CHAPTER 9

“Wow,” Dom said, looking up from the Marlin. “That’s the weirdest damage I ever saw.”

The deserted cruiser rode at anchor, a sensible distance from the shore. Nobody knew what the hell had punched that hole in her. In daylight, the massive void in her bow and foredeck looked even less explainable to Dom than it had the previous night.

Marcus brought the Marlin alongside and cut the engine. He stood at the helm controls, studying the daylight slanting through the ruptured bulkhead. “So what can ram clean through a hull at that angle?”

“Had to be low in the water to slant up like that.” Dom secured the Marlin’s line to the cruiser’s ladder and reached for the handrail. “If I was guessing from scratch, I’d say she steered onto a reef in heavy seas and skewered herself on a freak chunk of rock, then the swell took her off again.”

“And then there’s the tree,” Marcus said.

“Look, I said guessing from scratch.”

“And the blood.”

“Okay. I get it.”

The name painted on the bow was Steady Eddie. If there’d been a home port named on there, it had been worn off or scraped clean long ago. Dom pulled himself onto the deck and powered up his Lancer’s chainsaw. The navy salvage crew hadn’t found anything on board last night, but that didn’t mean there was nothing here, because they’d just done a quick search of the main compartments in the dark with a flashlight. Dom couldn’t begin to piece this together. So he’d assume the very worst until proven wrong.

And he wasn’t afraid. Not even nervous. That struck him as weird, because any sane man needed a little spark of fear in an unknown situation, but he didn’t have it. It was like it just didn’t matter anymore, as long as it was him going in first and not Marcus.

So that’s where I’ve gotten to. Always had to have a purpose. Used to be the family. Then it was finding Maria. Now it’s all about keeping Marcus alive.

Dom decided he felt a lot better. He’d forgotten he’d thought he had nothing much left worth living for.

“I’d call this a motor schooner,” Marcus said. “This cost a lot of money once.”

She must have been a beautiful vessel in her day; she was a vintage design, more like a yacht. But now she was a scruffy heap, even without the recent damage. Her wheelhouse was rotting and her glass was cracked.

But she had a deck-mounted machine gun. Every fancy cruiser needed one, Dom thought. It looked in good condition. Whoever had owned her had clear priorities.

“Start from the bow and work back,” Dom said. He aimed down into the hole in the deck as he peered in. It was a huge well, nearly the entire width of the deck at that point, and the splintering flared upward. Steady Eddie had been struck from beneath the bow, not from above. Whatever had hit her had taken a chunk out of the chain locker as well. “Upper deck, then down below.”

“Aye, skipper,” Marcus muttered.

“You could live on a boat like this.”

“Or die on one.” Marcus studied the hole, then dropped his legs through and lowered himself to the deck below. “Yeah. Shit. Blood.”

“Literally shit?”

“No. Literal blood, though.”

Dom dropped down after him. The hole in the boat’s side matched the gap in the deck, as if whatever struck had gone in at forty degrees. If it had entered a meter lower, the boat would have sunk. The sun lit up the lower deck, revealing a bulkhead sprayed with blood.

“Now here’s the freaky detail,” Marcus said, prodding something with the tip of his chainsaw. “One for Baird to chew over.”

There really was a huge stalklike object embedded in the transverse bulkhead behind him.

It had lodged in the doorway of the compartment, at an angle from whatever had gone through the hull. Dom had never seen anything like it. But they were in more southerly waters now, and he didn’t know much about the kinds of trees growing around the islands. This one looked more like densely packed creeper instead of a conventional tree, as if the stems had coiled together to form a solid, gnarled mass. He decided it was probably tropical. It also looked as if it was long dead, although there were no signs of decay.

And it was as hard as concrete.

“Never seen wood like that,” he said.

Marcus tilted his head slightly as if to get a better look. “Me neither.”

If it hadn’t been for the sprays of blood, Dom would have settled for the explanation of a freak grounding in a storm, a million-to-one accident as the boat smashed down onto a sharp outcrop on an island.

Yeah, weird shit happens. But somehow I don’t think this is going to be it.

The chaotic state of the interior didn’t prove a thing. Clothing and equipment, including a harpoon with the shaft still attached to the line, were scattered everywhere. Dom worked his way aft. Although there was no more serious damage, there were bullet holes in the deck and halfway up the bulkheads, as if someone had been firing down at something and missed.

It looked like the damage that had been done to Harvest. But there were plenty of possible reasons for loosing off a few rounds below deck besides hauling up Lambent marine life.

Marcus checked another compartment and disappeared into the gloom.

“Well, they weren’t unarmed,” he said.

“What?”

“Look.” Marcus stepped back out and let Dom peer inside. The compartment was stacked with boxes of ammo, plastic-wrapped rectangles that were probably explosive, and loops of wire. “Might be part of the resupply chain to the gangs back on Vectes.”

“Might just be routine precautions, given the freak show around these waters.”

Marcus shrugged. “Let’s check out the wheelhouse.”

They came up on deck at the stern hatch. When they looked over the side, a rainbow layer was drifting on the water surrounding the boat.

“She’s leaking fuel,” Marcus said. He opened the wheelhouse door and stepped in. “Nice comms fit. No expense spared.”

Dom poked around in the console and pulled out some dog-eared charts that had been folded carelessly. Then Marcus checked the radio and turned the dial; it was still switched on, just as the engines had been left running. The crew didn’t seem to have had the time to shut the ship down before abandoning her.

