CHAPTER 4

We only achieve unity through order.

(NASSAR EMBRY, ALLFATHER PRIME, FOUNDER OF THE COALITION OF ORDERED GOVERNMENTS.) PORT FARRALL, TYRUS, ONE WEEK AFTER THE FLOODING OF JACINTO, 14 A.E.

“Your vehicle camo sucks,” Baird said, puffing clouds into the freezing air. “Saw you coming way off.”

Bernie brought the battered ’Dill to a halt at the outer checkpoint. “Aren’t you going to ask me how I got them on the roof?” She jumped out to admire the haul of deer carcasses strapped to the hatch surfaces and panniers of the APC. “Four. That’s a lot of meat, Blondie. And leather. If you’re a good boy, I’ll teach you how to dress it.”

“You’re loving this, aren’t you?”

“You want to live on dry rations and a roast rat for special occasions? Come on, mount up.”

Bernie drove into the reclaimed city with mixed feelings. Her whole reason for struggling across Sera to reach Jacinto was to get rid of the grubs, to get her world back before she was too old or too dead to do it. Now that the grubs were mostly gone, she wasn’t sure what would fill that space.

For the meantime, being uniquely useful would do. She could survive off the land in any terrain, any climate, and teach others to do the same. That knowledge was now vital in the literal sense of the word. It was central to staying alive.

But one week after the destruction of Jacinto, the reality of what they’d left behind—squalid as it was—was really starting to bite hard.

“How many dead today?” she asked.

“You got some recipes?”

“Don’t even joke about that, Blondie.”

“Forty-three,” Baird said. “Hypothermia. Elderly. Make sure you wear your cat-fur booties, Granny.”

Dr. Hayman posted the list at CIC daily. The winter was bitter and the accommodations grim, despite the engineers doing their best to bring the most habitable part of Port Farrall back to life. It was all about timing. A different season and this would have been a little easier. They could have grown crops. But at this time of year, all they had was the emergency rations shipped out with the convoy and whatever they could forage. As Bernie drove slowly through the streets, she spotted four civilians carrying a plastic sheet between them like a battlefield litter. Another dead body? No, whatever was in it was throwing reflections onto the walls. When the

’Dill passed, she could see it was bulging with fish, so brilliantly silver that they sparkled in the sun.

“The boom-and-bust cycle of nature,” she said.

“You Islanders talk some mystic shit.”

“Not mystic, Blondie. Humans die off, so other animal populations boom. Especially marine life.”

“Handy.”

“In a pie. Lovely.” At least there’d be a reliable source of fat and protein around, even if the diet got monotonous. “You know, I’d rather be on the ships. Got to be warmer and more comfortable.”

“Put me down for that yacht Cole spotted.”

Gears patrolled the streets. Civilians were combing the place looking for missing friends and relatives. They’d reached the stage where the shock of displacement was beginning to wear off and they were working out just how wrecked their lives were. People with nothing to do but wait for food and watch others die were a recipe for unrest.

Even Jacinto’s citizens had limits to their stoicism. “Do we even have a head count yet?”

Baird shrugged. “No, stragglers are still arriving. Cole says some civvies have left to see if the local Stranded settlements will take them in.”

“Ungrateful tossers. Anyway, shouldn’t we be assimilating the Stranded if this is all that’s left of us?”

“Stranded aren’t us, Granny.”

They were the savages beyond the wire, and it had nothing to do with hygiene. “Hang on, what about the Operation Lifeboat guys?”

“Come on. You don’t like Stranded either.” Baird paused a beat. “You’re lost, aren’t you?”

“I know where I am, dickhead.”

Everything bounced off Baird. He took it in the same way that he dished it out. “I meant that now the fighting’s stopped, you don’t know what to do except harass the local wildlife.”

“Haven’t noticed you happily taking up knitting, either.”

“I haven’t gone this long without a firefight in fifteen years. I don’t know what comes next.”

When Baird wasn’t being mouthy or smug, he could say things that brought her up short. Life had changed out of all recognition again, just as it did on E-Day, but the COG had been at war—one way or another—for the best part of ninety years. Peace was unknown territory.

Bernie inhaled discreetly. Baird smelled faintly of phenol. “You going on a date ? Where’d you get the disinfectant?”

“Dr. Hayman’s having the whole place sprayed. Infection control.”

Gears had banged out of Jacinto in just the armor and kit they stood up in, no personal effects, or even a change of pants for some. “I’ll go scavenging later.”

