CHAPTER 10

I can’t tell you exactly how many citizens we have here, sir, or who they are, because I don’t have a complete census of names yet. So I can’t even tell you how many Stranded have slipped in between evacuating Jacinto and today. We have a porous border, and a lot of people who look pretty rough to begin with.

(ROYSTON SHARLE, HEAD OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT, BRIEFING CHAIRMAN PRESCOTT.)

KR-80, EN ROUTE FOR VECTES NAVAL BASE, SEVEN WEEKS AFTER LEAVING JACINTO .

“I never thought I’d envy men.” Bernie dragged herself through the cargo compartment hatch to squeeze between Baird and Marcus. Anya sat on the bench opposite, jammed between Cole and Dom. It was more diplomatic seating in a crowded Raven than cramming her up against Marcus. “This crate’s sanitary arrangements leave a lot to be desired for us girls. I expected better with Gettner driving.”

Cole guffawed and deafened everyone. He was a lot louder via a radio earpiece. “All I want to know is why ladies spend so damn long in the bathroom.”

“Sweetheart, six hours in the air is a long time.” She leaned forward and patted his knee. “Never take the traveling convenience of a dick for granted. If we had one, Baird and I certainly wouldn’t—would we, Blondie?”

Baird, arms folded tight across his chest, had taken refuge behind a fresh pair of goggles.

“Don’t mind Mataki, ma’am,” he said to Anya. “She’s old. She rambles.”

Bernie didn’t actually expect any more than a bucket in a Raven, but she sorely needed to see some levity right then. Cole could always be relied upon to join in and steamroller over everyone’s doubts. From time to time, she caught him staring at her, frowning a little, and his unspoken question said that he knew she was agitated but wasn’t sure why.

He was a perceptive lad. He’d put two and two together sooner or later. She’d wanted to tell him. Shit, she hadn’t even told Hoffman, and if there was anyone she felt she could confide in, it was him. Yes, I’d rather deal with grubs than Stranded now. At least what you see is what you get. They never pretend to be human.

Dom jerked his head at Cole to to get his attention. “Not sick yet? You got it corked or something?”

“I’m picking my moment, baby.”

Gettner’s voice cut in on the circuit. “Not in my frigging bird you don’t, Private. Bag it, then dump it, okay?”

“See, your position as Queen Ratbag’s already been filled, Granny,” Baird muttered. Gettner boomed again. “And I heard that, too, Corporal Baird. You want a nice refreshing dip with the sonar buoy?”

Bernie took it all as general relief and the gradual return of optimism. Mel Sorotki’s Raven was following about a hundred meters behind, carrying the underslung ’Dill and enough supplies to keep the recon party going if they decided it was safe for the fleet to start shipping in refugees. It felt like life was moving on for the first time in years.

“You ever been to Vectes, Bernie?” Dom asked.

“No, too far for most Stranded, and big seas. Easier pickings on the smaller islands. Plus the biohaz marker buoys didn’t do much for its tourist trade.”

“You never thought of yourself as Stranded?”

“Shit, no.” Bernie wondered if Dom would ever really understand how much the idea appalled her. Baird seemed to, at least. “I was just taking longer than expected to get back to base.”

She sometimes wondered if Dom believed her, but it was hard for anyone on the mainland to understand just how damn big and empty the world was, and how tough it was to get anywhere when there was nobody else around.

“I don’t know how you stood being on your own for that long,” he said.

“I left Galangi nine years after E-Day. We didn’t even know who else had survived the Hammer strikes until then, remember.” God, was it really that long ? Had Mick been dead nine years ? Grief did lose its sharp edges eventually, for her at least. Maybe Dom’s never did. “So that’s actually five years completely on my own, roughly

… the rest was just being alone among people I knew.”

I could tell them. I could tell them all right now. I could get it over with, explain what happened, what I did, why I did it. Cole wouldn’t blame me. Anya and Baird wouldn’t. Dom? Not sure. But Marcus … no, he’s got his rules. He’d think I was an animal.

Marcus—eyes shut, arms folded across his chest—was definitely not asleep. The eye movement under his lids was all wrong, and she was jammed so close to him that she could feel the tension in his arms, as if he’d braced himself so that he didn’t lean on her. She’d been cooped up in transports often enough to know that dead-weight sensation when the Gear in the next seat finally nodded off and slumped against her.

“Where did you commandeer a boat?” he asked, eyes still shut.

“New Fortitude.” No, Marcus never forgot a damn thing anyone told him. “I got fed up waiting for the ferry.”

“For someone who’s afraid of water, you don’t let it hold you back.”

From anyone else, that might have been sarcasm, or even praise. From Marcus, though, it was a question. She just didn’t feel up to answering it in front of everyone when they had nowhere to run to avoid it.

“Marcus, you know I hated amphibious training,” she said. “I persuaded a trawler to drop me off on the mainland. It’s not like I sailed around Sera single-handed on a bloody raft. Well, not quite.”

Baird seemed to find that funny. “You hijacked a trawler? Classy. That’s so you. There’d have to be dead edible things involved.”

“Hey, we can’t laugh at them nautical types for their dumb -ass uniforms any more.” Cole held up a warning forefinger, diverting the others’ attention. Yes, he knew something was troubling her. “The navy’s drivin’. We got to depend on them now. Specially if we end up livin’ on an island.”

“Okay, day -trippers.” Gettner cut in on the radio. “Unless there’s been some unfortunate seismic activity on a Jacinto scale, we’ll be at your destination in thirty minutes. Met records say it’s windy most days.”

“Nice bracing breeze.” Marcus gave Bernie a look that said he’d finally picked up on her apprehension, too.

“I’ll man the gun. Last disused COG base we visited had resident monsters.”

Anya, staring out the Raven’s door, looked swamped by her body armor. She was too slight for the standardissue plates, so she’d opted to try partial armor on the upper body. Plates took some getting used to. Anya wanted to start.

Bernie still wondered if she’d done the right thing by encouraging her wish to be more frontline. A woman needed to be able to look after herself in a world that was now a lot more uncertain for wholly different reasons, but Bernie wondered if she was just feeding Anya’s need to live up to the larger-than-life image of Major Helena Stroud. Anya was surrounded by conspicuous valor wherever she turned: her mother, Marcus, Dom, Carlos, and even Hoffman all had received the Embry Star. It was in danger of becoming her benchmark, a sign that she was somehow lacking.

“If there’s anyone on Vectes, then they probably haven’t seen COG personnel in fifteen years,” Anya said.

“That’s going to be interesting.”

