Ten Low E-Book

Stark Holborn

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: The Factus Sequence
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 396

Beschreibung

Firefly meets Dune in a breakneck race to escape across an alien moon thriving with aliens and criminals Ten Low is an ex-army medic, one of many convicts eking out a living at the universe's edge. She's desperate to escape her memories of the interstellar war, and the crimes she committed, but trouble seems to follow wherever she goes. One night, attempting to atone for her sins, she pulls a teenage girl – the sole survivor – from the wreck of a spaceship. But Gabriella Ortiz is no ordinary girl. The result of a military genetics programme, she is a decorated Army General, from the opposing side of the war to Ten. Worse, Ten realises the crash was an assassination attempt, and that someone wants the Ortiz dead...  The pair bury their hatreds and strike an uneasy deal to smuggle the General off-world. Their road won't be easy: they must cross the moon's lawless wastes, facing military hit squads, bandits and the one-eyed leader of an all-female road gang, in a frantic race to get the General to safety. But something else waits in the darkness at the universe's edge. Something that threatens to reveal Ten's worst nightmare: the truth of who she really is and what she is running from.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

One: The Book Of The General

Two: The Book Of Malady

Three: The Book Of Life

Four: The Book Of Hel

Acknowledgements

About the Author

“I loved Ten Low. Combining the taut characterisation and clever wit of Stark Holborn’s spectacular Westerns with some splendidly inclusive and innovative sci-fi, this is a wonderful fusion of Firefly and Joanna Russ, with a Ennio Morricone soundtrack.” –JOANNE HARRIS, BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OFCHOCOLAT, THE GOSPEL OF LOKIAND MANY MORE

“A fantastic, punchy SF action story, full of blood and grit and bitter pasts.” –ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY, AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OFCHILDREN OF TIME, DOGS OF WARAND MANY MORE.

“Stark Holborn continues to impress. Great characters and a blistering pace.” –GARETH POWELL, AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF THEEMBERS OF WARSERIES

“Ten Low showed me the most vibrant desert world since Dune. [It] leaves the old guard masters in the dust.” –ALEX WHITE, AUTHOR OF THESALVAGERSTRILOGY

“Stark Holborn’s writing is clever, original and thrilling.” –R. J. BARKER, AUTHOR OFTHE BONE SHIPSANDAGE OF ASSASSINS

“An action-packed SF adventure with an intriguing majority female cast? OH, HELL YES!” –STINA LEICHT, AUTHOR OFPERSEPHONE STATION

“I loved this from beginning to end. Stark Holborn grabs you by the throat on page one and never lets you go!” –CAVAN SCOTT, BESTSELLING AND AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR

“A gritty space western that fans of The Mandalorian should lap up.” –PAUL CORNELL, AUTHOR OF THESHADOW POLICEANDWITCHES OF LYCHFORDSERIES

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Ten Low

Print edition ISBN: 9781789096620

E-book edition ISBN: 9781789096637

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: June 2021

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© Stark Holborn 2021

Stark Holborn asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

For N.E.D.

ONE

THE

BOOK

OF

THE

GENERAL

IHUNCH CLOSER TO the sputtering fire. The darkness is vast, hiding countless lives, but down here the wind just coughs dust into my eyes. I close them against the grit, against the light of the struggling flames, against the emptiness around me, knowing I should sleep but afraid of what I might dream.

My thoughts have a habit of coming loose. The more I keep to myself, the more they seep from my head, catching on the stubble of my scalp and trailing out behind me like cotton. Unless I’m careful, I won’t get them reeled in again before I make Redcrop. I can’t afford that. Single words, single thoughts: no doubts and no questions.

I tug the scarf further towards the brim of my hat. Sometimes I wish for hair, thick and curling as it once was, to cover my ears and warm my scalp. I feel for the pouch at my hip. It is slack, the beads inside cold and too few. Breath. I hold one to my lips and try to believe it is what people say: a sphere of pure air from the forests of Prosper.

The bead clacks against my teeth before I bite down. The splintering plastic cuts my trailing thoughts and stops me from leaking into the night, even though there is no good oxygen within; just an empty orb and a dusting of dex-amphetamine. Enough to ease the fatigue caused by the thin air, even after all these months.

I swallow, the noise loud in my ears. Beyond the tiny fire there’s nothing. Just the wind. Some folk say the wind is alive, that it coils between the stars like a snake. Who am I to say they are wrong? Too long out here and you begin to hear the wind speak. An endless sigh that started a hundred thousand cycles before I was born.

Carefully, I drag my bag closer and bring the notebook into the firelight. The cover is peeling, and there aren’t many blank pages left, but I turn to one and take the pencil nub from the crease.

Hafsa Gellam, I write, and see her face again, eyes heavy with exhaustion as she gripped my hand. Beneath her name I draw a line and label it Child Gellam. Another line, another name: Child’s Child? I draw on, tracing four imaginary generations, until the pencil scrapes the bottom of the page.

So much potential… Life in the Barrens is hard won and easily lost, but Hafsa is a strong woman, and the child seemed healthy when I left. If the child lived, and went on to produce a child of their own and so on… I close my eyes. What if just one of those newly possible people saves another, with a word or a deed or a single, unthinking act? How many futures could that tiny, bloodied newborn carry within? How many lives could I add to the tally?

