CHAPTER 20

“He’s probably just gone off somewhere,” Anya said. “We’d have found the body if he’d been killed.”

Bernie slowed the Packhorse to ten klicks because that was the speed limit through the camp, but there was nothing to run down anyway. The devastation shocked her. It looked like the Stranded camp on the coast after they’d torched every last hut to stop the COG getting so much as firewood from it.

“Sorry, ma’am.” Bernie tried to concentrate on the mike in her hand. “He’s not a running-away kind of dog, but you’re right–polyps don’t haul off prey and lay up with it. As far as we know.”

“We’ll keep looking. Soon as he shows, I’ll call.”

“Thanks, ma’am. Mataki out.”

The world was going to hell again, and yet the thing that worried her most was a lost dog. She wasn’t sure if that made her insane, insensitive, or smarter than most. But animals were easier to love than humans. The thought of the poor little bugger lying hurt somewhere or just hiding in terror upset her.

But he’s an attack dog. He won’t piss himself and run. He’s been hurt. Killed. I let him down. He trusted me, and I wasn’t there for him.

“That’s what you get for not securing him yourself, you stupid cow,” she said aloud. “Never trust anyone else to do the important things for you.”

She parked the Packhorse in the compound and noticed that the rat bike was already there. Sam must have burned through the woods, because she hadn’t overtaken Bernie on the way back. There was a sense of urgency everywhere. It was reassuring in some ways, because she’d been certain that another setback like this would kill morale in New Jacinto stone-dead. There were only so many times you could stand looking at ruins and vow to rebuild.

Whatever else the bastards say about us—the COG doesn’t give up easy.

But there were no bastards left, not unless you counted the Stranded now scattered to the four winds. The world she lived in was now wholly COG. Even Gorasnaya had settled grudgingly into it like some argumentative but ultimately reliable ally.

To the west side of the base, there was a brand-new sea view and a lot less dry land. It was a big, vulnerable gap in the defenses.

Bernie worked her way across the parade ground, skirting the cordoned-off crevasses and subsidence, and tried to take in a new coastline. Bricks from one of the broken buildings clinging to the cliff were still toppling into the sea as she watched. The massive guns were gone. But it was nothing new. Ephyra had been ripped up and demolished on a daily basis too. She’d just started to think that it was all slowly improving.

Should have known better.

The barracks blocks were heaving with displaced civvies. Her quarters were taken but she couldn’t work up enough energy to be pissed off about it. Everything she owned was in her backpack anyway, so she was suddenly plunged back into the nomadic state she’d existed in for years on her long journey back to Jacinto. There was a vague comfort to it, the knowledge that she could just get up and go if she really had to. She could even sail out of here.

But I can’t do that to Vic. Not now.

Control had moved to the infirmary wing. She reported in and Mathieson gave her a meaningful jerk of the head to indicate a meeting was taking place in the next room.

“Don’t wander away too far, Sergeant—the Colonel wants to see you.”

“Is he going to be long?” She draped her arm on her slung Lancer. “I was planning on getting my hair done, you see.”

Mathieson wasn’t used to her. The look on his face told her he wasn’t sure if she was joking or not. Her armor was filthy with polyp fluids, her arms were covered in scratches and bruises, and she was sure she stank of smoke, dog, and cordite. Mathieson broke into a smile a fraction at a time.

“He’s in with Trescu and Michaelson.”

“The triumvirate.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because there’s three of them, sir.”

“I mean—never mind. Where are you going to be?”

“Sergeants’ mess. Unless you’ve got new tasking for me.”

“No, go get yourself a coffee and clean up. I’ve lost track of who needs an extra pair of hands until Major Reid gets back.”

The mess—a couple of basement rooms, one of which had been an ice store—was deserted, and there wasn’t any coffee. She poured herself a glass of the rum that the locals made from sugar beets and settled at the bar, chin resting on her hand. Eventually she heard Hoffman’s boots approaching at his usual fierce pace and wondered how to open the conversation this time.

He just stared at her for a moment.

“Shit, woman, you look like death warmed up.”

“You always did know how to make a girl feel special, Vic.”

He gave her a pat on the back, typically awkward, and then relented and put his arms around her. It went beyond affection. It felt more like he hadn’t expected to see her alive again, a really desperate, crushing hug.