“If that biohaz stuff got out of hand, they’ll have two heads. Shit, man, you saw those things we found at New Hope, whatever the hell they were.” Baird eased his elbow out of Bernie’s side and checked his Lancer. “Maybe we’ll find Indie troops there who don’t even know the Pendulum Wars are over.”

“I don’t care if we’ve got pirates coming out the storm drains,” Dom said. “Smell that air.”

Bernie could. It was the kind of scent that they just didn’t get on the mainland, the promise of cleaner skies. Vectes loomed on the haze of the horizon.

Marcus squeezed through into the forward section and settled down at the port-side gun. “Okay, Major, ready when you are.”

Gettner took the Raven in a cautious loop around the island. It was a seventy -kilometer crater, a long-dead volcano, and the coast was a hoop of granite cliffs that cradled fertile lowland in the bowl. On a chart, that was just data and contour lines. To the eye, it was another thing entirely.

Despite the warning signs and hazard buoys, the solid buildings of the naval base looked almost welcoming, and mostly intact; the old navy certainly built things to last. The metal jetty structures had seen better days, and some of the dock basins housed rusting, half-submerged wrecks as well as solid-looking vessels in dry dock, but there seemed to be so little overgrowth that Bernie wouldn’t have been surprised to see lines of naval ratings drilling on the parade ground.

“Good start,” Gettner said. “Sorotki, we’re heading inland now. But I think we’ve got our operating base identified.”

Vectes now didn’t look at all like the frayed oval on the naval charts. The grid said it was around five thousand square kilometers, and at this height, Bernie could no longer see the sea. She could have been anywhere on the mainland continent in the pre-Locust days. There was open country, forest, fields—yes, fields with clear boundaries, obviously maintained—and a river. In the distance, she could see granite highlands off to the west. It all looked solid and permanent, even comfortable, not a windswept rock in the middle of an ocean at all.

“Shit, rivers ?” Cole pointed at the broad ribbon of water snaking beneath. “Man, this is going to be nice. I might take up fishing.”

This place could support Jacinto’s remnant just fine, Bernie decided. It was bigger than Galangi, and that was pretty comfortable. They could start planting crops right away in this climate; people would now see some end in sight for minimum rations. The higher-minded civvies might have been bleating about organizing city governance and councilmen, but average humans didn’t give a shit about that. They wanted to eat and stay warm, and not get killed by grubs. It wasn’t much to ask at the end of a war.

“Well, maybe we won’t need to lynch Prescott after all,” she said. “Good call, Chairman.”

“Up ahead,” said Baird.

“What?”

“I said, look up ahead.”

Gettner cut in. “Yeah, I see it. House.”

“They’d have needed living quarters here,” Anya said, sticking to the past tense, when all Bernie could see now was an island where someone was still maintaining things. “Not just for the naval personnel, either—they’d have needed to be self-sufficient for long periods because resupply wouldn’t have been easy.”

“You mean like that?” Marcus said. He was staring down the sights of the door gun. “Nice tidy furrows.”

Gettner banked the Raven. Fields didn’t plow themselves, and as they passed over, a man in overalls straightened up from a power tiller, watched the Raven for a few seconds, and then began jogging in the direction of the house.

“Confirmed, still inhabited,” Gettner said. “So, you want to say hi, Lieutenant, or do a covert recon, seeing as they now know we’re here?”

Anya straightened up in her seat. Gettner was taking her frontline familiarization seriously, too. Bernie waited. Come on, Anya. You make life-or-death calls every day. It’s no different on the ground, except that you’re in the line of fire, too.

“Look for some obvious center of population,” Anya said, sounding more confident. “If we go covert now, it could look hostile. Try raising them on the radio. They probably don’t get too many visitors.”

That’s our Anya. Good going, kid.

Anya was in her thirties, but she would always be Major Stroud’s kid. Bernie didn’t see that as a bad thing. Gettner seemed to cut her a hell of a lot more slack than normal, too. She was even talking her through the procedure, and doing an unusually diplomatic job of it for a woman who could etch glass with her insults.

“Better not buzz their quaint homesteads.” Gettner took the Raven higher. “Nothing like low-flying gunships to upset the natives.”

The occasional single -story home below became ones and twos, still small scattered farmhouses, but then the horizon resolved into something more familiar—a man -made landscape of roofs. It was nothing like Jacinto, no towers or domes or skyscrapers, but it was recognizably a village. The Raven climbed higher.

“Fenix, what are you seeing down there?” Gettner asked.

“No anti-air batteries, but watch out for assholes with rifles.”

“Try the more strategic analysis, Sergeant.”

“Low technology level, judging by the roads. Low -rise buildings. Sweep the whole area and I’ll give you a better estimate.”

“Okay, let’s see if anyone’s home.” Gettner started repeating the radio contact litany. “This is COG KR-EightZero, inbound from Port Farrall, calling Vectes ATC. This is COG KR-Eight-Zero, calling Vectes ATC …”

Cole peered below. It was fascinating to watch him forget to feel sick when he had something that completely distracted him. “Cows! When did you last see a cow in a field?”

“Steak.” Baird nodded to himself, evidently satisfied. “Cream. I’m in.”

“Farmers,” Bernie said pointedly. She couldn’t imagine them being keen to share this with a city-load of strangers. “If I had a place like this, living on what I could grow and raise, and interlopers showed up, I’d need some serious smoothing over.”

“We’ll be suitably nonthreatening,” Anya said.

“Well, at least we can bang out fast if it all goes wrong.”

“How many other human enclaves are there going to be in the rest of Sera, do you think? Not just Stranded.”

Anya seemed to think of the Stranded as being voluntary outcasts, too, then. “People who couldn’t relocate.”

“There’ll always be some.”

And they’d all be small, all isolated, all running by their own rules. Bernie was prepared to hope that some would have retained a semblance of civilization, but so far she hadn’t seen much to encourage her.

“No radio response,” Gettner said. “Maybe they don’t have the tech.”

Baird shrugged. “Maybe they’re pretending they’re not in.”

This didn’t look like any Stranded settlement Bernie had ever passed through. Maybe the navy had never really left. Life in uniform meant accepting that you’d never be told the full story, even in the senior ranks, but Hoffman vented his frustration off duty with more foul language than Bernie had ever heard him use even in his NCO days. All she had to do was nod when he paused for breath. It seemed to do him some good. Poor Vic. You used to be so much happier.

That was nearly forty years ago. A lot of shit had slid down the sewer since then. What a nice, tidy little place …

The settlement beneath them now looked like a fishing port. Small boats bobbed inside a breakwater, riding a noticeable swell even in the sheltered harbor. The buildings nearest the shore were older and more haphazard, but the ones further back looked more carefully planned, newer, painted with chalk wash, more … civilized. People were visible—looking up, hands shielding their eyes against the sun, some running back toward the town, some with kids.

