“You heard what Baird saw. And Bernie.”
“Yeah, Lambent come in all shapes and sizes. So?”
“So what’s going to turn glowie next?”
“Dom, are you channeling bloody Baird or something?”
“Sorry.” Dom knew better than to get his hopes up. It was way too early for anyone to assume they had a handle on the Lambent. “It just feels like the last months in Jacinto again. Everyone crammed into smaller and smaller spaces. Driving around doling out food rations. You know.”
Sam probably did. If she was half as tuned in to people as he thought she was, she’d understand that he was having one of his flashback days, when things didn’t just remind him of old Jacinto. They reminded him of Maria and the kids.
“Got it,” she said. And the subject was closed.
Engineers and off-duty Gears were still working around the clock to replace the wooden houses burned down by the first invasion of polyps, so the influx of refugees was creating an even bigger backlog. They were crowded into tents, a pretty miserable prospect after the comfortable fishing cottages they were used to. Dom braced for a sullen reception.
A line had already formed when they got to the distribution point, and it summed up the whole situation for him. He could tell the difference between the old Jacinto population and the Pelruan locals, even if they were all complete strangers, simply by the way they stood.
The Jacinto contingent had spent years queuing for everything, and their stances were relaxed as they took the opportunity to socialize. But the Pelruan folks had never needed to do it, and so they stood in awkward silence, facing the head of the queue as if they’d miss their turn if they dared turn around and chat with their neighbor. Poor bastards. Their lives had been wrecked in less than a year. If they were starting to hate their government and everyone who represented it, he couldn’t actually blame them.
And then there were the former Stranded, and he didn’t mean the decent and honest Dizzy variety. Some of the families of the gangs who’d accepted Prescott’s amnesty hadn’t left with Ollivar’s pirate fleet. Dom had no idea why they stayed now, because they certainly weren’t accepted by anyone, least of all the Gorasni. They were probably getting less to eat than the average Stranded gangster. They stayed in a tight, suspicious line of their own.
“So much for integration,” Sam muttered, heaving the sacks off the truck. Dom had never done ration runs with her before and he suspected some well-meaning amateur matchmaker had deliberately paired them on the duty roster. “Come on. We’ve got four more stops and we’ve got to pick up supplies from Jonty’s farm before lunch. Look, you drop the stuff down, vegetables and flour first, and I’ll do the handovers and check them off the list.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Sam had a natural talent for making people relax in what was a pretty degrading situation. She made it more of a street market than a grim soup kitchen, chatting and joking with people as if they were customers with a choice, not bums getting welfare. She patted their kids on the head and asked how the family was, even if she didn’t have a clue who they were. At one point she found a misshapen carrot that Dom could only describe as anatomically correct and turned it into an impromptu stand-up routine.
“Oo-er, missus!” she said, laughing her head off as she brandished the thing like a grisly trophy. “Don’t all rush at once, ladies! I might keep this one for myself. Perks of the job.”
There was a lot of giggling and hooting from the women at the expense of the men in the line. “Ah, come on, you don’t need it,” one of the old women said. She grinned at Dom. “You’ve got this nice young man.”
Dom felt himself blush to his roots. In a few short years he’d be forty, and here he was, embarrassed as hell by a bunch of housewives and unable to meet Sam’s eye. But when he did, she wasn’t really laughing. She had that odd, sad look as if she’d said something important to him but he hadn’t been listening, and the moment had passed to repeat it.
But she seemed to shake it off and got the Pelruan people to join in the banter. They knew her better than the Jacinto crowd. Dom hoped the little kids didn’t understand the carrot joke.
“Hello, Miss Byrne!” A small boy gazed up at her adoringly like she was a princess. “Where’s your rat-bike? Have you killed any more crab glowies?”
“Ah, I’m putting blades on the wheels,” Sam said, straight-faced. “It’s going to cut right through them like butter. Legs everywhere. Splat!”
