Anton’s next guess is mercenaries. He’s wrong. There are a dozen reasons but I don’t have time to list them all. Although top of the list is that mercenaries are mercenary. If you’re in it for the money, you don’t throw yourself out of zeps without a parachute, even low-flying zeps.
Mercenaries don’t want to face death. They want other people to face death. They like living. That’s the only way you get to bank the gold.
‘Up here . . .’
We climb steps from the water’s edge. Knives in our belts and Kemzins in our hands. Soldiers are meant to like K19s. But they’re cheap cookie-cutter shit. If those were mercenaries, we could kill a couple and arm ourselves with something better.
Bells are still ringing in the cathedral across the river.
Don’t know yet if it’s a warning or a signal.
Sergeant Brandon told me most of the Death’s Head are off-planet. And everyone knows the Legion aren’t allowed near Farlight anyway. Plus, half the militia are on a training exercise outside the city boundaries. The rest are here.
So, some are on an exercise. Others aren’t.
Anyone can see that’s bad.
A square waits up ahead. With a church on its northern edge, and a decaying colonnade around the other three sides. Uplights usually pick out the clock tower but the whole square is in darkness.
The little statue of OctoV looks weird unlit.
No light either on a statue under the colonnade, of a young girl with a cryptic smile and perfect breasts. She’s nude. Most statues in this city are. This one looks like Aptitude. That’s no surprise, the model was her great-grandmother.
Didn’t know more than one had been made.
I touch its arse for luck. Me, and a thousand men before. Most of her is a greasy green. But her right buttock is shiny enough to have been cast yesterday.
‘Friend of yours, sir?’ Leona asks.
‘Something like that.’
Our glorious leader never told me to betray General Jaxx. He did, however, order me not to tell the general – or anyone else – that I was working for him. That he, our glorious leader, was my boss. Of course OctoV is everybody’s boss. He just doesn’t talk to everybody.
He talks to me.
‘Sir?’ Leona says.
‘Thinking,’ I tell her.
‘About what the fuck we’re doing here?’ Anton asks.
‘No. Why the fuck this is happening.’
Nothing political occurs on Farlight without OctoV’s approval. The laws that underwrite this city don’t come more basic than that.
‘Not mercenaries?’ Anton checks.
Sergeant Leona and I shake our heads together. Not mercenaries. Not Silver Fist, or any of the Uplifted and Enlightened’s shock troops. Every time the list gets shorter, it gets nastier. And when we run into the only choice left, it gets very nasty indeed.
‘Sir,’ says Leona. ‘Three o’clock.’
When a figure slinks under the arch on the far side of the square I’m beyond surprise. Leona’s not. Flicking down her visor, she stares in disbelief.
Silver skin, hollow chest, a face like someone slit its nostrils and hacked off its ears. The one we faced at Wildeside was obviously half grown. This one really stinks. Even from here we can smell its vinegary stench.
‘Fuck,’ she says. ‘What’s that?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Let me go and ask.’
Anton scowls. ‘It’s a fury. Go for the guts. Don’t let it get close.’
She glances at him.
‘Feeds through its fingers.’
Leona shivers.
The fury is focused on a man a hundred paces away. The poor bastard hasn’t seen it yet. When he does, he tries to run.
You can’t outrun furies. Well, maybe I could, given a head start. He doesn’t stand a chance. Closing the gap in easy strides, the creature slams its fist into the man’s back, breaking his ribs and dropping him to his knees. The second strike uses straight fingers that split flesh and displace bone as they reach for his heart.
We hear him scream from where we stand.
Leona’s first shot kills the man and the fury steps back, puzzled.
Her second, third and fourth shots release what blood it has swallowed from the fury’s gut. Although it’s hard to tell if the creature even notices. All Leona does is attract its attention.
‘Don’t waste your ammunition.’
‘Sven,’ Anton says.
‘I mean it.’ Nodding towards the creature, which now waits like a coiled spring, while it decides whether to attack us or a group of civilians pretending to be invisible against a far wall, I say, ‘Does it look injured to you?’
To me it just looks irritated.
We win the contest of who it wants to kill next.
‘Behind me,’ I order. Anton decides the order applies to him as well.
The creature racing towards me is used to its prey running, so it doesn’t expect me to step forward, and stops when it should attack.
Bizarrely, that’s bad, because now I’m off its list of targets.
It wants Leona instead. Trying to move round me, it sidesteps, as Leona takes bigger ones to stay behind me. Fighting one-armed is hard. Doing so against a fury should qualify as suicide.
Well, for anyone but me.
But, like I said, the fury doesn’t want to fight me. All it wants is for me to get the fuck out of its way so it can kill Leona. As it tries to push past, I side-stamp its knee. Anything without steel joints would be down, but it keeps standing. So I slam the Kemzin into its throat and hear the rifle’s plastic stock break.
The damn thing barely rocks on its heels.
Been a while since I fought anything my size. And the lack of my combat arm leaves me feeling . . . lopsided. That thought just has time to flick through my head before the fury decides it’s facing an enemy after all.
Bemusement turns to . . .
Anger is the wrong word. It’s colder than that.
I watch it happen and – a split second ahead of it happening – watch the fury’s red eyes flick to the rag round my upper arm. That is what’s holding it off. Not my stepping forward, not my size.
‘Sven . . .’
‘It’s sir,’ I say.
Sergeant Leona’s holding out the rusting abattoir pistol. Damn thing’s so large she can barely lift it with both hands.
‘Let me get back to you.’
Don’t know what it means. Something Debro says.
