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“I loved Ten Low. Combining the taut characterisation and clever wit of Stark Holborn’s spectacular Westerns with some splendidly inclusive and innovative sci-fi, this is a wonderful fusion of Firefly and Joanna Russ, with a Ennio Morricone soundtrack.” – JOANNE HARRIS, BEST-SELLING AUTHOR OF CHOCOLAT, THE GOSPEL OF LOKI AND MANY MORE

“A fantastic, punchy SF action story, full of blood and grit and bitter pasts.” – ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY, AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF CHILDREN OF TIME, DOGS OF WAR AND MANY MORE.

“Stark Holborn continues to impress. Great characters and a blistering pace.” – GARETH POWELL, AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE EMBERS OF WAR SERIES

“Ten Low showed me the most vibrant desert world since Dune. [It] leaves the old guard masters in the dust.” – ALEX WHITE, AUTHOR OF THE SALVAGERS TRILOGY

“Stark Holborn’s writing is clever, original and thrilling.” – R. J. BARKER, AUTHOR OF THE BONE SHIPS AND AGE OF ASSASSINS

“An action-packed SF adventure with an intriguing majority female cast? OH, HELL YES!” – STINA LEICHT, AUTHOR OF PERSEPHONE STATION

“I loved this from beginning to end. Stark Holborn grabs you by the throat on page one and never lets you go!” – CAVAN SCOTT, BESTSELLING AND AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR

“A gritty space western that fans of The Mandalorian should lap up.” – PAUL CORNELL, AUTHOR OF THE SHADOW POLICE AND WITCHES OF LYCHFORD SERIES

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Copyright

Ten Low

Print edition ISBN: 9781789096620

E-book edition ISBN: 9781789096637

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: June 2021

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© Stark Holborn 2021

Stark Holborn asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Dedication

For N.E.D.

One: The Book Of The General

ONE

THE

BOOK

OF

THE

GENERAL

I HUNCH CLOSER TO the sputtering fire. The darkness is vast, hiding countless lives, but down here the wind just coughs dust into my eyes. I close them against the grit, against the light of the struggling flames, against the emptiness around me, knowing I should sleep but afraid of what I might dream.

My thoughts have a habit of coming loose. The more I keep to myself, the more they seep from my head, catching on the stubble of my scalp and trailing out behind me like cotton. Unless I’m careful, I won’t get them reeled in again before I make Redcrop. I can’t afford that. Single words, single thoughts: no doubts and no questions.

I tug the scarf further towards the brim of my hat. Sometimes I wish for hair, thick and curling as it once was, to cover my ears and warm my scalp. I feel for the pouch at my hip. It is slack, the beads inside cold and too few. Breath. I hold one to my lips and try to believe it is what people say: a sphere of pure air from the forests of Prosper.

The bead clacks against my teeth before I bite down. The splintering plastic cuts my trailing thoughts and stops me from leaking into the night, even though there is no good oxygen within; just an empty orb and a dusting of dex-amphetamine. Enough to ease the fatigue caused by the thin air, even after all these months.

I swallow, the noise loud in my ears. Beyond the tiny fire there’s nothing. Just the wind. Some folk say the wind is alive, that it coils between the stars like a snake. Who am I to say they are wrong? Too long out here and you begin to hear the wind speak. An endless sigh that started a hundred thousand cycles before I was born.

Carefully, I drag my bag closer and bring the notebook into the firelight. The cover is peeling, and there aren’t many blank pages left, but I turn to one and take the pencil nub from the crease.

Hafsa Gellam, I write, and see her face again, eyes heavy with exhaustion as she gripped my hand. Beneath her name I draw a line and label it Child Gellam. Another line, another name: Child’s Child? I draw on, tracing four imaginary generations, until the pencil scrapes the bottom of the page.

So much potential… Life in the Barrens is hard won and easily lost, but Hafsa is a strong woman, and the child seemed healthy when I left. If the child lived, and went on to produce a child of their own and so on… I close my eyes. What if just one of those newly possible people saves another, with a word or a deed or a single, unthinking act? How many futures could that tiny, bloodied newborn carry within? How many lives could I add to the tally?

When I open my eyes I know at once that I’m no longer alone. Something is out there, beyond the firelight.

It’s them.

I can’t see them, but I sense them, clearer than ever before. The hairs bristle on my arms. They’ve surrounded me.

‘What do you want?’ I whisper.

