CHAPTER 2

The first thing you do is split the team into two shifts—because this is going to go on for a lot longer than you think, and by the time you realize you’re too tired to think straight, you won’t have anyone ready to take over. (STAFF SERGEANT LENNARD PARRY, COG LOGISTICS CORPS, BRIEFING CIVILIANS CO-OPTED FOR EMERGENCY CONSTRUCTION DUTIES.) PORT FARRALL EVACUATION ASSEMBLY AREA, NORTH TYRAN COAST, THREE HOURS AFTER FIRST FLOODING. Anya Stroud couldn’t tell if she was looking at fifty thousand people or half a million. She stood on the Armadillo’s open ramp with her jacket wrapped tightly around her, hands thrust in pockets, watching a slow -flowing river of refugees streaming past, many clinging to junkers that didn’t look capable of carrying so many people. The icy sleet had now turned to snow. It was the worst possible time to evacuate. And it was the first time in fifteen years that Anya had absolutely nothing to do for the time being, except worry—about Marcus, about whatever the hell Dom had meant about Maria, about the next twenty-six hours, about whatever tomorrow meant now. Their Raven had landed safely, she knew that much. She didn’t dare hog overloaded comms channels for personal chitchat. Behind her in the rear of the APC, Lieutenant Mathieson was manning comms, keeping a tally of Gears and tasking them as they reported in. He was diverting some to security duty, others to rest periods. It was a well-rehearsed plan.

How many civilians did we lose? How many Gears? How long is it going to take to check everyone on the list?

“Anya, you should get some sleep.” Mathieson turned in his seat. He’d lost both legs in combat and hadn’t taken enforced desk duties well. “You’re back on watch in seven hours.”

“I’m okay,” she said. “If I sleep now, I’ll feel like hell when I wake up.”

“Suit yourself.”

Mathieson turned back to the comms console again. Anya went on scanning the scene around her. To her right, she could see the abandoned city of Port Farrall through the line of parked trucks and Centaur tanks. The nearest buildings were backlit by APC lights as Gears moved in to secure the area before the EM teams and sappers moved in. Nobody was under any illusion that the Locust threat was entirely over. There’d be pockets of stragglers. And they’d be just as dangerous. When she turned to face the rear of the Armadillo, the upperworks of CNV Sovereign were visible, picked out by navigation lights as the warship sat alongside in Merrenat Naval Base. We all know the drill. We’ve had evacuation plans in place for years. But even so … how are we going to pull this off? How do we get an abandoned city habitable in days?

No, not days. Hours. The temperature was plummeting. Nobody had the luxury of time.

“Anya?” Hoffman strode up to the APC, boots crunching on the frozen slush, and indicated somewhere back down the line of parked vehicles with his thumb. “The CIC truck’s operational now—heating and coffee, people. Get down there. No point freezing your asses off. Stroud, you’re rostered off. Get some sleep.”

“I told her, sir—” said Mathieson.

“I’m fine,” she said.

“Maintaining rest breaks is part of your duties, Stroud. Got to keep you operational.”

That was Hoffmanese for “I worry about you.” She found it rather endearing. “Understood, sir. But I can’t sleep now. Don’t they need people to … well, at least hand out hot drinks or something?”

“I said rest. What’s the key thing in any planned emergency?”

“Know your task and carry it out, sir.”

“Right. Let the designated teams worry about everything else until they ask for assistance. You’ll be busy tasking Gears sooner than you think. Public order, security details … yes, it’s a different kind of soldiering now.”

Hoffman paused and looked past her at something in the crowd of refugees. A Gear—forties, with a wild beard and a straw hat that marked him out as press-ganged from the Stranded—was working his way back through the tide of bodies, calling out a name: “Maralin? Maralin! Sweetie, you okay? Where’s Teresa?”

A teenage girl struggled through the press of bodies and flung her arms around his neck. People parted to avoid them, and Anya watched a tearful reunion. Then another girl, just like her—no, exactly like her, a twin—appeared in the crowd and elbowed her way through, yelling, “Daddy! Daddy!”

“Well, someone’s happy,” Hoffman muttered. “Grindlift driver. Glad he found his kids.”

Anya had a hard time distinguishing Stranded from citizens now. Many refugees were so ragged and scruffy that they could have been either. And while that Gear had found his family, others were still searching the human chaos for faces they recognized. A man stood to one side of the stream of people, calling out: “Anyone seen my son? Tylor Morley. Fourteen, brown hair, skinny. Anyone?”

He repeated it over and over, like someone standing on a street corner selling newspapers. Anya knew there’d be many more desperate searches like that in the days to come. The satisfaction at evacuating most of Jacinto was now giving way to the guilt and dismay of realizing how many had been lost.

“That’s the hard stuff,” Hoffman said. “I’m thankful that the emergency guys can handle all that. Fighting grubs was the easy bit.” He paused. “When Santiago reports in, ask him to see me.”

“Will do, sir.”