When I open my eyes I know at once that I’m no longer alone. Something is out there, beyond the firelight.

It’s them.

I can’t see them, but I sense them, clearer than ever before. The hairs bristle on my arms. They’ve surrounded me.

‘What do you want?’ I whisper.

The wind howls; whips out a tongue to lick the moisture from my eyeballs, cat-slinks around me. But that’s just the wind. They haven’t moved.

‘What do you want?’ I ask it again.

Useless to talk. They would not listen to anything I have to say. I’m not even sure they speak. Words are a skin to keep fear within the body, and they have no bodies, have no fear.

Whether they understand me or not, there is a shift, a change in the air as if they are pressing closer, and my heart starts to beat madly. They seize my attention, stretch it far beyond my normal capacity, stretch it out to the east where something waits, hot and sharp and urgent.

My mind rebels, catapulting me back into myself, into a confusion of images: cold metal piercing skin, pain on the wings of black birds, a figure gloved in blood…

I open my eyes. I’m lying in the dirt, the hat fallen from my head. Beyond the fire there’s nothing, just the night. Have they gone? Impossible to tell. They’re never truly gone, just as they are never truly here.

But they have left a feeling behind them: the conviction that past the plateau to the east, something waits.

I look up to see the ship fall flaming to the earth.

* * *

It takes me the rest of the night to reach the crash site. The glow lights the horizon pink as raw flesh. I travel as fast as I can, but the mule is sluggish, jostled by the wind, sand-scoured and grit-loaded. By the time I smell the smoke, night is losing its fullness and the wind is weakening, dragged to another hemisphere by the darkness.

I’ve seen wrecks in my time, in their many stages of tragedy, but never one like this. The destruction is total, every inch of metal a flame, every flame so hot it has scorched the sand to glass. There’s no telling what the ship once was, no telling how many souls it carried to this bright and violent end. I scrape at the dirt with my boot. Can’t linger here. A wreck like this will attract scavengers like the Seekers within hours.

What’s a ship doing out here, in any case? There are no ports, only the scattered townships of the Barrens. A navigational error? I squint up into the lightening sky. From how far has the ship fallen?

The impact crater is still hot enough to sear my face, and as I peer down I see that it’s useless. There’s nothing left, only blackened streaks and shards.

I start to walk away when my gut lurches, as if it’s trying to drag itself east. The images come on fast again: a bird with black wings, cold metal, bloodied hands… Spitting, I straighten up. They are obviously not finished with me.

I get back on the mule and drive away from the wreckage, towards the rising sun.

Morning in the Barrens is beautiful, but it comes with an asking price of hunger and cold, loneliness and near-insanity. A price that almost no one is willing to pay.

I have paid, many times over, but I don’t spare a glance at that hard-won beauty. Instead, I stare at the track that has carved its way through the dirt. At the end of it, beside the twisted remains of a lifecraft, two figures lie motionless on the sand.

In the few seconds before I reach them, I think about turning the mule aside, leaving the bodies and continuing on, into another future.

But I won’t, and they know that. They know my choice was made long ago.

Twenty paces away I stop, reaching for the knife at my belt. Gangs like the Seekers or the Rooks sometimes use bodies as bait. I edge closer.

The downed lifecraft is dull silver, new-looking, with no markings or badges to suggest what kind of ship it might have come from. That isn’t unusual. Ever since the war it has been standard practice to strip all lifecraft bare, in case of a landing in enemy territory. Not that Factus took a side; no one wanted it anyhow. Even the Free Limits had little use for a waterless wasteland where the enemy was everything and nothing.

Wisps of smoke coil from the ruined craft, and the whole thing stinks of hot metal and melting plastic. Gripping the knife, I lean over the figures. They lie huddled, so close together it’s difficult to tell them apart, covered in sand as they are. The larger one is a man, I think, cradling a smaller one. I nudge the man with my boot. When he doesn’t move, I pull off my ragged gloves to reach in through the smashed helmet of the flight suit.

His face is cold but there’s a pulse, faint and faltering. The helmet of the smaller figure is raised, a little. I worm my fingers through the gap and feel that the flesh there is warmer, the pulse stronger. The man’s arms did their job.

I brush the sand away from the suits, searching for identification. But they too are plain: no labels even. The man is solid and muscular and at least seven feet tall. It takes all my strength to roll him away. As soon as I do, a weak groan emerges from the shattered helmet. I ignore it, and ease the smaller of the two into a position better suited to breathing.

As soon as I touch the body, I feel slackness within the sleeves. Whoever is wearing the suit is small and slight. The man is undoubtedly an adult – could this be a child?

Swearing, I unclip the helmet from the suit. A child: what might that do for my tally? I don’t dare think about it as I wrench the helmet free.

Black hair tangles around a small face grey with blood loss, the features lost beneath a cake of dried gore and sand. Desperately, I check the skull, searching for wounds. When I find the contusion on the scalp, three inches long and bleeding sluggishly, I let out a breath. If that is the only damage – and if the child regains consciousness – they should live.

