Hoffman paced up and down behind the line of Gears, talking to someone on the radio—Michaelson, Baird assumed, judging by what he could hear.
“Then you’ll just have to make sure you drive them away from the goddamn ships, won’t you?” Hoffman sounded more weary than angry for once. “We can’t predict which way these bastards are going to run. We’ll all have to force them.”
Everything suddenly went quiet. Baird never liked this lull. His gut shriveled into a hard ball and a burning cold sensation spread through his thigh muscles. It would pass, but he was sure he really was going to piss himself one day just like Cole told everyone he did.
Then the shout went up. Somewhere on the walls above, a lookout yelled: “Contact—one-six-zero, range five hundred meters, too close for the cannon—it’s coming around the cliff.”
Baird saw the flash from Fenmont’s guns even before he heard the boom. He didn’t see the leviathan until it reared up again and dived down below the surface. Only parts of it were visible, a couple of undulating humps trailing foam, a tentacle or two as it rolled, even a glimpse of its head, but one thing was clear—it was even bigger than he’d thought, and he’d thought pretty big. Vale of Dane put on a spurt and raked the water with her 30 mm close-in defensive gun. For a few moments nothing broke the surface.
Too good to be true. Can’t be.
And it wasn’t. There was a deep metallic thud followed by a slow grinding sound, and Baird couldn’t even tell where it was coming from until Fenmont’s bow lifted meters out of the water. She hung there for a second before crashing back down with a groaning, tearing noise. The ship listed to port just as the leviathan surged out of the sea and smashed down onto the deck.
“Don’t think a chainsaw’s going to work this time,” Marcus said. “Let’s pick on something smaller.”
The leviathan turned toward the quay and plunged under the surface. There were only two options now; to stand and fight, or turn and run. Baird found he couldn’t move. The creature rose out of the water right in front of him to fill his field of vision, so close that he couldn’t even see the tentacles at its sides. And it stank like the tide had gone out. He heard the wet slaps and frantic scrabbling of polyps, and then the firing started.
It’s going to crush me. That asshole’s going to flop down on top of me and leave a greasy smear.
Baird opened fire. He didn’t know or care if it was going to work. He just fired. The leviathan veered sideways and dived again, oblivious of him.
Now the polyps were all over the jetty, scores of them—no, hundreds. Any plan to drive them toward the newly dug trenches around the base went to rat shit right away. All Baird could do was just keep firing and reloading to hold them off him. He could hear sporadic explosions and screams around him as some polyps reached their targets and detonated. The only thing that stopped him from sinking all his clips into the things was Marcus grabbing him by the arm and shoving him into a run. He tripped over the remains of a Gear, and for a moment he thought it was Cole.
“Run—just frigging run!” Marcus yelled. “Get down that trench and just run.”
Once Baird started running, his body took over and it wasn’t going to stop for anything—not even if he wanted it to. Where the hell was Cole? The leviathan must have come up again with a second wave of polyps, because the firing on the jetty started again. Baird didn’t even dare slow down to look over his shoulder. He could hear the things scuttling behind him as he sprinted after the Gears running ahead. Then he was suddenly aware that he was splashing through a stream of fluid that was getting deeper by the stride. The pungent solvent smell of imulsion made him clamp his lips together to keep the fumes out.
Oh fuck. That’s my great idea. The fuel flood. Oh shit …
It was designed to pump out a controlled spray so the polyps roasted instantly, but nobody was supposed to be running inside the trench. That was planning for you. Plans went belly-up every time. Baird prayed that nobody decided to let off a few bursts until everyone was out of the trench. He didn’t want to end his days as a barbecue. In fact, he didn’t want to die at all, ever.
Despite himself, he turned and took a few strides sideways, just long enough to see a tidal wave of dark gray legs thrashing after him. It was the first time he’d realized Marcus was right behind him.
“Yeah, you seen ’em,” Marcus panted. “Pretty. Now get the hell out.”
The trench was a couple of meters deep. Baird had no idea where he’d get a foothold and how he’d get up the sides without the polyps grabbing him. But it was that or let the plan fall apart.
