“Not yet.”
“Okay, I’ll just give Lieutenant Stroud the location and leave her to do the NOK.”
Sometimes death was so universally present, so all-pervading, that it didn’t need mentioning by name. It was as invisible and taken for granted as oxygen. Bernie only noticed it when it wasn’t there. But when it was spoken about, it had two faces—one that was familiar to the point of being casual, the other just embarrassed dread. Today she felt the dread. It would pass.
Mac trotted around, nosing through the grass on the track and seeming none the worse for his run-in with the polyp. When Bernie got his attention by snapping her fingers, he looked up at her with a disturbingly human frown. He was a sad-looking dog at the best of times, but now he looked as depressed as she felt. He knew things were going badly wrong.
“Is he done?” Marcus asked, pressing his earpiece with a bloodstained finger. “I’ll let Hoffman know we’re bringing in a body.”
Bernie picked up Mac’s leash. He gazed at her expectantly for new orders. “Yeah, I think we found them all,” she said, slipping him a piece of jerky by way of reward. Her hands were trembling from the effort. “The ones from the last stalk, anyway.”
She could never shake the feeling that all this was her fault, or at least the COG’s. Vectes had escaped the Locust invasion, one of a handful of isolated, tiny islands protected by volcanic ridges. Now Jacinto and its refugees had landed on the doorstep unannounced and uninvited, bringing disaster with them.
“What are we going to do with the tractor?” she asked. “We can’t just leave it covered in all that shit for his family to clean up.”
It was going to be bad enough when they had to drive the thing again. And they would, she was sure; they didn’t have a choice. Sera had been burned and bombed and poisoned back to a pre-industrial world. There were no new tractors rolling off assembly lines anymore.
We’ve all done it. We’ve all climbed back in a ’Dill or a Packhorse and tried not to notice someone’s blood. But not these people. The war’s just begun for them.
Combat was haunted by small, painful aftermaths that most people never thought about. Marcus caught her staring back at the vehicle and nodded, as if he was mindful of those small things too. Yet again, she saw him as a twenty-year-old Gear waiting for extraction on a beach in Ostri, kneeling over the remains of Carlos Santiago, ready to take his friend home for the last time.
“Yeah,” Marcus said. “We better take care of that.”
CHAPTER 2
When are you going to listen to me? You’ve got four weeks’ flying time left before you start eating into the fuel reserve that’ll guarantee getting back to the mainland. There’s no more imulsion. We can’t even go foraging around abandoned depots like the old days, and you can’t convert aircraft or warships to run on cooking oil. We’re stuck on an island in the middle of nowhere. And whether it’s this year, or the next, or a century’s time—we’ll need to leave here one day.
(Royston Sharle, Head of Emergency Management, to Colonel Hoffman)
STALK EMERGENCE SITE, NORTHERN VECTES.
Hoffman wished he’d taken a leak before he left base. Dr. Hayman’s grim prediction about his aging prostate was coming true like a curse.
But it would have to wait. There were at least three problems ahead of his bladder in the queue, and the most urgent one was coming over the radio right now.
“Colonel, we’ve got a dead farmer,” said Marcus. Hoffman’s gut knotted. “Polyps.”
“Got an ID?”
“Not yet.” Marcus paused. “He bled out over Mataki. Try not to yell at her.”
Hoffman hesitated. “Understood, Fenix.” Sometimes it was as if there had never been any feud between them, no punches swung or court martial or jail. Marcus was selfless, twice the man his damn father had been. “Can you recover the body?”
“That’s taken care of. We’re heading for Pelruan in a few minutes.”
“Okay, I’d better get up there and make some reassuring noises as soon as Prescott’s finished his nature trail. Hoffman out.”
Prescott was still ordering Baird around, getting him to collect samples for some goddamn reason. What did the man expect to do with them? There were no more labs and no more scientists. Hoffman seized the brief lull to slip into the bushes and relieve himself.
Yeah, don’t yell at Bernie. Be grateful she forgives and forgets. Or forgives, anyway.
He wasn’t sure the locals in Pelruan would be that tolerant. They’d want to know what he was going to do to protect them now that the hellish outside world had come to their island. He didn’t have any answers.