“You mean robbing civvies.”

“I mean seeking redistribution of assets for the good of the wider community.”

“Yeah. Right.”

Civvies had been given enough warning of the evacuation to take grab bags. They’d been drilled to keep a bag of essentials by the door, ready to run, because they’d been used to moving from one part of Ephyra to another each time the grubs infiltrated. So now civvies had stuff, and Gears mostly didn’t. It was something of a role reversal.

“I meant bartering a few steaks for clothing, razors, whatever,” Bernie said.

“Prescott says we’ll get the basics we need.”

“Yeah, but he can’t pull supplies out of his arse, and that means taking stuff off civvies. They used to resent us for getting bigger food rations. We don’t need all that aggro fermenting again now. Hearts-and-minds works wonders, Blondie.”

As the ’Dill wound its way through the streets, Gears stood out like a separate species even in borrowed overalls—tall, muscular, well fed. The civvies were stick-thin. Anyone between the two extremes was probably in a noncombat role, like the sappers and drivers, fed a little less generously than the frontline. We’re getting just like the frigging grubs. Splitting into different types.

“You’re going to butcher all this shit in the open, right?” Baird said. “Entrails. Gross.”

“See it as sausages. Nothing gets wasted.”

Hoffman had set up the new HQ and barracks in an abandoned boarding school, confined to the ground floor until the engineers could carry out repairs to the upper floors. Bernie drove the ’Dill into what had once been the staff car park and jumped out to unload with Baird. Gears wandered out to watch as she managed to drape the smallest animal across her shoulders and tottered toward the entrance with it. She could hear Cole’s bellowing laugh even before he burst through the main doors.

“Shit, baby, you never gonna get that through the cat flap.” He held out his arms. “Let the Cole Train take your burden.”

“You think it’s too dressy as a collar? Maybe if I took off the hooves.”

Cole lifted the carcass as if it was weightless. “I’m glad you’re givin’ up eating kitties, Boomer Lady. They got worms.”

Dom stood outside the entrance, leaning on a shovel where he’d been clearing snow. The poor little bastard was trying hard to look as if nothing in particular had happened to him. Bernie was still trying to gauge the right time to get him to talk, but Dom would probably pick his own moment. He certainly had over Carlos’s death.

“I’ll give you a hand, Cole,” Dom said. “I’ve never had venison. What’s it like?”

Baird lowered another carcass from the ’Dill’s roof, letting Dom take up the slack. “You’ll hate it. I’ll have your share. Hey, I want the antlers for the mess wall.”

They were all trying hard—even Baird. Delta had closed ranks around Dom, looking out for him and making sure he wasn’t left on his own. Bernie didn’t think that a man who could live with losing his kids and parents was a suicide risk now, but then he hadn’t had to blow their brains out himself, so maybe caution was a good idea. She left them to unload and headed for CIC—an old laundry—to clear things with Hoffman, finding herself stepping over Gears dismantling their armor plates down to the components to scrub them. Some were boiling shirts and pants in an open vat of soapy water, standing around in an assortment of borrowed work clothes. Combat was a smelly business. This was the first real break they’d had to get the stench of grubs, blood, and sweat out of their kit. The scent of damp decay—wood, brick, mold—still lingered under the assault of newer, cleaner odors.

And shit, it was cold in here.

Hoffman was leaning over a paper chart with Anya and the EM chief when Bernie walked in. They seemed to be checking routes between the docks and the inhabited part of the city. Nobody had debarked from the larger vessels in the evacuation fleet yet. Bernie wasn’t the only one who thought they were a better place to be.

“Mataki,” Hoffman said, glancing up for a moment, “I want you to set up daily bushcraft classes for the civvies. Is there anything practical they can do in the field?”

“Berries and traps, sir. I don’t recommend the river. Civvies and thin ice don’t mix.”

“And see Parry about supply recon teams. One of his men says there’s a lot of recoverables on the south side of the city—machinery, raw materials.”

“And the Stranded didn’t sniff it out?”

“Another secure COG facility that we kept to ourselves.”

Ouch. Hoffman was still livid that Prescott had hung on to classified information right up to the final battle. Maybe he’d beaten the rest of it out of him. Good for you, Vic. Anya, now wearing sensible working rig and flat boots, gave her a quick flash of the eyebrows. Fights had been had, evidently.

“Will do, sir. Permission to barter some venison with the civvies?”

