Maximum Offence (2 page)

‘All done,’ says Neen, rubbing his fists.

‘Good. Anything I should know?’

Neen hesitates.

‘What?’

‘Told the little shit to pay us from now on.’

I grin. It’s a good call.

‘How much?’

‘Twenty per cent,’ says Neen. ‘Straight off the top, no deductions. Last day of each month. No exceptions, no excuses . . .’

This is a farm boy, an ex-militia conscript who should have been dead months back. Would have been if I hadn’t taken over his troop. I wonder where he got the idea. Then I see his sister behind him and know exactly where she thinks he did. Shil is scowling, but that’s nothing new. Shil’s always scowling. We have history.

‘Problem?’

‘No, sir,’ says Shil.

‘Good . . .’ I look round the bar. ‘Get drunk,’ I tell Neen. ‘Get laid. Acquire a hangover. We ship out tomorrow.’

Neen grins. ‘It that an order, sir?’

His sister sighs.

HINGES CREEK AND ANGELIQUE POKES HER HEAD ROUND THE door.

‘Sven,’ she says and disappears. Might be the fact I’m standing naked in the middle of my bedroom. Must be the gun in my hand.

‘What?’

Reappearing, she nods as a towel goes round my waist and the SIG-37 goes back in its holster. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘but she won’t . . .’ Who
won’t
is obvious, because a girl slides past Angelique and looks around.

‘Pre-fab construction,’ she says. ‘Early-Octovian. Original walls and door. Original electrics from the look of it . . . You do realize,’ she says, ‘this building was only meant to last five years?’

‘I like it.’

‘You would.’

Her nose wrinkles at the smell, but she catches herself quickly. And when she brushes past me to the open window, it could be to examine its sash cords. Because that is what she does.

‘Original fittings,’ she says.

Maybe she catches my irritation.

‘You don’t mind?’ she says.

‘Of course not.’

If she hears an edge to my voice, she doesn’t let it show. Anyway, going to the window doesn’t help with the smell because the air beyond the window stinks of dog shit, burning rubber and hydrocarbons from the landing fields outside. Where does she think the stench came from in the first place?

‘You really like it here?’

‘Yes,’ I say.

Angelique is looking between us. ‘You know each other?’

‘I’m sorry,’ says the girl. ‘Didn’t I say?’

‘No,’ Angelique says flatly. ‘You didn’t.’

Angelique might be blonde, generously built, free with her body, but she has the temper of a redhead, and it’s coming to the boil. I don’t need the argument, and I don’t need the complications an argument will bring.

‘Ms Osamu,’ I say, ‘may I introduce Angelique, my bar manager?’

They glare at each other.

‘Angelique, this is Paper Osamu, ambassador for the United Free to the Octovian Empire. Ms Osamu has full plenipotentiary status for this edge of the spiral arm.’

Angelique doesn’t know what it means either, but has enough brains to recognize it as trouble and best avoided. ‘She’s U/Free?’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘She’s U/Free.’

Paper Osamu smiles.

‘But . . .’ says Angelique, and gets no further.

My visitor looks a good year or two younger than Angelique, who is nineteen at most. Paper’s also wearing rags. They are undoubtedly expensive rags. Probably ripped from exotic silk by a famous U/Free artist and sewn together with strands of web from a spider that has been taught to shit silver. But they still look like rags to me. And if they look like rags to me, then they’re going to look like rags to Angelique, only more so . . .

The furthest she’s been from home is Maurizio Junction.

That’s eight streets away.

‘Coffee would be good,’ says Ms Osamu. She is looking at Angelique as she says this.

‘You’ll find it downstairs.’

Angelique shuts my door with enough of a slam to make the windows rattle and the U/Free ambassador laugh. ‘Are all your women so jealous?’

‘She’s not
my women
.’

‘Really?’ Paper Osamu looks at me.

‘All right. But only the once.’

‘You’re such children—’ Ms Osamu catches herself, apologizes. The U/Free are big on not being rude about others. They have laws about such things. Me? As far as I’m concerned, if you think someone’s a crawling heap of shit, you’re allowed to say so. Just don’t be surprised if they pull a knife on you.

Taking a piece of card from her pocket, Paper Osamu says, ‘Look . . . The general’s invited you to a breakfast he’s giving in my honour.’

