“They’re having manufacturing issues with the resonator components.”
“Tell Payne he’s no Adam Fenix.”
Prescott actually laughed, his posh ha-ha noise rather than proper laughter. “Adam would be surprised to hear that endorsement from you, however oblique.”
“Yeah. Pity it’s too late.” Hoffman wasn’t going to let the grubs carry on popping out Reavers, though. He’d find another way. “I’ll call Pad in and we’ll see what we can put together ourselves.”
“We do have intelligence-trained operatives, Victor.”
“I’d rather rely on an experienced Gear, thanks.”
“Let me know if you change your mind.”
Hoffman hated having an operation snatched away from him. He walked up to the wall map and took a look at the location outside Ilima, now marked by a neatly cut square of red paper on the end of a dressmaking pin. A Lightmass bomb wasn’t the only way to destroy grubs in tunnels. There was good old-fashioned sabotage, the quiet stuff he’d done years ago in special forces, and he still had some of the men who knew how to do it, like Dom.
“Mathieson, get me Pad,” he said.
Pad’s callsign was Outlier these days, although he’d had quite a few over the years. Hoffman was trying to recall what his callsign was at Anvil Gate when Mathieson looked up and pointed to the receiver to indicate Pad was waiting. He must have been hanging on for the signal.
“Pad, it’s time to come in,” Hoffman said. “Get your ass back here so we can plan a raid on the tunnels. How long is it going to take you?”
“I can be back at CIC by nineteen hundred,” Pad said. “I’ve seen a couple more Reavers emerge, so let’s not piss about. We’ve got to hit them soon.”
“Pull out, Pad.”
“Okay, sir, but I’m going to make sure there’s no other exit from that fissure. I’ve got a camera.”
“You heard me. Call it a day and RTB.”
“Okay. Nineteen hundred. Outlier out.”
Hoffman wasn’t sure what kit Pad had these days. He was forever trading stuff with the Stranded, so if he came back with some imaging, that would help. They had the geological data for the whole of Tyrus somewhere. With survey information and a little common sense, they might be able to get a reasonable idea of what kind of tunnel system they’d be dealing with. It had to be hangar-sized. Reavers were big and needed space to get airborne. Hoffman walked over to the DRA archive on the other side of the square and got one of the clerks to book out the geological survey of Ilima, and by the time he returned with the cardboard tube tucked under his arm like a grenade launcher, Anya was back at her desk and the imaging interpreters were at their table, poring over the latest batch of aerial recon pictures that had just been printed off from the morning sorties.
Mathieson stood his ground as control room skipper and carried on regardless of Anya’s return. Neither of ’em with a clue what to do with themselves when they’re not in here. Hoffman hoped there weren’t going to be fights over who got the main desk.
Anya did look bad, though. Not tired, as Hoffman had expected: she looked like she’d been crying, and that wasn’t Anya at all. He’d have a chat with her later. It didn’t take a mind-reader to work out who she’d been crying over. It was just the timing that bothered Hoffman. Why now? Maybe Marcus had finally written back to her.
“Okay.” He unfurled the survey chart, offered it up to the wall in various places to find the best fit, and rummaged in the nearest desk drawer for some thumbtacks. “Let’s fix these bastards while they’re still in the shop, shall we?”
Anya looked up from the clipboard of handover notes but didn’t offer a comment, and a couple of Raven pilots wandered in with recon images and left them in the in-tray on her desk. The trouble with quiet days was that they hung somewhere between hope and waiting for what felt like the inevitable.
And then the firing started, and Hoffman was left in no doubt what kind of lull this had been.
The AA guns on the roof started up just as the voice traffic burst over the radios.
“KR-Seven-Seven, six Reavers, inbound, bearing two-seven-zero, range five kilometers.”
“Roger that, Seven-Seven.” Anya dived straight in and didn’t give Mathieson a chance to open his mouth. “All callsigns—Reavers inbound from the west, two-seven-zero, six identified.”
Hoffman abandoned his chart and moved over to the main illuminated plot table. Dealing with Reavers was always a balance between committing Ravens—which seemed to be the action the assholes were trying to provoke—and letting them get close enough to the wire for the artillery to take them out. “KR-Eight-Zero to Control, we have eyes on one Reaver squadron coming in from the north as well.”
