CHAPTER 12

I am responsible for myself and my actions; I shall conduct myself honorably, and live a clean and frugal life. I have responsibilities to my fellow citizens; I shall be loyal to them, and humble, because we are equal elements of a greater whole, and without them I am nothing. I have responsibilities to our society; I shall understand and respect my place in it, defend it, and work to make it prosperous, so that I may receive society’s protection, and that we may hand on safety and prosperity to future generations.

(THE OCTUS CANON, FOUNDING PRINCIPLES OF THE COALITION OF ORDERED GOVERNMENTS, AS HANDED DOWN BY THE ALLFATHERS, AND RECITED BY EVERY CITIZEN.)

PELRUAN LANDING AREA, ONE DAY AFTER THE STRANDED RAID, 14 A.E.

“I decided Prescott could cope without me,” Hoffman said. “And if I had to watch Major Reid trying to crawl up his ass one more time, I might have taken a chainsaw to him. Am I being unreasonable, Anya?”

“One reason I take care of you, sir, is that I’d prefer not to work for him,” she said. “Come on. Meet the loyal caretakers.”

The Raven circled once before heading back to Vectes naval base with Will Berenz. The advance party of Ravens had landed to get essential services running before the first tranche of evacuees came ashore. Anya had half imagined some kind of single event, a historic and camera -worthy moment where the remnant set foot on safe ground for the first time, even though she knew that the landings and transfers would have to be done in stages.

Cole and Baird were working on the quay, cutting lengths of wooden planking with their Lancers’ chainsaws. Okay, chainsaws were chainsaws. You could use them for more than just killing grubs. But it still made Anya smile. A couple of small boys watched the two Gears, clearly fascinated.

“Where’s Mataki?” Hoffman asked.

“Visiting the Stranded with Sergeant Fenix. They’ve gone with Sorotki and a local farmer for an aerial recon.”

“Are the local vermin rabid or something ? Never known them try to take on Gears. I don’t agree with amnesties for them, but Prescott insists. I think they’ll tell him to kiss their asses. They usually do.”

“They’ve had soft targets for too long. They’re not used to facing superior firepower.”

“Well, they’re going to get damned used to it now. Crazy bastards. Did anything set them off, or are they always that suicidal?”

Anya wondered how much Bernie had told Hoffman. He probably needed to know that she had more issues with Stranded than the average Gear, but this was thin personal ice to step on.

“I think they were just making the point that they owned the place, but then they found out they didn’t,” Anya said. “We made contact with them earlier in the day, and it was pretty hostile.” God, do I tell him? Maybe he knows the rest. “Sergeant Mataki slugged one. But she had good reason.”

Hoffman slowed his pace to an occasional step. “How good?”

“One jostled her.” No, that didn’t cover it at all. “Sir, were you aware she was gang-raped by Stranded?”

Hoffman obviously wasn’t. He stopped dead. He didn’t even look at Anya, and his usual reaction to any news was to fix the messenger with a stare that could drill holes in sheet steel.

“I was not,” he said. “Are we talking about the same Stranded?”

Anya lost her nerve. There was only so much strain she could put on Hoffman’s heart before he turned pale enough to scare her. “It’s complicated.”

“I’d need to know.” He hadn’t even let loose with his usual stream of expletives. He was definitely shaken; the blood had drained from his face. “Mataki and I go way back. Do you fully understand? I’d personally take a Lancer to any man who upset her.”

“I believe she dealt with two of them, sir.” I should never have started this. I should have left it to Marcus.

“I’m sorry, I realize you’re close. I should have handled this more diplomatically.”

“Damn glad you told me, Anya,” Hoffman said. “Because she wouldn’t. Leave it with me.”

He walked on, shaking his head, fists balled. Anya thought better of pouring fuel on the fire by mentioning the boat that Bernie had taken an interest in.

When Gavriel met them in the town hall, Hoffman seemed to snap back to his old self, blunt and business-like.

“So some of your residents think we’re going to be a pain in the ass,” he said, turning a chair around and straddling it. “Well, we’re not going to be on your doorsteps for a long time to come. You’ll have seventy kilometers of breathing space. But the Chairman will not tolerate segregation and no-go areas in COG territory. There has to be some integration.”

Gavriel looked ashamed, if anything. “I think they’re afraid of overcrowding and violence. Competition for food. Some remember the Pendulum Wars, and from what Lieutenant Stroud tells me, that was civilized by comparison.”