I check both sides of the invitation.

‘Want me to read it?’

‘I can manage. My old lieutenant taught me.’

‘Bonafonte deMax?’

It’s my turn to stare.

‘I checked him out,’ she says. ‘At the general’s suggestion.’

We live in a city full of generals, empire ministers and senators. Also heads of the high clans, distant cousins of the emperor and trade lords. However, round here, if someone says
the general
they mean General Indigo Jaxx, commander of the Death’s Head and my ultimate boss.

‘And call me Paper,’ she adds. ‘We’re friends.’

First I’ve heard of it.

Walking over to my wardrobe, Paper finds my uniform. The jacket has been cleaned since she last saw it and the blood’s come out. My boots are also clean, which must be Angelique’s work, because I don’t remember scrubbing them.

There’s a waterfall of silver braid tucked inside one of the boots, a holster over the back of a chair and a dagger’s sheath on the mantel over the fireplace. The dagger itself keeps the sash window from sliding shut.

‘Antique,’ says Paper, looking at the blade. ‘You steal this?’

‘General Jaxx gave it to me.’

‘So,’ Paper says, ‘I guess that means he stole it.’

‘Paper . . .’

‘The blade’s old Earth,’ she tells me. ‘All old Earth artefacts are protected under United Free legislation. No trading, no selling, no transfer between systems without a licence.’

‘Could have been in his family for generations.’

‘We’ll make a diplomat of you yet.’

‘God forbid.’

‘I’m a diplomat,’ she points out.

‘So you’ve said.’

Arranging my uniform on the floor, Paper stands back and looks expectant. She’s medium height, athletic without being muscled, just enough hips to grip, a tight rear and high breasts, which are full without being large. She’s also black-haired, but that means nothing. Last time we met her hair was chestnut and her eyes were blue. Today they are green.

‘Sven,’ she says. ‘You need to dress.’

‘Then get out.’

‘I’ve seen naked men before.’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I’m sure you have.’ Dropping the towel, I stamp over to the shower. It’s a real one, the kind that uses water. Unfortunately, its sides are made of clear glass. Paper walks round it slowly, taking a good look.

‘Impressive,’ she says. She’s not talking about the cubicle.

I keep my back to her as I pull my trousers over wet skin and buckle my belt.

‘May I?’ says Paper’s voice behind me.

So polite, the U/Free.

Reaching up, she wipes a drop of water from my shoulder where it vanishes under the edge of my prosthetic arm. ‘Exquisite workmanship.’ The stump has a tortoiseshell effect where badly healed flesh used to be. It gives a dull click as she taps it. Then she taps my arm itself, which rings slightly.

‘You lost this to a ferox?’

Nodding, I turn round.

She is standing so close that I can smell woman under whatever scent she’s wearing. And her pupils are wide, those little black dots no longer little but vast, reducing the green of her irises to a thin circle around the edges.

‘Really?’ she says, breathless. ‘A ferox?’

‘It was old,’ I say. ‘Almost dead.’

‘I heard you cut off its head.’

‘Needed proof.’

‘Of what?’

‘That this wound wasn’t self-inflicted.’

‘People do that?’ she asks. ‘In the desert . . . ?’

Smiling, I say, ‘In the desert, people do anything.’ Then, because she’s still close, I wrap one arm around her waist and pull her close, raising her chin with my other hand.

‘
Sven . . .
‘ She twists away before I can stop her.

‘Thought we were meant to be friends?’

Paper Osamu tuts. ‘Come on,’ she says. ‘Let’s get you dressed.’

Helping me into my jacket, she adjusts my holster, buttons my braid into place, hangs my Obsidian Cross, second class, on its ribbon around my neck, and rips my blade from the sash window. Which, obviously enough, crashes shut.

The U/Free can be strange sometimes.

———

When we get downstairs the others are waiting. Telling Neen I’ll see him later, I ask Aptitude to help Lisa clean up and the rest to get on with whatever needs doing. Angelique scowls when I hold the door for Paper. Shil merely raises her eyebrows and makes sure that I’ve seen.

‘Who’s the eldest one?’ Paper demands, the moment we’re outside.

‘Shil . . . My sergeant’s sister.’

‘Had her too?’

‘
Paper!
‘

‘Just asking,’ she says.

