The rounds raised a curtain of spray. A few seconds later, a paddle-shaped tentacle like a squid’s unfurled from the surface and missed the Raven by three meters. Sorotki banked sharply and gained height, coming back to let Mitchell piss the leviathan off more. Mitchell emptied two belts of ammo into the thing, and it did the job. It did the job really well. The next thing Bernie saw was the tentacle vanish as the Raven shot off toward the beach.
“Incoming!” Sorotki said. “One huge mad thing heading your way, on a line with the slipway.”
One of Rossi’s squad was on lookout up on the high ground on the other side of the harbor. “No, it’s passed the slipway. It’s going to hit this side.”
“Get out of there,” Rossi yelled. “Get back down here.”
Being shelled was bowel-loosening, Bernie recalled, but when the shells that landed had minds of their own and charged after you, it was a whole new level of fear. The leviathan crashed down onto the shore. Polyps poured ashore in a weird beachhead landing. Bernie still couldn’t tell where the polyps came from—from inside the leviathan, off its back, even out of its arse—but there were a lot of them. She shifted to stand behind the Gorasni positions and signaled to the Tollen vets to stand by. The firing started.
But the Gorasni boys didn’t hold a line—they advanced.
“I can’t do this,” Benten said suddenly. “I can’t stand with these men.”
He raised his rifle. He was definitely aiming at the polyps, but it was clear he wasn’t going to back up the Gorasni. The old soldiers were watching him, and they weren’t going where Bernie had directed them. For a second she had to look away from the Gears and other men in front of her.
“You’ll go where I tell you, Corporal,” she yelled. “Now.”
“We won’t fight alongside them.” Benten started backing off to the road to bypass the eight Gorasni. “I mean it. They can die. We’ll do this alone.”
It was the worst time to lose discipline. “We’ve got a bunch of Stranded defending the Gorasni camp,” Bernie yelled. “That’s after the Gorasni killed some of them and dumped their bodies in the camp. If that feud’s on hold until we stop the polyps, then so’s yours. That’s an order.”
Some of the polyps had broken through. Bernie had no choice. She grabbed Benten and shoved him bodily into line. The Gorasni had turned and were moving back now, drawing the polyps into the more confined space of the street.
“Kill those fucking things.” Bernie knew she had to make this stick. “Back up those bloody Gorasni or get out of the way. Now. Or I’ll slot you myself.”
“Then go ahead, Sergeant.”
These men were Gears like her. She could only guess what they’d been through at the hands of the enemy. She knew what vengeance and loathing felt like; for one act of violation she’d butchered two men, and done things way beyond a just execution. They’d deserved it. But she scaled that up to spending weeks, months, years in a Gorasni labor camp watching your mates worked and starved to death, and probably hoping you wouldn’t be far behind them. She had no idea how she could ask these old soldiers to forget that.
But she had to. “You’ll do it,” she said, “because you’re still a Gear.”
Benten looked at her with a mixture of real pain and absolute disgust. Bernie was sure she’d have told the Gorasni to go fuck themselves, too. But he stopped, moved back to the Gorasni line, and opened fire.
Bernie felt like shit. But, like the feuds, atonement would have to wait for later.
CHAPTER 16
A dog has a military mind. He respects the chain of command. He needs to know who’s in charge for the good of the whole pack, and if there’s no leader, he’ll take the job himself—because somebody has to. The difference between a human and a dog, though, is that the dog doesn’t lie awake at night dreaming of having that power.
(SERGEANT BERNADETTE MATAKI, EXPLAINING HER FONDNESS
FOR DOGS)
VECTES NAVAL BASE, THREE HOURS AFTER THE INITIAL POLYP ATTACK.
“You can use one of these, I assume?”
Hoffman handed Prescott a Lancer and watched him carefully. He took it two-handed and tilted the rifle to inspect it, safety catch uppermost, as if he knew what he was doing.
“I was a Gear,” he said. “But Lancers didn’t have chainsaws in my day.”
