Maximum Offence (29 page)

Now I’m scowling and the brigadier is laughing. Although he stops fast enough when I glare. See, told you he was one of life’s staff officers.

‘I’ll fight them both at once.’

‘With only one arm?’ General Tournier sounds tempted.

‘How hard can it be?’ I ask, sneering towards the Vals. ‘They’re just copies of each other.’ It’s the Vals’ turn to scowl. There are a couple of things you don’t say about the Vals and that is one of them.

‘Two of them?’ says the general. ‘At once?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Can I do it?

Of course I can fucking do it.

‘Get him a fighting arm,’ General Tournier demands.

His ADC scampers off, bumping into one of the tables in his hurry. It takes the boy a lot longer to return, probably because he is staggering under the weight of a vast metal prosthetic.

‘Any good?’ he asks.

It’s stained, made from beaten steel, with braided hoses and hydraulic rods to work the main joints. A row of blades runs from its wrist to the elbow, which ends in a vicious spike. The arm even tightens at the top with screws. A deep scratch says an enemy got in a good blow then died. Well, if the blood still crusted on the elbow spike is anything to go by.

Obviously enough, I love it.

Flexing my new fingers, I make a fist, and then swing my new arm from side to side a couple of times just for the pleasure of hearing the hydraulics hiss.

‘You approve?’ asks the general.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Right,’ he says. ‘Here are the rules—’

‘Sir,’ I say.

General Tournier doesn’t like interruptions.

‘It’s just . . . Don’t the Vals need to know the rules as well?’

He does that dog-like bark that passes for his laugh. ‘Oh Sven,’ he says. ‘Believe me, the Vals know my rules already.’ Turning to his ADC, he asks, ‘How many of my officers have those bitches killed?’

‘I believe it’s five, sir.’

‘So this is going to be interesting,’ says the general, and his ADC nods. As do the brigadier, the major and every other officer at that table. A bunch of puppets the lot of them.

‘Those rules,’ I say. It’s worth it, just to see their shock.

‘Laser fencing,’ says the general. ‘For this bout,’ he says, ‘I think we’ll set it to the max. One knife per Val. You already have your arm. The fencing stays up until you or both Vals are dead . . . Anything else?’

He’s talking to his ADC.

‘No rounds, sir. No breaks.’

The general smiles. ‘Oh,’ he says, ‘I don’t think Colonel Tveskoeg will be expecting rounds or breaks. Will you, Sven?’

‘Waste of time, sir. Rather get this wrapped up.’

A pair of guards erects laser wire. The arena is going to be triangular. That is a new one on me. Don’t think I’ve ever seen an arena that wasn’t round or square. Since my new arm counts as my weapon, I leave my knife on the table. And it’s only as I head for the ring that General Tournier sees the scars on my back.

‘Sven,’ he says, calling me back. ‘What are those?’

The first thing he’s said in two hours that doesn’t drawl from his lips like the punchline to some joke.

‘Whipped,’ I say.

‘Who by?’

‘Someone who’s now dead.’

He laughs, and nods towards the Vals. ‘All yours,’ he says.

GRABBING A CHICKEN LEG TO CHEW ON MY WAY DOWN, I TAKE one last look round the vast dining room. Neen is with Rachel and the others. Emil is sober and scared, but also looking like a trooper, and that is enough for me. Shil’s clearing a table three tiers back.

If she sees me, she doesn’t let it show.

And Haze? He has been here all evening.

Sat right next to the five-braid. His own braids look longer and his face is thinner. He has his head tipped slightly to one side, and he is listening. When his gaze catches mine, he smiles. Having smiled, he offers five to one against. He’s betting on the Vals.

Great
, I think.

The laser goes up the moment I enter the ring. Static lifting hairs on the back of my neck. Tossing a chicken bone over my shoulder produces a zap like one of those fancy insect killers. Roughly what I expect to happen.

The Vals are still wearing their silver blankets, although they lose these quickly enough, wrapping them round their left forearms. Makes sense: my arm is the most dangerous weapon in this ring.

As we circle, the Vals toss their knives from hand to hand.

But that is all they do.
It’s a holding pattern
, I realize. And that makes me realize something else. The Vals regard themselves as bound by our treaty. They won’t attack until I do, because of the vow they made when I set them free. In fact, they may not attack at all.

