CHAPTER 16

“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 guys 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.

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.

But so far, Pelruan was holding on. Bernie seized the lull in fighting to jog back to the compound and retrieve the Packhorse. She drove down the dirt road to the waterfront, passing Rossi on the way. She slowed to a halt.

“Drew, you okay?”

“They’re like shrapnel,” he said. He had small cuts across his chin. His goggles had protected most of his face. “I frigging hate them more than grubs, and that’s saying something. I’m going to get the ’Dill out there.”

“How’s Silber doing?”

“One of the old boys stopped the bleeding, but he’s going to lose that leg. He needs Doc Hayman.”

“Let’s hope the infirmary’s still there when we get out of this shit.”

Rossi patted her arm through the open window. “Nice job with the Gorasni thing.”

“Yeah, I feel so good about treating vets like that. Terrific.”

“Mataki, you were a sergeant when I was in short pants. Don’t you know by now that nobody’s meant to love sergeants? They’re meant to be in awe of us.”

He jogged away to the first-aid station. Bernie drove on. Human instinct was to find somewhere safe to lay up for the night, but for Gears, it was hunting time. The COG had always favored night attacks. An enemy that couldn’t throw light on the battlefield—especially one away from home—was vulnerable to a disciplined force that knew the terrain and had a solid plan.

But if that enemy was naturally bioluminescent, he was doubly fucked. Bernie suddenly found that very funny.

It was probably fatigue lowering her guard, but those wobbling patches of light moving between the wind-stunted bushes on the eastern side of the harbor definitely leveled the playing field. She picked out Sam and Anya behind cover at the top of the beach and drove slowly up to them. Sam was on her rat bike.

Sam revved the bike and braced the butt of her Lancer against her belt. “I bet they wish they didn’t glow.”

Bernie opened the Packhorse door and nudged Anya to get in. The polyps seemed to be regrouping. “You know that girls’ day out we never had because I hit a mine?” she said. “Let’s make up for it now.”

“I’m in,” Sam said. “Better mop up these stragglers before the next wave.”

Sam set off along the concrete path toward the bushes, steering one-handed like a cavalry lancer on horseback. Maybe the polyps didn’t see in the same spectrum as humans anyway, so operating without lights might have been a waste of time. But it certainly made the bastards easier to see by contrast.

The bike roared and twisted as muzzle flash lit up the undergrowth. Sam swerved around, spraying fire. The polyps weren’t so bloody clever when they were up against a fast opponent. Bernie decided it was time to risk playing that game in the Packhorse.

And one of the things could detonate under the vehicle, and it’s goodnight Mataki. But sod it. I can’t keep running around.

“You want to drive, ma’am?” she asked.

“No,” Anya said. “I want to shoot.”

The Stroud genes were forcing their way out now. The last hour or two had made Anya a lot more confident—and aggressive. She was psyching herself up for the next attack, just like her mother used to do.

She’s doing fine, Major. I promised, remember? I said that if she ever picked up a Lancer in earnest, I’d make sure she was ready.

“KR-Two-Three-Nine to all call signs.” Sorotki was circling overhead without nav or cockpit lights, a wandering noise over Bernie’s head. “I can see the leviathan’s lights under the water now.”

“Stroud here—are you pursuing it?”

“We’re going to brass it up as it comes up the beach. It’s moving in again.”

“Stand by, all call signs,” Anya said. “Wait for the Raven.”

“Yanik, you okay?” Bernie called.

A voice drifted out of the gloom. “I want a drink. I want to pee. I saved an old soldier from getting polyped, and he spat on me. Apart from that, life is fabulous.”

In another life and another time, Bernie would have lived happily among the Gorasni. They had that appealingly grim humor, they were good soldiers, and they would fight to the death. But she would never forget the expression on Frederic Benten’s face. She had no right to forgive what she’d never endured.

“Glad to hear it, Yanik,” she said.