“Okay, what’s wrong?”

He tried to force a laugh, very un-Hoffman. “What isn’t?”

“Tell me you’ve not assassinated Prescott.”

She was joking, or at least she thought she was.

“Look, there’s something I’ve got to show you,” Hoffman said.

“There’s nobody else I can talk to about this.”

“You’re scaring me now, Vic.”

Hoffman perched onto the bar stool next to her and slid something out of his breastplate. It was a data disk. He held it up between his forefinger and middle finger for her inspection like it was a cigar he was about to light. “Tell me what this is.”

“Not the payroll details, judging by your face.”

“I don’t know what the hell’s on it. All I know is that it’s encrypted, none of the COG Command keys can open it, and Prescott didn’t want me to see it.”

“Where did you get it?”

“I broke into his desk.”

“Well, bugger me. Honest Vic joins the fallible human race.”

“What’s so secret now that he couldn’t tell me when we were going down for the third time?”

“He’s the kind of man who thinks the time of day is classified information. It could be anything.”

Hoffman gazed at the disk as if it was going to combust if he stared at it long enough. “I really need to find out what’s on here.”

“Ask him. Go on, have it out with him, once and for all. I’ll back you up. I’m bloody sure Marcus will, too.”

“Had the chance.” Hoffman drummed his fingers on the bar for a moment. “Failed.”

Hoffman folded his arms on the bar and rested his forehead on them for a moment. It was a rare lapse for him, a naked moment of weary vulnerability. Bernie struggled to think what Prescott might be up to. There were no secrets left in the world worth keeping, unless the Chairman had discovered a secret stash of coffee he was hoarding for himself. All the things that governments fretted about were beyond irrelevance now.

“Give it to Blondie,” she said. She hated to see him ground down like this. “He’ll be into that in no time. But just ask yourself what you’ll do when you find out what he’s hiding. You might not want to know.”

“Whatever else I screw up, I always know how to pick a sensible woman.”

“I’ll do now, will I?” It just slipped out. She wanted him to understand that he’d hurt her all those years ago and that while she might have forgiven, she hadn’t completely forgotten. “Last game in town?”

“Look, I’m not proud of how I treated you. But I’ve grown up. I’m sorry.”

“We’re sixty years old, Vic—it’s about bloody time.” She regretted it as soon as she said it, and knew she’d made her point. “And talking of secrets, are you ever going to finish telling me about Anvil Gate, or do I have to wait for your memoirs?”

Bernie had tried patience and sympathy. She’d dragged the story out of him a line at a time, but been interrupted or thwarted so often in the last few weeks that she wondered if she was meant to know the truth. Her best chance now was to provoke him.

“No. No, you don’t.” Hoffman reached for her glass, and she thought he was going to drink what she’d left, but instead he pushed it away to the far end of the bar. “Let’s finish that story right now. Every last damn word of it.”

It was definitely a day for telling the truth.

Hoffman felt as if a few years and a ton or two had lifted from him as he walked through the workshops in search of Baird. He’d never been sure if Bernie would stare at him in disgust when he told her the full story of Anvegad. But she’d nodded, said she would have done the same to the Indie officer, and agreed that the Kashkuri guy had got what was coming. For some reason, she didn’t seem to understand that it was the Indie officer who haunted him, not the Kashkuri.

She’d also asked him if Sam knew her father had turned down the chance to escape with her mother. Bernie cared about those things. She’d been the one who finally told Dom how his brother Carlos had died. She knew what a tough call it was to decide whether to burden someone with the truth about a loved one, good or bad.

No, I never told Sheraya. So Sam probably doesn’t know, either. And Pad didn’t tell her, because he told me so.

And where the hell did he go? Is he still alive?

Samuel Byrne’s decision was one of those things that would either be too painful to bear knowing or a precious revelation, and Hoffman had never known which. It was time he found out. He was the last man around who knew the sacrifice Byrne had made. That was something to be remembered and honored, not some dirty secret to be taken to the grave.

There were dirty secrets, but he wasn’t going to bury those, either. He held Prescott’s data disk gripped tightly in his fist. The workshops were big, echoing spaces that smelled of old oil and burning rubber, and today they were busy, full of people trying to salvage or repair what they could from various ships and vehicles. The hammering and drilling of metal hurt his ears. He tried to avert his eyes from the searing white welding arcs.