So why are the stalks coming up here? And how?
He was zipping up when he heard twigs crack behind him. He turned, expecting to see Prescott, but it was Mel Sorotki.
“Sorry to interrupt your pee break, sir, but there’s a real mess in the field over there.”
“Say again, Lieutenant?”
“Dead cattle. The polyps fragged them. It’s all barbecuesized chunks.”
Hoffman sighed. “Here we go. We’re going to be tear-assing all over the island keeping a lid on these little shits.”
“Baird’s got a theory.”
“Good. I’ll take it. Let me go talk to him.”
Baird always had a theory. He was an engineer, a man who was happier with machines than with people, but in that logical engineer way he could also break most things down to basic principles and come up with insights. Sometimes Hoffman worried that he expected Baird to do the job of entire universities full of experts.
But Baird basked in it. Hoffman was happy to pat him on the head for being a clever boy as often as he wanted.
“Take a look at this.” Baird thrust a folded chart under Hoffman’s nose. It was a survey map of Vectes, heavily penciled over with flight paths. Sorotki’s crew chief had scribbled PROPERTY OF MITCHELL K—RETURN TO KR-239 on the margin. “This island’s volcanic, but there’s always a network of fissures. So you get underground rivers or seams of softer rock. Simple answer—the stalk finds a way through a gap from the ocean. All we have to do is stay away from the fissures.”
“Depends where they are. And how far the stalks and the polyps can spread from those points. Which we don’t know yet.”
“So we find out. We plot where they come up.”
“I never had you down for an optimist, Baird.”
“I’m not. If I’m wrong, they can be up our asses anytime, anywhere, anyhow.”
“Okay, so we start plotting the emergence sites.” Hoffman studied the chart. Vectes was about seventy kilometers north to south, only five thousand square kilometers, but it was a lot of ground to keep an eye on with a small Raven fleet and a worsening fuel shortage. “If there’s a pattern, then we have a containment strategy.”
“Yeah, but remember all those busy little polyp legs. They get around.”
“So we can keep them out,” Hoffman said. He’d dug defensive ditches to trap and kill the recent polyp invasion from the sea. “We’ve done it once. We can do it again.”
Hoffman pressed his earpiece to call Control, gesturing to Sorotki to get the Raven started. “Mathieson, we’ve got a dead civilian. I’m going to be tied up explaining that to Pelruan. You better brief Trescu. I don’t want him bitching that we don’t keep him in the loop.”
“The Gorasni probably know already, sir,” Mathieson said. “They monitor our voice traffic.”
“All the more reason to come clean, then.” Miran Trescu had played straight with him so far—straight enough, anyway—so he’d play straight in return. Whether Gorasnaya regarded itself as part of the happy COG family or hankered after its Indie past, they were all in the same shit together now. “Tell him I’ll talk to him as soon as I get back.”
Richard Prescott was walking around the field, stopping occasionally to study the stalks. Hoffman didn’t know what he was up to, but the man never did anything without a good reason. Every action, every gestur
e—every word—was calculated and controlled, designed to achieve a result that Hoffman couldn’t guess at. He resented Prescott for even making him want to guess. Like the goddamn data disc and whatever was on it, it ate at him when he needed to keep his mind on the immediate problem.
“Let’s move, Chairman,” he said. “We need to get to Pelruan before the corpse does. Hearts and minds time. Baird, Cole—with me.”
Hoffman ducked under the Raven’s rotors and settled in his seat, staring out of the crew bay so he wasn’t tempted to look at Prescott and start festering again. Cole buckled himself in on the opposite bench, effectively putting a wall between the two men. He winked when Hoffman glanced at him. The man was a natural diplomat.
“Don’t worry, I ain’t gonna puke on you, sir,” he said cheerfully. “I emptied my tanks on the ride up here.”
“That’s decent of you, Cole.” Hoffman gave him a conspiratorial nod and radioed Anya Stroud. She’d be waiting for the Raven at Pelruan. “Lieutenant? Do we have a name yet?”
“We think it’s Leon Whellan, sir. It’s on his land. Married with two kids.” Anya sounded as if she’d taken a deep breath. “Lewis Gavriel’s gone to find his wife.”