“Gavriel—”

“Lewis, please.”

“Lewis, we fought genocide. Do we have to draw a picture ? Goddamn it, we’re not animals. We’re not Stranded. My Gears are disciplined soldiers, and the civilian population is under martial law. They’re not some plague that’s going to spoil your comfortable existence here.”

“I know that, Colonel.”

“Remind them that their community only exists because the NCOG paid it to be here to support the naval base.”

Anya winced. She liked Gavriel, and hoped he understood Hoffman’s savaging was nothing personal.

“So how do we achieve integration, Colonel?” Gavriel asked calmly.

“Same way any social animal learns to get along with a new pack. Gradually. We allow small parties of the remnant to visit Pelruan, and Pelruan sends small parties to see what life is like in Vectes. Eventually, anyone can go anywhere. But this will be one island, one nation. Chairman Prescott is most insistent on that. He’s asked me to pass on his invitation to your councilmen to visit VNB and meet the civilian community when they arrive.”

Reading the riot act to Gavriel was redundant. The man still saw himself as a COG civil servant, fifteen years’

isolation or not, and so did many of his neighbors. But some didn’t, and Anya could only guess at where that divergence had started.

And who’s the new animal and who’s the pack? That’s the problem.

Perhaps once they saw how little impact the overnight city at the other end of the island made to their daily existence, then they’d settle down.

And I’ll make damn sure they have a history lesson. They have to understand. But why should we have to justify ourselves to them, after all we’ve been through?

Anya realized she’d almost let resentment get a hold on her. That was how easy it was, how simply it began. And now she knew what her objective would be in the immediate future. She might never become the exemplary fighting Gear her mother had been, but she could organize and analyze—and she could make people understand.

“Martial law,” Gavriel said at last. “That would apply to all of us, would it?”

“It would,” said Hoffman. “The Fortification Act is still in force.” He checked his watch. “It shouldn’t make any difference to your daily lives, Lewis, except that we’ll provide security patrols here—and at the farms. That should reassure your people.”

“Some will see it as enforcement, but we can deal with that.”

“Maybe it is. Citizenship is a two-way street. So we’ll deal with it.”

Anya winced. Hoffman had never been a diplomat, but his honesty got him a long way. Now he wanted his walking tour of the town.

“They might as well get used to the sight of me,” Hoffman said, “because this is all going to land in my lap. I can smell it.”

“It’s actually quite a nice place, sir.”

The whole concept of a nice place was almost a forgotten memory. Anya thought back a few weeks to when she’d believed that Port Farrall was as good as it was going to get, and that there were no more havens across a distant border where small luxuries were still available. Now she was standing in one of those havens. Her definition of luxury had scaled down considerably over the years, but fresh food, a quiet bar, and clean sheets were now real.

And no grubs.

That was the hardest thing to get used to. The monsters were still very much under every refugee’s bed. A few houses showed signs of fire damage from the raid, but workmen were already up ladders, hammering and sawing and repairing. Word of Hoffman’s arrival had spread around town, and people wandered out to look. The colonel looked every inch what he was—aggressive, uncompromising, and short on charm—but he seemed to switch into parade inspection mode, and went along inspecting and commenting favorably on the tidy state of the houses. Anya willed him not to go the whole hog and order some unlucky householder to get down and give him twenty for having an untidy front yard.

He couldn’t have looked that intimidating today, though. One of the small boys who’d been watching Cole and Baird now trailed them, and finally caught up with Anya. He looked about eight. He shot Hoffman a glance, but seemed to think Anya was the safer bet.

“Miss?”

“Hi. What’s your name? Mine’s Anya.”

“I’m Josef. Does your gun work?”

“Yes.”

“What are grubs like?”

“Horrible. But you don’t have to worry about them.”

“Is that why the Gears look at the ground every time there’s a big wave or a noise?”

Anya didn’t quite understand. “What do you mean, Josef?”

“Why don’t they look up?”

Hoffman grunted. “I think the boy means that every time there’s a noise they’re not expecting, Gears automatically look down. Grubs.” He patted the kid’s head. “You’d look up to see what it was, right?”

“Yes.” Josef was now mesmerized by Hoffman and forgot Anya. “Is that because the grubs are under the ground?”

“It is, son. They lived in tunnels and dug their way up to the surface. We never knew when they’d burst through and come to get us.”

Josef looked stricken. It was a child’s nightmare, all right. “Did they kill people?”

“Millions and millions.”