Stranded? Governance by the most violent, for the most violent. Can’t tell until you get down there.

“I’m setting down on that cliff,” Gettner said. There was a promontory north of the inlet, an inviting expanse of lush green turf. “High ground, good visibility, unimpeded takeoff. Okay, boys and girls, try not to found a cargo cult, will you? But I doubt they’ll think you’re visiting gods.”

“Ma’am,” Cole said, “just wait till they see my best moves.”

Bernie caught a glimpse of more people moving onto the shoreline. The town was turning out to watch the show. The Raven descended, flattening a circle of short grass with its downdraft, then settled on its wheels.

“I’ll go on ahead.” Marcus jumped out. “Delta—stay back, wedge contact formation, and low-key. Bernie, Anya—on me. Women can defuse situations. You look less threatening. Usually.”

They walked slowly down the slight incline, weapons conspicuously slung and hands well clear, but Bernie could imagine what the locals would notice first—not a gray -haired old woman and a slight blond girl, or the familiar and welcome uniform of a protection force, but a big, surly, scarred, heavily armed man who’d just jumped out of a helicopter gunship.

Gears would scare the shit out of anyone, whether their Lancers were aimed or not. They were physically incapable of looking like they’d dropped by to have a nice chat.

Had the locals even seen a chainsaw bayonet before? Not if they’d been cut off since E-Day. Somehow it looked a whole lot more menacing than the old Lancer she’d been used to.

A path of small rocks and pebbles crushed into the soil led down to the shorefront buildings. Ahead, two men with shotguns, backed up by a crowd of about thirty, had formed a roadblock of bodies.

“Easy, Delta,” Marcus said. “If we’re moving in, might as well show what good neighbors we can be.”

That was the way to do it. Even though they’d just stepped out of a long, dehumanizing war, Gears could snap straight back into being civilized, disciplined, law-abiding—everything the COG stood for, everything Bernie had come back to find again. She’d been like that once, and then—

Crack.

The shot was either very badly aimed or meant to go over Marcus’s head. VECTES SHOREFRONT .

“Hold your fire—Delta, stand down!”

As soon as the first shot cracked and the insect whine of a round passed over their heads, Dom knew that diplomacy here was going to be basic. His automatic reaction to coming under fire was to drop down and return it. It was hard to override something that had been so hard-drilled in him for nearly twenty years that it was now instinct.

“Delta, maybe you should withdraw.” Gettner’s voice didn’t sound agitated, but Dom could understand why a pilot sitting in a Raven with extra fuel tanks was a little nervous around weapons discharged by strangers.

“Barber’s covering you.”

“Stand by, Major,” Marcus said. “They just don’t know how lovable we are yet.”

Baird muttered something under his breath and pulled his goggles over his eyes. Dom took a few cautious steps forward so he could see better. Marcus seemed to put an awful lot of faith in psychology, but all Dom could think was that even a Stranded asshole who couldn’t shoot straight was capable of a head shot at that range, and Marcus never wore a helmet. That do-rag wasn’t going to save him.

Dom had to strain to hear what the civvies were saying, but everyone else was loud and clear on the radio.

“Hey, I’m not shooting, citizen,” Marcus said.

The man out front—forty-five, fifty, sandy hair—still had his shotgun leveled. “Who the hell are you?”

“Sergeant Marcus Fenix, Coalition of Ordered Governments. Why don’t we put down the weapons and talk?”

“All kinds of vermin can get hold of COG armor these days. Prove who you are.”

He definitely had Marcus there. A COG-tag wouldn’t prove a thing. The crowd was getting bigger.

“If I give you my earpiece,” Marcus said carefully, “I can probably get Chairman Prescott himself to talk to you.”

That usually didn’t cut much ice with Stranded. Dom prepared to open fire if anyone’s finger so much as moved on the trigger again, and waited for the frozen pause to turn into the usual abuse about fascist assholes. But the guy with the shotgun seemed taken aback.

“Damn, after all these years…”

“I’m Marcus.” Yeah, he had this crowd control thing down pat. No ranks now, just people. “And this is Anya Stroud, and Bernadette Mataki. You want to catch up on the news?”

The guy lowered his shotgun, although the other man just angled his down forty-five degrees.

“Gavriel,” he said. “Lewis Gavriel. Head of maintenance at the naval base. Been here since before the COG

decommissioned it. More than twenty years.”

Marcus held out his hand for shaking. It always surprised Dom that he could switch back instantly to the wellmannered heir to a big estate, who knew the right titles to call people and how to read a wine list.

“Nice place you got here,” Marcus said. “We used to call it Toxin Town”

“And we knew how to keep the lids sealed.” Gavriel motioned to the other guy to lower his weapon. “That’s all gone now. Are you planning to bring the rest of your men?”

Marcus turned to wave the squad forward. Baird trotted down the slope, but Marcus held out his arm to halt him.

“Goggles off.” He only had to give Baird the two-second ice-cold stare these days to get him to do as he was told. “Easier to communicate when the other guy can see your eyes.”

Well, it always worked for Marcus. Baird parked his goggles on his head again without a word. Gettner’s voice filled Dom’s earpiece. “We’ll sit this out—call if you run into problems. Sorotki and Mitchell are going to prep the ’Dill.”

Dom took the eye contact thing seriously. The growing crowd was made up of all kinds of healthy -looking people, including a lot of kids. Many people here—maybe most—hadn’t seen a Gear in full rig before, that was clear. One small boy, seven or eight, trotted alongside Dom, staring at his boots. They seem to fascinate the kid more than the Lancer.

“Why d’you need those big boots?” the kid asked.

Dom missed being a dad. He hadn’t been a dad often enough, not when he added up all the days he’d actually been home with his kids. “To stomp big grubs.”

“I never seen one.”

“You keep it that way. You wouldn’t like ’em.”

A man’s voice from behind him made him look over his shoulder.

“Hey, don’t I know you?” The guy was talking to Cole, keeping pace and craning his neck to look him in the eye. “Yeah, you’re Augustus Cole! Damn it, you’re the Cole Train! What are you doing in uniform?”

Shit, have they been totally cut off from the war? How much are we going to have to tell them?

Cole chuckled. “Got to spread the pain to a different game, baby.”

“I saw you play in the final for the Eagles. The last season before you joined the Cougars. Man, you were good.”

“I know,” Cole said, grinning. “But that was just trainin’ for the really big game, know what I mean? Hey, you guys play thrashball here? Want a game? I promise I’ll be gentle.”