Marcus looked at the preset channel controls on the radio, picked up the mike, and pressed the first one.

“This is Steady Eddie calling,” he said. “Anyone out there looking for this boat?” He released the receive button and waited for a moment. “This is Steady Eddie. Position … just south of Vectes.”

Marcus paused again, frowning. Dom felt the hair on his nape bristle. Then the speaker above the windshield made a loud clunk.

“Who’s that?” a man’s voice demanded. “And where the hell are you? We’ve been searching for you for three days.”

“Jackpot,” Dom said quietly.

Marcus took a breath. “This is Sergeant Fenix of the Coalition of Ordered Governments.”

“Ahh, shit. You assholes again.”

“Let me guess. Lesser Island Free Trade Association?”

“Don’t dick with me. Where’s the crew? Have you murdered them yet? That’s what you usually do.”

Word got around, then. The Stranded bush telegraph had a bigger range than Dom had imagined.

“The boat’s wrecked,” Marcus said. “We found it. We want to know what happened to it, not claim salvage.”

The channel went silent for a few moments.

“Every time we lose a ship, it’s you bastards sinking them,” the voice said. “Cut the crap.”

“Not this time. You’ve got bigger problems out here.” Marcus waited, but there was no response. The channel was still open, though. Dom thought he could hear breathing. “Fair enough. You want to talk—you know where we are. Fenix out.”

Marcus put the mike back in its cradle and tried the ignition. The engine spluttered but then ran smoothly. He shut it down again.

“It’s safe to bring it in,” he said. “Then Baird can pick it over.”

“We need a biologist.” Dom climbed down into the Marlin and slipped the line. They headed back to the naval base. “Not an engineer.”

“Baird did okay with his grub theories. He was usually right.”

Dom wondered if Marcus would ever say that to Baird’s face. Baird still bitched about Marcus making squad sergeant instead of him, but Dom knew it was just griping for the sake of it. Baird was happy as long as everyone accepted that he was smarter than the rest of them. He hadn’t shown any signs of enjoying authority when he led the squad on that refugee camp patrol, so Dom wondered just how much he really wanted it. Baird looked out for Cole, and he even managed to show some concern for Bernie in small doses, but it was beyond him to care much about those outside his small circle. And he seemed to know it. Dom was convinced that Baird had been deliberately insubordinate to sabotage every promotion he’d had in the past, to make sure he was busted back down to corporal every time. He just needed the reassurance that people thought he was good enough to be a sergeant. He didn’t actually want the emotional responsibility of being one.

Marcus gave Dom the fixed stare. “What’s the joke?”

“What? Oh, Baird. I’d miss the cabaret if the asshole got himself killed.”

“First time I’ve seen you amused for some time.” Marcus sounded almost relieved. “He has his uses.”

An impatient Baird was waiting for them when they landed. “You didn’t bring me back samples? I could have gone with you.”

“Relax, they’re bringing the whole boat back,” Dom said. “It looked like it was running arms and ammo for the Stranded, so they must have been landing it here in inflatables or something.”

“Whoa, retribution. That gives me a warm glow. So is it a tree?”

“Maybe. Weirdest tree I ever saw, if it is. More like a giant vine—a stalk.”

“So we’re four vessels down in freaky circumstances in a couple of months.” Baird nodded, looking satisfied. “I say it’s glowies. Can’t all be down to shitty seamanship.”

Marcus didn’t look convinced. “But the last boat didn’t blow up. What’s the tree got to do with it?”

Baird shoved his goggles farther back on his head with that know-all expression. “I’ll work it out.”

It took Michaelson’s salvage team an hour to bring Steady Eddie into the naval base and berth her securely. By that time, Michaelson was pacing around waiting to board her. Trescu stood farther along the quay, talking to one of his submarine crew. Maybe he was getting edgy because Clement had gone out to do some active pinging and she hadn’t reported in yet.

Baird headed straight for the hole in the deck with a handsaw and came out five minutes later with a small chunk of the unidentified stalk. He held up the saw in disgust.

“That stuff’s like heavy-gauge steel,” he said. “Look what it’s done to my saw.” He jumped back onto the quay and handed the chunk to Trescu. “Sure you didn’t find any of this when your frigate went down? Or are you still too shy to talk about that?”

Trescu didn’t seem offended by Baird’s tone. Either he cut Baird a lot of slack for being useful, or he regarded him as an insect hardly worth reacting to.

“We found very little debris apart from what would have been on deck,” Trescu said.

“Are you sure you gave us the right search area?” Michaelson asked.

“Why would we lie to you?”

“Probably the same reason that we tend to assume we control everything. Unconscious cultural habit.” Only Michaelson could get away with saying that. It took a bit of charm. “Clement’s taking a look along this boat’s likely course, but it would be very helpful if we could pin down the last location for Nezark. Because Commander Garcia hasn’t found that geological formation your people reported.”

Trescu spread his arms. He really did look surprised and indignant. Dom believed him.

“Why would we invent such an insane excuse?” Trescu asked. “You don’t believe me? Very well. Take Zephyr. Take the crew who did the sonar search. Check for yourself. The best location we have is that sector we gave you.” He took a step toward Michaelson. “I have no explanation. I want one. Nezark wasn’t a disposable wreck, and her crew were not faceless strangers. We grieve too, Captain. The COG has no monopoly on civilized sentiment.”

Michaelson nodded politely. “Let’s look again, then,” he said. “Full sonar and aerial sweep of that whole section of the grid. With our best teams.”

