Death's Head (41 page)

Too slow,
I hear my gun say.

Move faster.

As Duza turns at the voice I grab the first of her eleven braids. Electricity sears flesh and glistening bone is revealed where the skin of my palm should be. Swapping hands makes me drop the SW SIG-37, which swears viciously as it hits the floor. But changing hands is instinctive and so is wrapping Duza’s braid around my fingers. In the end she simply reaches up and rips the steel plait from her own head.

White light and static.

She’s waiting for me when I step through a wall, her pistol already raised. Several things happen simultaneously.

Duza says, “It finishes here.” But that’s the least of them.

When her finger tightens on the trigger, I hurl my dagger as hard as possible, straight into her face, and she really is as good a shot as people say. I know this because she vaporizes the blade midthrow.
Carbon, chromium, cobalt, manganese, molybdenum, silicon, and vanadium.

I taste it happen.

And I see it also, only I see it from behind her, which is where I’m now standing. And Duza is right: This is where the thing ends. Wrapping my fingers into a handful of braids, I yank back her head and feel the general flicker frantically as she tries to switch dimensions. Fear, pain, and my grip lock her into place for the few seconds it takes me to hack off her head with her own blade.

And it’s true: Her flesh really is hard as old oak.

“This thing you’ve got for knives,” says the gun when I pick it up again. “We need to talk about it sometime.”

“SIR?” THE SHOUT
comes from Neen.

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s me.”

“You can stop firing, sir,” he says. “We’ve done it.”

The Aux take one look at the severed head hanging from my hand and glance at one another. “You might want to lose that, sir,” says Neen.

I’m expecting a battle report, numbers lost and injured, what the Aux are doing to lock down any remaining guards or crew, but it’s obvious Neen’s mind is on other things. As are all their minds.

“Why?” I demand.

“Because,” says Haze, “we’re about to have visitors.”

Shil begins to straighten my uniform, then takes a look at my face and decides to leave it as it is. “Take the gun,” she suggests. “Although I’d keep it pointed at the floor.”

By now I know who is out there.

“How do I look?”

“Like shit.”

“That’s
Like shit, sir…
”

She snaps a half-mocking salute, then lets her gaze flick to my burned hip. “You want me to battle-dress that first?”

“No,” I say. “It’ll keep.”

We go out together. Not just me and the Aux, but the whole crowd of us, right down to the girls originally chosen to keep the crew amused on their journey to Bhose. We carry a motley collection of daggers, pulse rifles, and pistols, although everyone is careful to keep their blades sheathed and their fingers well away from any firing buttons or triggers.

THE ONE THING
you can say for the United Free is that their stick is so unbelievably big, they can afford to speak very softly indeed. You don’t need to raise your voice when you can swat whole planets as easily as children can brush away a fly.

Lights illuminate the decks of the
Winter Wind,
although none of us can pinpoint their origin. Some form of force shield is holding back the storm so that rain trickles down invisible walls in the distance. Above the slow waves hovers a vast black oval that shifts slightly until it hangs unsupported next to our ruined deck.

“Attention,” shouts Neen.

And as we watch, a sliver of the oval disappears. It doesn’t open or slide back or nictitate, it simply vanishes, and a young woman steps onto our deck. She’s wearing a simple jacket, ordinary black trousers, and light-colored shoes; somehow the effect is far more elegant than she has the right to expect.

I recognize her immediately.

“Paper Osamu,” she says, introducing herself.

We all know that citizens in the Free can replace their bodies and hold back the years, so there’s a chance Ms. Osamu is really older than we are, perhaps by centuries. But she looks about Neen’s age, which I find disconcerting in someone who goes on to announce herself as newly promoted U/Free ambassador to this section of the outer spiral.

“Which one of you is Sven Tveskoeg?”

I step forward, aware that my injured hip makes me limp.

Readouts in my head tell me we’ll be on lenz from the moment the ship arrives until the moment it leaves. So I try to keep my shoulders straight and my chin up, but tiredness makes me stumble and when Paper Osamu shakes my hand it’s impossible for me not to wince.

She turns my ruined hand in hers so the burned flesh is visible against the black leather of her glove. “You’re injured.”

“There’s been a battle.”

Her mouth twists, which could be the beginnings of a smile. “We heard,” she says. “We also piggybacked the local spy sats and you’re right, all appear to have suffered the same simultaneous malfunction. However…” She pauses, like someone used to public speaking, and that’s when I know she’s older than she looks.

“We have identified wreckage, also bodies. A U/Free team is collecting evidence as I speak and if what you say is true…” She hesitates, for real this time. “And I tend to believe it is, then I will be filing a galactic crime report. Third-degree genocide. You may be called to give evidence.”

“You got here fast.”

The words leave my mouth before I can catch them.

Paper Osamu smiles. “We have fast ships.”

What she means is,
We have ships that rip holes in space and post themselves through nonexistent slots.
Her tone is smug, and her gaze as it scans the deck in front of her is a little too neutral. Any minute now she’s going to offer us all the U/Free equivalent of beads and I’m going to lose my temper.

This is not a good idea.

“We’ve got injured,” I say. “Can you spare medical supplies?”