There are rules, fuck it.

Real rules.

I’ve known troopers ignore them. Lie, rape, and break vows in the name of expediency. Knew a fuckwit who machine-gunned a hospital ward full of civilians. Another who changed sides three times in the same war. Not like the Aux, conscripts who had no option but change sides.

Like me, enlisted.

The enlisted are different. We are here from choice.

We’ll be here from choice next life. Hell, we were probably here from choice the life before. No one but the U/Free remembers their past lives. So I can’t tell you if that’s true.

Me, I’m here now. Ready to look death in the face with open eyes. And if this ends in someone reciting the soldier’s prayer over my body, then so be it. I’ll settle for a long sleep and a better life next time.

Of course, I’ll fight like fuck to stop that happening. But if it does, then it does . . .

‘You’re released,’ I tell the Vals, keeping my voice low. ‘If I kill you, then I’ll get your implants home if I can. If you kill me, then I want it quick and clean.’

They grin.

‘And I want you to kill that general for me.’

I don’t need them to nod to know that’s already in their plan.

As one Val plants her feet firmly on the deck, the other begins to edge around me and our audience start banging on the tables with their fists. They’re taking bets on who lands the first blow.

‘Five on Sven,’ shouts Neen.

He’s swamped with takers. Since he doesn’t have five gold coins, it is a brave bet.

Wiping sweat from my eyes, I flick my gaze from one Val to the other. Both have oiled their skin; should have thought of that myself. Only I didn’t know this was going to happen and they obviously did.

‘Ten on the Vals,’ says the brigadier.

No one takes his bet.

As Val 7 moves, she rolls her dagger across the back of her hand. A neat trick, made neater by the fact she is moving crab-wise as she does it, with her eyes locked on mine.

Watch the eyes is a good maxim.

Only this time it is almost a mistake. I duck just in time, as the other Val slicks her blade through the space where my throat should be.

Someone claps.

And I’m two paces back and finding my balance. Twisting fast, I flick out my wrist and watch Val 7 dodge.

They’re fast, I’m faster. My next strike rakes Val 5’s chest. For a second the wound reveals muscle, ribs and the fat inside one breast, and then blood wells. The cut needs stitching but it’s not fatal. All the same, she’s shocked.

‘Pay up,’ someone shouts. It is Neen.

A movement catches my eye and I turn to find myself facing Val 7 again. She has stopped rolling the blade across the back of her fingers. Now it juts from the side of her fist, edge forwards. She’s here to stop me finishing her sister.

‘I’m going to kill you.’

‘Yeah,’ I tell her. ‘That’s what they all say.’

A feint from Val 7 has me twisting sideways. It’s only experience that warns me the real move is yet to come. As she goes for my throat I step back, and she switches hands so fast her blade blurs. Her next stab targets my groin.

I block with my arm. The one with bone in, the one that bleeds.

Her next attack is harder, and she makes a mistake. Coming in close, she jerks back as my fingers reach for her throat, and slips on her sister’s blood. This gives me time to finish her sister.

Val 7 is still trying to find her balance as I open Val 5’s throat with my forearm and reverse my swing, jabbing my elbow hard into her head. As it hits, the spike goes right through her skull, and someone gags.

Ten to one it’s the general’s little ADC.

A twist frees the spike and carries me away from Val 7, who stands torn between rushing to her sister’s side and killing me. In the second we eye each other, her sister begins to buckle, then drops to her knees and tips sideways.

‘Fucker,’ says Val 7.

The next attack is brutal.

She comes in stabbing, hard and fast. As I block the blows, I reach for her shoulder, but my fingers find oil and slip. She grins. And I have seen that grin before, because it’s mine.

Usually, I see it reflected in the eyes of those I kill.

When she steps forward, I step back and let myself skid slightly on the blood-slick deck. The Val thinks she has me. So she rushes forward. And, as her blade jabs towards my throat, my toes regain their grip and my metal arm comes up to block her blade.

My other arm slams into her throat. The weight of the blow crushes cartilage. Seven minutes, that’s how long she has before her ruptured throat tightens enough to suffocate her. Unless I finish it here.

Scooping up the Val’s knife, I hammer its hilt into her skull, knocking her unconscious. Breath still rasps in her throat and her ribs shudder as her lungs fight for every breath. God, you have to love the Vals.