Shit. This has to end.
The trench curved around. He had no idea where he was now, but he needed to get out. Then he saw Cole, hands on knees, catching his breath.
“Thought you was never comin’,” Cole said, and shoved him up the side of the trench in one smooth movement as if he’d rehearsed it to the second.
Baird pulled himself over the edge and reached down without thinking to pull Cole up. But the arm he grabbed was Marcus’s. Cole had scrambled out on his own. There was a rapid burst of fire, and then the loud whoomp of igniting vapor. Baird felt the heat sear his face. His eyebrows sizzled, singed by the fire.
And his pants and boots were soaked in fuel. He held his breath, waiting to go up like a torch.
I’m going to die. Oh shit.
“Move it,” Marcus said. “Before Dizzy runs you down.”
The world started to fall back into place. Baird knew now where he’d come up out of the trench. He was right outside the Gorasni camp. He sat up, looking into a burning pit of thrashing, twitching, exploding polyps. Where the hell had they all come from? There seemed to be hundreds more now. A grinding noise way too close to his ear made him scramble to his feet, and he narrowly missed the mine-clearing scoop of a grindlift derrick.
“Corporal, you better shift your jaywalkin’ ass,” Dizzy yelled from the cab. “I got crabs to clear.”
Baird stood back to reload and shift ammo clips into the right pockets, taking stock of the bizarre battle around him. The polyps weren’t all charging blindly down the trenches. Dizzy and the other drivers were bulldozing some of the more adventurous ones over the side in drifts, shoveling them on top of their buddies. The things kept detonating, but the rigs could withstand mines. Dizzy whooped loudly every time one went off. The pits of burning imulsion crackled and spat.
“Worked better than I expected,” Marcus said.
Baird felt for his eyebrows. “Mostly. Where’s Dom?”
“Gone with Hoffman. Come on, the leviathan’s shaking off more polyps.”
“Shit. We’ve shown our hand now. They’re not stupid—even a frigging amoeba understands that running into flames is a bad idea.”
“We’ll just have to be smarter than a fucking amoeba, then, won’t we?”
Baird took a shortcut through the Gorasni camp with Marcus and Cole, expecting to see the Gorasni settling the score with the polyps for the loss of their imulsion platform. But the men defending the camp were mostly Stranded, Ollivar’s army of scruffy assholes. They were great shots, he had to give them that. They were picking off the polyps like rabbits. If he’d been them, he’d have let the Gorasni fry.
Maybe they wanted to save each other so that they still had a sworn enemy left to vent their shit on when this was all over.
It really is going to be over. Isn’t it? Another fifteen years of this—no frigging way.
“Tell me there ain’t people here,” Cole said. He aimed short bursts into the approaching wave of polyps. Everyone was lined up across the main drag through the camp, trying to form a semicircle to stop the things dispersing. There was a whisker between pulling that off successfully and getting in someone else’s arc of fire. “’Cause tents ain’t brick walls.”
One of the Stranded opened up with a Hammerburst. They were sporting a lot of salvaged Locust weapons. “The noncoms shot through when the siren sounded,” he said. “Don’t worry, you can
’t wipe out those Gorasni bastards—we’ve tried.”
“I just love it when we all get on so well,” Baird said.
“Hey, COG—these things are getting smarter by the minute. Shut up and shoot.”
The polyps seemed to be getting the idea in a dumb animal kind of way. Instead of rushing in a mass, falling over one another and presenting a nice wall of meat to target, they started to scatter, racing between the rows of tents. And that was when the tide turned the wrong way. They wheeled around and re-formed behind the line. Half the Stranded turned and formed up into an old-fashioned infantry line to face the choke point of the gate into the camp, and the others broke into pairs, conventional rifle-style.
Baird had now reached the stage where his body was on autopilot—along with his mouth—and he was too busy reacting to crap himself. It was a blessing. It would turn to fatigue and thinking every next shot would be the one he missed, the last one before something killed him. But for the time being, he was coping.
Marcus signaled Cole and Baird to block a row each. “I think they’ve played this game before,” he said.