Paper mutters something about research, and I stop listening when she starts using words like
polyandry
. I’m pretty sure there’s a
primitive peoples
in there somewhere. But she catches herself, glances at me and decides I’m not paying attention anyway.

‘She likes you,’ Paper says, bringing it back to my level.

I could tell her that Shil hates my guts and has done ever since I made her brother my sergeant. But I don’t bother. ‘No, she doesn’t,’ I say instead.

‘Believe me,’ says Paper. ‘She does. I know these things.’

Paper probably means she once read something about the mating habits of those
primitive peoples
she was muttering about. As we walk, the city of Farlight wakes around us and she tells me my mission. The one I’m meant to keep quiet about.

We’re being borrowed by the U/Free.
We
being the Aux. Although that is a secret, obviously.

‘You understand?’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I know what secret means.’

Paper sighs. She doesn’t, however, tell me why we’re being borrowed. That’s going to come later.

The houses become larger as we head downhill, and keep getting larger, grander and cleaner until we near Farlight’s centre where huge mansions hide behind heavy gates. The gardens are green and roses flourish. People down here have enough water to waste on plants. It’s an interesting idea for someone who grew up on a frontier fort in the desert.

Elegant hovers wait outside shops as we get closer still. Uniformed guards usher high clan families into retailers so exclusive I have no idea what they sell. And nothing outside gives a clue. Paper watches me watch them. There is something knowing in her gaze. As if this is what she expects me to do.

Cold air blasts from shop doors.

For a few seconds, as they leave, the families experience the heat with which the rest of this city lives daily. And then sides lift on sleek hovers, and chauffeurs and cold air welcome them inside. This was Aptitude’s life once. She’s never seemed to miss it.

‘What are you thinking?’ Paper asks.

‘Nice car,’ I say, as a smoked-glass monstrosity slides away. She glances at me strangely.

A virus attack hit this area before I was born. A few of the streets melted. Most just dripped a little and then solidified. Although few of them dripped as much as OctoV’s cathedral. This looks ready to collapse into a puddle the moment the sun rises high enough.

It’s looked like that for five hundred years.

That’s what Paper tells me as we skirt the square and duck under an arch in the shadow of the cathedral, that leads down an alley and into a smaller square beyond. Behind this is a long and narrow lake, looking like a river, that divides the north from the south of Farlight. The lake stinks in summer, and it stinks in winter. Only not quite as badly. Bodies have a habit of turning up in that lake. A number of them badly mutilated. I know where we’re going.

What interests me is that Paper also knows. I’ll give good money she hasn’t been before. The Death’s Head aren’t known for issuing open invitations to their regimental HQ.

The square is dusty, the grass even browner than the last time I was here. No one’s wasting any water round here. A fir tree droops behind rusting railings, stripped of its needles by the heat as surely as if someone had lit a bonfire underneath. The HQ itself is immaculate.

‘Don’t tell me,’ says Paper.

Glancing from the freshly painted door to the rusting railings, from the scrubbed steps to the parched earth showing between patches of dead grass, she says, ‘Subliminal reinforcement of already established hierarchical patterns . . .’

I ignore her.

Elbowing my way through a crowd around the door brings me to the steps at the same time as a major in the militia. His chest drips with braid and he’s wearing a row of ribbons probably awarded for dressing himself. A young woman hangs off his arm. She has as many jewels as he has medals. In addition, her breasts are doing their best to fight free from her blouse. It’s a heroic battle.

There’s no doubt what the jewels were awarded for.

‘
Lieutenant
,’ he says. We stare at each other.

Maybe I’m meant to stand back, or something. When I don’t, he draws himself up to his full height. This is a head shorter than me. ‘I order you to give way . . .’

OK, so I shouldn’t grin.

‘Sven,’ says Paper. ‘Let him go first.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I outrank you,’ says the major.

Like I give a fuck
. ‘Tell me,’ I say, ‘what are all those ribbons for? Heroism in the face of overwhelming . . .’

My nod takes in his partner’s generous flesh.

Anything the major intends to say — and he looks like someone who intends to say a lot — dies at a bark of laughter from the top of the steps. A crop-haired man with wire glasses hiding pale blue eyes stands in the doorway. He’s wearing a simple uniform. No decorations except a single Obsidian Cross.

‘Wondered what was holding everyone. Should have known . . .’