SO VILE A SIN.
Ben Aaronovitch and Kate Orman.
The body on page one
BEGIN TRANS.
TO: CinC Thangase liKhosi Oxhobileyo [Lady Leabie Forrester]
FROM: XO 10mH [Executive Office 10th a.s.sault Regiment]
RE: OPERATIONS, VALHALLA, CALLISTO.
BKGRND: 10mH to make OD(C) [Orbital Drop (Capsule) ] within security perimeter of the Valhalla Citadel and commence operations against elements of the 61st ImLand ArmInf Division. The objective being to gain control of the Citadel and neutralize Command and Control elements of local ImLand forces and seize the person and household of Emperor.
ACTION REPORT: OD(C) at 11:15 IST. Initial mission objectives taken at H+1 hour. Initial resistance was stiff and 10mH took 6% casualties during the course of the a.s.sault. Despite heavy fighting secondary mission objectives were achieved at H+6 hours and the operation moved ahead on schedule. In the face of extremely heavy enemy resistance the leading elements of 10mH a.s.saulted the citadel and took final mission objectives at H+11. Casualties were extremely heavy (35%).
NOTE: Regret to inform you Colonel Roslyn Forrester was killed in action while leading the final a.s.sault.
1 September 2982
It should have been raining the day they put Roz into the ground, not bright and sunny under a blue sky.
The sky should have wept tears on to the bare shoulders of the women who carried her body, darkening the bright patterns of their blankets. Should have soaked the ground and turned it muddy. Should have fallen on the armour of the honour guard and turned it all to rust and ashes.
Rain would have stilled the voices of the praise singers, stopped up the bugles and the idiot mouths of speakers. There should have been pain and confusion and darkness.
But it was not raining the day they buried Roslyn Forrester.
The sun was high and bright in a wide African sky and the air was scented with cut gra.s.s and freshly turned earth.
The Doctor and Chris were just two of the hundreds in the funeral procession, winding their way through the Umtata Reclamation Zone. The sun beat down on the Doctor. He thought of taking off his hat and fanning his face.
In the hazy distance he could make out the shapes of the overcities. There would be rubble from fallen buildings scattered throughout the Zone, chunks of polyconcrete and pieces of furniture. High-tech versions of the kopje kopje, great stones piled on stones.
Leabie had been busy in her garden. The rolling, gra.s.sy hills of the eighteenth century had been carefully restored. Terraforming Earth itself. They"d flown over one of the work crews in the shuttle. The Doctor had rested his head on the window, watching the bright-yellow machines moving the earth, workers with trolleys carrying out the rubbish. In the distance, a herd of antelope were kicking up a long plume of dust.
Normally, Chris would have been ooh-ing and ah-ing over the machinery, toy-box-sized from this height. He had sat perfectly still, staring at the seat in front of him.
Chris was right at the front of the procession. From time to time, as the dirt path wound through the Zone, the Doctor caught glimpses of his companion. His surviving companion.
9.
Chris wore his full Adjudicator uniform, deep-blue armour with gold tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs, full cape hanging from his broad shoulders. He stood painfully straight, his upper lip rigid. He must be cooking in that armour.
The Doctor was near the back of the procession. Behind him, a group of Ogrons moved, not exactly marching, but silent and organized. Behind them, a group of Earth Reptiles.
In front of him, soldiers, human soldiers. There were ten of them, each with a bad-tempered buffalo snarling on their armour, Colour Sergeant Muller leading the way. Dwarfed by the standard she was carrying. The flag tinkled in the gentle breeze, a row of metal chimes sewn to the bottom of the cloth. Beside her, a second flag: the ancient UN standard, light-blue and white.
Then nine more of the buffalo soldiers. Side by side with another eight figures in DPM fatigues and blue berets.
In front of the soldiers, the n.o.bility. Mostly members of the Inyathi clan, scores of men, women and children in traditional dress. The women walked at the front, wailing. Sometimes it was a wordless sound, rising and falling Sometimes there were words, too distant to understand.