Hoffman wasn’t sure why dead family men were somehow more tragic than single ones. He felt worse about those who hadn’t left any family to grieve for them. They’d been erased, past, present, and future. And after the COG had lost millions of civilians in Tyrus alone, he wondered if he was making too much of a single fatality here.
But Pelruan was a small town, just a few thousand people. Every death hit them hard. They needed reassurance that they weren’t a forgotten irrelevance to the newcomers in the south of the island.
Their island. Their farms. We can’t make this work without them.
Sorotki cut into the comms circuit. “Sir, Eight-Zero’s a few minutes out. And Control says the grindlift rig’s going to be in position in half an hour.”
“Good. The sooner we know what kind of rock those stalks can get through, the better.”
Anya was already waiting at the landing area by the harbor when the Raven set down, pacing an imaginary line in front of the Packhorse and swamped by armor that didn’t quite fit her. But she was growing into it in other ways. Pelruan was her responsibility now.
Hoffman had wondered if he’d dumped too much on her by giving her command of the small garrison here. She’d been a desk-bound ops officer until a few short months ago, and that was a tough transition for a woman in her thirties.
But she’s Helena Stroud’s daughter. That’s a warfighting pedigree. I just hope she doesn’t have her mother’s penchant for suicide missions.
Hoffman jumped down from the crew bay and inhaled the scent of wood smoke wafting on the air. It was the morning’s snakefish catch being processed in the smokehouse down by the slipway. The Lambent threat out at sea— leviathans, stalks, even smaller glowies trawled up in nets—had forced the trawler fleet to make the most of shallow water species. The prospect of a few meaty, smoky fillets distracted Hoffman for a moment before duty crashed in on him again.
Goddamn. How is all this going to impact the food supplies?
If stalks were coming ashore, then areas of farmland would have to be off-limits. Crisis begat crisis. The farms were already struggling to catch up with the influx of refugees.
So add food rationing to the list. Well, we’ve had plenty of practice at that.
“Hello, sir… Chairman.” Anya glanced past Hoffman to acknowledge Prescott, doing it by the book. “I’ve set up a temporary morgue in one of the fishery stores. It’s got refrigeration.”
“Let’s hope we don’t end up filling it,” Prescott said. “What’s the mood like?”
“Cooperative. They always are. Model COG citizens.”
“Is Lewis Gavriel back yet?”
“I’ll radio him, sir.”
Prescott wandered off to corner Baird. For a moment Hoffman wondered if Prescott knew Baird had his disc, and his insistence on coming along for the ride had nothing to do with the stalks at all. That was the problem with a devious son of a bitch like the Chairman. You could waste your life trying to second-guess him. Hoffman resisted the temptation and focused on Anya.
“You’d better draw up an evacuation plan, just in case,” he said. “I’ll get Sharle to work out where we can put a few thousand extra people if we need to.”
“Already done, sir. I’ve had a few spare evenings to kill since the last polyp attack.” Anya was the kind of junior officer every CO needed: organized, efficient, loyal, uncomplaining, and always two steps ahead of the clusterfuck in question. Hoffman had never known her to have one fallible human lapse of temper or judgment. “Sergeant Rossi’s organizing lookouts. We’re going to be reliant on civilians to raise the alarm.”
“They know the land better than us anyway, Lieutenant. Good plan.”
She shielded her eyes to look up into the sky, scanning for the inbound Raven. “How are we going to monitor the whole island, sir? Most of it’s uninhabited.”
“We can’t. We’ll just recon what we can for as long as we’ve got fuel.”
Goddamn. We’re relying on farmers and fishermen waving flags and calling us on their walkie-talkies now. Some army.
In just fifteen years, the Coalition had collapsed from a global superpower with satellite early-warning systems to a threadbare city of refugees using hand tools. For a moment it wasn’t the fruitless war against grubs and glowies that ground Hoffman’s spirit into the dirt, but the thought of rebuilding afterward.
Even if they wiped out the Lambent, he’d never live to see Sera get back to normal. It would take generations.
Anya turned around and looked south-east. “Here it comes, sir.”
