“What?” Caroa lunged forward, staring at the screen. “That’s impossible! We were on target! We hit him!”
“Yes, sir,” the strike officer confirmed. “The hit was clean.” He, too, seemed troubled.
“We hit the target,” Jones said. “But that’s the augment. Right there.”
“It could be another augment,” Caroa argued. “Some privateer. It could be merchant shipping from the Seascape. The trade combines all employ half-men in their forces.”
Jones shook her head. “No, sir.” She bent over her keyboard and started typing commands. “Raptor One… I’ll show you.”
Footage spooled rapidly. Images flashing. Flares of light. The infrared display of the hit and aftermath, all of it running backward. Death undone. Damage healing itself. Missiles reversing their flights—
The analyst slowed the recording.
“This is right before the first strike,” she said.
There it was again. The familiar last seconds that he had seen previously. People wandering the building. In the corner of the video, a countdown clock ticked down to missile strike. It was all correct. Nothing untoward that the general could make out.
Now the moment of truth, missiles a mere two seconds away. The last, sudden lunge of the augment as it sensed its demise.
The general clenched his teeth as events unfolded. The augment was fast. They were all damnably fast—it was why Mercier used them. And this one was better than most. But they weren’t made of magic. No matter how optimized their DNA, augments were still flesh and bone. They still lived.
And they still died.
“There’s the first hit,” the strike officer announced.
The screen flared with an expanding ball of searing light.
Jones hit pause.
“Second strike is incoming…” She pointed, then fiddled with knobs. “But I reran the footage and filtered against the heat, looking for the coolest objects, you see…” The analyst trailed off, pointed.
There was a ghosted image, still moving.
“What am I looking at?” the general asked. “This is nearly a textbook hit.”
The recording inched forward. The creature was starting to heat up, starting to ignite.
“There! You see it! He’s hit!” Caroa exclaimed. “Plain as day!”
“Yes, sir,” Jones said mournfully. “Second strike happens now.”
Another ball of exploding fire and death, overlaying the first, the creature haloed in fire. Around it, others were dying, curling in on themselves and becoming ash.
The third strike hit. All in mere seconds of motion.
One… one and a half seconds…
Two seconds.
“He’s dead,” the general said firmly. “He’s right inside the blast radius.”
“I’m not finished, sir,” Jones said, sounding aggrieved. Caroa suspected she’d used the same put-upon tone in her training classes, when she showed her instructors how much smarter she was than them. “We lost the sensors on Raptor One. But Raptor Two was still getting good thermals. So I brought it back around.”
“Why on earth would you bother?”
Jones and the strike officer both looked guilty. “The winds were good. I wasn’t using fuel,” she said defensively, but at a glance from the strike officer, she admitted, “We—I wanted to see what a six-pack did. I’ve never launched that much ordnance at once.”
“Her first Havoc drop,” the strike officer said, smiling slightly at her eagerness to rubberneck at the destruction she had wrought. Caroa, too, remembered and understood that awed urge to see the power of the gods that he wielded, to view the crater left behind. With a few typed launch codes, the world dissolved in heat and magma and flames. That rush never died. Not even for old men.
Caroa stifled his smile, not wanting to encourage her. He sighed instead. “All right. Show me.”
Jones looked relieved. “It took a little while to bring the Raptor around and get a resolve. There’s a hurricane coming in, so it took some jockeying, and the intel suite on the Strike Raptors isn’t as good, but I got it locked in and—” She stabbed the screen with a finger. “There. Look!”
The screen was still awash with white heat. Slicks of fuel and payload blazed everywhere. The waters of the great rectangular lake that had lain before the ancient capitol building were streaked by hellish rivers of fire. But in the waters, there was a separate blot of red. A spot of independent movement.
The cameras lost the image.
“Storm,” the analyst apologized.
The image returned, wobbly, but clear enough. The heat signature was big, and it was moving. Steadily, deliberately. Moving away from the blast.