Or maybe that’s just me.

Hooking two fingers into her nose lifts her onto her knees. And then I cut her throat from behind so blood sprays across the deck. The crowd roar, but I barely notice because I’m already sawing the head from its body.

The knife is sharp, but she has wiring in her flesh. So metal scrapes metal, before bone cracks and her skull comes free. It takes less time to behead the other. She’s already dead, half her blood is on the deck, and I have worked out where to cut.

Quick learner, that’s me. It’s an
adaptive mechanism
.

God knows what that means, but it’s what a Death’s Head technician told me about five minutes before she decided to cancel my psych test halfway through and erase the results.

‘WELL,’ SAYS THE GENERAL. ‘THAT WAS IMPRESSIVE.’

I look for a subtext but he seems to mean what he says. So I thank him, dump the heads on the table and reach for my glass. It’s full again. You can say what you like about General Tournier, but he runs a tight ship.

‘To a good death,’ I say.

It’s a well-known Legion toast and he looks at me strangely.

Although that might be because my two trophies are making a mess of his spotless linen tablecloth. Also, everyone else at the table has stopped eating. So I lean over and take the rest of a chicken for myself, chewing chunks of meat from its carcass.

Fighting makes me hungry. Actually, everything makes me hungry.

One of the reasons having a kyp in my throat pisses me off so badly is I like food; what I don’t like is everything I eat exiting the arse of some parasite before it reaches my stomach.

‘You might want to clean up,’ the general says. Sounds like an order to me.

‘Of course, sir.’

He nods. ‘Oh, Sven . . .’

I pause, about to zip up my trousers.

‘Welcome aboard.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ Slinging my holster over my shoulder, I grab my shirt and jacket, toss them over my new arm and look around me. Time to get my other arm sewn. Vijay is looking at me strangely.

It makes me remember to ask, ‘What about my ADC?’

The general raises his eyebrows. ‘What about him?’

‘Your men can look after him?’

‘Oh yes,’ says General Tournier. ‘I’m sure they’ll manage.’

Someone laughs. I am not sure why, but I glare anyway.

A major looks away. He has tiny braids growing from the rear of his skull, three of them. Gratefully, he fixes his attention on an approaching woman. Anything to avoid having to look back at me. ‘Yes?’ he demands.

Dipping her head, Shil says, ‘I’ve been sent to clear, sir.’

Her voice is tight, but her face is neutral. So I doubt anyone else at the table catches her simmering anger. Perhaps I am wrong.

‘Name?’ demands the five-braid.

‘Shil, sir,’ she says.

‘You’re from Hekati?’

‘Yes, sir . . .’

‘Shil,’ says the five-braid. ‘Why won’t you look at me?’

As I watch, her fingers tighten on the tray. She’s wondering if she can use it as a weapon. The answer is yes. Also that cup, that knife, that glass. Anything is a weapon if you approach it with the right attitude.

‘Well?’ the five-braid demands.

She looks up and looks away. Shrugs.

‘Tell him,’ Colonel Vijay says. ‘He’s not going to hurt you.’

One thing you can guarantee. Patronize Shil and she’s going to want to rip out your heart. Only she is trapped, being watched by a dozen Death’s Head officers, and the five-braid is still waiting for his answer.

So I drape my arm around her shoulder.

And then reach round a little further, cupping the underside of one breast. Half of the table laughs as she twists free. As Shil’s face flushes, her eyes fill with tears. They’re from anger. Although I’m probably the only person to realize that.

‘Come on,’ I say, ‘you can tell us.’

‘Can’t,’ she says, scowling at the floor. Any minute now, she is going to start kicking her heels like a brat . . . If in doubt, play dumb; first rule of survival in the militia.

‘Yes, you can.’

She tilts her head, considers this.

‘He’s got snakes for hair,’ says Shil, flicking a sign against the evil eye. It’s meant to be out of sight, but the braid sees it anyway. Or maybe he’s meant to see it and Shil is only pretending to keep it out of sight.

He laughs loudly, and I decide to end this conversation. Grabbing her, I slide my hand under her skirt. She moves so fast it is all I can do to catch her wrist before she slaps me. Half the table joins in the five-braid’s laughter as I kiss her.

‘Let’s get you out of here,’ I whisper.