‘Keep your wits about you,’ I tell the Aux. ‘Only attack if I give the order.’
‘That was a joke, all right?’ Colonel Vijay’s voice sounds tired. ‘For anyone listening over the comms system: that was a joke.’
He brings his trike alongside for a quiet word.
The Wolf’s Lair hugs the top of a peak that has been flattened to take it. There’s one road, which crawls round the mountain in a slowly rising spiral, cut into the living rock. This forms the only way in.
High walls, looking down on the spiral, mean every step of the approach can be targeted from the ramparts. The black rock into which the spiral is cut is studded with steel doors for its final twist, which must be vast to be visible from here.
‘It’s hollow,’ I tell Neen.
He nods. ‘Yes, sir.’
Maybe Colonel Vijay told him that, as well.
My guess is one of the earlier COs decided he needed more space, so had the rock beneath his base quarried to provide it. The quarrying will be deep and the rock strong. This is not an easy place to capture.
As General Luc approaches the castle, a steel door slowly opens and his vehicle disappears, presumably inside. We’re two spirals below, with twenty scout cars ahead, each one leaving a safe distance, in case of mines . . .
Although I’d like to see someone dig this road.
As we finish our second loop around the mountain, the faces around me tighten. Neen looks determined, Shil resigned. Rachel is reciting a table of distances, wind speeds and deflection settings, her default position in times of stress. Ajac is doing his best to look like Neen.
Iona simply looks scared.
‘Being scanned,’ the SIG says. It shivers as it handshakes the castle’s security settings. No idea what it tells it. That it’s General Luc’s new housekeeper, probably. ‘Sven,’ it says, a moment later, ‘I think you should . . .’
Yeah, I know I should.
This is the bit I always hate.
The kyp in my throat leaps as I swallow the information the SIG is feeding me. There’s a taste of static, and my combat trike lurches as a spasm locks my muscles. But it’s fleeting and the gyros kick in anyway.
‘You OK?’ Shil asks. ‘Sir?’
‘Yeah. Just busy.’
Floor plans blossom inside my head. The hidden part of the castle is vast. There are dormitories for a thousand Wolf Brigade, and enough weapons for twice that number. Real weapons: pulse rifles and missile launchers, grenades and smart bombs. The armoury, fifteen floors below, is lined with mesh behind ceramic plate. It holds more ammunition than I’ve ever seen in one place.
The Wolf is ready for war.
That’s interesting. General Jaxx had an intelligence service second to none. So how come he didn’t know? Unless the Wolf’s naturally suspicious, and his suspicions are accidentally right.
‘Paranoid,’ says a voice.
‘What?’
Neen looks across, sees my expression and glances away. Most of this conversation is inside my head anyway. So, as far as he’s concerned, I’m just talking to myself.
All the same, I’m not sure I knew I’d said that aloud.
‘That’s the word you’re looking for. Paranoid. Displaying an extreme or unnatural distrust of others. A character trait often found in senior officers. Well, in mine . . .’
‘OctoV?’
‘He’s dead. She’s dead. Doesn’t make much difference.’
‘So who are you?’
‘A ghost.’
‘Oh Sven. Can I stroke your gun, please?’ The SIG-37’s impression of Leona’s voice is good enough to startle me.
‘Little bitch.’
‘My feelings exactly.’
We’re approaching the last of the spiral, which means an open door blocks our way. Its hinges are larger than me, and now it’s open, its outer edge extends over the drop, making it impossible to ride round. A steel iris in the rock reveals a tunnel, with luminescent strip lights and gun encampments every hundred paces.
Close the iris to lock off that tunnel, and open the steel door, and you halt your enemy in his tracks. General Luc may be paranoid but he has good defences.
The cavern into which we’re led could hold Farlight cathedral. Maybe not its clock tower, but the main bit. And it has the same churchlike lighting and high ceilings. Even the grey walls rise in the same way.
‘You OK, sir?’ Shil asks.
I’m touching stone for luck without even realizing.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Never better.’