“You’ll go deaf if you keep doing that,” he yelled.

Baird’s blond head popped up from the engine compartment of a Packhorse. He wasn’t wearing ear defenders. Cole was. He winked conspiratorially and took them off.

Baird straightened up and wiped his hands on a rag. “If it’s about your limo, Colonel, it’s going to take me some weeks to get around to emptying the ashtray.”

“Goddamn it,” Hoffman muttered. He liked Baird’s acid side as long as he followed orders. “You’ll just have to do something else to avert my wrath, then, Corporal.”

“Okay, my staggering range of skills is all yours.”

Hoffman debated whether to involve Cole in this. Knowledge put pressure on everyone. Baird would have to do a mucky job and keep it quiet from his best buddy, and Hoffman felt he owed Delta more than that. He couldn’t bitch about Prescott’s lack of candor if he didn’t practice what he preached. But he was also compromising these men by even mentioning the disk to them.

“You can say no to this, Baird.”

“If you’re trying to psych me up to say yes …”

“I’ve got an encrypted disk that none of the COG codes can open. And I shouldn’t have it.”

Baird got a look in his eye just like that damn dog did when Bernie said “Seek!” He loved this shit. He didn’t just enjoy solving puzzles; he needed to solve them before anyone else could. He took comfort and identity from being the smartest kid in the class.

“Well, that narrows it down,” he said.

“Prescott knows I’ve got it.” Hoffman dropped his voice as far as he could in the pounding, scraping, drilling cacophony around them. “That’s why you can walk away from this without any stain on your technical manhood. You too, Cole. You don’t have to get involved in this shit.”

Baird laid down the wrench. “Nice psyops, Colonel. You’ve got my undivided attention. Hand it over.”

“What’s Prescott gonna do about it?” Cole picked up the discarded wrench and continued working where Baird had left off. “Bust you down to private?”

“Better wash my hands,” Baird said. “Don’t want to leave any fingerprints.”

Hoffman shoved the disk into Baird’s belt. “I don’t know if it’s urgent or not. Might just be embarrassing pictures from his wild youth, if he had one.”

“I’ll be in my executive suite,” said Baird, and strode off.

Hoffman paused a moment to look for a reaction on Cole’s face. Cole just raised an eyebrow and went on tinkering with the battered Packhorse.

“I’ll let Marcus and Dom know what’s going on,” Hoffman assured him. “But I don’t want everyone knowing that the Chief of Staff’s been reduced to stealing data from the Chairman. Not good for morale. We’ve got to at least look as if it’s a united front.”

“Understood.” Cole frowned at the Packhorse as if he was changing the subject. “Baird makes this shit look easy. Damned if I know what’s wrong with this thing.”

“The man’s gifted. Don’t know what we’d do without him.”

“You ever tell him that? He’d appreciate it, sir, even if he gives you a load of bullshit about how he don’t care what anyone thinks.”

That was typical Cole. Hoffman gave him a slap on the shoulder. “Yeah, just for you, Cole. I’ll give him half an hour before I go find him. He’ll have it cracked by then and I can tell him what a smart boy he is.”

Walking around for a while was a good thing to do right now. People needed to see the top brass out and about, doing something useful or at least looking like they were. It also gave Hoffman quiet thinking time. By the time he’d covered the distance from the workshops to the edge of the Gorasni camp, he’d worked out that he was going to offer to tell Sam about her father, and give her the choice of whether to hear it. It was all too much like Dom’s situation. There was no painless way to tell someone their dead loved one had done something heroic and sacrificial. It would always be bittersweet.

The Gorasni refugees paused in their cleanup operation to watch Hoffman for a few moments, more curious than suspicious now, as if Trescu had put out the word that the COG bastard wasn’t wholly bad and didn’t need to be shot on sight. It was progress of a kind. Yanik waved to him as he went by. It seemed churlish not to acknowledge the man.

“Has she found her dog?” Yanik called.

He could only mean Bernie. “Not yet,” Hoffman called back.

“Is a lovely day, yes? The garayazi have gone. No more Stranded. I can save many bullets now.”

Yanik walked on, grinning. He didn’t fret about shooting anyone and he probably wouldn’t have lost a second’s sleep over stealing classified data, Hoffman knew.

