‘You think they’ll follow us?’
‘Moloney might look like a bit of meat with eyes, but he’s a vicious bastard. Rooks don’t dare mess with us in Landfall. Out here though…’
A mare rumbles up beside us. It carries Pegeen and a second, slumped figure.
‘Boots is hurt!’ Peg yells.
The other G’hal is bleeding heavily from a head wound, her glasses missing, her skin grazed and torn from scalp to hip. She’s conscious, but barely. When we slide her from the back of the mare, she lets out a cry of pain.
Falco’s eye is bright with tears as she holds Boots’s face. ‘Doc?’
‘Bring her up here.’ I unclip the medkit. ‘I can treat her as we ride.’
The General gives up her seat. All the savage energy of the fight has left her, and now her eyes are raw and red, her face strained beneath a paste of dust and fuel.
‘What can I do?’ she asks.
I glance at her. Had she fought in the war like that, with so little thought for her own life? Or is it the recklessness of the dying? ‘You have done enough,’ I say.
‘We owe you our lives,’ Pegeen agrees, tearfully.
Falco shakes her head. ‘Never thought I’d be thanking a starred General of the Accord for anything, but Peg’s right. You saved our hides back there. Though god knows how you did it.’
The General smiles at last, her dry lips cracking. ‘That ship was a repurposed scout. A Peregrine 420. They have a tank in the belly for easy refuelling. Stupid design.’
‘Still, must have been a thousand to one chance of hitting a target like that, let alone moving, let alone in the dark.’
The General shrugs. ‘For you, maybe.’
I know what she means. For us ordinary humans. I stay quiet as Falco starts the engine and we move on, concentrating on treating Boots, and ignoring the clash of awe and pity and horror that fills me every time I look at the General.
Finally, when Boots’s wounds are dressed and she lies on the seats, breathing more easily, I look down. The General hunches on the floor of the wagon in her yellow jacket, like a sick bird, her eyes closed.
‘How are you feeling?’ I ask awkwardly, reaching to touch her forehead.
She snatches her head away, but not before I feel that, in the already warm morning, she is far hotter than any human should be.
‘Don’t concern yourself,’ she says, licking her cracked lips.
‘General—’
‘I am fine. Only sick of being in this damn box on wheels.’ She lets her head fall back, her eyes close. ‘I used to have my own scout ship you know. A Hawk. It was a beautiful thing. Intelligent steering, stabilisation coils, self-adjusting atmospheric pressure. Never thought I’d be stuck on the ground like this, crawling along like a beetle.’
I don’t answer. It began two years ago, with the A-series. The Commander’s words come back to me. As they aged, they simply broke down. It’s a painful, wretched end.
‘What series are you?’ I ask.
The General doesn’t open her eyes. ‘C. There were thirteen of us. Raised at the base on Voivira, whittled down from hundreds.’ Her lips twitch. ‘The best class the Accord ever produced, according to reports. Late enough for the accelerated cognition process to have been ironed out, early enough that the programme had not yet been diluted to suit the bleeding hearts.’ She opens one eye. ‘D-series onwards are little better than figureheads. Not fit for battle. Not like us.’
I turn away.
It’s genius, I think, staring at the passing desert, brilliant with morning light. Calculated, twisted genius. Not only because the children it produced are near super-human, but because they are devoted to their cause as only the young can be. Because only a sociopath would fail to feel some pity for them. Whatever the General had done, however many atrocities she had committed, I can never forget that, beneath the scars and fierce intelligence, she should have been an ordinary child. And she knows that. Uses it.
But still, I can’t shake the feeling that they are using her too.
‘The way you fired at that craft,’ I say. ‘Did you… feel anything?’
‘What do you mean?’ she snaps, but behind the insolence I hear fear and know I am right.
‘You’re not going mad,’ I say, over the clatter of the wagon. ‘It’s them, it was the same for me in the beginning—’
But my words are cut off as the wagon bumps over something hard and metallic buried in the sand.
‘That’s a warning platform,’ Falco calls. ‘Be on your guard. We’re coming up to the Pit.’
Ahead, metal glints in the sun. Strange shapes are set at regular intervals along the road, on either side of the trail. As we draw closer, my stomach contracts.
They are cages, ugly boxes half-dug into the ground. When we pass the first an arm shoots out, clawing at the air with bloodied nails. We pass another, and another. Some look empty, others seethe with flies, dried gore soaking the dust before them.
My heart beats hard in my throat. Beside me, the General has lost her usual stony expression, staring in disgust and dismay.
‘We have to stop,’ I say. ‘There are people alive in there.’
Falco’s jaw is tight, but she continues to drive, looking straight ahead.
‘Much as I hate to say it, the traitor’s right, why the hell haven’t we turned around?’ the General demands.
‘We turn around, we’re carrion,’ Falco says. ‘Told you there was a new Pit Boss. Guess this is their way of cleaning things up.’
A few minutes later we come to a watchtower, built from rusted scraps. Beyond, a huge crater yawns. The sides are lost in shadow, but deep within something glints. A thin cord dangles from the tower, disappearing beneath the dust of the road. Falco stops the wagon clear enough that I guess it is the fuse for some kind of explosive.
‘Well,’ a voice hoots. ‘If it ain’t Lady Sickness herself.’
A figure
