CHAPTER 11

There’s justice, and there’s vengeance. Justice is vengeance administered impersonally by a bureaucrat in a standardized and predictable way, so we all know how much punishment to expect and when we’ll get it. (CAPTAIN QUENTIN MICHAELSON, NCOG, ON MAINTAINING SOCIAL ORDER.)

PELRUAN, VECTES, SEVEN WEEKS AFTER THE EVACUATION OF JACINTO, 14 A.E.

Gears were family, and families didn’t have secrets.

They had disagreements, and favorites, and annoying dumb -ass habits, but they didn’t keep serious shit from each other—especially if there was something that could be done about it. Cole hoped Bernie understood that.

“Ain’t prying, Bernie,” he said. The card game didn’t matter now. It was just to pass the time, anyway. “But we know you’re troubled.”

“Who isn’t?” she said. “The whole army’s a psychiatric ward. Our civvies are stressed shitless, too. Can’t live in a world like this and stay normal.”

“Hey, Gill, let’s check out that bar.” Mitchell stood up and went for the door. It was getting too grim and personal for him. Gettner took the hint. “This is squad business.”

There was a clear understanding of who was squad at any given time and who wasn’t—nothing personal, just the way Gears were. Bernie took a long time to say anything after they’d left.

“No point pissing around with a long tale of woe,” she said. “I was raped by Stranded a couple of years ago. So I went after them. I killed two of the guys, but the third got away. That’s about it. Anyone want to play another hand?”

It was hard to follow that. Real hard. It even took a few moments for the full meaning to sink in for Cole. Anya shut her eyes for a second or two, and Marcus didn’t look like he’d even heard what she’d said. That normally meant he was listening to every syllable but didn’t want to react. But someone had to say something, do something, or poor old Bernie would be wishing she hadn’t mentioned it.

Dom was sitting right next to her. “Shit, Bernie, I’m sorry. I had no idea.” He was the kind of guy who hugged and back-slapped everyone. He put his arm out automatically, but suddenly looked too scared to touch her.

“You’re not a monster. You were dishing out justice.”

Cole remembered something Bernie said not long after she first showed up in Jacinto. It hadn’t all been jokes about her shooting cats for food and fur. He knew damn well—after he’d talked to her and watched her for a while—that some bad things happened to her while she was traveling. Stuff happened to most people; they took their chances out there. But it was tougher for a woman.

What was it she’d said? I’ve done some bad stuff. It wasn’t just cats I skinned. Well, if Bernie had some interesting earrings now as well as kitty-fur boots, then that was fine by him.

“Okay,” she said. “It needn’t have happened. This gang of bastards spent most of its time cruising the islands, killing, robbing, raping—preying on other Stranded. I happened to have my nice big Longshot, so I put a few holes in them. Then they came back. I can probably handle one man, but three—no.”

Cole could see Bernie was going to cry at some point. He just wanted to make things right for her. Maybe getting it off her chest would do that, or maybe he’d opened up something nasty she couldn’t handle.

“Any of the gentlemen we just made acquaintance with?” Cole asked. “’Cause me and Baird, we run a really good etiquette program on how to treat ladies with respect.”

“I told you they were frigging animals.” Baird leaned back in his chair and looked over his cards again. He didn’t mean to be an asshole, but sometimes he just couldn’t put things nicely. Cole stood by to shut him up if he couldn’t manage some tact. “Dom’s right. Why are you the monster ? Because you shot a few? They’re vermin. You should get a medal.”

“I didn’t exactly shoot the two I tracked down.”

Baird shrugged. “Good call. Why waste ammo on ’em?”

Bernie didn’t have to draw a picture for Cole. He could guess how she’d settled the score. She knew her way around a carcass, and he’d seen her nearly lose it with that grub back at Port Farrall. But she was still Bernie, still fun to be with, still someone he’d trust with his life. She wasn’t one of the monsters. She just had to deal with them too often.

“So,” Marcus said slowly, “what are you planning to do when you find the third guy?”

Yeah, he always got straight to the point.

“I know what I want to do,” she said. “And you’re going to give me that disapproving Fenix look.”

“Is that what’s really bothering you? What I think?”

“I don’t know, and that’s what’s bothering me.”

“If the asshole shows his face, we got a legal system, right?” Cole was starting to wish he hadn’t started this.

“Martial law. Rules are clear. The boss man’s comin’ soon, and we’ll be runnin’ the place just like we did Jacinto. Can’t argue with a legal system.”

“I’m not the jury, Bernie,” Marcus said. “Can’t say I blame you. Can’t judge you, either.”

Bernie just shrugged. “Well, now you know. I’m not traumatized or any of that shit, because I won’t let them win. But if I have a choice, I’ll be predator, not prey.” She looked like she’d had enough, and stood up to leave.