By the time the weird procession reached the center of the town, Cole had fallen back a long way, surrounded by people who remembered him when he was a thrashball star, signing autographs. Dom had almost forgotten that world existed. It must have been strange for Cole, too; he looked happy enough—he almost always did—but it had to feel weird to be reminded of the life he once had.

Bernie, standing off to one side, watched the crowd with an expression that wasn’t curiosity or wonder but suspicion. She was shadowing Anya, close enough to be a bodyguard. She was also trying to keep an eye on Cole, and she couldn’t do both.

Shit, she really didn’t trust anyone who wasn’t a Gear. But this place could have been a small town in southern Tyrus decades ago, and the people in it didn’t seem like Stranded. It felt more like a COG outpost that had been waiting for the government to finally show up and tell them what was going on. Dom scanned each street and checked each roofline as he passed, more out of habit ground in by urban patrols than fear. That was when he saw it: a frayed and much-repaired banner fluttering from a polished brass pole, the white cog-shaped symbol still clear on a black background that had faded to charcoal gray. Hell, that was exactly what this place was. Not an abandoned site colonized by passing Stranded, but a community that was still part of the Coalition of Ordered Governments.

It was probably going to take a while for Bernie to realize that.

“Where are we, anyway?” Dom asked. “Does this place have a name?”

Baird nodded silently in the direction of a painted sign on a nearby wall. It read PELRUAN TOWN HALL. Dom was sure that was where they were heading, but Gavriel went into what looked like the local bar instead. He seemed to be pretty friendly, warning shots aside. Whether he’d still be so sociable when he heard what Marcus had to say was another matter. He stopped everyone at the door, including the guy who was reluctant to lower his weapon.

“Come on, Will, you can see who they are.” Gavriel sounded placatory. “We don’t need protection from our own people.”

“Hey, Dom, company man,” Baird whispered. “We lucked out. Finally.”

“Check out the banner, Baird. It’s home.”

Home turf or not, it was pretty hard to sit around in a deserted bar looking casual in armor. Dom tried. He shook hands the way his father had always insisted—just hard enough to make an honest impression, not break anything—and watched Marcus and Anya sit down opposite Gavriel at a small table. Dom felt a vague and nagging sense of guilt that he couldn’t place. He was one big tangled ball of guilt now, and working out the particular thing that triggered it each time was getting harder.

“Fenix,” Gavriel said, still on the small talk. “I don’t suppose you’re related to Adam Fenix, are you? He came here a few times. Always a big VIP visit when he showed up.”

“My father.” Marcus’s jaw muscles twitched. “And he died a few years ago.”

“Oh … I’m sorry.”

Anya cut in. She could always time it right. “How long since you had news of the mainland, Lewis? You know about the Locust.”

Shit, if they don’t…

“We had long-range comms until the Hammer strike. After that, we lost day-to-day contact, but we know that it’s bad out there. We hear things occasionally.”

“But you’ve survived okay since then.”

“We’ve always had to be a self-sufficient community. The town was here for the naval base—mutual dependence. The town might as well be the base.”

“Couldn’t you get to Ephyra? You heard about the recall.”

“Yes, but how could you relocate a town in the middle of the ocean in three days, or even three months? And I thought the government would need to reactivate the base sooner or later, so … well, my team decided that if the locals stayed, we all stayed. Then, as time went on, we’d get short-range radio contact from passing boats, or an island, or the occasional refugee would show up, and we pieced the news together.”

“Did the government realize you were still out here?” Marcus asked.

“No idea. Obviously, we didn’t get a Hammer strike, but whether anyone realized we hadn’t evacuated …”

Gavriel changed tack. Dom felt pissed off on his behalf. “The Locust are destroying everything, aren’t they? Well, they haven’t reached us yet. Is that why you’re here? Is the COG starting up the biochem programs again?”

Anya was good at breaking awkward news. Marcus seemed to have taken an invisible step back, arms folded, to let her tackle it.

“The war’s all but over,” she said. “We finally wiped them out. Most of them, anyway. We still get stragglers, and that’s a problem, but we need to consolidate what we have left before we deal with that once and for all.”

Gavriel’s lips parted for a moment as if he had a million questions and they were all jamming the exit trying to get out.

“It’s … pretty damn strange to know there’s been something terrible going on for so long, and we’ve known next to nothing about it. Except from the Stranded.” He didn’t sound as if he was about to celebrate. Dom supposed that it was all just too weird, sudden, and disorienting for anyone to take in. “So what happens now?”

“Lewis, everything’s gone. Even Ephyra.”

He blinked a few times. “What do you mean, gone?”

“We even had to destroy Jacinto to stop the Locust. We flooded the whole city to drown them in their tunnels.”

Anya’s shoulders rose a little, as if she’d taken a deep breath to blurt it out all in one go. “That was the last place we held, so we had to evacuate the survivors to Port Farrall—and that’s been derelict for years. The majority of the human race is now in a single refugee camp. At least ninety-nine percent of the population of Sera died in the years after E-Day.”

Gavriel seemed like a calm sort of guy. Dom thought that was probably an essential quality for a man whose job once had been to look after some of the most lethal weapons in the COG. But there was calm quiet and there was paralyzed by shock quiet, and this was the latter variety.

“Oh … my God …”

Anya nodded, as if she was reassured that he’d started to understand just how serious the crisis was. “We have to rebuild Sera from scratch. We’re starting over with the few we saved.”

Shit, the scale of destruction was too much even for most Gears to grasp. How could Dom expect people like this to take in a fifteen -year war, with no TV or radio from Jacinto, just occasional Stranded passing through?

Even Bernie said she hadn’t ventured this far.

Dom could hear everyone’s breath, each tense swallow. That was how quiet things were right then.

“I suppose you want us to come back, then,” Gavriel said at last. “I can see why. Some won’t want to go, I can tell you that now, but… well, this is desperate.” He shrugged. “I rather like it here.”

Here it comes.

Oh boy, this is going to sting …

“Lewis.” Anya leaned in a little and put her hand on top of his. Only Anya could have done that right then. She was just the person to tell you the very worst and make it hurt less, because she had that calming CIC voice honed by years of talking Gears through tight situations. “Nobody’s asking you to leave. The mainland’s going to be no place for anyone for a while. We want to bring what’s left of Jacinto here before we lose everybody.”

Gavriel definitely wasn’t taking it in now. Dom could see that he wasn’t focusing on Anya, and his lips kept moving as if he was trying to spit out an insect he’d inhaled.