Hoffman looked as if he was going to say something else, but he just turned around and walked back toward the EM truck. Anya wiped her face with the back of her hand. Her skin was starting to sting with the steady barrage of snow.

“Better get moving,” she said. She shut the hatches and started the engine. “I want to check out the medical tent. I’ll drop you off at CIC.”

“What’s all that about Dom?” Mathieson asked.

Anya went into protective mode. Dom had defended her from intrusive interest when her mother was killed, and now it was her turn to watch his back.

“I didn’t think you knew him,” she said.

“Everyone knows Dom. Won the Embry Star at Aspho. Screwed his career defending Fenix at the courtmartial. Hoffman’s favorite. Spends all his free time looking for his missus.”

“Yes, that’s Dom.” Anya steered the ’Dill out of the line, keeping to the vehicle lane marked in the grass by reflective cones. She kept a wary eye out for stray pedestrians. “Like you said, Hoffman’s favorite.”

It was as good an explanation as any. She’d get to Dom before the gossip started. So far, the only people who knew weren’t the gossiping kind: Delta Squad, Hoffman, and herself. It was nobody else’s business. When she reached the CIC truck, she jumped out of the ’Dill’s cab to find herself ankle deep in slush and regretting not changing into combat boots and fatigues. Mathieson swung himself out on prosthetic legs that were the best that the COG could manage to make, and that wasn’t very good at all. Anya made a note to sweet-talk Baird into seeing what modifications might be possible. Baird wasn’t exactly the most bighearted Gear, but he couldn’t resist a mechanical challenge.

And humanity was now facing a future with even less technology at its disposal. Although that was obvious, and everyone knew that abandoning Jacinto meant leaving behind almost all the trappings of modern society, the full realization hadn’t hit Anya until then.

No workshops. No bakeries. No computer network. No drugs manufacturing. We didn’t have much in Jacinto, but now we’ve even lost most of that.

The CIC truck’s interior looked like any small office, minus windows. It smelled of damp wool, fuel, coffee, and sweat, packed with weary and stressed people trying to grab a hot drink to keep them going while they worked out humanity’s chances of survival on the back of a used and reused notepad. This was an old emergency management command vehicle from the pre -Locust days, a mobile base for the response team, designed to go wherever a civil disaster occurred. Anya almost didn’t recognize Prescott when she walked in; he was sitting on one of the desks, in a thick pullover and ordinary pants like the rest of the civilian team—no smart tunic, no medals, no gold braid. It might have been common sense—civilian rig was warmer than his uniform—but it looked like a subtle message that he was in it with the common people, suffering what they suffered. Design or accident, it certainly seemed to have had the right effect. The EM team looked energized. Even Dr. Hayman looked more relaxed. After what they’d all been through, that was some impressive inspiration in action.

No, you’re not just any old bureaucrat, are you, sir?

“Okay.” Prescott was partway through some agenda item. “So we’ll leave people on board ships for the time being, except for those in open vessels who need immediate shelter. Can the larger vessels take any of them?”

“Stuffed to the gunwales already, sir.” Royston Sharle had drawn the shortest straw of all as the EM chief. He’d served in the COG navy, and it showed to Anya in all the right ways. “Disease is going to be an issue if we push that. You know—confined spaces, overloaded waste discharge. We’ve rigged tents with heaters for the time being, and for tonight, we just have to get as many under cover as we can. Those in vehicles—they’re better off staying put until we can move into the buildings. Latrines and water in place, and soup wagons will be operational within the hour.”

“Good job, Sharle.” Prescott rubbed his forehead, looking down at a sheaf of notes in his hand. If it was an act, it was beautifully performed. “Thank you. Fuel?”

“Sovereign sent a marine recon team into Merrenat and there’s still imulsion in at least half the tanks that Stranded couldn’t get at. And there’s no telling what else is still stored in that complex—it was built to withstand a full Indie attack in the last war.”

Anya listened, the landscape of crisis shifting before her eyes. From a single city under siege, held together by necessity, defined by a physical defensive line, humankind was now in free fall. The biggest threat was itself. The word secure brought that home to her. Citizens had probably stolen, feuded, and connived throughout the war, but the Locust threat was right on their doorstep—easy to focus upon, familiar, oddly unifying. Now the Locust were gone. Simply staying alive was suddenly even harder. Anya could sense a communal fear of the truly unknown. Prescott glanced up at her and looked relieved; he even managed a quick smile. Maybe that was his political psyops at work again. The sobering thing was that she felt herself respond to it like everyone else did. She was willing to work until she dropped.

“How many people did we lose?” Prescott asked quietly. “Do we have any idea yet?”

There was a brief silence. Hayman looked at Sharle for a moment.

“I can only tell you how many haven’t made it out of the treatment station alive so far,” she said. Hayman had to be at least seventy years old; she was in the vulnerable elderly category herself, even if her don’t-mess-withme attitude disguised that. “And that includes trauma and those who’ve died of heart attacks in transit. But if you’re asking for an estimate overall—we’re thinking in terms of thirty percent losses.”

