Day of the Damned (2 page)

Chapter 3

IT’S ALMOST NOON WHEN WE CREST A SLOPE TO SEE A shattered cargo carrier on the high plain in front of us. Imagine a giant silver fish, and then smash its spine with a metal bar and that’s how it looks.

Make that a fish with no markings.

‘Poetic,’ says my gun.

Slapping the SIG into silence, I tell Aptitude to stay where she is and Anton to cover me and kill anything that moves. Neither looks happy.

Too bad.

Gun held combat-style across my body, I head down a slope, giving myself cover where I can. That’s most of the time, because the bits of slope not littered with rock have fragments of cargo carrier as big as our scout car.

Of course, that means anyone down there has cover too. Only the gun says the sole life sign inside the cruiser is on the edge of flickering out.

A section of tail fin lies in the dirt. A name stencilled beneath a number, both crudely painted out. The angle of the sun makes the name visible.

Olber’s Paradox.

No idea who Olber was. Not too sure what a paradox is either.

The first casualty lies a hundred and fifty paces from the wreck. The cargo loader’s guts make a pattern in the dirt, what’s left of them. The arrangement looks accidental. His head rests twenty paces beyond.

Blowflies rise, furious at being disturbed. Only to resettle. There’s a stink to the air. The heat isn’t being kind to the corpses.

This is nasty.

A crew member stares at the sky. Her eyes poached white by the sun. Her pistol is in its holster. The handle of a dagger juts from her boot. Although her neck is broken and the back of her head pulped, the blood on a rock behind her says her death is an accident.

‘Still getting life signs?’

‘They’re fading,’ the SIG says.

It directs me towards a middle section. This obviously flipped on impact and came to rest upside down. A wide scar in the dirt shows where it spun before hitting a massive boulder that brought it to an abrupt halt.

I’m surprised anything is alive in there at all.

‘Hollow-point,’ I say.

The SIG swaps clips.

Stepping up to a wall of ripped metal, I swing myself round its edge and sweep the inside. A dozen bodies lie at my feet. They’re even ranker than those outside. Eight chairs and a table are bolted to the floor over my head.

Broken beer bottles. Dried blood.

A naked girl no bigger than a kitten whirls six inches from a cracked holo watch belonging to one of the bodies. Every time she reaches between her thighs, she vanishes in a crackle of static, only to reappear and start again.

Seems I’ve found the crew quarters.

One of the beds is occupied.

Its owner hangs limp from the fat strap that kept him locked down and alive when Olber’s Paradox crashed. A hard habit to break. Buckling yourself in. Speaks to me of a life spent planet-hopping. Since the man can’t release his belt without smashing everything left unbroken in his body, I have to go to him.

‘Make it fast,’ the SIG says.

Punching a hole in the wall gives me my first foothold and lets me stretch for a handhold above. It would sever the fingers of anyone normal. But I’m using my prosthetic arm and aiming for a safer hold above that.

My arm’s combat issue. No idea how many people have used it before me.

The real problem comes when I reach the top. Eight beds are bolted in a row. The one I want is in the middle. The bolts securing the nearest bed hold when I reach for it and swing free. After that, I swing myself from one metal bed frame to another. Takes me a couple of minutes to reach the last person alive in this ship.

‘You in there?’

Something flutters behind his eyes.

‘Wake up . . .’

He doesn’t.

‘Sven,’ the SIG says. ‘Bad choice.’

OK, I’m not going to slap him awake. In the end I work my way to the side of his bed and reach for the buckle of his safety belt. It’s jammed, obviously. So I’m hanging from an upside-down bed, trying to free someone who’s bent double like a piece of wet washing.

‘Admit it. You’re enjoying yourself.’

Reaching between my shoulder blades, I find my throwing knife and half cut the strap. There’s a story to that blade. But now’s not the right time for it. Dropping the blade to find later, I reach forward and yank at the weakened strap.

