Death's Head Read Online Free PDF Page B

uniforms.
    You know the one. It’s black, with silver piping to the shoulders, narrow silver epaulets, and silver bars on the collar. A skull stares from each button. A tiny dagger hangs on his left hip from a silver chain, as much an affectation as the spectacles, which have smoked-glass lenses.
    Other cavalry regiments rely on gold braid, scarlet cloaks, crimson linings, and even cavalry knots in nauseating shades of green. They all look like doormen in overpriced knocking shops.
    Not the Death’s Head. No one who has ever seen that uniform could mistake it for anything else. And in the unlikely event you might mistake it, the men wrapped in its understated arrogance are usually happy enough to correct your error.
    A sergeant hauls me from the ground and holds me upright in front of the officer. At a nod from the colonel, the sergeant drops me again.
    “Ceramic?” says the colonel “Are you sure?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Army-issue armored ceramic…?”
    I nod again, having nodded the first time as well as barked out my reply. “Yes, sir.”
    Is this man an idiot, his gaze says. If not, then what am I dealing with here? He does not look the type to take battle fatigue kindly.
    “And where do ferox get ceramic?” he asks, his voice quiet.
    “From Fort Libidad,” I tell him.
    “I see,” he says. “And they carried it here? All the way across the desert?”
    I’m bored with nodding. “Have you seen Fort Libidad?” I ask. Around me, half a dozen officers tense.
    “What if I have?”
    “It occurs to me,” I say slowly, wondering how to finish a sentence I shouldn’t have begun in the first place, “that perhaps you might have noticed the armory?”
    “Might I?” says the colonel, turning to a major. The major looks nervous, as well he might. Other officers are discreetly backing away, obviously worried about being included in the question.
    “You noticed the bodies, sir.”
    “Everyone noticed the bodies,” says the colonel. “It would be hard not to, given how many there were. Tell me…what did I notice about the armory?”
    “I’m sorry, sir,” the major admits finally. “I’m not sure.”
    “There isn’t one,” I say.
    Both officers turn to me, but only the colonel is smiling, and it’s the smile of a cat that’s seen a particularly interesting piece of prey.
    “Isn’t one?” His voice is quiet and sounds eminently reasonable, always a bad sign in a senior officer.
    “They cut it up,” I tell him, already bored with the conversation. Part of me knows I’m living dangerously, but the shock of getting away from the ferox has gone to my head, and my relief at being back among my own kind is giving me unrealistic expectations of how I can expect my own kind to behave.
    “And then,” I say, “they carried it across the desert. Not one bit, but the whole fucking thing. The reason you didn’t see an armory is that there’s no armory left to see. It’s been patched into their tunnels and disguised with mud, rubble, and assorted shit…”
    I’m rambling, but no one seems to mind.
    “How do you know this?” the colonel demands.
    “I was there.”
    The two officers glance at each other.
    “You went with them back to the fort?”
    It’s a bad question. Yes, I’m a traitor. No, I’m a liar…“They took me,” I say. “It wasn’t like they told me why.”
    A hard stare, then the two officers glance again at each other. I’ve gone from being a traitor or a liar to being insane. Of the three options, it’s probably the safest. So why do I have to blow it?
    Some habits are difficult to break, I guess.
    “I learned how to communicate with them.”
    That really gets their attention.
    “It’s true…” Pushing aside a medic, in my anxiety to sit up and make what I say sound true I scramble as far as my knees. A tube is already in my wrist and the medic seems to be trying to force another up my nose, for no reason that seems obvious.
    “Leave us,” demands the colonel, waving