Grabbing a chicken leg to chew on my way down, I take one last look round the vast dining room. Neen is with Rachel and the others. Emil is sober and scared, but also looking like a trooper, and that is enough for me. Shil’s clearing a table three tiers back.
If she sees me, she doesn’t let it show.
And Haze? He has been here all evening.
Sat right next to the five-braid. His own braids look longer and his face is thinner. He has his head tipped slightly to one side, and he is listening. When his gaze catches mine, he smiles. Having smiled, he offers five to one against. He’s betting on the Vals.
Great, I think.
The laser goes up the moment I enter the ring. Static lifting hairs on the back of my neck. Tossing a chicken bone over my shoulder produces a zap like one of those fancy insect killers. Roughly what I expect to happen.
The Vals are still wearing their silver blankets, although they lose these quickly enough, wrapping them round their left forearms. Makes sense: my arm is the most dangerous weapon in this ring.
As we circle, the Vals toss their knives from hand to hand.
But that is all they do. It’s a holding pattern, I realize. And that makes me realize something else. The Vals regard themselves as bound by our treaty. They won’t attack until I do, because of the vow they made when I set them free. In fact, they may not attack at all.
There are rules, fuck it.
Real rules.
I’ve known troopers ignore them. Lie, rape, and break vows in the name of expediency. Knew a fuckwit who machine-gunned a hospital ward full of civilians. Another who changed sides three times in the same war. Not like the Aux, conscripts who had no option but change sides.
Like me, enlisted.
The enlisted are different. We are here from choice.
We’ll be here from choice next life. Hell, we were probably here from choice the life before. No one but the U/Free remembers their past lives. So I can’t tell you if that’s true.
Me, I’m here now. Ready to look death in the face with open eyes. And if this ends in someone reciting the soldier’s prayer over my body, then so be it. I’ll settle for a long sleep and a better life next time.
Of course, I’ll fight like fuck to stop that happening. But if it does, then it does . . .
‘You’re released,’ I tell the Vals, keeping my voice low. ‘If I kill you, then I’ll get your implants home if I can. If you kill me, then I want it quick and clean.’
They grin.
‘And I want you to kill that general for me.’
I don’t need them to nod to know that’s already in their plan.
As one Val plants her feet firmly on the deck, the other begins to edge around me and our audience start banging on the tables with their fists. They’re taking bets on who lands the first blow.
‘Five on Sven,’ shouts Neen.
He’s swamped with takers. Since he doesn’t have five gold coins, it is a brave bet.
Wiping sweat from my eyes, I flick my gaze from one Val to the other. Both have oiled their skin; should have thought of that myself. Only I didn’t know this was going to happen and they obviously did.
‘Ten on the Vals,’ says the brigadier.
No one takes his bet.
As Val 7 moves, she rolls her dagger across the back of her hand. A neat trick, made neater by the fact she is moving crab-wise as she does it, with her eyes locked on mine.
Watch the eyes is a good maxim.
Only this time it is almost a mistake. I duck just in time, as the other Val slicks her blade through the space where my throat should be.
Someone claps.
And I’m two paces back and finding my balance. Twisting fast, I flick out my wrist and watch Val 7 dodge.
They’re fast, I’m faster. My next strike rakes Val 5’s chest. For a second the wound reveals muscle, ribs and the fat inside one breast, and then blood wells. The cut needs stitching but it’s not fatal. All the same, she’s shocked.
‘Pay up,’ someone shouts. It is Neen.
A movement catches my eye and I turn to find myself facing Val 7 again. She has stopped rolling the blade across the back of her fingers. Now it juts from the side of her fist, edge forwards. She’s here to stop me finishing her sister.
‘I’m going to kill you.’
‘Yeah,’ I tell her. ‘That’s what they all say.’
A feint from Val 7 has me twisting sideways. It’s only experience that warns me the real move is yet to come. As she goes for my throat I step back, and she switches hands so fast her blade blurs. Her next stab targets my groin.
I block with my arm. The one with bone in, the one that bleeds.
Her next attack is harder, and she makes a mistake. Coming in close, she jerks back as my fingers reach for her throat, and slips on her sister’s blood. This gives me time to finish her sister.
Val 7 is still trying to find her balance as I open Val 5’s throat with my forearm and reverse my swing, jabbing my elbow hard into her head. As it hits, the spike goes right through her skull, and someone gags.
Ten to one it’s the general’s little ADC.
A twist frees the spike and carries me away from Val 7, who stands torn between rushing to her sister’s side and killing me. In the second we eye each other, her sister begins to buckle, then drops to her knees and tips sideways.
‘Fucker,’ says Val 7.
The next attack is brutal.
She comes in stabbing, hard and fast. As I block the blows, I reach for her shoulder, but my fingers find oil and slip. She grins. And I have seen that grin before, because it’s mine.
Usually, I see it reflected in the eyes of those I kill.
When she steps forward, I step back and let myself skid slightly on the blood-slick deck. The Val thinks she has me. So she rushes forward. And, as her blade jabs towards my throat, my toes regain their grip and my metal arm comes up to block her blade.
My other arm slams into her throat. The weight of the blow crushes cartilage. Seven minutes, that’s how long she has before her ruptured throat tightens enough to suffocate her. Unless I finish it here.
Scooping up the Val’s knife, I hammer its hilt into her skull, knocking her unconscious. Breath still rasps in her throat and her ribs shudder as her lungs fight for every breath. God, you have to love the Vals.
Or maybe that’s just me.
Hooking two fingers into her nose lifts her onto her knees. And then I cut her throat from behind so blood sprays across the deck. The crowd roar, but I barely notice because I’m already sawing the head from its body.
The knife is sharp, but she has wiring in her flesh. So metal scrapes metal, before bone cracks and her skull comes free. It takes less time to behead the other. She’s already dead, half her blood is on the deck, and I have worked out where to cut.
Quick learner, that’s me. It’s an adaptive mechanism.
God knows what that means, but it’s what a Death’s Head technician told me about five minutes before she decided to cancel my psych test halfway through and erase the results.