As the analyst had said, the cameras weren’t as good as those on Raptor One. Raptor Two was for killing, not for spying. But the thing was big, and it was moving… and it was hot.
“He’s on fire,” the general murmured.
“Yes, sir, I think so, sir. The augment is still burning, underwater. I think he took a hit from our first strike, might have gotten splash from the second, but then with the rest…”
“We missed.”
The figure swam on.
“Why won’t it just die?” the strike officer wondered as they all stared at the screen. “It should be dead.”
The general scowled. “They were made tough. They’re designed to feel little pain, less fear. They’re very fine weapons.”
“Yes, sir. But… this is unnatural. Even for an augment.”
The general ground his teeth. The strike officer had no idea how true his words were. In his youth, Caroa had believed that one could never have too fine a weapon. Now he regretted his early enthusiastic vehemence. Sometimes it was possible to cut yourself on your own sharp knife.
The blip kept going, but its progress was slow. “He’s hurt,” Caroa said.
“Definitely,” Jones agreed. “We hit him with some nasty stuff. HH-119 doesn’t come off. It should have already burned through him. I think the long immersion in water is helping him. It’s amazing how long he’s staying down without oxygen.”
“They’re designed for amphibious assaults,” the general said. “They can stay down for a good twenty minutes like that. Maybe longer.”
“I’m surprised we don’t just design them with gills,” the strike officer said.
“We tried. There were problems mixing air intakes.” Caroa scowled. “I can’t believe the bastard is still moving.”
“He’s cooking, though,” the strike officer said. “Look at that heat signature. We’re watching him cook. Just because he’s moving doesn’t mean he’s not dead. It just takes more time.”
“Where is he now?” the general asked.
Jones sped up the camera. The creature began to shoot through the water, hyperfast, sliding across the lake and then…
It disappeared under the shadow of a ship.
“Schooner. Manta-class,” Jones said. “Fast little ship. A smuggler, we think. The target hides under her for a while, and then she sets sail…”
The heat blip appeared at the stern of the ship.
“And the son of a bitch hitches a ride,” the general finished. He scowled at the heat signature of the creature. Still alive. Still holding on, like a barnacle from hell.
The screen fuzzed and flickered.
“This is the live feed now?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. The storm is starting to cause interference. Looks like it’ll only hit Cat Two, Three at most. Still, nasty to sail into.”
“Maybe they’ll sink,” the strike officer offered hopefully.
The general scowled at him. He shut up.
The ship rose and fell violently on the waves. The screen flickered again with storm interference.
“Hit them,” the general ordered. “Sink the ship.”
“Sir?” Jones and the strike officer turned to him, surprised.
“Hit them,” Caroa repeated firmly. “Maybe that augment is already dying on its own,
but trust me, we want to be sure. It’s too dangerous to be running wild. It’s a goddamn Pandora’s box. Sink the whole goddamn ship. No one will notice. It’s a no-man’s-land out there. It’s not like we’re sinking competitor cargo in the South China Sea. Ships sink all the time out there. Especially in storms. Hit them.”
“But, sir!” Jones protested. “We fired the entire payload! We don’t have any more missiles in the air. It will take hours to scramble more Raptors. By that time, the hurricane will make flying impossible.” The screen fuzzed again. Jones ran her hands over the controls, frowning. Brought the image back. “I’m already having a hard time tracking.”
“You mean we’re going to lose them?”
Jones swallowed, glanced guiltily at the strike officer, who looked similarly forlorn. “Yes, sir.”
“Fates preserve us.”
Fear slid fingers up the general’s spine: old horror, old memories, rising. He ran his hand under his collar, trying to get a breath. The Strategic Intelligence Center suddenly felt too hot. He fought the feeling of rising claustrophobia, trying to focus on the task at hand.
This is my fault. I rushed it. I should have kept a reserve. Stupid, stupid, stupid—
He realized his hand was up at the scars on his face, his fingers plucking at the memory of his wounds—
With a growl, Caroa jerked his hand away from the ravaged flesh that even cell knitters had failed to fully heal.