He leaned over the chart again, both hands flat on the table. “Go ahead. I’ll file it under public relations.”

“I found some cattle tracks, too—farm livestock got loose and bred, probably. Might be well worth a foray for steak and milk in the weeks to come. Oh, and signs of feral dog packs. If they come near the camp, it’s shoot on sight.”

Hoffman managed a smile. “You’re a damn useful woman, Mataki. See what you can do about the feral cats, too.”

Great. I’m catering and pest control. Still, nobody needs a sniper for much else now. He didn’t ask if she’d save some venison for him. He probably knew she would. When she walked back outside, the carcasses had a small audience, so it seemed a good time for a spot of skills transfer. They were mostly city boys who’d known nothing except hunting Locust. They probably hadn’t seen a deer this close, if at all.

“Right, you lot, gather around for training, or sod off and do something useful.” She pulled out her knife. “And someone fetch me a hacksaw.”

She put on her instructor’s voice and began indicating with the tip of her knife what needed cutting first and why. Anya wandered into her field of view and stood watching with her arms folded; without makeup, she looked so much like her mother that it was upsetting. Bernie almost lost her thread. She paused for a second to get back on track.

All these years, and it still isn’t over.

“Sorry, where did I get to?” Bernie said, not caring if she sounded like she’d plunged into senility.

“The balls, Granny,” Baird called.

“Oh, right.” Smart-arse. “Yes, testicles.” She couldn’t resist it. She sliced carefully, then lobbed them at Baird.

“You’ll be wanting a pair.”

Everyone needed to have a laugh when they had to watch guts being removed. Inevitably, though, someone would throw up. Gears who had managed to chainsaw their way through any number of grubs would lose their lunch soon, she knew it. Sometimes it almost tipped her stomach over the edge, too.

“You don’t need to throw any of this away—well, not much.” The carcass still felt comfortingly warm, but her hands would stink for a week no matter how many times she scrubbed them. “Lungs, heart… chop those up, and you can make a nourishing filling for—”

Her voice was drowned out by the rumble of a vehicle coming through the entrance gates. A huge grindlift rig squeezed between the pillars. Dom turned around, stared, and then jogged over to it as if he’d never seen one before. It was only when the driver scrambled down from the cab and the backslapping started that she realized this was a reunion, and decided to call it a day on the lesson. She dropped the offal back in the deer’s body cavity for safekeeping and wiped her hands as best she could on its coat.

“Bernie, this is Dizzy Wallin,” Dom said. “He saved my ass, and Marcus’s. He took on that grub bastard Skorge so we could get clear in the grindlift.”

Bernie could smell stale alcohol. The man stuck out his hand and she shook it. “He’s buildin’ me up, Sergeant

—Tai was the one who stopped that weird streak o’ piss, not me. He saved my ass. Where is he? I got some extrasmooth moonshine I want to share with him.”

Tai Kaliso’s name stopped the conversation dead. Dizzy looked into Dom’s face, read what was there, and screwed his eyes shut for a moment.

“Shit,” he said.

“Sorry, Dizzy. He didn’t make it.”

“What happened ? Last I saw, he was givin’ that grub bastard hell with a chainsaw and yellin’ at me to get away.”

Dom caught Bernie’s eye, and she wondered if he was hesitating to spell out what had happened to Tai because of her or for Dizzy’s sake. Maybe he’d just had enough of reliving nightmares.

“The grubs took him,” he said. “He was … ah, shit, they just carved him up, man. They really made a mess of him.”

Dom looked down at the ground for a few moments. Dizzy looked at Bernie and she just shook her head. The detail could wait, if it had to be told at all. A movement caught her eye, and she looked up at the cab of the rig to see two teenage girls staring down at them.

“My girls,” Dizzy said. “I’m gonna be able to look after them now, like I oughta.” He gripped Dom’s shoulder.

“Let’s all meet up later and sample that moonshine. For Tai.”

“We’ll do that,” Bernie said. “Nice to meet you, Dizzy.”

She walked away to get on with butchering the deer, but she’d only gone a few steps when the alarm sounded. Cole jogged past her to the gate with his hand pressed to his earpiece, followed by Baird.

“Grubs?” she asked. “I’m in the right mood for them.”

“Civvies shapin’ up for a riot,” Cole said. “Hey, Marcus? You down there already?”