“Are you asking for help?”

Something about Paper Osamu’s tone worries me. It’s formal. We’ve entered a negotiation to which only she, and half a trillion others, knows the rules. Unfortunately, we’re not among that number.

“Yes,” I say, not giving myself a chance to change my mind. “I’m asking for your help.”

Slots open in the side of her craft and what exits is dust. Only this is dust that moves under its own power and folds itself around my hand and hip before I can object. Others behind me are also enveloped.

“Stand still,” says Paper Osamu. “You’ll find it makes things easier.”

We’re being treated to a full-on presentation of U/Free power. That’s when I realize this little scene is being relayed to the Uplifted as well as to Farlight and OctoV’s other cities. At the gates of Ilseville, the Enlightened issued a challenge to the Free while making it sound as if the challenge was to OctoV.

This is the reply.

And there’s an elegant symmetry in the U/Free using us to warn the Uplifted, just as the Uplifted used us to challenge the U/Free. Something else about politics falls into place for me: Presentation matters.

“Thank you,” I say, holding up my newly healed hand. “That’s really very impressive.”

Paper Osamu’s mouth twitches. “Glad you like it,” she says. “Is there any other way in which we can help?”

My glance takes in the others, the ruined ship on which we all stand, and the dark swell of a sullen ocean around us. I’ve had enough of this world. My guess is that we all have.

“If it’s okay with you,” I say, “we’d quite like a lift off planet.”

CHAPTER 52

S
IX WEEKS
pass before we are released by the United Free. At no time do they suggest we are prisoners or hostages of any kind. We’re treated with respect, fed well, given additional medical treatment, and allowed access to a gym and a weight room. Of course we’re also kept in isolation and only allowed to see outsiders when we go for medical treatment or questioning.

What I do is dangerous, Paper Osamu tells me.

At first I think she means being a soldier.

She doesn’t. She means all that glitching dimensions with the kyp, reading events ahead of them happening, and stealing information from all available sources. It’s dangerous, quite possibly illegal. And apparently there’s a really good chance that it will kill me.

I’m not to do it while I’m aboard her ship.

All in all I’m interviewed five times. Always by Paper Osamu, although the audience changes. Her ship is somewhere unspecified, but obviously out of our own system.

Everything is so quiet I begin to believe we’ve slipped through one of those rips in space Haze talks about. When I suggest this to Ms. Osamu, she smiles kindly and talks about self-canceling sound and acoustic engineering. This is the point I decide not to try any of my other theories out on her.

She gives Haze access to the library.

After a few days, at his suggestion, I’m also offered access.

There are ten to the power of twenty-four living stars, beyond counting in any real sense. Dead stars can be the size of small cities or five times bigger than Fort Karbonne’s sun. The energy from a single photon released at the center of a star takes a million years to reach that star’s surface. A number of stars are actually older than the universe, which suggests levels of complexity not yet understood.

Haze loves it, but then he’s rapidly developing into a two-braid. At the end of the day I’m still a fighting machine. All the same, some of the things I learn are interesting, and a few are even useful.

Enlightened technology is illegal within areas claimed by the U/Free, but only because the U/Free regard it as crude and unstable. Personality uploading is perfectly legal for U/Free citizens, as is melding with a hive mind, provided such melding is consensual. Bodily augmentation, either viral or surgical, is commonplace. But nonregulated technology is to be regarded as inherently unsafe, hence the ban.

On instinct, I look up OctoV.

Renegade hive mind, now self-assimilated,
reads the entry. OctoV was Uplifted but is now separate. The
Id
to their
Ego.
The entry makes it clear that the Free regard this as a bad thing.

That evening I’m visited by Paper Osamu. She’s neatly dressed and intensely professional. If I would like to ask for asylum from the Free she feels certain it would be granted.

I am, apparently,
more than I appear.
Also,
greater than the sum of my parts.
Just listening to this adds to my headache. The idea of exile becomes less attractive when I ask about the Aux.

“Define
aux.
”

“My fighting group…Shil, Haze, Neen, Franc, and Rachel. We come as a unit.”

Something tells me Paper Osamu is wondering whether offering me asylum is a good idea. Not that she need worry; I refuse as soon as I realize asylum means leaving the others behind.

I ask to see them.

Ms. Osamu tells me this is not possible.

All of us, what remains of the army…we’re kept separate by rank, corps, and gender, apparently because Paper Osamu believes our social and sexual models of interpersonal relationships are unfair, and does not wish to implicate herself by encouraging hierarchical models while we remain in her care.

Haze says she’s a prude, and her announcement that postsexuality is an ideal just means she’s so bored by fucking she doesn’t want anyone else to enjoy themselves, either. The blush as Haze says this tells me things have gone further between him and Rachel than any of us guessed.

The morning after I’m offered asylum, Paper Osamu wakes me at dawn to tell me to collect my belongings; all of us are being returned to Octovian care. Almost inevitably we’re arrested for treason, desertion, and cowardice the moment we step aboard General Jaxx’s mother ship.

CHAPTER 53

M
Y TRIAL
is simple and quick, its verdict obvious. A lieutenant I’ve never met represents me. He barely bothers to see me beforehand.