One of the Stranded heard him. “Seen ’em a few times on land,” he called. “Still working out what else they can do. Like how they move around at sea.”
“Gee, thanks,” Baird said. “Now you frigging tell us.”
Then Baird got to see what polyps did when you didn’t drop them on the spot. One Stranded yelled, “Stoppage!” His rifle had jammed. His paired buddy was reloading. A polyp jumped him and it detonated like a grenade. It took out both men. There was a second of stunned silence before half the Stranded platoon—yeah, Baird admitted it, he had to think of them like that—went nuts, broke ranks, and charged the polyps.
You didn’t get to survive in the wild if you weren’t a tough, stubborn animal. Stranded were survivors to a man.
More polyps exploded short of their target, setting tents on fire and scattering wounding debris. Then the things started spitting something—venom, acid, whatever. Baird didn’t know, and for once his curiosity didn’t force him forward for a closer look.
The battlefield was now all smoke and yelling and an overwhelming need to kill anything that moved and wasn’t human. Baird almost didn’t hear his radio.
Just as his own name could cut through any amount of noise, so could the word Pelruan. Mathieson was trying to free up a Raven and two squads of Gears. One of the Gorasni squads answered instead.
“We go,” said the voice. It was Yanik. “You pick us up now. Tell the lovely duchess to hang on.”
Sam. It had to be. That was what the Gorasni sailors had taken to calling her, duchashka. Pelruan had more trouble, then.
“Hang on for what?” Marcus asked.
Mathieson responded. “Another leviathan. It’s hanging around Pelruan. They need some backup.”
“I fucking told you so,” Baird said to Marcus. “There’s two of these things.”
“Three,” Mathieson said. “There’s three.”
PELRUAN, NORTH COAST OF VECTES.
“Yes, it’s back.” Sam lowered the binoculars and handed them to Anya. “I swear it’s learned already. Look.”
Bernie divided up the ammo between the squads with Rossi. Rifles were all they had except for the guns on the garrison’s two ’Dills, and those weren’t much use against small, fast targets on the ground. She wanted to save those for the leviathan if it got within range. Right now, it was being a sensible monster and keeping its distance.
“That’s what freaks me more than anything,” Rossi said. “Grubs—you knew they could think. But these things—they’re just animals. Or plants, even, like the damn stalks. What’s driving them? What do they want? They’re not even eating us.”
Anya squatted next to Bernie. “You think we should evacuate the town?”
She should have been asking Rossi. Bernie tried to be diplomatic.
“I don’t know what Drew thinks,” she said, “but we need to stop those things coming ashore in the first place, or else it won’t matter where we run. They’ll just spread through the island. Eh, Drew?”
Rossi didn’t look up from the piles of clips. “We should at least ask the civvies if they want to leave. I guarantee they won’t, but we ought to.”
The townsfolk were watching. Only a few of them had firearms, but all those who did seemed to be standing around waiting for orders. They’d been used to taking care of themselves, and however ill prepared they were for the world of grubs and Lambent, they were still willing to have a go.
Among them were the old boys from the Duke of Tollen’s Regiment. Bernie knew she was in no position to tell them they were too old. They were in their seventies and eighties; they might not have been fit and athletic, but they still knew how to use a rifle. They probably thought the same about her.
I think they call that irony. I tell this bunch of vets that they’re no use now. I hope Vic sees the joke.
And I hope he’s alive to hear it.
“You heard who Mathieson’s sending us, didn’t you?” Anya said. “Gorasni troops.”
“Shit.” Rossi shook his head slowly. “Well, ma’am, you wanted to hone your frontline command skills. This is going do it.”
“I’ll handle it.” Bernie felt Anya had enough on her plate. Being smart and gutsy wasn’t going to be enough to get her through this alone, not even if she could suddenly sprout a dose of her mother’s killing aggression. “I get on okay with the Gorasni. It’s probably because I know how to castrate farm animals. Always builds bridges, that.”
“I can hear a Raven,” Anya said.
Mac trotted over to Bernie and stuck his nose in her face. Will Berenz had either let him out on his own, or else he’d been wandering around nearby.