One of the Ravens was now airborne, circling over the area, so whatever had triggered the incident, CIC was making a show of cracking down on it. Bernie collected her rifle and put in her earpiece. Human civilization was a fragile thing.

She knew that all too well, not only because she’d seen what replaced it in far too many places, but also because she straddled that line between reason and savagery herself. Her own grasp on civilization was as fragile as anyone’s.

Yeah, making that grub suffer would have been a dangerous release for her anger. She’d find another way to do right by Tai.

FOOD DISTRIBUTION CENTER, PORT FARRALL.

So much for cold weather keeping trouble at home.

Dom could now see the crowd. He was about a hundred meters away when the scuffle spilled over into something uglier, but Marcus was already there.

A guy went down hard on the concrete; the screaming mob closed like a sea. Marcus waded into the center of about eighty men and women, Lancer held close to his body, and just shouldered his way through. Dom felt his guts knot and started sprinting. Armor or not, Marcus was taking a big risk. Without a helmet, he’d get a serious kicking if he went down, and that was the kind of dumb thing that killed you when a shitload of grubs couldn’t.

Marcus vanished in the press of bodies for a moment. When Dom caught sight of him again, he was standing his ground and letting blows bounce off his plates. Then a space began opening around him.

“Hey, enough!” His yell was loud enough to cut right through the screaming. “I said enough— back off!”

The scuffle stopped, but the crowd was still yelling and cursing. Dom and whoever was behind him—he didn’t even look—slowed and spread out, rifles aimed.

The target of the mob’s anger lay on the ground, huddled in a ball, and Marcus stood over him like a dog guarding a bone. Dom almost expected to see him bare his teeth and snarl. And it wasn’t the men in the crowd who were gesticulating and swearing now; it was the women.

It wasn’t easy to get heavy with a bunch of women.

Shit, we’re not trained for this.

Dom remembered the food riots in Ephyra not long after the Hammer was fired, and he would rather have faced down grubs bare-handed than have to charge civvies again. He never felt right going after them. He didn’t know if he had what it took to shoot if he had to.

Marcus just stood there, immovable, and signaled to the approaching Gears to hold it without even looking in their direction. Dom braked. Cole caught up with him, and now it was a matter of seeing what happened next.

“I want you to step back, folks,” Marcus said firmly. “Now. Move it. I’m dealing. Okay?”

The shouting died down, and there was suddenly a little more space around Marcus.

“That’s it.” He held out his left arm and made a calm -down gesture. But he still had his Lancer in his right hand, muzzle lowered, finger inside the trigger guard. “That’s better. Just go home. Okay?”

He was doing his it’ll-be-all-right voice. He could usually pitch it perfectly, quiet enough not to make anyone feel threatened but firm enough for them to know he meant business.

A woman started up again. “That animal shouldn’t be here.” She had that same well -bred tone as poor old Major Stroud. Her clothes were threadbare, but Dom could see they’d once cost a lot of money. “They’re parasites. We’re struggling to stay alive, and he just walks in to steal our food.”

“That’s my problem, ma’am. Not yours.” Marcus switched instantly to a voice Dom hadn’t heard in years—the wealthy, educated Marcus, one posh person talking to another in some sort of code they both understood. “Just go home.” He turned slowly, spotted Dom, and gestured discreetly. Stay back. “I’m not moving until this area is cleared.”

The woman must have been used to getting her own way. “We’re supposed to be under martial law. Unless he’s punished, they’ll all be in swarming in here before long. We’ll be overrun by Stranded.”

Marcus just looked at her for a few beats in absolute silence. Dom could hardly hear him now. “Martial law?

Yes. I can arrest you all, or shoot you for unlawful assembly. But you’d rather walk away now and let me deal with him. Wouldn’t you?”

The King Raven was holding position at about two hundred meters, not directly overhead, but close enough for Dom to feel some downdraft. It was there to keep an eye on crowd movement. That was another police job that Gears weren’t trained for. It would either reinforce Marcus’s point or make things worse; in this mood, a mob needed only one trigger to kick the whole thing off again.

“Okay.” Marcus squatted slowly and grabbed the man by his collar, hauling him upright. “We’re done here.”