“Okay, wake me when it’s my watch. I’ll be back to normal in the morning and everyone can forget we had this conversation.”

Anya hadn’t said a word up to then, but now she moved in. There was some sisterly ladies’ stuff going on. Anya probably knew best what Bernie needed to hear. “Come on, Bernie. I’ll make coffee.”

Cole felt he’d failed Bernie somehow. He thought that a bit of comradely support would work wonders; Gears were closer than family, because there was nothing as tight as a team that’d been under fire together. But whatever was really getting to her wasn’t going to be fixed by sympathy.

“Shit,” Baird said. “What kind of pervert rapes old women? I mean, no offense, but Bernie’s Hoffman’s age.”

Dom shrugged. “Maybe they were, too.”

Marcus gathered up the cards from the table and shuffled them. “It’s about power and humiliation,” he said.

“Nothing to do with animal lust.”

“Well, if she catches the last asshole, don’t expect me to stop her and tell her to be civilized and legal about it.” Baird took the deck from Marcus and dealt new hands. “I’ll hold her coat.”

“Bernie’s right,” Dom said. “We’re all messed up by one thing or another. If I’d …” He seemed to be concentrating hard, like he kept forgetting what he had to say. “If I’d come face -to-face with the actual grubs who did that shit to my Maria, I’d have done just what Bernie did … whatever that was, but I can guess. That’s all I’m saying.”

It was the first time Dom had said anything like that. He only talked about Maria’s death in vague and general terms. But now he’d spelled it out to everyone: the grubs had done something terrible to her. Shit, everyone knew that. But sometimes you had to say it out loud just so you could hear it, so you accepted that folks were gone and never coming back.

Baird had dealt Cole a lousy hand. He hadn’t done Dom any favors, either.

“I’m out,” Dom said, pushing his cards back into the center of the table. “And I’m so tired I won’t even have nightmares tonight. Wake me up when it’s my watch.”

“Yeah, count me out, too,” said Baird. “Wow, listen to that silence out there. Isn’t it weird?”

The sea was pretty noisy, and so was the wind. But there was no traffic, no animal sounds, and no distant thump of artillery or mortars. It took some getting used to. Cole and Marcus patrolled the town on foot, as much for the novelty of breathing in clean, mild air as getting into alleys that were too narrow for the ’Dill. The locals had built a really nice place here.

“Is Dom really doin’ better?” Cole asked.

Marcus shrugged. “Up one day, down the next.” He let out a long breath. “Thinks he can save the world if he works hard enough.”

“That world’s gone, man. Gotta draw the line. Save the new one.”

“How do you teach a man who never quits that he’s done all he can?”

Marcus was no good at letting go of stuff, either. “Well, maybe you gotta show him.”

If there was anything good about the last fifteen years, Cole decided, it was that shared pain saved you from having to explain what the problem was. Everyone—Gears and civvies alike—had been through a lot of the same garbage, more or less, so you never had to feel you were crazy or abnormal, seeing as normal meant you were just like everyone else. And that meant seriously fucked up.

Pelruan looked like its worst problem might have been feeling lonely. It was so small that they could cover it all in thirty minutes at a slow amble. Every time they did a loop around the Ravens up on the cliff, Sorotki and Barber were sitting in KR-239’s bay, chatting happily with buddies on long-range comms.

“It’s okay here,” Cole heard Barber saying. “I can’t believe all this shit is finally over.”

Marcus stood staring out to sea.

“What’s that?” he said.

Cole followed where he was pointing. It looked like a dim, intermittent white light on the water. Then it was gone.

“Reflection?”

Marcus stared a little longer. “Don’t think so,” he said. “Cole Train, go wake everyone.”

PELRUAN, 0300 HOURS.

If there was anything out there on the water tonight, then it had to be human, and Dom hadn’t had to deal with a human enemy in a very long time.

He kept to the spongy grass above the pebble shore so that he could hear better instead of drowning out everything with crunching boots. Once he’d adjusted to the sound of the sea, he tried to filter for other noises. At one point he was sure he heard the puttering noise of an old outboard motor.

Damn, my hearing used to be better than this. That’s what comes of never wearing a helmet. Eighteen, nineteen years of noise, noise, noise …

Dom scanned the shore with his field glasses, picking up what little moonlight there was. A small flock of seabirds huddled against a cliff north of him, heads tucked under wings; gleaming shapes in the water turned out to be seals of some kind, eyes narrowed in weirdly smug human expressions. If it hadn’t been for the voice traffic in his earpiece, Dom would have believed he was the last man left on Sera, alone with more wildlife than he’d seen in years. He was out of visual range of everything and everybody.

It would have been a great place to bring up kids.