But he pulled himself back on track. “Sorry … how can we … how can we feed a city? I mean … this is thousands of people we’re talking about, isn’t it? We’re a small community. About three thousand here, and then there’s the other settlement, anywhere up to a thousand Stranded. We avoid them for the most part.”

There was a definite dividing line, then, just like Baird’s: regular humans and Stranded.

“We’ve got our own supplies,” Anya said. Well, not quite, but some. But Dom understood why she said that. The locals would be worried that the newcomers were going to leave them starving. “It was a managed evacuation. If we can set down here, we can rebuild our own camp. Look, you know the Vectes base better than anyone. Is it habitable? Can we make use of it?”

“Mothballed,” he said. “Hydroelectric power, run-of-river. One of the reasons this site was chosen was sustainability. We had to be able to keep going if the worst happened … well, that definitely came to pass, didn’t it?”

“That sounds like a plan.”

“I’m only the mayor here,” Gavriel said. “I have to put it to the vote.”

Marcus just gave her a slow, careful look. Dom wasn’t sure if she saw it, or if she was even meant to, but she paused for a moment.

“I don’t want to overstate the case,” she said. “But Vectes can save humankind. You can save it. We have nowhere else to go.”

Gavriel licked his lips for a moment, staring at the table, then nodded, but Dom knew damn well that he didn’t know what he was nodding about. He glanced sideways to catch Bernie staring at her clasped hands.

“I feel very bad not offering you some refreshment,” he said. “Would you …?”

“You’re very kind.” Marcus had taken over again. He had something on his mind. “I’d like to go check out the naval base first. You probably need to do some explaining to your people in the meantime.”

“You’ll need Will to show you around, then.”

“We’ve got the plans,” Marcus said. He seemed in a real rush to get out. “We just need to get the feel of the place. Any operational defenses?”

“They’ve been dismantled, but they could be restored.”

“And how much trouble are the Stranded?”

“Sporadic raids. I’m armed for a reason. People have been killed here. The Stranded know the deal—if they set foot in the town, we shoot on sight now. They haven’t been around for a while.”

“Understood,” Bernie murmured.

Dom kept right behind Marcus all the way back to the Ravens, doing his best to look reassuring, the kind of Gear who had come to make things better. Cole was glad -handing enough for the whole COG. He was turning out to be quite a distraction, and that was a big help right then. Marcus was pissed off about something, and that didn’t help him look more friendly. The civvies stared. No, they’d never seen Gears quite like this before. But then they hadn’t seen grubs, either. That would have made everything a lot clearer for them. The ’Dill was now parked between the two Ravens while the flight crews lounged on the grass, helmets by their sides, chewing ration bars like they were on a picnic.

“Okay, it’s Vectes base,” Marcus grunted. “Who’s driving?”

“Why, yes, I’d be delighted to transport you, Sergeant Fenix.” Sorotki got to his feet and did a curtsey. He seemed to be enjoying himself. “Your ill-articulated wish is my command.”

Marcus didn’t react. “Thanks, Lieutenant.”

He turned away to stare out to sea while they waited for Will to show up. Dom saw Bernie roll her head slightly as if she’d resigned herself to doing something, then start the slow stroll toward Marcus to talk to him. Dom decided that was his job. He shook his head at Bernie to divert her and moved in.

“Hey, Marcus, what’s the problem?”

Marcus didn’t turn around. “No problem.”

“Bullshit.”

“I said no problem.”

“And I said—bullshit.”

Marcus did his slow head turn. “You want to know.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, the COG’s going to roll in here and take over this island. We ought to spell that out, because there’s sweet fuck -all the guy can do about it anyway. But instead, we start with a lie—by omission, but that’s as bad. Poor reward for a loyal COG servant who stayed at his post waiting for orders for fifteen frigging years, and because he has, we can ship in refugees a little easier.”

“Hey, Marcus, I’d have done the same, okay? Get them used to the idea gradually, make them think it was their own.” Dom put the people he knew and loved first, and wasn’t ashamed of that. But Marcus worried and sacrificed just as much for the stranger, too, and sometimes you just couldn’t do both at once. You had to choose.

“Kinder than walking right in and saying, ‘Thanks for your service, asshole. Now beat it.’ Right?”

It wasn’t like the islanders could have caught the next boat back to Ephyra anyway. Dom didn’t see staying put as an heroic last stand on a burning deck, up to their asses in grubs. They’d just been marooned in a pretty safe place.

Marcus stared at him for a few long seconds, then nodded. But Dom could see how a guy who wouldn’t abandon his post on doomsday would really touch a nerve with Marcus.

“Baird—stay here in case anyone gets too interested in the other Raven.” Marcus turned back to the squad as if nothing had happened. “Rest of you—we check every facility there ourselves. If Will can’t open a door, we blow it. I don’t want to find any more surprises in decommissioned COG facilities.”

“Yeah, even Hoffman didn’t know about that last place,” Cole said. “Man, was he pissed. He ain’t good at hiding it, either.”

Dom wondered if Marcus’s suspicion was actually a dread of finding more of his dad’s activities, not fear of turning up more secret shit. They’d found some weird research stuff in the last COG outpost, but the recordings of his father’s voice in the Locust stronghold had really rattled Marcus. He hated secrets. That was clear. Will Berenz arrived clutching an old leather briefcase so stuffed with papers and plans that he couldn’t close it properly.

“This is going to take some time,” he said, holding up the case. “This is everything you need to know about VNB. I don’t suppose they even use the call sign anymore, do they?”

“Everything?” Marcus said.

“Yes.”

“I want to know all that chemical and biological stuff really is gone.”

“Okay. I can understand that.”

It was a silent ride to Vectes base. Marcus did his usual avoidance maneuver: eyes closed, arms folded, don’tinterrupt-me frown. Even after twenty -odd years, close as real brothers, there were still parts of him that Dom couldn’t fathom. Marcus could go through a two-day firefight and not turn a hair. But little things, little dumb things, made him fume. It was almost always about not being told everything.

His father had lied to him about a stack of things, like his mother’s disappearance, and probably for the kindest reasons, but Marcus didn’t seem to think so. Maybe hearing Adam Fenix’s voice on those damn grub computers, or that Locust bitch taunting him about his dad speaking highly of him—and none of the squad was going to mention that to Marcus again—had dredged it all up.

Marcus wasn’t like his father in so many ways.

When push came to shove, Adam Fenix was prepared to kill a world to save at least some of it. His son, Dom suspected, might not have been.

VECTES NAVAL BASE, CALL SIGN VNB, LATER THAT DAY.