“Worse than the Hammer of Dawn?”

Hoffman missed a beat and swallowed hard. “Yeah. Worse than that.”

“Wow,” said Josef, and darted off back to Cole and Baird.

“Now there’s a boy whose sleep’s going to be disturbed for a few weeks,” Anya said. Hoffman shook his head. “I think he grasped the situation a hell of a lot quicker than some of the adults. Kids are better at imagining monsters.” He braced his shoulders again as if he was shrugging off a bad memory. He almost certainly was, but he had a long list to pick from, and Anya always had to guess which. “Now, under martial law we can requisition whatever supplies we need, but you’re going to tell me that’ll alienate our friends here, so what the hell do we barter to make ourselves feel like nice people when we need to take something?”

“Fuel,” Anya said. “They’re using everything from wind turbines to wood stoves to vegetable oils. Repair the landline network. Provide labor to clear land. Give them TV in a few key places. That sort of thing.”

“TV?”

“Easy. Just tell Baird that you don’t think he can possibly cannibalize some of the monitors from the ships and make a closed circuit system out of them, and then stand back. Keeps the media busy, too.”

“Yes, we really are wrecking their island idyll, aren’t we?”

“Cooperation takes less effort than enforcement.”

Anya was uncomfortable with the new face of the COG that some in Pelruan seemed to see: an occupying army, an invasion. It wasn’t how she saw herself or her comrades. It certainly wasn’t how Jacinto civilians had regarded the Gears who held the line between them and the Locust advance.

A refugee city of people who still aren’t convinced they’ll live to see tomorrow, traumatized, hungry, bereaved

—and a small town that hasn’t even seen a Locust. We’ve got a big gulf to bridge. Hoffman sat down on the low stone wall that ran along the quay and watched Cole and Baird sawing wood to length for the repairs. The air smelled of resin, sea, and cooking.

“Damn nice, like you say,” Hoffman said absently. “We’ll make the new city damn nice, too. Prescott keeps talking about New Jacinto.”

“When are you going back to VNB, sir?”

“When I’ve seen Mataki,” he said. “I can wait. May I borrow your Lancer, Lieutenant?”

He held his hand out for her rifle, then revved up the chainsaw and went to cut wood with his Gears. If she hadn’t known he was upset about Bernie, then she would have sworn he was starting to look at peace. MERRIS FARM, SOUTHERN VECTES, SAME DAY.

“You just got to shoot them when they destroy crops or kill livestock,” the farmer said. “They’re a damn nuisance. You from farming stock? You sound like an Islander.”

Bernie nodded. “Galangi. That’s mostly livestock. Grew up on a beef farm.”

“Say ass.”

“Arse.”

He burst out laughing. “You got that accent.”

His name was Jonty, and he carried an obsolete shotgun broken under one arm. Three black dogs with wild, mistrustful eyes kept close to his heels.

“What about you?” he asked Marcus.

“Strictly urban.” Bernie could tell from Marcus’s slow head turns that he was keeping watch on the dogs in his peripheral vision, avoiding eye contact. “Big garden. Nothing more.”

One of the dogs edged forward and trotted over to Bernie to sniff at the cat -fur lining that was just visible through the straps on her boots. Bernie squatted down and offered a gloved hand for inspection, fingers carefully closed. The dog wagged its tail, apparently satisfied that she had the right canine attitude.

“Probably wants to chase cats with you,” Marcus said.

“No, he’s got a taste for Stranded.” Jonty snapped his fingers and the dog came back to heel. “They killed my other dog, the bastards. That was when I changed to using buckshot. They know the score now. If I catch ’em on my land, I shoot to kill. They got a choice of being civilized like the people up in town, or not, and they chose not, so I treat ’em like any other predator.”

Bernie understood the man perfectly, but Marcus didn’t look comfortable. It might have been the smell of manure, because that was one thing you rarely got in Jacinto. Either way, he wasn’t happy.

“So we could give you security cover,” Bernie said carefully She wasn’t here to do deals, but she’d struck up a rapport with the man, and it seemed a waste of goodwill not to broach the subject. “We’ll be reclaiming a lot of the open land for farming in due course, but in the meantime, we’ll need to find food supplies to top up the rations.”

“I’m finding it hard to work this farm on my own these days,” Jonty said. “Now, if you had some spare hands

…”

“Oh, I’m sure we can find some.”

“I think that would work out nicely, then.” He looked over Sorotki’s Raven with an expression of mild curiosity. “I never been in one of these things, y’know.”