Baird’s voice in his earpiece made him jump. “Dom, see anything?”

“All clear.”

“There’s something out there, man.”

Anya cut in on the radio. “Marcus, I’ve just left Lewis. He’s disappointed that everyone’s been told to stay inside and leave us to it. Some of the locals are pretty pissed off.”

“When his guys have trained with us and know how to stay out of our fire, we’ll deploy together,” Marcus said. “Until then, they’re safer indoors.”

In the middle of nowhere, the list of potential intruders was short. If it wasn’t the heavies from the Stranded camp, then there was a whole new problem out there that they hadn’t thought of. Big island. Long coastline. A few thousand people stuck in one town and a few farmers here and there can’t possibly keep an eye on who comes and goes.

“Massy would have to be crazy to start anything,” Baird said. “Is he seriously going to go up against Gears?

Dumb asshole.”

Bernie had been unusually quiet. She didn’t have a lot to say when she was working, but she’d been checking in with only the occasional grunt, nothing more.

“Hey, Mataki—what d’you think?”

She took a little while to answer. “He might be doing what damage he can before the whole bloody COG

shows up and smokes him. He knows there are only ten of us. And he doesn’t seem worried by the locals.”

“Rules of engagement,” Marcus said. “Remember that we have them, Delta.”

“Yeah,” Baird said, “but do they?”

“Just saying. They’re not grubs. Self -defense or defense of COG citizens when presented with lethal or injurious force.”

Baird didn’t argue. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t find a reason to shoot, though. Dom wondered how Bernie felt about that.

“Bernie, can I ask you a question?”

“Yeah.”

“If you shot some of the bastards to start with, why didn’t they kill you?”

Marcus sighed. “Dom, drop it.”

“Hey, I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Fair question.” Bernie seemed relaxed about it, but that didn’t mean a thing. “You want a blow-by-blow account, all the details?”

“God, no. I’m sorry.”

“I think they wanted value for money,” she said. “You have to be alive to suffer, remember. That’s why I felt a bit … cheated after I killed them.”

“You got that cleaver with you, Bernie ?” Baird asked. Dom couldn’t remember the last time he’d called her Bernie. He was definitely doing his best to be nice to her. “The one for making omelets.”

“I thought it was for chopping nuts.”

“We’ll swap recipes.”

The squad was now spread out along the kilometer of shore, with Anya patrolling the landward boundary in the

’Dill. She was pretty safe in that; Stranded weren’t likely to have grub firepower. But Dom was sure she’d just drive right over anyone who got in her way, because she had that same streak as her mom, the ability to shut out everything else and go for a target.

She was still getting to grips with the physical stuff. When she did, she’d be scary.

“Hey, something moving,” Baird said. “Hear it?”

It was running fast along the pebbles, something pretty small by the sound of it, a rapid skittering noise at a gallop pace. Dom picked it up in his binoculars: two goddamn dogs. After the feral pack in Merrenat, he wasn’t taking any chances. He could hear the hah-hah-hah of their panting as they raced in his direction. But they streaked past him. They didn’t even slow down to check him out. He wondered if they were chasing rabbits, or whatever had left its crap over the short turf here, but a few moments later they started barking their heads off. Then two, three, four shots rang out. The barking stopped.

“Game on,” Baird said.

Raven engines cut through the night air as the birds lifted in complete blackout. If anyone was coming ashore from the sea, they had to do it at Pelruan, between the break in the cliffs that gave the town a sloping shoreline and a harbor. Dom dropped to one knee, Lancer ready. In the town behind him, dogs took up the barking.

“KR units, on task.” Gettner said. “Sorotki, keep an eye on the back door.”

“On it, boss.” KR-239 broke away and headed inland.

“Contact, hundred meters out, on your two o’clock, Fenix—rigid inflatables.”

“I see ’em.”

“And here,” Cole said. “They’re spreadin’ out. I got a bunch of three inbound, slow-movin’.”

“I see you, Cole, and I have a shot—lead boat of group of three.” That was Bernie. “Ready when you are.”

Dom ran toward the slope of the next cliff to get some elevation. He could see what Gettner had eyeballed now

—another group, four small raiding boats, coming in slowly. The swell hid them in the troughs until they were almost ashore. Then they hit the throttles and stormed in.

Shit, they had to be crazy. They had to hear the choppers and feel the downdraft, even if they couldn’t see any lights. Maybe they assumed the COG was too gentlemanly and civilized to unleash its superior firepower on a bunch of randomly armed civvies.

Wrong call, asshole.

The night suddenly lit up as Gettner switched on the Raven’s searchlight. A brilliant white shaft raked the shore and shallows, picking out one of the inflatables like a cabaret spot. For a moment, just a moment, the raiding party stared up, hair flattened by the downdraft, spray whipping around them.

