Free Maximum Offence by David Gunn Page B

‘You don’t.’
    Leaning forward, he slaps his hand on a recognition panel, and engines begin to quiver behind us. This shuttle is strictly short-run. I’ve seen one like this before on a landing field in Farlight. Unless our destination is within a hundred thousand miles of here, I don’t see how we are going to get anywhere.
    I needn’t have worried.
    Once we are buckled in, the colonel taps a number sequence into a pad on the console in front of him. He does it swiftly and confidently. The very exemplar of a competent officer. Then ruins it all by cancelling and re-entering the numbers, more slowly this time.
    And before I even have time to think idiot , space rips and we are there.

Chapter 11
    MOST CIVILIANS BELIEVE YOU CAN CATCH THE UPLIFT VIRUS simply by being in the same room as an Enlightened. That is not true according to Haze. It’s elective. That means people choose to catch it. Well, it means they find an Uplifted willing to cut three lines into their wrist and rub his blood into the wounds.
    After that, it is too late. You can’t change your mind if you want to. You have it, your children have it, their children have it. Germ-line manipulation, Haze says. Whatever the fuck that means. I am not sure what I’m expecting when an airlock opens to let us into Hekati’s hub, but a greeting party made up of a five-braid Enlightened in full-dress uniform, flanked by half a dozen Silver Fist guards, isn’t on my list.
    This braid is as tall as I am.
    Almost as broad too, but that is where the likeness ends. I don’t have fat tubes looping from my naked chest to my hip nor a dozen metal hoses criss-crossing my gut like veins. Mind you, he doesn’t have a prosthetic arm.
    As the Enlightened turns, one of his braids scrapes against the leathery skin of his left shoulder. His eyes are shiny as glass. Perhaps five-braids have eyelids and perhaps not. Hard to say, because this one doesn’t blink. He just stands with his legs planted on the deck and his fingers tight round the handle of a heavy pistol.
    For now it’s in his holster.
    As I said, we are newly docked in Hekati’s central hub.
    Take a huge wheel world, give it four spokes that join in the middle at a hub and we’re inside that. Our CO is frozen in the doorway. I don’t think he’s ever seen an Enlightened before. Certainly not close up.
    Behind the five-braid stands a Silver Fist lieutenant. He has one of those faces that looks chiselled from granite and he likes the look. As I watch, his eyes flick to a screen to check his own reflection.
    Their sergeant interests me.
    He is broad, because sergeants mostly are. Doesn’t matter how often officers tell you they want NCOs with brain. Most officers want brawn and are happy to supply the brains themselves. Neen is the exception, he has brains and he’s not broad. Their sergeant is watching me.
    He is puzzled. Since I’m one of life’s natural sergeants, he probably wants to know what I’m doing wearing the collar bars of a Death’s Head lieutenant. It’s a question I ask myself most mornings. Until I remember the answer.
    My alternative was to be shot.
    ‘So,’ the braid says. ‘If you’d like to introduce yourselves?’ He is staring at Colonel Vijay when he says this.
    When the colonel remains frozen, I answer for him.
    ‘Tveskoeg, Sven, lieutenant, 1028282839.’
    The braid looks at me.
    ‘Name, rank and number,’ I say. ‘That’s all we’re giving.’
    ‘You’re not prisoners,’ says the five-braid. ‘You’re . . .’ He hesitates, thinking about it. Or maybe he is only pretending, because he’s nodding and all his men are leaning forward to catch what he will say.
    ‘Honoured guests.’
    The Silver Fist sergeant has something like pity in his eyes. His sympathy doesn’t make me feel any better. As for the five-braid, he’s gesturing at a screen that shows our little craft hanging in space just beyond the edge of the hub. ‘Regard us as a necessary evil,’ he says.