“Do I get to go with Clement?” Baird asked. “Ravens—been there, done that.”

Dom took it as read that Baird was automatically included in best, and so did he. Michaelson slapped his shoulder.

“Of course, Corporal. I’m counting on you to find out what’s sinking these vessels before I lose my whole damn fleet.”

Baird had been allowed to tinker with Clement’s systems—encouraged to, even bribed to—but this was the first time he’d been out on a patrol.

He’d earned the right as far as he was concerned. He’d built a towed side-scan sonar for Clement by cannibalizing a fish-finder taken off one of the trawlers. If there was anything worth seeing down there, this baby could image it clearly enough to see the frigging whiskers on barnacles.

But he didn’t want to look too excited. A guy needed to preserve some dignity. He squeezed into the torpedo compartment and listened to the rumbling, humming, and whining all around him. She was running on batteries now, two hundred meters below the surface. It was the most perfect machine he could imagine.

“Baby, you’re lookin’ radiant,” Cole said. He kept hitting his head on the deckhead pipework. He wasn’t a submarine-sized guy. “That imulsion rig’s gonna know you’ve been cheatin’ on her with a sub.”

“You know me. I’m shallow. I go for looks every time.”

“Well, now it’s dived, it don’t make me puke like most ships do, but I ain’t gonna get serious with this lady anytime soon.”

“Cole, you know what this is? Forget the water. This is as near as we get to a spaceship. The most complicated weapons platform ever built. Even counting the Hammer of Dawn. Operating under the sea is harsher than orbit, man.”

Cole just looked at him straight-faced for a moment, then burst into raucous laughter. “When they gonna make a full-size one?”

Baird didn’t find submarines claustrophobic. They were just cramped, no worse than some of the spaces ashore that he’d had to live in. Everything was made to fit. Things stowed away or folded back into bulkheads or doubled up as something else. It was like heavily weaponized camping. Yes, he loved it. He even loved that weird smell.

In the control room, things were even more cozy. Garcia stood hunched over the sonar operator, studying the screen with one of the Gorasni crew, Teodor, while another Gorasni stared at the charts with apparent disbelief. They were doing a parallel search of the seabed in a fifteen-kilometer square from the position in Nezark’s last radio message.

“You sure?” Garcia asked Teodor.

“Sure. Your chart is wrong. Your position is wrong. Crappy.”

The helmsman looked up from the yoke and gave Garcia an eloquent roll of the eyes. Teodor turned to his colleague and they exchanged a burst of Gorasni.

“Much as I hate to argue, we’re exactly in the square you designated,” Garcia said. “We can still triangulate off the Hammer satellites when we surface. We know where we are.”

But Teodor was distracted by whatever his buddy had said. He tapped on the side-scan sonar display and made a look-at-this gesture. The other guy quickly folded back the edges of his chart so he could lift it to show Teodor, managing to look both dumbfounded and angry at the same time. The chart was overwritten in thick black pencil.

“Janu knows where he was, too.” Teodor took the dog-eared, folded chart and thrust it at Garcia. “And that is where we find the new rocks. There.” He turned to the sonar screen. “And they are not there. Rocks don’t go home. They stay.”

“So explain why we find the right spot and the rocks are gone,” Teodor said. “Lava eruptions, quakes—all leave marks, yes?”

Baird thought the obvious answer was that a tired, panicky navigator had recorded the wrong position. Garcia had simply plotted the speed and time—assuming they’d given him the right numbers—and drawn an arc from Branascu, then looked at the broad corridor the Gorasni ships would have taken.

The search area didn’t look too far out to Baird. But even a frigate was a small object to find in an ocean.

Garcia looked frayed. “Look, let’s surface again and see if the Raven’s found anything useful.”

“Sir,” said the sonar operator, “the seabed here isn’t the same as on our charts, either. Look. That is not flat. It’s a convex mound. Lots of debris on it.”

“And where is this bulge?” Teodor asked. They all looked at the Gorasni chart. “Same as the place we marked rocks.”

“All stop,” Garcia said. “David? Plot me a square search out from that position. Chief—periscope depth.”

“’Course, that don’t explain where the rocks went,” Cole said to Baird. “We goin’ up top now? I’m just gonna find a sick bag. I’ll be layin’ down with the torps if you need me.”

“We’re just coming up far enough to raise the radio mast,” Garcia said. “Michaelson and Hoffman really need to hear this. Brace for a rerun of all the you-must-be-mistaken conversations.”

It took some believing, Baird had to admit. When Clement came up to mast depth, Gettner flashed the sub first. She must have been dunking her sonar buoy.

“KR-Eight-Zero to Clement. Problems? Result?”

“Here’s the edited highlights.” Garcia squeezed the mike handset so hard that his knuckles went white. Baird watched him de-focus for a couple of seconds as if he was rehearsing a form of words that didn’t make him sound like a total dick. “We found the location but the rock formation was gone. Moved. Collapsed. Whatever. We’re starting a square search for the wreck now. Here’s the start position.”

Gettner paused for a beat. “No shit.”

“Okay, sounds impossible, but Corporal Baird’s sonar confirms the seabed’s changed.”

“Fair enough. I’ve seen two cities sink into holes. Nothing surprises me now. Gettner out.”

Garcia shrugged. “She took that pretty well, all things considered. Now let’s talk to the boss fella.”