“I really wanted to see fishing nets,” Gettner sighed. Then the bullhorn boomed. “Drop the fucking weapons, vermin, or I will open fire.”

Dom’s eye caught upward movement as an assortment of rifles lifted and aimed. He didn’t take in anything else, only the weapons. A pipe -like barrel jerked up almost vertically just a split second before a yellow ball of discharged gas blew out behind it. A grenade round hit the Raven. Fire spat from the air down at the boats, raising a neat line of water.

Been there. Been on the receiving end of that, a long time ago.

Dom fired out of pure reflex. His save -yourself instinct was screaming: Watch out for the Raven, the bird’s been hit, it’s going down. But nothing hit him, and there was no fireball. When he turned, the Raven was hovering, firing short bursts into the shallows. More boats skidded up the shingle and Dom opened fire again, punching through one of the rubber hulls. Three men jumped out of it and ran ashore, and Dom jumped up to sprint after them. Automatic fire—some Lancer, some not—rattled up and down the beach. The bastards were landing at multiple points.

Marcus cut in. “Gettner, you hit?”

“If they’d done more than clip the boarding step, you’d know all about it.”

“Give me some light by the slipway, then.”

“On it.”

“I have a visual on the ’Dill.” That was Sorotki. “Heading for … yeah, I see them, three big junkers, heading into town. Going in to welcome them to Pelruan …”

“Hey, mind my tanks, shithead.” Gettner must have been taking more fire from the ground. “Barber, smoke them before they hit the reserve fuel, will you?”

Dom reached the edge of the buildings, panting. The Stranded had vanished into the streets. That was the last thing he needed. He couldn’t see the bastards, and the homes were mainly wooden structures that gave no protection to anyone inside, a bad place for a firefight. It was even worse knowing there were civvies huddled in every building who wouldn’t have a clue how to stay down and let Gears deal with the cleanup.

“Dom!” Baird sounded out of breath. “I’m heading right toward you. We’re going to intersect by the town hall.”

“Where the hell are you? Can you see me? I can’t see you.”

“Running parallel with the road where the bar is.” He paused. “Amateurs. Homemade firebombs—”

Glass smashed. A tongue of yellow flame leapt above the low roofline, and the whoomp of igniting fuel followed by more Lancer fire gave Dom something to run at. He skidded around the next corner, trying to orient himself by the light of the fire, and caught sight of one of the Stranded running full tilt down the road. He stopped and squeezed off a burst. The guy pitched forward and fell on one side. Dom was suddenly aware of screaming—

a woman’s voice from out in the open, not muffled by walls.

Shit.

Dom had shot someone in the back. For a terrible moment he thought he’d dropped a civilian who’d come out to defend their property or something. He ran for the body, but Baird appeared out of a side alley and gave him a thumbs-up.

“Locals are firefighting,” he said. “Shit, I hate urban ops. You can’t hose anything.”

“I’ve lost at least two of them.”

“It’s a small town. How far can they get?”

“How much damage can they do?”

Wooden buildings, narrow streets, fire. Dom could work it out. Voice traffic had been almost zero for a few minutes, but now Dom’s earpiece went on overload.

“Shore, clear.” Bernie said. “Boats—clear. Eight-Zero, can you see anything else down there?”

“Negative, Mataki. Heading over to the town.”

“Anya, Sorotki—Fenix here. What’s happening your side?”

“Roadblocking.” Anya was shouting over the noise of a Raven. Sorotki sounded like he was almost parked on top of the ’Dill. “Because I can’t drive and operate the gun at the same time.”

Machine-gun fire started up in short bursts, and then the distinctive sound of the ’Dill’s belt-fed gun joined it. Dom could have sworn he heard Anya whoop. That was so unlike her that it shook him. He ran where the two Stranded had gone, following the light of another burning building, and straight into a knot of men from the town

—shit, he hoped he could tell the difference—with a scruffy bearded guy pinned bodily to the ground. One of the men put a hunting rifle to the Stranded’s head and pulled the trigger.

Oh God oh God oh God …

For a few seconds, Dom was back in the Hollow, one simple movement of his trigger finger marking the line between finding what he’d searched for so desperately and destroying it forever. Oh God, Maria, I’m so sorry …

The group of men looked up at Dom as if he’d crashed a party.

“What the hell’s wrong with you? The bastard asked for it.” There was a Gnasher shotgun lying on the road, COG issue. One of the men grabbed it. “We told you to let us deal with this. What the hell are you going to do now? Let them burn us out?”

Dom snapped back to being Dom the Gear, ready to deal with anything. “You look after the firefighting,” he said, poking his finger hard in the man’s chest. “Leave the Stranded to us. Okay?”