He falls as the strap snaps. And so do I, almost.

At the last second, I tense my arm, and the bar, the bolts and my bones are strong enough to stop us hitting the floor.

Leaving my survivor in the shade, I search the rest of his ship.

Another dozen crew members are in various states of corruption. A small cage is full of those creatures that attacked earlier. Another cage is ripped open. The ceiling above the first one did a good job of introducing itself to the floor, and it looks like a dead monster sandwich.

Sheet metal. Smashed creature. Sheet metal.

Works for me.

A quick trawl of the rest produces nothing useful. I had in mind gold, diamonds, body armour or at least some interesting weapons. The things legionnaires dream about, when they’re not dreaming about beautiful young tribal women willing to remove their clothes.

Used to live in the desert. Probably shows.

And the only tribeswomen willing to take off their clothes did it for money, and were neither young nor beautiful. They were sullen and silent, and regarded us with something between fear, hatred and contempt.

Aptitude comes running. Only to stop when she sees me scowl.

‘What?’ she demands, chin up and eyes narrowing.

She really is ridiculously beautiful. Even wearing her father’s old combat jacket and desert boots. I wonder about the jacket, before realizing it has a temperature-controlled lining and she’s been baking up there in the truck.

‘You didn’t know it was safe to come down.’

‘The gun said there was only one thing left alive in there. You’re holding him. How can it not be safe?’

She’s angry at being told to wait.

Probably angrier still at working herself into a state because she thought I was dead. Then discovering I wasn’t. Several women who know me would get angry about that.

‘Aptitude—’

She glares at me.

‘Let’s get him deeper into the shade.’

Taking his legs, she helps me up the hill, although I take most of the weight. We dump him in the shadow of the truck and Aptitude goes to find a first-aid kit. She does it without being told. She’s not the kid I think.

That’s half the problem.

‘Morphine,’ Anton tells her.

Aptitude’s already on it. She hands me a hypodermic with a tiny needle and a tube that needs squeezing. Might be old-fashioned. But battlefield morphine works and it’s cheap and you can buy it anywhere.

Much like Kemzin 19s. The cookie-cutter SLR of choice for skinflint dictators everywhere. Anonymous, efficient, near impossible to break. Our glorious leader loves the Kemzin 19. Not that I’m suggesting for one minute that our leader . . .

The crew carried Kemzins.

Now why would the crew of a cargo carrier be armed? Leaning close to the injured man, I take a better look and swear.

‘What?’ Aptitude demands.

I ignore her.

Pumping a second syringe into his neck, I watch the crew-man’s eyes roll back and his breathing steady. He’s luckier than he deserves. A handful of smashed ribs, from where the strap compressed his chest on impact. A dislocated leg and cracked hip. A broken arm. Some ugly bruising. Could be worse.

The dehydration is killing him.

And we can deal with that.

‘Let me,’ Aptitude says, dropping to a crouch. She has a bag of saline solution in her hand. As we watch, she slides a needle into his wrist, lets the blood flow back to rid it of air bubbles and attaches a plastic tube, turning a petcock to let the liquid flow.

‘Where did you learn to do that?’

‘School,’ she says.

Anton’s watching with amusement.

‘So,’ Aptitude says, when her father disappears to fetch a splint. ‘Who is he?’

His name is Carl and he’s a cargo skipper. The last time we met I swapped my coat, ex-Death’s Head, ballistic-lined, for passage into Farlight from an off-world orbit. I didn’t know it then but I was on my way to kill her.

Aptitude . . .

Anton’s only daughter.

The one who’s wondering what my scowl means this time.

No idea what Carl’s second name is. Probably doesn’t have one. Most people I know don’t. I do only because Debro gave me one.

Sliding my hand into his jacket I find his ID.

Same face, false name. Unless it was false last time round. Makes me wonder if the whole crew signed on with false papers. This makes me wonder something else . . .

‘SIG,’ I say. ‘Check the black box.’