Just as I bend to pick the child up, something strikes me hard in the side, sending me sprawling. Choking on dust, I scramble for my knife, cursing myself to falling into an ambush…

But no. There are no other blows, no figures emerging from foxholes dug into the sand, no swooping crafts. Reddened eyes stare back at me. The man is awake.

He croaks a word, blood staining his teeth, and his eyes go to the knife, then to the child. He tries to rise, only to fall again with a gurgle of pain.

‘No harm,’ I tell him, holding up my hands. ‘No harm. Medic.’

‘You… touch her,’ he says, in an accent I can’t place. ‘You die.’

He is not in a position to be making any kind of threats, but I nod. ‘I need to fetch my kit. I have supplies. I can treat you both.’

‘Where?’ He half lifts his head to stare around, ropes of strain in his neck. ‘Where is here?’

‘The Barrens. North of Redcrop.’

He raises his eyes to the sky, losing its beauty now, turning flat white. ‘Where?’ he insists.

I follow his gaze up towards Brovos, pinkish-red and just visible in the sky. The last planet in the system, and beyond its orbit, nothing but the Void. Has he fallen from so far he doesn’t even know which moon he is on?

Above, invisible in the air, they sway and shift the lights of other worlds.

‘Factus,’ I tell him, turning away. ‘We’re on Factus.’

* * *

The man’s eyes follow my movements as I haul the tarp from the back of the mule. He’s more alert now, but that does not mean he will live. Folk often have a wave of consciousness before the end. I once read about forest trees on Earth, and how they did much the same: used the last of their strength to send their life force through the roots and into the soil, giving it to others. That was what this stranger had done, in all likelihood, for this child. So be it. One life is better than none at all.

I set up a shelter from the rising sun, stretching the tarp from the post anchored on the mule across to the wreckage. I try to work fast, my eyes on the child, not yet conscious.

‘You,’ the man croaks. ‘Woman. Your name.’

‘Hafsa Gellam,’ I lie, as I tie off the tarp.

I feel his eyes travelling across my sunburned face, half-hidden by the scarf that wraps my neck from collarbone to chin, across my shorn head, my old jacket, my hands, roughened by the winds.

‘Which side?’ he asks.

I open the medkit to check its contents which, in truth, are pitiful. I haven’t been able to bring myself to stop at a trade post for some time and here is the evidence: two rolls of squashed bandage, a bottle of cleaning fluid, a few ampules of analgesics and tranqs and boosters, needles, thread.

‘What does it matter?’ I say, searching for my cleanest rag. ‘War’s over.’

‘Which side?’

‘I didn’t fight.’

‘Everyone fought.’

‘Not here.’

He grunts, as if to say that’s something I can well believe, but when I take out a roll of bandage, his eyes narrow. The bandages are black market, lifted long ago from a consignment headed for the First Accord. At the sight of the double yellow triangles stamped upon the wrappings, he seems to relax.

Whoever he is, he’s given himself away. One way to find out for sure. Kneeling, I unclip the shattered helmet from his flight suit and work it free. As the man gasps in relief, I see the tattoo on his temple, half-hidden by tangled copper hair. The same double triangles that mark the bandages. Beneath them is a thick line. A lieutenant, then. I glance at the ruined craft – a defector? I start to unclip the rest of the suit.

‘No.’ He knocks my hands away. ‘Her.’

‘Your injuries are worse.’

His face is a bad grey colour but he lifts an arm to hold me off. ‘Her first.’

I shrug. Whoever he is, whatever trouble he’s in, it’s likely I won’t be able to do much more than make him comfortable. Either way, I have to be fast. Desolate as this place is, Seekers have sentries, and even the heat won’t keep them at bay.

When I release the child’s flight suit, I see that I was right; she is a lot smaller than the garment implied. I would guess at around twelve or thirteen years old. She wears a beige thermal shirt and trousers, like pyjamas. The collar is soaked with blood, and a tear at the elbow and smears of oil speak of a hasty escape. Had she been sleeping when the ship’s distress call went out, whisked from her bed into an escape craft by this man?

Perhaps. Though something tells me he is not her father. A bodyguard, then? A kidnapper? Whoever they are, they aren’t new settlers, or farmers from Brovos. They look too healthy for that and rich folk don’t venture out this far if they can help it. The modern lifecraft and brand-new flight suits could have come from Prosper, or Jericho, or some inner-system enclave.

I test the child’s limbs. They are all mobile, no sign of trauma. The blood pasting her face seems to come only from the scalp wound, which is ragged, though shallow. But when I wipe the mess away, I see something that stops my hand.

Beneath the blood, a tattoo stands out dark on her temple. The same double triangle.

I draw back. ‘Who is she?’

‘She needs help.’ The man looks at me, half-desperate, half-hostile. ‘You said you’d help her.’

He’s right. I grit my teeth. No matter what tattoo she has, she is a child, she is hurt and I am the one with the medical kit. I clean her head with some of the bandage and stitch the wound as best I can through her hair, hoping for her sake that she doesn’t wake before I am finished. When I pull the last stitch tight, she stirs and bares her teeth, but her eyes remain closed.