“You started this. You provoked them.”

Baird caught up with him and they left the civilians to it, realizing that Gears weren’t coming across as the heroes of the hour in Pelruan. This wasn’t Jacinto. The locals didn’t see Gears as saviors, the last line of defense. They were just outsiders that they didn’t invite and didn’t understand.

“I’ve lost the other asshole.”

“Screw him,” Baird said. “Hear that?” There was crazed barking, but it was coming from outside now, not the houses. “They’ve let the dogs loose. Wow, they must train them to take out Stranded. I’m impressed.”

Dom stopped dead. “Marcus? Anya? Anyone need backup? We lost our quarry.”

The Lancer fire from the shore had stopped. Dom could hear people coming out of the houses, calling to their neighbors to check if they were okay. Baird yelled at them to get back indoors because it wasn’t over yet, not by a long shot. If they heard him, they took no notice.

“Ahh, shit.” That was Marcus with his radio channel open. Dom had no idea where he was. “Get back inside, lady … Cole, get them back inside. Shit. Dom? We’re clear shoreside. Get down to the road and mop up anyone from the junkers.”

Baird ran alongside Dom. “Next time we hit a new town, first thing we do is memorize the street plan.”

“Yeah.”

“We’d have been screwed without the Ravens.”

“I never said Stranded were dumb.”

There was one road out of Pelruan to the south, now marked by a pall of smoke and flame. The town was so small that if you stood at the right point, or got some elevation, you could see everything from the road to the shore in one axis, and from one headland to the next in the other. Even in darkness—it was 0405 now—the aftermath of the fighting was visible. Dom climbed up on a dry-stone wall and scanned the area. There were five or six fires, some already being damped down, and both Ravens were now out over the open country to the south, searchlights directed, guns occasionally loosing off bursts of fire.

Dom and Baird ran on. By the time they got to the roadblock, Cole was hauling out bodies, and the two Ravens were heading back, their nose lights visible head -on. Two junkers lay on their sides, burning fiercely, and the third was upright with its roof ripped open like a tin can.

“I’d hate to see the Lieutenant when she’s in a pissy mood,” Cole said. “Damn, you seen the collection of toys these jokers got? There’s grubs with less firepower than this.”

The ’Dill had stopped at a point where the road sloped away sharply into the river on one side and soft ground on the other. Perfect choke point: Anya definitely had the right stuff. Dom just didn’t want to see her end up like her mom, killed in a magnificent but crazy single-handed charge. It might have been great for the movies, but it was shit for the people left to grieve. The top hatch opened slowly and Anya eased her head and shoulders clear. Dom wouldn’t have said she looked pleased with herself, not quite, but in the light from the fires she had a certain shine to her cheeks like she’d just come back from a brisk walk.

“You can’t see much from this gun position,” she said.

Baird clapped a few times. “Great debut.”

“I think Mitchell did most of the work.” She ducked back down and came out through the front hatch. When she saw Cole clearing up, her face changed, and Dom wondered if she’d suddenly made the connection at gut level that the targets she’d been firing at so diligently were actually flesh and blood. “How many of them are there?”

“We’ll count ’em proper when the Ravens are done playing fighter jocks,” Cole said. “Shit, seen that chunk out of Gettner’s bird? Whole step ripped off the crew bay. She’s lucky she ain’t toast.”

“We’ll hear all about it.” Baird collected the weapons, an assortment that was mainly automatic rifles and grenade launchers. He paused to take a naval officer’s ceremonial sword off a Stranded’s belt. “Whoa, Captain Charisma won’t like you playing pirates with that, buddy. Show some respect.”

Dom slid his hand inside his armor to check that his photographs were still safe. “You okay, Anya?”

“I’m … I’m fine, Dom. Just not trained for this.”

“Hell, who is? You ever killed anyone before?”

“I think I hit a Locust or two when we first reached Port Farrall,” she said. “But never a human.”

Baird just looked at her. “You still haven’t…”

Cole just shook his head. The flames were dying down in one of the junkers, and he ventured in to pull out a body that was half out of the driver’s seat. Dom only saw the movement as he tugged on it. Cole froze and turned away. “Aww … shit, this one’s … aww, hell.”

Dom wondered what could disgust Cole. Any man who could chainsaw his way through a squad of grubs and laugh his ass off wasn’t the squeamish kind. It took Dom a while to work out what he was looking at, but then the blackened shapes resolved into something recognizable: the body had come apart in two halves when Cole pulled at it.

“Gross,” Dom said, and finished the job for him.