Prescott rarely pulled the veteran card, which was just as well. Every one of Hoffman’s generation had done their compulsory military service unless they were medically unfit. But the Chairman was one of those privileged kids who did the two-year commission so that he didn’t look too much like a parasite before his dad whisked him off to groom him for the family firm, the business of politics.
“If you need to use the chainsaw,” Hoffman said, “the power switch is here. Status indicator—here. But I wouldn’t recommend getting that close to those things.”
“I have my security team. Don’t worry.”
Hoffman wasn’t about to. If anything happened to Prescott, he had a team in mind to run the COG, and it didn’t include himself. He wondered if Prescott could grasp the idea of someone who didn’t want his job.
“Casualty update?” Prescott asked.
“KIA—ten Gears, fourteen Stranded, five Gorasni. Civilian fatalities—eleven reported, but most civvies are either locked down or they’ve gone off camp. Wounded—no total yet, but forty combatants have been through ER.”
“That’s not as bad as I’d expected.”
“That’s not counting the naval personnel missing from Fenmont. Those things aren’t done with us yet, Chairman. They’ve come back for a second bite at Pelruan, and they’ll do the same here.”
Prescott was fiddling around in his desk drawers as if he wasn’t listening. Hoffman found himself fighting a constant urge to grab the man by his collar, shove him up against the wall, and ask him what in the name of God was so distracting that he wasn’t pissing his pants about the current situation. And what about Bernie? What about Anya? And Sam—he owed her father better than this. Everything and everyone he cared about was under threat. It had been that way for years, but this was one crisis too many.
“Carry on, Colonel,” Prescott said. He finally found what he seemed to be searching for—a small pistol. He put it in his pocket, then locked the drawer. “I’m listening.”
The Chairman’s office overlooked the base, giving Hoffman a good view of the damage unfolding below. The base and the civilian camps beyond were wreathed in a haze of smoke as the last wave of polyps burned. The creatures were working out how to avoid getting lured into the pits, and everyone with a rifle was back to picking them off individually. The bursts of automatic fire were getting fewer and further between.
“If we can’t kill the leviathans before they drop more polyps, the next assault needs to be dealt with differently,” said Hoffman. “I’m going to use the Hammer.”
“How? Is that wise?”
That’s rich coming from you, Chairman.
Hoffman found it interesting that he didn’t seem to object to the unilateral decision. “I know the targeting’s getting a lot less accurate, but we need a substantial response. It’ll mean a lot of physical damage to the base, but it’s that or keep burning through ammo.”
“But we don’t know how many more polyps will show up. They could be a daily feature. Then there are the stalks. They’ve suddenly stopped showing up. When do we know we’ve reached the appropriate point to apply maximum force?”
“We don’t,” Hoffman said. “I’m just being a goddamn soldier. I’m working out how we kill every hostile and neutralize the threat every time. Beyond that—well, that’s all I can do.”
“Then we need to evacuate the civilians further inland. I’ll get Sharle on it.”
“We’re on an island, Chairman. That limits the advantage of running away. If I knew what this Lambent thing was, I might stand a better chance of beating it. But how come we have only the deadbeats left from the university? What happened to all the smart g
uys in white coats we used to have, the ones who could do some damn research and find solutions? I’m relying on a handful of intelligent Gears to work this shit out.”
Prescott gave Hoffman a carefully blank look. “We didn’t get any answers from scientists before, Victor, which is why we deployed the Hammer of Dawn globally. Remember?”
Oh yeah. I remember. I remember trying to locate Margaret, and sending Gears out into black ash as thick as a snowstorm, and finding the survivors sheltering in drains. Nothing wrong with my goddamn memory.
“I’ll rely on Baird, then,” Hoffman said.
“He’s a very intelligent man. I’d really like him on my staff, much as he seems to enjoy killing anything that moves.”
“Right now,” Hoffman said, “I need him doing some killing.”