It’s not the same. This time I have the upper hand.
He focused on the video feed of the clipper ship as it sailed deeper into the storm. “Find it,” he said. “Find that ship. Get its registration. Pull everything you have for its movements.”
“It’s a smuggler, sir. I don’t think they record where they go.”
“Use your head, Analyst! Show me you aren’t just a clever test taker. Smugglers smuggle! They have to resupply somewhere. They have to sell whatever it is that they’ve pulled out of that hellhole of a city. Scour the Eastern Seaboard. Manhattan Orleans. The Seascape. Mississippi Metro. The Gulf. The Islands. Check London registries, if you have to!”
He stared at the infrared signature of the half-man, still clinging to the ship’s stern. A huddled blot of heat, lashed by rain and winds.
Maybe it will die on its own, a hopeful voice whispered, but the general suppressed the thought. Wishes were for victims. Those sad souls who prayed to Kali-Mary Mercy that their seawalls wouldn’t break. Fools who begged the Fates to keep a hurricane from turning Cat Six. Deepwater Christians who prayed to God to wash away their sins.
Wishes weren’t for soldiers.
Soldiers faced reality, or else they died.
“That ship is going somewhere,” Caroa said. “Find out where. We’ll burn them on the other side of the storm.”
6
TOOL CLUNG TO the clipper ship as it climbed another mountainous wave face and then raced down its back. Rain hammered down, malevolent. Foaming waters clawed at Tool as the ship sank into a trough. He fought to hang on.
All of his skin was burned, and yet he felt little pain. He was dangerously wounded, his nerves seared dead, and the burn of the missile strikes was still burrowing inward. Even now, heat rose from his skin, his scarred flesh smoking.
He smelled like a coywolv that his soldier boys had once roasted over a campfire, when they’d first begun to retake the Drowned Cities. They were all gone now, he realized. Everyone who had sat around that early campfire. Stub and Sasha. Alley-O. Mog and Mote. All the rest. He could still remember Stub igniting, the boy enveloped in flames even as Tool turned and ran.
Human meat turned to ash, without even a chance to scream.
My pack.
The ship climbed another towering wave. Tool struggled to maintain his grip. He could feel himself weakening, and wondered if he cared. His kingdom destroyed before it could be properly begun. His soldier boys…
They had not been kin, but they had been pack. And now they were all dead in the blink of an eye, become the prey of another, more advanced, predator.
Tool’s lips curled. Sharp teeth gleamed as lightning slashed the clouds.
I am not prey.
A memory. A mantra. His truest nature. Something to howl at the gods who rained down fire and sought to wipe him out.
I am not prey.
No human could have survived the missile strike. Only such as he, designed to withstand the perfect crucible of war. He was meant to survive. Meant to live on after other, weaker creatures died.
Or perhaps he was deluding himself. Perhaps he was already dead, and didn’t realize. At a certain temperature, all meat cooked. It took time for the deeply burned to die. He had memories of this, he realized. Memories of fire raining down from above. Members of his pack, roasted and dead, but still moving for a few hours longer, not comprehending that they were already gone.
I have been burned before.
The memory was there, a shadow play of jumbled images: augments like himself, igniting, screaming rage as they were transformed into pillars of fire—
A wave of salt water crashed over Tool, dragging him back to the present. Another wave struck the ship abeam, and water rushed across the canted deck. Tool fought to hang on.
The captain of the vessel seemed hell-bent to sail into the storm, but the ship was clearly in trouble. Another mountainous wave came rushing up from behind. As it crashed down, Tool’s fingers slipped. He lashed out with one hand, barely hooking the last rung of the rail. Foaming waters swallowed him completely.
Amazingly, the ship righted itself and clawed forward once again. Tool surfaced, spitting water. Squinting into the lashing rain, he could see the ship’s crew now up on deck, struggling with ropes, trying to raise more sail. He guessed that their automatic pulleys had failed, so now they were trying to save themselves by hand.