We’ve all done things we’re not proud of just to survive. Or because we think it serves a greater good. Maybe I don’t have the right to judge Prescott.

But that was bullshit, and he knew it. If Prescott had a secret this late in the game, then it was big. And Hoffman’s duty wasn’t to a single politician but to use any means necessary to maximize the chances of humankind making it through the next few years.

Hoffman carried on walking, checking his watch every few minutes. Half an hour, I said. Baird’s probably cracked the encryption and found a way to turn the data disk into a perpetual-motion machine by now. He made his way back through the naval base, skirting around roped-off holes and working parties until he reached the disused lavatory block where Baird had set up a makeshift workshop of his own.

The corporal was sitting on one of the toilets in a cubicle whose door had long vanished. Its black plastic seat was folded down to make a chair, and in front of it was a bench made out of old ammo cases. An odd assortment of disembodied components was spread around the bench, linked by strips of ribbon cable and wires like a set of entrails in need of a body cavity. It wasn’t until Hoffman recognized a computer terminal—just the flat part of the screen, nothing else—that he realized what he was looking at. Baird had wired together an array of scavenged computer components to make a working system. He looked up, his expression grim.

“Couldn’t fit all this in a case,” he said. “Even if we had a spare one, which we don’t.”

Hoffman watched him for a while. Baird was a different man when he was playing with his toys. Hoffman actually felt sorry for him. Maybe that was why Bernie did, too.

“Well?” Hoffman said.

Baird shook his head slowly as he hammered at the battered keyboard. “You think I can do anything, don’t you?”

“Yes. Can’t you?”

“Not this time.” He stared at the monitor for a moment, but it was clear that he wasn’t seeing what was on it. He was just searching for the right moment to look Hoffman in the eye. “I can’t open it. I’ve never seen anything like it. Don’t think I’m making excuses—but this isn’t anything the COG’s ever used.”

Hoffman wasn’t sure what surprised him most, Baird’s defeat or the fact that he admitted it so openly. Disappointment gripped him. This wasn’t the time to tell Baird as much.

“You want to talk me through that, Corporal?”

Baird straightened up. “None of the COG security codes work, but you know that already. In fact, it doesn’t look as if it uses any of the encryption technology that the COG’s ever had—military or industrial. I’d guess that it’s something that Prescott had built for him specially.”

“I won’t ask how you actually know all the COG encryption codes,” Hoffman said.

“But you’re glad that I do.”

“Damn right I am.”

“I’m going to keep at it. Anything that’s encrypted can be unencrypted, and nobody locks me out forever.”

“Even knowing what you can’t do with it tells me something.” He thought of Cole for a moment and took his advice. “We rely heavily on your talents, Baird. I don’t take them for granted.”

Baird looked awkward. Bernie was right; for all his cocky bullshit, he really didn’t know how to handle compliments. “I mean, how unknown can an encryption key be? It’s not like Prescott has a whole bunch of scientists holed up somewhere working on cutting-edge tech just for him, is it? It’s got to be based on something we already know and use.”

“No.” Did Prescott think they had a chance of cracking it? He hadn’t seemed panicked, but then he never did, not even when he was about to press the button and incinerate most of Sera with the Hammer of Dawn. “Do what you can, Corporal. Let me know if there’s anything you need.”

Baird took the disk out of the computer’s disembodied guts.

“You trust me to hang on to this?” he asked, half-offering it back to Hoffman.

“You know damn well I do,” Hoffman said. “Make sure you don’t lose it.”

He knew Baird would now guard it with his life. It was a matter of pride as well as obsession. Hoffman walked away, careful not to look back, and reflected on the fact that Baird didn’t seem to feel at all diminished by having to use a goddamn lavatory for an office. That was confidence. He almost envied it.

The day wasn’t resolving quite as Hoffman had hoped. He wanted boils lanced and all hidden things made plain in the space of twenty-six hours. He wasn’t going to get far with Prescott’s secrets by midnight, but that didn’t absolve him from clearing up the unfinished business of more than thirty years with Sam, business he didn’t really know needed completing until Bernie pointed it out to him. Now was as good a time as any.

