Maximum Offence (7 page)

Morgan laughs. The U/Free are different to us. How different we are all coming to realize.

‘You should get changed,’ says Paper.

‘So should you.’

She smiles. ‘I’m wearing a gown. You’ve got all that braid.’

‘All that . . . ?’

‘Jaxx had your uniforms sent over.’

Paper says this as if it is the most obvious thing in the world. As if General Jaxx shipping some lieutenant’s uniform for a party was normal.

‘Sven,’ she says, ‘the general told us you’d be happy to attend any functions necessary. After all, you’re here on a cultural exchange.’

First I’ve heard of it.

‘Do call Jaxx to check,’ says Morgan. ‘If you want.’

———

Neen’s puzzled. It looks like his jacket, but it feels wrong. So he turns up the lights for a closer look and realizes it is only pretending to be his jacket. Someone has taken standard-issue battledress and re-created it in spider’s silk and fine wool.

The changes do not end there.

Braid edges his collar; his belt is leather not webbing.

As for our Death’s Head patches . . . Franc cut those from the skin of a cold-water alligator on the marshes outside Ilseville, the night we formed the Aux. It seems longer ago than it is.

The patches remain, but someone has tidied the edges and wrapped them in silver. A new row of stripes decorates Neen’s left sleeve.

They’re the real thing.

Death’s Head official issue.
Sergeants, for the use of . . .

‘Shit,’ says Shil. She looks at her brother, uncertain whether to be upset or pleased. A dagger fills Neen’s hand; it’s plain black, with a silver pommel. That is official issue too.

Franc is here now. We’re all pretending that’s normal. She looks like Franc and sounds like Franc and even smells like Franc. I know that, because I get close enough to check. Her face looks the same, as does her body, what I can see of it.

Only her eyes are different. They’re terrified.

She has been brought back from the dead. No one asked her if that was what she wanted. How could they? So we’re ignoring it, she’s ignoring it, and I’m letting Shil and Rachel fuss over the new uniforms like children with a toy-box.

‘Let’s unpack the rest,’ Rachel says.

Franc has proper stripes for a corporal. And everyone has a battle ribbon, a slash of red and white. Must be for Ilseville, because it cannot be for anything else. We are obviously claiming that as a victory now.

My uniform is last. It looks like before.

Silver collar bars show my rank, an Obsidian Cross hangs on its black silk ribbon; a run of silver braid falls to the left of the jacket. Although the braid is better quality than it was. The jacket is less ornate than Neen’s, but that is how we work. The uniform General Jaxx wears is simpler still.

My boots are new, though, their heels higher. This is unnecessary, as I am already taller than everyone else.

‘Sir,’ says Shil, nodding to a roll of cloth. ‘Think this might be yours.’ Her voice is way too neutral.

It’s a cloak.
Staff officers, for the use of . . .

Staff officers? Why not just shoot me and have done with it.

The outside of the cloak is black, and what I can see of the silk lining is red. A silver skull on one side of a floppy collar grins at a skull on the other side. A metal chain loops between their teeth.

‘
So you
,’ says a voice.

‘What?’

‘
Tacky, tawdry, tasteless
.’

As I shake out the cloak, Neen ducks and something flicks across the room and bounces off an opposite wall. I know what it is before it lands. There aren’t many weapons that can swear like that.

Very carefully, Haze picks up the SW SIG-37.

‘Haze . . .’

‘Just fetching it for you, sir.’

‘Clips emptied,’ protests my gun. ‘Molested by U/Free
experts
‘ — it puts particular emphasis on this word — ‘then thrown across the room by a moron.’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Good to see you too.’

It snorts.

So I threaten to introduce it to an elevator.

The SIG-37 snorts some more.

Its fold-down wire stock is gone. Its pistol grips are mother of pearl rather than neoprene. Chrome glints where a slate-grey slide should be, and a small ruby replaces the original red dot sight.

‘U/Free orders,’ it says.

‘What -
pimp my gun
?’

‘Not that,’ it says bitterly. ‘Take a proper look.’

The cinder-maker capacity is gone. Some idiot’s taken the world’s first fully intelligent pulse pistol, with advanced AI and battle-precognition capabilities and reconfigured it as something a fifteen-year-old gangbanger would be ashamed to carry.

In the bottom of the box is a holster.

Black leather, silver buckle. A full-dress dagger sits under that, its pommel a skull. Slamming the SIG into its new holster, I ignore the fact it’s now sulking, and say, ‘Let’s get this over with.’