“Hey, sweetie, go home. You can’t tackle polyps. Or go sit in the Packhorse.” Mac just looked at her with those sad, baffled eyes as if he was waiting for orders in a language he understood. Bernie beckoned to one of the townspeople. “Take him back and lock him up somewhere safe, will you?”
The Raven appeared as a black flickering shape approaching down the coastline. Mel Sorotki’s voice came over the radio net.
“KR-Two-Three-Nine inbound, three minutes—Mataki, just tell me you don’t have a recipe for these things.”
Anya had her intense and slightly defocused look on, as if she was running through the academy theory classes in her head. “Roger that, Two-Three-Nine. Just you?”
“Stroud, we’re a one-bird army up here. These Gorasni are hard-core.”
“That’s what worries me.”
“First wars first. Kill the current enemy before the previous ones. That’s what I hear.”
One of the Tollen vets walked over to Anya and Drew. He wasn’t fast off the mark, but he still had that upright bearing and he carried an old rifle like it was still part of him.
“Ma’am.” He didn’t salute. He came from the era when you didn’t salute or return one if you weren’t wearing your cap. “Corporal Frederic Benten. We still know how to follow orders.”
“And are you still good shots?” Anya asked.
“Yes, and we stand our ground. Partly because we’re not so good at the running-away bit these days.”
“Good.” There wasn’t a trace of condescension in Anya’s voice. “I want you to form a rank behind the Gorasni, so that if anything gets past them, you pick it off.” She gestured. “Three of you on that headland, the rest of you in front of the cottages at the top of the slope.”
“Ma’am, Gorasni?”
“If they’re prepared to get killed defending this town, they’re under my command like everyone else,” she said.
Benten took it with a grim nod. He went back to his friends, and Bernie watched the news spread among them.
“Shit,” Sam said. “Let’s hope the old discipline kicks in.”
Sorotki landed the Raven and the guy they called Yanik jumped out. He trotted up to Sam and bowed extravagantly.
“My life is y
ours, duchashka. Let us hope it doesn’t come to that, though.”
Sam gave him her half-smile, the one where her eyes didn’t even flicker. “I always wanted a meat shield. Is that it? Eight of you?”
“Eight Gorasni equals twenty COG equals fifty trained Stranded. We are economical people. Value for money.”
“Bullshit,” Sam said. “But thanks. And the old boys with the trident badges, the ones giving you the hairy eyeball—they hate your fucking guts. Your guys put their guys in death camps. Be tactful.”
Sam could always cut to the chase. Yanik seemed to appreciate it. Sorotki and Mitchell joined the huddle to discuss tactics.
“The leviathan’s cruising out there,” Mitchell said. “It keeps diving when we get close, but we’re up for a strafing run if you 77 are.”
“Remember those things can rear a long way out of the water.” Anya signaled to the Pelruan locals to move into position. They had no personal radios, so it was back to last-century soldiering. “Don’t take chances. Pull back and give us air support here if you don’t sink the thing.”
“It’ll provoke it into shaking off polyps, probably,” Sorotki said. “At least that gives us a chance to choose when the attack starts.”
Bernie put her hand on Anya’s shoulder to get her attention. “I’ll go with the locals, ma’am,” she said. “That way one at least of us has a radio link to you.”
“Good idea, Bernie. And I think they’ll listen to you more than me.”
It was a shame. Anya was a good Gear. She had all the right instincts, but she was a small, pretty, blond girlie who looked a lot younger than she was, and the old men clearly didn’t give a damn that she came from war-hero stock, even if they knew that her mother had won the Embry Star. The doubt was all over their faces.
“Okay, Mel, poke the beehive,” she said.
Sorotki had a tough job on his hands. Mitchell was a pretty good door gunner, but they had no idea if a stalk was going to punch out of the water if they ventured too low, or if the leviathan was going to swat them out of the air with a massive tentacle. The Raven circled over the shallows. All Bernie and the others could do was watch. Mitchell was a small silhouette in the open door. Then he opened fire, raking the water below.