Michaelson took it without comment. Baird eavesdropped for a while as Garcia traded speculation with him about grubs collapsing bedrock underwater. The search resumed again, this time with some expectation of an answer. Baird went back to keep an eye on the sonar display.

“I’ll tell you when we find something,” the operator said, his eyes not moving from the grainy image forming by sections in front of him. “Why don’t you go look after Cole? I don’t know why you keep dragging the poor guy to sea. You know he chucks up all the time.”

“Because if you run into some serious shit out here, Cole’s the guy to get you out of it,” Baird said. Because we’re a team. Because he’s my buddy. “Sick or not.”

He almost hoped the sonar operator would need a break and leave the monitoring to him. But the guy was glued to the seat. Baird retreated to the tiny chart table and waited for Cole to come back to the control room. Teodor and Janu squeezed in next to him, resting their asses on a locker and keeping out of the way of moving traffic. Baird, a man who liked to maintain his personal boundaries, wondered if he’d really be cut out for submarine duties.

It was almost getting to the frustrating stage when the sonar guy twisted in his seat to call Garcia.

“Sir? Look at this. This has to be Nezark. Looks like a hull to me.”

Teodor shot off the locker as if he was spring-loaded. There were so many bodies crowded around the screen now that Baird couldn’t get a look in.

“Very clear,” Teodor said. “Is a Gelen. Look at profile. Very easy to identify. Hey, there are holes in the hull! I can see holes.”

“There you go,” said Garcia. Everyone stood back and Baird finally got a look at the elusive display. Even if he said so himself, it was pretty damn good. The frigate looked like a detailed brass rubbing, heeled over to one side, with two massive puncturelike gashes in her port side below the waterline. “Better call in.”

The sonar guy still had his gaze fixed to the screen. “Sir …”

“What is it?”

“Sir, weird shit. There’s something moving.”

Baird thought he meant marine animals. There was a lot of stuff swimming around out there, as noisy as a tropical jungle over the hydrophones. Baird had never seen a biologic on this sonar so he got up and took a look.

Okay, so the imaging wasn’t as great with a moving object in real time. But he could see that the disjointed outline wasn’t a whale. And it sure as shit wasn’t a shoal of fish. It took him a moment to make sense of what he was seeing, but it looked like an invisible hand was filleting the seabed, ripping its backbone out like a zip. Beneath the boat, something was erupting out of the mud and rock, leaving long spines behind it.

Garcia grabbed the mike. “Emergency surface.” He seemed remarkably calm given what Baird could see. “Surface, surface, surface. Blow tanks.”

Someone hit the alarm. It sounded three times, and suddenly the boat was filled with the noise of compressed air purging the ballast tanks. The deck tilted under Baird’s boots like a surfboard at forty-five degrees. He grabbed the nearest solid object that wasn’t a handle or a valve. Pencils and other loose objects skidded off the chart table and bounced along the deck.

Cole was probably washing down the torpedo compartment decks with puke by now. It was a white-knuckle ride.

The surge to the surface felt like it was never going to stop. Baird’s gut floated, gravity free, and then came crashing down through his pelvis as Clement breached like a dolphin doing tricks and smacked down hard into the sea again.

“Helm, full ahead, flank.” That was Garcia-speak for get the fuck out of here. He looked at Baird as if he expected him to shed some light on the completely unbelievable. That was what happened when you acted like you knew it all. “Seismic. Has to be. Lava. Fault line.”

“That’s biologic,” Baird said, not sure if he was going to wet his pants or ask Garcia if they could do it all again. “It’s alive.”

“I go look,” Teodor said. “You open the sail? Yes?”

“I’ll go look.”

Baird headed for the hatch. He’d climbed up to the small open bridge enough times to know the drill, but never after surfacing when the sea had drained out of it. It was cold, wet, and slippery; even without his armor, it was a tight fit. He got a foothold on two metal ledges that folded down on either side, and braced his elbows on the top edge.

Was there anything out there?

It wasn’t easy to spot things on the surface unless the sea was like a millpond. Today it wasn’t. But that wasn’t going to be a problem.

A hundred meters off the port bow, maybe less, something punched through a mat of white foam.

It was a fucking stalk, just like Dom had said. A gnarly, weird-looking stalk.

No, it made even less sense than that: it was a stalk stretching out like some big, brainless arm, and things were spewing out of it, things with six big, jointed, crablike legs, things about the size of a dog. One of the things at the tip of the tree paused like a diver waiting to launch from the top board.

It was luminous, and not in a good way.

Glowies. More glowies. Different glowies. Oh … shit.

Baird ducked down into the sail. He didn’t think to jump below and shut the hatch. He yelled to the deck beneath.

“Hard to starboard. Go on. Do it!” He stuck his arm down into the well, hand outstretched. “And somebody hand me my frigging rifle. Now.”

“You know when I said nothing would surprise me?” Gill Gettner banked the Raven and dropped so low that Dom was sure she was going to tip everyone out of the crew bay. “Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.”

Dom clung to the safety line. Clement was a lonely black shape in the sea below, trailing an arrow-shaped white wake. Something was on an intercept course with her, but it was hard to work out what it was or even its size from this angle. It was only when the Raven leveled out five meters above the water and came up on Clement’s stern that Dom realized what it was.

Barber leaned out of the bay to get a better look. “Well, there’s something you don’t see every day.”

“No shit,” Marcus muttered.