The viewers at home would be listening to murmured commentary on the traditional! Xhosa dress, especially what the clan leader, Leabie Forrester, was wearing: a red blanket thrown around her body, a weight of blue and white jewellery around throat, forearms, ankles. Pointing out the different Zulu costumes, kilts and furs, and the Knights of Io in their traditional Indian clothes. Putting names to the Baronial Allies who had been invited, from Hungary and Mexico and Australia.
Men and women wandered purposefully up and down the edge of the procession, hands clasped in front of respectful black kaftans. The POVs. Each wore a media badge, but it was only a legal requirement. You wouldn"t fail to realize you were being watched by one. Men and women with green eyes, transmitters slid softly into place over their pupils. Whoever decided they were less intrusive than cameras had never spent an hour being stared at.
Green eyes, watching.
10.The rain should come down, ruining their view, forcing them to peer through sheets of freezing water. Unable to focus in on the little man sloshing through the red mud.
It should have rained hard, pouring down from a sky as angry as he was, to wash the gra.s.s into mud, the stream into a torrent that would sweep away this field, this hilltop, the gaggle of the still living.
Still living. The dead on holiday. The sparrows still flying.
He realized that the chimes on the buffalo soldiers" flag were dog tags.
The procession slowed and halted, forming a semicircle of mourners around a wide, bare circle of naked earth. The POVs shuffled, looking for the best positions.
Now he had a clear view of the very front of the procession.
The wooden bier, held by Chris and three young Inyathi men. He saw Thandiwe standing beside her mother, her shoulders bare, her little face imitating the grim expressions of the grown women around her.
Chris saw him in the crowd, but didn"t look at him. Perhaps the Doctor"s need to be invisible, to not be here, was starting to affect the people around him. He wasn"t here, standing in the African sun while someone dug a hole in the ground so they could hide his friend in it. He was in the rainstorm, and on a battlefield on Callisto, where he should have been but wasn"t. Having left it just a little bit too late this time.
Chris was speaking. He"d been up half the night trying to get the eulogy to sound right. It had started as a four-thousand-word essay. Standing in front of a mirror in one of the TARDIS"s libraries, he"d recited it over and over, scribbling out bits, until he"d got it down to just the right length.
Had Chris finished speaking? The Doctor couldn"t hear him for the sunlight, battering down. He closed his eyes for a moment.
When he opened them again, Chris was lifting Roz"s body from the bier.
He didn"t feel the impact itself, just the after-effects, every cell in his body ringing with the shock. Whatever had hit him had knocked the air out of his lungs. His whole chest was alight with crushing pain.
11.He looked around, trying to work out what had hit him, realizing he was on his knees. One hand was pressed to his chest.
Had he been shot? Where was the blood?
Something inside him clenched clenched, and clenched clenched again. Sparkles erupted across his field of vision. His fingers were tingling, suddenly cold. He still couldn"t work out what had hit him. again. Sparkles erupted across his field of vision. His fingers were tingling, suddenly cold. He still couldn"t work out what had hit him.
His other hand was clutching his hat, trying to keep it on, keep his face hidden from the staring POVs. They would just love this.
Green eyes, watching.
Someone took his hand, gripping it tightly, trying to pull him to his feet. Somebody was calling for a doctor.
I"m here, he thought, I"m on my way, just let me catch my breath.
12.
Prologue.
All the King"s Horses
s.p.a.ceport 16 Undertown: 22 February 2981 Vincenzi"s platoon ran into a company-sized unit of OLM regulars on the wrong side of the pacification zone. They lost five troopers to PG ordnance before they reached makeshift firing positions in a nearby defile.
The oggies started lobbing AP Seekers in their general direction: marble-sized smart munitions that homed in on the smell of human fear. It was gear that oggies were supposed to be too dumb to use.
The smart money was on staying down and waiting for the nearest orbital platform to come over the horizon and rock the Ogrons into the ground. But the platoon"s lieutenant was fresh off the ship from Purgatory and still believed the Landsknechte party line on death and glory. He stood up, said something inspiring, and prepared to lead his troops in a glorious charge against the enemy.
Vincenzi shot him in the back of the head.
The platoon withdrew under cover of a precision orbital strike.
No more casualties were taken.
