‘Stretch him between those two trees.’ as we’re not using nails to fix Pavel in place, it is not as if Colonel Vijay can really complain. Let’s face it; we are not even tying the rope that tightly. ‘Now remove his trousers.’
My sergeant looks puzzled.
‘Do it.’ My voice is abrupt and Neen’s lips tighten. He cuts roughly, hacking away until the O’Cruz caudillo stands naked from the waist down, stretched by ropes between two olive saplings.
So far, all he has told me is that the snakeheads took Shil. Who led them and why are questions he seems unable to answer. We’re about to change that.
Stripping off my own shirt, I pull a dagger from its sheath on my hip.
As expected, Pavel begins to struggle. He’d protest, but his mouth is stuffed with a bit of rag. It’s going to remain that way while I work. He already knows that.
I work, the gag stays in.
The gag comes out, he talks. He doesn’t talk, the gag goes back in.
‘Sven . . .‘ Colonel Vijay sounds worried. Must be because I’m using the knife on myself instead of on Pavel. Slitting open my armpit, I force my fingers under muscle until I reach something ceramic. Hurts like fuck. Still, it was bound to.
Closing my fingers around a handle, I say, ‘Got it.’ Before calling, ‘Rachel.’
She is already running to fetch her needle and cotton.
An m3x laser blade is illegal in ninety-eight per cent of the known galaxy. The only reason it’s not illegal in the rest is that no one has got round to passing laws there yet. At least not laws anyone can make stick.
You can buy legal versions of the m3. These have coloured blades and hum when you turn them on. Easy enough to lose the hum. Well, it is if you’re good with software. But fixing the blade . . .
My knife has a blade that adjusts from red to invisible.
I choose pale blue, because Pavel needs to see what’s coming, and pale blue is the colour of flame at its hottest. ‘So hot,’ I tell Pavel, ‘wounds seal.’ Tapping his arms near the shoulders, I say, ‘I can cut here and here without spilling a single drop of blood. But you know where I’m going to start, don’t you?’
He looks down. Doubt if he can see over his own belly, but the shrivelling little acorn between his legs says he knows what to expect.
I’m not big on torturing a man in front of his daughter. Not even a bastard like Pavel; and I killed Racta, his heir. Well, I would have done, if a prospector hadn’t beaten me to it. So he has a right to have issues.
But I really do need to know where Shil is . . .
‘Take Adelpha away,’ I tell Milo.
‘No.’ The girl shakes her head. ‘I’m staying,’ she says.
And that gives me a better idea. Stamping across to where she stands, I grab the front of her dress and yank. It’s made from cheap cotton, rotten with sweat, and shreds easily to reveal heavy breasts and dark nipples. From the way Milo’s gaze fixes on these, before switching to me, he hasn’t seen them before either.
‘Milo,’ says Neen. ‘Don’t.’ He puts his rifle to the huge fisherman’s head. Neen is not happy. Why would he be? Today was the day he thought he’d see his sister again.
Struggling against his ropes, Adelpha’s father shakes his head. He’d be shouting, but the gag prevents it. This is where I should have started, I realize. I file that thought away for next time, because there will be a next time. There always is.
‘Sven,’ says my SIG.
‘What?’
‘Think he wants to say something.’
Yeah, I think Pavel wants to say something too. Reaching for the gag, I say, ‘You get one chance. You understand me?’
He nods, thinks about it and nods again.
‘OK,’ I say. ‘The gag comes off. You tell me where Shil is. Anything else and I’m going to hurt your daughter very badly indeed. Understand?’
Again, I get a nod.
‘Good, in that case . . .’
‘Don’t hurt her,’ he says, before the gag is even half free. ‘Please don’t-’ And then he screams in pure frustration, because I’ve turned and Adelpha is backing away from me so fast she trips.
And Milo lunges, then hits the dirt when Neen clubs him; Colonel Vijay stands up from his rock, catches my eye and sits down again; and Pavel says, ‘The nine-braid took her.’ That’s what I need. Not snakehead, not strangers.
The nine-braid.
‘You,’ I say to Adelpha. ‘Cover yourself.’