Tree had sounded almost funny when they salvaged the abandoned cruiser. Now it wasn’t funny at all. Clement turned in a shallow arc and the grotesque stalk missed her bow by a few meters. Dom could see things clambering over the stalk like swarming insects, but they must have been at least half a meter tall. One leapt for the boat’s casing. It landed on the sonar dome at the bow.

Shit. Am I hallucinating, or is that thing glowing?

Baird was in the foxholelike well of the submarine’s bridge, his Lancer braced on the rim. He opened fire as the thing—six legs, scuttling like a spider—charged down the length of the boat’s casing. The muzzle flash was suddenly overwhelmed by a ball of light and a loud explosion.

Gettner veered to port. “Shit!”

“He’s okay, he’s okay.” As the Raven swept past, Dom could see Baird reloading and then frantically rubbing something out of his hair one-handed. “That’s got to be Lambent. How many different models do those things come in?”

Baird pulled his goggles into place, looked up, and made a gesture that could have been anything from get clear to don’t leave me here, assholes. Gettner looped around and came back down the line of the boat’s course, bow on.

Submarines were blind. Clement’s eyes were now just Baird and Gettner. Marcus moved up to man the door gun.

“KR-Eight-Zero to Clement, any damage?” Gettner turned and kept pace with the boat, holding position aft of the sail. “I’m looking at one live Baird and the remains of a … an exploding giant crab.”

“Garcia here, Eight-Zero. We’re okay. Hull seems intact. What did we avoid?”

“A big stalk of something that just punched out of the water. I don’t know where the glowing crawlies came from—on it, in it, no idea.”

“Yeah, I’m fine, assholes.” Baird’s voice cut in, shaky and pissed off. He still had his Lancer ready as if he expected a second wave any second. Dom gave him a thumbs-up. “Thanks for asking. This is how I love to spend my day.”

“We see you, Baird,” Gettner said. “You want to give us a sitrep, or just bitch all day?”

“It must be like coral,” he said. “Rock hard and full of individual polyp things. Except it grows about a zillion times faster than coral. You want to fly over and take a look? They’re still all sitting on that thing like—”

Gettner cut him dead. “Clement! Steer one-eighty! Hard over!”

Dom saw it a heartbeat later. Something shot along under the water, broke the surface, and shaved across Clement’s bow. It was another stalk. He heard the shout—might have been Baird, might have been Garcia—and saw the boat roll. Whether she turned in time or was struck a glancing blow, Dom didn’t know. He heard Marcus suck in a breath.

Submarines weren’t built for surface stability. Clement heeled, then righted herself. But the polyps had a foothold on the hull. Its curve and the slick of seawater left them scrabbling for purchase, but they hung on, a carpet of the things, clinging to the sonar dome and the forward hydroplanes. They seemed to be timing their charge.

Baird opened fire again. “Close the hatch,” he yelled. “I said close the frigging hatch! Dive and drown these things. Otherwise they’ll blow like mines.”

Garcia cut in. “Get below. Now.”

“Yeah?” Baird emptied a clip into the first wave of polyps and detonated them. The boat shook. More swarmed up. “I turn my back—they’ll come straight down on top of me.”

“No heroics. Get off the bridge.”

“What fucking heroics?” Baird sounded enraged. “Tell Gettner to earn her pay and get me out of here.”

Gettner dropped closer. Dom kept an eye open for new stalks but held his aim. Marcus swung the gun, trying to get a clear shot, but he could only aim down at the hull.

“Shit.”

“Yeah, don’t be tempted to open up with the gun yet, Fenix,” Gettner said. “Heavy caliber—I don’t know if those boats can take sustained fire.”

“Understood.” Marcus still sighted up on the submarine. “Major, you up for a winch rescue?”

“You bet. Any polyps that climb up the cable—bat them out.” The Raven lifted a few meters. “Baird, you picked the right day to drop the armor. Ready when you are.”

Baird picked off a polyp trying to climb the sail. It blew out a chunk of the anechoic coating as it exploded. “Okay, shut the hatch and crash-dive, or whatever the order is. Garcia? Just do it.”

“Yeah, do it,” Gettner said.

“Dom, take the gun.” Marcus moved in and started prepping the sling and winch with Barber. “If we hang around, we’ll get one of those stalks up the ass.”

“I’m estimating they can reach at least fifteen meters out of the water,” Gettner said. “Trust me, I’m going to bang out fast.”

What if those polyps could swim? Dom watched them clinging to the submarine. They were pretty chunky. Maybe they’d sink.

As soon as Clement flooded her tanks and sank beneath the surface, they slipped off the casing and thrashed around in the sea. Dom trained the gun on them as Baird kicked free from the bridge and trod water for a moment. He was now ringed by a ragged fringe of floundering polyps, any one of which could have gone off like a depth charge.

“Remember—the downdraft could trigger them,” Gettner said. “I don’t want to scrape Baird-burger off my undercarriage.”

Barber kept his eyes on the water. “They aren’t mines.”

“Nat, they’re Lambent. They could do any damn thing.”

“Okay, right … right … overshot, move back … got it.”

Baird was now directly underneath the Raven, battered by the downdraft in the middle of a disk of foaming water. He raised one arm with an OK gesture, diver-style. His left hand still gripped his Lancer, held above his head.

“Let’s go.” Marcus squatted on the edge of the deck with Barber, guiding the sling in one hand. “Yeah … steady, Major … steady … okay, he’s got it.”

Baird struggled to get the sling under his arms for a few seconds. He should have dropped the rifle. Dom was ready to tell him to jettison the thing, but Baird wouldn’t have listened anyway. The polyps swept closer to him on a wave, looking far from dead even if they weren’t efficient swimmers.