Hoffman didn’t have a choice now. He had to use whatever asset was free to engage them. He could take a few hits in the city more easily than losing Ravens, though. There was one place where he could get a better handle on the situation, and that was the artillery position on the roof.
“I’m just going up top,” he said, but the moment he opened the door something hit him in the chest and knocked him backward. The blinding flash and the explosion felt like it came later. He was flat on his back, winded, and the light vanished. He could hear something like tinkling water a long way off.
Glass. It’s glass. Been here. Done that. Oh shit.
His mouth was full of dust. He spat before trying to inhale. But he could move and he was pretty sure he was on his feet now, or at least on his knees and able to stand. The light was filtering back in again as if smoke was clearing. Something creaked and then hit the ground with a thud. He tried to make sense of what was left of CIC.
“Anya? Donneld? Come on, people, talk to me. Anyone hurt?”
“We’re okay, sir.” That was one of the photographic interpreters. “Hell of a mess.”
“Me too,” Anya called out. “Mathieson, too. Just checking we’re not bleeding and don’t know it.”
Hoffman looked up, ears ringing. The AA guns were still pounding somewhere above him. Most of the ornate plaster ceiling had fallen in, leaving the central lighting rose hanging from the joists above, and the windows were shattered. The blast had ripped charts off the walls. He looked behind him and saw that the door to the corridor was hanging off its hinges at the top, revealing the destruction outside. The passage looked like it had taken a direct hit and it was a matter of sheer luck that CIC had only caught the tail of the blast. He could already hear voices from the other side of the rubble as a damage control party tried to get through to them.
“We’re okay,” he called. He turned and crunched over the carpet of shattered plasterwork to Anya’s desk. Mathieson was still sitting in his wheelchair, fishing wires and paper out of the debris on his desk. Anya, covered in pale gray dust as if she’d been floured like a piece of fish, was testing the connections on the radios.
“Well, it’s one of those goddamn days,” she said to herself. She picked up a phone and Hoffman could hear the line buzzing. They were still connected to the exchange, which was something. “Can’t get any worse.”
Everyone took it pretty calmly. There was a recovery plan for all this. They knew where they had to go to set up the command systems again and restore power and comms, and there were responders tasked to drop everything and help them do it. A couple of off-duty Gears in their civvies and a medic picked their way into the room, ready to do what was necessary. There’d be more people along soon.
“Like we’d take your word that everyone’s okay, sir,” the medic said. “Can everyone walk? Come on, clear this place and get over to the first aid station. You don’t know what else is going to collapse.” He went over to Mathieson, couldn’t find a clear path for the wheelchair, and beckoned to one of the Gears. “Sorry, lieutenant, we’re going to have to lift you out and fetch the chair afterwards. You’ll need a Centaur chassis if you’re going to work in this place.”
Maybe it was a lucky hit, nothing more. Hoffman was always surprised
how lucid he managed to be after getting caught in an explosion, but he found himself stumbling through rubble with Anya, heading to the far side of Sovereigns and thinking that this was the first phase of a new push by the grubs. Maybe they thought taking out CIC was a good start. Maybe they didn’t understand just how decentralized the COG had become and that most units could go on fighting without CIC anyway.
We’ll be up and running again in a few hours. Fuck you, grubs.
When he looked up at the open sky in the courtyard, he could see the smoke hanging in the air from the artillery barrage. The guns were still pounding right across the city. He sat on the steps with Anya as they waited their turn to see the doctor. She was dusting off a field radio that had seen better days.
“Just checking, sir,” she said, brushing back her disheveled hair to shove in an earpiece. She fiddled with the dials. “Control to all KR units, CIC comms are temporarily down and we’re relocating.” Hoffman could only hear one side of the conversation. “Roger that, Eight-Zero … yes, understood.”
“Gettner’s playing squadron sheepdog, is she?” Hoffman asked.
“You can always rely on her, sir.”
“You okay? Because you looked pretty strung out before we got hit.”