But we said we’d evacuated most of the city. I said it. Anya tried to come to terms with what most meant. Is that the best we could do?

Yes, 70 percent was a good majority, achieved under attack and with the city literally vanishing under them. It still didn’t make 30 percent acceptable. And it didn’t include any Stranded, because the COG had no real idea of how many people lived in wretched shantytowns outside the protection of Jacinto. There could have been more than a million dead now. A drop in the ocean after so many over the years, but—

No, Anya couldn’t take it in. She just let it register on her brain as a statistic, allowing the shock do what it was designed to do—to numb the pain temporarily so that you could concentrate on surviving. Prescott chewed over the news for a few moments, then slipped off the table to stand upright, fully in command. It was perfect use of body language; he probably did it automatically, a habit learned at his father’s knee. This was simply how statesmen behaved.

“I’m not going to give you a stirring speech,” he said. “We face facts. Our society’s changed out of all recognition in three hours. We’re more at risk now than we were under Locust attack. We’ve lost even the most basic comforts we had in Jacinto. People will die of cold and hunger. People will become angry and scared very, very fast, and that’s the point at which we face collapse. It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. And it’s going to put enormous pressure not only on you, but on our Gears—we’re taking them out of a terrible war and plunging them straight into policing their own people, keeping order, because order will break down if we don’t impose it. Some Gears will find it impossible, and so might some of us. But the only other choice is to degenerate into savagery, and then the Locust will have won because we handed them the victory.”

Prescott stopped and looked around at the assembled team. Anya had been so transfixed by the pep talk that she hadn’t noticed Hoffman behind her. She had no idea where he’d been, but he was here now, coffee in one hand, freshly shaven, smelling of soap. That was his substitute for sleep—coffee and a shower. Where he’d found running water and privacy, she had absolutely no idea, but Hoffman would have rubbed himself down with snow if he had to.

“Well said, sir,” Hoffman said quietly, and sounded as if he meant it. “We now have security patrols on task.”

So that was where he’d been. Anya had expected to be central to that tasking, but things were changing. The meeting broke up, and Hoffman beckoned her into another compartment of the vehicle.

“I can’t find Santiago,” he said. “Now, what the hell went on with his wife? I heard that transmission.”

Anya shook her head, trying not to think the worst. “I only know as much as you do, sir.”

“Permission to go find out some more, seeing as you’re not going to sleep.” Hoffman folded his cap and tucked it in his belt. “I’ve got to do my quality time with the chairman. And please give Sergeant Mataki my compliments if you see her.”

“Understood, sir.”

It was all code. If Hoffman had ever been the type to openly admit he was worried sick about individuals, it was long buried. No commander had that luxury. Anya felt she had moral permission to use the radio now and leaned over Mathieson at the comms desk.

“Okay, where’s Sergeant Fenix?”

Mathieson consulted his roster. “Delta’s on stand-easy and they’re all logged off the radio net. Try looking in marshaling zone G. Tents should be up by now.”

If Dom was losing it, Marcus would be with him. All she had to do was find Marcus. She drove the ’Dill slowly along the marked lanes, slowing to a crawl every time she saw a group of Gears. It took a long time, and then the APC’s headlights picked out a familiar figure—Augustus Cole. Apart from his sheer size, no other Gear was crazy enough to go around with bare arms in this weather. Baird and Mataki stood there with him, looking as if they were arguing, completely oblivious of the snow.

Anya stopped and rolled back the Armadillo’s hatch. “Hi, guys. Where’s Dom? I’m on a mission from Hoffman.”

“Marcus went lookin’ for him, ma’am,” Cole said. “Some serious shit’s goin’ down. What happened? I heard him, you heard him—”

Baird cut in. “I don’t believe it. The man was totally normal when we met up. Not a word about it. When you blow your wife’s brains out, you don’t just shrug and carry on, do you?”

“Blondie, you’re all fucking heart,” Bernie said sourly. “Sorry, ma’am. Look, I say we shut up and leave this to Marcus for now. We don’t know what went on yet. We tell anyone who asks about Maria that Dom’s got proof she’s dead, and not to ask him about it. Okay?”

“Good idea,” Anya said.

Baird seemed genuinely shaken by it. “I mean, I saw what the grubs did to our guys down there, and shooting her had to be the—”

“Shut up before I shut you up.” Bernie prodded him hard in the chest. “Dom’s in shock. We do what we have to, to get him through it, okay? And from you, that means no crass advice. Keep it zipped.”

Anya was satisfied that Bernie had the situation—and Baird’s mouth—under control. She’d try raising Marcus again.

“Hoffman thought you’d been killed, Bernie,” she said. “He wants to know you’re okay.”

Bernie’s face was cut and bruised. She glanced away as if she was embarrassed at Hoffman’s concern. “Not in quite those words, I’ll bet.”

“I’ll tell him you’re happy he’s okay, too.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Bernie said.