The man doesn’t make a sound while I work, only keeps his eyes fixed on the child’s face. Too late, I see what the effort has cost him. The redness has vanished from his skin, leaving it blue-white, drained. He is dying.

His white military-issue vest is sodden with blood. A dark, shining snake pulses from the wound between his ribs. A piece of shrapnel from the crash is embedded there, dug deep. He must have turned on his side at the moment of impact, and taken the brunt, sparing the child.

‘Leave it,’ he gasps, when I touch the piece of metal. His voice is full of liquid. ‘I know it’s bad.’

I nod. Little use in lying to him.

His eyes find mine. ‘She will live?’

‘If she regains consciousness, and if there’s no damage to her brain, and if the wound does not fester—’

A bloodied hand grasps my sleeve. ‘She can’t die.’ He hauls himself towards me, using the last of his strength. ‘If you hurt her, you’ll pay with your life.’

‘I will not hurt her. I told you, I’m a medic. You have my word.’ I stare down at him. ‘Are you going to tell me what’s going on?’

For a moment he can only heave breaths. The stink of gore and sundered flesh fills my nose.

‘What’s the nearest town…?’

‘Redcrop. A day’s ride. Mining township.’

‘The Accord – have authority there?’

I laugh, humourlessly. ‘They like to think so.’

He sags back. ‘Take her there. Find a wire. She will know— what to do. She must…’

A noise catches my ears and I stop him with a gesture. In the distance, but coming closer, something is droning: the distinctive, double-cough of an overhauled engine. I swear and spring up.

‘What?’ the man asks, as I rip the tarp free and bundle it onto the mule.

‘Seekers, most likely,’ I say, piling everything into the medkit, ‘coming to scavenge the site.’

‘Seekers? Bandits?’

‘More like a cult.’

I see a light in his eyes, and know what he’s thinking; even a cult can be bribed, can be traded with.

‘Forget it,’ I say, ‘the Seekers are crazy. If they see you are hurt, they will kill you both and take your organs before they listen to a word you say.’

I bend to retrieve the unused bandage. For the space between breaths we are eye to eye. I see myself reflected there, and it’s a face I hardly know, the eyes shadowed and squinted tight, the skin wind-whipped and scar-peppered. The engines grow louder. A dust cloud appears in the distance.

‘Go then,’ he chokes, ‘take her, and remember your oath.’

I don’t argue. The options are two living and one dead, or three corpses, plundered by the Seekers. I know which one I prefer, and anyway, no matter who the child is, the tally doesn’t lie. I lift her awkwardly and wedge her among the bundles on the back of the mule. Then I’m in the driver’s seat, pulling the scarf over my mouth.

‘Tell her I died for her,’ the man’s cry comes over the noise of the dirt mule’s engine. ‘Tell her I didn’t know their plans. Tell her she must fight.’

I don’t answer, just take off towards the horizon.

* * *

I ride for Redcrop. There’s nowhere else. Much as I dislike being in a settlement, it is as safe as anywhere and at least I have a few contacts. As for the girl… I glance back to where she lies, slumped upon the mule.

Tell her I didn’t know their plans.

A shiver ripples across my skin, despite the heat. No child should have military tattoos, no matter how patriotic her family. They couldn’t be real.

Perspiration collects beneath my hat, dripping from my scalp into my eyes, so I stop the mule in a strip of shade cast by a boulder. The child mumbles as I lift her down, her eyeballs swivelling back and forth beneath the lids, as if reading from some giant book. Her skin is hot and dry, her breathing shallow. With a sigh, I feel for my pouch of beads. Don’t want to waste one, but it might be enough to wake her, and I need answers.

The instant it shatters between her teeth, her eyes fly open.

They are bright hazel-brown, the whites bloodshot. For a second they roam the sky, contracting in pain at the brightness, before settling on me. Something like fear crosses her face, still a mess of dried blood, and she opens her mouth to cry out, but chokes.

I grab the flask of water from my belt and hold it to her lips. She swallows greedily, stale as it is, until I take it away.

She gasps for a few breaths. ‘LaSalle?’

‘The large man with the red hair? He is gone.’

‘Gone?’

‘Dead. He was badly injured in the crash. You remember the crash?’

The child winces, raising a hand to her head.

‘You were hurt,’ I tell her warily. ‘But I have stitched the wound. I believe you’ll live.’

The child blinks hard, her lips trembling – on the verge of tears. I sigh, relief surging through me. So she is just a girl, hurt and afraid, no matter what the tattoos imply. A military ward, perhaps?

‘There’s a cut on your head,’ I say, trying for simpler words. Alone for so long, I’ve forgotten how to speak to anyone, let alone a child. ‘And I think the crash may have bruised your brain. You will probably feel sick, for a while. Do you understand?’

She seems to see me for the first time, taking in my face, my clothes, the dirt mule behind us.

‘You won’t hurt me?’ Her voice is high and frightened. ‘Or sell me in a market?’

‘No.’ I sit back. ‘I’m just a medic.’

She sniffs and nods. ‘Help me stand up?’