The boy laughed. Of course: she’d been the one up there fighting polyps with Anya and Bernie, so she was a heroine to them. They definitely looked at her differently from the way they looked at him. He was one of the bastards who made them leave the only home they’d ever known. She was the avenging angel who swooped in and blew the shit out of monsters.
This is why I hate doing civvie liaison. Find me a grub or a glowie to kill. Please. I can’t do normal yet. Maybe I never will.
By the time the food packages had been handed out, the atmosphere—in that part of the camp, at least—was a lot happier and less tense than it had been when they drove in.
Dom headed to the next drop-off point, glancing at Sam occasionally as she went through her list ticking off names. He hated himself for looking. Every guy checked her out, because she had that dark Kashkuri glamour she’d inherited from her mom, but he found himself looking for something beyond that. He was caught in that painful, guilty place between wanting to feel at home with her and seeing Maria superimposed on every woman he glanced at.
“You’re pretty good with the sales patter,” Dom said.
“Oh, the market was a big social event in Anvegad. Real performance art.” Sam looked up and kept her eyes straight ahead. “Besides, it makes it a lot easier for me than standing there throwing them scraps like we’re some animal charity.”
Dom decided not to ask why food handouts pissed her off so much. He watched her go through the same ferociously cheerful routine at every drop-off and realized that Anvegad must have been worse than a Stranded camp in the closing years of the Pendulum Wars.
Why did you have to be nice as well as good-looking? Couldn’t you just be a total bitch and make it easier for me?
They reached the far end of the camp at the construction site, a no-man’s-land of cleared fields and open countryside. There were as many Gears as civvies working on the site. Dom inhaled a pungent mix of sawdust, resin, and vehicle exhaust through the open window as he drove past the defended perimeter on the way to Merris Farm.
No, Jonty’s farm. The name was changing. At least the poor asshole would be commemorated.
“I want rosebushes and an orchard,” Sam said, sticking her head out the window to look back at the half-built new homes. “And a tank trap.”
“Hopeless romantic, aren’t you?”
“That’s what they tell me.”
Dom hadn’t intended the conversation to go down that route and he willed himself not to say anything else he’d regret. A couple of Ravens passed north on patrol. He took no notice until the radio net came to life a few kilometers down the road.
“Control to any callsign north of the base,” Mathieson said. “We’ve got a possible polyp incursion near the old reservoir. Grid delta-seven.”
Sam grabbed the handset from the dashboard. “We’re about ten klicks away, Control. We’ll respond.”
Gettner cut in on the circuit. “KR-Eight-Zero—on it.” Sam shook her head. “Does that woman ever land? She must sleep hanging from the rafters like a bloody bat.”
“She doesn’t want time to think,” Dom said. “You know how it is.”
Sanity was all about keeping busy and not allowing the demons—or ghosts—any room to slip through, Dom decided. He tried to visualize the map as he drove cross-country, remembering where the big north-south fissure stopped. The charts said thirty kilometers north of the naval base.
“It can’t be stalks.” He headed off-road. The truck bounced and shuddered with alarming me
tallic screeches, complaining that it wasn’t a ’Dill and that it really didn’t like this rough terrain. “The fissure doesn’t come that far south.”
“What, then?”
“Either polyps move a lot further overground than we thought, or the assholes have found something else to hitch a ride on.”
“It’d have to be the size of a leviathan. Those glowies are a meter across.”
“We’ll know soon enough.”
“Should’ve brought my bike.” Sam gripped the dashboard as the truck threw her around. “That’s how you fight polyps. Okay… Byrne to Eight-Zero, can you see anything yet?”
“We’re over the site, Byrne,” Gettner said. “But it’s thick tree cover. We need eyes on the ground.”
“That’s us, Eight-Zero. We’ll use you for a marker.”
Dom could see the Raven now, hovering above the woods. He headed for the edge of the trees.
Dom stopped the truck and they got out. “Listen. Hear that?”
Something was crashing around in the undergrowth. All they had to do now was wait, aim, and shoot. Dom climbed up on the flatbed to get a better view and gave Sam a hand up beside him.
“They must have heard us by now,” he said. “They can’t miss the Raven, either.”