He wandered into CIC and found Mathieson. The lieutenant was eating a sandwich one-handed while he scribbled notes on a sheet of paper that was gray from repeated erasure and re-use. He pushed his headset’s mike away from his mouth with an unconscious flick of his finger every time he went to take a bite, then flicked it back again. It didn’t slow down his conversation with the patrolling Ravens one bit. He’d been stuck at that comms desk far too long.

“How you doing, sir?” he said, looking up. “It’s all quiet now the Stranded have run away. Can’t get used to it.”

“Make the most of it. Longest we were ever without some kind of trouble was six weeks, and that was between the wars. We didn’t get used to that, either.”

Hoffman was suddenly distracted by the rest of Mathieson’s meal spread around the desk. A water canteen stood next to the phone. There was nothing remarkable about a bottle of water, except this one was a UIR type, not COG issue. He knew all too well what they looked like. He’d stepped over them in the churned mud of battlefields, riddled with Lancer rounds and scattered around with the sad contents of wallets, and he’d drunk from one when his life hung on a thread at Anvil Gate.

Indies make me look at what I am. Maybe that’s why I don’t like Trescu.

The most traumatic memory he had to live with was an act of unexpected and shaming kindness that he repaid with a bullet. That was an indictment. He suddenly felt he could never stand alongside the Tollen vets in remembrance, because his nightmares were of his own making.

“Something wrong, sir?” Mathieson asked.

“Just admiring your canteen.”

“That’s from Yanik. Don’t worry, I didn’t have to trade anything for it. He was just being kind. He probably feels sorry for me.”

Poor Mathieson; he had no idea how much worse that made Hoffman feel. It was time to do something positive, something done for its own sake rather than to relieve his guilt. Benoslau. That was the officer’s name. Captain Benoslau. Hoffman wasn’t sure what he was going to do with that fact, but remembering the man’s name was the least he could do.

“They’re not all monsters, Lieutenant,” he said, and changed the subject. “Look, I need to find Byrne. Does she hang out in the main mess?”

“You after a tattoo, sir?”

“No,” Hoffman said. “I need a scar removed.”

Mathieson knew when to ask questions and when to keep his mouth shut. He didn’t say a word.

In the world they’d both known and lost, he would have gone far.

Barber hung out of the crew bay, snapping recon images of the terrain beneath the Raven like a crazed tourist running out of sightseeing time.

“We haven’t even scratched the surface of this place,” he said. “The map doesn’t tell us a damn thing. For all we know, there could be imulsion reserves down there.”

The center of the island was an extinct volcano, four kilometers across with steep walls smothered in ancient forest. Baird stared down at the dense, deep-green ocean of the tree canopy, trying to concentrate, but all he could think about was why Prescott’s data disk wouldn’t give up its secrets to him.

“Sure there are,” Baird muttered, “and I’m going to devote my life to charitable work. If it’s okay with the tooth fairy.”

Shit, he hated this let’s-all-be-resilient, stiff-upper-lipness that was sweeping the camp like a dose of dysentery. The sooner people accepted they were even more fucked now than they’d been a month ago, the sooner they could get on with dealing with the situation. He wasn’t being negative. He was being realistic. He glanced around the crew bay at the faces of the squad and knew he wasn’t the only one.

“Bernie, you want to take a look over the northern sector?” Barber asked. “Might as well while we’re out here. The mutt’s probably running loose in the woods.”

“It’s easier to look on foot.” Bernie sounded as if she’d turned away a lot of helpful advice over the last few days. “But thanks, Nat. It’s kind of you.”

Mac the psychotic mutt had been missing since the night the polyps first came ashore at Pelruan. Baird was sure that the dog had been minced to hamburger by some exploding polyp, but he wasn’t going to say as much to Bernie. She loved the flea-bitten thing.

“If there was imulsion under here, they’d have drilled for it a long time ago,” Marcus said. He didn’t seem to have an opinion on the dog.

Dom didn’t join in. Even Cole’s lack of noisy cheerleading today was noticeable.

“So what do we do?” Gettner asked. “Sharle says we’ve reached the point where we can’t run the fleet and be sure we’ve got enough fuel to reach the mainland when the time comes.”

Gettner usually listened in to the crew bay chatter; it was hard not to when everyone needed the radio just to talk over the noise. But she rarely joined in the real conversation. Baird had never thought of her as being scared or in need of buddies like any other Gear. It rattled him a little.

“We won’t be going back for a long time,” Dom said.