“They’re noisy buggers.” Bernie mimed ear defenders with her hands. “You’ll need a headset just to talk.”

It took Jonty a few moments to convince the dogs that they should stay put and that he wasn’t being taken away. He talked to them like kids, which Bernie found painfully touching. Poor sod: stuck out here on his own, listening for every noise in the night, in case a gang of Stranded decided to cut his throat. Well, that was going to change.

“So you negotiated a food supply,” Marcus muttered, out of earshot. “Nice. But it’s all COG land anyway.”

“I know, but you catch more with honey than you do with vinegar.”

“And if they don’t accept the honey, then you pour on the vinegar.”

“Feel free to do better, Marcus.”

“I’m impressed. Really.”

“We’re going to need one hell of a lot more than a single farm’s output, anyway. One and a half to two hectares per person, preferably.”

“You worked it all out. Now wait and see what happens when we have to offer the Stranded amnesty.”

Marcus had never been sociable, but he was definitely keeping contact with Jonty to a minimum. Bernie knew she was in no position to criticize the farmer for taking potshots at Stranded or talking about them in pest control terms. But Marcus seemed to want to keep his moral high ground. For a man who had no qualms about killing Locust, he was pretty ambivalent about even the worst specimens of humanity.

Easy to be humane if you haven’t been on the receiving end of them. But you must have seen your share in prison, Marcus. You know I’m right.

Mitchell stayed in the cockpit with Sorotki as the Raven lifted and circled the farm. Jonty pointed out the boundaries and the routes the Stranded took to get onto his land by following one of the rivers that ran down to their part of the coast. Local intel was precious. Bernie made notes.

“So you’re going to bring all your big guns and troops into harbor,” Jonty said. “No wonder the vermin are getting restless.”

“If they’re that dangerous, why haven’t they wiped you all out?” Marcus asked.

“Animals generally stop eating when they’re full, and predators don’t wipe out their food supply, do they? But now you’ve shown up and upset the food chain.”

“Have they ever asked to join you guys?”

“Not as far as I know.”

“Would you accept them?”

Jonty snorted derisively. “They think they can make anyone back down, even you, because we’ve been soft on

’em. We ought to go down there, all of us, every man and woman capable of holding a gun or a knife, and deal with them once and for all.”

“So you’ve had your own war for survival.” Marcus’s tone didn’t change. “You get desperate, you throw everything you’ve got at it. Done that. Had to destroy the place. Twice.”

“I don’t think they realize the size of the force you’re bringing with you, Sergeant Fenix.”

“Time we told them.”

“Hey, Fenix, are we just overflying the farms, or what?” Sorotki asked. “The next one’s ten klicks east.”

“I want to check out the Stranded camp again.”

“Why me every time?”

“Because they shot up Gettner’s bird.”

“They shot up this one, too. Just a recon, or you want another fistfight with them?”

“Let’s see.”

Jonty leaned forward in his seat and pointed at one of the door guns, its ammo belt loaded and secured. “You can stop them anytime you want. Permanent.”

That was the problem with Stranded. Not the pathetic ones, who just eked out an existence from day to day; Bernie couldn’t get worked up about them like Baird did. He saw them as traitors who could have fought the grubs but left better men—and occasionally women—to do it. No, it was the violent, criminal ones that were the problem, but even the COG balked at wiping them out.

And yet we fried Sera to stop the Locust. We sank Jacinto. Where do we draw the line? Who’s worth sacrificing, and why? Why only good people, or the anonymous innocent ones? Why not those shit-bags?

She didn’t have an answer.

“See, there’s the sheep farm,” Jonty said. It was all bucolic peace down there, green and white and leafy, a world away from Jacinto and what was in her mind right then. “Up in town, they do like their meat.”

“Shit,” Marcus said to himself.

The comment was too quiet for the mike, but Bernie could lip-read that easily enough. The thought of lavish portions of roast meat was almost shocking. Rationing might finally be over before too long. Bernie let herself feel a little excited.

“So what do you take as barter?” she asked.

“Labor. Entertainment. Beer. Food I don’t grow or raise.”

She could see why people on Vectes had no idea how desperate the rest of humanity had become. Is that their fault or ours? Could we have shipped out here sooner? It was all too easy to tie yourself in knots with the if-only and what-if. Everyone did the best they could with the situation they were saddled with on the day.

“Sorotki, can you take us over the Stranded?” Marcus said. “Come in from the highland side if you can.”

