There was no single act of closure, he knew. He knew it from the deaths of his kids, and his parents, and pretty well everyone he’d grown up with. It was a gradual process for him. He had Maria’s necklace; now he needed to move on another step and deal with the tattoo.
He changed into his civvie clothes and went looking for Sam. She was taking a break in the mess, drinking with Dizzy. It was nice to see them getting on.
“I hear you’re pretty good with ink,” he said.
Sam gave him that sideways look. “Yes. You want something done?”
“I think so.”
“So—traditional Kashkuri stuff? South Islander?”
“Can you change an existing tattoo?”
Sam looked thoughtful. “Possibly. Depends.”
“You gonna need some of Doctor Wallin’s special anesthetic?” Dizzy held out a small bottle of moonshine. “Guarantee you won’t feel a thing if she saws your damn head off.”
“I’ll get numb later,” Dom said. “Thanks, Dizzy.”
“Okay.” Sam slid off the seat and beckoned Dom to follow. “Better do it now, before we both chicken out. I’ll get my stuff.”
Dom found a storeroom in the barracks. He didn’t want anyone watching, even by accident. He rolled his sleeve back as far as he could and offered his right biceps.
“Okay, you’re going to have to talk me through this,” Sam said, opening a small bag like a cosmetic case. “What exactly do you want done?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But she’s gone, and I need to mark that somehow.”
Dom knew that Sam’s up-yours attitude wasn’t the whole woman. Somebody named after a dead-hero father they’d never known would understand all the confusing, painful feelings that Dom still carried around with him. Sam studied the stylized heart and then nodded.
“You ready to trust me on this, Dom?”
“Go ahead.”
It took a long time without a powered needle and it hurt more than he remembered. He didn’t want to watch her do it, either. When he finally looked, not knowing what effect it would have on him but knowing he wanted something to change, it made his throat tighten.
Sam really was good at this kind of thing. Gifted, in fact.
The tattoo and all it stood for had been transformed. If Dom hadn’t known it had once been a heart, he would only have seen the angel cradling Maria’s name, wings folded, eyes raised toward something infinite and certain.
He couldn’t have told Sam what he wanted. But somehow it felt like he’d seen it that way from the start. He’d wear his sleeves rolled down for a couple of days to hide the dressing, not that anyone would have pestered him with questions about it.
“I owe you,” he said.
Sam turned in the doorway. “No, you don’t,” she said. “That’s for making my day.”
The base was now settling into a quiet waiting game. The sound of vehicle motors and grinding gearboxes continued late into the evening, throwing up a halo of hazy light beyond the ancient walls as the diggers raced to complete the network of pits and trenches. The only ships moving were the NCOG patrols. Even the Ravens were few and far between. Dom sat on a bollard by the jetty, watching navigation lights pass overhead and the black patch of helicopter-shaped nothing as one of the birds blotted out the stars.
“We love this, don’t we, baby?” Cole walked up and stood contemplating the docks with him. “At our best when we’re waitin’ for the shit to start. All match-fit and ready to go.”
“Wonder when we’ll ever shake that off.”
“Wonder when we’re ever gonna get the chance.”
“Where’s Baird?”
“Weldin’ shit. Pipes. So they can flood the pits with fuel and bake some glowie crab. Man, that boy’s creative in all the wrong ways. But I ain’t complainin’.”
“What are the civvies going to do if it all kicks off? We haven’t got enough spare rifles to arm one percent of them, even if they knew how to use them.”
“Then we better make sure we stop the glowies. That’s all we got.”
No point evacuating the civvies inland, because the stalks can come up any damn place. No point making them rough it in the woods, because they’ll be even more afraid and disoriented. No point doing anything except wait—because we just don’t know what’s coming around the corner, or even if it’s coming at all.
The next day was quiet, too, and the next, and the day after that. Dom did perimeter patrols as normal, and rode with the twice-daily Raven recon flight. Clement and Zephyr were paired up now, doing a sonar sweep around the island.