“We could speed things up if we helped them out, Anya.” Mel Sorotki walked along a faded paint line on the parade ground as if he was walking a tightrope, arms extended. He looked bored out of his skull. “I’m up for a search. So is Mitchell.”

Marcus, Dom, Bernie, and Cole had already been gone three hours with Will Berenz. Anya charted their progress around the base as Will drove them from building to building in the site vehicle kept for checking the place over each month. The base was the size of a town, with roads that had colorful names like Admiralty Place, Weevil Lane, and Ordnance Row.

“He likes to keep pilots on standby,” she said, pressing her earpiece again. “Marcus, how are you doing?”

“Fine,” he said. There was a sound of creaking metal hinges in the background. “As in nothing so far.”

Mitchell appeared and began pacing around, too. “Anya, tell him they don’t mark dangerous secret shit with a skull and cross-bones and the word POISON, will you?”

“Tell Mitchell,” Marcus’s voice growled, “that we’ve seen enough dangerous secret shit by now to know.”

Mitchell smiled. “So ground-pounders don’t go deaf.”

Anya hoped Will Berenz understood that Delta came from a very different world, like every other Gear and Jacinto citizen. She wondered how people in this relatively peaceful island existence would cope with men and women who were constantly on edge, ready to swing a punch, and who didn’t even regard that as abnormal.

“Anyway, the environment guys in EM will want to check it out when they get here, too,” Sorotki said. Anya cut the outgoing comms link. “Can’t be too careful. At Merrenat, we found fuel. New Hope outpost, Delta were attacked by things we hadn’t even seen before. Here—who knows what we’ll get in the prize draw?”

Sorotki broke out a deck of cards, one of the two universal distractions for Gears, and dealt three hands. From time to time, Anya could hear the vehicle in the distance. Vectes was quieter than any place she’d known—until sirens started wailing, and she almost tripped in her scramble to raise Marcus on the radio while she tried to find her respirator. Sorotki and Mitchell swung into the Raven’s cockpit, ready for a rescue. Anya imagined the worst. She wasn’t even sure why she’d grabbed her gas mask. “Marcus ? Delta, anyone, what’s happening?”

She could hear Cole laughing his head off. “Ma’am, Private Augustus Cole reporting that the base alarm works!”

“Just testing,” Marcus said. “Carry on.”

“They’re so fucking hilarious.” Mitchell scouted around for his cards. “Anyone remember what hand they had?

”

Apart from a lot of squabbling seabirds vying for roosting places, the base was peaceful again in that echoing, solid way of big empty structures. It was another hour before the battered pickup rattled back through the gates and pulled up next to the Raven on the parade ground. Everyone jumped out looking pleased—not just Will Berenz, but even Marcus. He was closer to a smile than she’d seen in a long time.

“We’ll take it,” Bernie said. “But the wallpaper’s got to go.”

Anya savored a flood of relief and radioed Port Farrall, exchanging thumbs-up gestures with Dom. Marcus did a slow turn and walked away again. If anyone was going to find it hard to adjust to peace, it was him. Anya sat down on the Raven’s bay steps, hand to her ear.

“Sir? Sir, I think we have a solution.”

Prescott let out an audible breath. “Is it viable, Lieutenant?”

“I’ll get more solid information sent to Emergency Management later, but yes. Delta just checked the base for hazards. We have a habitable area—power, water, some existing accommodation—and a few thousand COG

citizens still living on the island. The base maintenance team’s been here since E-Day.”

Prescott didn’t respond for a moment. Anya thought she’d lost the link.

“Absolutely extraordinary.” He sounded as if he meant it. “Sovereign will be with you in around four or five days, and we’ll have Raven units with you in a day or so. The relocation starts now.”

“I’ll get the local maintenance team moving.” She paused, wondering if the next point would be too trivial. But there was now an entire generation who’d only known a shattered, burning landscape and a crumbling city. “It’s a very attractive island, by the way.”

“That’s important to know. Deploy the bot to transmit some images back to CIC. It’ll be a huge morale boost for everyone to see where they’re going—that it’s going to be a better life.” Prescott sounded as if he’d been interrupted. “Anya, Colonel Hoffman wants a word.”

Somehow, she was expecting more discussion. She recalled a time when people had spent longer deciding which restaurant to visit. But when you were out of choices and out of time, the really big decisions tended to make themselves—or they’d already been made.

“Anya? You clearly made the Chairman’s day. Now give me some good news. How do you assess the security situation?”

“Still on that, sir. I think the local population will be scared of being swamped by migrants, so we have to start handling that right away.”

“They’re definitely our people, then.”

“They seem to be. COG naval base team, and the town that serviced it. There’s an aggressive Stranded presence we need to assess, but I think the island’s big enough to maintain separate zones if we have to.”

“That’s COG sovereign territory, Lieutenant, not a private resort, and we are the government. We’ll be sensitive to local feeling, but we also have the remnant of humanity to look after.”

“When you put it like that, sir …”

“Well done, Anya. Good job. And now I owe Michaelson the last of my brandy.”

“Sir, they have a bar here.”

“Damn good job.”

The genuinely hard work was yet to come. But Hoffman sounded so caught up in the general optimism that she felt that this was the turning point, the moment at which life would change forever. Marcus ambled back across the parade ground, right on cue. Either he had uncanny timing or he’d been listening on the open circuit. He put one boot on the Raven’s deck. “Better go fix the tourist brochure.”

“You heard, then.”

“It’s not like they can choose another destination.” He called to Sorotki. “Lieutenant—I want to take a look at the Stranded settlement before we lose the light today. Let’s move.”

Dom seemed almost excited. “Anya, they’ve got a hospital wing,” he said. “Some medical supplies, too. Doc Hayman might even be pleased for once.”

If Anya hadn’t known Dom so well, she’d have thought things were back to normal. A couple of months’

grieving wasn’t long enough, though, so she took it as simply getting the outward signs under control or being exhausted into a numb state of marking time. Sometimes he looked quietly lost, but then he’d find something small that focused him—the clean air here, a generator that still worked—and made him come alive for a while. Grieving had to be taken a moment at a time. Eventually, there were more good moments than unbearable ones in a day, and then you knew you’d turned the corner into a new road.

The Raven lifted clear of the parade ground and set off along the western coast.

“I’d call this blustery,” Sorotki said. The coast here was much more rugged, a narrow strip rising into the highlands that ran down one side of the island. “Those hills make a good windbreak.”

“Good natural barrier for a lot of things,” Will said. “Keeps the Stranded out of our way most of the time.”