“Ah, the old gunship -rising-over-the-horizon trick,” Sorotki said. “Always a good laxative. And are you sure you want to do it with a civilian passenger embarked?”

Marcus turned to Jonty. “Promise me you won’t use that shotgun, whatever happens.”

“Not if it’s my life on the line.”

Marcus shifted the Lancer on his lap. “It won’t come to that.”

“Leave it to us, Jonty,” Bernie said.

“No us, Mataki.” Marcus checked his watch. “You stay well back this time. I’m giving them Prescott’s amnesty offer and telling them where to pick up their dead. After that, they can go to hell. Jonty, if there’s any asshole you can ID as a serious criminal, other than just antisocial, you let me know.”

Jonty didn’t look too pleased with that. “What goddamn amnesty?”

“Standard procedure,” Marcus said. “Chairman’s orders. We remind them they can join the human race, ask them to hand over their criminals, and the rest is up to them. We’re short of humans these days.”

“You won’t find any down there.”

“They never accept anyway.”

“And then what? You kick ’em off the island? You don’t know, do you?”

“Not my call,” Marcus said.

Mitchell manned the gun as Sorotki took the Raven over the cliffs to set down a hundred meters from the Stranded camp. Bernie knew the Stranded here were afraid, all right. It wasn’t just the COG showing up in force and ruining their arrangement. It was the first time they’d realized she was a Gear. They knew retribution was coming—and if not from her, then from the COG itself.

“You wait here until I call you,” Marcus told Jonty, and jumped out.

“What makes you think they won’t kill you?” Jonty called.

“They’ve seen what one squad can do. So they can work out how a whole army would ruin their day.”

“Leave your mike on,” Bernie said. “I want to hear.”

She couldn’t see enough from this distance. Marcus walked slowly to the beachfront shacks and stood there waiting. Eventually a couple of men came out cradling rifles and walked toward him, stopping about five meters away.

“Where’s Massy?” Marcus asked.

“Not here. But you’d know that, seeing as you killed him.”

“Got a message for you from Chairman Prescott, then. If you haven’t committed a capital crime, then he’s offering you amnesty. Citizenship. Just front up at the gates of the naval base a week from today, oh-ninehundred hours.”

“Asshole,” said the taller man of the two. “Don’t try to play fucking civilized with us.”

Marcus had a habit of saying what he had to say regardless of the responses he was getting. It made him seem robotic and implacable. The overall effect was unsettling. “And the locals get to look you over and identify the criminal element.”

“Followed by a fair trial, yeah?”

“You get the same treatment as a citizen. If any of them commit capital crimes, they’re in deep shit, too. Fair’s fair.”

“And how are you planning to enforce this crap?”

“The navy, a couple of brigades of Gears, and the civilian population of Jacinto are going to be here in a couple of days,” Marcus said. He seemed to be working through a list, not really expecting any dialogue, but determined to do it by the book anyway. “Whatever you’ve got going here is over. How you deal with that is your problem. You can collect your casualties from last night’s shit on the southern approach road, about two klicks out. Now, anything you want to say to me?”

“Yeah. Fuck off.”

“Fair enough.” Marcus took a couple of steps backward. “And the guy who recognized Sergeant Mataki better have a good explanation for why and how next time I see him.”

“Oh, there’s going to be a next time?”

“Believe it. Where’s the blue boat?”

“Why can’t you bastards just let us live?”

“Living’s fine. It’s looting and violence we don’t like.”

“Where the hell are we going to go? There’s nowhere left.”

“Yeah, we found that out, too.” Marcus shrugged and turned to walk back to the Raven. “Try the other islands.”

Sorotki turned over the Raven’s engine. “That was a waste of fuel. Home, Jonty?”

“Only if you’re not going to let me shoot those two.”

Marcus repeated the litany. “Can you identify them as murderers, rapists, traitors, arsonists, looters, profiteers, or sex offenders?”

“You missed theft of war materiel,” Sorotki said.

Jonty pondered a mental list of crimes, frowning. “I don’t think so.”

“Then I’m not,” Marcus said. He turned to Bernie. “I suppose you’ve identified a good observation point.”

She had. It was habit. She couldn’t look at a situation without working out the best place to keep watch and get the drop on someone. “Nice OP on the ridge as we flew in.”

“Okay, we wait there and see who we can see. Give Jonty the binoculars, and he can ID some of them. Take us out of hearing range, Sorotki.”