Everything blows up in our faces now. Used to be that everything burrowed underneath us, buried us, dragged us down. Now it’s all explosions.

The cable went taut. The winch started whining. “Got him, Gill,” said Barber.

Dom had stopped thinking about the submarine. He was too busy watching the polyps thrashing toward Baird’s legs while he kept his peripheral vision tuned for movement under the surface, for signs of more stalks erupting. One of the polyps managed to slap its legs down on the water and jump a meter. It grabbed at Baird’s boot and hung on.

Baird yelled in pain. For a terrible moment, Dom expected the polyp to detonate and take Baird’s legs with it, and nobody could do a damn thing—not even shoot at it. Then Baird kicked, it dropped, and it exploded as it hit the surface. Baird was lost for a second in a column of water.

“Hey, you assholes trying to use me for frigging bait?” he yelled. “Winch me up!”

“He’s okay,” Marcus grunted. “Normal for Baird.”

Dom was itching to sink the polyps. “Can I fire now?”

“Knock yourself out.”

Machine-gunning the creatures in the water felt surreal. Dom had to give some of them a second pass to get them to detonate, but where they’d drifted into a mass, a single exploding polyp set off a chain reaction. It was like watching a pyrotechnics show.

Marcus hauled Baird inboard across the deck by his belt.

“Yeah, spread ’em around, Dom.” Baird rolled over on his back, gasping but not too exhausted to bitch. “I mean, they might have eggs or something, like coral polyps. Help ’em spread.”

“You’re welcome.”

“My frigging ankle hurts. It got me.”

Gettner’s voice rasped over the speaker. “Hey! I can throw you back anytime, motormouth. Fenix, radio ahead and warn Doc Hayman that Baird might have brain damage. Because I swear I just saw him risk his self-obsessed ass to save his buddies. That says frontal-lobe trauma to me.”

“It’s a nice boat,” Baird said defensively. Dom watched his embarrassment, the telltale roll of the head. “I want it in one piece.”

“Sure you do,” said Marcus.

Dom was pretty sure that the first non-Baird thing that went through Baird’s mind was saving Cole. If he thought any wider than that, then the man was changing. Or maybe Dom had read him all wrong. It was a crazily brave thing to do, whatever the motive.

“They’ll let you keep playing with the boat, I’m sure,” Dom said.

“Hey, I rebuilt their comms and towed array. They’d peel grapes for me if I wanted. If we had grapes.”

Gettner interrupted. “Serious moment, guys. Is he fit enough for me to hang around here? Because I can see something. Look at the water. Follow the line from the main stalk.”

Dom couldn’t see what she meant until the Raven gained altitude. A streak of shadow grew under the surface as the growth was continued underwater, heading southeast. While Dom watched, another stalk erupted from the sea a few hundred meters ahead of the last one.

“Wow, is that part of this one, or what?”

“If it isn’t,” Marcus said, “maybe they’re erupting all over the region.”

Barber marked it on the folded chart resting on his thigh. “Better put out a shipping warning.”

“Hey, Nat, we’ve got one ahead,” Gettner said. “Look.”

She turned the Raven so Barber could see from the crew bay. Dom watched his expression behind his goggles as he refolded the chart and looked at the next grid. His frown got deeper, he started licking his lips a lot, and then he sat back with his hands flat on the chart, staring into the mid-distance for a moment.

“If I draw the proverbial line through these points, you know what it intersects with?” he said at last.

Baird unstrapped his boot and nursed his injured ankle. “This isn’t going to be a fun quiz, is it?”

“No, it’s not,” Barber said. “The damn things are on course for the Emerald Spar field.”

Marcus pressed his earpiece. “Control? This is Fenix. We might need a hand at the imulsion rig.”

Dom had reached his crisis overload for the day. Whatever came down the pike next, however bad, however crazy—it wasn’t going to shift that needle beyond the end-stop.

The harder they fought, the worse things got.

Gettner touched down on the rig’s helipad, muttering to Barber about loads and return trips.

Baird could hear her. She was already planning for the worst—the evacuation of the platform. Judging by the welcoming committee that met the Raven, though, the rig crew weren’t planning on going without a serious fight. They were, as Bernie would have said, seriously tooled up.

“Is that hardware for the stalks, or us?” Baird asked.

Marcus shrugged. “It’s their home. How far would you go to defend yours?”

“Mine was demolished by grubs. Like yours.”

“Yeah. So it was.”

Gradin and six of his crew waited at the edge of the pad, armed with an array of weapons that Baird had to admire. It included a grenade launcher, a flamethrower, a harpoon gun, and a Locust Hammerburst.

Grubs. Baird almost felt nostalgic about them. Nice big targets, predictable things that he knew how to fight. Things that relied on dry land, just like he did. After fifteen years, he had the measure of them. Now he was dealing with glowing monster eels, ship-killing giant stalks, and dog-sized exploding polyps, all of which sounded like interesting novelty acts until he started adding up the casualty list.

His ankle was giving him hell. He was parked somewhere between angry lashing-out aggression and the shaky aftermath of being too scared to think straight. When he jumped out of the Raven after Dom, he realized—again—that his armor was still on board Clement.

Gradin shook Marcus’s hand. “So is it our excellent cuisine or witty conversation that brings these stalks to our door?”

“We’re still working that out. You can evacuate. Gettner can take you off the rig.”