‘There isn’t one.’

Of course there is. It’s bad enough not logging the journey. But no black box? My gun will tell me Olber’s Paradox isn’t carrying an emergency beacon next.

‘Hey,’ the SIG says. ‘Guess what . . .’

The U
Free, who own three quarters of the galaxy, don’t approve of unregistered ships. Being on the United Free’s non-approved list is a bad place to be. Of course, the U
Free don’t own anything. As they’ll be the first to tell you. They are a Commonwealth of Free Peoples united in their wish for peace.

The fact we still use money amuses them.

On their planets, houses build themselves, the weather does what it’s told and everything is free. Our habit of killing each other amuses them less. So they provide observers to ensure we slaughter each other according to the rules.

Break the rules and bad things happen.

Planets find themselves in different orbits. Whole sun systems disappear. Galactic maps get redrawn. The U/Free talk quietly. But they carry a very big stick.

OctoV doesn’t approve of unregistered ships either. Of course, his list of capital crimes would fill a book. Probably does. But we’re talking serious here. Death for the captain. Death for his crew. Quite possibly death for the owner.

Our glorious leader and his ministers don’t object to smuggling as such. They just want to make damn sure they get their cut.

‘I mean it,’ the SIG says. ‘No recorder.’

Either this is black ops, or the captain came from so far out-system he didn’t know the rules. We can skip that because Carl would have told him. So that means we’re dealing with black ops.

Not good, given Anton promised OctoV to stay out of trouble.

‘Where are you going?’ he asks me.

‘Forgotten something.’

‘What?’

‘My coat.’

Same flies, same headless cargo loader, same stench on entering the crew quarters. A woman lies on top of my coat, and her guts are rotted to the softness of jam. So I scrape the worst off with my knife, then take the thing outside and scrub it with handfuls of dirt.

‘He had your coat?’ Anton’s looking at me strangely.

‘Yeah. It’s a long story.’

‘We’ve got time.’

‘He hasn’t.’

Anton helps me load Carl into the scout car.

Using back roads, we loop round to approach Wildeside from the opposite direction, arriving as the sun is starting to set. Not sure it’s going to make any difference. If OctoV is lenzing us from high orbit, he’ll have been tracking us the whole trip anyway.

Debro’s not sure if she’s delighted to see me alive, furious we’re so late back, or prepared to wait to find out what happened. Being her, she decides to wait. And her anger fades when she sees Carl. Peeling back his shirt without wincing at the stink, she checks his broken ribs and Aptitude’s handiwork.

She’s impressive, Debro.

Aptitude is going to be like her when she grows up. Aptitude just doesn’t know that yet. ‘Get him inside,’ Debro says. Anton and I carry him between us.

The room she chooses is down three flights, and in the far corner of the palazzo. We’re underground. I’m wondering if there’s any significance in that when Debro’s next question tells me, yes . . .

‘You plan to tell me where you found him?’

I shake my head.

‘Sven . . .’

‘You don’t want to know.’

‘But Aptitude and Anton know already.’

‘Then you’d better make sure you’re the one who replies if anyone comes knocking. Hadn’t you?’

She’s smart enough to know that’s an answer in itself.

Chapter 4

WHEN I’M TWELVE A LEGION LIEUTENANT PUTS A PISTOL TO MY head.

It misfires. Maybe he can’t be bothered to try again. Maybe he decides the goddess luck, that whore whose favour soldiers need, has decreed I should live. Alternatively, he’s so drunk he forgets why he was going to shoot me.

All of these are possible.

A week later he marches me into the desert.

That’s me, him and two dozen volunteers who’ve just completed three weeks’ basic training, max . . . He carries a camelback water carrier, dried meat and his Colt automatic. I carry a camelback, his spare clips, a compass and a sliver of mirror for signalling when the radio doesn’t work.

This is most of the time.

At first, I think he’s taking me out to finish off what he began five days earlier on another planet. But why take two dozen others with him? And why bother to swap one shit hole for another?