In this game, a girl had to be multilingual. Anya could speak Hoffmanese, and she understood Bernie-speak pretty well too. She turned the APC around at the end of the lane and resumed her search. SOUTHERN PERIMETER, ASSEMBLY AREA.

There was just enough light from his armor’s power status indicators for Dom to see the detail on the photograph. He squatted in the lee of a boulder, bent over so that his body shielded the picture from the falling snow, and went through the sequence that was now pure reflex after so many years. He studied Maria’s face—her cheek pressed to his as they posed for the camera—and recalled where they’d been when the picture was taken, then turned the print over to read what she’d written on the back. He’d done the same thing a dozen times a day for ten years. The photo was cracked and creased; Maria’s handwriting was gradually fading, the lines more smeared each time he took it from the pocket under his armor.

So you always have me with you. I love you, Dominic. Always, Maria.

That was the Maria he had to remember: beautiful, enjoying life, not the scarred and tortured shell in the Locust detention cell. Dom tried to fix it in his memory. That was how he’d been trained. When a commando was in the worst shit imaginable, he had to be able to think his way out of it—to concentrate on survival, tell himself a whole new story, believe the best, and ignore the nagging voice that told him he’d never get out of this shit-hole alive.

Dom tried. But all he could see was her sightless eyes flickering back and forth as he tried to get her to recognize him, and a face that was only scarred and ulcerated skin stretched over a skull. Why can’t I see the rest?

The last thing he could visualize was placing the muzzle of his sidearm to her temple as he held her. He shut his eyes at that point. He remembered lowering her carefully to the floor and taking off the necklace she still wore, the one he’d bought her when Benedicto was born, but the rest was a blank, and somehow he couldn’t see any blood in his mind’s eye.

Was it her?

You know damn well it was.

Why didn’t I take her out of there and get her to a doctor? Wouldn’t any man do that without thinking?

Why didn’t I find her sooner, try harder, go looking down there earlier?

I had ten fucking years and I let her down.

Dom knew the answers and that he could have done no more. But there was knowing and there was believing, and believing wasn’t much influenced by facts.

He fumbled under his chest-plate for the sheaf of photographs he kept in his shirt pocket. It was the size of a slim pack of playing cards, carefully sealed in a plastic bag, and he could visualize each of the photos at will. His life was preserved in those fragile sheets of glossy card: his brother, Carlos; his parents; his son and daughter; Malcolm Benjafield and Georg Timiou from his commando unit. There was only one person in those pictures who was still alive now, and that was Marcus.

Dom put Maria’s photo back in the pack and resealed it. He wouldn’t need to show it to anyone else again. He’d found her.

What am I going to feel like tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that?

He got to his feet and walked on, staring out into the snow, cradling his Lancer. Despite the noise from the camp—’Dill and Centaur motors, generators, the murmur of thousands of voices, occasional shouts and instructions—it was quieter here than anywhere he’d been in years. He could hear boots crunching in the snow, gradually getting closer. He didn’t need to turn and look.

“Dom.”

Marcus just appeared beside him, matching his pace as if they’d planned this patrol. He didn’t ask if Dom was all right; he knew he wasn’t. And he didn’t ask if Dom wanted to let it all out or talk it through, or why he’d gone off without telling anyone. It didn’t need saying or asking. It was simply understood. The two of them knew each other too well to do anything else.

“Nothing moving out there,” Dom said.

“Hoffman’s set up patrols in the camp in case the civilians get out of hand.”

“Yeah, it’s a whole new pile of shit now.”

“You said it.”

“Everyone thinks I’m a bastard, don’t they?”

“The whole camp? I didn’t ask them all. But if you mean the squad—no. They don’t.”

“They know what I did.”

Dom was ready to freeze to death out here rather than go back and look Baird, Cole, or Bernie in the eye—or anyone else, come to that. It was like he’d sobered up after a crazy night and had to admit he’d been an asshole. He felt he had things buttoned down all the time he was in the Locust tunnels, but now he was safe—whatever that meant now—things were starting to come apart again. He didn’t know what the next minute would bring for him.

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Dom could repeat it like a litany. The well-meaning woman who’d counseled Maria after the kids died had listed it for Dom like a transport timetable, all the stations where you would stop on your way to the terminal marked Normal Life Again. But she’d never warned him that he’d feel all of it at once, or in random order, or that he’d never reach normal.

“Dom, say the word, and I’ll tell them what happened. You don’t have to.” Marcus stopped to sight up on something. The snow was easing off; the cloud cover was thinning out. “They’ll understand.”

“How can they understand if I can’t?”

“We’ve all lost family. Nobody’s judging you.”

“I should have saved her.”

Marcus just shook his head. They were now a couple of kilometers south of the camp, in ankle -deep snow pitted with crisscrossing animal tracks. Dom had been certain that he’d react like Tai and blow his own head off rather than live with the horror that was trapped in his mind, but it didn’t feel that way at all. He could have done it ten times over by now. He hadn’t.

