Maximum Offence (14 page)

‘Sir,’ he says. ‘With respect, sir. We left our supplies back at camp. On Colonel Vijay’s orders. So we could travel light.’

‘What did you leave, exactly?’

‘Tents, sir. Food, sir. Most of the ammunition.’

‘Neen,’ I say. ‘Fuck off, now . . .’

Punching a superior officer is a capital offence. Almost everything in this army is. It’s worse if he’s a staff officer. Then they shoot you, patch you up and shoot you all over again. Otherwise, everyone would do it.

But I’m still not going to take it out on Neen.

Seeing my anger, Colonel Vijay stays out of range. If he had any sense he would know just how close he is to being fragged by his own side. But he has all the sense of a blind kitten. Women probably find him sweet.

Me, I just want to pull the pin on a grenade.

‘Stay here, sir.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘To tell the others to stop wasting ammo.’

A couple of seconds later, our rifles fall silent. A second or so after that, the mercenaries do the same. With luck, we destroyed their supplies when we hit those pods.

‘Haze,’ I say, ‘you jacked into Hekati’s system?’

‘Yes, sir,’ he says. ‘Sorry, sir.’

‘Why?’ I demand.

‘Can’t help it, sir . . .’ He must know how stupid that sounds.

‘What did you discover?’

‘Accessed the schematics, sir. She keeps track of all transport moving inside her torus. She always has done, there used to be seven and a half million—’

He sees my face and skips the lecture.

‘Transport?’

‘A Hex-Seven, sir.’

An X7i landing craft? On Hekati’s sea?

‘And a copter, sir. It’s shielded.’

The Hex-Seven is irrelevant. We are miles from the coast. Anything that happens here will be over before its crew arrive. But the copter . . .

‘You know where it is?’ I ask Haze.

He shakes his head.

‘Find out.’

‘Sir,’ he says, ‘that means . . .’

This boy isn’t a natural soldier. He isn’t a natural anything. Haze is a braid on the wrong side. Given half a chance, the Silver Fist will slice my throat, rip out my implant if only I had one, and poke their way through what is left of my brain. What they will do to Haze is far worse.

And yet he’s still sticking in there. That is courage of a kind.

‘Oh fuck,’ Haze says. He’s talking to himself. ‘They’re watching us . . .’ Scrabbling for his pad, he flips it open and flicks his fingers across its surface without glancing down.

‘Permission to request help, sir?’

Help?
I’d ask Haze where he thinks we’re going to get help, but he’s gone back to his pad and is scrabbling frantically at its keys. So I nod, realize he can’t see, and say, ‘Permission granted.’

‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘Thank you. Thank you . . .’ Takes me a moment to realize he’s not talking to me.

In the distance, a tiny explosion lights the side of our mountain.

A few seconds later, there is another.

Then another.

‘What’s going on?’ asks Colonel Vijay.

We ignore him.

‘See them?’ I ask Neen, who hands me his field-glasses. I don’t need binoculars to know what is happening. Low-level lenz, the tiny comm-sat cameras that act as eyes for an advancing army, are dropping like hail into the valley below.

It is time we left.

Keeping our heads down, we make it to a stone hut before a copter skims overhead, heading for where the mercenaries still are.

An Uplift trooper hangs from the hatch, a machine gun resting on his knee. A heat sensor hangs under the copter’s body. Watching them go, I’m grateful the sun’s already made the slate roof hotter than we are.

A minute or so later a battle starts behind us.

Silver Fist, meet the Mercenaries. Mercenaries, meet the Silver Fist
.

A belt-fed opens up and then falls silent. Grenades echo so loudly that pebbles trickle down the valley sides. I know how to read gunfire. Whoever the mercenaries are, they’re going down hard and taking a dozen Silver Fist with them.

It’s brutal, but the conclusion is foregone. As mortars drown out small-arms fire, a belt-fed opens up one final time. When it stops, it’s from choice.

A single shot brings silence.

Neen says the soldier’s prayer. All any of us can hope for.

———

Shouldering our weapons, we crest a ridge, switch tracks and begin the climb to a higher valley. Thorns drag at our legs and sweat dries before it has time to bead on our skin. The sun beats down and the wind is hot.

‘Our supplies,’ says Colonel Vijay.

‘Lost, sir.’

He opens his mouth to protest, then shuts it again.