The Raven’s engine noise told her it was heading inshore fast. Sorotki, usually a one-man comedy act, sounded pumped up on angry adrenaline for a change. “KR-Two-Three-Nine, following the glowie bastard in—stand by to repel things.”

After all the waiting—which had probably only been half an hour, maybe forty minutes—the next assault unfolded on Pelruan in seconds. The Raven’s door gun raked the harbor. It was an instant, short-lived fireworks display, a show of muzzle flash and living lights as the polyps were catapulted ashore from the leviathan before they scattered for an attack. The Raven hovered, firing into the water. Bernie saw the leviathan rear and thrash around. Its head was picked out in blue-white points of light. Mitchell was targeting them; she saw the rounds strike. She couldn’t hang on to watch the outcome, though, and turned the Packhorse in a screeching tight circle to head for the surreal river of bobbing, scuttling polyp lights.

Anya leaned out of the passenger window, Lancer ready. This was going to be harder than Bernie had thought. APCs like the ’Dill had gun turrets on both sides and a top hatch, but maneuvering a Packhorse for a gunner on the opposite side to the driver—that was another matter.

Point and swerve. That’s all I can do.

Bernie drove right at a column of polyps. They scattered. She yanked the wheel hard right, swinging the vehicle’s tail around, and Anya opened fire. Something hit the Packhorse’s door like clods of mud.

“Gotcha!” Anya’s voice was a hiss. “Come about, Bernie. They’re going left.”

Bernie had to keep moving. If one of those little glowie shits managed to scramble aboard, she and Anya would be dead. She couldn’t see the surface she was driving on, she couldn’t avoid mud or deep shingle, and she was now totally disoriented because she’d lost a sense of where everyone else was. She could only drive by instinct—and by the direction of rifle fire. Radios didn’t help at all.

Anya leaned out further. “Left! Go left!” She fired in short controlled bursts, just the way she’d been trained. Some of the spent casings flew into the cab. One smacked Bernie in the cheek. “Stop! Back up!”

It was like a weird game, except losing it meant dying. Bernie felt the tires bump over something and she waited for a scream or a detonation, but it never came. Anya reloaded as Bernie spun the wheel. She seemed to have lost all sense of fear and caution.

“Ma’am?”

“Keep going! I’m on a roll!”

Anya laid down a long sputtering line of fire through some bushes and wet polyp fragments splattered the windshield. Bernie caught a glimpse of the ’Dill coming at her broadside just in time to accelerate clear. She let the ’Dill move in and paused for a moment to work out where she was.

Above the harbor, the Raven was still at a steady hover and firing. Sorotki and Mitchell weren’t giving up yet. Bernie jumped out of the Packhorse to keep an eye out for stray polyps and looked back on the battlefield, and found she was a hundred meters from the harbor wall on the patch of open ground to the west of the town. To her right, she couldn’t see far because of the houses, but she could hear the rifle fire; ahead of her was a mass of overlapping fire from both directions. She was expecting someone to get shot at any moment. Then there was a loud whoop in her ear via the radio.

“KR-Two-Three-Nine—the bastard’s down! Got him!” Mitchell sounded as if he’d caught Sorotki’s adrenaline surge. Raven crews were generally flat calm. “Headshot. About five belts of headshots, actually. He’s belly up and floating. Not as big as I thought.”

“Stroud to Two-Three-Nine—you sure it’s not playing dead?”

The Raven lifted vertically. Bernie saw its searchlight cast a fierce white pool on the water. Then it crossed her mind what detonating a Lambent Brumak had done to Jacinto.

But that was with a Hammer laser. That was different.

“Oh, I know when they’re faking it …” Mitchell said.

Bernie reached for her binoculars and had just lifted them to her eyes when a brilliant flash of light blinded her. The booming explosion seemed to come several seconds later. She heard Sorotki say “Shit!” and for a moment she thought the Raven was going down.

“Mel!” Anya yelled.

But the light died away and the Raven was still there. It came back to hover again. Bernie could now hear dogs howling and barking from the houses.