Humans … it was different. People weren’t grubs, not even the really shitty ones. Baird peered over his shoulder, then went on loading the salvaged weapons into the ’Dill, still whistling. Gears generally despised Stranded—as savages, thieves, cowards, parasites—but Dom had always tried to get on with them because he needed their help. He’d lost count of the number of Stranded he’d stopped in the streets and shown Maria’s picture. Had they seen her? It was always no, until the last day, and then it had been too late. Why don’t I blame them?

“Why d’you hate ’em so much, Baird?” Cole asked.

Baird counted off on his fingers with a theatrical flourish. “Failure to engage with the implied social compact between citizens and state. And the fact that they stink like shit.” He looked at his gloves, frowning. “Oh, yeah, I forgot—they’re mean to people we like.”

Marcus’s voice cut in on the radio circuit. “Delta, we’re done here. Everyone back to the slipway to clean up the debris. Baird—find some welding equipment and fix Gettner’s bird so that she shuts up.”

Baird drove the ’Dill down the narrow roads back to the shore. Pelruan seemed to have two natural centers, two places where people tended to congregate. One was outside the town hall—not exactly a square, more like a village green—and the other was the row of houses closest to the sea, almost a semicircle looking down the shallow slope into the harbor. Baird parked the ’Dill, headlights angled down onto the shore to illuminate it, and everyone dismounted. A growing crowd of locals had come out to look. Some stood with arms folded, looking shocked, but some were obviously mad as hell, and not just with the Stranded. Dom saw one guy yelling at Marcus while Gavriel and Berenz stood between them, making calm-down gestures with their hands.

“Vernon, nobody got hurt,” Berenz said. “The damage can be repaired. But nobody got hurt.”

Vernon turned on him. “Yeah, and they wouldn’t have come here at all if it hadn’t been for this bunch throwing their weight around—when did we last get raided? They don’t know how we do things here.”

“Vern, Stranded could come back and raid us anytime. But do you seriously think they’ll be back now?”

“Face it, Will—our way of life here is over. In one damn day, everything’s changed.”

Dom listened, resentful. Well, now you know how the rest of the world felt on E-Day, asshole. But we’re not grubs. We’re your own.

Gavriel steered the guy away. Marcus, being Marcus, just stood there in silence and let it roll off him, looking more interested in the bodies that were being laid out. Bernie examined them. They were looking for something. Dom jogged over with Baird to check.

“No Massy yet.” Marcus rubbed his neck as if he’d pulled a muscle. “Twenty-six bodies so far.”

“He might be one of the barbecued ones,” Baird said helpfully. “We’ve got a stack out on the road.”

“Either way,” Marcus said, “we’ve got a shitload of Stranded with a grievance.”

“So? They try it on, and we cap them, too. Not exactly a legal gray area.”

“Why the hell would they even try?” Dom asked. “Last-ditch raid? One for the road?”

Marcus shrugged. “Fifty to a hundred of them, with grenade launchers, assault rifles, and vehicles. Ten of us with two helicopters, reluctant to see collateral damage. We’d have taken those odds, too.”

“Yeah,” Dom said. “But we’d have won.”

The Ravens were still hovering over the water, searchlights moving slowly, while a couple of small boats searched for more bodies. Any they hadn’t recovered could have washed out of the harbor by now. Gavriel came back and joined the subdued line looking at the Stranded dead.

“I think it would be a good idea to call a town meeting in the morning and calm everyone down, Marcus.” He indicated the dead bodies with a nod. “People are quick to forget that those individuals there would have cut their throats for the clothes on their backs. And what with the … returning refugees, we’ve got a volatile situation.”

“Yeah. I’ll do that.” Marcus nodded, like it was the most natural thing in the world, no more than a dispute over a parking space. “I’ve had plenty of practice at explaining why things went to ratshit.”

He walked away, and Dom watched him sit down on the front steps of one of the houses, head lowered, finger jammed into one ear. Dom knew who he was trying to raise: Hoffman.

Hoffman, Dom thought, would have done exactly the same.

PELRUAN, KR-239 CREW BAY, LATER THAT MORNING.

Anya sat in the Raven’s crew bay with Delta, waiting for Hoffman to call back and explain just how disappointed he was with their diplomacy.

“You can’t make allowances for Stranded, Marcus,” she said. “One squad can’t search thousands of square kilometers in a day.”

Bernie shook her head. “I should have postponed my feud until the bloody fleet was here.”

“I’m the one who wanted to pay them a visit.” Marcus joined the squad competition to take the blame. Nobody could ever accuse them of sloping shoulders. “But we need to put a lid on any complications in town, and fast.”

Stranded could be anything from a slight nuisance to a full-scale threat. But nobody was used to a blurred line between Stranded and citizens; you were either one or the other. Some of the residents didn’t seem to be too sure about that dividing line, and Anya could see them milling around the slipway, staring at the debris from the skirmish. Some looked stunned, others disapproving. Being isolated from the real war had formed a very different culture, COG banners or not.

