‘You’ve got thirty seconds,’ I tell the braid.
‘Twenty-nine,’ says the gun. It counts us down to three, then two, and it’s about to hit one when I ruin its day and jack out the hollow-point. The shell bounces on the floor and rolls under the bed.
‘What did you do that for?’ it demands.
‘I’m listening,’ I tell the SIG.
I am as well.
According to the braid my DNA is close to the humanoid original. I don’t have plus point eight per cent anything. Everyone else has stuff taken out. Of course, that doesn’t mean I come from Earth . . .
The braid shakes his head.
How could I, when Earth never existed?
But I’m as close to the template as he’s seen. So, he says, if I want I can call myself the last human. This seems to be a joke. And I’m ready to let him know how I feel about that when I decide I’d better keep listening.
At Haze’s suggestion, the braid is offering me a job. A job, and rapid promotion from a rank that isn’t mine to start with. It takes me a second to realize he’s offering me General Tournier’s job.
All I have to do is drop down five levels and kill the man.
Chapter 47
Earth never existed. Anyone who says it did is a heretic and a doubter of the truth. That Earth story is a myth made up by heretics to explain why life became more complicated several centuries ago. Only it didn’t . . . Get more complicated, that is. That’s another myth. Equally vile. The universe has always been exactly as it is.
The five-braid glares at me. ‘You accept that?’ he says.
I tell him it never occurred to me it hadn’t.
He nods, begins talking about the singularity, and stops when he realizes I’m still playing catch-up with his first lot of words. We move on to things he reckons I can understand.
No alcohol, no paintings, no eating cold-water reptiles, no sex between races (or perhaps it’s species) . . . I’ve stopped listening by the time he gets halfway through his list of things I’ll need to give up when I come over to his side.
As offers go, it’s tempting.
Not for what I’ll give up but for what I’ll gain. Ten per cent of the stock value of any rebel Octovian planet I take. And I’ll be leading a legitimate army, so anyone who opposes us is automatically a rebel.
There’s a sliding scale of fees for everything from captured villages to capital cities and enemy ships. The sums he’s talking about are enormous. You could hire a Legion brigade for a year. No, you could buy the whole bloody Legion, desert forts and all.
I am not sure I even knew that much gold existed.
All he wants in return is to run some tests and take a quick look inside my skull. For a moment, I think he wants to open up my head. But he means he needs free access to my thoughts.
I can think of several reasons why this is a bad idea. One of them sits scowling in the bed behind me. How much poking around does a five-braid have to do before he realizes Shil and I have history?
‘So,’ he says. ‘Do we have a deal?’
A five-braid and me. Now there is an unlikely combination. ‘What’s the security like on your ship?’
My question puzzles him.
‘If I’m going to kill the general . . .’
He smiles, thinking he has agreement. ‘Lenz,’ he says, ‘the usual stuff. Doors talk to each other, elevators communicate, maintenance bots feed visuals to the ship’s AI. Nothing serious.’
The gun snorts.
‘Here,’ says the braid. Pulling a small disc from the inside pocket of his uniform, he touches it to an identical disc on his collar.
‘What does it do?’ I demand.
‘Security override. Wear this and you’re invisible to the ship’s monitors.’
Taking it, I fix it to my own collar and turn back. Maybe I should just kill him now? It’s hard to know. I’m trying to be cool, but I’m not sure how I’ll react if he starts poking around inside my skull.
‘Get on with it,’ I say. ‘Before I change my mind.’
Something lifts the edge of my mind, and I slam it down, pure instinct. Shil screams. I think it’s because my arm is back to strike. But I’m wrong.
Having grabbed the dagger from my belt, Haze is sawing it across the braid’s throat. The Enlightened does that flickering thing as he tries to take himself somewhere else. But my elbow spike in his chest locks him into the present.
As Haze finishes, I let go the braid and he drops, sliding off the spike with a wet sucking sound.
I rip the clocking device from the fallen five-braid’s collar, then turn back. ‘We’ve only got two of these,’ I tell Haze. ‘There are three of us. Can you make yourself invisible to the lenz?’ Only he’s not listening. He’s too busy helping Shil from the bed.
‘Are you all right?’ he asks. ‘I mean . . . Did they . . . ?’
‘No,’ she says, abruptly. ‘They didn’t.’
Haze waits.
‘One tried,’ she adds with a shrug. Her voice is sour. ‘Thanks for asking, I think.’
‘Shil,’ I say.
‘Later,’ she says. ‘Sir.’
‘Well,’ I ask Haze. ‘Can you?’ Only he’s still not paying attention. Must be something about this ship. It makes me feel odd too.
‘We need to talk,’ he says.
‘Haze.’
‘Sir-‘ He stops. ‘The general told me to watch you.’
‘You mean Tournier?’
‘No, sir . . . Jaxx, sir. Before we left.’
‘General Jaxx? ‘ ‘Yes, sir.’ Why didn’t you tell me? But I already know. When someone like Jaxx says keep something quiet you keep it quiet. The alternative is having Horse Hito rip your tongue through a slit in your neck. And that is if you get lucky.
‘Why tell me now?’ It’s obvious that Shil wants an answer to this too.
Taking a deep breath, Haze says, ‘Almost didn’t. Almost let the five-braid turn you. Would have done, probably. But . . .’ He shrugs. ‘We’re the Aux. That has to count for something.’ He looks around him and shivers.
‘What?’ Shil asks.
‘You can’t feel it, can you?’
She shakes her head.
‘No,’ he says. ‘I thought not. Hekati’s dying.’ Walking across to the line of bottles, he examines the labels until his hand stops over a dumpy-looking flask. ‘Shil?’ he asks.
She shakes her head.
‘Sir?’
Why not?
He pours one each for us; then he pours one for Shil anyway, which she kills in a single gulp. That done, she eats half the nuts in the bowl and fills her pockets with the rest.
‘You they feed,’ she tells him. ‘Us they starve.’
‘I’m not them,’ Haze says.
If Haze is right, our two badges and his own skills are enough to hide us from the lenz we’re going to find on the ceiling of every corridor in this ship. And we have a plan for dealing with anyone we meet.
We are going to kill them.
And if Haze is wrong, we are going straight to the second part of that plan.
I’m holding the SIG-37, combat style. Slightly raised, so I can sweep the corridor outside my room. Haze has my knife and Shil carries the five-braid’s pulse pistol, his knife, and a set of my throwing spikes.
Overkill, I reckon. But if it makes her happy, that’s fine.
The rest of the Aux are seven decks down.
I’m tempted to kill the general first, then his staff officers. Sometimes you just want to eat pudding early. All the same, I make myself wait.
Victory First Last and Always is large enough to need escape decks every five levels. What interests me most is that General Tournier’s own quarters are directly above the largest escape deck. Not sure that says anything good about him.
Not sure I care, either.
If there’s a pod on that escape deck big enough to take us all – and there’s any of us left to take – then we’re going to take it, and should that pod turn out to be for General Tournier’s own use, so much the better.