“Yeah, but someone needs to make a decision now. We’re still burning fuel like there’s no tomorrow.”

“There’s not enough information to make a decision.”

“There never is, but it never stopped us doing pretty decisive shit before. Is Prescott up to this?”

“He’s been up to it for fifteen years,” Barber said quietly. “Compared to what we’ve been through, this isn’t even close to rock-bottom.”

“Looks like he can count on one vote, then,” Cole murmured.

Gears always griped. It was an art form, part of the military culture like bawdy songs and black humor. Baird felt he’d written the book on griping, not that he didn’t have plenty of reasons. But he hadn’t seen it creep over the edge into the unsayable stuff about lack of faith in the government before. Nobody thought the government could do much more than it already had. Even if Prescott wasn’t loved, nobody had illusions about omnipotence. He was in the same shit as everyone else.

Actually, the government was just Prescott. Unless Baird counted Pelruan’s town council, which had been carrying on in its own sweet elected way since the Hammer strike days, there wasn’t an assembly for New Jacinto. It was hard to think about that normal stuff when every day was fraught with real physical danger.

“Well, we said we missed the grubs,” Baird said. “We got our wish.”

Dom stirred. “No, you said that when we didn’t have any more grubs around, we’d start fighting each other, so we’d have to find something else to kill. And we did.”

“Let’s do the job, people.” Marcus stood up and hung on to the safety rail. If there was an argument brewing, he’d always make damn sure he cut it short. Baird took the hint. He didn’t so much feel intimidated as scolded and made to feel like a dumb kid. “Lots of island out there.”

The Raven banked and headed northwest, skimming over forest slopes that fell away into hills and then gentler plains—farm country. The signs that Vectes had once been a much busier island were still there in the just-visible boundaries of overgrown fields. Baird sat eavesdropping on the submarine net for a few minutes, bored shitless by a landscape that could only have been of interest to someone who liked spending their day knee-deep in cow pats. He could hear the voice traffic between the two boats as they tested Clement’s damaged systems. It was all very chummy now, with Zephyr’s crew fussing over Clement’s repairs and trying to help. Clement had taken a pounding when she blew up the first leviathan. With Dalyell still struggling to stay afloat and Fenmont out of action, the fleet was shrinking fast.

And that was what they’d need if they were going to get back to the mainland one day; lots of ships, and plenty of fuel to run them.

Baird managed to forget Prescott’s disk for a few moments to crunch some numbers. A Raven’s Nest slurped through half a million liters of fuel a day at full speed. Unless somebody came up with an alternative fuel source fast, the carrier wasn’t going to be sailing much further than the five-klick limit.

“Nice and peaceful since the Stranded banged out.” Gettner went on chatting. Barber looked at Baird and raised his eyebrows theatrically. No, this sociability wasn’t like the old harpy at all. “What’s the world coming to when we have recruitment and retention problems with parasites?”

“The Gorasni are still our best buddies, though,” Barber said. “Which beats the alternative.”

“Not in Pelruan …. Hey, look at the forest cover down there. And the waterfall.”

“Yeah, scenic.” Baird squinted at the picture-postcard scene. Prescott’s data disk superimposed itself on the image uninvited. “At least we’ll always have lumber and power.”

“You can build boilers for the ships,” Bernie said. “They didn’t always run on imulsion.”

Yes, he’d definitely oversold his skills. “I’m not so good with the miracles these days.”

“That’s defeatist talk.”

“Have I missed something?” Gettner asked. She had a finely tuned radar for the little things. “What miracles?”

Bernie, arms folded on her chest, looked tired and distracted. “Nothing, ma’am. Baird’s trying to develop a human personality because he admires our species. Just like in the movies.”

Baird didn’t manage to bite straight back with a withering response. He needed to learn to play off Bernie’s lines a little better to maintain the illusion that nothing weird was going on. He recovered a couple of seconds too late. “Did they have movies when you were a girl, Grannie? Didn’t you just daub paintings on cave walls and tell each other stories about them?”

“I dunno,” Bernie muttered. “Maybe I ought to ask your girlfriend in Stores. The one you keep making eyes at. You obviously prefer mature women.”

“Hey, I’m only nice to her because I need her supply of ten-millimeter bolts.”