The wind howls; whips out a tongue to lick the moisture from my eyeballs, cat-slinks around me. But that’s just the wind. They haven’t moved.

‘What do you want?’ I ask it again.

Useless to talk. They would not listen to anything I have to say. I’m not even sure they speak. Words are a skin to keep fear within the body, and they have no bodies, have no fear.

Whether they understand me or not, there is a shift, a change in the air as if they are pressing closer, and my heart starts to beat madly. They seize my attention, stretch it far beyond my normal capacity, stretch it out to the east where something waits, hot and sharp and urgent.

My mind rebels, catapulting me back into myself, into a confusion of images: cold metal piercing skin, pain on the wings of black birds, a figure gloved in blood…

I open my eyes. I’m lying in the dirt, the hat fallen from my head. Beyond the fire there’s nothing, just the night. Have they gone? Impossible to tell. They’re never truly gone, just as they are never truly here.

But they have left a feeling behind them: the conviction that past the plateau to the east, something waits.

I look up to see the ship fall flaming to the earth.

* * *

It takes me the rest of the night to reach the crash site. The glow lights the horizon pink as raw flesh. I travel as fast as I can, but the mule is sluggish, jostled by the wind, sand-scoured and grit-loaded. By the time I smell the smoke, night is losing its fullness and the wind is weakening, dragged to another hemisphere by the darkness.

I’ve seen wrecks in my time, in their many stages of tragedy, but never one like this. The destruction is total, every inch of metal a flame, every flame so hot it has scorched the sand to glass. There’s no telling what the ship once was, no telling how many souls it carried to this bright and violent end. I scrape at the dirt with my boot. Can’t linger here. A wreck like this will attract scavengers like the Seekers within hours.

What’s a ship doing out here, in any case? There are no ports, only the scattered townships of the Barrens. A navigational error? I squint up into the lightening sky. From how far has the ship fallen?

The impact crater is still hot enough to sear my face, and as I peer down I see that it’s useless. There’s nothing left, only blackened streaks and shards.

I start to walk away when my gut lurches, as if it’s trying to drag itself east. The images come on fast again: a bird with black wings, cold metal, bloodied hands… Spitting, I straighten up. They are obviously not finished with me.

I get back on the mule and drive away from the wreckage, towards the rising sun.

Morning in the Barrens is beautiful, but it comes with an asking price of hunger and cold, loneliness and near-insanity. A price that almost no one is willing to pay.

I have paid, many times over, but I don’t spare a glance at that hard-won beauty. Instead, I stare at the track that has carved its way through the dirt. At the end of it, beside the twisted remains of a lifecraft, two figures lie motionless on the sand.

In the few seconds before I reach them, I think about turning the mule aside, leaving the bodies and continuing on, into another future.

But I won’t, and they know that. They know my choice was made long ago.

Twenty paces away I stop, reaching for the knife at my belt. Gangs like the Seekers or the Rooks sometimes use bodies as bait. I edge closer.

The downed lifecraft is dull silver, new-looking, with no markings or badges to suggest what kind of ship it might have come from. That isn’t unusual. Ever since the war it has been standard practice to strip all lifecraft bare, in case of a landing in enemy territory. Not that Factus took a side; no one wanted it anyhow. Even the Free Limits had little use for a waterless wasteland where the enemy was everything and nothing.

Wisps of smoke coil from the ruined craft, and the whole thing stinks of hot metal and melting plastic. Gripping the knife, I lean over the figures. They lie huddled, so close together it’s difficult to tell them apart, covered in sand as they are. The larger one is a man, I think, cradling a smaller one. I nudge the man with my boot. When he doesn’t move, I pull off my ragged gloves to reach in through the smashed helmet of the flight suit.

His face is cold but there’s a pulse, faint and faltering. The helmet of the smaller figure is raised, a little. I worm my fingers through the gap and feel that the flesh there is warmer, the pulse stronger. The man’s arms did their job.

I brush the sand away from the suits, searching for identification. But they too are plain: no labels even. The man is solid and muscular and at least seven feet tall. It takes all my strength to roll him away. As soon as I do, a weak groan emerges from the shattered helmet. I ignore it, and ease the smaller of the two into a position better suited to breathing.

As soon as I touch the body, I feel slackness within the sleeves. Whoever is wearing the suit is small and slight. The man is undoubtedly an adult – could this be a child?