“Just the triumph of hope over experience, as they say.” Anya took an unnaturally intense interest in the radio receiver to avoid meeting his eyes. “I finally worked up the courage to phone the prison and Marcus wouldn’t take the call.”
“Did he write, then?”
“I know he got my letter this time,” she said. “Prescott delivered it personally. So I’ve been waiting.”
Really? Damn, I didn’t expect Prescot to tell me, but Anya’s confiding in him now? Well, shit.
“And he didn’t reply.”
“Not yet.”
Asshole. Hoffman felt like a father whose daughter had been wronged. But Marcus had no expectation of getting out of there alive, and he’d been typically straight about it from the first day: forget me. Anya had been hovering around Marcus for more than fifteen years but she still didn’t get that this might have been as much of Marcus as anyone could ever have.
“I don’t know what to say to you, Anya,” Hoffman said quietly. He folded his arms on his knees. “I don’t know how to ask you what shape your relationship was in before this happened. Just … he’s not demonstrative. Wanted to keep it private. Is that what really hurt you?”
Anya swallowed hard and brushed the tip of her nose with the backs of her fingers. Her eye makeup had smeared into gray shadows that made her look even more exhausted and broken. Hoffman wanted to drive over to the Slab there and then and give Marcus the punch in the face he so richly deserved.
“He loves me in his own way,” she said.
“Bullshit.” Hoffman bristled. “If you love someone, you love them in the way they want to be loved. That’s a lame excuse for being cold.”
“No.”
“Oh, it is. That’s me, girl. I had a wonderful wife who stood by me and put up with all my crap, right to the end.” Hell, this was painful; but he had to know he was doing this for the right reasons, and he had to give Anya advice that would make her happier one day. “I came back from Anvil Gate a different man. She still stood by me. For twenty damn years. Not the first good woman I lost through being an asshole, either. She should have left me when she could, just like you need to get over Marcus and move on.”
Anya rubbed her nose again. “Easier said than done, sir. You can’t stop loving someone even if you want to.”
“Anya, forgive me for offering an opinion, but he should have married you years ago.” He wouldn’t take her goddamn call. Might be noble, might be selfish. Either way—just look at her now. “If your mother had still been around, she’d have kicked that bastard’s ass.”
It was harsh and it was true. Sometimes people needed a wake-up call. Anya blinked a few times, then gave him a sad I’m-okay-now smile that didn’t convince him much. “Okay, I don’t want to offend you, but seeing as we’re being frank …”
“Truth doesn’t offend me. It might hurt, but it never offends.”
“Sometimes I wonder if you’re my biological father.”
Hoffman hadn’t been expecting that. Shock did weird things to folks, though. “What the hell makes you think that?”
“Because Mom would never tell me who my dad was, and you’ve always been so kind to me.”
“Goddamn.” Hoffman shook his head. “Sweetheart, I can tell you for sure that I’m not. I just served with your mom, that’s all. But … look, you’re a lovely, loyal, clever girl, so why wouldn’t I treat you right? I’ve lost too many people I care about. I cherish the ones who are left.”
“That’s me, loyal to a fault.” She sounded disappointed, and the loyalty thing seemed to grate. “Sorry, sir.”
“I wish I could say I was, Anya.”
“We’re all going a bit crazy these days, aren’t we?”
“Damn right we are. Hey, Pad’s coming back into camp tonight. It’s high time we all got rat-assed in the mess. You up for that?”
“Sure.” It sounded like no. “Why not?”
The worst thing about days like this, Hoffman decided, was that things got said in the heat of the moment and then couldn’t be taken back. He’d never realized that Anya worried about who her father might be. It hadn’t struck him that she might have wanted to get over Marcus, either, although she might simply have been fending off a painful conversation. He decided to leave it alone for a while and let her immerse herself in re-establishing CIC in the ballroom of the House of the Sovereigns, because busy was good. He liked busy too. The ballroom was a strangely luxurious place with paneled walls and a slightly sprung floor that would also double as a morgue or a casualty center if needed. Hoffman felt like a vandal for using pins to mount the charts on the walls.
