Maximum Offence (4 page)

We kill Enlightened, because they’re our enemy. Only Haze is an Aux, a member of our troop and that makes the truth messier still.

‘Well?’

‘That second explosion,’ he says. ‘It smelt chemical.’

‘
Plastique
.’

Haze stares at me.

‘Used it when I was a kid,’ I say. ‘In the Legion. Along with rusting rifles, sweat-rotted uniforms and food rations so stale no one else in OctoV’s army would even open them.’

He nods.

‘The first bang was the AI,’ he says. ‘Plus our oxygen tanks. The second, that was serious. Someone stuffed the glider’s nose-cone with enough explosive to wipe out us, half a cliff and all the evidence . . .’

‘Who?’

‘The Enlightened?’

A fair guess. Only how the fuck would a bunch of metalheads know about us . . . And how could they get themselves into a U/Free security base and pack the nose of a glider that is being kept under guard?

I have a better explanation. Only it leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

‘What do you think, sir?’

‘No idea,’ I tell Haze.

———

Walking backwards is easy. Well, it’s easy when you’ve done it as often as I have. You just lean yourself slightly forward for better balance, and keep the gun low and swivel from the hip.

I’m the last into the camp, obviously. If you can call five troopers waiting in the rubble of a fallen cliff a camp.

‘Sir,’ says Neen. ‘You want me to take watch?’

‘How’s the arm?’

He looks at me.

‘It’s not a trick question.’

‘Numb,’ he admits. ‘But I can handle a gun.’

A good answer and a true one. ‘Later,’ I say. ‘First we need a tent. And a fire, assuming there’s anything to burn.’

‘Bushes,’ says Franc.

‘
What?
‘

‘In the cliff. Shil and Rachel are trying to . . .’

Well, if Rachel thinks she has something to prove
.

There are bushes all right. They begin a quarter of the way up, which puts them a long way above Rachel and Shil, who are lit by the pale light of three separate slivers of moon.

‘
Come down
.’

‘I’m . . .’ Rachel’s voice is distant. More worried than I would like.

‘
Now
.’

Neither one moves.

As Shil shouts something to Rachel, I realize we have a problem, and it isn’t just their stupidity.
Great
, I think.
Should have known Rachel was too good to be true
. Still, if you are going to be afraid of something it might as well be something that’s likely to kill you, like heights.

‘As soon as I start throwing wood down,’ I tell Neen, ‘get a fire going. Also, if you can’t make a tent have the others build a sand wall.’

‘Sir,’ he says.

Neen points to a dark gash at the base of the cliff. It’s low and slants away to one side. As I approach, a bat the size of my fist spirals out and hits an insect on the rise. A second later a dozen bats spiral out behind the first.

I leave Rachel where she is.

The mouth of the cave is tight enough to scrape my shoulders and that doesn’t help my temper. Although what I find inside goes a long way to making me happy again. No ash from a fire, or spoor. Nothing that looks like the remains of a meal. The cave is clean. Which means that whatever is howling out there in the wilderness either doesn’t come up this far, or is too big to fit through that hole.

Shil is waiting when I get outside.

‘Rachel . . .’ she begins.

‘Yeah, I know.’

The cliff is sheer and handholds rare.

It is now so cold that frost glues the rock to my bare toes and the fingers of my good hand. Probably glues itself to the fingers of my other hand too, but that’s metal so I can’t feel it.

Climbing quickly, I ignore the ache across my shoulders as I haul myself to where Rachel clings to the rockface. She is shivering, from fear or cold.

‘OK for the moment?’

That’s
a question needing an answer in the affirmative
.

Whatever the fuck that is. Actually, I know what it is. It’s when you can’t say
no
. My old lieutenant taught me. Part of my education, like learning to use a fork instead of my fingers, wash myself at least once a week and not punch people without good reason.

Arm over arm, I drag myself to a point a hundred yards above Rachel. A quick tug does nothing to move the first bush, and neither does a hard yank. In the end, I have to position my feet, grip rock tightly with my good hand and wrap a branch several times round my prosthetic hand to discover why. The bloody plant has roots five times longer than the bits I can see.