‘Be careful.’ I lean down to take her arm. ‘If you do have a concussion—’

In a flash, my arm is twisted and I’m flung off balance, landing face down into the dirt. I roll onto my back, snatching out my knife by reflex, but a small fist knocks it from my grasp. I try to cry out when something slams down on my throat.

It’s the girl’s boot. She stares down at me, her lips curled into a snarl.

‘You won’t kill two of us, carrion.’

As blue and yellow stars start to fill my vision, the wind blows, brushing sand across my face and for a second, less than a second, I feel them.

They are like a creature with a thousand eyes, hungrily tracing every outcome, showing me innumerable realities, too many for my mind to bear.

I am dead in the desert, the child driving the mule away. I throw her off with such force that her head strikes a boulder. I am dead, the wind drying my corpse to leather. I drag her across the sand, me, her, each of us the victor, the victim…

I shoot out an arm and I see every conceivable movement gather around it, a blur of limbs and chaos, impossible to track, until – like a clear signal from static – I see my own hand grab a fistful of dust and fling it into the girl’s face.

She falls back. Before I can get to my feet she lunges again, this time with the knife in her hand. I scramble away, body a mess of adrenalin and not enough air as she attacks in frenzy, aiming to kill.

But they have shown me this path, and as I crash into the dirt mule, I know what to do. I reach behind me, groping for the medkit. Metal meets my fingers and the moment the girl leaps, I strike.

The knife falters two inches from my heart. The girl’s lips twitch in a snarl, before a convulsion shakes her body and she glances down at the syringe protruding from her neck.

‘Y—’ she begins before the knife falls from her grip and she crumples, lifeless, to the ground.

* * *

I don’t allow myself to sit and breathe until the child is restrained and tied as securely as I can manage, even though she won’t wake for hours. In my panic I gave her enough tranquilliser to suppress a grown adult, and there’s a chance that it could kill her.

Her small face twitches as the drug makes its way through her system. Cursing myself, I fetch the canteen of wastewater from the mule. My brain thuds with questions, with the thin air and the ebbing adrenalin and the lingering horror of their presence. Wetting a rag, I begin to wipe the dried blood from her face.

At first, her features appear unremarkable: skin sallow with blood loss, round cheeks, pointed chin. But as I clean the mess away, I see the undeniable evidence of what she is. Although she’s young, thirteen at most, her face is deeply lined. Between the heavy brows and around her mouth are creases usually seen on someone who has lived through years of hardship. Her physique too, is unnatural. She’s lean, but not through malnutrition and labour and ill health, like most on Factus, but sinewy, with hard muscles beneath the skin of her arms and legs.

Some part of me still hopes that I am wrong, that she’s just a poor sick child after all. But when I clean the last of the blood away from her temple, there’s no denying it. There’s the tattoo – the double triangle and three thick lines – proclaiming what she is.

I shove myself away. My own temple throbs, as if the skin there – a faded pink scar now – is reverting to newly seared flesh; as if my hand has only just dropped the hot iron. Covering my face, I try to find some control, try to wrest myself back from the woman I once was, the woman who only a few years ago might have taken up the knife and used it without question.

I close my eyes. The Free Limits are finished. The woman who fought and killed for them is gone. Now, the tally is all that matters and it demands that the child, whoever she is, whatever she is, must live.

Besides, I have a promise to keep.

* * *

I make sure to arrive at the trade post in the twilight, when the winds are picking up and no one cares to look too closely at the shape on the rear of my mule, covered with the tarp. It’s reckless, but there’s no way I’m going to take the child into the settlement until I have some answers. Too much attention. Some bad part of my brain whispers that she might wake and escape on her own and so spare me a decision I don’t know how to make.

The trade post is outside of Redcrop proper, separated from the settlement by fields of sickly-looking century trees and ghostly agave. Townsfolk prefer it this way. It keeps uncertainty out of their lives, along with scratchtooth drifters and wreckers, bandits and scavengers, the desperate and the damned who come trailing suspicion and violence from the Unincorporated Zone.

Redcrop is a faithful, fearful town: they take no risks and brook no questions. Questions lead to uncertainty, uncertainty opens the door to doubt and so, to them.

Different in the cities; there, hundreds of people make thousands of choices, every day. It’s enough to keep them at bay, people reckon, gives them enough to feed on. But out here in the wastes people are few and choices are scarce, and if you let yourself doubt – if you let chance into your life – you’ll shine out like a beacon through time and space and they will come to feed.

Or so it goes. All folk ever have are stories. Farms too near the Edge destroyed utterly by one bit of bad luck after another, brawls that somehow turned into massacres, folk who ran, maddened, into the desert and were never seen again. No proof. Just thin-air superstition – the Accord said – stoked by mercenary peacekeepers and vice wardens for the purpose of extracting money from the fearful.

Only people with choice but to ride the wastes alone told stories of meeting them and surviving. People like me.

With a sigh, I climb off the mule. I have no intention of lingering, not with an unconscious and murderous child bound and hidden on my vehicle. Another dose of the sedative sent her under when she began to kick and twitch at dusk. I didn’t like it, but neither did I want my throat cut.

