Death's Head (31 page)

You can hear me?

Yes. I can hear you…

I can take down that high fighter.
The boy is podgy, fevered, and nervous. With his sweat-stained uniform and Death’s Head patch he looks like a kid caught dressing up; the others are starting to look like soldiers.

You know,
he says.
Don’t you?

I nod.
How did you get involved with Franc?

My family owned her.
Haze looks embarrassed, and I realize how little I understand about his world.
We played together as children…

All of this is wrong,
he adds.
The war, people starving, people owning each other or paying others to fight for them. People like you and me.
Haze wonders if he can say it, decides he can.

We shouldn’t exist.

Oh fuck…

I have a rebel NewlyMade, camped out in a foxhole a hundred yards from a landing jetty, with a battle about to begin. I wonder to myself how I’d explain it to the Aux if I just shot him here and now.

You don’t need to,
says Haze.
Order me, and I’ll do it myself.

Whose side are you really on?

His gaze flicks to Franc, Neen, and Shil. There’s no hesitation in his voice whatsoever.
Theirs,
he says.

“Go talk to the Vals,” I tell him.

“About what?” he asks, answering aloud.

“The high fighters.” I stare pointedly at the slab he carries. “Tell them how your slab can help overcome the shield.”

Vaulting from the foxhole, Haze sprints across sodden grass, throwing himself into the ditch behind the rocket launcher. Both Vals look surprised.

“What do you want?”

Can I really hear their words from where I squat? Or does Val 9’s question filter into my head through the kyp? It’s impossible to say.

“The high fighter’s going to attack again.”

“Obviously.”

“I can stop it.”

“You can stop it from attacking?”

Haze shakes his head. “I can unlock the codes,” he says. “Then you can shoot it down.” He’d say more but Val 9’s got him by the throat and she’s looking at Val 11, her eyes calculating the odds of this being likely.

“You’d better not be lying.”

“I’m not,” insists Haze.

He hunkers down with his slab, fingers flicking over the screen as his gaze dances among the high fighter, the rocket launcher in front of him, and the two Vals, who are watching, hard-eyed and suspicious.

“It’s about to roll,” he says.

The plane does.

“Take it before it reaches the river,” says Haze.

“We decide when to fire.”

“No.” Haze shakes his head. “You have to take it before it reaches the river. Unless that’s too hard a shot?”

Both Vals look like they want to get their hands back around his neck. Climbing out of their foxhole, they start to ratchet the wheel, raising the barrels; everyone can see it’s going to be a long shot.

A second later Haze climbs out of the foxhole after them.

“What’s he doing?” asks Shil, sounding worried.

Franc looks at me and smiles strangely. “Helping the Vals.”

“The Vals take help from no one,” says Ion. So I shrug and point and he shrugs in his turn. Stranger things in love and war, and we’re seeing the side effects of both of those.

The high fighter is closer now, a delta wing so thin it’s near invisible when seen from the front. A dot and the slash of a line, fire waterfalling behind it.

“Now,” Haze says. “Now.”

He’s almost shouting.

The two Vals hesitate for a second, and then one of them yanks a lever and all eight rockets fire at once. It’s wasteful and they’ve depleted a tenth of their weapons in one go, but it’s probably our best chance of making this work.

Smoke trails zip toward the incoming plane. It’s right around now our rockets should self-destruct, leaving the high fighter to fly unharmed through smoke and shrapnel. Only our rockets are still closing.

“Fuck,” says Ion, sounding genuinely impressed.

“Five, four, three, two, one…” The Vals are counting aloud. When the explosion comes, they hug each other and then punch Haze in the shoulder, which seems to be about as close to affection as either one is likely to get.

“Watch,” Haze says.

What’s left of the plane is hurtling toward the jetties on the far side of the river. An area used for mooring if the city gate quays are already jammed with incoming cargo. It hits smack-on, exploding in a ball of flame, then expands into black smoke and an even bigger ball of fire as the fuel it carries ignites.

Vals 9 and 11, and Haze, are almost blown off their feet.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck…” Ion’s saying it like a mantra. Like he doesn’t believe what just happened, which make two of us, or thirty, or three hundred, or however many there are still crouched in foxholes in front of the city gates. Haze would know, but he’s busy scraping mud from his face and turning bright red as the Vals forget the prejudices of a lifetime and try to hug him…

“Haze,” I shout. “Get yourself back here.”

He shoots me a grateful glance.

We’ve taken down their batwings and we’ve knocked out a high fighter, something that just shouldn’t be possible. In the afterglow I’m pretty sure that Ion, at least, is aware the best has just been.

All the same, he’s laughing and joking with his men. Passing obscene comments up and down the line, so jokes and insults run from the point of the arrow up one side, back down again, and up the other side. We’re in a gap between the softening-up and the real attack, and a silence settles across the line as everyone finally begins to realize that.

The earpiece Ion is wearing crackles.

“Sure,” he says. “Understood.”

“Outpost?”

“Yeah. They’ve reached the last bend in the river.” He lowers his voice. “We’re facing Silver Fist.”

A lot of mercenaries think the entire Death’s Head should be out here with us, but the Death’s Head are kept for when they’re really needed, and the mercenaries are the ones who’ve been offered passage off planet, should they live. All the same, Silver Fist isn’t good; they’re elite. The Uplift’s answer to OctoV’s Death’s Head, unless it’s the other way around.

“Belt-feds,” I suggest as the first landing craft comes into sight.

Ion nods. My suggestions are allowed. Control rests with Ion—that’s been agreed in advance. He expects an argument and is initially suspicious that I agree to his demands. So I explain the obvious. My job is not controlling mercenaries, who already have their own command.

We’re here to kill enemy officers. It’s that simple.