Part of him had started grieving for Maria the day she really fell apart—when Benedicto and Sylvia had been killed. Whatever was happening in his head now wasn’t nice, clean, noble, predictable grief. It was full of other shit and debris, like the snow around here. It wasn’t as white as it seemed.

“You did save her,” Marcus said at last. “Remember Tai Toughest guy we knew, and he wanted to die. That was after hours of what the grubs did to him, not weeks or years. If anything like that happened to me, I’d want you to cap me right away, because I’d sure as shit do it for you.”

Dom didn’t know if Marcus could do it, because he hadn’t slotted Carlos when he’d begged him to. Marcus had still tried to save him. But that didn’t matter now.

“We better report in,” Dom said.

“Yeah.”

“You spoken to Anya yet?”

“No.”

“You thought she hadn’t made it. Don’t kid me that you don’t need her.”

Marcus made the usual noncommittal rumbling sound at the back of his throat. “Yeah.”

They turned back to camp, following a wide arc. Dom tried to imagine how he’d have felt if Anya had been the one to die and it had been Maria on that Raven. He was damned sure he’d have rushed to Maria’s side and never let her out of his sight again. But Marcus had been raised in a big cold house full of silence, where emotions were kept on a leash, so he probably didn’t even know where to start.

The temperature was falling fast now. The snow was turning rock hard, and the sounds it made had changed slightly. Dom strained to listen.

“Shit.” Marcus held up his hand to halt him. They covered each other’s backs automatically. “Hear that?”

Dom had to hold his breath to hear it. Whatever it was sounded a long way off, like something moving erratically through the belt of forest to their south, breaking branches as it went. It could have been an animal. There were enough varieties of hoof and paw prints on the ground to fill a zoo. But some sounds were deeply embedded in memory, and Dom wanted it to be just his tormented mind misreading everything and trying to fit it to familiar patterns.

“Corpser?” Dom said.

Corpsers were too big to manage a stealthy approach, and they had too many legs—great for excavating the grubs’ tunnels and ferrying drones around, but piss-poor at surprise attacks on open ground. Something was crashing in this direction at high speed.

“I hope his mother knows he’s out late.” Marcus pressed his radio earpiece. “Fenix to Control, enemy contact, two klicks southwest of camp, possible Corpser approaching. We’re engaging.”

“Roger that, Fenix,” Mathieson said. “You’re not rostered on patrol. Are you alone?”

“Santiago’s here. Consider it voluntary overtime. We love our work.”

“I’m tasking fire support and a KR to get some light on those grubs. Don’t hog all the fun, Fenix.”

Stragglers were inevitable. And this time, they were almost welcome. Dom had unfinished business that drowning the grub bastards hadn’t resolved. Yes, it was a Corpser. He could see its lights in the darkness now, wobbling as it worked its way through the trees.

“So, we wait here, or we go get it?”

Marcus started walking. “Manners are the bedrock of civilization. Let’s meet the asshole halfway.”

Dom was up for that. A switch flipped somewhere inside, and he wanted destruction, vengeance, some vent for the pressure building within. He was jogging some way ahead of Marcus when he heard the Raven approaching. It swooped low overhead and the brilliant blue-white searchlights lit the field up like moonlight. Dom saw movement behind the Corpser. Shit, it was a mixed bag of Locust—a dozen drones, a couple of Boomers, and a Bloodmount.

Marcus sighed. “Ahh, shit…”

“You think they’re a recon party?”

“I think that’s a bunch of grub refugees doing what we’re doing and getting the hell out. Higher ground, old eholes—they’ve kept ahead of the flood.”

Well, they weren’t coming to kiss and make up, that was for sure. Dom could already hear the noise of ’Dills behind, racing to the contact point. He dropped behind the nearest cover with Marcus, took aim, and waited. On open ground the motley band looked grotesque rather than terrifying, but if they got into the camp—no solid buildings for protection, masses of civilians who were already scared shitless—the panicked stampede alone would cost lives, let alone any damage the grubs might inflict.

Maybe the grubs didn’t realize they were on an intercept course for a human camp. They looked in complete disarray. The Bloodmount was going nuts, thrashing its head from side to side even with its rider hanging on to it for grim death. If the rider was thrown, the thing would revert to blind instinct and sniff out the nearest human flesh.

Maybe the grubs would veer away when they realized how outnumbered they were. No. Bring it on. Come to me. Come and die.

As far as Dom was concerned, one grub was too many. Prescott was right: it was a genocidal war. The Locust started it. But now humans had to finish it, and grub stragglers weren’t just a hazard, they were potential breeding stock. They all had to die.

This is why I’m still alive. This is what I’m meant to do. I get it now. Dom could now see headlights playing on the hummocks in the snow from behind him as the APCs raced to their position. There was no way the grubs could miss that, not in complete darkness on open land. Dom bet on them feeling just like he did then—that they wanted to make someone pay for what had happened to their buddies and their shitty little bit of Sera, and they didn’t much care if they died doing it.

“Want to take a bet on how many Locust were down there?” Marcus said.

“No idea. Thousands. Hundreds of thousands. Millions.”