Barber laughed. Maybe that was enough to divert him and Gettner from paying too much attention in the future. Baird went back to fretting about Prescott’s data, wondering if the man had ever been a straight-up guy before he got a dose of power.

That’s how it starts. You keep a secret from your buddies, the people you rely on to save your ass. It’s for a good reason. It isn’t even about not trusting them. You don’t want to drag them into it. Then it gets to be a habit. And the next thing you know, you’re hiding the really big shit, and you turn into Prescott.

Was that how politicians started? Did little Richard Prescott lie once to his mom about who took the cookies, found that it worked, and then never stopped?

“Okay, let’s take a look at Pelruan,” Gettner said. “We’re going to have to cut back on these patrols, you know.”

As they passed over Pelruan, Baird could see some of Rossi’s detachment walking the perimeter. One of them stopped to watch the Raven and raise his hand in acknowledgment before the chopper turned away and headed south again. They were just above the trees, about ten klicks along the path of a stream, when Dom reacted to something below.

“Dogs,” he said. “Look.”

Bernie twisted in her seat. It was the Pelruan pack. The townspeople let them run loose to keep the Stranded away, but even now that the bums were gone, the dogs still had their routine.

“See Mac down there?” Dom asked.

Bernie shook her head. “If he was still with the pack, Lewis would know by now.”

Gettner turned the Raven and headed down the next valley, where the stream flowed into the river. “Damn it, Mataki, we’re going to find that dog.”

“Doesn’t he come when called?” Baird asked. “I mean, don’t you have some kind of whistle?”

Bernie leaned back in the seat. “No need to humor me, Blondie. He’s gone, poor little sod. He’d have shown up by now.”

Gettner didn’t take any notice. She followed the river, dipping over every patch of open grassland. It was a waste of fuel. Baird didn’t want to be the one to say so, not in front of Bernie anyway.

“Bernie’s right—he could be anywhere,” Dom said. “That’s five thousand square kilometers to search.”

“You know how many hours I spend looking down on this terrain?” Gettner snapped. “I see the dogs and I know most of the places they go. Come on, an experienced recon team, and you can’t spot a dog the size of a damn pony?”

Humor her. Baird looked whenever the Raven banked far enough for him to see out of the door, but his mind was elsewhere. How many red cars can you see, Damon? Shut up in the back there. Yeah, like a goddamn day out with the folks …

“Hey, I see it,” Cole said. “Well, damn—you got that mutt trained, Boomer Lady! Look at him!”

“What?” Gettner snapped.

“It’s the dog,” Cole said. “He’s down there, tryin’ to keep up with us!”

Marcus hung on to the safety rail and leaned out. Baird couldn’t see what he was looking at until the Raven descended to hover and he suddenly got a good view of the meadow below. Yes, it was Mac: he was trotting around in a circle now, head lowered against the downdraft as if he was a Gear waiting for extraction.

“Thank God for that,” Bernie said. “He’s a fast learner. Raven noises mean the food lady as far as he’s concerned.”

“He should run for office,” Baird said. “Even if he does lick his own ass, he’s still a more impressive candidate than Prescott.”

Gettner brought the Raven down slowly. “Okay, I’m setting down. Nat, keep an eye on the pooch in case he gets too close. Mataki? Stand by to grab him.”

It was a small scrap of good news but sometimes that was all it took to lift everyone’s mood for a short while. Bernie jumped out and ran at a crouch to grab Mac by his collar to haul him back inside. By the time he landed on the deck with a thud, claws scrabbling for purchase, it was obvious that he hadn’t had much fun in the last few days. He looked pathetic, in fact, with patches of matted fur.

“That better not be catching,” Baird said.

Bernie checked him over as the Raven lifted. Baird grabbed a safety line to hitch to his collar just in case Gettner did some fancy flying as the chopper headed west to resume the coastline recon.

“What are you trying to do, lynch him?” Dom said. “If he falls out, he’ll just strangle himself.”

“Okay, so I’ll make him a proper harness. You want to hold him?”

“Hey, cool it.” Bernie tried to examine Mac in a forest of boots. There was very little deck space in the crew bay with six personnel embarked. “We’ve got him now. Thanks, everybody.”

Cole frowned. “Looks like he’s been welding. He’s covered in burns.”

“Polyps.” Baird risked parting Mac’s fur to check the injuries. The matted patches revealed raw skin. “I bet he’s been hit by an exploding polyp.”