Some things had a slow burn time. Hoffman often found himself interrupted by realizations about things that had happened minutes or even days before. This time, his mental tap on the shoulder came from a very routine, apparently unthinking action that Prescott had performed a minute before.
Hang on. Why does he need to lock his drawers? What the hell is there left to hide?
Maybe it was habit. A man didn’t change overnight from a culture of secrecy to spilling his guts. Maybe it was time to give him his regular reminder that they were all on the same side.
“I understand,” Prescott said.
“Chairman, forgive me for asking this yet again, but is there anything at all that you haven’t disclosed or made available to me?” Hoffman hated this verbal sparring. “It might not look relevant to you, but if there’s any classified data that even you can’t access, it’s the kind of thing I can get Baird to pull apart. You’d have shared everything else with me, of course.”
He expected a negative response. And he got one.
“If I had anything that could possibly help you to resolve this situation, I’d have given it to you by now,” Prescott said.
“Just checking,” said Hoffman. You know I am, too. “And can I suggest that you relocate for the time being? It might make more sense for you to evacuate with the civilians. They need your leadership right now. We just need to get on with the job.”
Prescott stood looking at him. “Very well.”
“I mean now, Chairman. I might not be able to carry out a rescue if we get another attack, and you’ve seen how fast things can unravel.”
Hoffman got the feeling that Prescott just wanted him to go away. He wondered if the Chairman was waiting to call Trescu—or even Ollivar—and didn’t want Hoffman around to hear him. Hoffman was pretty sure that Trescu wouldn’t horse-trade with him, but Ollivar was a wild card. The bastard hadn’t even told them that the Stranded had come across polyps on the mainland. It didn’t fill Hoffman with confidence.
Can’t stop Prescott being Prescott. But I’m not going to be dismissed like a schoolboy.
“Good point,” Prescott said. He appeared to give up at that point and headed for the door. “I’ll stay on the radio, channel fifteen. Keep me updated.”
Hoffman followed him down the stairs and went into CIC to talk to Mathieson. But he kept an eye on the doorway to make sure Prescott didn’t double back.
“We can’t move people far, sir,” Mathieson said. “We’ve commandeered every vehicle we can find, but the majority are on foot. Those who’ve agreed to leave, that is. A lot have said they’ll stay and chance it. They’re fed up with running. Even temporarily.”
“Damn shame we haven’t got an armed population,” Hoffman said. He checked again to make sure Prescott had left. “I’m glad we didn’t confiscate all the firearms the Gorasni brought in, though.”
“By the way, Sergeant Mataki’s still operational.”
“You can say alive, Lieutenant.” A thought crossed Hoffman’s mind, an uncharacteristic one, and he was ashamed to let it overtake him when he was worrying about Bernie’s welfare. I’m going to take a look in Prescott’s office. “You call me and let me know what’s happening at Pelruan, no matter what. Even if I’ve got polyps crawling up my ass and the base is burning down. Got it?”
“Roger that, sir. Things are quieting down at the moment.”
It would only take a minute or two. Hoffman went back upstairs and stood looking at the desk in the Chairman’s office. He’d never done anything like this in his life. He hadn’t even sneaked looks at other people’s private stuff as a kid. But this wasn’t about privacy. This was about a secretive asshole of a boss and a civilization teetering on the edge of annihilation, existing from one day to the next. He had to know, if only to enable him to go on working with Prescott without the relationship going totally to hell. He had to be able to trust him.
As far as you can trust any politician.
Maybe he was just doing what we were all trained to do without thinking. Keeping firearms secure.
The locks on the old desks here were simple. He took out his pocketknife and unfolded the awl. He wasn’t sure how he was going to lock it again, but that depended on what he found, and—
So if I find something that pisses me off, what am I going to do about it? Once I open this, there’s no going back.