We change on the spot. I have a reason for this.

I want to see Franc naked, just not that way. She’s fit, thigh muscles sliding over each other as she moves. From her cropped skull to the gash of her sex, she still lacks body hair, but I am right about one thing. Her scars are gone.

Seeing me look, Franc turns her back.

‘You plan to redo them?’

When she doesn’t answer, I twist her round so fast she almost trips. The others go still. They’re wise.

‘Well?’ I say.

Scared eyes meet mine.

Franc can remember me killing her. She can remember dying at the bottom of a bleak cliff on some shitty little planet, half gutted by a creature whose ancestors used to be human.

Then she wakes here. In a place she doesn’t recognize.

‘Say it.’

‘Sir,’ she says. ‘Sorry, sir.’

‘
For what?
‘

She flicks her gaze around the room, before settling it on me. Her eyes are dark, her face gaunt. I can tell how badly she wants to look away. ‘I didn’t mean to let everyone down.’

‘
You didn’t—
‘

Then I get it. She is ashamed of being killed.

‘See that,’ I say, pointing to a scar on my ribs. ‘Should have finished me. And that,’ I point to my gut. ‘Hurt so much I wished it fucking had. And this . . .’ I tap my prosthetic arm, making it ring. ‘Got ripped off by a ferox.’

She knows that.

‘You don’t survive shit like that. Not normally. Only I mend fast. You don’t. So get yourself dressed and go party.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Naked, but happier, she salutes.

WE STOP THE SKY BRIDGE AND GIVE IT AN ADDRESS. THERE IS a slight ripple before the bridge begins to move. Five buildings later, the bridge drops to level ten and creates a door in an outside wall ahead of us. We’re impressed. We’re meant to be impressed.

‘Welcome to tonight’s soirée,’ says the bridge.

Haze snorts, but then he is the only one to know what it means.

On the far side of the door we find a bedroom, leading to living quarters, with an exit onto the walkway beyond. The rails around the walkway are missing, and a dance floor floats in the triangular space where emptiness should be.

This is a small and private gathering it seems.

A dozen U/Free turn to watch us, and then a dozen more. By the time I realize the floor’s floating, and we’re expected to step across the gap from walkway to floor, a hundred people are watching.

And you’ve never seen anything like them.

Well, I haven’t.

They’re tall, they’re elegant, and they’re beautiful. A hundred white smiles, a hundred displays of perfect teeth. They’re all holding glasses, and sipping chilled white wine.

‘
Fuckers
,’ says my gun. It speaks for us all.

‘Sven,’ says a voice from the crowd. ‘How sweet of you to come.’ Paper Osamu’s words ooze warmth. ‘And your friends as well.’ She smiles broadly.

Like we had a choice.

‘I’m sure you need a drink,’ she says.

A waitress appears, wearing a skirt slit to her thigh, with a top tight enough to squeeze her breasts while open enough to reveal their valley. She bows when I take a glass, and the valley gets a whole lot deeper.

Laughing, Paper Osamu says, ‘Come on. There are far more interesting people to meet.’

Morgan is talking to a blonde in a shirt so thin it’s see-through. She has nipples like bullets and the tits of a teenage whore, all four of them. She also has pale blue eyes, and these belong to a woman old enough to be my great-grandmother. As her gaze sweeps down my uniform it rests a little too long on the zip.

‘So,’ she says. ‘This is him?’

Paper nods.

The woman smiles. ‘If you’re interested,’ she says, ‘we might try a threesome?’ She’s talking to me this time.

‘Maybe later.’

As I am herded away, Paper leans close. ‘I’m impressed,’ she whispers. ‘That was almost polite for you.’

‘I meant it.’

She frowns, and then decides I’m joking.

The first hour goes well enough. People talk, I pretend to listen. The waitress with the split skirt and overflowing breasts becomes my shadow. Every time my glass is empty, she fills it from a bottle that looks full.

Her smile gets wider as the night goes on.

Just as I am about to ask what time she gets off, a scowl fills her face and she fades into the crowd, taking the champagne with her. So I turn, none too happy, and find myself staring at an elegant young man with blond hair and high cheekbones. Little more than a boy, really.

He nods, the slightest dip of his head.

