Maximum Offence (17 page)

‘Earth to Sven,’ says my gun. ‘Anybody in?’

‘Wait.’

An ejército breaks from the right. He is firing as fast as he can jack the slide on his . . .
single-shot rifle?

Brains splatter the bush behind him.

It’s a good shot by Rachel, but I want one of these bastards alive. I have questions, like
snipers? rifles? flak jackets?
The last time I saw them, these men were riding ponies and waving swords.

‘Come on,’ says my gun. ‘We’re being outflanked.’

Yeah, I can hear them.

As I begin my retreat, with the SIG held low, a man rises from a ditch beside me. He is carrying the blade I expected them all to be carrying. Ducking low, he goes for my guts. So I spin away, blocking his jab on my arm.

The ejército knows what he is doing. He knows a knife is as good as a gun in a fight this close. He just doesn’t expect me to agree.

‘Sven,’ says the SIG. ‘You’re not—’ It sighs. ‘Fuck,’ it says. ‘You are.’

———

Dropping the gun, I rip free a blade. I’d like to say it’s old, that it has saved my life in back alleys and bars. But it’s militia standard issue. A double-edged blade with a blood runnel to ease suction. The man grins, because my knife is half the size of his.

‘You die,’ he says.

Shaking my head, I grin back.

What with not having marched bloody miles and fought two battles already, he is fresher than I am. Also, broad-shouldered and muscled. In addition, he is fast. At least, he’s fast for his size. But he’s not me.

So when he stabs, I take the blow in my side. And watch his eyes widen as I grab his fist to hold the blade in place. He is too flustered to see me rear back my head. Slamming my forehead into his nose ends the fight. Although he’s not dead until I rip free his blade, and return it deep into his own throat.

‘
Sven
,’ Shil shouts a warning.

‘That’s
sir
,’ I say, without thinking.

Then I’m on my knees. When I try to straighten, something slows me. No one has a grip on my shoulders, but I’m slow, way too slow . . . Someone is screaming, but I don’t think it’s me.

There is a hole below my chest. Silvery coils slide out of my fingers as I try to stop them falling. Some bits of me are missing. I know this, because a length of fat gut lies at my feet, covered in grass and grit.

‘
Sir
.’

‘Should have kept going,’ I say.

Dropping to her knees Shil stares into my face.

‘
Man down
,’ she shouts, turning back. ‘
Man down
.’ Should have guessed from all that yelling earlier.

‘Don’t die,’ she says.

It’s a fucking stupid thing to say.

I apologize, because I didn’t mean to say that aloud. ‘Back to the wall,’ I tell her. ‘Now . . .’

Grabbing my arm, she tries to lift me.

‘Shil,’ I say, ‘
just fucking go
.’ Doubt floods her eyes, then awareness. She glances at my wound, probably doesn’t even know she has done it. She recognizes a killing shot when she sees one. ‘I’ve got morphine,’ she says.

‘Save it. Colonel Vijay leads, OK? No arguments.’

She nods blindly and rises to a crouch. I hear the crack of a rifle, a cry from the trees below and then silence. The ejército should be dead now, only they’re opening fire again. Our enemy have reinforcements. I know that, otherwise Neen would be here now.

Whatever it takes
.

Wish I had been able to make that true.

It’s a hundred paces to the gate. But it’s uphill and she will be in the open. I can see fear growing in her eyes. Any minute now, Shil’s resolve will fail.

Can’t let that happen. ‘
Go now
,’ I try to say.

But the clouds are red and the night’s gone pink. I can hear Aptitude’s voice and see her mother’s face and that is absurd. One’s in Farlight and the other is locked down on a prison planet. I can hear my old lieutenant too. And that’s even more ridiculous, because he’s dead.

An army of ejército advance from the treeline. Some have guns. Others carry blades. ‘
Run
,’ I whisper, but it’s too late.

As a man drags back Shil’s head and a blade glints in the moonlight, a voice that isn’t mine says:

‘No.’

A voice that expects to be obeyed. And that’s good, because it is obeyed. Instead of cutting Shil’s throat, the ejército reverses his dagger and clubs its pommel into the side of her head.