He opened it anyway. The lock yielded. The drawer contained Prescott’s gold watch, a file of papers—the signed paperwork invoking the Fortification Act fourteen years ago which was effectively Prescott’s crown and scepter—and a computer data disk with a standard sticky label marked A2897. The paperwork was what it appeared to be, but the disk required examination.
He was committed now. He couldn’t put it back and walk away. He took it downstairs to CIC, avoided Mathieson’s glance, switched on the old terminal, and tried the disk in the drive. It didn’t surprise him that the ancient system couldn’t read it. But there had to be one that could, or why would Prescott have kept it?
“Mathieson, I need you to go get a coffee. Or take a leak. Whatever.”
The kid knew what that meant. He nodded, averted his eyes, and wheeled himself out the door. Hoffman went to his terminal—the most recent technology they’d salvaged from Jacinto—and tried the disk there. The drive chugged away to itself for a few moments and the screen flickered. But the file name was a random string, and trying to open it prompted the first layer of an encryption dialogue.
What else did I expect?
Hoffman took a full ten seconds to make the decision to put the disk in his pocket. It took another twenty for him to rummage in the desk and find a carton marked DAMAGED DISKS—DO NOT DISCARD.
Everything was saved for another day, in the hope that it could be salvaged or reused somehow. And all the COG data disks looked the same. He just swapped the labels.
Even as he put the substitute disk back in the desk and struggled to make the drawer appear still locked, he wondered what had happened to him—a man so incapable of deceit that fellow top brass never wanted to tell him the serious shit. He appalled himself. It took a hefty blow with the butt of his sidearm to batter the lock into some semblance of being secured again. He’d just dislodged a pin or something, but it would have to do.
But Prescott will know. And he’ll come after me, maybe. And what do I say?
I tell him to go fuck himself, and that he forfeited the last of my loyalty when he never told me there was a secret facility at New Hope. That’s what I say.
Hoffman’s chest was pounding as he walked down the stairs. When he put his weight on each tread, he felt his legs shake. It was crazy. He was a seasoned Gear. But rifling through his boss’s desk had reduced him to a trembling pile of guilt.
Quentin Michaelson came to his rescue, even if the man didn’t know it.
“Michaelson to Hoffman … are you receiving, Victor?”
“Go ahead.” Hoffman adjusted his earpiece. “Any good news?”
“Clement and Zephyr are still submerged. Garcia thinks he’s got a firing solution on one of the leviathans.”
“Translate that for a Gear.”
“The subs have found one of the
things idling and they think they’ve got a good chance of putting a torpedo up its chuff.”
“Why didn’t they do that before?”
“Ah, gratitude. Because biologics don’t move as predictably as vessels, and that makes them hard to hit. Damn it, Victor, we were trained to avoid killing sea life.”
“If one, why not both?” Yes, that sounded ungrateful. For all Hoffman knew, these were the first two leviathans of a hundred. “But one less leviathan probably means a lot less polyps.”
“Garcia thinks both boats will need to fire a simultaneous spread from different angles to catch it off guard. Overlapping fire in three dimensions, if you like. But the other one will detect all that. So it’s a case of fire and run like hell.”
“We better time this carefully, then. Can Garcia carry on tracking it?”
“Yes, but if it starts moving, there’s no telling if and when he’ll pick it up again.”
The plan refocused Hoffman on essentials. He had an enemy out there, effectively two amphibious assault craft waiting to land troops. The fact that they weren’t human or didn’t seem to have any purpose or plan made no difference. Basic principles of warfare still applied; his job was to prevent the enemy from establishing a beachhead, and if that wasn’t possible, to prevent them from breaking out.
And then we kill them.
Hoffman felt under his armor for the stolen disk in his breast pocket and went to rally the Gears.
He realized he was automatically including the Gorasni and Ollivar’s militia in that group.
PELRUAN, NORTH VECTES COAST.
It was getting dark now. Some of the wooden houses in the town were burning, and the locals had formed a chain of buckets to put out the fires. Polyps weren’t just mines. They were pretty good incendiary devices when they blew up near flammable material, too.