“I think we’ve got about fifty or sixty heading this way.”

“Maybe some of the Lambent made it out, too, and that’s who they’re running from.”

“Like we’re the softer option?”

Dom centered his sights on a Boomer. “They got that wrong, then,” he said, and opened fire. ARMADILLO PERSONNEL CARRIER PA-776, RESPONDING.

“Cole, let me in.” Anya Stroud hammered her fist on the ’Dill’s hull as it revved up. “Cole!”

Anya was only a little slip of a thing by Cole’s scale of reckoning, but she was close to putting a dent in the metal. Bernie leaned across the crew cab and went to hit the hatch control.

Baird snapped his goggles into place with a loud thwack of the strap. “It’s ladies’ night, Cole.”

“Anya ain’t frontline.” Cole would have driven off, but he couldn’t see exactly where Anya was standing and he was afraid of flattening her. “She’s gonna have to sit this one out.”

“Bollocks, her mother was my CO, and she’s coming with us,” Bernie said. She hit the switch. “Mount up, ma’am.”

Cole wasn’t sure that answer made sense. But he didn’t have time to argue, and Bernie had her killing face on. She was still mad as hell about her squad—or something. There was plenty to be mad about. Anya scrambled into the cab.

“Okay, ma’am, just be careful, that’s all.” Cole understood that rush of blood that made a Gear want to get stuck into a bunch of grubs. It was only natural, but not in a skirt and high heels. That was asking for trouble. He sent the ’Dill racing down the perimeter lane. “If I bring you back with holes in you, Hoffman’s gonna yell bad words at me.”

Baird rummaged in a locker. Cole caught a glimpse of a Lancer being handed over as he focused on the driver’s periscope.

“Okay, ma’am,” Baird said. “Tell me which end makes the big noise.”

“I still have to requalify with this weapon every year, Baird.” Anya checked the safety and the ammo clip, then powered up The short burst of chainsaw noise in the confined space made Cole wince. “Think of this as saving me from skills fade.”

“We only got a few grubs, and there’s a whole army of Gears headin’ their way, so form a line,” Cole said.

“Just in case, then.”

Maybe she felt she still had something to prove, what with having a kick-ass mother like Helena Stroud and everything. Shit, that was some serious lady to live up to. Bernie had told Cole some hairy stories about the major, and he believed every word. He glanced at Anya for a moment to check whether her expression said scared shitless or red mist, but it looked more like she was trying to recite some drill under her breath. She had a point, though—frontline meant squat now. Nobody was going to get the luxury of sitting at a fancy desk all day, even if the COG still had any of those. Which it didn’t.

“Whoa, they started without us,” Baird said, finger pressed to one ear as he listened to the comms chatter. There was a weird mood going around, that crazy state between finding everything funny and wanting to cry for days. People did dumb shit when they felt like that, but it was sinking in that the grubs were busted and humans were back on top again, even if that was top of a pile of nothing. You had to make allowances. “Hey, Cole, see all the muzzle flash? It’s a mixed grill. A little of everything on the Locust menu.”

“Shit, it’ll all be over by the time we dismount.” Bernie didn’t sound like she was joking. “But they won’t be the last.”

“I promised I’d save a live one for you, Granny.”

“That’s my boy. I’ll remember you in my will.”

“Not fair,” Cole said. “You promised to leave the kitty-fur boots to me, Boomer Lady.”

“You get the country estate. You’re my favorite.” Bernie’s voice wasn’t right. Her mind was on something else.

“Is it true what they did to Tai?”

Cole didn’t want to think about it yet. It wasn’t the right time to lose it. Maybe later. “Depends what you heard. But he’s out of it now, so—”

“I told her,” Baird said.

Everyone stopped yapping. Anya laid the Lancer on her lap. Baird hadn’t told Anya, and now Cole could tell she was imagining the worst. Maybe she couldn’t imagine anything that bad.

No, she was a CIC dispatcher. The bots’ cameras had shown her the war in close-up for years. It’d take a lot to shock her, but then maybe Tai was one mutilated body too many.

“Now, where am I gonna park?” The ’Dill bounced over the rough ground. This was close enough. Cole brought it to a halt next to three other APCs—none of which had their full armor plating—to provide extra cover.

“End of the line, ladies. Check you got all your luggage with you.”

Another squad was already laying down fire to the right, and when Cole followed their aim, he could see that the Corpser had broken away and was trying to circle around the defenses. Shit, get a Centaur down here and pop this bitch with a few shells. They were now in a meadow due south of the camp, running parallel with the road to Jacinto. More refugees were still streaming in. And they’d heard that the grubs were back in town, judging by the screaming.

Shit, the last thing anyone needed now was some kind of stampede and civilians rushing every damn where. They had nowhere to hide. But there was no point telling them to leave the cleanup to the Gears and carry on into the camp like nothing was happening. They knew the grubs were around, and grubs meant ending up dead.