She drops, eyes open. A boot rolls me over and the owner of the voice bends closer. When he spits I grin, because I’m obviously who he thinks I am.

‘Leave him here,’ says Pavel. ‘Let him die slowly.’

‘And her?’

‘We take. His woman for my dead grandson.’

Not my woman
, I think. It’s my last thought before the sky floods crimson and the hillside drops away.

THE AIR IS SOUR WITH SMOKE FROM A FIRE THAT HAS BEEN BURNING for longer than the boy has been alive. A buried seam of junk
‘taneously-nited
. . . That’s what his sister says. Now it burns so deep that no one can reach the flames to put them out. Supposing anyone could be bothered.

Head down and shoulders forward, the boy runs for the far edge of the rubbish dump, his bare toes biting into ash and tossing up dust behind him. There are silvery thorn vines on the slope ahead. If he can reach those . . .

And then?

Then he can circle round to pick off his tormentors. One or two at a time. Maybe even three or four if he goes after the smaller ones. You have to be fourteen to belong to the Junkyard Rat Gang. That means he can join in two years. If they’ll have him.

Which they won’t.

Primary One is his planet’s largest and oldest dump. It has the richest waste. It also has the Rats, whose control of the dump means they don’t have to pick through rotting meat, discarded clothes and broken glass like the other scavengers in search of precious things. The Rats tax those who work the dump half of everything found. Only those chosen by the Rats can scavenge.

The boy isn’t one of them.

Run,
screams a voice in his head. So he runs.

Thorn vines tear his arms and cat-scratch his ankles. They rip his trousers and slice through his tattered shirt to draw blood. His sister Maria will be furious. She likes him to be tidy. Maria looks after the family now. After . . .

Well, everyone knows after what.

Five years back mercenaries chose his village for a base. A brigade from the Légion Etrangère drove them out. It was a hard fight and most of the houses were destroyed in the process. The boy’s parents were taken in for questioning.

His father is still alive. But he doesn’t speak and he doesn’t work. Now and then, the boy finds his father staring at him. As if wondering what this stranger is doing in the house.

‘There he goes,’ shouts a voice.

The boy curses.

Should have been finding somewhere to hide, not worrying what Maria will say. Mind you, that’s easy to say for anyone who hasn’t met her. Maria’s tongue is sharp. And her slap has knocked a sneer from more than one grown man’s face. The boy could flatten her with a single punch back, of course. But he never has, and he never will.

He owes her too much.

‘Go round . . .’ That sounds like Rice.

Dropping into a ditch, the boy comes to his knees behind a twist of vine studded with flat, razor-edged blades. Some vines are silver; this one is purple from whatever is buried beneath its hungry roots.

A number of Rats huddle around Rice at the bottom of the slope. He’s looking up to the right. So that’s obviously where he has sent some troops. The boy could go left, use one of the tracks out of the dump and go home . . . Only Rice will simply come looking for him.
Some things in life you just have to face.

That’s what his sister says. So the boy climbs higher, to keep above the scouts. As he climbs, he grabs anything that looks sharp and thrusts it inside his shirt.

A smoking gash marks the highest point of the dump. Hell’s mouth, people call it. No one knows what lies so deep that it can keep burning so far below the rubbish heaped over it. All they know is that smoke from the gash burns your eyes and its ash eats into your skin.

Maybe if he crawls close the Rats will be unwilling to follow? And maybe not, but it’s worth a try.
Make nice,
Maria says.
Ask politely if you can scavenge the dump. Explain . . .
Only how can he, when Rice won’t listen to his pleas, and the Rats chase him from the dump every day?

A steel bolt, two stones, a lump of once-molten slag, a bottle made from bluish glass . . . His weapons collection. It is hard to believe someone hasn’t found the bottle before him. Also, he has something flat and green that looks like ceramic but stresses when it bends. The thing has jagged edges. Really sharp. So he decides to throw it first.

He doesn’t have long to wait.

Coughing tells him the scouts are coming. But the boy waits until the first figure is a dark shadow before he throws. Then he stands, twists his body and spins the razor-edged piece of board as hard as he can.

‘Fuck.’

‘Shit, he’s . . .’

‘Get Rice.’

The boy ploughs his way towards their shouts.

