Read Death's Head for Free Online Page B

low enough to keep my legs from moving. I am, however, definitely still alive, and this is more than I have any right to expect.
    “We can’t send you back to the legion,” he says. “You know how it is. One man left after an entire fort is slaughtered. No brigade would take you…” He hesitates, amends his words. “Well,” he says, “no brigade would take you and let you live. So we have to think of something else. Do you have any thoughts on the matter?”
    It doesn’t occur to me to wonder why a general is taking the trouble to discuss matters with an ex-legion ex-sergeant.
    “I don’t care where I go,” I say. “So long as it’s not back to the desert.”
    “Had enough of the sun, have we?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Right,” he says. “Leave it with me. I’ll see what we can do.”

 
    CHAPTER 8

    F ALL IN,” orders a corporal, so I do.
    I wear a militia uniform at least ten years out of date and a size too small.
    Maybe it amuses the general to see me look so shabby beside his men’s black-and-silver uniforms. And I travel in his entourage, although it’s probably more honest to say I travel with the baggage.
    We leave Karbonne in a sleek black fighter that takes far more passengers than it should, given its rapierlike profile. An hour later we rendezvous with a mother ship in high orbit above the planet. Why the mother ship bothers with high orbit is anyone’s guess. There were precious few people left on the surface of this world with weapons to do more than bring down a simple kite.
    I’m sent for again two days later. My meeting with the general is brief. He simply nods at the sergeant who led my execution party, and then nods at me. “Horse will look after you,” he says.
    The sergeant nods. “Yes, sir,” he says. “We’ll have a good time.” He’s quite obviously talking to the general.
    “Dismissed,” says General Jaxx.
    And away we go.
    “He’s taken a liking to you,” says the sergeant. “Just as well. If Colonel Nuevo had his way, you’d be dead.”
    “If I had my way,” I growl back, “he’d be slop in the bottom of some bucket.”
    The sergeant smiles at me, a death’s-head grin that goes with his silver buttons and the badge on his cap. “You ever been on a mother ship before?”
    My snort is answer enough.
    I’ve jumped planet in low-level troop carriers, surrounded by the kind of recruits who throw up if forced to cross a puddle, and I’ve dropped from a pod, years ago when we first took this system from the Enlightened, may their metal heads catch fire…Mother ships, battle cruisers, and high fighters are not usual forms of legion transport.
    “Let me show you around.”
    As it happens, he doesn’t show me very far. An elevator drops us eighteen levels and we exit into the bowels of the recreation area. If anything this clean can be so described. Black glass walls and black glass fountains. A row of tables outside a café, pushed tightly together, because the corridor down which we walk isn’t that wide.
    A smartly dressed woman with two small children sits at one of the tables. The man sitting opposite her is ridiculously elegant and drinking something cloudy and green from a tiny glass. An Obsidian Cross hangs from his collar, and silver braid waterfalls down one side of his chest. He wears the uniform of a Death’s Head lieutenant as if it’s a particularly amusing form of costume.
    He glances idly at the sergeant beside me, and the sergeant comes to attention. A polite nod and we’ve obviously been given our orders to move on.
    “Let’s find a bar,” I say.
    Horse laughs. “Okay,” he says. “The general wins.”
    I frown.
    “He said this was about as far as you’d get…” As the sergeant looks around him, I wonder what he sees. To me it’s a new world, one where Death’s Head officers and NCOs slouch down corridors, black-and-silver jackets slung loosely over their shoulders. A world where bar-keepers smile and whores are polite, instead