There was no sign of stalks or polyps. It was almost as if they’d tested out the COG, found they got a kicking, and moved on elsewhere.
But Dom didn’t believe that a life-form that could give the grubs nightmares would quit that easily. The most he could hope for was that if they were as dumb and instinct-driven as some thought, then they’d latched on to some other scent. But it would just be a temporary respite, like all the other quiet moments in the war.
The bastards were just getting their breath back.
Meanwhile, the coastline to the west was crawling with extra Stranded. Bernie walked the perimeter with Mac most of the day, Lancer slung across her chest and her Longshot on her back, making it clear that it wasn’t polyps she was keeping an eye open for. Dom waved to her from the ’Dill’s hatch as it headed back through the main camp. She gave him a meaningful nod.
“I just hope she doesn’t cap anyone,” Dom said to Baird.
“What?”
Dom dipped down inside the cabin. Baird was driving, listening to two radio channels at once.
“I said, I hope Bernie doesn’t shoot any more Stranded and start a riot.”
“Killjoy. What else has she got left at her time of life, except mutilating assholes and giving Hoffman a gruesome time?”
“Baird, shut up, will you?”
“Hey, want to listen to the submarine net? I rigged my radio so I can hear their transmissions.”
“Damn, you’re stalking those boats.”
Baird just shrugged. He parked the ’Dill in the compound and stayed in the driver’s seat, listening to the chatter. Dom decided that was how he coped with being scared—making things and staying busy the whole time, as if that gave him some control over his fate in a chaotic world. Dom hung back for a moment, trying to think of something placatory to say. It was really hard to do the buddy thing with Baird.
“Whales,” Baird said.
“What?”
“Zephyr’s reporting a pod of whales singing on the hydrophone.”
“Well, that’s nice and relaxing for them.”
Baird frowned. He was concentrating on something, not even looking at Dom. Then he sat upright.
“Shit,” he said. “Unidentified biologic.”
“Stalks?”
“No, something swimming, uncatalogued. They’ve pinged it with the sonar.”
“Isn’t that going to piss it off?”
“Pissing it off is better than not seeing it coming.” Baird just sat there, listening. Dom watched his expression change. “Squid, maybe.”
“Leviathan.” A few months ago, a leviathan was the worst thing Dom could imagine finding underwater. They were another act in the grub freak show, a whale-sized mountain of scaly flesh with teeth and lethal tentacles. Now he was seeing it as preferable to the stalk and polyp combo. At least leviathans stuck to the water. “Hey, they understand how big those things are, don’t they?”
Baird fiddled with the radio. The channel he was listening to suddenly burst over the ’Dill’s speaker, a conversation between a Gorasni and Tyran voices.
“Clement, we still have the biologic. Bearing zero-eight-five, depth sixty meters. Moving above us.”
“Roger that, Zephyr. Clement to KR-Six-Seven, unknown biologic approximately ten kilometers south of you. I’m trying to get a side scan. Stand by.”
“They ought to make me an admiral,” Baird mutt
ered. He’d been bragging all week about how great his sonar gizmo was. “A commodore, at least.”
It took a few moments for Clement to come back on the net. The voice was Commander Garcia’s; steady, but definitely not relaxed this time.
“Well … that’s a face only a mother could love,” he said. “Tentacles … whale-sized … I’ll assume that’s a leviathan. Moving north to Vectes. Signal all inshore vessels to return to harbor and stand by.”
“Great,” Dom said. “Maybe it’ll wrestle the stalks.”
“Knowing our luck,” Baird said, “it’ll lose.”
CHAPTER 15
Rest in peace, and fear not.
(TRADITIONAL INSCRIPTION ON COG WAR GRAVES)
PELRUAN, NORTH COAST OF VECTES: PRESENT DAY, 15 A.E.
Bernie checked the Packhorse’s rearview mirror to make sure Sam Byrne was still following on the bike. Every time she glanced up, she expected to find that Sam had peeled off in search of something more demanding than guarding a fishing village.