We march for a week.

After two days our camelbacks are empty.

The water hole we find on the third day is brackish.

That’s the term he uses. He means it’s almost black and stinks of death and tastes of corruption and salt. Vomiting and the bubbleshits keep us busy for the next two days. Between the vomiting and soiling ourselves we march south, headed for a horizon that always stays just out of reach.

The sun is hot.

But it’s the nights that kill.

The temperature drops so fast it seems impossible the heat in the sand beneath our boots can be squandered so easily. Blue skies turn black. And birds swirl briefly in the scarlet gap between the two and then disappear.

We don’t know where.

On the seventh day, Lieutenant Bonafont makes a joke about resting that no one else understands. He tells us that over the next dune is our fort. The furthest south of any fort the Légion Etrangčre has ever held on this planet. He was here more years ago than he wants to remember.

He’s right, there is a fort.

If you can call a mud-brick ruin, with cracked corner turrets and a broken double-pillared gate a fort. It needs rebuilding, Lieutenant Bonafont tells us. He’s sure we can see that for ourselves. To rebuild it, we’ll need bricks.

Does anyone know how to make bricks in the desert?

‘Piss,’ he says.

So we do. He has me work the sand with a shovel until the mix is wet enough to be slopped into a wooden form and tamped down. Shovel, form and tamp are not words I’ve heard before.

One form makes twelve bricks.

We have five forms but not enough piss.

We’ll make more tomorrow, he tells me. He’s wrong, of course. There is no tomorrow for most of us. As the moon crests a dune far to our east, a wailing cry breaks the silence.

A boom follows.

Our new bricks blow inwards, and damp sand scatters across our tiny parade ground. A grenade comes to rest in the open doorway of the stores. Our sergeant, wall-eyed and bald, grabs the grenade, tosses it inside and slams the door.

The quartermaster screams his fury but dies anyway.

As does Sergeant Nero, who falls back with a spike of door jutting from his belly. It’s the second splinter, the one through his eye, that kills him.

I see him die by the light of a flare our corporal desperately tries to stamp out. His boots spread phosphorus. Until the whole parade ground around him is lit with a sullen glow.

‘Where’s your fucking rifle?’ he screams.

Seems little point saying no one gave me one.

Anyway, a Kemzin lies at my feet, its owner killed when the wall blew in. So I grab it, and work its lever as I watched the corporal do that afternoon.

My first shot kills a tribal.

And has the corporal screaming treason.

Apparently, firing before the order is given is punishable by death. As he heads in my direction, I work the lever again and point the Kemzin at his gut.

He decides not to bother.

An army pours into our fort.

They wear black robes and have their faces hidden.

All wail that unearthly cry. Doesn’t matter that they’re badly armed, and used up their explosives in the first few minutes of the attack. There are more of them than there are of us, and they’ve fought before.

Most of those around me haven’t.

Swords slash; daggers find their way into guts. Every tribal we shoot is replaced by another, until they’re clambering over their own dead to get through our walls. And we’re being backed into a corner of the parade ground.

For raw recruits, we die well. When our clips are empty, our blades come out. In the end only two of us remain. I’m one. My Kemzin is empty, but its cheap plastic stock is slick with blood and brains.

The man next to me, the man who put his gun to my head, still holds that gun. The tribal leader opposite is trying to guess if it’s loaded. This matters, because this time round, the lieutenant has it pointed at his head. Their chief offers us a quick death in return for surrender.

My lieutenant refuses.

The sun is rising, its colour splashing the dunes beyond our wall. Looks pretty, I think. No idea why. I’m not the kind to notice things like that. It just does.

Their leader says something.

Everyone stops looking at the lieutenant’s gun.

They look at me instead.

A small man, who unwraps a layer of his cloak to reveal swirls tattooed onto his face, steps forward to translate a question.

‘Why are you smiling?’

I shrug, what else am I supposed to do?