Swearing, I unclip the helmet from the suit. A child: what might that do for my tally? I don’t dare think about it as I wrench the helmet free.

Black hair tangles around a small face grey with blood loss, the features lost beneath a cake of dried gore and sand. Desperately, I check the skull, searching for wounds. When I find the contusion on the scalp, three inches long and bleeding sluggishly, I let out a breath. If that is the only damage – and if the child regains consciousness – they should live.

Just as I bend to pick the child up, something strikes me hard in the side, sending me sprawling. Choking on dust, I scramble for my knife, cursing myself to falling into an ambush…

But no. There are no other blows, no figures emerging from foxholes dug into the sand, no swooping crafts. Reddened eyes stare back at me. The man is awake.

He croaks a word, blood staining his teeth, and his eyes go to the knife, then to the child. He tries to rise, only to fall again with a gurgle of pain.

‘No harm,’ I tell him, holding up my hands. ‘No harm. Medic.’

‘You… touch her,’ he says, in an accent I can’t place. ‘You die.’

He is not in a position to be making any kind of threats, but I nod. ‘I need to fetch my kit. I have supplies. I can treat you both.’

‘Where?’ He half lifts his head to stare around, ropes of strain in his neck. ‘Where is here?’

‘The Barrens. North of Redcrop.’

He raises his eyes to the sky, losing its beauty now, turning flat white. ‘Where?’ he insists.

I follow his gaze up towards Brovos, pinkish-red and just visible in the sky. The last planet in the system, and beyond its orbit, nothing but the Void. Has he fallen from so far he doesn’t even know which moon he is on?

Above, invisible in the air, they sway and shift the lights of other worlds.

‘Factus,’ I tell him, turning away. ‘We’re on Factus.’

* * *

The man’s eyes follow my movements as I haul the tarp from the back of the mule. He’s more alert now, but that does not mean he will live. Folk often have a wave of consciousness before the end. I once read about forest trees on Earth, and how they did much the same: used the last of their strength to send their life force through the roots and into the soil, giving it to others. That was what this stranger had done, in all likelihood, for this child. So be it. One life is better than none at all.

I set up a shelter from the rising sun, stretching the tarp from the post anchored on the mule across to the wreckage. I try to work fast, my eyes on the child, not yet conscious.

‘You,’ the man croaks. ‘Woman. Your name.’

‘Hafsa Gellam,’ I lie, as I tie off the tarp.

I feel his eyes travelling across my sunburned face, half-hidden by the scarf that wraps my neck from collarbone to chin, across my shorn head, my old jacket, my hands, roughened by the winds.

‘Which side?’ he asks.

I open the medkit to check its contents which, in truth, are pitiful. I haven’t been able to bring myself to stop at a trade post for some time and here is the evidence: two rolls of squashed bandage, a bottle of cleaning fluid, a few ampules of analgesics and tranqs and boosters, needles, thread.

‘What does it matter?’ I say, searching for my cleanest rag. ‘War’s over.’

‘Which side?’

‘I didn’t fight.’

‘Everyone fought.’

‘Not here.’

He grunts, as if to say that’s something I can well believe, but when I take out a roll of bandage, his eyes narrow. The bandages are black market, lifted long ago from a consignment headed for the First Accord. At the sight of the double yellow triangles stamped upon the wrappings, he seems to relax.

Whoever he is, he’s given himself away. One way to find out for sure. Kneeling, I unclip the shattered helmet from his flight suit and work it free. As the man gasps in relief, I see the tattoo on his temple, half-hidden by tangled copper hair. The same double triangles that mark the bandages. Beneath them is a thick line. A lieutenant, then. I glance at the ruined craft – a defector? I start to unclip the rest of the suit.

‘No.’ He knocks my hands away. ‘Her.’

‘Your injuries are worse.’

His face is a bad grey colour but he lifts an arm to hold me off. ‘Her first.’

I shrug. Whoever he is, whatever trouble he’s in, it’s likely I won’t be able to do much more than make him comfortable. Either way, I have to be fast. Desolate as this place is, Seekers have sentries, and even the heat won’t keep them at bay.

When I release the child’s flight suit, I see that I was right; she is a lot smaller than the garment implied. I would guess at around twelve or thirteen years old. She wears a beige thermal shirt and trousers, like pyjamas. The collar is soaked with blood, and a tear at the elbow and smears of oil speak of a hasty escape. Had she been sleeping when the ship’s distress call went out, whisked from her bed into an escape craft by this man?