“Okay, it’s definitely not faking,” Mitchell said. His voice was shaky. “It just blew up.”

Sorotki’s usual cheeriness was forced this time. “We’ll get a little more altitude before we try that again. Anyone need a searchlight?”

Anya got on the radio again. “All call signs—the leviathan’s down. No more polyps. Let’s clear up what’s left.” She bent forward to look out the driver’s door. “Come on, Bernie. Let’s go.”

Bernie got in and started the Packhorse. “You don’t want Sam hogging all the big juicy ones, do you?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“This is weird.”

“You said it.” A wobbly cluster of lights was racing head-on toward them. Bernie steadied herself to swing the vehicle around. “Okay, ma’am, as they say in the navy—sixty rounds rapid—in your own time—go on.”

Bernie had been through the roller-coaster cycle of fear, adrenaline, anger, and hysterical relief so many times that she knew which stage she was at and when she needed to back off. Fatigue didn’t help much. She was definitely at the shaky, giggly stage. But Anya was still absolutely bent on destruction. She emptied two magazines before she realized she’d run out of polyps.

“Wow,” she said.

The rifles all seemed to fall silent at the same time. There was a lull, and then lights appeared ahead of them—the ’Dill—and Sam’s single headlight suddenly came bouncing out of the darkness across rough ground. The only sounds were the surf, the rumble of various engines, and the dogs going crazy.

“You okay?” Bernie asked.

“I’ll work that out later.” Anya was out of breath. Bernie could hear her swallowing hard. “Stroud to all call signs. Are we clear?”

“Ma’am, all clear this end.” That was Rossi. “Just going to drive the course and make sure.”

“We glorious sons of the Republic of Gorasnaya have also crushed the enemy in case anyone gives a damn.”

“Thanks, Yanik.”

Anya waited. The only troops left to report in were the few locals with rifles, including the veterans.

“Nothing moving,” Benten said at last. There was nothing relieved or triumphant in his voice; the poor old bugger just sounded resigned. “Permission to stand down now, ma’am?”

Anya, bless her, always knew the right thing to say.

“Stand down, Tollens,” she said. “Nice job. Thank you.”

The Raven spent a few minutes sweeping the town with its searchlight. Bernie waited, engine idling, just in case some stray polyp had escaped. Anya hadn’t called in to VNB Control yet.

“You’re not okay, are you, Anya?”

“Oh, I’m fine,” she said. “That’s the scary thing. I want to do it again. I’m not finished. And all this hilarity—I hear it all the time in Control. But now I’ve done it myself. Tell me it’s normal. Tell me I’ve not got some terrible thing in me waiting to get out and kill and joke about it.”

“You’re normal. We all do it. It’s the animal brain taking over.”

“I wish I’d known this while Mom was alive.” Anya didn’t elaborate. “I better let Hoffman know it’s over.”

She took out her earpiece and picked up the handset mike from the dashboard. Her hand was shaking.

“All done, sir,” she said. “We’ll sit tight here until we’re sure there isn’t another leviathan out there.”

“Stay put until we’ve secured the naval base, Lieutenant,” Hoffman said. “It’s going to get rough down here for a while.” He paused. “Everyone’s fine.”

That was his way of telling her Marcus was okay. Anya hadn’t seen him for a while but didn’t even mention him, which was a sure sign she was fretting about him. Bernie couldn’t stand the avoidance any longer.

“You keep your head down, Colonel,” Bernie said.

The mike picked her up. “You too, Sergeant,” Hoffman said. “But remember I’m the one with the goddamn rabbit’s foot.”

Saving Pelruan suddenly didn’t feel quite as good as it had a few minutes ago. But Bernie didn’t have to explain to Anya. They both understood each other now.

After they’d checked in at the signals office, Rossi organized duty rosters and sent Bernie off for the night. She wandered back to Berenz’s house with Sam, feeling like she’d had a wild night that she would regret when she sobered up next morning and recalled her excesses.