‘We should stop soon,’ he says finally.

He is afraid to make it a direct order in case I disobey. He’s not sure what he will do if that happens. I am, he’ll do nothing. And his instinct is right. If he tells me to go back for the supplies or to stop this march, I’ll frag him where he stands.

‘Soon, sir,’ I say.

‘Good,’ he says, as if we’ve reached some agreement. A few hours later, he suggests stopping again. This time I don’t even bother to answer.

‘SO,’ SAYS THE SIG. ‘WHO ARE WE GOING TO KILL TODAY?’

‘We’ve only just got here.’

‘And your point is?’ it says. A click of a switch closes it down.

The roof to our new base is missing, the front door has been stolen for firewood and the inside is strewn with goat droppings harder than buckshot. It’s ideal. There is even a spring outside, where black rock forces rainwater to the surface.

‘Obsidian,’ says Haze. Rachel thinks it’s coal.

I don’t care what it is so long as it keeps providing water.

‘Slowly,’ I tell them. ‘Sip it slowly.’

One entire circle of Hekati is behind us. It has taken five days in total, including today’s forced march, and I only know we’ve done it because this valley is where we came in. What we haven’t done is find our missing U/Free observer.

We’ve seen ejército at a distance; they leave us alone. We see prospectors, and they don’t even know we are here.
Is this what the ferox felt like?
I wonder.

Invisible, out on the edge.

Boats skid across the distant sea like insects. Carts trundle from one city to another, pulled by donkeys or teams of men. Colonel Vijay is amazed. He never knew people lived like this. No one bothers to point out many live far worse.

‘Neen,’ I yell.

He comes running.

‘Hunt something,’ I say. ‘Kill it. Get Franc to cook it.’

My sergeant glances towards a figure sitting under a tree. He wants to say something about the colonel, but isn’t sure he should.

I’m damn certain he shouldn’t. ‘Wait,’ I say. ‘I’ll come with you.’

We find a track half a mile above our new camp. It runs straight uphill and a wisp of fur suggests wildcat. A large one, given the thorn’s at hip height.

My bet is the cat sleeps up here and hunts lower down, in which case we are heading in the wrong direction for food. Only I need a fresh look at the valley and the higher we go the better my chances of seeing the islands off Hekati’s coast. Because those are what we’ll need to search next.

‘Sir,’ says Neen. ‘Can I talk freely?’

‘As long as it’s not about the colonel.’

Our next stop is a rock overhanging the valley, with our camp far below and a glimpse of the sea beyond. All of Hekati’s rivers lead to that sea. Back in the day, there were obviously dozens of the things. Most of the river beds we meet now are little more than damp gravel or cracking mud.

Seven million people once lived here. Now Hekati’s a back-water so far out of touch that other backwaters regard it with contempt.

Ideal place to hide something
, I think.

There is more to this mission than a missing U/Free and some sickly prospectors, a bunch of Silver Fist and two dead mercenaries. I just know it. All I need to do is work out exactly . . .

‘Sir,’ says Neen. ‘Are you all right?’

A sixth sense prickles the back of my neck, and my body floods with adrenalin as the kyp flexes in my throat. My body does other stuff that makes little sense, like slowing my heartbeat and heightening my hearing. It’s an animal thing.

‘Prey?’ whispers Neen.

‘Hunters.’

When I draw my gun, the load-and-lock diode is lit, the sights have ranged themselves to a hundred paces and the SIG has set itself for hollow-point.

‘You knew?’

‘Oh,’ says the SIG. ‘Now he decides to talk to me.’

As ordered, Neen goes first. He finds a ditch and crawls along it until he crosses the wildcat’s track we found earlier and follows that for fifty paces. I’m right behind him, and slam my hand over his mouth the moment he stops.

‘Quiet.’

He is not nearly scared enough for what’s making its way towards us. Unholstering the SIG, I drop out its clip, count ceramics and fold my fingers round the handle to deaden the noise as the clip slots back into place.

Seeing me do this, Neen checks his own rifle.

He has eighty to a clip, another hundred hanging from his belt. I would swap both the SIG and his rifle for a single moly-coated bullet and thirty seconds with Rachel’s sniper rifle. Obviously, I don’t say this. The SIG can sulk for days.

‘Ready?’

My gun sighs. ‘Always.’

‘Single shot . . .’