The guy looked like he’d had the shit kicked out of him, face covered in blood, clothes ripped. For a moment, Dom thought the whole crowd—silent now—was on that knife -edge of either breaking up or pitching in again, and Dom’s only focus was on getting Marcus out of there if it blew up. Marcus was effectively surrounded. He had to walk through a few men to get the guy out. And that was the likely flash point. Dom got ready to fire a burst over their heads. Then Marcus took a couple of steps, setting his shoulders in that don’t-fuck-with-me way, and the men in his path just stepped aside. People usually did. Dom took the cue to move in behind him with the others, forming an extended line to walk slowly toward the crowd until the civilians all decided to move away at the same time like a shoal of fish. It might have been the sobering effect of seeing Cole ambling toward them, too.

“We don’t take much pushin’ to go over the edge as a species, do we?” Cole said. He waited with Dom until the street emptied. “Shit, we all behaved ourselves when the grubs were around.”

“We’re too used to having an enemy.” Dom looked up to watch the Raven bank away. “Come on, let’s see what the bum has to say for himself.”

Marcus took the Stranded guy around the nearest corner and checked him over, while Dom and Cole watched. The man was scared shitless. He seemed to be expecting another good kicking.

“And I’m supposed to be the frigging animal?” Blood trickled from his scalp and nostrils in bright, shiny trails, and he kept wiping his split lip with the back of his hand. Despite the crap he was giving Marcus, he was still shaking. “Shit, you COG fascists never change.”

Marcus ignored him, tilting the guy’s head with both hands to look at his scalp. “The doc should check you out. Skull fractures. Delayed onset of symptoms.”

“What you gonna do with me?”

“Kick your ass out of here, if you don’t want the doc.”

“Why’d you save me, then? Why didn’t you let ’em kill me?”

Marcus leaned over him. “Because if I let them do it once, they’ll do it again. And again. And then we’ve got anarchy. It’s not for your sake. It’s for ours.”

“Gee, thanks, asshole.”

“You’re welcome. Come in, or stay outside. But inside—it’s our rules.”

The bum didn’t respond. Cole gestured to him to get up. “Come on, fella, let me escort you out the restaurant. You ain’t wearin’ a tie. We’re kinda formal.”

Cole strolled off with the bum, heading for the checkpoint, but Dom saw him reach into his belt and hand the guy a small ration pack. They disappeared around the corner.

“One week,” Dom said. “Shit.”

“Yeah. Better work out a way to stop them from getting in and upsetting the more sensitive citizens. Not exactly a secured perimeter.”

“That was pretty impressive crowd handling, by the way.”

“Yeah. I’m great with housewives.” Marcus shrugged and walked out into the main street again, looking uncomfortable. “Anyway, I didn’t like the odds. Let’s dump this on Hoffman and get the food supplies sorted.”

Without any discussion or briefing, every Gear who’d responded to the call was now patrolling a little differently. Dom could see the sudden change. They weren’t keeping an eye on buildings or potential emergence holes any longer. They were watching the civilians around them. It was weird how something could shift the balance so fast. Grubs were easy to see, obviously a threat, but any one of the folks in Port Farrall could suddenly become the disgruntled hothead with a grudge now. At least they weren’t armed, for the most part. This is what gets to me. I need a clear line between who’s on my side and who isn’t. Unity through order. Shit, I used to think that was just a slogan.

Boots thudded behind him at a jog, and Cole caught up with him. “Dom, baby, how you doin’?”

I don’t know how I’m doing. I’m existing. That’s about it. “So, how far did you have to drop-kick him?”

“Aww, I just advised him to stay out the way of crazy women. Shit, maybe we’re gonna need Stranded now.”

“Yeah, well, they know the membership rules. It’s up to them.”

They’re no use to us. How many times did I walk through their stinking slums looking for Maria? Ten years, all their networks and bush telegraph and shit, and they didn’t know she was out there? Then some bastard finally thinks he recognizes her when it’s too damn late? Fuck them.

Dom knew—in a weird, distant way—that he’d split off the functioning parts of himself to get through the day. There was the terrified Dom who had nightmares, and struggled to face each morning when he woke. Then there was the Dom who kept his body moving and going through the motions of being a Gear. There was also the Dom who endlessly replayed those last few minutes with Maria, torturing himself with what he might have done differently, and—half ashamed, half enraged—even blaming others.

But I did it. It’s all down to me.

“Dom, we been talking to Parry.” Cole jogged his elbow to get his attention. “His guys and the civvy builders are gettin’ some of the small rooms habitable. You want a cabin to yourself?”

“We’ve all got to put up with some discomfort.” Sleeping quarters were no more than rows of camp beds and bare mattresses in derelict classrooms. “Why would I want my own room?”