When the tribal leader speaks again it’s into perfect silence. His words are deep and guttural, paced slowly and with gaps.

‘You are facing death,’ his translator tells me.

My grin surprises him. As if I need telling. Of course I’m facing death. I’ve faced it every day of my life. It’s what keeps me alive.

He translates my reply slowly.

Beside me, Lieutenant Bonafont nods. Sweat beads his face, dark patches disfigure his uniform. The heat rises with every fraction of an inch the sun climbs in the sky. And the lieutenant’s been holding his gun to their chief’s head for five minutes. But if he stinks of sweat and alcohol, he doesn’t stink of fear.

Their leader unwraps his face.

He has tattoos, like his translator, although their ink is fading. His beard has gone grey in places. Half of his teeth are missing when he grins. Those that remain are yellow enough to be old bones, and his breath smells sour.

‘How old?’ he demands.

The gun my lieutenant holds on him might as well not exist.

His translator relays the question. Just as he relays my answer.

I tell their leader his world is prettier than mine. He says that’s why he wants it back.

‘What happened then?’ Aptitude asks.

‘We leave at noon with a single camelback of water between us. It takes eight days to reach Fort Libidad, which was where we started. For the last three of those I’m supporting my lieutenant. For the last, I carry him on my back.’

‘Fuck,’ she says.

‘Aptitude.’ Debro’s voice is sharp.

‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘I know. All the same . . .’

Anton reaches for his wine. Lunch hasn’t begun and his glass is almost empty. He’s soaking up the alcohol in his gut with hunks of bread torn from a fat loaf the size and shape of a small rock. Aptitude’s contribution to the meal.

‘This is good,’ Anton says.

Aptitude scowls.

We’re supposed to know it’s good. She made it.

A waft of garlic hits us the moment the door opens. An old woman whose name I don’t know carries in a serving dish, four plates and a bowl of water with petals floating in it.

‘Gathered these myself,’ she says, placing the dish on the table.

‘Aptitude,’ Debro says, ‘how many?’

The girl’s good manners fight her wish to say none.

‘What are they?’ I ask.

I mean, I know what they look like. But I’m assuming this is a bluff and the snail shells are stuffed with pine nuts or something fancy. It’s not a bluff, they really are snails.

Won’t be my first, of course.

But the last time I was starving and my sister told me if I didn’t eat them I’d die of hunger anyway.

‘Sven?’ Debro says.

I hold out my plate. She has that effect on me.

I can kill without thinking. Run until my ankles are raw and my boots full of blood. And I can smash any barrier that pain tries to put in my way. But have Debro offer me snails . . .

‘What?’ Aptitude asks.

Anton’s grinning.

We’re halfway through the first course when the old woman returns to whisper in Debro’s ear. Debro glances at Anton, who follows both women out of the room.

‘Subtle,’ Aptitude says.

Her smile fades when they return. Must be the man behind them.

Tall and bearded, he’s older than Anton, who’s older than me. A scar runs down his right cheek. Since it would cost little to remove, choice obviously keeps it there. He’s wearing uniform with the purple flashes of a staff officer. The flashes are edged with pewter thread. A wolf skin is draped over one shoulder.

‘Shadow’s here in his official capacity.’

‘Although it’s always a pleasure . . .’ The words drawl from his lips. This man is high clan. One of the oldest families. People like him talk only to their own. I might as well be furniture.

‘He’s been asking about smugglers,’ Debro adds. ‘Apparently they might have crashed near here. Don’t suppose you’ve heard about it?’

‘No one’s said a thing,’ Aptitude says firmly.

Anton ignores the question. ‘General Luc,’ he says, ‘may I introduce Lieutenant Sven Tveskoeg, Obsidian Cross, Second Class.’

The man stares at me.

And I remember why his brigade is called the Grey-Eyed Boys.