Dom stood still, just listening for a couple of minutes. Then he saw movement between the trees and the telltale flicker of yellow light in the dappled shade.
“Here they come,” he said, taking aim. “Ready for you this time, bitches… yeah, come and get your rations.”
The polyps broke from the trees and charged toward the truck.
There were more of them than he expected, a lot more. He opened up on them at fifty meters, detonating part of the first wave in a spray of greasy meat, but they kept coming. Even with two overlapping arcs of fire, a bunch of them dodged through and vanished under the truck before he could pop them. For a second, he and Sam stared at each other in horror. The little shits were right underneath them.
Shit. Fuel tank. Polyps. Truck bomb.
Sam grabbed his arm and dragged him to the edge of the flatbed. “Jump! Come on, Dom, bloody well jump!”
He fell more than leapt clear and rolled a couple of meters. The truck rose a meter into the air on a cushion of smoke and flame as the explosion lifted it and sent it crashing back to the ground again. Dom didn’t see the second explosion because he curled instinctively into a ball to shield himself. When he looked up, the truck was engulfed in flame.
“Where are they?” Sam was on her knees, groping for her Lancer. “Where the hell have the others gone?”
Dom could still hear the Raven overhead. He could see movement better on his hands and knees because he was at polyp eye level. For a moment, he expected to find himself nose to nose with them.
“Eight-Zero here, are you two okay? We heard that.”
“Byrne here—no injuries.” Sam got to her feet. “Except the truck. Can’t you see the fire?”
Dom saw movement zip past his eyeline and knelt back on his heels in one movement to open fire. A small explosion shook the undergrowth, sending smoke and flame licking around the tree trunks before it died down.
“I can now,” Gettner said. “We’ll winch you up.”
Sam looked down at the ground just as Dom felt something through his knees. It was like being on the deck of a ship pounded by heavy seas, a lurching sensation followed by a shock wave.
“Stalk,” he said. There was another shudder. It was getting stronger. “Stalk… stalk!”
He was looking at the trees in front of him when they just tipped over. That was the only way he could describe it. He watched them part like fur on an animal as the ground heaved upward and two twisted columns dappled with red light punched out of the soil. For a moment he thought a crater was going to open up and swallow him. As he struggled to stand, he realized he’d lost sight of Sam.
“Sam! Sam, where are you?”
“Come on—run!”
Sam was behind him now, trying to haul him to his feet. When he stood, he tripped over the tangle of roots exposed by the subsidence. Run? They’d be frigging lucky if they could climb out of the debris. It was like a lumber yard that had taken a direct hit.
The last thing he saw before he turned and scrambled after Sam was those breathing, pulsing blisters on the trunks of the stalks opening like seed pods. He could have sworn he saw lumps spurt out of them, like the things were choking on food and coughing it up. He waited for glowie dogs to splash onto the ground and come after him.
“Santiago, get out! Now!” Gettner brought the Raven down so low that the few trees still standing swayed wildly, whipped by the downdraft. “Come on!”
Sam kept stopping to turn and drag Dom by the arm. He could see the Raven through the branches now. Leaves and twigs whipped around and peppered his face as he stumbled out of the undergrowth at Sam’s heels and ran for the cable dangling from the crew bay. Training kicked in and he shoved the lifting strop over Sam’s head and shoulders first before she could argue about it. Her boots were off the ground in seconds.
Dom turned around with his Lancer raised, ready for the wave of Lambent dogs he was expecting to boil out of the woods, but there was nothing behind him. He waited for the cable to pay out again, looped the strop under his armpits, and let Barber hoist him inboard and haul him across the deck on his ass as the Raven lifted clear.
“Get some images and plot those bastards, Nat,” Gettner said. “Santiago, can you tell the difference between a vehicle and frigging ordnance? Shit. Another truck gone.”
“Major, were you and Baird separated at birth or something?”
“Look, I’m glad you’re okay, Santiago, but you can explain it to Len Parry. He’ll be spitting nails about that truck.”
“Okay, I’ll go back and salvage what I can later.”