Don’t blame you, girl. I don’t like being packed off to a safe billet when there’s real work I could do, either.
“Going home to your dad, Mac,” she said. The dog sat in the passenger seat beside her, occasionally sticking his muzzle out the open window. “He’ll be pleased to see you. You’ll forget all about me, won’t you?”
“Your channel’s open,” Sam said.
Bernie didn’t care. “So I talk to the dog. I get more sense out of him than I do most humans.” She switched the radio to standby. “Let’s see how Anya’s been getting on.”
Pelruan depressed Bernie more every time she saw it. It got her down because it was picturesque and peaceful, even with the ditches and razor wire that Rossi’s squad had put around its boundaries. It should have been left alone to carry on in happy ignorance in its grub-free backwater. Some Gears—and civvies—felt it was high time the locals understood what the rest of Sera had endured for so long, but some just felt sorry for the poor bewildered bastards.
Yeah, I do. I wouldn’t have taken this half as well as they have.
Anya was waiting for her when she drove up to the collection of huts that served as the barracks and admin office. She really did look a lot like her mother these days, especially now that she’d taken to wearing armor. She glanced past the Packhorse for a moment as Sam roared to a halt on the bike.
Bernie opened the vehicle door for Mac. He jumped out and inspected Anya’s boots for interesting scents. “How are you, ma’am?”
“All very quiet.” Anya kept a wary eye on Mac. “Rossi’s a safe pair of hands, so I haven’t screwed up and started any riots yet. I hear we’ve got some interesting wildlife around.”
“Stalks? Stranded?”
“Leviathan. Haven’t you heard?”
“I’ve only been monitoring my own channel on the way here.” There was no reason for Bernie to be flashed with a message like that anyway, but she still felt discarded and irrelevant. “Anything I need to know?”
“The submarines just pinged one. All vessels have been ordered back to berth and all crews ashore. I’ve just been recalling the fishing boats.”
“I didn’t realize they were still working.”
“They do some line fishing close to the shore.” Anya indicated down the road. “You’ve got a choice of billet, by the way. Will Berenz or Ellen’s bar.”
“Well, that’s an easy one, isn’t it, Mac?” Bernie grabbed her backpack and set off. She knew the way. The dog trotted ahead of her. “See you in the signals office in about half an hour, ma’am.”
Sam surveyed the narrow streets between the wooden houses as they walked. “This would really burn.”
“What?”
“I always think that when I see wooden buildings. They burn too easily. My mother always told me how Anvegad burned.” Sam looked embarrassed for a moment. That wasn’t like her at all. “Funny how things take root in your mind.”
Hoffman still hadn’t finished telling Bernie about Anvil Gate. There was always something that interrupted, and they hadn’t had a moment on their own in days. Maybe he’d forget all about it. And maybe Sam knew enough to fill in the gaps.
The older Bernie got, the more the past became her most vivid focus. Maybe the past really did matter that much, or maybe that was just the way the brain aged, giving up trying to access the short-term stuff and seeking comfort and vindication in the memories it had put away safely years ago.
And then there were parts of the past that simply wouldn’t let go even when she wanted to run from them. They were all around her now in this tourist-brochure fishing village. There was a war memorial in the middle of the well-trimmed grass square outside the town hall, a square-section tapered granite pillar with the Coalition’s cog-and-eagle emblem on top.
Bernie always paused to stand to attention and bow her head at any memorial she passed. Every Gear of her generation did. It was automatic. If she had time, she would stop and read the names carved there, too, because that was the whole point: that these men and women were never forgotten, even if their families and friends were long gone. Names mattered. They needed seeing and saying.
Nobody’s ever really dead unless we forget them. That was what Cole always said.
Sam stopped beside her. From the corner of her eye, Bernie could see her shuffle uncertainly, as if she’d never done this, and then follow Bernie’s lead. Mac stopped too.
