Once they are broken, Neen separates the bushes into piles. One pile is kindling, the other our supplies for later. Franc is feeding the fire. She’s having a competition with herself to see how close she can get her fingers to the flames.
The roots are oily, which helps them burn. Ash already lines a circle of stones holding the fire. Shil is talking to Rachel, both of them kneeling behind us in the safety of the cave.
Between them, they scoop handfuls of grit from the floor until they hit water. Most of the Aux are farm-born on shitty little planets, in backward bits of the spiral. It’s easy to forget that; until one of them makes a perfect fire or finds water from instinct.
They are born on farms, grow up on farms, are conscripted into one army, captured and conscripted by another. Then, carrying cheap guns and wearing even cheaper uniforms, they pod-drop onto marshland outside a city called Ilseville.
That is where they’re meant to die.
Only they meet a lieutenant without troops. So when their NCO goes down he takes over.
That’s me.
When I look up, Shil’s staring at me, and there’s something knowing in her eyes. Maybe she’s noticed the way I’ve been watching Rachel . . . Franc’s abandoned the fire for her knives, which she’s sharpening on a tiny whetstone. They look sharp enough to me.
Pushing myself to my feet, I nod towards the darkness.
‘Coming?’ I ask Franc.
Grinning, she stuffs one knife into her belt, another into her boot and slots the last, sight unseen, into a sheath hidden in the small of her back. I don’t see where she puts the last one because she turns her back on me.
We are done up as mercenaries. This means far too many zips, flaps and shiny buckles for my liking. The Legion wear combat camouflage. Double dirt, they call it. Death’s Head wear black, with silver stripes or shoulder bars.
Mercenaries look like an explosion in a cheap market.
‘Neen,’ I say, ‘keep everyone in the cave.’
‘What about . . . ?’
‘They piss in it, they shit in it. For all I care, they can fuck in it. But if anyone takes a step outside I will cut their throats myself. Any other questions?’
He meets my gaze. ‘No, sir.’
‘The rest of you?’
Rachel and Haze look away, and Shil just shrugs as if she expected no better. She’s the eldest, apart from me. You’ve probably worked that out for yourselves.
Say desert and people think of sand, but it is as likely to be grit, or something like the shale that crunches under my feet. The cliff is at my back, the cave is that glow away to one side and ahead of me is a slope down to the desert floor.
If it wants us, whatever is out there will have to climb that slope. We have triple moonlight and the slope on our side, and a cruel wind against us. Every now and then, the wind catches grit and throws it into my eyes.
I could leave it until daylight . . .
The thought comes out of nowhere. There is nothing to say we must meet them head on. Then again, there is nothing to say we must not. But I’m ex-Legion, and meeting the enemy head on is what the Legion do. Of course, that doesn’t mean it is always right.
‘You all right, sir?’
‘I’m fine.’ It comes out louder than I intend. All this thinking is getting to me.
‘Right,’ I say. ‘We’re going to go down there, kill one of them and drag it back to the cave, take a look at what it is.’
As plans go, I have heard worse.
So has she. Sketching me a salute, Franc draws a knife from her belt and waits for her orders.
‘That way.’
Shale slithers as we head downhill. We keep to the shadows, following the bed of a dry river, but it is not enough. A howl from ahead is answered by a howl off to the left, and then by another to the right.
They know we’re coming.
Franc freezes the moment I raise my hand.
‘Stay here,’ I order. ‘Count to ten, then make enough noise for five.’
She wants to be down there mixing it but she does as she is told. A few seconds after I leave, my corporal begins booting rocks down the slope, one after another. And she boots them hard.
That girl is a miracle of pure pent-up aggression.
As she kicks, Franc flicks a blade from hand to hand. It moves so fast it’s impossible to say which hand holds the knife at any point. Her shoulders are loose and she’s slouching.
Unless you have Legion training, she looks off guard. If you have Legion training, she looks very dangerous indeed.
Leaving Franc behind, I head towards a desert floor that ripples like an ocean, the silver grey of the shale catching the moonlight in patches of broken surf.