The post is already ringed with vehicles; dirt mules in far better condition than my own, old delivery quads and charabancs, even a battered ex-army transport painted silver and black, the words VALDOSTA’S VIPERS emblazoned on the side. A travelling sideshow, no doubt. At least people will be distracted.

I whistle. The shadows move and a shape comes forwards: a teenager with a bald, patchy head, wearing huge, tattered gauntlets.

‘I will be an hour,’ I say, digging beneath my clothes for a bead. ‘I want the mule guarded well.’

The boy nods and drags a piece of gristle from a pouch to hold up in the air. A skeletal vulture sails down from the veiled sky to land on the front of the mule. I leave the boy securing the bird to the handlebars, while it stabs, oblivious, at its payment. Shouldering my pack, I hope that – for the sake of her eyes – the girl-child doesn’t wake.

Hat down, I duck between the sheet metal gates and into the trade post compound. It’s the dinner hour, and pungent century smoke mingles with the hot smack of planchas, and the odour of boiled onion powder and protein cooked in whatever sort of fat can be spared.

Folk sit in tight groups around the food station, smoking or chewing, picking crickets’ legs out of their teeth and gawking at each other’s plates to check they haven’t been cheated on their meal. The sight of the food, basic as it is, is enough to make my stomach yawn with hunger, after weeks of old field rations.

But business first. Glancing over my shoulder, I approach the door of Sorry Damovitch’s place.

Inside, it’s quiet, just those who can’t afford to eat and instead pummel their guts with mezcal. Sorry himself is at the edge of the room, shoving leaf fibres about the floor with his foot in an attempt to clean up some spill.

As I walk to the bar, one of the drinkers looks up: a large individual with a mottled pink face that speaks of hard drinking. Their straw-coloured hair is dark with grease, in a military cut short enough to show the three-dotted tattoo of a private of the Accord. As I pass, they push their stool back to stop me. Their expression turns sour as they take in my hat and the scarves that wrap the length of my throat.

‘Wasss your business?’ comes the slurred challenge. Before I can answer, Sorry himself shuffles forwards, his hangdog face drooping further at the prospect of violence.

‘Please,’ he implores, holding out a hand towards me, ‘for your own safety, go outside. I will serve you from the back door. What do you want?’

‘Just the usual,’ I say.

He lets out a breath.

‘Doc. You look—’ He shakes his head. ‘Next time, take the hat off, yes?’

I nod, though I’d do no such thing. A shorn head like mine gave nothing away, but the scars on my temples certainly did. People don’t like not knowing which side you were on. I follow him towards the bar, the drunk continuing to protest my presence with not-so-muttered threats.

‘It would be best to avoid Loto,’ Sorry murmurs. ‘The Accord revoked her pension. She’s been drinking snake wine since noon and is not to be reasoned with.’

‘How have you escaped her wrath?’ I ask, nodding at his neck, where two neat scars from a prison collar were all that remain of his former internment.

His thin lips lift in a smile. ‘Such is the luck of the landlord.’ He places a tumbler before me. ‘Friend to all, while there is a cup to be filled.’

I watch as he takes a bottle from beneath the bar and pours a few fingers of mezcal into the glass. Ordinarily, it’s a stupid idea to drink the stuff – who knows what bacterial horrors have been stuffed into bags and thrown into the vats to hurry fermentation – but I know Damovitch keeps a good batch for those who would not forgive being poisoned.

‘It is on me,’ he says softly. ‘For the last time.’

I drink. It’s appalling and makes my eyes sting, but it’s better than the jars of snake wine that line the bar; coiled creatures barely visible through the murky liquid.

As I peer at the drowned snakes, Damovitch places a little dish of worm salt and a lump of tinned orange in front of me, giving me time to find my tongue. For a while I just listen to the clang and hiss of the food station outside, to the roar of engines from the stable, the crying of the vultures and the distant desert wind rattling the sheet metal of the fence. I suck the smoky, biting salt from the orange, the combination making my mouth sing, and as always, wonder how much I can say.

He isn’t trustworthy, Sorry, but he is at least predictable in his cowardice. He was a Limiter too and in prison had been a Five, so the story went. He contrived to have his sentence cut by apologising so profusely for his actions during the war, that even the prison chaplain had become irritated and petitioned the governor for his early release just to be rid of him. The governor agreed, on the condition that Damovitch shed his sentence name of “Five”, along with the prison collar, and be forever known as “Sorry”.

A fair deal, I think, watching him sprinkle more worm salt into the dish. It suits him, and besides, prison governors have handed out far worse names to convicts on release. Better to keep the number. Better to bear the shame and the sneers than allow them to give you a name.

I drain the glass. The girl has a name, one that I’m afraid to discover.

Just dump her here, the woman from the past whispers. Leave her like the man said. She does not deserve your help.

‘Sorry,’ I call. ‘How much do you remember about the Accorded Companies?’

Damovitch’s face takes on the squeezed, fawning look it does when he’s trying to think of an answer that will not get him into trouble.

‘Ahh,’ he says, grabbing the bottle. ‘War’s in the past. We’re all just citizens, now.’

He tries to pour another slug of mezcal, but I put my hand over the glass.

‘Where were you stationed?’

