The stars are high and clear, which means the air here is thin. What little heat the dunes take up during the day is taken back by the night faster than is safe for any of us. Cold kills as surely as a knife. It creeps up on you. Makes you decide it would be a good idea to lie down for a little while. Perhaps shut your eyes and remember all those interesting times you thought you had forgotten.
Almost froze to death once. If you have to go, it’s probably as good a way as any.
Doesn’t mean I’m going to let it happen here though. Not to me, and not to any of my troopers. I am headed for the plane, or what is left of it. The tail is way behind us, one of the wing tips just ahead. And we are half a mile from the cliff itself. Seems to me the glider broke up far too neatly.
Out to my left a double moon brightens. Then a third. Maybe it is that third moon which wakes whatever beast it is that howls. A long howl, too deep for a sand wolf and too raw for a fox.
Not ferox.
I’m glad about that. Ferox hunt silently.
‘Sir.’ Neen drops back from walking point.
Yeah, I know . . .
We have a big problem, and a small problem. The small problem is out in the wilderness howling at us. The bigger problem is that where we’re meant to be doesn’t have three moons.
It has two suns.
At least it does according to our briefing.
As I glance to the left, checking on that triple moon, something crests the top of a dune and rears upright. Its howl echoes off a distant cliff and starts other voices howling.
‘Fuck,’ says Shil. ‘What’s that?’
‘A wolf.’
I wouldn’t believe me either.
‘Build a fire,’ I tell her. ‘When we reach the cliff.’
She wants to say there’ll be nothing to burn, but has more sense. I know that, we are in the middle of a desert, for fuck’s sake. She needs to improvise.
‘You know . . .’ says Haze.
‘There’s going to be nothing to burn?’
He nods.
Telling Neen to resume point, I order Shil to move out, then I watch as Franc and Rachel head after her. Rachel is limping, and working hard at not looking back. As I wait for her to leave me with Haze, I break open our distress pistol and feed it a flare.
‘Why? ‘ I ask Haze.
He steps back. ‘Sorry, sir . . .’
‘No. Tell me why there’s going to be nothing to burn.’
He considers this, his head tipped to one side and still wrapped in bandages. We tell everyone he took a wound that will not heal. The truth is messier. Those two braids budding through his skull make him Enlightened.
We kill Enlightened, because they’re our enemy. Only Haze is an Aux, a member of our troop and that makes the truth messier still.
‘Well?’
‘That second explosion,’ he says. ‘It smelt chemical.’
‘Plastique.’
Haze stares at me.
‘Used it when I was a kid,’ I say. ‘In the Legion. Along with rusting rifles, sweat-rotted uniforms and food rations so stale no one else in OctoV’s army would even open them.’
He nods.
‘The first bang was the AI,’ he says. ‘Plus our oxygen tanks. The second, that was serious. Someone stuffed the glider’s nose-cone with enough explosive to wipe out us, half a cliff and all the evidence . . .’
‘Who?’
‘The Enlightened?’
A fair guess. Only how the fuck would a bunch of metalheads know about us . . . And how could they get themselves into a U/Free security base and pack the nose of a glider that is being kept under guard?
I have a better explanation. Only it leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
‘What do you think, sir?’
‘No idea,’ I tell Haze.
Walking backwards is easy. Well, it’s easy when you’ve done it as often as I have. You just lean yourself slightly forward for better balance, and keep the gun low and swivel from the hip.
I’m the last into the camp, obviously. If you can call five troopers waiting in the rubble of a fallen cliff a camp.
‘Sir,’ says Neen. ‘You want me to take watch?’
‘How’s the arm?’
He looks at me.
‘It’s not a trick question.’
‘Numb,’ he admits. ‘But I can handle a gun.’
A good answer and a true one. ‘Later,’ I say. ‘First we need a tent. And a fire, assuming there’s anything to burn.’
‘Bushes,’ says Franc.
‘What? ‘
‘In the cliff. Shil and Rachel are trying to . . .’
Well, if Rachel thinks she has something to prove.
There are bushes all right. They begin a quarter of the way up, which puts them a long way above Rachel and Shil, who are lit by the pale light of three separate slivers of moon.
‘Come down.’
‘I’m . . .’ Rachel’s voice is distant. More worried than I would like.
‘Now.’
Neither one moves.
As Shil shouts something to Rachel, I realize we have a problem, and it isn’t just their stupidity. Great, I think. Should have known Rachel was too good to be true. Still, if you are going to be afraid of something it might as well be something that’s likely to kill you, like heights.
‘As soon as I start throwing wood down,’ I tell Neen, ‘get a fire going. Also, if you can’t make a tent have the others build a sand wall.’
‘Sir,’ he says.
