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 . . .’
The major’s eyes flick from me to General Jaxx. Then from General Jaxx to Paper Osamu, and some dim understanding of who this strangely dressed woman might be finally reaches his brain. He looks like a man already regretting getting out of bed.
Paper and I go up the steps first.
Chapter 3
The drop glider is so old it comes from a time when stealth meant making the edges pointed and painting everything matt black.
Now it just looks dated.
An X73i says the pilot. Then admits he had to look it up, because he’s never flown one before. In fact, he didn’t know any still existed.
‘Great,’ says Neen.
He shuts up when I glare at him.
Our pilot has been jumpy since we began to drop. All he and his co-pilot have to do is sit in their little cabin upfront and steer this thing in controlled descent. So I don’t see their problem. We are five hours out of Farlight and half a spiral arm away. That’s what happens if your general lends you to the U/Free. You present yourself at their embassy one afternoon, sign papers stating you undertake the job willingly, and head downstairs into a shitty little basement.
I think we’re going for a briefing.
Perhaps a medical.
What am I meant to think? The basement door opens on one planet and closes on another? That would be bad enough. Only it doesn’t. It dumps us on board a U/Free ship in low orbit over a planet. The ship’s bigger than most cities.
Well, cities I’ve seen.
Fifteen minutes later, we are dropping towards the planet’s surface in an out-dated glider, dressed as mercenaries but minus any weapons. Clearly, we’re going to be given those later.
‘How much longer?’ asks Rachel.
She’s my sniper, all red hair and attitude. Heavy breasts and broad hips. She has been fucking Haze, my intelligence officer, for the last six weeks. We’ve all been pretending not to notice.
‘Zero one five,’ says the pilot.
There is cold desert below, and if villages exist down there they don’t show on the scans. According to our briefing Hekati is five rocks out from a double star on the inner fringe of a spiral. It lacks oil, minerals and decent agricultural land. I’d ask what we’re doing here but I already know. Destroying a weapons factory.
‘Don’t worry,’ the co-pilot tells Rachel. ‘I’ll get you down safely.’
On screen, which is how we see them, his boss quietly takes a medal of legba uploaded from inside his shirt, and I know we’re in trouble.
‘Actually,’ he says, ‘you won’t.’
Touching the medal to his lips obviously closes a circuit.
As the pilot’s skull explodes, jagged splinters take his co-pilot through the head, and splatter two helpings of brain across a bulkhead. It happens too fast to stop, even if we could get through the security doors to the cabin.
‘Sir?’ says Shil. ‘We’re . . .’
‘Yeah,’ I say.
We are doing what happens when a drop glider loses both its pilots, we’re crashing. The X73i is a thousand feet above the desert floor, and headed for a cliff half a mile ahead. The cliff is a good thousand feet higher again.
‘We’ll have ridge lift,’ says Haze.
Half of what Haze says is nonsense. The rest can sometimes save your life. He might be large, moon-faced and clumsy. But he’s not as large as he was when we first met on a battlefield and I stopped him being chopped up by enemy guns. Although he still sounds simple to anyone who doesn’t know different.
‘Wind hits a cliff, sir,’ he says, ‘it rises. Creates an updraught. The updraught will give us lift.’
‘Not enough,’ I say.
We have about two minutes before the cliff face and this plane get up close and personal. All we’ve got going for us is the fact the desert floor is rising as it approaches the cliff. A thousand years of sifting sand for all I know.
‘Sir,’ says Rachel. ‘The exit’s jammed.’
‘Of course it is. It’s tied to the system.’
‘One minute thirty.’
‘Sir,’ asks Haze. ‘You want me to override the glider’s AI?’
As I said, he is my intelligence officer. Only, he’s not an officer and his intelligence isn’t something most people recognize. But he has more shit in his skull than I have and two metal braids one each side of his skull to prove it.
‘No time,’ I tell him.
‘One minute twenty-five.’ He’s counting down to the AI’s internal clock. ‘I can probably-’
‘Haze.’
‘Sir?’
‘Prepare to jump.’
‘But sir,’ says Rachel. ‘The exit . . .’
‘Fuck the exit.’
One minute ten.
Dropping to my knees, I punch my fist through the glider’s floor and rip with my metal hand. Cold wind swirls into the hold and scoops trays from a trolley. The air on this planet is thin and we’re losing the oxygen mix that keeps us comfortable.
‘Help me.’
Ceramic slices at their fingers but they tear anyway. Leaving me to snap the optic fibres that run like veins under the skin of this craft. We wobble. Of course we bloody wobble. You rip holes in a glider it’s going to get upset.
‘Grab what you can.’
When Rachel just stands there, I push her towards the rear of the plane. She wants to protest, but doesn’t dare. She grabs food packs and begins tossing them through the rip in the floor.
‘Just drop the lot.’
She does.
A gun cabinet clings to a rear bulkhead. It’s locked, but one punch takes it off the wall. The cabinet has no back, which makes locking it pointless and gives us our only weapon. A fat distress pistol, with three flares. As Rachel throws out the pistol and tosses flares after it, part of me wonders how we are going to find this stuff.
‘Jump,’ I tell her.
When she hesitates, I push her after the gun, the flares and all that other stuff she has been tossing out. Haze follows, looking shocked.
The others don’t need encouraging.
So I hit the ground and roll to put out flames. A split moment later, a second explosion drops fifty tons of cliff on what is left of our glider, burying it. The first explosion might be an accident. The second is intentional. I just have time to think this before rocks begin rolling my way.
‘Incoming,’ I shout.
A small boulder, the size of a three-wheel combat, tumbles past, then a larger one, maybe the size of a house, followed by a cartwheeling splinter as long as our buried plane.
Progression, I think.
Flinging myself behind a rock, I wait out the landslide. The crawl space is too small, so I jam my legs into the gap and wait it out some more.
A year ago I wouldn’t have known what progression meant. Mind you, a year ago I was someone else. These days I’m Sven Tveskoeg, lieutenant with the Death’s Head, Obsidian Cross, second class. What I’m doing out of uniform is a whole other question.