Division had a good idea of what had gone down they had the unit telemetry, and a partial log from the edge of a satellite sensor 13 footprint. But the oggies had scavenged the battlefield and the lieutenant"s body was MPE. Missing, presumed eaten. The troopers wouldn"t talk: they knew what Vincenzi had done and why.
No one was sure what to do with Vincenzi.
He spent two months in administrative limbo, eating and sleeping in a series of identical battleship-grey cabins on board a variety of troopships each one a few pa.r.s.ecs closer to Earth.
Every so often he was visited by investigators from the Judge Advocate"s office, the rank insignia growing more elaborate as he was pa.s.sed up the chain of command. They saw an average-looking guy with average coffee-coloured skin and average dark eyes with a slight fold, black hair cropped tidily, uniform pressed, body hunched and weary from the long hours in what was essentially solitary confinement. He got through the interviews by sticking to yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir, and as much chicken s.h.i.t as he thought he could get away with.
In the gaps he mostly spent his time staring at the bulkhead.
Occasionally the lieutenant"s head would squeeze out of the corner where the ceiling met the wall and bounce around the room screaming. Vincenzi did his best to ignore it.
Then one day he looked out of the viewport and saw the unmistakable blue, green and silver of Earth turning below him.
The Imperial Landsknechte gave him a dishonourable discharge, a one-way ticket down the well, and just enough money to drink himself to death.
He did his best to comply. After all, following orders had always been what he was best at.
There was a moment of lucidity towards the end. He found himself in a bar in the part of the undertown that had once been called Hong Kong, with eighteen schillings left on his account.
Just enough for a last bottle of juke.
The bar was housed inside the salvaged fuselage of an antique pa.s.senger flitter, bolted halfway up the remains of the Ching Ma bridge. From his seat Vincenzi could see the remains of the s.p.a.ceport at Chek Lak Kok which had been nuked during the Wars of Acquisition. He wondered which race of bemmies would 14 use such a prosaic weapon against a ground target, a well-aimed rock from orbit being much 15.
faster and cleaner. The Falardi perhaps, or maybe the Qink, both of whom leant towards the esoteric when it came to weapons.
Or perhaps we did it to ourselves, he thought. A fire-and-forget weapon that got fired and forgotten another little mistake that was left behind when they floated the overcities.
He could make out the distinct footprint of the blast, a series of concentric circles written in twisted steel and plasticrete, as neat as a schematic on a tactical monitor. Heat casualties, blast casualties, radiation casualties.
Dead, nearly dead. Dead soon.
He had enough money for a bottle of juke and after that, without money or protection, he was dead meat. Already he could feel the undertown closing in around him, toothy shadows that would detach from nooks and crannies as soon as he left the bar.
Would he fight? He thought he might it seemed more appropriate than just letting them turn him into an average-looking corpse. He smiled. No doubt bits of him would live on as spare parts in an organ bank somewhere. Why wait? he thought, and lifted his hand to attract the bar thing.
And then his life changed direction.
"That stuff will kill you," said a man sitting further down the bar.
"That"s my business," said Vincenzi.
The man shrugged. He flashed his ID at the bar thing. "Give the stabsfeldwebel something less fatal."
"Now listen, friend "
"Yes," said the man, "I am your friend."
He was dressed in a conservative grey kaftan and matching leggings. His features were too bland to be anything other than a bepple, unlined tan skin, grey eyes, small nose and mouth. He was so un.o.btrusive it was almost conspicuous.
The bar thing put a bottle down. The man picked it up and moved over to the stool by Vincenzi. "Try some of this."
It was Centillion sake from the Asumi habitat in Procorus 200 schillings a pop. What the h.e.l.l, thought Vincenzi, why not?
There was a hiss as he cracked the seal and the 16 bottle flash heated to the correct temperature. He poured a measure into a 20 ml shot gla.s.s with a picture of the bridge etched into its side. He lifted the gla.s.s, sniffed the aroma and threw the contents down the back of his throat. It felt good going down, much better than the juke had. Maybe he would burn a little brighter for having that inside him.
The man retrieved the bottle and poured himself a measure.
"My name is Fluellen," he said.
"What do you want?"
"Do you know what a compiler is?" asked Fluellen.
"A fixer?" Vincenzi glanced at the bottle. He was willing to talk as long as the drink kept coming.