“So you got some privacy, man. You know?”

“No …” Yes. Dom knew what he meant.

“You wake up. Every time you wake up, you go, Oh God, and …”

Dom’s face burned. “Shit, I’m waking up the whole barracks when I have nightmares. Is that it? I’ve got to move out?”

“No, man. It ain’t that at all. Everyone’s got their nightmares. Nobody’s sore at you. Just offerin’. You want it, I’ll make it happen.”

In some ways, Dom would have found it easier if everyone had told him to snap out of it. Nobody did. They just got kinder and tried harder. There was nothing they could do, though.

“Thanks, Cole Train.”

Shit, I’m going to lose it…

Dom blinked and tried to clear his eyes. Bernie was a little way ahead of him, a bloody handprint on the backside of her pants. When they walked through the school entrance, she made for her precious deer carcasses and seemed to be searching for something.

“Bastards,” she snarled. “Where’s my frigging liver gone?”

Dom joined her, because it was something to do, anything to distract him. The deer’s innards were scattered. Small blood-tinted paw prints led into a culvert.

“Cats,” Dom said.

“That’s it. Time I got some fur gloves.” She checked her Lancer’s ammo clip, then her watch. “They need putting down. Vermin. I’ve got a couple of hours. Coming?”

Being Bernie, she just wanted to be kind. Dom wasn’t stupid; he knew the whole squad—his social squad, nothing defined by call signs—kept a constant watch on him.

Putting down. Euthanizing. Whatever fancy name you want. Oh God, Maria …

It tipped him over the edge.

“Just stop being nice to me, all right?” The shout was out of his mouth before he could think. Everything in his peripheral vision vanished. It was just rage and shame and pain erupting, uncontrolled. “Just frigging stop it, all of you. I couldn’t save my own fucking wife. I couldn’t find her in time. I couldn’t save her. I had to shoot my own fucking wife because I couldn’t save her. Okay? Are we done now? Are we done with crazy Dom? Fuck you all.”

Then he burst out sobbing. The next second—he could have punched someone out. He didn’t know what the next breath would bring. He heard Cole like he was miles away, telling someone to beat it, that there was nothing to see here, and Bernie just grabbed him as if he was going under for the third time. He sobbed on her shoulder. It didn’t matter what anyone thought, because his life wasn’t worth shit now.

“Come on, sweetheart, it’s okay … okay …” Bernie must have beckoned someone, because he felt her shoulders move. “Take it easy. It’s okay.”

Someone took his elbow. “Dom, it’s freezing. Get inside.”

Marcus had promised Carlos that he’d always look after Dom. And he was always there; he’d just show up, like he showed up now.

Dom wasn’t sure how long he sat in the janitor’s room with his head in his hands. He could hear sawing and conversation outside as Bernie cut up the carcasses. Later, he heard single shots from a distance, shattering the still air.

“Waste of ammo,” Marcus muttered.

But that was all he said. He simply sat there and waited until Dom decided he could stand up again and face the rest of the day.

Despite his expectations, he did.

CIC CONTROL ROOM, 2200 HOURS.

It was way past dinnertime. Hoffman’s energy was flagging. He wanted to take a leak, and he wanted the steak that Bernie had surely put aside for him very badly indeed, but he also wanted commitments from the Chairman before he rostered off, or at least some acknowledgment that plans might have to … adapt.

“Look, I agree with you, Victor,” Prescott said. “We haven’t trained Gears for civil policing. But if it worked for fifteen years in Jacinto, we can still make it work now.”

“That was when we had grubs knocking on the door, sir.” Hoffman’s biggest fear had been that he would screw up the defense of Jacinto and humankind would be wiped out because he wasn’t up to the job. He’d dodged the bullet on that, and now another fear had taken its place: that he didn’t have the peacetime skills that this beleaguered society needed to pull itself together again. “The grubs have gone, so the lid’s finally off—plus we really are in deeper shit than we were a week ago.”

“I’m going to visit the local Stranded and offer them amnesty. Usual terms.”

You’re not listening to me. “And if they tell you to ram it?”

“Then, because of the acute supply shortages, I authorize Gears to shoot Stranded as looters if they’re found inside the perimeter.”

“You tell them that.”

“I will. And I expect your men to follow that order.”

“What makes you think they won’t?”

“It’s very hard to shoot civilians, Victor. Any Gear will open fire if he feels his life’s threatened, but it’s another thing entirely to pull the trigger when the target is making off with a loaf of bread.”