Diodes whirr, although it has the sense to damp them. Somewhere the SIG has settings for mute. It must, all intelligent guns do. I’ve yet to find them.

The rocks ahead have that flat quality hot landscape gets when the sun is directly above and unfiltered by cloud. And I know Hekati’s sun is reflected, that dawn and dusk are tricks created with mist and mirrors. But the people who design these places are good, and thinking too much about that stuff fucks you up. So I don’t.

‘Field-glasses.’

Neen hands them over.

Takes me three seconds to find what I know is out there. ‘Take a look,’ I say, passing the glasses back. ‘And don’t let light reflect on the lens.’

‘Oh fuck,’ he says. ‘That means . . .’

It means two mercenaries took down a platoon of Silver Fist, destroyed a copter and took out two braids. There is no doubt about that last bit. Because each has a severed head hanging from his belt.

One braid has three metal snakes, the other five. That’s a major and a full colonel in our world. Also, the mercenaries seem to have helped themselves to a collection of Silver Fist weapons.

When Neen raises his rifle, I say, ‘Let them pass.’

He shuts his mouth and does what he’s told.

I have my reasons. Either those two are the world’s best trackers or they have a fix on something. And my guess is it’s Haze.

‘OK,’ I say, a few minutes later. ‘Now we follow.’

———

As said, I can read the sound of gunfire. This one begins with a burst from Franc. Has to be Franc because she is the one we left standing guard. A clip burns in answer. So the mercenaries have enough ammunition not to worry about wasting it. A second clip burns just as fast. This means they didn’t hit Franc first time round.

I can count every single one in the Aux fire in reply.

‘What about Colonel Vijay?’ says Neen, when I tell him this.

Yeah, that’s true. They might have hit the colonel, but I doubt it. No way are we getting that lucky. Rachel is firing single shots. And probably doing more to pin the enemy down than the rest put together.

‘OK,’ I say. ‘Let’s get down there.’

The grass in front of our base is on fire.

Leaves shrivel on bushes, the air stinks from cordite, and whatever animals once made nests in that grass. One mercenary is in the open. The other covers him from behind a low wall. The one in the open uses his rifle to shred stone chippings from the hut.

Anything that wastes their ammunition is fine with me.

The Aux falling back makes sense in one way. The hut has thick walls and narrow windows. Of course, the lack of a door is not great. But, so far, the mercenaries don’t know about that, because they’ve approached from the other side.

In another way, it’s fucking stupid.

The building has no roof. One well-positioned grenade and my troopers are going to be decorating the inside walls. I send Neen round behind a tree. Then, when he is in position, signal him to cover me.

Rising from a crouch, he does.

As Neen opens fire, Franc sticks her own gun around the window and hoses down everything in sight. Her clip burns out in a single blip. Another muzzle appears in the same space and burns out two blips later. So Shil must be changing clips.

How much ammunition do they think they have?

Can’t see Rachel, but that is Rachel for you. She’ll use one bullet to everyone else’s hundred and probably make the only shot that really matters.

And just as I think
where’s Haze?
a grenade rises from inside, bounces off a strip of roof tiles on its way down and lands at the feet of the nearer mercenary. Hard to know if Haze is an idiot or simply inspired. Perhaps both.

Two paces take me into the open . . .

Caught by the unexpected, the mercenary turns.

So I hit the ground and Haze’s grenade explodes. Needn’t have bothered about hitting the ground. A fair bit of the shrapnel never gets further than my target.

Of course, he’s in armour.

I’m not. All the same, he goes down.

And I scrabble up, praying all the while that Neen is keeping the other mercenary busy. He is. So I stamp on the helmet of the one at my feet, twice. He has a grenade of his own. It seems a pity to waste it.

‘Down,’ I shout, pulling the pin.

Neen ducks behind his tree as I begin to count.

As the other mercenary spins, I reach
three
and drop into a ditch myself, lobbing the grenade towards him. He tries to kick it away, misses and by then it is too late anyway. The explosion knocks him off his feet and throws him into a wall.

He’s in full armour, obviously. But it’s still enough to stun him. A hollow-point direct into his chest kicks him back when he tries to stand. His armour cracks, but the ceramic holds. We are talking quality stuff.

Gripping his head, I twist until his helmet can go no further. It’s an internal lock, not his spine, that stops me. Although I’m sure I can get round that.