They have their irises decoloured on joining. But it’s not the grey eyes, pewter buttons or the pelt across his shoulder that tells me who this is. It’s the bullet round his neck, where most officers wear an obsidian cross.

This is the Wolf.

Commander of the emperor’s guards.

That round is live, though dull with age. Letters and numbers are engraved up one side. SHADOW LUC, Z193XX79.

As a cadet, General Luc bought a .72 slug with his own name on it as a joke. When his luck held through the first of the Doubter riots and an attack on OctoV’s palace, he decided his charm worked.

So did his enemies, which was more important.

‘Death’s Head?’ he barks.

The Grey-Eyed Boys don’t like the Black Machine. That’s fine, we don’t like them either. Over-privileged and over-paid. Most of them have never faced a proper battle in their lives.

‘General Jaxx’s ADC,’ Anton says.

The Wolf sneers. As if he expects no better. Then he looks me up and down. Very obviously and very slowly. So I do the same, and he doesn’t like that.

Dumb insolence, you can’t beat it.

Well you can. A lead implant to the back of the skull tops dumb insolence any day.

We’re of equal height. But I’ve got a combat arm, minus its spikes. My hair’s cropped. My skull a little wider than most. Even out of uniform, in combats and singlet, it must be obvious what I do for a living.

Kill things.

He has thick hair, swept back in a grey mane, and grey-flecked eyes that examine me without blinking. The Wolf radiates privilege, money and power. He thinks he was born to rule. I think a strategically thrown grenade can improve most chains of command with the pull of a pin.

This is a man with little need of show.

An officer whose reputation for savagery is so extreme no one could have done even half the things he’s accused of doing. His anger is growing. Debro must feel it too, because she frowns.

And General Luc smiles.

‘Garlic snails,’ he says. ‘Always my favourite.’

Anton shoots his ex-wife a look and it’s hard to know what it is meant to say, except that it’s not kind. The woman who brought the finger bowl lays an extra place at the table. I ask Aptitude her name. It’s Katie, she’s the cook. Before that she was Aptitude’s nurse.

‘And then you got Sophie?’

Sophie was Aptitude’s bodyguard. She died the day I burnt Villa Thomassi to the ground and shot Aptitude’s husband.

When I look up, General Luc is staring at me.

I stare back and he refuses to look away. He doesn’t like my grin. But then I don’t like being stared at.

‘So,’ he says. ‘Tvesko
eg.
’

‘It’s an old Earth name.’

I’m only saying what Debro told me.

Until I met her I was Sven, nothing else. She gave me the other name. One day she’ll tell me what it means. The tightness that crosses his face is matched by a tightness in her own. Seems I’ve wandered into another minefield.

‘You believe in Earth Perfect?’

I shrug. Politics is dangerous enough without adding religion. Our enemies, the Uplifted, believe Earth never existed. It’s a myth, used by fools to explain why so many people in the galaxy look the same.

We believe it exists, however.

Well, most of us do. It’s still out there, perfect and waiting.

A few people, the doubters, believe it was destroyed. Earth existed, right enough. Just doesn’t any longer. It’s Earth’s memory we should keep perfect.

Debro’s one. Doubters live simpler lives than most. In Farlight there’s a community that still uses donkey carts rather than trucks or hovers. Not because they’re poor, but from choice. Sounds weird to me.

‘Never gave it much thought, sir.’

‘Maybe you should.’

I don’t like it when other people make Debro unhappy. And Debro’s sitting there, with a tight smile on her face and her fingers gripping her fork so tightly her knuckles must hurt. She doesn’t like it when people talk about Earth.

Aptitude’s noticed it too.

‘Snails,’ I say. ‘Did you develop your taste for them on Rogate, sir?’

Anton chokes on his wine.

The story’s famous. As a captain, trapped on a planet where winter lasts eighteen months, Shadow Luc and his troop survive without rations when their supply line is broken. A surprising number survive. The same isn’t true of civilians in the area. His report mentions a diet of roots dug from the frozen earth.