“See, even the bloody hound doesn’t come out to welcome the conquering heroes,” Sam said. “Good night. See you at oh-five-hundred, Sarge.”

She was right; Mac hadn’t come racing to slobber affection on her. Bernie decided not to take it personally. She’d make her peace with him in the morning.

“I still think it’s the only option left,” Hoffman said. “We fight or run. And sooner or later, we’ll run out of ammo and fuel, and then running won’t be possible. Let’s end it while the Hammer is still more or less operational.”

Dom found it strange to have this kind of meeting without Anya or Prescott around. He knew why they weren’t there, but the mood in CIC had shifted; this was a soldiers’ gathering, no politics or long-term strategic shit. It was about staying alive for the next twenty-six hours.

And Miran Trescu and Lyle Ollivar were there at the table. Marcus kept giving both of them that very slow head turn, as if he was expecting the worst of them. He probably wasn’t. It was just the way he listened. But it was interesting to see the effect it was having on Ollivar. He was getting twitchy.

“So how do we concentrate the polyps in a kill zone again?” Marcus asked. “We baked a few. They catch on eventually. And then there’s the Hammer laser. Remember what happened when we lasered that Lambent Brumak?”

It had collapsed the tunneled bedrock of Jacinto. The Hammer and Lambent combo was a city-killer. Dom found himself trying to calculate if a shitload of polyps added up to one Brumak, and what the blast radius might be. He gave up and decided to leave that to Baird.

“Yeah, but they’ve got one goal,” Baird said. “They go after prey. They don’t want to steal ships or any of that pirate shit. They’ll chase us. An orbital laser is beyond their conceptual thinking.”

Dom waited for Ollivar to punch Baird out for the pirate comment, but he didn’t seem interested. “So what about Marcus’s question?” Dom asked. “We sank Jacinto by targeting a big chunk of Lambent meat. If we try that here, we might get the same effect and lose the whole base.”

“Valid objection,” said Hoffman. “Shit.”

Baird was scribbling numbers on a scrap of paper. “Maybe not.”

“Not worth the risk if we can kill a leviathan out at sea.”

“And then we don’t get its polyp cargo, either. So how do we get it to the surface where we want it, and keep it there so we can paint it with the targeting laser?”

Marcus didn’t blink. “I’ll whistle for it.”

Dom didn’t care who played bait for the glowies as long as it wasn’t Marcus. Shit, he’d do it himself. Why did it have to be Marcus all the time? Dom wondered if what he sometimes thought was Marcus’s death wish—or at least not giving a shit about his own life—was actually an attempt to make amends for his father’s invention frying the planet.

No. He’s always been that way. Ever since we were kids. Always the first to wade in and defend someone. Always the first to throw a punch that needed throwing.

Hoffman looked across at Mathieson. “Lieutenant, get me Captain Michaelson. I want to know what those subs are playing at.”

“Are we voting on this?” Ollivar asked. “Because we don’t actually give a shit if the COG survives or not, as long as these things are wiped out. That includes Gorasnaya, of course. You can rot in hell too.”

“You’re welcome,” Trescu said.

Hoffman rubbed his forehead, eyes shut for moment. “No vote. My decision. I just want ideas. If you don’t have any, shut the hell up and follow the plan.”

Dom gave Cole a discreet glance, and Cole just gave him his why-are-we-here look.

Why? Because we do all the weird shit with Lambent. Hoffman thinks we know as much as anyone does. Which is slightly more than jack shit, but not much.

“Okay,” Marcus said. “I take a patrol boat out and piss off the leviathan, then slap the targeting laser on it. How I keep it there while the sat platform locks on is the tricky bit.”

“Ten seconds,” Baird said.

“We’d usually have Lieutenant Stroud to input the targeting coordinates, but she’s not here, so Baird can do that.”

“Hey, I’m not being left behind here.” Baird looked at Cole just for a fraction of a second. Dom spotted it. “I’m the glowie authority, remember?”