‘Nowhere special,’ he mutters, ‘on Jericho first, Felicitatum, that is.’

‘Which faction?’

‘The Nightwatchmen.’ Glancing at Loto, he raises his voice. ‘I didn’t fight, not really. I was in logistics, but even for that I am sorry. The Free Limits tricked me into joining, with their promises of open trade and their fancy words. They took the best years of my life.’

I look him dead in the eyes. He shuts up.

‘What do you remember about the Minority Force?’

‘The war kids?’

I nod. ‘The ones the Accord brought up through training camps.’

‘I—’ He swallows. ‘I don’t know. FL always said they were monsters, tortured and augmented ’til they weren’t even kids no more.’

‘The Minority Force were our greatest asset!’ The chair falls to the ground as Loto stands, her eyes blazing. ‘They were our greatest achievement. And you call them monsters?’ A glob of spittle hits the bar, several feet to Sorry’s left. Loto’s eyes fill with tears. ‘Those kids were the bravest of us all.’

‘So what happened to them?’ I ask, hoping Loto will take the bait.

‘War heroes.’ She sniffs. ‘They’re the lucky ones. Set for life, on their pensions. Cushy jobs, easy living on the home planets. Not like the rest of us left behind on these godforsaken rocks among convict scum.’

She takes a step towards me, but Sorry is ready, thrusting a bottle of snake wine into her hand.

‘Here now, Loto, have a drink. I know how hard it’s been for you.’

‘You’ve no idea,’ Loto slurs, grabbing the bottle with its coiled inhabitant, allowing herself to be steered back to her table. ‘I loved them and they kick me out, treat me no better than one of you damn cons.’

‘Listen, Doc, you better leave,’ Sorry whispers when he comes back to the bar. ‘She is in her cups, and she won’t be the only one. Dinner hour is almost over.’

I don’t bother nodding. ‘Here,’ I murmur, digging through my pack. ‘Take these for Rowley.’

It isn’t much, a couple of tabs of muscle relaxant, but Sorry’s face drops into gratitude; the most honest expression I’ve seen that evening. He might be a coward and a worm, but he loves Rowley – one of a multitude ruined by the munitions factories – and cares for him as best he can. For that, I give him credit.

‘May your thoughts be clear, Doc,’ he says.

‘And mine?’

A figure leans in the doorway, better dressed than anyone I have seen for months in a voluminous grey coat, somehow unstained by road dust. Oiled black curls hang elegantly on broad shoulders. They are heavily made-up with swirls of silvery paint that shine against cool brown skin. Twisted metal rings circle every finger.

‘Valdosta.’ Sorry grabs at his apron. ‘A moment, if you please.’ Shoulders hunched, he runs towards the back room.

From the corner of my eye I see one of the drinkers shrink down in their chair as Valdosta walks towards the bar. Even Loto is silent, staring hard at the tabletop. Something prickles at the back of my mind; the reeling sensation that usually signals their appearance.

‘Care to play?’

Valdosta’s open hand rests on the bar. In the centre of their palm is a pair of worn bone dice.

‘No.’ I look away. ‘Those things are dangerous.’

‘Only if you fear the outcome.’

When I don’t reply, Valdosta breathes a laugh and flicks their hand, sending the dice clattering. My muscles tense. Somewhere behind me a chair squeaks, most likely a drinker wondering whether to run.

I stare hard at my empty glass, willing myself not to see.

‘Five and five is ten,’ Valdosta says.

Cold sweeps me, scalp to heel.

‘Sorry,’ Sorry bursts, hurrying from the back room with a paper-wrapped package in his hands. ‘Here it is, my apologies, I’ll have it ready next time.’

When he sees the dice on the bar his face goes pale beneath the sunburn.

‘Thank you, Damovitch.’ Valdosta sweeps the dice away, dropping them into one cavernous pocket, the package into another. ‘I’d stay, but I have a show to prepare for.’ I can feel their eyes, studying the side of my face. ‘Perhaps next time, Ten.’

I don’t let go of the bar until the door creaks closed, until the ringing of jewellery fades into the sounds of the trade post. Even then, my nerves sing like wire in the wind.

‘Who was that?’

Sorry’s mouth is a hard line as he scrubs at the bar with a rag, as if the dice have left a stain. ‘Valdosta,’ he mutters. ‘Runs entertainment. And security. Protection from the Seekers, and from…’ He stops, staring at the spot where the dice fell, then back at me. ‘You should get out of here,’ he says.

* * *

I take Sorry’s advice. When I emerge from the bar people are milling about the trade post’s square in anticipation of the evening’s entertainment. Anything will do: an insect fight, a brawl, a shanking, a drunk falling over their own boots.

Luckily for them, or not, depending on how much protection money they stand to lose, Valdosta’s Vipers are in camp. I pause in the shadows near the bar, curious despite myself. The sideshows are usually miserable things, cheap tricks or illusions, bits of tech from off-world – common on the home planets but still exciting out here – even re-enactments of famous battles glossed up with fine words that had never been said. There are beetle fights, bird fights, prize bouts between bruisers and strung-out veterans who want to taste blood on their teeth again.