Gettner’s Raven above the trees and circled overhead before landing in a whirlwind of dust and grit. When the rotors slowed to a stop, Marcus emerged with Dom and Barber to unload a body-bag strapped to a gurney. Hoffman kept watching that door until he saw Bernie step down with the dog.
Hoffman could only stare and heed Marcus’s advice.
Don’t yell at her.
She was covered in dried blood. Her pants and cuffs were black with it, and there was a big smear on her forehead as if she’d wiped her hand across it. He knew it wasn’t hers— damn, he hoped it wasn’t, anyway—but it still made his stomach lurch. He’d lost Margaret because he hadn’t stopped her taking a crazy risk. His history repeated itself on a daily basis, but this was one thing he knew he couldn’t cope with if it happened again.
One day, it’s going to be Bernie. It’ll be her zipped up in one of those bags, and I just won’t be able to go on.
“That better not be your blood, Mataki.” He said it to silence the inner voice. Maybe if he said it often enough, it would never have to happen. “Or I’ll—”
“I’m fine.” She certainly didn’t look fine. “I’m just not Doc Hayman.”
“So what kind of shape is he in?” Now Hoffman had to make an effort not to fuss over her. “The widow’s going to want to take a look.”
Marcus loaded the gurney into the back of the waiting Packhorse. He stared at Hoffman with just the faintest moment of defocus in that unsettling pale blue stare. Bernie wasn’t the only one who’d had to pick up the pieces once too often.
“He’s intact from the waist up, Colonel,” he said. “Better clean him up before she sees him, though.”
Anya jerked her head in the direction of the town. It was five minutes’ walk away at most. “I’ll drive. I’ve set up a morgue.”
“Expecting a crowd?” Marcus got into the passenger seat as Anya opened the driver’s door.
“Might as well plan for it,” she said.
The Packhorse set off down the track to the harbor road. Dom, Baird, and Cole followed on foot with Prescott. Hoffman hung back with Bernie, keeping one eye on Mac while Mac kept one accusing eye on him. The animal belonged to Will Berenz, Pelruan’s deputy mayor, but he’d latched on to Bernie
to the point of being a pain in the ass, gazing up at her with such besotted devotion that Hoffman felt he was competing with a four-legged rival. Mac was a jealous dog. Hoffman found it painful to realize that he was a jealous man.
“You been poisoning that dog’s mind against me?” Hoffman asked, trying hard to jolly things along. “Is he okay?”
Bernie nodded. “He’s a regular polyp hound. Whatever happened to him when he was missing just made him want to kill more glowies.”
“You better clean up before the civvies see you.” Hoffman took off his kerchief, unscrewed his water bottle, and soaked the cloth as he walked. “Here. Let me do it.”
“Vic, not in front of Baird. Please. He’ll only take the piss.”
“Goddamn it, woman, we’re not exactly a secret.” He grabbed her arm to bring her to a halt and wiped her face and hands like a grubby kid. There wasn’t much he could do about the blood that had soaked into her pants. “Just snarl at him and put him in his place. Like you do with me.”
“Okay, I disobeyed your orders. But I had to find the dog.” She pulled free of him and walked off. “Now I’ll do as I’m told and stay on base.”
“Well, that’s big of you, Mataki.” No, that wasn’t fair. She’d just had a man die in her lap. Even for a veteran sergeant, things like that never got any easier. “Sorry. I’m just worried that I’ll damn well end up burying you.”
Bernie managed a smile. “As long as you don’t dump me on the compost heap. I’d prefer to be turned into jerky.”
Hoffman reached in his pocket to pull out the rabbit’s foot she’d given him, taken from an unlucky animal she’d hunted for the pot. “And this goddamn thing isn’t working.” The stew had been pretty good, though. He was slowly getting used to life with a survival expert. “Maybe I need all four to change my luck.”
“It’s going to take a lot more than luck,” Bernie said. “Just remember that the people here aren’t used to living with monsters under the bed. They might overreact.”
“I’m damned if I can think what constitutes an overreaction at the moment, babe.” Hoffman shook his head, suddenly feeling very old. That was happening too often lately. “Because this shit just isn’t showing any signs of bottoming out.”