“And we can’t haul Stroud back just to help us out.” Marcus gave Baird his I-mean-it blank stare. “So you’ll have to suck it up.”

Dom thought Baird was probably more worried about not being around to watch Cole’s back, but maybe he was making too many assumptions about the man’s motive. Just because he looked like he cared didn’t mean that he did. He was certainly pissed off, though.

“Shit, a Raven gunner capped a leviathan at Pelruan, and we can’t?” Baird made it sound like a disgrace. “Come on.”

“Sorotki estimates it was smaller than the ones out there,” Marcus said. “Mitchell emptied all the ammo they had into its head. But we might not get the head.”

Hoffman cut in. “And it still nearly brought the Raven down. We’ve already lost one bird that way.”

Everyone was looking at the clock on the wall. Mathieson was sitting with one hand cupped over his headset earpiece, waiting for Michaelson to tell them what was happening with the hunting submarines.

“Got him, sir.” Mathieson switched the radio to the speakers. “He says they’re tracking it. Listen.”

“Victor, stand by,” Michaelson said. “Because once we fire torpedoes—even if they don’t hit the thing—the other one’s probably going to know all about it.”

“Where are they?”

“Clement can only detect one at the moment, so it’s going for that.”

Baird always found the fly in any ointment. “Shouldn’t we be out there with the laser ready to deploy before they start shooting? Because the first thing that asshole’s going to do when it hears its buddy turned to glowie soup is go for the source of the torp noise or head for us, depending on its IQ.”

Marcus stood up, like the decision was made. “Tell Michaelson to find a boat he can afford to lose. I’m going to prep the targeting laser. Baird, do your sat coordinates stuff.”

Dom jumped up and tapped Cole on the shoulder. “You keep saying you want to take up fishing, Cole Train. Let’s go.”

“Yeah, if the torps miss, I can always puke it to death.”

“There’s a Gorasni crew out there as well.” Trescu got up and headed for the door. “So I take Baird’s place.”

Hoffman looked resigned to the whole thing. It really was the only option left.

“I always knew a committee could run the COG better,” he said wearily. “Okay, do it. The fallback position if the polyps manage to land is that we channel as many as we can into the storage tunnels, seal them in, and pour fuel down there.”

“And then,” Ollivar said, “hope that there aren’t more on the way.”

Hoffman went red in the face almost immediately. It was like watching a squid change color. Dom took a step back, ready to jump between him and Ollivar.

“We fight until we run out of ammo or men or fuel or all three,” Hoffman snarled. “There’s nothing else we can do—except sit on our asses waiting for the right time to pull out all the stops. I have been there before, you goddamn parasitic bum. These choices do not get any simpler. And we’ve run out of time for fucking around.”

Hoffman pushed his chair back and strode out. The squad followed with Trescu. In the passage outside, Marcus blocked Hoffman’s path.

“You should keep Prescott where you can see him, Colonel,” he said. “Or is this something else?”

“His job is to deal with the civilians. He can do that just fine with Major Reid.” Hoffman pushed past Marcus. “And in case you forgot, one of our duties is to evacuate the civilian government to a place of safety in an emergency. Ten klicks up the road is the safest we can do for now.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to come on this mission.”

“Think I can’t hack it, Fenix?”

“If you get killed, then the top command of the COG will consist of Prescott and Reid. Maybe Michaelson will get a look in occasionally, if he’s a good boy.”

Trescu just gave Hoffman a knowing look. Dom knew they’d never be best buddies. But the two men definitely had an understanding, even if that was a shared contempt for certain things—and people. If Dom hadn’t known Hoffman for so many years, and his inability to plot and scheme, he’d have suspected a coup was coming. But that wasn’t Hoffman’s style.

Dom didn’t know if it was Trescu’s, though. He suspected it was. And much as he didn’t like Prescott, the man was their own, the legal head of state, and Dom couldn’t recall him ever doing something that went against the army’s wishes. Just being an asshole wasn’t a disqualifier. He wasn’t a dangerous asshole.

