Free Death's Head by David Gunn Page A

man is bearded, dressed in a dozen different layers of rags, and his hand starts moving toward his boot the moment Anton enters his world. A knife, I guess. Probably homemade and crude, like his shelter.
    He’s a loner. We’ve all seen them before.
    “No,” Anton says, shaking his head. “I’m not here to cause trouble. I just want to know where you found the food.”
    The old-timer’s grin shows broken teeth.
    “Well?” My patience is not up to Anton’s standards.
    “Wall,” the man says before going back to prodding his fire. Most of the ashes seem mixed with bone. I have my answer.
    “We eat the worm,” I tell Debro.
    Phibs looks sick.
    “I’m serious…It’s frozen and vast. There’s got to be some kind of goodness in the bones, and the flesh can probably be dried for use later.” The girl is looking at me with horror. Debro’s expression isn’t much better. So I leave them to tell the others and push ahead. When I can go no farther and the worm gives way to a wall of sheer ice, I know we’ve arrived.
    “We’re going to die,” announces Phibs when he catches up with me. He’s looking at our new quarters, which used to be somebody’s old quarters until that person obviously moved up in the world. A cave has been hacked directly into the ice, and a mound of frozen shit and yellow ice decorate one corner. All you can say for the arrangement is that at least the subzero temperatures mean the shit doesn’t smell.
    A ragged piece of canvas is bundled into one corner. It’s ripped and filthy, but it’s better than nothing, and some of the men are wearing more than one layer of clothes. At least one of the older women has a cloak. Debro herself is wearing my jacket.
    “I need that back,” I tell her.
    Beside me, Anton bridles.
    Phibs already understands. “We must make a doorway,” he says. “Keep in what heat we can, right?”
    Debro slides herself out of my jacket, and I notice the expensive black suit beneath. No one has stolen Debro’s clothes anywhere up the line. I find that interesting in itself.
    “And your jacket,” I tell another woman.
    She glares at me.
    “And yours.”
    The man next to her clutches his arms across the front of his jacket. “Or what?” he demands.
    “I’ll break your skull against the wall and take it anyway.”
    Behind me, Debro sighs. “I think you’ll find he means it,” she says, looking at the man, who climbs out of his coat in sullen silence. A second later the woman does the same.
    We collect up spare clothes among us—Debro, Anton, Phibs, the girl, and I. Her name is Rebecca, but I only discover that when we’ve finished sorting the jackets and coats by size. She’s nervous around me, maybe because she heard me suggest swapping her for food.
    And then, once Debro has found something to go across the door, which turns out to be the rag we found at the start, I leave her redistributing clothing according to need and wander over to the pile of frozen shit, making myself vomit and catching the laser blade before it hits the floor.
    A quick flick of its handle and my blade appears. The m3x has a default set to cobalt blue, which lets the user see what he’s doing. At its purest setting the blade is entirely invisible and all the more frightening for being so.
    “Holy fuck,” someone says.
    But by then I’m working.
    Sandstone, ice, or carbon, there’s little difference among them as building materials and they’re all better than piss-stinking adobe. I cut block after block from the ice until I have enough bricks to build a wall. The ragged curtain provides camouflage, hiding my work from anyone outside.
    Waving the others back, I slash the cave entrance into a square, giving myself a surface to which the ice bricks will bond. And then I carry my blocks, three at a time, and lay them in place. It’s quicker than having to show someone else how to do it.
    When this is finished we have a doorway narrow enough to be guarded by one or two people,