A frightened face looks up through drifting smoke, and turns red as the boy drives his heel into a face and steps on it in his hurry to hurt the boy beyond. That face turns red as well. There is a fourth boy, but he’s running downhill, stumbling as he runs.

A metal bolt to the back of his skull drops him.

The boy is stronger than them. He minds pain less. That’s why they hunt him in a pack. Crouching, the boy examines his victims. Two are unconscious. The third stares with frightened eyes, blood bubbling from a rip in his throat. It doesn’t jet like everyone says it
should. It bubbles like a damp fart. The boy wonders what to do. Then remembers what Maria always says.

When you don’t know what to do . . . Do nothing.

He leaves his victim to die. It feels good to be out of the smoke. Mind you, it feels even better to have three knives and a little club on a bendy spring that wobbles when you tap it, and hits the middle of your hand with a satisfying thump.

‘
Oi, freak . . .
‘

It is Rice, with a dozen of his followers. All are armed and most carry knives. They’ve worked out which way he was going to circle. The boy is cross with himself for being so stupid.

‘What have you got there?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Show me, freak.’

‘Show you what?’ says the boy, hiding the little club behind his back.

Rice scowls.

The boy knows everyone else fears the Rats. Only he doesn’t, the boy is not sure why. It would be much easier to be like the others.

‘Hand it over,’ Rice demands.

Glaring around him, the boy spots the Rat who blinks and launches himself at the weakness in the wall. A punch to the face drops the Rat. Someone tries to grab the boy, but he produces his little cosh and breaks the man’s skull.

‘You can’t run,’ Rice shouts.

Yes, he can. It’s one of the things he does well.

Head down and shoulders forward, the boy heads for the far edge of the dump, knowing he has been here before.

‘Out of the way,’ shouts Rice.

Something hisses past the running boy, and the boy is still grinning when the next dart hits. The first blast of electricity takes him to his knees. Stumbling upright, he manages five steps before an aftershock drops him. Every nerve in his body burns along its entire length. He has pissed himself, then he realizes he’s done worse.

‘Gross,’ Rice says.

A boot catches the boy in the gut, but it’s nothing to the agony in his muscles and the cramp in his limbs. After a while, Rice stops kicking.

‘Fuck,’ says a voice. ‘Where did you get that?’

‘Traded it,’ Rice says proudly.

‘Who with?’

‘None of your business.’

A voice mutters its apologies.

Even in the middle of his pain, the boy has the sense to curl around the spring-loaded club. The longer he can keep Rice from finding out about the Rat with the bubbling throat the better.

‘Hey, freak . . . Can you hear me?’

He says nothing.

‘Of course you can.’ Rice laughs. ‘We don’t want you here,’ he says. ‘Next time, stay away.’

———

He’s forgotten already, the boy realizes. The Rats all have their heads turned to Rice as he outlines the gang’s next job. Smash up a bar, break into a cargo ship, go down to tax the brothels. The list is limited.

Someone will kill Rice eventually.

But it isn’t long since Rice killed the boss before him and the Rats are being careful. The boy wonders if they’d let him be boss if he killed Rice. Even as he thinks it, he knows they wouldn’t.

On a slope stands a hut.

Well, what is left of one. Wreckers have stripped the roof, gutted the inside and cut rusting walls into strips and sold them on. All that remains is a floor with a lip around its edge. The floor is made of something too hard to cut and too heavy to lift. Rain fills this makeshift pool.

Stripping off, the boy splashes himself clean. Having scraped his soiled trousers, he rinses them and tugs them on. The thorn-vine scratches on his ankles are already starting to heal. It’s one of the
reasons the Rats call him
freak.
That, and the shape of his skull, which is a little wider than everybody else’s.

It is time to go home now.

As the boy reaches the peak of a trash mound, he sees a high curl of smoke in the distance. This is wrong. Everyone knows smoke comes from the dump. So he looks harder, because his eyes are good, and realizes it’s his village burning.

The Rats are slung along a road below him now. So close, he could hit them with a stone if he threw it hard enough. And soldiers are heading up the road towards the Rats in the opposite direction. The reason the Rats can’t see the soldiers is a bend in the road.