Who knows what these Vipers are. Two performers emerge to set up the stage, wearing tight costumes of silver, their faces smeared with shining paint, like Valdosta’s. Catcalls and hollers follow their movements. Not fighters, then. If Valdosta tries to play the dice on a crowd like this, things might turn bad quickly.

I step away when a noise splits the air, high-pitched and wheeling, followed by thunder. Music. I turn back, stunned, as a figure walks out with a drum, and another with a pipe. It’s been so long since I’d heard real instruments. A memory returns of sitting in a concert hall on Prosper, surrounded by clean, wealthy people, all of us captivated by the symphony orchestra. I had never heard anything like it but even then, as the beauty of the music moved me to tears, I felt a stab of pain, knowing I was only there to experience it through a lie. I remember holding on to the plush seat, wondering if I could have had a life like that – for real – if I had made a different choice.

But I hadn’t. And now, here I am, transfixed by two pedlars with makeshift instruments. All around palms slap in time, voices fill the air, people jostle to see. And I crane alongside them, my eyes hungry, my brain ravenous for a new sight after months of the Barrens.

Valdosta steps out from behind a curtain and raises their arms, commanding quiet. They’ve shed the voluminous coat for a costume covered with long translucent ribbons that flutter from their elbows, wrists and hair.

‘Is this a place of clear thoughts and constant spirits?’ they cry.

‘Yes!’ someone hollers, and the crowd join in.

‘Is this a place of the steadfast? The staunch and the unswerving?’

The agreement grows louder. Part of me wants to raise my voice and slap my neighbour and grin. But I can’t. If they knew what I was they would cringe from me.

‘Then I ask,’ Valdosta calls, ‘for a volunteer! One brave person to prove that there is no doubt in any soul!’

They clap their hands, and immediately two assistants appear, each holding a battered cage containing a live snake. The noise of the crowd intensifies. They are happy, relieved now that they know what the show will be. An animal show, where someone faces down a dangerous beast to win a prize. It’s a favourite in the townships, because everyone knows that the beasts are tame and won’t attack; there can be no doubt in the outcome, no danger, though people like to pretend there is. Make something prohibited and it becomes what folk crave, even if that thing is doubt itself.

Shaking my head, I turn away. Valdosta is an ordinary charlatan and racketeer, then, if a glamorous one. I have almost reached the gates when a booming voice stops me in my tracks. The volunteer has been chosen, and it’s Loto.

She stands, her arms tucked like a wrestler, her tattooed face flushed with drink. She crouches and – to the approval of the crowd – spits in readiness to face her foes.

Valdosta signals the assistants to open the doors of the cages. I crane to see the snakes uncoil into the night, their tongues flickering. They look the part: pit vipers, heavily scarred and muscular, patterned white and grey like Valdosta’s coat. I watch as Loto feints towards them, staggering clumsily.

‘Carrion worms!’ she slurs. ‘Piece of shit Limiter traitors, think we’ll just forget?’ The crowd roars her on as the snakes jerk and raise their heads. ‘I’ll kill you both!’ Loto screams, her face contorted. ‘I’ll drink your blood!’

Valdosta’s arms shoot up, the snakes rear, and something crashes against my consciousness, too huge to fit inside my skull. They are here. They are here, and they are hungry. Reality stretches and squeezes as every possibility presents itself at once, tangled together. I see flames, I see blood flying, I see the crowd surging towards Valdosta, the decisions of two dozen people happening simultaneously.

Did they follow me here? Did I bring them down upon this place? For an instant something shines through the chaos: a snake’s fang, bared and ready to strike. Valdosta’s eyes meet mine.

A scream splits the air, and another. Loto staggers, one snake attached to her arm, the other to her ankle, their blunted fangs sunk deep into her flesh. Valdosta still stares at me even as one of the assistants pulls a knife from their belt. All around, people scream that it is them: the Ifs, the demons, come to feast.

I run for the gates with the rest of the crowd. The metal judders and shakes as people shove their way outside, stumbling for their vehicles, as if that will help, as if they aren’t everywhere. Outside the gate I turn, half-desperate to call back to Valdosta. Do you see what I see? Do they follow you too?

Nausea churning the mezcal in my stomach, I flee towards the mule, towards the child and the decision that waits there, knowing they are watching me go.

* * *

Across the fire, the girl’s face twitches. The fitful light makes her seem old one moment, young the next; now heavy with lines and woe, now untroubled, like any child at rest.

But she is not any child. A bit of scrub snaps and flares and the light catches on her tangled, curling black hair cut into the style favoured by the Accord: longer on one side, short on the other, to display the tattoo of rank to full effect.

I’ve never seen a child of the Minority Force before. People used to say that they weren’t real, that they were just normal children play-acting at being strategists and soldiers, that the whole idea was a propaganda exercise cooked up by the Accord then twisted by the Free Limits to show what the true overreach of power looked like.

I study the girl’s face, rolling a bead between my teeth, tasting its dull bitterness before biting down. Considering how she attacked before, I’ll need every ounce of wit I have. As the faint buzz of the breath goes through me, I pick up a pebble, take aim and throw it gently. It takes another four before she wakes.