“Ma’am, get up in the ’Dill’s hatch and give us fire cover.” Bernie gestured to Anya. “Because you’re not fully mobile in what you’re wearing. We’ll put that right later. Okay?”

“Who’s herding the civilians?” Cole asked. “Someone ought to be keeping a line between them and the grubs in case they bolt the wrong way.”

Anya vanished and the top hatch flew open. She had a vantage point now, and she could see stuff Cole couldn’t. She rested her Lancer on the hatch coaming while she activated her radio. “We need some crowd control down here, Mathieson.”

“Tell him to put some armor between us and the refugees,” Baird said. “We’re overmanned down here. Just keep the civvies out of our way and stop ’em going shitless.”

“Control’s blind, man.” Cole felt sorry for Mathieson, trying to task units without any visual on the battlefield.

“Shit, the things I’m missin’ about Jacinto already …”

Bernie pointed toward the road. “Ma’am, if you want to head off any civvies, move the ’Dill—we’ll be fine.”

“Roger that, Sergeant.”

Bernie smiled to herself and jogged away in the direction of the firefight. Baird shoved Cole in the back. “Hey, come on, Cole. We got to keep an eye on Granny. She’s the one who knows how to cook all that wildlife shit, remember? That’s important now. Skills, man.”

Every Gear seemed to be converging on that bunch of Locust like they’d never seen one before. It was now total overkill; relief, probably, everyone finally seeing the last of the grubs and wanting to get a whole lot of shit out of their systems. The biggest danger now was probably getting in some other Gear’s arc of fire. APCs screamed out of the assembly area and headed for the road, taillights bouncing in a staggered line. Cole could hear a Raven heading his way.

But he had some shit to get out of his system, too.

He focused on a wounded Boomer trying to reload—baby, you had to be faster than that with Cole Train around—and ran at it, firing short bursts. Marcus was down there somewhere to the right, yelling at someone else.

“Stop pissing ammo!” Marcus didn’t yell much, but when he did, you could hear him the other side of Jacinto.

“Shit, save your fucking ammo!” There was a roar of chainsaw, then a loud grunt. “We can’t replace this shit yet.”

“Yeah, that’s right, baby!” The Boomer looked up just as Cole put a burst into its legs to distract it. He sprinted inside its reach before it could aim its Boomshot and put two rounds through its eye socket—a handy ready-made hole in the skull, a whole lot easier than trying to get through that thick hide. “I’m on an economy drive. Baird, where you got to? Talk to me—whoo, we got light!”

The Raven was now overhead, sweeping the snow with searchlights, and Cole got an instant snapshot of the battle as far as the visible horizon. Dark gray mounds lay scattered: dead grubs. Baird and Bernie were running to intercept one moving toward the road. Cole could see it staggering, leaving a trail of blood on the snow. A massive explosion followed almost immediately by a second—a kind of boom-boom like a heartbeat—left him blinded for a few moments.

“Corpser down,” said a deadpan voice on the comms channel. A Centaur rumbled into the circling pools of brilliant white light as if it was taking a bow at an ice show. The tank was in its element, with plenty of space to do its thing. “KR-Three-Five, you see the Bloodmount? They’re just nasty. We want it.”

“KR-Three-Five to all squads, we have visual on the Bloodmount and rider. C-Twenty-Eight will engage. Stand clear.”

The Centaur fired another volley of shells just as the Bloodmount came racing toward the camp. Man, they were big ugly bastards even by grub standards. They ate humans if they got a chance. The rider must have known he was going to get his ass fried, and his pony’s, too, but he kept on coming like he had a chance of trampling the place.

They hate us that much?

Hell, that’s what I’d do …

“Fire.”

The Centaur trembled on its massive tires from the recoil. The Bloodmount was an instant ball of flame, and its rider was hurled so high into the air that a couple of Gears had time to start a run for his landing spot. The meadow was suddenly still except for the Raven tracking back and forth in a search pattern as it scanned the battlefield. It didn’t look like any grub had made it out.

The show distracted Cole for a moment, and he lost sight of Baird and Bernie when the searchlights moved. Then a ’Dill’s headlamps picked out the two of them. The grub they’d been chasing was down. And Bernie was on its back, like she’d tackled it. She probably had. Baird waved at him.

“Cole!” he yelled. “I promised Granny, okay?”

“What the hell you doin’, man?” Cole jogged across the snow. Another ’Dill rolled in, lights angled down, like it was illuminating the area for them. “Give her a hand. She’s gonna get hurt. You out of ammo or something?”

The grub was badly wounded, all blood and frayed flesh, but that didn’t mean it still wasn’t dangerous. Cole didn’t want to see Bernie survive the war—hell, two wars and whatever shit she did in between—just to end up creamed because she couldn’t resist settling one last score with grubkind. But she had the thing in a headlock, pinned it to the ground.

That was a sight to behold in itself. She was no kid, and she still wasn’t carrying enough weight to brawl like that, but she didn’t seem to care. She drew her knife and shoved the tip under its jaw-line. Shit, why didn’t Baird shoot the thing?