She drags her dress together by its torn edges, and nods gratefully when Rachel reaches into her pocket for more of that cotton. A single stitch across the neck is enough to give Adelpha back her decency. I don’t doubt that Milo will be unwrapping her later anyway. Once he is over his headache.
‘This nine-braid . . . It was he who gave you those weapons the night we fought?’
Pavel nods. All the argument gone out of him. In a single day, he’s lost his daughter and city and leadership to Milo. We all understand that. Adelpha’s new husband will be caudillo of the O’Cruz ejercitox. I’m part of a bigger nightmare. A particularly nasty part, but just a part all the same.
‘Why did you give him my trooper?’
‘She slapped me.’
I look at Pavel. The man means it.
‘Cut him free,’ I tell Neen.
Pavel’s face says he thinks this is a trick. That I’m freeing him so I can inflict something worse. It’s not a trick.
‘What did you tell the nine-braid about her?’
My guess was right. He didn’t tell the braid Shil was one of mine. There is a simple reason for this. Pavel was meant to kill us all that night. As far as the braid is concerned, Pavel did.
‘So he thinks she’s . . . ?’
‘Difficult,’ says Adelpha. ‘I told her to keep her mouth shut and pretend to be dumb. She’d last longer that way.’
‘Did the braid give your father a present in return?’
Adelpha nods. Walking over to where Pavel is tying the rags of his trousers around his waist, she says, ‘Show them.’
Pavel opens his shirt: just enough to let me see a tiny cylinder, with a flip-up top and a distinctive red ring round its middle. Someone has welded a hoop to the bottom and Pavel is wearing the planet buster upside down on a chain round his neck.
‘Colonel,’ I yell.
‘That’s illegal,’ my gun says. God knows, it should know.
The chain snaps as I yank. Pavel’s looking at Colonel Vijay, and wondering why he’s started scowling. When I offer Colonel Vijay the cylinder, he shakes his head.
‘You know what that is, Sven?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘How?’
‘Seen one before.’
‘Right,’ he says. ‘I don’t want to know, do I?’
‘No, sir,’ I tell him. ‘Probably not.’
Milo doesn’t know what is going on, nor does Ajac, Iona or Adelpha, but they all catch the glance Haze gives Rachel. It’s appalled, fascinated and only slightly disgusted. I can almost taste Haze’s hunger from here.
‘Sir,’ Haze says. ‘May I talk to Pavel?’
‘Yes,’ answers Colonel Vijay. Maybe he thinks the question is for him.
Wrapping his arm round Pavel’s shoulders, Haze leads him to a rock and stands beside him, looking down over the valley and the city below. Haze seems to be listening. After a while, he talks and then listens again.
‘He’s good at this,’ says Colonel Vijay.
I nod.
According to Pavel, the cylinder is old technology. Very secret. The braids found it in a temple. They felt Pavel should have it because he’s the O’Cruz caudillo. And that’s right. Because they told him it was found in an O’Cruz temple.
‘And what will it do?’ I want to hear this bit for myself.
‘It will make all my enemies disappear.’
‘That’s what the braid said?’
‘Yes,’ Pavel tells me. ‘He promised. As if they never existed.’ He squints around him. ‘Did he lie?’
‘Oh no,’ says Colonel Vijay. ‘He didn’t lie.’
‘But I’ve got to wait,’ Pavel says. ‘Because it won’t work yet.’ And then he tells us why. Pavel has been told the cylinder only works under the light of a full moon. Complete shit, obviously. All he need do is flip up its lid, turn a priming ring and put his thumb to the button. We’ll be buggered, he’ll be buggered and so will Hekati.
‘Fifty-three hours,’ says Haze. That’s how long we have until a full moon.
This means the braids, Silver Fist and probably Shil will be elsewhere by then; because they’re sure as fuck not going to be anywhere near here. Because there isn’t going to be any near here.
This is a buster. It folds matter inside itself and posts it somewhere else.
You can destroy whole systems with a buster. And the next thing you know, the U/Free turn up declaring exclusion zones and exiling planets to outer orbits, assuming there are any left. No one stops me when I hang the chain around my neck.
Then I salute Colonel Vijay and tell him we need to talk.