‘Haze . . .‘ I say.
Turning back, he hastily looks away. So I tip what remains in my jug over my head and dry myself on a sheet taken from the bed. Believe it or not, that does improve matters.
‘You’ve lost your head dressing . . . ?’
Haze checks to see if he’s in trouble. He’s not. ‘Kyble knew,’ says Haze. ‘Told me not to be ashamed of what I was.’ His words come out in a rush.
‘And were you?’ I ask.
He nods.
When Franc returns, Haze leaves.
The bread is stale and the fruit spoilt, apart from the figs, which are unripe as bullets. I eat the lot because I’ve eaten worse. And worse is better than none at all, and I’ve eaten that too. As I wipe crumbs from my mouth, Franc steps back to strip off her singlet, unbuckle her boots and climb out of her combats.
‘Kyble’s orders?’
Franc nods and I laugh.
She is straddling me when Colonel Vijay comes into the square. Although Haze must say something, because the colonel shouts from outside, and then waits for a minute, before beginning to climb the stairs. By this time, I’m wearing the sheet I used to dry myself and Franc is back in her clothes. Well, mostly.
He barely looks at her.
‘Tracked Pavel to a city in the mountains,’ he says. ‘It’s walled, bigger than this, with guards on the gate. Looks locked down to me. So either they’re expecting us, or they’re expecting some other kind of trouble.’
His voice is clipped; it takes me a second to realize he’s angry. Another, to realize it’s with me.
‘Sir . . .’ I begin.
‘No,’ he says. ‘You’ll listen.’ Stamping to the window, he glares out at the square and then stamps back again. ‘You,’ he says, nodding at Franc. ‘Leave us.’
Saluting, she heads out without needing to be told twice.
‘Three points,’ says the colonel. ‘One, you cost us a trooper. Two, we have lost a week because of you. And three, you don’t commit suicide in my time. Neen’s on the edge of going rogue.’
He turns, scowls at me.
‘And I don’t blame him.’
He means it. The little fuck is siding with Neen.
‘You think you’d be alive without me, sir?’
‘I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.’
‘Let me repeat it.’
‘Sven . . .‘
‘Sven nothing, sir. You’d be dead.’
I’m seconds away from putting him through a wall. Here I am on some fuckwit habitat in Uplift space, on a mission so secret that no one’s prepared to tell me what it really is. Because, sure as fuck, it is not about finding a missing U/Free. At least, not just that.
I’m pretty sure Colonel Vijay knows.
‘One,’ I say. ‘Shil disobeyed a direct order to retreat. Two, you almost blew the entire fucking mission with your little meltdown in the hub. And three, I’m bored shitless babysitting some little fuck with a chest full of medals for battles he didn’t fight.’
The colonel flushes.
‘Must be hell, sir,’ I say, ‘having Jaxx for your father. All that money, all those houses.’
‘You have no fucking idea.’
‘You’re right,’ I tell him. ‘I don’t. Never met my real father.’
‘Surprise me,’ he says. ‘I take it your mother was a whore?’
‘No, sir.’ I say. ‘That must be yours.’
Blocking his punch, I step back. Everyone has buttons; it’s just finding the right ones to push. All the same, for the first time, Colonel Vijay seems to know what he is doing. So I take another look and realize his face is thinner, his eyes harder. Wind has turned his skin to leather. ‘Some fancy tutor teach you to fight?’
‘A sergeant,’ he snaps. ‘No one you’d know.’
‘Horse Hito?’
He steps out of my reach. ‘You know Hito?’ Colonel Vijay sounds surprised.
‘Yeah,’ I growl. ‘Horse gave me the knife I used on Paradise. Went with me to have my arm fitted. Introduced me to General Jaxx. One of life’s good guys . . .’
Colonel Vijay is reassessing.
I’m not at all sure I like being reassessed by some smug little shit. Only the smug little shit is fading before my eyes and someone else is taking his place. Guess all Vijay Jaxx needed was to get out from under his father’s shadow.
‘So,’ I say. ‘How do you know him?’
The colonel laughs. ‘He’s the old man’s pet assassin.’
First I’ve heard of it.
Chapter 28
The AUX sit under an olive tree in a yard behind Kyble’s house. Neen rests his back against the ancient trunk and Franc has her back to Neen. Haze is lost in thought, and Rachel is judging distances in her head, flicking her gaze between distant roofs as she mutters numbers. As for Franc, she picks her nails with a throwing knife.
Franc is the only normal one among them.
All turn to watch as I shut Kyble’s door and stamp across the yard to where they sit in sullen silence. We are the Aux, we don’t behave like this.
‘All right,’ I demand. ‘Tell me what’s wrong.’
They look at one another.
‘Neen,’ I say.
He hesitates. So I yank him to his feet. Not difficult; I just twist my fingers in his collar and lift. The body of a farm boy, all whipcord thin, but no real weight.
He is fast, though.
Seems I’ve swapped one fight for another. That’s fine, because this is a fight that needs to happen. The moment I block his punch, he punches again. The blow comes close, but not close enough. A punch like that can rupture your throat.
Knocking him down with a backhand, I move forward to stamp his gut. This time Neen gets lucky and his heel clips my thigh. Rachel moans, although that might be at the grin which suddenly brightens my face.
Right on cue, Colonel Vijay appears.
‘Stop.’ He glares at us, sweeping his gaze from where I stand to Neen lying in the dirt. ‘This is . . .’ The colonel hesitates. I think he’s overdoing it, but it’s his idea and it’s a good one.
‘Oh,’ he says. ‘I see. A competition match.’
Seniority is abandoned for competition matches. You approach the ring a colonel or a trooper and take back that rank on leaving. But in the ring . . . It’s bullshit, obviously. No one but an idiot cripples someone five ranks above. Life is too short for that kind of stupidity.
However, the precedent is there.
In the army, precedent is everything. It means you can do what you want, and insist someone else did it first. The colonel and I have a deal. He forgets what I said in the room upstairs and I don’t kill Neen, unless necessary. As he points out, good sergeants are hard to find.
‘Almost as hard as good COs,’ I tell him.
He laughs. Then realizes I mean it.
Sitting himself against the tree, Colonel Vijay says, ‘What rules?’
‘No rules,’ says Neen.
‘You OK with that?’ His question is for me.
‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Never been big on rules myself.’ Neen’s sneer nearly costs him his life. He is so busy looking mean he forgets to watch me. As my arm flicks out, my fingers reach for his throat. All I need is my thumb and finger around his larynx and this match is over. It’s a nasty way to die, but a good way to kill.
At the last moment, Neen twists away.
So I reach forward and he backs away. And suddenly we have Kyble watching, as if she knew this was going to happen. Perhaps she did. Although you probably don’t need precog to know that this was coming to the boil.
Neen and I are both angry. We’re both angry about the same thing. I think Neen should have kept Shil at the gate. He thinks I shouldn’t have made Shil think that running back was expected.
Same incident, different readings.
Happens all the time. There will be six versions of this fight. Unless we give them an official one. ‘Begin,’ says Colonel Vijay.