Perhaps. Though something tells me he is not her father. A bodyguard, then? A kidnapper? Whoever they are, they aren’t new settlers, or farmers from Brovos. They look too healthy for that and rich folk don’t venture out this far if they can help it. The modern lifecraft and brand-new flight suits could have come from Prosper, or Jericho, or some inner-system enclave.

I test the child’s limbs. They are all mobile, no sign of trauma. The blood pasting her face seems to come only from the scalp wound, which is ragged, though shallow. But when I wipe the mess away, I see something that stops my hand.

Beneath the blood, a tattoo stands out dark on her temple. The same double triangle.

I draw back. ‘Who is she?’

‘She needs help.’ The man looks at me, half-desperate, half-hostile. ‘You said you’d help her.’

He’s right. I grit my teeth. No matter what tattoo she has, she is a child, she is hurt and I am the one with the medical kit. I clean her head with some of the bandage and stitch the wound as best I can through her hair, hoping for her sake that she doesn’t wake before I am finished. When I pull the last stitch tight, she stirs and bares her teeth, but her eyes remain closed.

The man doesn’t make a sound while I work, only keeps his eyes fixed on the child’s face. Too late, I see what the effort has cost him. The redness has vanished from his skin, leaving it blue-white, drained. He is dying.

His white military-issue vest is sodden with blood. A dark, shining snake pulses from the wound between his ribs. A piece of shrapnel from the crash is embedded there, dug deep. He must have turned on his side at the moment of impact, and taken the brunt, sparing the child.

‘Leave it,’ he gasps, when I touch the piece of metal. His voice is full of liquid. ‘I know it’s bad.’

I nod. Little use in lying to him.

His eyes find mine. ‘She will live?’

‘If she regains consciousness, and if there’s no damage to her brain, and if the wound does not fester—’

A bloodied hand grasps my sleeve. ‘She can’t die.’ He hauls himself towards me, using the last of his strength. ‘If you hurt her, you’ll pay with your life.’

‘I will not hurt her. I told you, I’m a medic. You have my word.’ I stare down at him. ‘Are you going to tell me what’s going on?’

For a moment he can only heave breaths. The stink of gore and sundered flesh fills my nose.

‘What’s the nearest town…?’

‘Redcrop. A day’s ride. Mining township.’

‘The Accord – have authority there?’

I laugh, humourlessly. ‘They like to think so.’

He sags back. ‘Take her there. Find a wire. She will know— what to do. She must…’

A noise catches my ears and I stop him with a gesture. In the distance, but coming closer, something is droning: the distinctive, double-cough of an overhauled engine. I swear and spring up.

‘What?’ the man asks, as I rip the tarp free and bundle it onto the mule.

‘Seekers, most likely,’ I say, piling everything into the medkit, ‘coming to scavenge the site.’

‘Seekers? Bandits?’

‘More like a cult.’

I see a light in his eyes, and know what he’s thinking; even a cult can be bribed, can be traded with.

‘Forget it,’ I say, ‘the Seekers are crazy. If they see you are hurt, they will kill you both and take your organs before they listen to a word you say.’

I bend to retrieve the unused bandage. For the space between breaths we are eye to eye. I see myself reflected there, and it’s a face I hardly know, the eyes shadowed and squinted tight, the skin wind-whipped and scar-peppered. The engines grow louder. A dust cloud appears in the distance.

‘Go then,’ he chokes, ‘take her, and remember your oath.’

I don’t argue. The options are two living and one dead, or three corpses, plundered by the Seekers. I know which one I prefer, and anyway, no matter who the child is, the tally doesn’t lie. I lift her awkwardly and wedge her among the bundles on the back of the mule. Then I’m in the driver’s seat, pulling the scarf over my mouth.

‘Tell her I died for her,’ the man’s cry comes over the noise of the dirt mule’s engine. ‘Tell her I didn’t know their plans. Tell her she must fight.’

I don’t answer, just take off towards the horizon.

* * *

I ride for Redcrop. There’s nowhere else. Much as I dislike being in a settlement, it is as safe as anywhere and at least I have a few contacts. As for the girl… I glance back to where she lies, slumped upon the mule.

Tell her I didn’t know their plans.

A shiver ripples across my skin, despite the heat. No child should have military tattoos, no matter how patriotic her family. They couldn’t be real.

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