“And leave you to defend the platform?” Gradin took a step forward and did a theatrical count of heads. “I make that four, unless your Raven flies itself. We stay. Everyone here can use a weapon, including our wives.”

Marcus didn’t even try to argue with him. “Fair enough. We’ve got extra squads inbound, but until the cavalry shows—better get started.”

“So tell us how to fight these things.”

Baird was the world expert on stalks and polyps by default. Everyone looked at him expectantly.

“It’s an emerging field of research,” he said. “As in—we met the assholes for the first time a couple of hours ago. They blow up when you hit them. Or when they hit you.”

Gradin sighted up on an imaginary target somewhere past Baird, then lowered his rifle. “Good. That is all I need to know.”

“About knee-high. Six legs.”

“Walking mines.”

“Running mines. Lots of running mines, and they use the stalks like siege ladders.”

Gradin shrugged. “We keep them clear of the vapor venting system, then. Or else we all end up orbiting with your Hammer satellites.” He looked out to sea. “So this is all Lambent.”

“Probably. They were the ones the grubs were fighting a war with.” Baird had a feeling that he’d overplayed his expert card. “We can’t keep up with the different shapes they come in, so here’s the rule—if it looks weird or glows, blow the shit out of it. We can worry about accidentally plugging endangered bioluminescent species later.”

Gradin gave him a look that could have been amusement. “We take your advice.”

Gettner and Barber stayed with the Raven while the others climbed down to the drill deck. The platform was a lot of real estate to cover with just fifty people; Baird suspected that wasn’t even enough personnel to run the drilling operation safely. In the canteen, a team of surprisingly cheerful men and women were laying out ammunition and medical supplies in what looked like a well-practiced drill. They seemed to have a plan for sieges.

“You’ve played this game before,” Dom said.

Gradin shrugged. “We’re a fat target marooned in the middle of nowhere. Yes, we’re ready. Stranded, exploding monsters, marauding COG—we repel all boarders. That was a joke, by the way. We joke.”

“Yeah, I knew you didn’t mean it about the Stranded.”

“Where is your big thrashball star?” Gradin asked.

“Probably still throwing up all over a submarine,” Baird said. He’d kept trying to raise Cole on the radio, but Clement was obviously still below mast depth. “You’ll have to make do with us puny guys.”

“You want someone to take a look at that leg?”

“Not until it falls off.” Baird paused. He could go through the motions, he supposed. Diplomacy. Yeah. How hard can it be? “Thanks.”

The ankle injury worried Baird. He kept unfastening his boot to take a look, and it wasn’t so much the pain as not knowing a damn thing about those polyps. He was checking to see if it was glowing. He felt stupid for even thinking it, but after the weird shit he’d seen in the Locust tunnels—the luminous mucus on the floor that he’d stopped Dom from handling, and the grubs that looked a bit shiny, too—he was half-expecting to morph into some grotesque mountain of exploding meat like that Brumak did.

Shit.

“You want some pain control?” Marcus said.

Baird had to come clean. Marcus had seen all the Lambent variations too. “Just checking I’m not glowing in the dark.”

“You’re the one who was always bitching about having no flashlights.”

“Just saying.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll shoot you if you light up.”

Marcus could say shit like that and not sound remotely callous or glib. Baird couldn’t. He knew it. He fastened his boots again and then began worrying about what to use for body armor instead.

Gradin stepped up onto a bench at the front of the canteen and let out one of those piercing forefinger-and-thumb whistles that Baird couldn’t do. That got everyone’s attention.

“People, Eugen is filling the standby tanker to capacity so we can ship out as much fuel as possible. A precaution.” Gradin pointed to the northwest quadrant of the platform. “The landfall—if it happens—is likely to be on the helipad side, but these stalks can shoot up anywhere. So two lookouts per flank, and one depth-charge launcher. Keep the polyps from exploding near flammable vapor.”

“Do we begin shutting down the whole platform or not?” asked one of the men.

“No time. Drilling is suspended. That is all we can do.”

One of the women was loading spare ammo clips with rounds and didn’t look up. “Are these things quick?”

“Yeah,” Baird said. “They are.”

“Can they swim?”

“No, but they don’t drown fast, either.”

The name tab on the woman’s overalls said DERSAU A. “So. I treat them same way as cockroaches. Flamethrower, maybe. Works really good.”

“At a distance, yes …”

Marcus looked up as if this had rung a bell with him. “What’s the lowest flashpoint imulsion you’ve got here?”

“Flashpoint, or fire point?” Gradin asked.

“You read my mind.”

“We prerefine some grades that will burn. Two-edged sword, of course.”

“Do it to them before they do it us.”

“This is how Gorasnaya waged war in the Silver Era.” Gradin looked amused. “Stand on the castle battlements and rain fire on the unwary. We enjoy this.”

“It’ll be a party,” said Baird.

They really need me here. I can rig stuff fast. This is what I was born for.

The platform had plenty of spare pipe sections and conduit. It took Baird, Eugen, and the drill crew half an hour to divert the outflow from one of the storage tanks to a network of hoses around the platform. Wherever those stalks came up—if they came up—their little polyp buddies would get sprayed with flammable fuel and torched.

It might not get here, of course.

Who was he kidding? He’d seen enough of the Locust to know that if shit was feasible, then it was a dead-cert fucking guarantee to end up in his lap. The glowies wouldn’t be any different.