“Yeah,” Hoffman said at last. “I’m more scared of that than getting my ass shot off.”

Hoffman will do the right thing. Maybe Prescott’s chickened out and is trying to save his own ass. Okay. I can live with that.

In the end, all that mattered to Dom was that he kept Marcus alive. His best friend was all he had left.

The naval base was now in the grip of a quiet chaos. The evacuation of civvies was still going on and now nonessential military personnel were leaving. Every vehicle was co-opted to do the shuttling. The only stroke of luck in the whole pile of recurring shit was that the weather was mild, and an overnight outside wasn’t going to kill people like it would have done at Port Farrall. Dom sometimes thought back to what it would be like there now, whether it would have been smarter to stay put and lose the weakest to cold and hunger instead of uprooting everything to come here.

But we can’t do that. That’s not how civilized folks do things.

Michaelson stood at the brow of Falconer as the squad and Trescu prepared to board. He obviously planned on going along for the ride.

“I did a deal with Ollivar’s merchant navy,” he said. “Want to see what we’ve got bolted on the foredeck?”

“Can’t wait,” Marcus growled.

“I didn’t ask what they used it for themselves, of course.”

“Go on, sir, show me,” Dom said.

Dom still took some pride in being the seagoing Gear in the squad, even if it was from his amphibious landing days in the last war. Michaelson had been around for that, too. He was a lot thinner, grayer, and more wrinkled than he’d been during the landing at Aspho Point, but he hadn’t lost that bravado. Michaelson liked a good scrap and would cross the road to find one. Maybe that was why he and Hoffman got on so well.

There had been a 30-mm gun on the foredeck of the patrol vessel the last time Dom had been on board. The other guns were still in place, but this one had been replaced with what looked like a cross between a telescope and a missile launcher.

“Thar she blows,” Michaelson said.

Dom took a closer look. “Sir, that’s a harpoon.”

“Explosive harpoon, actually. I want to think our seagoing Stranded brethren save it for robust negotiations with one another in trade disputes, but whatever they used it for, it might be a way of keeping a Lambent leviathan on the surface for a few seconds.”

“Shit, sir, that’s going to be hairy.”

Marcus strode up to look at it and cocked his head slightly to one side. “Water skiing. Maybe even being dragged to the bottom.”

“I’m game if you are, Sergeant,” Michaelson said.

“Hell, why not?”

“What did you swap it for?” Dom asked.

“Ten catering containers of canned pork. Don’t worry, it was well past its use-by date.”

Michaelson seemed in his element. Falconer headed south out of the base, trailed by Gettner’s Raven, and took up position about six kilometers offshore. Trescu leaned on the rail alongside the squad and they all stared down into the black water to watch for lights, as if being on this relatively small vessel was any protection against a leviathan that could break the back of a destroyer.

Trescu put his hand to his earpiece.

“Zephyr is transmitting,” he said helpfully. So he still had his comms link to his fleet, then; Hoffman must have gone soft. “She wants to make her move. Captain Michaelson, I suggest we do this now. We’ve lost four hours already. These beasts won’t wait forever.”

Michaelson pushed back off the rails and slapped Marcus on the back.

“Toss a coin for the privilege,” he said.

“It’s my job.” Marcus took off his armor plates and stacked them. Dom had never known him to do that before a mission. “You get ready to launch the lifeboats. If we blow that thing up, the shock wave’s going to rupture every weld and rivet on this tub.” He gestured at the armor and gave Dom a meaningful look. “You all might want to consider how long you can tread water in full fighting order.”

“Damn,” Cole muttered. “Whatever happened to a nice boat trip ’round the bay?”

Michaelson did an after-you flourish of his hand and Marcus padded along the deck to the harpoon mounting. The leviathan had lights. At least they’d see the thing coming.

If it doesn’t come up right under the hull, of course.

“Ready,” Marcus called. “Tell the boats they can blow its brains out any time they like.”