Maximum Offence Read Online Free PDF

to do it.’
    It takes me a minute to find a handhold good enough to take both our weights. By now, I’m behind her, my body close to hers. She can feel my breath on the back of her neck and I can smell fear rise like dying heat from her body.
    I tell her to turn round and grip my shoulders.
    She doesn’t want to do it, but she knows that staying glued to this cliff isn’t a choice. So she shifts slightly, only to freeze as I wrap one arm round her waist.
    ‘Turn slowly, I’ve got you.’
    Can she do it?
    The answer is yes. Letting go, she shifts until she can put her arms round my neck. It is just bad luck my foot chooses that moment to slip.
    As I grab cliff and Rachel tightens her grip, my feet kick for a new hold. For a moment, I think we are not going to make it. So does Rachel. As my toes find rock, a liquid heat fills my lap.
    She’s pissed herself. As good a sign that we’re still alive as any.
    ‘Wrap your legs round me.’
    Her hips are wide enough to let her do it. She’s strong, unless it’s just fear that has her squeezing my hips as if her life depends on it. When she tightens her grip, I can feel her breasts squash against me. Her hair smells of oil, and her body smells of fear, overlaid with the sharpness of fresh urine.
    ‘Sir,’ she says. ‘You all right, sir?’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘Just wondered.’
    ‘ Rachel . . . ‘
    ‘You went still, sir. Like you’d realized something.’
    She’s brighter than I thought. Either that or she reads minds.
    ‘We need to move.’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    With her arms locked tight round my neck and her legs gripping my hips, we make the return climb. It takes longer than it should, as I have to test each grip before letting go with my other hand.
    Normally I’d jump the last fifteen or twenty feet, but I can’t. Not carrying Rachel. So I edge my way down the cliff until I feel gravel beneath my toes.
    ‘Wrap her in something warm.’
    If Shil notices the stain on Rachel’s clothes, she keeps it to herself.

Chapter 5
    ONCE THEY ARE BROKEN, NEEN SEPARATES THE BUSHES INTO piles. One pile is kindling, the other our supplies for later. Franc is feeding the fire. She’s having a competition with herself to see how close she can get her fingers to the flames.
    The roots are oily, which helps them burn. Ash already lines a circle of stones holding the fire. Shil is talking to Rachel, both of them kneeling behind us in the safety of the cave.
    Between them, they scoop handfuls of grit from the floor until they hit water. Most of the Aux are farm-born on shitty little planets, in backward bits of the spiral. It’s easy to forget that; until one of them makes a perfect fire or finds water from instinct.
    They are born on farms, grow up on farms, are conscripted into one army, captured and conscripted by another. Then, carrying cheap guns and wearing even cheaper uniforms, they pod-drop onto marshland outside a city called Ilseville.
    That is where they’re meant to die.
    Only they meet a lieutenant without troops. So when their NCO goes down he takes over.
    That’s me.
    When I look up, Shil’s staring at me, and there’s something knowing in her eyes. Maybe she’s noticed the way I’ve been watching Rachel . . . Franc’s abandoned the fire for her knives, which she’s sharpening on a tiny whetstone. They look sharp enough to me.
    Pushing myself to my feet, I nod towards the darkness.
    ‘Coming?’ I ask Franc.
    Grinning, she stuffs one knife into her belt, another into her boot and slots the last, sight unseen, into a sheath hidden in the small of her back. I don’t see where she puts the last one because she turns her back on me.
    We are done up as mercenaries. This means far too many zips, flaps and shiny buckles for my liking. The Legion wear combat camouflage. Double dirt, they call it. Death’s Head wear black, with silver stripes or shoulder bars.
    Mercenaries look like an explosion in a cheap market.
    ‘Neen,’ I say, ‘keep everyone in the