As the fury punches for my ribs, I grab its wrist, and slam my knee into its elbow as hard as I can . . . Hurts like fuck. When the joint doesn’t break first time I try again and something snaps. So I twist, grinding broken steel against itself.
Vile breath hisses from the fury’s lips.
‘Sergeant . . .’
‘Here, sir,’ she says.
Catching the revolver, I thumb its oversized hammer, jam the muzzle into the creature’s neck and pull the trigger. Fuck knows what the calibre is, but that recoil would break most people’s wrists. Bits of spine exit the fury in a spray of metal, wiring and wizened flesh, as the explosion echoes around the square.
‘How many more?’ Anton asks.
‘What?’
‘In total . . . How many furies?’
A memory of the drop flicks through my mind. One pod, a line of maybe ten furies. Five waves of figures falling.
‘No more than fifty . . .’ Yeah, reckon I’m right. Looking at the fury at my feet, I knock the figure down to no more than fifty, minus one.
Taking the abattoir revolver from me, Leona breaks it open to extract the case, pulls a new round from her pocket and slots it into the cylinder, flicking the revolver shut with a satisfying snap. She’s good like that.
Anton is looking appalled.
That’s because another two furies have entered the square. Large bastards too, even bigger than the one we’ve just killed. If that’s possible. And both are heading our way. Ripping Simone’s scarf from my arm, I tear it in three and thrust one strip at Leona. ‘Here,’ I say. ‘Tie it on, now.’
Anton ties one on too.
The fury nearest us hesitates. The one behind bumps into it. Both snarl their irritation. A guttural hissing. Before returning their attention to us.
‘What’s happening?’ Leona asks.
‘They’re deciding whether to attack.’
‘The rags, sir?’
‘Yeah.’ She catches on fast.
‘Sir?’
‘Sergeant?’
‘Looks like they’ve got proper bands. Maybe we could . . .’
She jerks her head towards the colonnade. Killing the fury has brought us to the attention of three militia officers. All wear white bands stencilled with a ferox skull wrapped round their arms.
We’re obviously the topic of their conversation.
‘Good idea,’ I say.
Edging towards them, we bring the furies with us. Never quite attacking, unwilling to let us escape. Our audience wants to back away, but there’s a wall behind, and they’re in the corner of the colonnade.
As we get closer the furies lose interest.
Our makeshift armbands, combined with their official ones, stand the furies down. Instead, the creatures turn for the group of civilians we saw earlier. Three men, one woman and a child, all neatly dressed.
‘Doubters,’ Anton says.
Surprised he can see that from here.
Realizing they’re the new target, the family run for a church door. The battle is brief, brutal and one-sided. ‘Watch,’ I order, when Leona begins to turn away. We need to work out their methods.
See if there’s anything we can learn.
‘But sir,’ she signals our audience, ‘shouldn’t we . . .?’
Join them? Why not?
Sergeant Leona has other plans.
Ripping free her knife, she stabs it into the base of their captain’s skull, jerks her wrist to cut his brain stem, and combines extracting her blade with a rapid sweep that opens the throat of the lieutenant next to him.
Their junior lieutenant goes for his gun.
He exits this life with a broken knee, a crushed larynx and his head twisted far enough to sever his spinal cord. It’s good to find something that dies as it should.
‘Sergeant,’ I say. ‘Who gave you that order?’
Leona looks at me. ‘Sir. You said it was a good idea, sir . . .’
I take the ferox-skulled armband she offers, nodding as she ties the next one to her own arm. Interesting. She kills the officers in order of seniority. Now she’s handing out their bands according to our rank. I get the first. She gets the next. Anton’s rich, but Leona’s decided he’s a civilian and disposable.
Wonder if he realizes that.
Stuffing my original band inside my shirt, I rifle the nearest man’s pockets for what I can find. Five gold coins and a handful of silver from off-system. Plus a bundle of high-denomination notes.
The paper’s worthless, obviously.
Anton says nothing when I pocket the gold.
Doesn’t need to, his scowl says it all. The man’s had money so long he’s forgotten what it’s worth. Leona takes the silver I offer with a smile.
‘Take this,’ I say, thrusting the safe conduct and ferox-skulled ring at Anton.
He shakes his head.
Anton’s not keen to re-cross the river.
Why would he be? All the same, the safe conduct and ring are going to make it easier. ‘Send her,’ he says. His comment is contemptuous enough to make Leona bridle. Worries me that he doesn’t notice.
‘I need you to go.’
‘Why?’
‘Because the Aux know you.’
Anton can’t deny that. He’s Aptitude’s father. The Aux met him when he and Debro came to collect her from Golden Memories, the day after his audience with OctoV. Neither Debro nor Anton told me what our glorious leader said.
Doesn’t surprise me. He saw them separately.
I doubt they’ve told each other. Our glorious leader can be very persuasive when he wants you to keep things to yourself.
‘Find Neen,’ I say. ‘Tell him to hurry. I want full battle rattle, but no Death’s Head patches and I want them fully armed. If you can steal armbands on your way up, that’s good. If not, tell Neen to collect some on his way down.’
‘Sven-’
‘We need to find Colonel Vijay. Then we need to get both of you out of here and back to Debro’s. We have to make sure Wildeside is safe.’
‘Wildeside’s not in danger,’ Anton says.
It’s not in danger?
He’s said too much. But a pack of furies are loping from under an arch, as the stink of blood on the hot wind draws them our way, and Anton decides I didn’t notice his slip; or I’m too stupid to put things together if I did.
‘I’d better go,’ he says.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘You had.’