Bernie sat with her hands in her lap, clutching something. When Anya took a discreet look, it turned out to be a few downy feathers, black and white, like some of the seabirds nesting at the base. Anya’s first thought was that Bernie had been doing what she did best—scoping out the wild food supply and sampling it. When Anya looked up, Bernie’s eyebrows were raised slightly as if she was disappointed.

“No, I didn’t kill anything,” she said. “Just picked these up. I was going to make a fishing lure for Cole. You said you wanted to try fishing, Cole Train.”

Cole grinned. “Bernie baby, you remember the little stuff, don’t you?”

“If I kill something,” Bernie said, “I have to have a good reason. It’s not a hobby. It’s necessity.”

She bunched the feathers by their quills, took out a small tin to extract a fishing hook, and began binding the feathers onto the shaft with a fine thread.

Will gave her a wary look. Bernie returned it.

“I’m the battalion survival instructor. Not just a sniper.” She said it as if that would make Will feel safer. “So, are the Stranded that much trouble?”

“They’re not welcome in town. This is the COG, and either they abide by society’s rules or they leave.”

“That still doesn’t tell me what they do. But I can guess.”

“They steal, and they damage things we can’t replace.” Will patted his shotgun. “And sometimes they kill. Nobody’s going to come if we call the police, so … we are the police.”

Bernie just gave him a nod, as if she understood perfectly, and went on making the lure. Nobody said anything else until Sorotki cut into the comms about fifteen minutes later.

“Next stop, Stranded Villas, five minutes. Very picturesque.”

“Anywhere to land?” Marcus asked.

“We could just circle menacingly.”

“Just want to look them in the eye and say hello.”

Dom raised a finger. “I’m the Stranded wrangler. Let me do the introductions.”

Marcus watched Will carefully. “You ever come down here?”

“Only when we had to, once.”

That said it all. Marcus did a slow blink. “We’re pretty serious about protecting citizens. You won’t get any more trouble.”

“Unless you want to fast-rope down and really impress the hell out of them, I’m going to try for that area at the top of the slipway,” Sorotki said. “If it can take that boat, it can probably take this bird’s weight.”

A clinker-built motor cruiser that had seen better days sat on blocks. The cement slipway was laid in sections, and already breaking up. Dom jumped out of the Raven after Marcus gestured to the others to wait. In Pelruan, the townspeople had come out to see who was landing. Here, though, Anya could see signs of everyday life—laundry hanging from lines strung between scruffy shacks, a thin wisp of smoke from a metal chimney—but there was nobody outside. Anya wondered what kind of Stranded could reach this isolated place and survive, and decided they weren’t the urban Stranded she’d been used to back home. Armed caution seemed to be what everyone thought was appropriate here.

“Will,” Bernie said, “what did Lewis mean about any old vermin wearing armor?”

“A boat landed a couple of years ago. One of the men was wearing pretty well the full rig, but it was obvious he wasn’t a Gear. Didn’t talk right, didn’t walk right. And then … he didn’t behave right.”

“Got it,” Bernie said, but her voice sounded different. “Now, if they were me, they’d have a sniper position in that boat. Coming, Cole Train?”

“I’m all about fishin’ boats now, Boomer Lady. Lead on.”

They jumped down from the other door and began walking. Anya saw Bernie circle the motor cruiser, then climb the access ladder to the deck.

“Hey, anyone home?” Dom called. He was still close enough to the Raven to run for cover if he needed to. He turned around full circle, back to back with Marcus and a few meters apart, and waited. “We’re from the COG. How about a chat, so we understand each other?”

There was a creaking sound from the cruiser. Anya moved to look, and there was Bernie, Lancer held vertically, leaning against the wheelhouse while a young guy in a heavy tunic backed out of the door and began climbing down the ladder. He seemed torn between worrying about her and sizing up Cole.

“Come on, folks,” Dom called. “We know you’re in—”

Suddenly doors edged open and men—no women in sight—began appearing in the paths between the shacks. They were armed with an assortment of half the weapons that Anya had ever seen: hunting rifles, a couple of Gnasher shotguns that no civilian should have had, snub pistols, and even a Hammerburst. Why the guy needed that—or how he got it—Anya couldn’t imagine, but scavenging had been a daily necessity for fifteen years. Extraordinary things were traded from place to place. It didn’t mean the man had fought Locust or even seen one.

“I hope you understand our shoot -to-kill policy now, Lieutenant Stroud,” Will said quietly. “We were never armed, and so we’ve got very few personal weapons. We’ve traded for whatever we can get.”

“You’ve got us now.” Bernie wandered past, right behind the man she’d flushed out of the cruiser, who kept glancing at her as if he was expecting to be shot in the back. “Cole, cover me, will you?”

Anya couldn’t sit this out. She jumped down, trying to tread the fine line between looking like she meant it and not provoking an incident. She hadn’t managed to nail that Gear body language yet. It was an effortless movement where the rifle became an extension of the arms and eyes, and she knew she’d need to achieve that or remain the useful desk jockey that everyone else had to protect in a tight spot.

One of the Stranded must have passed a ribald comment about Anya to his buddy within Bernie’s earshot. Bernie paused and gave him the angry sergeant stare.

“You so much as smile at the lieutenant,” she said, “and you’ll be pissing through a straw.”

The man with the Hammerburst didn’t look as if he was going to shoulder the weapon anytime soon. “Well, fancy seeing the COG here at last. Welcome to Massy’s territory. That’s me, by the way. You’re on my turf.”

“The COG’s moving back in.” Marcus just rolled over the challenge as if he hadn’t heard it. “Looks like we never left.”

“Shit, you’ve come to the middle of nowhere to find another place to kick us out of, asshole?”

“We’re just asking you to be more considerate neighbors to our citizens.”

Massy was probably forty or so, balding, bearded, unusually heavyset for a Stranded. They looked much betterfed here. “I’m seeing three of you—oh, and the dick from the town hall—and about thirty of us. You good at math?”

“Top of my class.”

“You want to check your figures again?”

Marcus just looked at him, then back at Bernie and Anya. “Dom, check my working-out, will you?”

Dom shrugged. “Well, there’s five of us, and Mr. Berenz, and then there’s the missile launchers and guns on the Raven, and a bored chopper crew, so I make that outgunned plus eight. But maybe I forgot to carry the one.”

Anya heard the rasp of metal bearings, like someone opening a reluctant jar. Sorotki trained his gun in the vague direction of the shacks, making more noise than he needed to.

Oh God.

Anya felt the jolt of adrenaline flooding her thigh muscles. She was scared. But…

I hate even thinking it, but I feel alive. Seriously alive.