These storms are your creations. You made them. Now you struggle to survive.
It gave him a certain dark satisfaction to see humans floundering so. It was ever the way of them. Diving always into danger without thought, always optimistic that they might win out. And so they died.
Another wave crashed over the ship. Tethers snapped. Struggling crew members blasted across the deck and disappeared into the frothing sea, their screams lost in the roar of the winds.
There was nothing for it. These puny humans would never survive if he didn’t reveal himself.
Tool hauled himself over the rail, stifling a howl as shrapnel from the explosions spiked and speared under his skin. He had been burned and flayed and perforated, but still, if there was pain, not all of him was cooked. Where there was pain, there was life. Pain was his ally, assurance that his heart still beat, his claws could still tear, his jaws still crush.
Tool dragged himself forward, clinging to the rail as waters swirled about his waist. A human went skidding past. Tool snagged him by the wrist.
“Hold fast!” Tool roared. The crewman nodded, terrified, clutching to him.
Young. Just a boy. Someone with missing ears and an old triple-hash brand on his cheek. Barely into manhood, and now about to drown. Tool dragged the boy back aboard, and the child reattached his survival line.
The boy pointed across the deck and shouted something. His words were lost, but his meaning was clear. Another of the crew was struggling with the mainmast, still unable to raise the sail. Without it, they would founder.
Tool gathered himself and leaped. He hit the mast and barely managed to grab hold before the next wave crashed into them. The sailor struggling with the mast lines looked up, eyes wide. Familiar.
“Mahlia!”
Before she could respond, another wave crashed over them. Tool grabbed her before she could be swept away. They both clung to the mast.
Blackness squeezed Tool’s vision, but he held grimly on. He was losing strength. The ocean continued to batter him, uncaring that he was using his last reserves. He could feel his strength bleeding away.
The ocean is vast, and we are frail.
>
Darkness pressed his vision and pain receded. He was dying after all. They had finally succeeded in killing him. Tool bared his teeth, hating that his enemies had beaten him.
Summoning the last of his strength, he grabbed the jammed pulley mechanism. The ropes were hopelessly tangled in it. With a heave, he tore it free and smashed it against the mast. Once. Twice.
Metal shattered.
Tool seized the rope in his teeth and ripped it loose. Fighting unconsciousness, he hauled at the rope.
Slowly, the sail rose.
He yanked again and it rose higher, billowing in the gale. At last, the sail filled. The ship surged forward. Tool swayed, fighting titan winds. Their only hope was forward motion. To cut through the waves, to race ahead of them. And yet now he couldn’t pull any more. Could barely hold the rope against the power of the hurricane. He fell to his knees.
Mahlia was beside him, shouting something he couldn’t hear. He wrapped the rope around his fist, knotting it there, and collapsed against the mast, still holding the rope, staring up at the sail, leaning back, making it fill. He felt the ship gathering momentum.
Around him, he was aware of people swarming. Humans, frail humans. Humans like ants, frantically working, struggling futilely. He felt ropes being looped around him, binding him to the mast. He heard Mahlia, shouting whip-crack commands, but the meaning of her words disappeared into the howl of the storm.
Darkness crushed his vision.
7
TOOL SMELLED THE scents of his Claw, all squeezed inside the sweltering hold of the attack boat. Wet fur, gun oil, ocean salt, iron blood, rotting fish, burning plastics. They were packed together like so many sweat-matted sardines in the pitch-darkness. The air was heavy and close. He could taste his Claw’s bloody breath in the darkness, all of them inhaling one another’s air.
Feritas. Fidelitas.
The carbon-fiber hull vibrated with the power of the attack boat’s engines as they rocketed for shore. It thumped and banged, slamming over waves. The din inside the hold was like construction hammers, relentless. Tool’s Claw all swayed back and forth, shaken by the jerks and shudders of the boat. No one complained. Speed was everything. Speed, radar deflection, and luck.