Hoffman tried not to lean back in the rickety chair. Once his shoulders touched the backrest, he knew he’d slump, and then he’d find it hard to stay awake. The Stranded were just a fraction of the problem, one of a list of potential flash points. Most of the trouble, he suspected, would come from a simple question asked over and over by the people in this makeshift city: why did food, medicine, or any other resource go to another person and not to them? They were already griping about how much easier folks had it on the ships, and that they didn’t have enough ashore.

“The only thing we have on our side at the moment is a windfall of fuel,” Hoffman said. “And that was luck. Nobody expected Merrenat to have imulsion left where the Stranded couldn’t get at it. But we don’t have the hardware yet to make decent use of it. Heating systems. Buildings with roofs and doors and windows Plumbing. People can only take so much, Chairman. We took them out of their last familiar haven, squalid as it was, and dumped them in a freezing hole.”

“That’s Sharle’s problem to address. And he is dealing with it.”

“But he’s using my engineers. And the security situation is my problem, too. So I can’t ignore the root causes.”

“What are you asking, Victor?”

“When will we decide that Port Farrall isn’t viable ? Because this was a last-minute panic choice. It’s too far north, given the infrastructure we don’t have.”

“We don’t have that option. This was a last resort, after all. Every city we considered as an evacuation center is going to be like this, or worse.”

“But we’ve got another three or four months of this weather, plus serious shortages. Ask Hayman how many will be left alive then. We’ve already got rustlung and some kind of dysentery.”

Out of uniform, Prescott sometimes looked like an art teacher on a day off. It was the pullover and the beard. Without that tunic and medals, he looked pretty ordinary—until he moved or opened his mouth, and then everything about him exuded a certainty that he was in charge, and that it was the natural order of things. Hoffman couldn’t imagine him having a single moment of self-doubt. From the time he took over the COG and deployed the Hammer, the man knew exactly what he wanted done.

“We’re ultimately talking about restocking Sera with humans, Victor. If we lose vulnerable people, the older ones, we can still … oh, I hate to use the word breed, but that’s the reality.”

“Hayman says you can keep humankind going just fine on a gene pool of two thousand people, but do we want to run on empty if we have a choice? Otherwise we might as well be the Stranded.”

“To make it worth leaving here,” Prescott said, “it would have to be more than hardship. I would need to be convinced that staying here would endanger the majority of survivors.”

“I’ll monitor that situation. Sharle or no Sharle.”

“Where else would we go? Where is the proverbial better hole?”

“Islands,” Hoffman said. “There have to be plenty out there that never had a visit from the Locust. Somewhere warmer.”

“Would any of them be large enough, though?”

“We lost a lot of people on evacuation. I think it’s going to reach fifty percent losses.”

Prescott just looked past him in slight defocus, stroking his beard.

“Let’s consider it,” he said eventually. “Talk to Sharle. And it’s going to put the naval contingent on a different footing.”

“Meaning?”

“We’ve let the navy decline.”

“It was always peripheral, even in the Pendulum Wars.” And they didn’t like that much. Hoffman had probably spent more time with amphibious ops than any other COG commander. “You only have to look in the dockyard now to see that.”

“Well, if we ever decide to reestablish the COG offshore, then we need more than a trawler navy, and not just for transport. When you’re ready, let’s assess their officers. I admit I’ve neglected the service badly.” Someone knocked at the door, and Prescott looked around. “Any other business before I turn in?”

“Any other classified information you haven’t shared with me, sir?”

Prescott gave him that look—the I-hate-apologizing-to-the-hired-help look. “I’m sorry about that, Victor. Yes, I’ve told you about every facility in COG territory now. The trouble with politics is that not volunteering information becomes a default in the best of us. It’s a mechanism we learn to stop ourselves from blurting out things at inopportune moments.”

That’s not an answer. But you’ve told me what I need to know anyway. Asshole.

“Thank you, sir,” Hoffman said. “Sleep well.” He raised his voice. “Come in.”

Prescott reached the door just as Bernie Mataki walked in. She held something balanced on a large sheet of metal, covered in a piece of camo fabric, and managed to salute the Chairman without dropping it. Hoffman waited for Prescott’s footsteps to fade. The man had a lair overlooking the sports field, with one of his priceless rugs on the floor, and for a man born to rule he seemed oddly happy with that.

“Asshole,” Hoffman said. It felt better to say it out loud.