The regiments represented were mainly the Duke of Tollen’s and the Andius Fusiliers, with a few NCOG Corps of Marines. Someone had tied a sash in Tollen colors around the column and laid a laurel wreath topped with the Tollen badge at its foot. Bernie had passed the memorial before and not seen the sash, so she wondered if it had been put there for some local anniversary or specific battle commemoration she wasn’t aware of. Then Sam nudged her elbow.
“They really don’t like the Gorasni, do they?” she said.
It took Bernie a few moments to see what Sam was looking at. Someone had left a card on the wreath, neatly handwritten, and she squatted to read it.
THE SURVIVORS OF RAMASCU.
WE WILL NEVER FORGET.
WE WILL NEVER FORGIVE.
“Prescott better scrub the joint parade for the Day of the Fallen, then,” Bernie said. “He tends to think people can kiss and make up.”
Sam stared at the card for a few moments, then saluted and walked away.
“Who did you lose?” she asked. “Particularly, I mean.”
Everyone had lost almost everybody they cared about. If someone asked that question, they wanted to know which death still gnawed at you most.
“Hard to say,” Bernie said. “Depends on the day. Sometimes it’s my brother, because we never got on. Mostly it’s Gears I served with. I don’t have that many special ghosts. I’m lucky.”
Sam made a noncommittal hfff sound. Yes, Bernie knew she was lucky; she didn’t lie awake at night thinking what might have been about the dead. The only thought that plagued her now was dying before she saw things on Sera starting to improve.
“You’ve spoiled that dog,” Will Berenz said, opening the front door. “Look at him. He’s put on weight.”
“He works hard. He needs to keep his strength up.” Bernie bent over and cuddled Mac, then made sure that Sam was out of earshot. “Everything okay here?”
“If you’re asking how Lieutenant Stroud’s coping, she’s very efficient. People here trust her. Good start.”
“I realize they’re unhappy about the various allies we’ve had to make. But there’s some serious trouble out there now. We need every rifle we can get.”
Berenz looked crushed, as if he didn’t need reminding. “We were on borrowed time for so long, weren’t we?”
“Will, we’re going to survive.” Bernie gripped his shoulder to make her point. “I don’t know how, but we’re going to beat this. Okay?”
She had no idea why she said that, other than she desperately wanted to believe it. Everyone on the isl
and had beaten incredible odds just to stay alive, though. It wasn’t unreasonable to think they could keep doing it.
“Okay,” Berenz said. “You’d tell me if we were beaten. I know you would.”
There was a fine line between strengthening morale and giving people false hope, but Bernie was never sure on which side of it she fell on any given day. When she got back to the signals office with Sam, Drew Rossi was monitoring the radio, nursing a cup of coffee that looked stone cold. They made the drink from some kind of roasted barley. Bernie wasn’t sure she remembered what real coffee tasted like anymore, but she was pretty sure it didn’t taste like that.
Rossi looked up. “A faraway island’s a great idea until somebody finds it, isn’t it? And then it’s just somewhere you’re stuck with nowhere to run.”
“Very uplifting, Drew. You should join Baird’s morale committee.”
“So what brings you two ladies up here?”
“Banished to the soft option,” Sam said. “With the rest of you girls.”
Rossi took it in his stride. He was a likeable man, just another Gear who took refuge in griping. “No stalks yet, then. So far, the biggest task is keeping the fishermen inshore. They’re sliding further out a few meters at a time.”
“Okay, with the assorted wildlife on the loose out there, you’re going to want us on patrol, yes?”
Rossi tapped his temple in a mock salute. “Yes, Sergeant.”
“Come on, Drew, I’m not trying to out-sergeant you. I’m just not used to being the spare prick at the wedding.”
“Hey, no problem.” He cocked his head to one side. “If it was the other way around, you’d stick him at a desk, too. We all get to the point where we can’t face losing one more person we care about. Shit, even the ones we don’t care about. Anybody.”
Rossi didn’t have to say who “he” was. The army was a gossip shop, and the smaller it got, the less escaped its attention. Bernie went off to start the route around town, Sam following.