Sorotki took the Raven a kilometer inland and left them to walk back on the observation point. By the time they reached the ridge, life in the Stranded settlement had reverted to normal and the residents were wandering around outside. Bernie settled down to scope through the faces.

“Damn.” Jonty lowered the binoculars. “There’s one I shot. I thought he was dead when they carried him off.”

“You need a Longshot,” Bernie said. “Reloading’s a pain in the arse, but it’ll stop a truck.”

She thought she recognized some faces. The Stranded were a small community anyway, but in the islands, the toughest individuals were the most mobile, island-hopping in small boats, keeping some sort of loose organization going like landed gentry visiting the peasants’ farms. Some folks turned up everywhere, not that there was much of anywhere left—

Yes. They did.

Her scalp tightened as realization dawned. It took her a while to be certain, and in the end it was the tosser’s walk that confirmed it. Gait was one of the things you couldn’t cover up with a beard or change of hair color—

not that this one appeared to feel he even needed to.

It was him. The one that got away. Until now.

He was younger than she’d remembered, but she did remember. Some things were hard to forget. But however hard she’d tried to put it to one side of her mind so that she could go on living, she knew she didn’t want to forget enough to forgo revenge.

“Well, fuck,” she said, surprised that she found herself smiling instead of throwing up. “Now I’ve got the full set.”

Marcus put his hand out and pressed down slowly on the barrel of her Longshot.

“Let’s talk,” he said.

PELRUAN, LATE AFTERNOON.

Dom knew it would happen sooner or later, but it still hurt when it did.

As he walked through the streets toward the bar, he saw Maria.

She was in a group of men and women clustered around a small truck, checking off wooden crates of something that might have been food—butter, cheese, whatever, but something in identical glass pots. For two seconds, she was solid and vivid enough to stop him in his tracks and make his stomach flip over. Every detail froze sharply for a moment, just to hurt him more; he could even see her necklace and her checked skirt. It isn’t real. This kind of shit happens.

Was it really her that I shot? Couldn’t it have been someone else?

But he had her necklace, and she’d been wearing the skirt when he found her. The more he stared in that slowmotion moment, the less she was there, and he found himself looking at a dark-haired woman who was actually nothing like her.

Bereaved people saw the dead, and they weren’t ghosts. Dr. Hayman had told him it would probably happen to him, too, and then it would stop after a while. For a woman who spat acid, she’d been almost patient when he wanted to ask her questions about Maria. He described what Maria had been like when he found her; Doc Hayman had nodded and said words like ataxia, dystonia, nystagmus, bradykinesia, ocular toxin deposition, and by the way, did he realize what those scars on her scalp were? Dom didn’t have the technical words, but yes, he knew all too fucking well that Maria was already long dead when she stumbled toward him. Doc Hayman said that she couldn’t cure any of those things, and what was left of Maria would have been a long time dying if she’d tried.

I’m not allowed to shoot patients. I’d be a better doctor if I did.

Yeah, Hayman was a tough bitch. But she was honest, and that sometimes did folks more favors than kindness. Dom found himself hearing her voice whenever he started to waver and berate himself.

“What are you staring at?” the not-Maria woman demanded.

“Sorry.” Dom didn’t actually feel embarrassed at all. “You reminded me of my dead wife.”

Yeah, honesty really worked best, most of the time.

He found Marcus and Bernie sitting in the bar with Hoffman, spaced around a circular table like they were waiting to start a seance. Dom could smell the residue of an argument. Of all of them, Hoffman looked the most pissed off.

“Hey, I bartered cleaning the kitchen for some beers on the tab.” Dom tried hard to lighten the mood. “Anyone drinking?”

“I’ll take a rain check,” Hoffman said. “I intend to claim it, Santiago. But it’s time I prepared the goddamn carpet of strewn rose petals for the Chairman’s arrival.” He stood and picked up his cap. “I want to talk to you before I head back, Mataki.”

Dom collected beers from the wooden trestle counter and tried to work out what had gone on. Back at the table, Marcus and Bernie looked grim.

She raised her glass. “The Unvanquished.”

Dom followed suit. “You think they’ll reinstate the old regiments one day?”

“Whether they do or not, I’ll always be Two-Six RTI, and that’s all there is to it.”

Marcus stared at his beer for a while and didn’t join in the sentimentality. After a few moments, though, he lifted the glass, focused on it for far longer than it took to line it up, and took a pull.

“We found our third rapist,” he said.