“Fire,” shouts Ion.

A dozen mortars lob their loads toward the river.

“Again.”

Water explodes around the first five landers in steady thuds, but nothing we throw at them makes a difference, and the Hex-Seven has been specially adapted for river work.

One side on each is preparing to drop.

A junior officer will be first ashore and die within seconds. Somewhere in the craft behind will be an officer the Enlightened are reluctant to lose. And somewhere in the craft behind that will be a collection of majors and colonels and maybe even a general…killing or capturing them is our first duty.

“Rifles,” I say.

Midbarreled and easy to carry, but not so lightweight they can’t be steadied, the Ursula 12e fires a single pulse that can melt combat armor and kill a trooper five back from the original victim. The pulse doesn’t spread; it barely dissipates.

Each weapon costs more than a legion sergeant earns in a year, and we have four of them: one for Franc, Shil, Haze, and Neen. I’ve seen the way those around us look at the guns and have no doubt there’ll be a fight over who gets the weapon if one of us drops.

I could stop this by tying the guns to our individual DNA, but a dead gun next to a dead soldier is a criminal waste, so I’ve left the codes open. Ion knows this, but only Ion. Genuine friendly-fire incidents are common enough without adding temptation to the mix…

CHAPTER 38

W
E SLAUGHTER
a hundred Silver Fist in a handful of seconds as a landing craft drops its side. Their second lieutenant goes down, his skull half gone. The burn through his heart is Neen, my own shot cuts his brain stem, and he’s technically dead before a mercenary even lobs a mortar, but no one’s arguing.

We’re all too busy killing.

As ramps fall from another four craft, a wave of uniformed elite rolls over the wooden quayside like silver smoke, hiding what was there before. As their front row goes down, the troopers behind march straight over the top, boots crushing their own wounded.

“Fuck,” says Franc, sounding impressed.

They’re less than a hundred paces away now, and every single step has got to cost. “Take the officers,” I tell my crew.

A lieutenant twists as Shil hits his shoulder, then goes down when her next shot explodes vertebrae from his neck.

“Good shot.”

She shrugs.

I put a hole through a knot of braid and see the major behind sink to his knees, then become one with the mud as three men clamber over him. One of them is a corporal with a rocket launcher on his hip. It’s a near-impossible weight to carry, but he’s doing it anyway.

Shooting him is like shooting myself.

The soldier behind grabs the launcher and swears as red-hot steel burns his hands, but he still has time to fire off a rocket before shrapnel opens his stomach and he stumbles, torn between reloading and the need to repack his own guts.

As the five landing craft empty, another five take their place. The ramp releases are better coordinated this time, steel sides hitting the riverbank in unison.

I take a major; at least I think he’s a major. The man behind him dies, and the man behind that, and my next shot rips open the face of a corporal who steps into the gap. She goes down, ground to pulp as those behind her scrabble to reach solid ground.

Vals 9 and 11 have their rocket launcher cranked as low as it will go, which is still not low enough. In desperation they spin the handle in the other direction, raising the barrels until it points almost vertically. Eight rockets hit the sky together, arc high, and fall toward the next wave of Hex-Sevens. Unfortunately the ramps go down seconds before the rockets can hit.

And most of the rockets miss anyway.

Mortars are being lobbed from inside the city. And the Silver Fist are retaliating with rockets from batteries on the far side of the river. There’s a whole other battle going on above our heads, but one thing I know for sure: Both sides are extracting a heavy cost in enemy lives.

“Fall back,” orders Ion.

“Not yet…” My words are drowned under gunfire, and it’s too late anyway: The mercenaries are abandoning their foxholes and moving toward the trench behind us. Crouched over their weapons, they walk backward, never once taking their eyes off Silver Fist.

Both Vals die, and a woman darts forward, drops to a crouch behind them, and slices into the backs of their necks with her dagger. The implants are still twitching as she stuffs wires, broken nerves, and core into her pocket. At least their memories will be going home.

“We need to hold,” I scream at Neen.

“Zero minus ten,” says my gun. “Timing’s okay.”

Seventy minutes have gone, ten longer than we needed to hold. It seems impossible, but then I realize fifteen Hex-Sevens have disgorged their troops, the floodplain in front of us is slick with blood, and I’m almost out of ammunition. I have to retreat, if only because the trench is where my next arms cache is waiting.

“Sir,” says Neen. “Please.” He looks worried that I might want the Aux to stick it out on their own.

“Fall back,” I tell him.

The next few hours take our numbers below a hundred. Anyone who makes it through to the end of the battle is guaranteed a way out of here. Apart from us, obviously…

It shows in a change of tactics. Driven by his determination not to be overrun, Ion sets up a row of belt-fed machine guns and fills the gaps with snipers, half a dozen marksmen he’s been holding in reserve. Most are female, which is interesting. I’m not sure I knew women made the best shots. At my suggestion, the Aux join them.

Occasionally suicide squads set out from the Silver Fist side, and that’s when we really come into our own, picking off the teams one by one and leaving the last out in the mud, badly wounded and usually screaming.

We’ve hit them hard, certainly hard enough to ensure that the final run of Hex-Sevens begins to unload its cargo on the far side of the river where Silver Fist sappers are busy constructing a camp.

Night is creeping across this world, and a cold wind is rising from the marshes around us. An alligator booms its challenge, unless it’s something else. I used to know the sound of every animal in the desert. Where I am now, its animals and plants are strange, its winds unexpected, and its weather patterns unclear.

We can fight in the dark, of course, and so can they. Night goggles are piled in boxes behind me. Ion wears a helmet with a visor that achieves daylight clarity with minimal weight. My own helmet does much the same. At this point I’m wishing I insisted on similar helmets for the Aux.