He checked his watch. Busy really worked. It was 1830 hours, nearly a day lost, and Pad was due any minute. Damn, he should have been back by now, but he’d said 1900. Hoffman left Anya, Mathieson, and the current CIC watch staff to tinker with the new setup and set off for the checkpoint on Timgad Bridge.
“Evening, sir,” said one of the Gears, a corporal called Tebbit. “Hear you got a direct hit today.”
“Usual grub bullshit.” Hoffman ducked under the rear barrier. “No Ravens lost, anyway. Two civvies and a couple of buildings. I think they’re just jerking our chains. The bastards are going to do another winter push to piss us off.”
“Looks like it. So are you keeping us company, sir?”
“I’m waiting for Pad Salton.”
“I’m glad he remembers where Jacinto is. I sometimes wonder.”
Hoffman stood at the checkpoint for four hours, arms folded on the top row of sandbags, waiting. Neither of the Gears on duty said a word to him. From time to time they handed him a tin mug of something hot and heavily laced with alcohol and sugar. It might have been a fruit concentrate of some kind. It was too sweet and too dosed with liquor to tell. But his greatest comfort right then wasn’t the generous amount of alcohol they’d added, but simply the fact that ordinary Gears still treated him like one of them. It made the job a lot less lonely.
Hoffman tried the radio again. “Red Zero Two to Outlier, over.” It was just dead air. “Red Zero Two to Outlier, over.”
Tebbit leaned on the top of the barrier with him and took a look through the binoculars. Derelict buildings still looked like a city, more or less, but beyond the road the destruction was more complete, and the whole shape and structure of civilization had gone. The heaps of rubble looked random and almost like natural landscaping. It seemed to stretch into infinity.
“He goes walkabout for months at a time, doesn’t he?” Tebbit said.
“Yeah. Months.” But if Pad said he’d be back, he’d be back. There was something wrong, and Hoffman knew it. South Islanders had an uncanny ability to go to ground and survive anything, and Pad was living proof of that reputation, but
sometimes things went wrong and they got killed like everyone else. “I’ll give him another couple of hours.”
In the end, Hoffman gave him until 2530. The rubble-strewn road on the other side of the bridge remained stead-fastly deserted with only the sound of some feral cats slugging it out to indicate there was anything left alive out there. He made a note on the back of his map to get a replacement bottle of liquor for the checkpoint and turned to walk back to Sovereigns.
“He’ll be back sometime, sir,” Tebbit said. “You know he will.”
Hoffman found he was ambling as if he was expecting a movie ending, where Pad would come down that road in the nick of time and he’d turn and give him a suitably gruff greeting to disguise his relief, just like grumpy old bastards were supposed to. But it wasn’t a movie, and Hoffman knew that Pad had run into trouble. He hadn’t made it. He was the last of Hoffman’s old gang from 26 RTI. They were gone, all of them, all dead or disappeared.
“Sure,” Hoffman lied, willing at that moment to trade the rest of his life for an hour talking to someone he could still call a friend. “Sure he will.”
THE SLAB: BRUME, 13 A.E.
The water was ankle deep in the psych wing, but it wasn’t getting higher, so Niko took that as a bonus.
He waded through the abandoned wing in rubber boots, checking with a flashlight in case this was raw sewage and not just water again. The place hadn’t been right since the army had blown up the sewers a couple of kilometers east during the summer. It sounded like it was too far away to make a difference to the prison but there was no telling how all the tunnels and sluices fitted together. They said it was a labyrinth down there, the kind of place you could use for bomb shelters if you didn’t need it to carry away waste and surface water. It made sense to Niko that you could really screw things up if you messed around with such a complex network.
Like traffic jams. One intersection gets blocked—the chaos spreads. God, when did we last have traffic jams? When did we still have that much fuel and that many vehicles?
He bent down to scoop up some of the water in an old pickle jar. Once he got outside into the light he’d be able to see the condition of the water and work out where it was coming from. The little he remembered from geography class told him that granite was impervious to water except when it was fractured. Well, there was plenty going on to fracture anything these days, but he suspected it meant that granite had fissures and holes in it from when it cooled or something.