Dom assumed the obvious. Hoffman was edgy because Bernie had done something that he now had to smooth over. “Oh. With the scumbags here, yeah?”

“It’s a shrinking pond.”

Dom waited, but no explanation followed. “Are you going to tell me?”

“We’re debating whether me slicing his balls off and feeding them to him would bring about the final collapse of human civilization,” Bernie said. “Eh, Marcus?”

Dom didn’t get it. “What’s the problem ?” The guy had committed a crime that carried the death penalty in Jacinto, and Bernie could ID him. Maybe she didn’t want a trial. She seemed more embarrassed than traumatized about the whole thing, for whatever reason. “Haul the asshole in. Shit, do we even need a trial?”

Marcus just deepened his frown. “Let’s save this for later.”

“You still believe in legal systems after what happened to you?” Dom asked. Marcus was still a Fenix, all let’s-not-talk-about-it and heavy silences. “Death sentence? Remember that?”

“I was guilty,” Marcus said.

Dom would have carried on, but he could see Bernie squirming. He didn’t want to make things any worse for her. The past was going to take a long time to shut up and leave them alone, all of them.

“You want to talk about a nice roast leg of lamb?” she asked. “We made friends with a farmer today.”

Food was always a good topic for distraction. Nobody could possibly get upset about it. Dom couldn’t recall the last time he ate lamb, and was debating the merits of a proper steak when the door opened and every head in the bar turned.

Dizzy Wallin walked in with his daughters, and—automatically, not really thinking too hard about it—Dom greeted them with a nod. So did Marcus and Bernie.

“Well, ain’t this nice,” Dizzy said, ushering his daughters to the table. “Can’t remember the last time I saw anywhere peaceful.”

Dizzy wasn’t the most fastidious of men—he usually stank of sweat and booze—but he’d done his best to tidy up today, beard combed and nonregulation hat brushed clean. Dom wondered how long he’d keep that up. Being back with his kids seemed to have made a new man of him for the time being, but he still had that distinctive odor of a heavy drinker, a faint methanol smell that soap didn’t remove. And no amount of armor would make him look like a military man.

Marcus looked him over and nodded. “So you’re the advance party?”

“Flown in special to get them old rigs in the dockyard going,” Dizzy said. “I got the magic touch. Betty’s gonna be jealous.”

Betty was his battered grindlift rig. “She’ll understand,” Dom said. “A rig in every port, right?”

Bernie moved chairs around so that the two girls—Teresa and Maralin—could sit down. They were twins, maybe sixteen at most, with that numb, scared look that said they’d been bounced from place to place and didn’t know what safe meant. Dom could imagine the kind of life they led in the Stranded shanties after their dad was conscripted. It brought home to Dom how damned hungry they must have been for Dizzy to enlist just to guarantee food for them. They looked like nice kids—clean and tidy, their long reddish hair pulled back tight in ponytails. At least they could make a new start now.

“I’ll get the beer,” Dom said. “Juice for the ladies.”

Ellen, the woman who ran the bar—and who’d been sweetness and light to Dom earlier—just lowered her chin and looked torn between annoyance and embarrassment.

“Another beer, please,” Dom said. “And have you got anything without alcohol?”

“You can’t bring them in here, Dom.”

He thought she meant Dizzy’s daughters. They were too young to buy a beer in Jacinto, that was for sure, but he didn’t think folks would be that strict out here. “Hey, I’m sorry, I forgot the age thing.”

“It’s not that. You know the rules for their kind.”

“What kind?” Dom felt his throat tighten. “Gears?”

“You know what I mean. Stranded.” She lowered her voice. “Look, I know he’s in uniform, but… we can see what he is. They’re going to have to leave, him and the girls, before we get trouble. He’s lucky nobody shot him as soon as he got into town.”

The bar was one single low-ceilinged space, more like a sprawling living room than a bar, without one glass or chair that matched another. Dom realized he wasn’t having a private conversation. The whole bar was watching and listening.

“He’s not Stranded,” Dom said. “He’s a Gear, just like me. And if he’s a Gear, then his kids are Gear’s kids.”

Silence was a strange thing. It wasn’t just an absence of noise. It was unnatural and frozen—tensed muscles, held breaths, spit unswallowed. Dom turned to check what was going to come crashing down on him. The room just had that feeling. It wasn’t exactly an ugly crowd, not like some of the bars he’d ended up in and wished he hadn’t, but it reeked of hatred.

