The choice is General Luc’s. He just doesn’t know that yet.
‘Sir,’ says Neen. ‘They’ve got tanks.’
‘How the fuck-’
‘Slung under triple-rotor copters, ready manned.’
Shil stands behind him, her eyes on Aptitude. Rachel, however, has eyes only for her rifle. She’s running her fingers down its stock, like she just remembered she wanted to take it to bed. Ajac is keen but unfocused and Iona simply scared.
‘Go sew people up,’ I tell her.
She disappears.
To Rachel, I say, ‘Up on the battlements. Kill the officers first.’ She doesn’t need telling, but saying it gives me a warm feeling inside every time.
Neen gets to look after Debro.
‘Keep her safe.’
He salutes, dips into his jacket and pulls out a small automatic. ‘Ma’am. Do you know how to use one of these?’
Taking the Colt, Debro unlocks it, jacks a round into its breech and returns it to safety, before tucking the side arm into her belt. She should have dropped the clip and counted her rounds, but it’s still impressive.
She’s certainly impressed him.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I didn’t get your name?’
‘Neen,’ he replies. ‘Sergeant Neen. This is my sister Shil.’
‘Senator Wildeside,’ Shil says.
‘Debro, please.’
It’s a strange meeting, two ex-militia grunts and the head of one of Farlight’s greatest trading families, but no stranger than my first meeting with Debro on a prison shuttle. And we live in a strange galaxy that gets stranger by the day.
Neen leads Debro towards an arch.
He asks something of a Wolf Brigade lieutenant who looks in surprise at Debro, then shrugs and nods to battlements above. The next I see of them, Debro’s added a pulse rifle to her weapons collection and Neen is showing her how to work the pre-charge lever.
‘The mother he never had,’ Shil says bitterly.
‘Thought that was you?’
Tears fill her eyes and I grip her shoulders until the crying is done. It takes three sobs, two breaths and an angry shake of her head before she’s pushing me away. ‘And I still fucking hate you,’ she says.
‘That’s, hate you, sir.’
I take the SIG from Sergeant Toro, whose eyes widen when it purrs obscenely and shivers in my grip.
‘Ignore it,’ I say.
‘That’s not kind,’ the SIG says. It scans what’s going on beyond the walls and burns a third of a battery pack as it works the odds. ‘Particularly,’ it adds, ‘as you’ll all be needing me to save your lives later.’
‘That bad?’
‘Been in worse.’
‘What happened?’ Aptitude asks it.
‘I survived,’ the SIG says cheerfully. ‘Your grandfather didn’t.’
Sergeant Toro tells the colonel that General Luc is on the H-pad, then hesitates on the edge of saying something else and says it anyway. ‘You’ll find he’s otherwise engaged, sir . . .’
Standing right in the middle of the tower, his feet apart and his hands on his hips, General Luc barks out orders, in between scanning the sky and the valley with field-glasses. And, in between barking orders and scanning the sky, he grins. The Wolf was born for this.
‘Sir,’ I say.
‘I’m busy.’ He barely glances in my direction.
‘Won’t make any difference.’
Lowering his binoculars, he says, ‘Didn’t take you for a defeatist.’
‘Didn’t take you for someone to throw his brigade away.’
Snow-blasted grey eyes look at me and it’s like staring into a cold wind as it scrapes over the ice sheet of some prison planet. I have no real idea how old the general is or what he has seen. I don’t doubt this man has eaten human flesh.
So have I.
At least, I think she was human.
Birth separates us. Money separates us. Rank, power, privilege . . . But right now those things don’t matter. In the things that do, we’re alike. As he nods, I know he’s coming to realize that.
‘Sir,’ I say, ‘where are the bombers?’
The first thing you do with a defensive position is pound the fuck out of it. You destroy its occupants’ will to fight. If we’re not being bombed there’s a reason and I know what it is. Leona told me, I was just too stupid to realize.
‘No bombers,’ the Wolf agrees. So I ask his permission to speak freely.
‘Quickly would make more sense.’
Our rockets have destroyed half a dozen copters at most. As I watch, a goat tit on the walls lets rip, and another four rockets head skywards. An explosion of chaff sends three after false targets and the fourth misses, only to be blinded by more chaff as it loops back for a second run.
If the U/Free haven’t helped the Thomassi with their defences, then their luck is extraordinary. We’re already fighting a losing battle.
Most of the heavy copters are dropping their cargo, and the first new-model Tuskers are grinding their way up the spiral. I can almost taste the static of their engines and the slap of their tracks.
‘Sven,’ my SIG says. ‘You might want-’
‘Down,’ I order. When Aptitude doesn’t move, I grab her wrist and drag her to the deck. Vijay follows after. Not sure where Debro and Neen are, but he’d better be keeping her safe.
‘Stay down,’ I shout, when the colonel raises his head. ‘Sir.’
Banking, one of the combat copters screams over the H-pad, its guns spinning as bullets slap across our deck, churning up bitumen and cutting a mortar man in two. Small-arms fire follows it into the distance, and it chaffs the only rocket to come close.
‘Fuck,’ Aptitude says.
The deck around us is a mess of spilt blood, crouching men and spent cases from the copter’s chain gun.
‘I imagine,’ the SIG says, ‘it’ll be back for more.’
‘Sir,’ I tell General Luc, ‘you must take Colonel Vijay through the gate.’
The Wolf goes utterly still.
‘What gate would that be?’ he asks finally.
His words are so quiet only I can hear them. General Luc’s fingers are round the handle of his pistol, and he’s already flicked safety. Vijay Jaxx fidgets behind me, as the SIG switches clips with an over-loud click.
‘Of course,’ I say, ‘we’ll need the key.’
The general’s eyes widen at that. Slowly, so he can follow my movements, I undo the top two buttons on my shirt and tug free my dog tags.
‘Where did you get that?’
‘From a friend.’
The general laughs sourly. ‘Any other surprises?’
Battle is raging above us. It sounds as if the Wolf Brigade are using up their entire stock of missiles; but sometimes there’s no point saving ammunition for later, and I think we understand this is one of those times.
All the same, raging battle or not, I move slowly as I dip my hand into my jacket pocket and extract the planet buster, its top still open.
‘Fuck,’ General Luc says.
The first time I’ve heard him swear.
‘Sven,’ Colonel Vijay says, ‘you might want to disarm that.’
At his suggestion, I flip the lid shut, twist the enamel ring below the button and stand down the planet buster.
‘I take it you were planning to withdraw your parole?’
When I nod, the Wolf smiles.
Only three people on this planet know how a buster works, and two of them have forgotten, that’s what Leona told me. It involves what General Luc’s hex gate and the U/Free’s ships involve. A folding of space so things that exist on one plane exist on another as well. Or, in the case of my planet buster, stop existing at all.
‘Took it from the Uplifted,’ I say, in answer to his next question.
‘Never reported it?’
‘Kept it as an insurance policy.’
A simplification of the last few months of my life.
‘Sir,’ I say, ‘Paper doesn’t know this exists. So it must be the hex gate that stops them bombing the shit out of us.’
A dozen questions fight for air time. The first out of General Luc’s mouth is, ‘What’s Paper Osamu got to do with this?’