Now I know what to expect, the second bush comes free with less effort. Then a third and a fourth and a fifth. I keep ripping them out until my good hand is bleeding from gripping rock and my feet are raw.

It doesn’t matter, I mend fast.

‘Last one,’ I shout.

Somewhere below Neen shouts back. A second later, a howling comes from the wastelands, sounding closer than before, a lot closer. And unless the cliff is doubling the noise, there is more than one animal advancing.

Rachel is waiting for me, her face lost in the shadow.

‘You OK?’

She nods, and then realizes I can’t see. So she says,
yes, sir, of course, sir
. Her voice is tight, however, and she shakes my hand off her shoulder without thinking. Her body is humming with tension under those shivers.

‘Rachel,’ I say, ‘what’s wrong?’

‘My hand’s trapped.’

Fuck
. Sliding my hand along her arm, I find fingers hooked into a crack in the rockface. They don’t feel trapped to me. ‘Lift your little finger.’

‘Can’t.’

‘
Do it
. . .’ Her smallest finger flexes under my grip. ‘OK,’ I say. ‘Now the next one.’

There is no movement at all.

‘Try your thumb,’ I suggest, although I already know the answer. One way or another, she’s frozen. ‘Right,’ I say. ‘This is how we’re going to do it.’

It takes me a minute to find a handhold good enough to take both our weights. By now, I’m behind her, my body close to hers. She can feel my breath on the back of her neck and I can smell fear rise like dying heat from her body.

I tell her to turn round and grip my shoulders.

She doesn’t want to do it, but she knows that staying glued to this cliff isn’t a choice. So she shifts slightly, only to freeze as I wrap one arm round her waist.

‘Turn slowly, I’ve got you.’

Can she do it?

The answer is yes. Letting go, she shifts until she can put her arms round my neck. It is just bad luck my foot chooses that moment to slip.

As I grab cliff and Rachel tightens her grip, my feet kick for a new hold. For a moment, I think we are not going to make it. So does Rachel. As my toes find rock, a liquid heat fills my lap.

She’s pissed herself. As good a sign that we’re still alive as any.

‘Wrap your legs round me.’

Her hips are wide enough to let her do it. She’s strong, unless it’s just fear that has her squeezing my hips as if her life depends on it. When she tightens her grip, I can feel her breasts squash against me. Her hair smells of oil, and her body smells of fear, overlaid with the sharpness of fresh urine.

‘Sir,’ she says. ‘You all right, sir?’

‘Why?’

‘Just wondered.’

‘
Rachel . . .
‘

‘You went still, sir. Like you’d realized something.’

She’s brighter than I thought. Either that or she reads minds.

‘We need to move.’

‘Yes, sir.’

With her arms locked tight round my neck and her legs gripping my hips, we make the return climb. It takes longer than it should, as I have to test each grip before letting go with my other hand.

Normally I’d jump the last fifteen or twenty feet, but I can’t. Not carrying Rachel. So I edge my way down the cliff until I feel gravel beneath my toes.

‘Wrap her in something warm.’

If Shil notices the stain on Rachel’s clothes, she keeps it to herself.

ONCE THEY ARE BROKEN, NEEN SEPARATES THE BUSHES INTO piles. One pile is kindling, the other our supplies for later. Franc is feeding the fire. She’s having a competition with herself to see how close she can get her fingers to the flames.

The roots are oily, which helps them burn. Ash already lines a circle of stones holding the fire. Shil is talking to Rachel, both of them kneeling behind us in the safety of the cave.

Between them, they scoop handfuls of grit from the floor until they hit water. Most of the Aux are farm-born on shitty little planets, in backward bits of the spiral. It’s easy to forget that; until one of them makes a perfect fire or finds water from instinct.

They are born on farms, grow up on farms, are conscripted into one army, captured and conscripted by another. Then, carrying cheap guns and wearing even cheaper uniforms, they pod-drop onto marshland outside a city called Ilseville.

That is where they’re meant to die.

Only they meet a lieutenant without troops. So when their NCO goes down he takes over.

That’s me.

When I look up, Shil’s staring at me, and there’s something knowing in her eyes. Maybe she’s noticed the way I’ve been watching Rachel . . . Franc’s abandoned the fire for her knives, which she’s sharpening on a tiny whetstone. They look sharp enough to me.