He looked up at the crane arm that jutted from the side of the platform. The remains of the Stranded pirate still hung there, a keep-clear warning in any language, but it wouldn’t make one damn bit of difference to those dumb stalks.

Now it was a matter of waiting. Baird wasn’t good at that. He walked around the topside gantries, checking for missed angles and vulnerable pipe runs. The platform would go up like a bomb if too much vapor escaped into a closed space and ignited. He was standing on the helipad trying to devise ways to use the flare-off as a giant flamethrower when Dom wandered up to him, Lancer clutched across his chest.

“Just as well we’re quick learners,” Dom said.

“Humans. Great at inventing things to fry each other. Shit at being harmless.”

“Always good to hear an outsider’s view on us.” Dom seemed to be waiting for a retort. “Don’t worry, I bet Cole’s fine.”

Baird still didn’t take the bait. He didn’t feel he had to now. He watched Gettner jump down from her Raven, walk around checking its skin, and then sit behind the door gun facing out to sea. He wondered if she’d ever been a deck chief and missed letting rip with that gun. Everyone needed a weapon in their hands. Gettner struck him as the kind who missed hers.

Marcus joined the staring-out-to-sea committee. “Listen,” he said.

The chatter of Raven rotors drifted in and out of Baird’s hearing on the wind. That definitely boosted everyone’s spirits, although the Gorasni had seemed up for a good fight anyway. A cheer went around the platform.

“Now they earn their fuel!” someone yelled.

“Yeah, it must look that way to them,” Marcus said.

Dom glanced at him. “You going soft on Indies?”

“They’re not Indies now.” Marcus turned to face the direction of the sound. “And none of them ever shot at you or me.”

Three Ravens appeared as black blurs on the horizon to the southwest, instantly reassuring. Ravens were air support, replenishment, and a ticket home. It was going to be a tight fit on that landing pad. As the first bird came into land, everyone took refuge from the downdraft and rotors by withdrawing to the deck below. Baird waited for the engines to cut, but the Gorasni guys went straight back up top. He could hear their loud cheers.

“Must be the mail drop,” Dom said.

But when Baird climbed up to take a look, he could see what had prompted the cheering. Miran Trescu had stepped out of one Raven followed by a squad of Gears. With body armor and a custom assault rifle, he looked like a seriously hard bastard.

“No Prescott, then?” Baird said. “Surprise.”

The Gorasni rig men were slapping Trescu’s shoulder and pumping his hand. He’d made their day. This guy wasn’t a desk jockey. He looked like he loved his job.

“See,” Eugen said to Baird, grinning from ear to ear, “this is why we follow Trescu anywhere. No figurehead. No manager. A leader.”

Baird looked anxiously for squad mates. Sam was swapping ammo with Jace. Even Drew Rossi had shown up, and that told Baird something; this wasn’t just a case of throwing the best guys at the job in hand. It was a training acquaint for the future. Hoffman had sent the guys who would lead squads the next time the stalks appeared after this.

Baird couldn’t see Bernie. But he did hear a loud, bellowing laugh.

Cole stepped out of a Raven with a navy kitbag over his shoulder, walked up to Baird, and dropped the bag at his feet with a clatter of metal.

“Baby, I turn my back for one minute and you’re gone,” he said. “Put your damn plates on. You look like a civilian.”

“Yes, Mom.” Baird could rely completely on Cole, maybe the first and only person in his life who was always there for him with no questions asked or conditions set. He opened the bag and took out his armor. Clement probably hadn’t even reached port yet, which meant Cole had been airlifted off the casing. “Bernie sent you to nag my ass off, did she?”

“She says she always knew you were human, deep down.”

“I just didn’t want to lose our last sub on my watch, okay?”

Cole wasn’t letting up. “Well, the sub thanks you, and so do the crew that was shittin’ themselves when that dose of crabs showed up.”

Yeah, I did something that Marcus would do. Does that make me a different person? I don’t even know why the fuck I did it. I don’t like losing. I knew Cole was relying on me. Does it make me an asshole because I wasn’t thinking of the other guys first?

“Yeah, whatever. Where’s Bernie, then?”

Cole shook his head. “Hoffman grounded her. Says she’s gotta take desk duties until she tests fit again.”

“I bet that went down well.”

“It’s gonna take him more than flowers to smooth over Boomer Lady, that’s for sure.”

There were eighteen extra Gears on the rig now, plus Trescu. Yeah, Bernie wasn’t essential, and she wasn’t a lucky charm. Everything she touched lately detonated under her. Baird still felt bad for her. He didn’t like being left behind when he could do something useful, so he could imagine how she felt about it.

“She can take her killer puppy for nice long walks,” he said. “Savage a few Stranded. It’ll do her good.”

Two of the Ravens took off again to monitor the progress of the stalks. There was nothing to do but stand here and wait for the things to hit or miss the rig. Baird switched his radio to the pilots’ channel and listened.

It was half an hour before he heard the words he’d been expecting.

“Shit … that’s fast. Four-Seven-One, you see that?”

“Confirmed. I’d say that’s multiple stalks, not one with branches.”

“Everyone’s an expert,” Baird muttered.

Marcus shook his head slowly. He must have been listening in on the comms net too, but then he always did. Trescu walked up to him, looked him in the eye in total silence, and nodded once. Then the Gorasni leader strode into the center of the helipad and proved he’d once been a drill sergeant.

“Emerald Spar!” Trescu roared. “Stand by to repel invaders! This rig is Gorasnayan soil!”