“Let’s make sure those things are dead first.” Gettner held the Raven hovering at a cautious distance. “Nat, check my figures, will you? I make this well south of the end of the fissure line—about fifteen kilometers.”
Barber secured the camera again and grabbed his chart. Dom knew damn well where the stalks had come up. He could read the truck’s speedo. He knew how far he’d driven. But he still wanted to hear Barber tell him he was wrong, and when he looked at Sam he could see she wanted to hear it too.
“Nat?” Gettner said again.
“You’re right, Gill.” Barber marked a couple of crosses on the chart. “Fourteen-point-three klicks, actually.”
It changed everything. The stalks had come up through solid granite bedrock, not the weaker sedimentary rock. All the plans about avoiding the softer bedrock areas and taking refuge on the granite had gone down the tubes. Nobody said a word for a while.
Shit, it really is Ephyra all over again. History repeats and repeats and repeats.
“That means those things can come up anywhere,” Barber said at last, as if they hadn’t worked it out for themselves. But someone had to say it.
A guy could stand his ground, or run, or die. The COG—especially 26 RTI—made a religion out of resilience. From childhood, everyone was taught to take pride in getting up each time they were knocked down, so much so that Dom used to wonder if folks had forgotten what they were bothering to get up for. Now he tried to find the line between noble refusal to accept defeat and just never learning to move on.
He could hardly bear to look back on the last fifteen years. It was starting to look like it had all been for nothing.
“There’s nowhere safe on Vectes now,” he said. “So it doesn’t matter where the hell we go. Only what we do.”
CHAPTER 17
We must plan on the basis that there’s nobody else left out there. We can deduce that the Hammer of Dawn has been deployed from the reports received from ships and by the ash deposits, but we don’t know why the decision was taken, or how many cities have been affected, or how many survivors there may be. All we can be sure of is that we will get no support from Ep
hyra for the foreseeable future, if Ephyra has survived at all. We’re used to being cut off, and we are a self-reliant community. We will come through this. And, one day, we will not only discover what has happened to the rest of Sera, but we will rebuild, and we will thrive again.
(The Right Honorable Bryn Mackin, Governor of New Fortitude Territory, in a radio broadcast to the people of Noroa and Galangi shortly after the Hammer of Dawn strikes, one year after E-Day)
MATAKI FARM, GALANGI, SOUTH ISLANDS: TEN DAYS AFTER THE GLOBAL HAMMER OF DAWN STRIKE, FOURTEEN YEARS EARLIER.
The ash was everywhere today.
Bernie bent down to wipe it off the leaves of the laurel bush by the front door. She rubbed it between her fingers, wondering how far it had drifted, and realized that a percentage of it was probably incinerated bodies. She wiped her hands on her pants.
I enabled this. In a way, this happened because of something I did.
Connections were everywhere: loops had closed. She’d fought at Aspho Fields, part of C Company. They’d bought time for special forces to raid the UIR research station at Aspho Point, and grab the Indie research that gave the COG its Hammer technology. And now the people killed by that technology—and plenty of fucking grubs, she hoped—had finally come back to her on the jetstream in the form of ash from the burning cities. She was breathing them all in.
Why did they fire it? Must have been the last stand. At least we fought back. At least we put a dent in the bastards. Didn’t we?
She didn’t know. She might never find out. That got to her more than anything now.
Everything comes back to 26 RTI in the end. Major Fenix, 26 RTI, Marcus Fenix’s dad—he designed the Hammer of Dawn. Shit. I wonder if Marcus is still alive? He was never the same after Carlos died.
The ash made a lovely sunrise, a vivid scarlet sky with a few wispy clouds across the fierce amber disk of the sun. The last time Bernie had seen anything like it was when the volcano on Soteroa had erupted when she was a kid.
But that was all that was lovely about it.
Ash was a pain in the arse for farmers. A good few days of rain, that was what she needed now. It’d wash the stuff off the grazing. If the ash built up on the pasture, she’d have to feed the livestock on hay and the last of the pellets. She couldn’t keep that up for long.