Then I see them.
At least I see one of them.
From here, he looks human. Tall and broad, with a shock of hair that sweeps back from his skull and falls halfway down his spine. He is naked, like a ferox, but the blade in his hand is sharpened steel.
He turns.
Deep-set eyes scan the slope.
When the stone in my hand lands fifty paces to his left he smiles. Thinking he’s got me. Only his gaze slides over where my stone hit and flicks back, as he tilts his head, trying to pinpoint the exact position.
The moonlight is hurting his eyes.
Must be like trying to stare into the sun for me, because he has one hand shading his face, while the other holds his blade low and slightly tilted.
It’s a good stance.
He can hear Franc on the slope above, there is no doubt about that. Every so often, his gaze flicks uphill, before returning to where he thinks I should be.
Only by now, I’m somewhere else.
There are five of them. A scout and four bunched together. As another two shadows crest a dune, I change my count to seven, adding an eighth, who appears from one side. Crouching, I watch the scout look from where he thinks I am to where Franc is making a noise, and then behind him to where the others cluster.
He is too indecisive to be senior.
That leaves the other seven.
Of the four together, one is small enough to be adolescent, one old and on the edge of the group. Another waves his hands and grunts, returning to the same sounds repeatedly. No one in command needs to make that much fuss about anything.
Knocking those three off my list, I edge close as one of those who crested the dune begins to shuffle down the near side. The others fall silent and face the naked newcomer.
Their leader is female.
A xenohuman, from when people changed to suit planets. This was before planets changed to suit people. She’s whipcord thin, muscles sliding over one another and sinews locking like rope as she swivels to glance uphill. A deep-throated growl sends the scout loping away into the darkness.
Franc’s problem.
With that decision, I move. Five steps take me to their group.
As an older male slashes, I catch his blade on my wrist and sparks fly. It is enough to make him hesitate.
Bad mistake.
A twist of his head and his neck’s broken. My next move shatters the jaw of a creature behind. When he stays standing, I sidekick his knee and hear the wet suck of cartilage rupturing. He howls, but that stops as I stamp on his throat.
It is brutal.
Battles always are.
At least the kind I fight.
The next creature dies in silence, my hand crushing his larynx so viciously my fingers meet in the middle. He’s dead, but I rip his throat out anyway.
Stepping back, I kick the balls of the adolescent opposite. She doesn’t have any. Female, I realize, as she screams. All the same, my boot doubles her over and I grip both sides of her head.
I knew another girl like her, on a different planet. The ferox ate her.
‘Fuck it.’
I don’t do guilt, and I don’t do regret for something occurring half a spiral arm away. Twisting hard, I break this one’s neck; and let her drop, trying not to stare at a dark triangle of hair and two perfect breasts.
As a howl comes from their leader, I realize I’ve done it. The fight is now personal.
Her daughter, her granddaughter?
Doesn’t matter. This tribe runs with a female as the boss and her successor is lying dead at my feet.
‘Come on then,’ I say.
The other two fall back as the female stalks forward.
She is huge. A good head taller than me, and I’m the tallest person I know. A blade hangs from her right hand. It is filthy along most of its length, but its edge has been sharpened on stone.
These creatures didn’t make that blade.
Also, they don’t belong on this planet, because none of us belongs on this planet or any other still in existence. The planet we belong on ate itself. Only that is heresy, so I try not to say it, even to myself. Because our beloved emperor hates heresy. You would be surprised the number of things he hates.
Well, perhaps you wouldn’t.
It’s still true though.
I have time to think this because the creature wants me to make the first move. Her remaining followers stand off to one side. Neither approaches me; she has them too well trained for that.
She circles, I circle.
Stepping sideways, we keep a safe distance between us. I am flicking my blade hand-to-hand, Franc-style. It irritates the leader, because she thinks I should have attacked by now.
But I’m waiting and circling, until light from the largest of the three moons hits her eyes.
That’s when I move.