But it’s only Dizzy. He’s a great guy. He’s one of us. What the hell’s going on?

Dizzy bowed his head for a moment. “We didn’t plan on staying. Come on, sweeties, let’s go. Got work to do.”

“This man saved my ass.” Marcus put his hand on Dizzy’s forearm and pinned him where he sat. “If you’re attacked by Stranded again, he’ll save yours.”

Bernie leaned back in her seat. “Yeah, we’re all Gears. If he’s not welcome, we’re not welcome.”

Dom waited for someone to make a move. Nobody did. In a way, he would have felt better if they’d just thrown a few chairs and swung punches, because that was easy, honest, simple. Instead, they just looked, and the looks on their faces said that they didn’t like Gears much, either. Great idea to remind them, Bernie. This was their island. They hadn’t a clue what had gone on over on the mainland, but whatever it was, they didn’t want any of that shit messing up their nice tidy lives. It was like they couldn’t connect the pieces of the world and understand that they couldn’t opt out of it.

A few grubs would have straightened you out, assholes. You really need to understand what it’s been like out there.

“Okay, that was a beer and two juices, yeah ?” Dom abandoned the goodwill of barter and slapped his remaining bills on the counter. “That’s still legal tender. It’ll buy you something useful at any COG base.”

Ellen didn’t say anything more, but she got him his drinks and took the money. Regimental honor had been satisfied. It probably didn’t make Dizzy and his daughters feel any better, but Dom knew. He met Marcus’s eyes, then Bernie’s, and it was what Baird called a primal moment. The Gears bond was unbreakable. And that included Dizzy. It was the indefinable tribalism that held an army together under fire when any sane man would have been running for his life, and it was as powerful as any emotion Dom had ever known. His heart had been broken so often by now that he wasn’t sure what it felt like to be his old self, but he knew that heady bond, and it gave him hope.

The noise level in the bar slowly ratcheted up into normal hubbub as everyone tried to pretend they hadn’t really tried to kick out a Gear for not being human enough. Marcus looked as if he was counting down the minutes until he could walk out with Dizzy without looking like they’d been driven out.

“First thing we do,” Bernie said, “is make sure there’s a sergeants’ mess set up in VNB.” Vectes Naval Base had become a familiar acronym overnight, just through repetition in fleet signals to the Ravens. “Even if we have to wait for the beer to arrive. I’d rather drink water in the right company.”

Marcus glanced at his watch again. It was hard to have a conversation under the circumstances. Eventually an older man passed their table and leaned over a little toward Marcus.

“You were awarded the Embry Star, weren’t you?” he said. “Aspho Fields.”

Marcus braced to repel hero worship. Dom watched his jaw set. “Yeah. So was Private Santiago here. And Sergeant Mataki got a Sovereign’s Medal.”

“I remember,” the man said, and moved on.

Dizzy scratched his beard. “Damn, never knew we was drinking with a bunch of heroes.”

“You’re not,” Marcus said. “You’re drinking with your buddies.”

After thirty minutes, Marcus seemed to decide that the point had been made, and got up to go. Dizzy showed off a huge, ancient truck that he’d driven up from VNB, and they killed some time debating why it mattered to drag Pelruan into the fold if they were going to rebuild Jacinto to the south anyway. Anya was overoptimistic—

Dom would never call her crazy—if she thought that it was going to make for a better society in the long run. It was all about numbers; Jacinto’s remnant had them, and Pelruan didn’t.

Teresa edged closer to Bernie and eventually managed a few words. Dom was beginning to wonder if the two girls were so traumatized that they didn’t talk. That bothered him.

“They hate us, Sergeant Mataki,” Teresa said. “Is it going to be like this everywhere?”

“Not if we have anything to do with it,” Bernie said. “Right, Delta?”

Dizzy seemed to pick up on Bernie’s embarrassment. “Some Stranded are halfway to bein’ real people, sweeties. Domesticated.”

Bernie looked chastened. After Dizzy and his girls drove off back to the base, Marcus stood staring at the dwindling taillights for a few moments.

“Never thought you had any time for Stranded, Bernie.”

“Don’t recall seeing any Stranded in that bar,” she said. “And don’t think that Dizzy didn’t make me feel guilty, either.”

Dizzy had chosen to be a regular human as far as she was concerned. Dom thought it was interesting to watch where people drew their lines. Marcus just nodded.

“Don’t forget Hoffman’s waiting to talk to you,” he said, and walked off in the direction of the Ravens.