So I inspect him the way I’d inspect a trooper back when I was a sergeant. A wispy beard, one of those little fair ones. Teeth that gleam. A narrow waist, and shoulders padded to make them broader. He’s thin and elegant, and he is rotating his fluted wine glass by its narrow stem, lazily.

I hate him on sight.

‘Yes?’

‘Sven Tveskoeg?’ The fact he drawls my name should be warning enough, but I’m not big on warnings.

‘Who wants to know?’

Drawing himself to his full height, the boy sweeps back his cloak.

‘
Fuck . . .
‘

Well, what am I supposed to say?

He wears the dress uniform of a Death’s Head colonel. And it’s the real thing: with a double loop of silver braid falling from one shoulder, and an impressive row of battle ribbons. An Obsidian Cross hangs at his neck. First class, obviously. Actually, it’s the one above: with a little crown and a spray of oak leaves.

‘Colonel Vijay,’ he says. ‘I’ll be leading this mission.’

‘
You’ll be . . . ?
‘

‘Leading this mission.’

He says it loud enough to make a woman next to us turn. Maybe Colonel Vijay has been told to expect an argument. But he’s a senior officer and I’m a lieutenant, and I should have known something like this would happen.

‘Of course you will, sir . . . What mission would that be?’

‘To rescue the missing U/Free.’

‘Missing U/Free, sir?’

‘Captured, Ms Osamu believes. By some god-awful little local militia. We’re going to get him back.’

‘Yes, sir,’ I say. ‘Of course we are, sir.’

Imagine a steel spring uncoiling. That is how fast I salute. It’s so fast, so faultless I might as well have slapped his face.

Can I help if he flinches? Rules are rules, so I hold my salute until he returns it.

‘Enough,’ he tells me. ‘We’re off duty here.’

‘Are we, sir?’

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘We are . . . And providing you follow my orders I’m sure we’ll get on.’

‘Never disobeyed an order in my life, sir.’

The little idiot believes me.

A flash of red under his collar badges tells me he is a staff officer, and that makes me take a closer look at those battle ribbons. One of them is for a campaign fought five years ago. This would make him what? Sixteen at the time? Fifteen?

Then I see Ilseville. It is the medal ribbon we have.

The only one we have.

I was there . . . Might have mentioned that before. I can name every Octovian officer, NCO or trooper who stumbled away from that city alive. God knows, there aren’t many of us. ‘Ilseville?’ I say it without thinking.

His eyes narrow. ‘I helped with the planning.’

Stepping closer, I put my face near his.

‘It was a fuck-up,’ I say, keeping my voice low. ‘A disaster. You know the casualty rate? As close to a hundred per cent as makes no difference.’

‘You survived.’ There is something bitter in his voice.

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘No thanks to shits like you.’

‘
What did you say?
‘

‘No thanks to HQ, sir.’

‘It was a victory,’ says Colonel Vijay. ‘To suggest otherwise is treason.’

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Glorious, wasn’t it? Makes me wonder about all those other victories we keep winning.’

Turning on his heel, he begins to stalk towards my troopers and then changes his mind. The next time I see our little colonel, he is laughing with Morgan and the blonde with four tits and thousand-mile eyes.

Strikes me, they are made for one another.

It is a long night and I lose the Aux somewhere down the line. Although I glimpse Colonel Vijay, with a glass of wine. The woman he’s talking to has her face close to his, and they are agreeing about something, strongly from the look of it.

‘I had no idea,’ she tells me later.

‘What?’ I demand.

‘That Octovians . . .’

Can hold their drink? Don’t fart in public?
As she struggles with words I’m not interested in hearing, I wonder if it is a good idea for her to stand like that on a mirrored floor when she has clearly forgotten her knickers.

Who knows what she’s trying to say?

The woman hesitates. ‘Are so
cultured
,’ she says finally.

‘Not all of us.’

She laughs, tells me she wants to introduce me to a friend.

His name is Obsidian, and he’s Paper’s grandfather. Looking at him, I can’t see a likeness. Unless it is his eyes. They are narrow, slightly almond in shape and cold as ice. His smile is equally chilly. ‘Sven,’ he says. ‘I’ve heard interesting things about you.’

‘Can’t say I’ve heard of you.’

Obsidian Osamu tells me I’m part of an important mission. A chance . . . A rare, unmissable chance — their president thinks — for the U/Free to integrate with galactic society. He keeps an utterly straight face as he says this. I’m really hoping he doesn’t expect me to believe it. Even the U/Free can’t think we’re that stupid.