‘Sir . . .’
Haze, from the sound of it.
‘Sir . . .‘
‘Over here,’ I call, and he stumbles uphill, Rachel in tow.
She has the distress pistol in her hand, which means she’s already started hunting down the supplies we dropped. I like Rachel; she’s one of my better finds. Haze knows I think this. I am not sure he is happy.
Mind you, I’m not sure I give a fuck.
‘You’re burnt.’
That’s Haze for you, always stating the obvious.
‘Not badly,’ I tell him. ‘Report.’
He looks at me.
‘Rachel . . . ?’
‘Sergeant Neen’s down, sir. Arm broken. Corporal Franc has a broken ankle. I’m OK. Shil’s OK.’
‘And you?’ I ask Haze.
‘I’ve got a headache.’
I am about to say, of course you have a fucking headache. You just fell thirty feet. However, something stops me. Haze’s eyes are glazed, his face is sweating. Any minute now, his nose is going to start to bleed. It is a habit of his.
‘We’re being watched?’
‘Think so, sir.’
He might be soft as uncooked dough and have even fewer social skills than I have, but if Haze thinks we are being watched . . .
Mind you. In the middle of a desert?
Satellites are possible. The sky is clear, almost purple. Not a single cloud, although infrared lenzing means clouds don’t present a problem these days.
We’ll deal with the watchers later.
‘Find the flares,’ I tell Haze.
‘Yes, sir.’
To Rachel I say, ‘Take me to Neen.’
‘Franc’s worse . . .’
Rachel adds sir, when she sees my face. But it’s too late. As I step towards her, she steps back; and then makes herself stand her ground. Although she twists her head away from the blow she thinks is coming.
‘Sergeants outrank corporals,’ I say, and leave it at that.
We find Neen against a boulder, clutching his arm. His face is tight and he has bitten through his lower lip.
‘You needled yet?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Why not?’
‘Thought we might need them later.’
Ripping open a combat pack, I stab a syringe into his neck and feel the bulb deflate as morphine enters his bloodstream. There are better drugs and better ways to deliver them, but morphine is cheap and effective and you can buy it anywhere.
Counting down from five, I let the drug do its job and then reach for Neen’s forearm. The thinner of the two bones is broken. But it hasn’t ripped its way through his skin and the break feels clean.
He is lucky.
‘Find me splints.’
When Rachel comes back, it is with a strip of ceramic from the glider’s tail, and a length of fibre optic that thrashes in her hand like a wounded snake. Seems the rear section of our glider broke free. Must have been that hole I ripped in the skin.
Haze carries a food parcel, two flares and a water bottle.
‘Find the other bottles,’ I tell him.
‘Sir . . .’ Rachel wants to say something.
It’s written on her face and that is an improvement. A few months back she wore her hair over her eyes so no one could see her face at all. After the surrender of Ilseville, a Silver Fist officer put his gun to the back of her head to shoot her and then changed his mind when he saw me watching. Maybe he decided raping her was enough. She got to live provided some idiot agreed to carry her.
That idiot was me.
Snapping the ceramic into sections, I pick two the closest in length and pull Neen’s arm straight. It is probably good that he faints. Lashing the ceramic into place with optic, I make him a sling with the last of the tubing and sit him against a rock.
‘Call me when he wakes.’
Rachel nods.
I find Shil fussing over Franc, who is white-faced and silent. One boot, old, buckled, and worn at the heel, lies in the dirt beside her. Shil is asking Franc to wiggle her toes.
Dropping to a crouch, I grip Franc’s ankle.
As I yank, her other boot clips the side of my jaw. It is a good kick, with massive amounts of power behind it. One of the things I love about Franc is that she has aggression hardwired right through her.
Shil and Neen might be farm-boy thin, but Franc is compact. She’s also shaven-headed and removes her body hair daily with the edge of a knife. Although the rest of us aren’t meant to know that. She once belonged to Haze, some kind of bonded servant.
‘Fuck,’ she says. ‘I’m-’
‘Anyone ever told you the one-second rule?’
Franc shakes her head.
‘Wake someone and they cripple you inside the first second, then tough. Should be more careful how you wake them . . . Also applies to treating wounds. Although you should have known that was dislocated, not broken.’
Chapter 4
The stars are high and clear, which means the air here is thin. What little heat the dunes take up during the day is taken back by the night faster than is safe for any of us. Cold kills as surely as a knife. It creeps up on you. Makes you decide it would be a good idea to lie down for a little while. Perhaps shut your eyes and remember all those interesting times you thought you had forgotten.
Almost froze to death once. If you have to go, it’s probably as good a way as any.
Doesn’t mean I’m going to let it happen here though. Not to me, and not to any of my troopers. I am headed for the plane, or what is left of it. The tail is way behind us, one of the wing tips just ahead. And we are half a mile from the cliff itself. Seems to me the glider broke up far too neatly.
Out to my left a double moon brightens. Then a third. Maybe it is that third moon which wakes whatever beast it is that howls. A long howl, too deep for a sand wolf and too raw for a fox.
Not ferox.
I’m glad about that. Ferox hunt silently.
‘Sir.’ Neen drops back from walking point.
Yeah, I know . . .
We have a big problem, and a small problem. The small problem is out in the wilderness howling at us. The bigger problem is that where we’re meant to be doesn’t have three moons.
It has two suns.
At least it does according to our briefing.
As I glance to the left, checking on that triple moon, something crests the top of a dune and rears upright. Its howl echoes off a distant cliff and starts other voices howling.
‘Fuck,’ says Shil. ‘What’s that?’
‘A wolf.’
I wouldn’t believe me either.
‘Build a fire,’ I tell her. ‘When we reach the cliff.’
She wants to say there’ll be nothing to burn, but has more sense. I know that, we are in the middle of a desert, for fuck’s sake. She needs to improvise.
‘You know . . .’ says Haze.
‘There’s going to be nothing to burn?’
He nods.
Telling Neen to resume point, I order Shil to move out, then I watch as Franc and Rachel head after her. Rachel is limping, and working hard at not looking back. As I wait for her to leave me with Haze, I break open our distress pistol and feed it a flare.
‘Why? ‘ I ask Haze.
He steps back. ‘Sorry, sir . . .’
‘No. Tell me why there’s going to be nothing to burn.’
He considers this, his head tipped to one side and still wrapped in bandages. We tell everyone he took a wound that will not heal. The truth is messier. Those two braids budding through his skull make him Enlightened.
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.’