Pushing myself to my feet, I nod towards the darkness.

‘Coming?’ I ask Franc.

Grinning, she stuffs one knife into her belt, another into her boot and slots the last, sight unseen, into a sheath hidden in the small of her back. I don’t see where she puts the last one because she turns her back on me.

We are done up as mercenaries. This means far too many zips, flaps and shiny buckles for my liking. The Legion wear combat camouflage. Double dirt, they call it. Death’s Head wear black, with silver stripes or shoulder bars.

Mercenaries look like an explosion in a cheap market.

‘Neen,’ I say, ‘keep everyone in the cave.’

‘What about . . . ?’

‘They piss in it, they shit in it. For all I care, they can fuck in it. But if anyone takes a step outside I will cut their throats myself. Any other questions?’

He meets my gaze. ‘No, sir.’

‘The rest of you?’

Rachel and Haze look away, and Shil just shrugs as if she expected no better. She’s the eldest, apart from me. You’ve probably worked that out for yourselves.

———

Say
desert
and people think of sand, but it is as likely to be grit, or something like the shale that crunches under my feet. The cliff is at my back, the cave is that glow away to one side and ahead of me is a slope down to the desert floor.

If it wants us, whatever is out there will have to climb that slope. We have triple moonlight and the slope on our side, and a cruel wind against us. Every now and then, the wind catches grit and throws it into my eyes.

I could leave it until daylight . . .

The thought comes out of nowhere. There is nothing to say we must meet them head on. Then again, there is nothing to say we must not. But I’m ex-Legion, and meeting the enemy head on is what the Legion do. Of course, that doesn’t mean it is always right.

‘You all right, sir?’

‘I’m fine.’ It comes out louder than I intend. All this thinking is getting to me.

‘Right,’ I say. ‘We’re going to go down there, kill one of them and drag it back to the cave, take a look at what it is.’

As plans go, I have heard worse.

So has she. Sketching me a salute, Franc draws a knife from her belt and waits for her orders.

‘That way.’

Shale slithers as we head downhill. We keep to the shadows, following the bed of a dry river, but it is not enough. A howl from ahead is answered by a howl off to the left, and then by another to the right.

They know we’re coming.

Franc freezes the moment I raise my hand.

‘Stay here,’ I order. ‘Count to ten, then make enough noise for five.’

She wants to be down there mixing it but she does as she is told. A few seconds after I leave, my corporal begins booting rocks down the slope, one after another. And she boots them hard.

That girl is a miracle of pure pent-up aggression.

As she kicks, Franc flicks a blade from hand to hand. It moves so fast it’s impossible to say which hand holds the knife at any point. Her shoulders are loose and she’s slouching.

Unless you have Legion training, she looks off guard. If you have Legion training, she looks very dangerous indeed.

Leaving Franc behind, I head towards a desert floor that ripples like an ocean, the silver grey of the shale catching the moonlight in patches of broken surf.

Then I see them.

At least I see one of them.

From here, he looks human. Tall and broad, with a shock of hair that sweeps back from his skull and falls halfway down his spine. He is naked, like a ferox, but the blade in his hand is sharpened steel.

He turns.

Deep-set eyes scan the slope.

When the stone in my hand lands fifty paces to his left he smiles. Thinking he’s got me. Only his gaze slides over where my stone hit and flicks back, as he tilts his head, trying to pinpoint the exact position.

The moonlight is hurting his eyes.

Must be like trying to stare into the sun for me, because he has one hand shading his face, while the other holds his blade low and slightly tilted.

It’s a good stance.

He can hear Franc on the slope above, there is no doubt about that. Every so often, his gaze flicks uphill, before returning to where he thinks I should be.

Only by now, I’m somewhere else.

There are five of them. A scout and four bunched together. As another two shadows crest a dune, I change my count to seven, adding an eighth, who appears from one side. Crouching, I watch the scout look from where he thinks I am to where Franc is making a noise, and then behind him to where the others cluster.

He is too indecisive to be senior.

That leaves the other seven.

Of the four together, one is small enough to be adolescent, one old and on the edge of the group. Another waves his hands and grunts, returning to the same sounds repeatedly. No one in command needs to make that much fuss about anything.