“That’s no way to talk to room service, Colonel.”

He smiled. “One day you’re going to have to peel me off his throat.”

“Well, better keep your strength up, then, sir.” She laid the metal sheet on his desk and whipped off the cover like a waitress to reveal a mess tin cradling a lump of brown meat and a few pale root vegetables that could have been anything. She’d even found some decent cutlery. “It’s as tough as old boots, but we didn’t have time to hang it. Cole hammered it with a mallet for a while, though.”

“Steak?”

“Venison steak. You could have had liver pâté, too, but some bastard cat got it. But I got the cat, so we’re even.”

Bernie could always make him smile. He looked down at the tabby-fur boot liners that had instantly cemented her reputation with Delta Squad. Anyone who could skin and eat cats earned a certain cautious respect.

“You’re primal, Sergeant Mataki.”

“Go on. Eat.”

“Don’t go. I need company.”

Hoffman hadn’t had a steak in nine, ten years—maybe longer. He certainly couldn’t remember having game at all. He chewed, eyes closed, overwhelmed by the intensity of the flavor, and suddenly found tears running down his face.

She sounded as if she’d sighed. “Are you okay?”

Maybe it was just fatigue, or the lid finally coming off after years of keeping it clipped down, or just vague memories of a vanished world that had restaurants. Either way, he was embarrassed.

“Yes,” he said, wiping his face with his palm. “Hell … I don’t know. Things you forgot existed.”

“A few nights’ sleep would do you the world of good, sir.”

“It’s Vic. Remember? Let’s pretend it’s still the NCOs’ mess and all this tinsel on my collar never happened.”

He opened the bag he kept under the desk—everything he owned—and took out the flask of brandy he’d been keeping for something special. He’d always imagined it would be one last toast to absent friends before he took a final stand, or used that one last round any sensible man saved for himself. “Here, rinse that cup out. Drink with me, will you?”

Bernie considered him with her head cocked to one side, then chuckled. “Yeah, Vic, I will.”

She took a metal object from her belt pouch that he first thought was a pocket watch, but she gave it a shake in her hand and it extended into a small cup. She placed it on the desk.

Hoffman examined it, fascinated. It was made of concentric tapering steel rings. “That’s very clever.”

“Collapsible. I travel light.”

“We’re the last of our kind, Bernie.” He poured a generous and gentlemanly measure for her. “To the TwentySixth Royal Tyran Infantry.”

“Two-Six RTI,” she said. “The Unvanquished.”

“We beat the goddamn grubs, anyway.”

“And we’re not the last. There’s Fenix and Santiago.”

“I meant our generation.”

“Then we’re definitely the last.” She stared into the cup, then raised it again. “Absent friends.”

There were so many of those now. Hoffman used to be able to recite names, but the best he could do now was remember individuals sporadically. “I heard about Tai Kaliso.”

“Ah, the Baird Broadcasting Service.”

“And Santiago.”

“All of it?”

“Maybe not. I haven’t caught up with him yet. I keep meaning to.”

“It’s grim. He found his wife in some grub cell. Marcus said she was blind, couldn’t speak, couldn’t recognize Dom, looked like a corpse. He didn’t know what the hell to do. She was too far gone.”

Bernie took a pull at the cup, then put her forefinger to her temple, thumb extended, and squeezed an imaginary trigger. Hoffman was about to take another mouthful of steak. He couldn’t.

“Oh God …”

“Bloody hard. Doesn’t matter if it’s the kindest option or not. Been there. Or been close, anyway.”

Hoffman thought of Margaret more these days. It wasn’t that he missed her, not like Dom Santiago would mourn his wife; he just felt worse about her each year. It wasn’t even a tragic love story, just a mediocre, mutual toleration like so many marriages. But even if he hadn’t pulled any trigger, he’d certainly killed Margaret.

“I’ll talk to him,” Hoffman said, and started eating again. “I’m still his CO. Hell, I remember the night his daughter was born.”

“Aspho won’t go away, will it?”

“Do you want it to?”

“Not really.”

So it was Bernie and Vic again for a while, just an hour or so, and one of the few times in his life when he regretted the path he’d taken, not as a soldier but as a man.

“Is it ever too late in life to put things right?” he said.

“If I thought it was, I wouldn’t be here.”

Bernie probably meant that insane journey across Sera to rejoin the COG ranks after so many years. But maybe she didn’t.

He’d find out.