Baird looked at Cole and shrugged. “We got a live one. Hey, ladies first…”

“Damon baby, just kill it so we can go. I ain’t had my dinner yet.”

“Why? We never took one alive before. It’s interesting.”

Cole suddenly realized what Bernie was up to. Her teeth were clenched, and she didn’t look like the Bernie he knew. And it wasn’t just the sharp angles that the headlights threw up on her face.

“You know what I’m going to do with this, tosser ?” Her face was right in the grub’s, close enough to get it bitten off if the thing had the strength left to go for her. “I’m going to do to you what you did to my mate Tai. Yeah. You like that idea? And I’m old, so I’m going to be a bit slow about it. Understand?”

The grub struggled weakly. Baird moved around and put one boot on its back to pin it down. Cole thought it was to stop the thing from throwing Bernie off if it got its second wind, but some of the Gears who were watching took it as an invitation to join in.

Cole didn’t mind chainsawing any number of grubs, but this wasn’t right. Bernie—and she was a kind woman, she really was—had kicked up a notch into something he hadn’t seen before. Andresen’s squad cheered. Nobody seemed to have any doubts; they all knew now what grubs did to human prisoners. And that was without the grievance about a few billion dead since E-Day.

“Bernie, just shoot the thing.” Cole debated whether to end the show himself. Baird wasn’t exactly helping calm things down. “Damon, that ain’t nice. Don’t get Boomer Lady all fired up when she’s had a shitty day.”

Baird shouldered his Lancer. “Why haven’t we taken any of these things prisoner before? Maybe this is a chance to learn something.” He lifted his boot and moved around to the grub’s head, kneeling down to look it in the eye. It just kept bellowing. It might have been crying for its mother or cursing them all to hell. Nobody knew; Baird was just about the only guy who stood a chance of working it out. He was smart when it came to grubs.

“Hey, asshole—look at me. I know you get a kick out of this shit, but why pick on us? Your war was with your own buddies. Not our problem. And, seeing as we’re chatting, where the hell did you all come from?”

The Locust just went on bellowing, and Bernie dragged the tip of her blade down its neck, looking like she was putting all her weight into it. Grubs had thick hides; she wasn’t joking when she said that slicing it up would take some time. Cole was starting to feel really uncomfortable now, wondering if he’d have sawed up so many grubs if he’d had the chance to take his time over it. Something told him he wouldn’t have, but that didn’t help him work out why one felt okay and the other didn’t. It didn’t make the grub any happier, either way. I never lost any sleep over ’em. Just over my folks. And my buddies. This ain’t the time to start judgin Bernie, maybe.

“I’ve got plenty of time, grub,” Bernie said. “Blondie, you think you’d understand an answer if it gave you one?”

Baird was still on his knees, peering at the grub like it was the underside of a truck. “Dunno. Try it and see.”

The group of spectators parted. Marcus wandered across, Dom behind him, and stood looking down at Bernie and Baird.

“Just shoot it,” he said.

Bernie still had a murderous grip on the grub, but she twisted around to look at Marcus. “Give me a reason.”

Marcus shrugged. “You’ll be bitching that your back’s giving you hell tomorrow.”

Bernie looked at him for a few moments, seemed to catch her breath, then eased off a fraction. She reached for her sidearm.

“Good point,” she said, and put the muzzle to the back of its head. “Okay, Blondie—clear.”

Crack.

If Marcus had just walked away like he’d put her in her place, it would have been awkward, seeing as she was the veteran sergeant. But he just held out his hand to help her to her feet. She took it. Everyone else thinned out. Getting a few hours’ sleep suddenly seemed a lot more interesting than messing up a grub or two.

“Terrific,” Baird said. “Now I’ll never know. Next time we find one—”

“I don’t give a shit what any grub’s got to say.” Marcus gave Bernie a shove toward the ’Dill. Cole reminded himself that they had history, regimental history. “Control? We’re done here. Returning to base.”

They piled into the ’Dill and headed back. Anya took the wheel. Cole sat back and tried to read what was going on—and there was a lot a guy could read in a bunch of tired, shattered people. Bernie linked her arm through Dom’s, not a word said, and Dom let her, then shut his eyes. It was a real nice motherly thing to do. Anya took a quick look at Marcus a couple of times, and he looked back in a way that wasn’t exactly a smile but wiped a few lines off his face for a moment. Baird sat dismantling a Lancer chain, not making eye contact, probably because he didn’t know how to tell everyone how glad he was that they were all alive and could actually think about a real future, not just the bullshit one that Prescott always used to talk about to make people forget they probably wouldn’t see tomorrow.

Yeah, nobody had to say a word. Everyone understood.

“I’d like to think that wasn’t me back there,” Bernie said quietly. “But it was, and that’s the thing that’s going to be the thin end of the wedge if we let it.”

Dom didn’t open his eyes. “You’d have stopped yourself. I’m not sure if I would have.”

Nobody needed to add that they wouldn’t have blamed him. Cole hoped he knew that.