She scowls.
So obviously I grin.
And that’s how General Luc finds me a few seconds later, as he filters between scout cars, ignoring the salutes of those around him. ‘You,’ he says. ‘What happened to your lip?’
‘Fell over, sir.’
He scowls. ‘So did Sergeant Toro.’
‘Really, sir?’
The Wolf’s scowl deepens. ‘Be glad I need you . . . This is your chance,’ he adds. ‘Don’t waste it.’
‘To do what?’
‘Impress me.’ His tone says that should be obvious.
‘Why the fuck would I bother, sir?’ My gaze takes in his convoy of trucks and scurrying troops. ‘You’ve got enough . . .’ I look at Shil. ‘What’s the word?’
‘Acolytes, sir?’
No idea what it means, but she’s probably right.
Shades of grey camouflage my Icefeld. A fat tyre bites dirt to leave a trail of dust that must be visible miles away. A Wolf Brigade stencil decorates a fuel tank that’s really an ammo box stuffed with cartridges for an 8-gauge pump-action shotgun slotted into the holster on my tank’s right side.
Insects commit suicide so often I stop at the first village to scrape the screen clean. The village is broken and has only one bar. A man in the shoulder patch of a Wolf Brigade veteran looks up, sees my Icefeld through the closing door and decides to leave by a side exit. I guess his patch isn’t real.
‘Beer,’ I demand.
The cane shot comes free.
I eat most of their spiced nuts, drink a second beer and piss against a rusting car out back, because that’s what everyone else uses. The barkeep takes one look at the 5000 Octo note I slap down on the counter and his face goes white.
‘Sir,’ he says, ‘I can’t possibly . . .’
‘Give me a rag and a bowl of water to wash my screen. Keep the change.’
He’s grinning madly as the door swings behind me, so I guess the events in Farlight haven’t reached this far from the city. A boy wanders over looking for a lift to the next ville. When I shake my head he shrugs.
Children stare as I leave.
Since ruins outnumber people and this place is on a road so obscure it appears only as dots on my nav pad, I’m not surprised. From the Wolf ‘s Lair to Wildeside is not a ride people often make.
The general probably has some NCO logging every last piss and beer break. And I could make the trip faster, but I’ve been given a day to travel there, and another back and I’m not looking forward to arriving.
‘One-fifty miles,’ says the SIG.
A couple of hours at this rate. Maybe slightly less. Depends how many more stops I make. In my pocket is Vijay’s memory crystal. The one containing the download from Morgan’s data cores. Vijay is one step ahead of me. He knew where I was being sent, and wants the crystal delivered along with the Wolf ‘s message, discreetly of course. You probably know what discreet means. I have to be reminded.
The next village is so small it has no bar at all.
It has a rusty bike, however, so old it’s double-wheeled, one at the front and one at the back. The naked child who rides it forms his fingers into a pistol and shoots me as I pass. Maybe General Luc comes this way after all.
‘Sven,’ my gun says.
‘Yeah, I know . . . Concentrate.’
The wheel spins in grit as my road disappears.
Since I can see it up ahead this has to be flood damage washing out the blacktop. We skid and slide, until I get bored with that. A long patch of grey scabs a slope to my right, so I gun the Icefeld. Traction when we hit rock powers the bike forward and I’m at a crazy angle, dodging a boulder, when my hip shivers.
‘Sven,’ my gun shouts. ‘You want to kill yourself, just pull over and do it properly.’
Twelve-pot brakes squeal, and only the gyro keeps us level as my bike skids to a halt, leaving a strip of smoking rubber behind it. Clambering from the Icefeld, I undo my holster.
‘Look,’ the SIG says. ‘Let’s talk about this.’
A boulder explodes a hundred paces away. Splinters of rock buzz past my head like wasps. None hit, though. A second boulder explodes, then a third. When I run out of boulders I burn a thorn tree back to ash and then a bush.
‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’
Wisely, the SIG-37 keeps silent.