Neen points to a dark gash at the base of the cliff. It’s low and slants away to one side. As I approach, a bat the size of my fist spirals out and hits an insect on the rise. A second later a dozen bats spiral out behind the first.
I leave Rachel where she is.
The mouth of the cave is tight enough to scrape my shoulders and that doesn’t help my temper. Although what I find inside goes a long way to making me happy again. No ash from a fire, or spoor. Nothing that looks like the remains of a meal. The cave is clean. Which means that whatever is howling out there in the wilderness either doesn’t come up this far, or is too big to fit through that hole.
Shil is waiting when I get outside.
‘Rachel . . .’ she begins.
‘Yeah, I know.’
The cliff is sheer and handholds rare.
It is now so cold that frost glues the rock to my bare toes and the fingers of my good hand. Probably glues itself to the fingers of my other hand too, but that’s metal so I can’t feel it.
Climbing quickly, I ignore the ache across my shoulders as I haul myself to where Rachel clings to the rockface. She is shivering, from fear or cold.
‘OK for the moment?’
That’s a question needing an answer in the affirmative.
Whatever the fuck that is. Actually, I know what it is. It’s when you can’t say no. My old lieutenant taught me. Part of my education, like learning to use a fork instead of my fingers, wash myself at least once a week and not punch people without good reason.
Arm over arm, I drag myself to a point a hundred yards above Rachel. A quick tug does nothing to move the first bush, and neither does a hard yank. In the end, I have to position my feet, grip rock tightly with my good hand and wrap a branch several times round my prosthetic hand to discover why. The bloody plant has roots five times longer than the bits I can see.
Now I know what to expect, the second bush comes free with less effort. Then a third and a fourth and a fifth. I keep ripping them out until my good hand is bleeding from gripping rock and my feet are raw.
It doesn’t matter, I mend fast.
‘Last one,’ I shout.
Somewhere below Neen shouts back. A second later, a howling comes from the wastelands, sounding closer than before, a lot closer. And unless the cliff is doubling the noise, there is more than one animal advancing.
Rachel is waiting for me, her face lost in the shadow.
‘You OK?’
She nods, and then realizes I can’t see. So she says, yes, sir, of course, sir. Her voice is tight, however, and she shakes my hand off her shoulder without thinking. Her body is humming with tension under those shivers.
‘Rachel,’ I say, ‘what’s wrong?’
‘My hand’s trapped.’
Fuck. Sliding my hand along her arm, I find fingers hooked into a crack in the rockface. They don’t feel trapped to me. ‘Lift your little finger.’
‘Can’t.’
‘Do it . . .’ Her smallest finger flexes under my grip. ‘OK,’ I say. ‘Now the next one.’
There is no movement at all.
‘Try your thumb,’ I suggest, although I already know the answer. One way or another, she’s frozen. ‘Right,’ I say. ‘This is how we’re going to do it.’
It takes me a minute to find a handhold good enough to take both our weights. By now, I’m behind her, my body close to hers. She can feel my breath on the back of her neck and I can smell fear rise like dying heat from her body.
I tell her to turn round and grip my shoulders.
She doesn’t want to do it, but she knows that staying glued to this cliff isn’t a choice. So she shifts slightly, only to freeze as I wrap one arm round her waist.
‘Turn slowly, I’ve got you.’
Can she do it?
The answer is yes. Letting go, she shifts until she can put her arms round my neck. It is just bad luck my foot chooses that moment to slip.
As I grab cliff and Rachel tightens her grip, my feet kick for a new hold. For a moment, I think we are not going to make it. So does Rachel. As my toes find rock, a liquid heat fills my lap.
She’s pissed herself. As good a sign that we’re still alive as any.
‘Wrap your legs round me.’
Her hips are wide enough to let her do it. She’s strong, unless it’s just fear that has her squeezing my hips as if her life depends on it. When she tightens her grip, I can feel her breasts squash against me. Her hair smells of oil, and her body smells of fear, overlaid with the sharpness of fresh urine.
‘Sir,’ she says. ‘You all right, sir?’
‘Why?’
‘Just wondered.’
‘Rachel . . .‘
‘You went still, sir. Like you’d realized something.’
She’s brighter than I thought. Either that or she reads minds.
‘We need to move.’
‘Yes, sir.’
With her arms locked tight round my neck and her legs gripping my hips, we make the return climb. It takes longer than it should, as I have to test each grip before letting go with my other hand.
Normally I’d jump the last fifteen or twenty feet, but I can’t. Not carrying Rachel. So I edge my way down the cliff until I feel gravel beneath my toes.
‘Wrap her in something warm.’
If Shil notices the stain on Rachel’s clothes, she keeps it to herself.