“When Lewis is ready, I’ll go in and talk to the council,” Anya said. “We’ll calm things down.”

Marcus did his slow head shake. “I’ll do it.”

“You want to address a meeting?” Anya felt that was her responsibility. She was the officer, and she was the one who’d told Prescott and Hoffman that things were fine, more or less. But a little pang of guilt made her wonder if she thought Marcus was too abrupt and aggressive to be trusted with the task. “Maybe I should do it.”

“A meeting,” Marcus said, “is just a mob that hasn’t started throwing rocks. I’ll be fine.”

Baird obviously couldn’t see what the fuss was about. “Hey, we’ve got the whole COG army coming. This is just a small bunch of seriously underarmed civvies. Why are we wasting energy trying to persuade anyone about anything?”

“Because we’ve got to rebuild society now,” Anya said. “Priorities are changing.”

“But this is the COG. Everyone’s got responsibilities. If they wanted all that flaky free-spirit I’m-an-individual crap, they should have moved to Pelles. Oh, wait—Pelles got creamed by the grubs even before Hammer Day. I rest my case.”

Sorotki stuck his head through the hatch. “The master’s voice. Hoffman on the line for the lucky victim.”

Marcus took a breath and pressed his earpiece, staring up at the deckhead. Anya listened in with her mike switched off, mainly to help her resist the temptation to intervene, and wondered if she should have stuck to CIC. She knew damn well that her mother would have handled this better. She wasn’t sure how, but Mom had just had a presence that said she knew exactly what she was doing and that she couldn’t lose. And even when she finally lost for the first and last time, she won the battle. Miss you, Mom. I really do.

“Colonel,” Marcus said, “we had a minor incident. The situation’s been contained.”

“How minor, Fenix?”

“Stranded raiding party—up to sixty dead, no civvies injured.”

“So what’s your security evaluation now?”

“Can’t be more than seven or eight hundred of them, and at least half are women, kids, or old men.”

“Prescott wants the usual deal—offer them amnesty and ask them to hand over the criminal element. How are the locals taking it?”

Marcus paused. “We need to get a few things straight with them first. Like whose side they’re on.”

“You said they were COG citizens.”

“They’re mostly COG citizens who’ve never had grubs up their asses. So they aren’t as focused or grateful as Jacinto folk when we have to break a few things to save them.”

“I hear you, Fenix. Prescott wants to address them live via your bot’s video link, but I’ll stall him.”

Marcus did his silent sigh, eyes shut for a moment. “Tell him he’s even more charismatic in person. What’s your ETA?”

The link faded to static for a moment while Hoffman seemed to be consulting someone. “Michaelson estimates four days, but we can start flying in teams in a few hours.”

“We’ll keep a lid on it.”

“You will call for assistance if you run into difficulties, Fenix. This isn’t the war. Policing civilians requires more manpower than shooting troublesome bastards.”

“I’ll make a note so I remember that.”

Marcus jumped down from the Raven and walked toward town. Anya followed with Dom.

“You’re not going alone,” she said.

Marcus didn’t turn around. “I’ll try not to drag my knuckles.”

The main meeting room of the town hall where they’d played cards just hours earlier was now packed with locals, who might have been representatives or just the first ones who managed to cram in to find a space. Anya took it as a positive sign—at least they weren’t rioting in the streets. Lewis Gavriel’s first reaction had been to call a meeting, and the population’s response had been to attend. That wasn’t the behavior of a mob. Gavriel squeezed through the crowd, clapping his hands to get attention over the hubbub of voices. But it was actually Marcus who silenced them. He walked in behind Gavriel, and the noise level dropped as if someone had turned down a volume control. He cleared a path without even trying. A teenage boy—fifteen, perhaps—turned idly to see what was behind him, and the expression on his face when he saw Marcus was pure animal fear, instant and undisguised. Anya was taken aback by it.

Hey, that’s my Marcus, he’s not like that, he wouldn’t hurt you—

Anya had to remind herself that any Gear was an intimidating sight for civilians not used to them—all that battle-scarred armor, the Lancer that never seemed wholly clean of blood, the impression of bulk and sheer unstoppability—but Marcus projected something beyond that. It wasn’t just dominant body language. It was a kind of angry weariness. It made people shut up and listen.

He reached the front of the meeting room and stepped onto the low dais with a hollow thud of boots. Anya moved off to one side with Dom, looking back at the packed hall and scanning the faces. Most wore similar expressions of confusion and fear.

Gavriel stepped up beside Marcus, all solidarity. “Citizens, I know you’re all worried by what happened earlier, but I really need you to listen to Sergeant Fenix. We’re going to have to get used to some changes. I want you to hear him out.”