Bernie cuddled the dog. “Awww, brave boy! You took on the polyps? Good Mac! We’ll get the nice doctor to take a look at you.”

“Yeah, Doc Hayman’s going to love veterinary practice,” Baird said. The burns were starting to worry him. They looked new. “How long does it take a burn to heal? Just checking.”

“Depends.” Marcus turned his head. “Why?”

“These burns are fresh. As in not a week old, which was when we last saw a frigging polyp land ashore.”

Marcus shut his eyes for a second. “Then we’ve still got polyps on the loose.”

“Better find them fast.”

The deck tilted as Gettner swung the Raven around again. “No way of telling how far a dog’s traveled, is there, Mataki?”

“No,” Bernie said. “He could cover half the island in a day or two.”

“Okay, then we head back to his last position and center a search on that.” Gettner took a breath and her radio clicked as she opened a channel to CIC. “Control, this is KR-Eight-Zero—possible Lambent contact, north of the island. No visual yet but signs of a recent attack. We might have more polyps on the loose.”

Mathieson’s voice snapped back instantly. “Roger that, Eight-Zero. I’ll alert all call signs.”

“Make sure you pass it on to the civvies too. No telling where those things might be.”

The Raven skimmed low over the trees, following a square search pattern from the point where they’d found the dog. Barber peered down the sights of the door gun, looking for scuttling movement beneath the branches.

“Do they breed?” Baird asked. “Polyps, I mean.”

“You want the pick of the litter?” Dom said.

“Ha, very funny. Just wondering how much we have to worry about glowies being on the loose—just hyperventilate a little, or totally shit our pants.”

There was still nothing out of the ordinary to be seen, but then polyps were small targets to spot from the air even without trees and vegetation obscuring the view. A herd of cattle suddenly scattered and ran across the field below the Raven.

“Hey, Major,” Dom said. “You’re spooking the cows.”

Gettner sounded puzzled rather than indignant at being warned for low flying. “They don’t normally bolt like that.”

Baird craned his neck to see when the cattle ran out of steam and stopped. But they didn’t. They kept running. One actually cleared a low hedge like a horse jumping a fence.

“Shit! Did you see that?”

“What?”

“Show-jumping cow. Wow, I’m waiting for the complaints from the farmers to start flooding in, Gettner.”

And then Baird saw what had scared the herd.

The trees shook violently. For a moment he thought it was a sudden gust of wind, but then the green pasture below split open like an earthquake had hit it, exposing dark soil and roots.

“Hang on!” Gettner yelled. “Whoa!”

The Raven banked sharply. Baird was on the opposite side of the chopper and saw only blue sky for a few seconds. Then the horizon leveled again and he was looking at a vastly changed skyline.

A charcoal-gray twisted column towered above the trees, its trunk covered with glowing red blisters. The last time Baird had seen anything like that, it was punching its way into the Emerald Spar imulsion platform. The trees were still shaking violently. Then another stalk punched through the soil, and another.

“Oh, fuck.” Bernie gripped Mac’s collar tightly. “They’re here.”

“Control, this is KR-Eight-Zero, contact in grid Echo Five.” Gettner always sounded irritably bored on the radio, but not today. Her tone was even but Baird could hear her voice shaking a little. “We’ve got a major stalk incursion, grid Echo Five—three stalks so far. We need some firepower up here fast, Mathieson.”

Baird had seen all kinds of depressing, terrifying, and incomprehensible shit over the last fifteen years. But this was the moment when he started to think that the end was really coming. Vectes was the last place on Sera where humanity thought it was safe. But it wasn’t safe any longer. The stalks had reached the island. They were growing in its heart. There was no escaping them now.

Baird aimed his Lancer, futile effort or not. He couldn’t see if they were disgorging polyps yet. And as much as he liked the taste of adrenaline, this wasn’t quite what he had in mind.

“We’re so fucked,” he said.

Marcus didn’t turn a hair. He never did. He just scowled at the instant forest of grotesque, glowing stalks and took up the door gun position opposite Barber.

“Get us as close as you can, Major,” he said. “This is going to take some time.”

Baird squinted down his sights and wondered what the hell those blisterlike things on the stalk’s trunk were for.

He knew he was about to find out the hard way.