Her daughter, her granddaughter?
Doesn’t matter. This tribe runs with a female as the boss and her successor is lying dead at my feet.
‘Come on then,’ I say.
The other two fall back as the female stalks forward.
She is huge. A good head taller than me, and I’m the tallest person I know. A blade hangs from her right hand. It is filthy along most of its length, but its edge has been sharpened on stone.
These creatures didn’t make that blade.
Also, they don’t belong on this planet, because none of us belongs on this planet or any other still in existence. The planet we belong on ate itself. Only that is heresy, so I try not to say it, even to myself. Because our beloved emperor hates heresy. You would be surprised the number of things he hates.
Well, perhaps you wouldn’t.
It’s still true though.
I have time to think this because the creature wants me to make the first move. Her remaining followers stand off to one side. Neither approaches me; she has them too well trained for that.
She circles, I circle.
Stepping sideways, we keep a safe distance between us. I am flicking my blade hand-to-hand, Franc-style. It irritates the leader, because she thinks I should have attacked by now.
But I’m waiting and circling, until light from the largest of the three moons hits her eyes.
That’s when I move.
It is just for show, a lunge towards her gut.
As she twists away, I make my second move, sliding my feet from under me to hit her ankle with the edge of my boot.
I have Franc’s accident to thank for that idea.
Rocking back, the creature then steps forward again, straight onto her freshly dislocated ankle. One shout of pain joins another as I cut her hamstrings, good leg first. She goes down hard as a falling tree. And I’m rolling myself up her, ending with a palm strike under her nose. The usual happens: bone enters her brain, her brain stops working . . .
Not that it was that hot in the first place.
By now, I am back on my feet.
Neither of the others tries to stop me as I walk away. From behind comes growling, but I ignore it. They’re in shock. Attacking would focus their minds, and these are minds best left unfocused. Part of me wonders how I know that, and the rest doesn’t care. I have been in enough battles to trust my instinct.
Climbing the slope takes longer than I like. The shale slides beneath my feet, and one of the moons vanishes behind a cliff. It’s the largest, and the loss of light makes the climb more difficult.
Of course, I could just plough my way up. But I’m trying to be subtle.
‘Franc . . . ?’
I keep my voice low. No one answers, so I slow slightly and head for where I remember her being.
‘You there?’
The fire is straight ahead of me. A flickering glow, mostly hidden by the slope and the fact it is built in the mouth of a cave. She should be here. Franc is not the type to retreat.
‘Sir . . .’
‘Franc?’
‘Man down, sir.’
I find her enemy first. His throat’s open to the bone, and a savage cut above his nose has ruined both his eyes. He stinks and shit glazes one leg. A dagger juts from his gut; it looks as if Franc lacked the strength to drag it upwards.
My corporal’s state isn’t much better.
‘Stay still.’ When she looks at me, I see pain.
‘Sorry, sir,’ she says. ‘Even Haze can’t fix this.’ Her hand flaps weakly towards her jacket.
Moonlight shows blood on the leather of her coat, but not what the coat is covering. Franc tries to stop me as I begin to lift the edge.
‘Too late,’ she says.
‘Yeah,’ I say, slapping away her hand. ‘We’ve done that bit.’ She wants to know if it is as bad as she thinks.
It’s worse.
Franc has the ribs of a stray kitten, the tits of a kid and a jagged rip below one of them that shows me her heart beating. It pumps slowly, shuddering between beats. The scout didn’t just stab her, he opened her chest.
‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Told you.’
‘Franc . . .’
‘It’s in your eyes.’ She smiles, bitterly. ‘You’re not as hard to read as you think.’
‘I don’t . . .’
She looks at me.
‘Want to talk about that?’ I say, changing the subject. My finger traces a puckered scar, one of a dozen that run from her hipbone to where her body hair would start, assuming she had any.
Franc shakes her head.
‘It might help.’
Her laugh brings blood with it. ‘How?’ she demands. ‘How the fuck could it help?’
‘Tell me who did it and I’ll kill them.’
‘Is that a promise?’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Guaranteed.’
‘Then you’re a fool . . .’ At my look, her mouth twists. ‘Yeah, I know. You’re a fool, sir.’ Realizing I still don’t understand, she says: ‘I did them. Well, mostly. The others came free, but that’s family for you.’
‘And I can’t kill your family because . . . ?’
‘I’ve done it already.’ She glances at the knife in my hand, splattered with blood from the creatures below. ‘You know,’ she says, ‘now would be a good time to make good on that promise.’
‘Franc . . .‘
‘You did it for Corporal Haven.’
She names a trooper I have forgotten, from a battle that barely registers.
‘You’re sure?’ That is a question I’m not meant to ask.
Her scowl tells me so.
Unsheathing one of Franc’s blades, I grip her shoulder with my hand and touch the tip of the knife to her heart. ‘Ready?’ I ask, because Franc deserves the final say on this.
She nods.
‘Sleep well,’ I tell her. ‘And a better life next time.’
A soldier’s prayer. My prayer. And so I jab the blade through beating muscle and shock her heart into stillness.
Chapter 6
Franc weighs next to nothing, and spilling her blood barely increases the mess. As I stamp my way up the slope, the second of the three moons disappears behind a cliff and a dozen extra stars appear, as the night grows darker.
I don’t know if our attackers carry home their dead. I don’t care. We do. We are the Aux. I don’t give a fuck if we’ve only been in existence for a few months. It is one of our oldest traditions.
The fire burns brightly in the mouth of our cave.
Neen takes one look at what I’m carrying and his relief at seeing me vanishes. He is the first on his feet, although I shake my head when he tries to take her body from me.
‘Oh shit,’ he says.
Rachel starts crying.
‘You,’ I tell her, ‘get back to your post.’
I might as well have slapped her because she flinches anyway.
Dropping to my knees, I roll Franc onto the ground and see grit glue itself to the stickiness of her jacket. If she’d died in battle, it would be different. But my corporal is dead because some fuck blew up our plane. I am going to find out why. Then I’m going to find out who. And then I’m going to kill that person, slowly.
‘We bury her here,’ I say.
‘Sir . . .’
‘Got a problem with that?’
As Neen steps back, his face closes down. ‘Something you should see first, sir.’ Grabbing a branch from the fire, he waves it back and forth until it bursts into flames. Then he turns and heads into the cave.
Shil and Haze are sitting in darkness.
‘Haze found it,’ she says.
‘Behind that,’ says Haze. The wall he points at looks like every other one in this place, yellow and dry enough to crumble.
They don’t know she’s dead, I realize.
‘Touch it,’ says Haze.
I am tired, Franc’s blood is on my hands and I am out of patience.
‘Cut the shit,’ I tell him. Scooping up a pebble, Haze lobs it at the wall. It passes through as if the wall weren’t there.
‘You took a look behind?’