Death to general Jaxx becomes down with Octov.
Beginning raggedly, the chant gathers force. The crowd in the next square finds courage in its anger. All the militia units around them do is nod. Someone rips a picture of the emperor from a bar wall and that’s enough. The crowd turns from looting doubter houses to destroying posters and breaking statues.
As the window of a liquor store goes in, a boy clambers over brandy bottles to smash a figurine of OctoV in full uniform. When Leona steps forward, I grab her and swing her into a wall. ‘Get yourself killed in your own time. Until then, behave.’
The rumours start a few minutes later.
OctoV has been captured. He has been killed. He has taken refuge with our enemies the Enlightened. No, the Enlightened are our friends. OctoV’s on the run in Farlight. Then it is Vijay’s turn to drive the rumour.
The general’s son hides in a house on the next street. This is untrue, as we discover when we reach the building. He’s crossing the river. One of the rusted wrecks on the Emsworth landing fields is really a combat craft in disguise.
I don’t bother to follow the splinter group heading north.
The landing fields are a mountain of rust, broken spider bots and shacks. Anything in there that works was stolen years ago. And Per Olsen would have told me if anything strange was happening on his patch.
The crowd’s need to find Vijay is interesting.
Not so much what drives it.
As who drives it.
In twenty-nine years of life, most of those with the Legion, and one in the Death’s Head, I’ve seen my share of slaughter and looting. But something other than anger and alcohol is driving this crowd.
It goes one way, houses burn.
The crowd chooses another and a temple goes up in flames.
Bars are looted and shops destroyed, doubters die. Yet whole streets remain untouched. Some suffer only broken windows. And always, the cry false or true is what decides the crowd. At first Leona and I think there are a dozen voices making the call.
Then we realize there are only three or four.
Word comes that Vijay Jaxx is hiding in a hotel near the river. It has to be true, because sappers take apart roadblocks to allow us passage. The furies left don’t follow, being satiated and dazed with overfeeding.
Most are already in mobile cages, herded there by men holding those rags on sticks. Dropped from a zep, picked up on the ground. For all its seeming chaos, this night has had military planning from the beginning.
We’re jostling across an embankment. Well, Leona is. The crowd keeps its distance from me. Might be the blood on my coat, my height or the broadness of my shoulders. Might be the fact I punch the first jostler in skeleton clothes into unconsciousness before stamping on his ankle and tossing him into the water.
‘Sir,’ Leona says.
The rest of her sentence goes unsaid.
General Jaxx’s death leaves me sick in the gut. You can’t expect a general to be like other soldiers. And you can’t expect soldiers to be like other men. We’re different. Simply killing doesn’t make a soldier. We fight for what we believe. And if we forget what that is we fight until we remember.
The people around me will never be soldiers. You think I have contempt for this rabble in their carnival clothes? You’re right, I came from far worse. I can’t say I made good, but I made different.
‘Sir,’ Leona tries again. ‘Permission to-’
‘Get on with it.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘To save Colonel Vijay’s hide.’
She shoots me a glance. ‘How will we do that, sir?’
How the fuck would I know? When I’ve got an answer, I’ll share. Then again, maybe I won’t. Must be something in the air, but I’m starting to mistrust Anton and Leona both. Don’t doubt myself though.
Armoured cars at the embankment end draw back to let us through. Militia officers sneer from open hatches. Makes me wonder what they think we’ve done that they haven’t. We’re not the ones who turn back doubters fleeing for safety.
‘Grim,’ says Leona, looking round.
Her first comment on the events of the night. Although night is the wrong word. Darkness is passing and I can see dawn shimmer on the distant slopes.
‘This way,’ someone shouts.
It’s always someone. We never see who.
But a voice shouts, and the crowd surges towards the old wrought-iron gates of a riverside mansion. Grabbing Leona, I drag her out of the crush and towards an alley. If people object, they keep it to themselves. And if they show any emotion, it’s to gaze sympathetically at Leona, who lets herself be dragged behind me.
I know this place . . .
A very grand hotel where Paper Osamu stayed when the UFree were having their embassy redecorated. The thought makes me consider how little I’ve seen of the United Free tonight. Surprising in itself, since the UFree pride themselves on their role as unbiased observers to the galaxy’s trouble spots.
I spit, and a smartly dressed man glares before turning away.
Can’t believe the idiot doesn’t recognize me. Mind you, seeing Federico Van Zill does wonders for my anger. He’s that ex-gangster Per Olsen mentioned. The one who went missing from the slums below Calinda Gap. For all his current aura of importance he was born a slimebag and will die one.
Preferably soon.
These days, it seems, he’s wearing suits and expensive shoes and working for . . .? Now there is a question.
Mind you, I know why Vijay’s here.
You don’t run black ops out of your regular base and this has U/Free written all over it. I thought OctoV was behind tonight until the crowd changed its chant. Now I know it’s Paper’s mob who are driving the slaughter. And since they’re not going to run this out of their embassy, and she or Morgan will want to be on site, this is the next best guess for their centre of operations.
Looks like Colonel Jaxx has been playing the guessing game too.