She’d never expected that. She wasn’t new to life-or-death situations, but she’d never been physically involved in them until the last few weeks. And she didn’t want to die, but right then she wouldn’t have traded places with Mathieson for anything.

“Okay.” Massy sounded relaxed, and he shouldn’t have been. He lowered the rifle, and every Stranded male did the same. “Here’s the deal. You keep away from us, and we’ll let you stay awhile.”

Something seemed to have caught Bernie’s attention. She walked past the shacks along the shoreline, along a row of small boats upturned on the pebbles. She looked them over as if she was thinking of buying one. Massy seemed to notice her for the first time. “You got a problem, lady?”

Bernie turned around. Anya could see she was chewing the inside of her lip. A couple of the Stranded men had moved round a little so that she’d have to walk past them. Anya’s warning bells went off, but Cole was already prepared and made a noisy show of cocking the Lancer manually and blipping the chainsaw for a second.

“The blue dinghy,” Bernie said, fixing on Massy. Anya was sure she had the other Stranded in her peripheral vision. “Anyone want to admit to owning that?”

“You want to make an offer?”

“Simple question. Is the man who owns it here?”

“No.”

“Shame,” she said. “I’ll have to keep looking.”

“Okay, we’re out of here.” Marcus motioned everyone back to the Raven, and the tension seemed to drop.

“Glad we’ve reached an understanding.”

Then Anya learned how fast a situation could veer from calm to a fight. As Bernie passed between two of the men, one moved to jostle her. Anya didn’t see the moment of contact. He might have just shoved Bernie, or maybe he’d touched her backside or something, but he had just enough time to start a leering grin before she spun and smashed the butt of her rifle hard across his mouth. Metal cracked against teeth. He went down like a stone. Anya’s instinct said to pitch in, to back up her squad. But she’d hardly moved before Dom was on the second guy, Lancer shoved hard in his chest, and Cole was blocking Bernie. Everyone froze; every weapon was now raised. There was an awful pause.

“Anyone else want some?” Bernie said, aiming at the man on the floor. She didn’t look like steady, goodnatured Bernie now. She looked like she wanted an excuse to fire. “No? Good call.”

“Yeah, I know who you are now,” one of the men called. “Stupid bitch. You’re really going to get what’s coming to you now. Didn’t you learn your lesson?”

“You need to stay out of my frigging way.” She began backing away with Dom and Cole as the Raven’s rotors started up. “Because you never learned yours.”

Sorotki’s voice came over the comms. “Move it, people. You’ll be late for diplomacy class.”

Marcus covered their exit and then jumped aboard. The Raven lifted clear. Nobody said a word while Bernie put her head in her hands for a few moments, then sat up straight again.

“Shit, I’m sorry.” She looked dreadful, every year of her age and then some, as if something inside had crumbled. She was a veteran Gear, no stranger to violence; Anya had seen her simply shrug off close calls with Locust. Something was wrong. “I could have got you all killed. Baird’s right. I’m a liability.”

“There’s nothing wrong with your reflexes, Bernie,” Dom said. He ruffled her hair as if she was one of the men. “It’s okay. Nobody got hurt.”

Cole joined in the vigorous hair rubbing. “Well, apart from the guy spittin’ out teeth, that is. See, that’s why I never played ladies’ thrashball teams. Girls get rough.”

“It’s not okay.” Bernie submitted to the horseplay. Anya thought that was revealing, seeing as she’d reacted so violently to someone else touching her. “I just lost it. I’m old enough to know better.”

Nobody asked what the man had meant by knowing who she was, and that she hadn’t learned her lesson. Anya tried not to guess. But she was already starting to fill in gaps despite herself.

“Bernie, we’ve all done it.” Anya reached across between the seats and grabbed her hand. “Even I’ve hit a guy. Okay, anyone here who hasn’t lost it with someone?”

Marcus shrugged. “Got kicked out of junior school for fighting. Had a fight on my first day at Olafson Intermediate, too. And I hit Hoffman.”

“Well, I just do friendly taps,” Cole said. “But yeah.”

“See, Bernie?” Anya squeezed her hand. “You’re in the company of serious scrappers. Everyone’s been there.”

“I feel better already,” Bernie said, clearly not meaning it.

It was part of a ritual, and Anya knew it. Everyone rushed to reassure Bernie in this awful, semi-joking way, listing their own moments when they forgot discipline and procedure and just lashed out. But the real question wasn’t asked, and wouldn’t be until the civilian was out of range: what had happened before she rejoined the army?

Will Berenz just gazed at Bernie with undisguised admiration. He didn’t seem remotely curious. All he seemed to see was a Gear who would put the Stranded in their place, Stranded who’d terrorized him and his neighbors. Anya had seen the Stranded on the fringes of Jacinto as unlucky misfits at best, and lazy cowards at worst, but she was now starting to see another element—the utterly lawless who’d never been in fear of COG justice in places where civilization had completely broken down.

Back at Pelruan, Will opened up the town hall and gave the squad the keys to the emergency storeroom. “Just somewhere to eat and bed down for the night,” he said. “Unless you want to be billeted with families.”

“We’ll be fine here, thanks,” Dom said. “We snore.”

Marcus nodded. “Appreciate it, Will. We’ll mount patrols tonight, just in case. You’ll hear the APC. Anya, maybe you can draw up watch rosters for the Ravens.”

Now they were on their own, with no outsiders to limit their conversation. Bernie hauled out folding camp beds while Dom investigated the food stores. Gettner and Sorotki’s co-pilot, Mitchell, volunteered to cook dinner. To Anya it felt like a settled and normal night in barracks in Jacinto, except there were no grubs to worry about, just a handful of feral humans down the coast who would have been unwise to show their faces here. No, not exactly like Jacinto: there were no sounds of a crowded city, no urban noise—just the wind, roaring surf, and occasional voices outside. The squad and Raven crews played cards. But there was no barroom conversation this time, just bids and declarations. Cole couldn’t keep up the silence forever. Anya watched him picking his moment to steer Bernie to one side, taking an occasional deep breath as if he was about to ask something.

“Bernie, you want to do some liquid resource investigation at that handy little bar?” he asked.

“Maybe tomorrow,” she said. “But thanks.”

Cole laid his hand of cards on the table, frowning at it for a moment. “Baby, you ain’t obliged to explain a damn thing to us. But if you want to tell us what all that shit was about, you got a sympathetic audience.”

Bernie rearranged her hand in silence, shifting cards around as if she was doing some complex calculation, but Anya could tell she wasn’t really concentrating on the game.

“Okay, I’ll tell you a horror story,” Bernie said. “With monsters in it.” She laid down her cards faceup, an obvious bust. “And one of them is me.”