Dom was standing so close to Anya that he could whisper in her ear almost without moving. “I’d like to see anyone try to interrupt him.”

Anya kept telling herself that Marcus could handle this. But he wasn’t even the talkative type, let alone an orator. She braced herself to step in if he hit problems.

“I want you to understand how serious our situation is,” he said. “You might think you know what war means, but you don’t. Most of humankind is dead. All the cities are gone, even Jacinto. The only humans left alive, apart from Stranded, are on their way here by ship because they’ve got nowhere left to run. Do you understand the stakes? We’re facing extinction. That’s why we’re moving in. And it’s not a request—it’s going to happen. The people we pulled out of Jacinto survived hell, and they’re COG citizens, too. So here’s the deal, like it’s always been—you do right by your fellow citizen, and the COG does right by you. There’s no other deal on the table.”

Anya never knew Marcus had that many words in him. She almost didn’t dare look at the crowd in case she broke the spell—which seemed to be horrified shock rather than admiration for Marcus’s brutally frank announcement.

It took a few long seconds to sink in, and then the questions erupted. And they weren’t just fired at Marcus; the crowd was arguing, taking sides, shouting. Marcus just folded his arms and waited in silence for them to yell themselves to a standstill.

Okay, that’s not a bad strategy …

“What the hell’s going to happen to us?”

“Are you invading?”

“How many? Come on, how many? This is just an island.”

“You selfish bastards—didn’t you hear what the guy said? They’re all that’s left.”

“They’re going to be slugging it out with Stranded and we’ll get caught in the middle.”

“We fended for ourselves when the COG abandoned us—where the hell were you when we needed you?”

“They’re our own, man. They’ve got nowhere else.”

“We don’t have room. Why the hell do we have to take them?”

“Because we’re COG, asshole, you forgotten something ? What do you think the flag is ? Why do you think we’re here at all?”

“I don’t care, they can’t just walk in—”

Bang.

Anya flinched. She thought for a moment that Marcus had hit the wall behind him with his fist, or maybe Gavriel had, but it was Dom. He’d knocked over a chair.

Dom took three strides into the crowd and grabbed the loudest guy by the collar while he fumbled inside his armor. He pulled out something: his photographs. He’d taken those pictures out so many times over so many years that he could just flick them out like a card trick. He shoved the photographs right in the man’s face.

“See this?” he said. Tears ran down his cheeks. “This is my wife. She’s dead.” He fanned out the photographs one-handed. “And these are my two kids. They’re dead, too. And these are my folks, and her folks. They’re all dead.” He dropped the pictures, the whole pack, and they fluttered across the floor. “You think they all died so you could slam the fucking door in our faces and tell me you don’t have room for the few who didn’t? I’m telling you— you have room.”

Anya held her breath. One wrong word, one move, could set off a fight. The guy just stared into Dom’s face even after Dom let go of his collar, and then squatted down to gather up the photographs with him. Dom, suddenly his normal self again, patted the pictures into a neat pile and slid them back inside his armor. Marcus stepped down off the dais. Anya expected some parting shot from him, but it was clear now that none was needed. He put his hand under Dom’s elbow and gave him a push toward the door.

Anya found herself alone, standing with Gavriel, with nothing to add.

“It’s that simple, people,” Gavriel said. “This is COG sovereign territory, and we’re its citizens. If you don’t want to accept that duty anymore, then this is a big island, and you can go your own way as Stranded. But Jacinto’s remnant is going to settle here. That’s all there is to it.”

Some people got up and stormed out. The rest just stood or sat where they were. If any of them were overjoyed at the prospect of ending their isolated existence, they didn’t show it.

“Thank you,” Anya said. “You have no idea what a lifeline this island is for everyone.”

As Marcus had said, Vectes didn’t actually have any choice. The remnant was coming, the COG was asserting its authority, and there was nothing anyone could do about it except develop a streak of self-destructive insanity and try to fight its own government.

But it still never did any harm to say thank you.

An old man with a wonderfully lined face smiled at her as she left the meeting room.

“Didn’t Ephyra effectively shut the door to refugees when Prescott ordered the Hammer strikes?” he said, still smiling.

“Yes, it did.” Anya couldn’t call it a low blow, because it was an inevitable parallel to draw. She wondered what he was going to tell her—and she knew that he would, sooner or later—about the relatives he had lost somewhere on the mainland. “But the people in those ships, they didn’t do anything.”

That wasn’t completely true, of course. There was Prescott and Hoffman. But Victor Hoffman had paid dearly for his part in the decision. She liked the old bastard too much to see him pay any more.

“Perhaps we’d have seen things differently if we’d been overrun by Locust,” said the old man.

“Yes,” Anya said. “I think you would.”