It is just for show, a lunge towards her gut.
As she twists away, I make my second move, sliding my feet from under me to hit her ankle with the edge of my boot.
I have Franc’s accident to thank for that idea.
Rocking back, the creature then steps forward again, straight onto her freshly dislocated ankle. One shout of pain joins another as I cut her hamstrings, good leg first. She goes down hard as a falling tree. And I’m rolling myself up her, ending with a palm strike under her nose. The usual happens: bone enters her brain, her brain stops working . . .
Not that it was that hot in the first place.
By now, I am back on my feet.
Neither of the others tries to stop me as I walk away. From behind comes growling, but I ignore it. They’re in shock. Attacking would focus their minds, and these are minds best left unfocused. Part of me wonders how I know that, and the rest doesn’t care. I have been in enough battles to trust my instinct.
Climbing the slope takes longer than I like. The shale slides beneath my feet, and one of the moons vanishes behind a cliff. It’s the largest, and the loss of light makes the climb more difficult.
Of course, I could just plough my way up. But I’m trying to be subtle.
‘Franc . . . ?’
I keep my voice low. No one answers, so I slow slightly and head for where I remember her being.
‘You there?’
The fire is straight ahead of me. A flickering glow, mostly hidden by the slope and the fact it is built in the mouth of a cave. She should be here. Franc is not the type to retreat.
‘Sir . . .’
‘Franc?’
‘Man down, sir.’
I find her enemy first. His throat’s open to the bone, and a savage cut above his nose has ruined both his eyes. He stinks and shit glazes one leg. A dagger juts from his gut; it looks as if Franc lacked the strength to drag it upwards.
My corporal’s state isn’t much better.
‘Stay still.’ When she looks at me, I see pain.
‘Sorry, sir,’ she says. ‘Even Haze can’t fix this.’ Her hand flaps weakly towards her jacket.
Moonlight shows blood on the leather of her coat, but not what the coat is covering. Franc tries to stop me as I begin to lift the edge.
‘Too late,’ she says.
‘Yeah,’ I say, slapping away her hand. ‘We’ve done that bit.’ She wants to know if it is as bad as she thinks.
It’s worse.
Franc has the ribs of a stray kitten, the tits of a kid and a jagged rip below one of them that shows me her heart beating. It pumps slowly, shuddering between beats. The scout didn’t just stab her, he opened her chest.
‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘Told you.’
‘Franc . . .’
‘It’s in your eyes.’ She smiles, bitterly. ‘You’re not as hard to read as you think.’
‘I don’t . . .’
She looks at me.
‘Want to talk about that?’ I say, changing the subject. My finger traces a puckered scar, one of a dozen that run from her hipbone to where her body hair would start, assuming she had any.
Franc shakes her head.
‘It might help.’
Her laugh brings blood with it. ‘How?’ she demands. ‘How the fuck could it help?’
‘Tell me who did it and I’ll kill them.’
‘Is that a promise?’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Guaranteed.’
‘Then you’re a fool . . .’ At my look, her mouth twists. ‘Yeah, I know. You’re a fool, sir.’ Realizing I still don’t understand, she says: ‘I did them. Well, mostly. The others came free, but that’s family for you.’
‘And I can’t kill your family because . . . ?’
‘I’ve done it already.’ She glances at the knife in my hand, splattered with blood from the creatures below. ‘You know,’ she says, ‘now would be a good time to make good on that promise.’
‘Franc . . .‘
‘You did it for Corporal Haven.’
She names a trooper I have forgotten, from a battle that barely registers.
‘You’re sure?’ That is a question I’m not meant to ask.
Her scowl tells me so.
Unsheathing one of Franc’s blades, I grip her shoulder with my hand and touch the tip of the knife to her heart. ‘Ready?’ I ask, because Franc deserves the final say on this.
She nods.
‘Sleep well,’ I tell her. ‘And a better life next time.’
A soldier’s prayer. My prayer. And so I jab the blade through beating muscle and shock her heart into stillness.