When I’m twelve and only just in the Legion I watch my lieutenant have a screaming fit. His CO, a boy half his age, has issued an order that gets twelve troopers killed. And though the CO would be within his rights to have Lieutenant Bonafont court martialled he does nothing.
Later, Lieutenant Bonafont tells me there’s a knack to losing your temper. You do it at the right time and in the right company.
For me, the right time is now, and alone.
We make the rest of the trip in silence. Although the SIG relents on the way into Wildeside village. ‘Roadblock,’ it says. ‘Danger seventy-eight per cent probable . . .’
That’s high to me.
‘Militia. Plus I’ve added a thirty per cent Sven fuck-up weighting.’
It hasn’t relented that much.
One of the soldiers waves me down as the other raises a rifle to cover me. It’s the old-model Kemzin with the short clip. He’d be more convincing if he remembered to jack the slide first.
‘Get off your bike.’
I shake my head, although I flip up my visor.
‘Debro around?’
Strangers on Wolf Brigade bikes don’t call Senator Wildeside Debro.
At least, not in the world they occupy, which is about to change beyond all recognition. In the way of these things, it will probably look and sound and feel and taste the same to anybody not bothered by the difference.
Unfortunately, Debro and Aptitude aren’t on that list.
‘Farlight was sacked,’ I tell them.
Mouths drop open. They stare at each other, wondering if I’m telling the truth. Wish I wasn’t. There are few things I’d wish away in my life, but I’d wish away the last week, and pay ten years of what’s left for the pleasure.
‘The Uplifted?’
Silver-skulled and ruthless, riddled with tubes and the virus. Our traditional enemies. You know where you are with the Uplifted and Enlightened. They want to kill us and we want to kill them. Even the militia can get their heads round that.
‘If only.’
Must be something in my voice.
‘General Jaxx was killed on Senator Thomassi’s orders. Half the city has been massacred. Men, women and children. Their houses burnt, their shops smashed, their warehouses ransacked. You will tell no one else.’
‘But OctoV wouldn’t-’
‘The emperor is dead.’
Shock slackens their faces. Both know what I say is true. No man would dare say that if OctoV were still alive. It has never occurred to them, just as it never occurred to me, that he would not still be there after we are all dead.
The ghost in my gun is no more OctoV than Leona was.
They are avatars. Subsets. Encased memories. I wonder where those definitions come from and realize it’s the kyp. Somewhere between the gun, the ghost and the kyp I’m floating in information.
‘Enough,’ I say.
Both NCOs think I’m talking to them.
Saluting, they step back and offer to escort me to meet Senator Wildeside.
The village is quiet, locked down with shutters tight and barred doors where bead curtains should be. An old woman sits on an upper balcony, resting a double-barrelled shotgun that is older than she is on her lap.
Her eyes follow me as I head for the square, riding no faster than the two militia corporals can walk. Up ahead is the arch to Debro’s compound. Another two NCOs occupy an encampment in front of it, made from sandbags.
A belt-fed sits on a tripod behind its defensive wall. The machine gun is old but clean, with the breech locked down and the belt in position and correctly folded. The gunner has chained himself to the belt-fed by his ankle.
Been a while since I saw that.
The corporal on my right tells me why. ‘Those creatures,’ he says. ‘We had an attack.’
‘I thought they were dead?’
‘So did we. This lot were alive.’
‘How many?’
‘Three.’
That’s enough. Three furies can do damage.
‘We were lucky,’ he says. ‘A man saw them coming. All the same, they killed ten troopers, plus two families. All of them,’ he adds. ‘Even the children.’
‘You did well to fight them off.’
My praise makes him braver. ‘The Wolf Brigade,’ he says finally. ‘What do you guys want with us?’
‘I’m not Wolf Brigade.’
He looks from my combat jacket to the bike I ride.
‘I’m delivering a message from General Luc to Lady Aptitude Wildeside. The name’s Sven Tveskoeg, I’m a Death’s Head lieutenant.’