CHAPTER 17

We’re willing to meet you. Neutral water, time and coordinates to follow. No more than two vessels each. Nothing bigger than a patrol boat. No tricks. And we want to see that our colleague is alive and unharmed before we do or say anything. (RADIO MESSAGE FROM CORMICK ALLAM, CHAIRMAN OF THE LESSER ISLANDS FREE TRADE AREA, TO CAPTAIN MICHAELSON, NCOG.) CNV FALCONER APPROACHING HANDOVER LOCATION, EARLY MORNING, SOUTHWEST OF VECTES, NEARLY TEN WEEKS AFTER THE

ESCAPE FROM JACINTO, 14 A.E.

Anya now understood the insistence on the time and place, and also why few Stranded ever made it to Vectes. Just to reach this mid-ocean point was a long, rough journey by sea even at patrol boat speeds. Tackling the distance by sail alone would have put anyone off. And now she saw another hazard for herself.

“Fog,” she said.

“Mist,” Franck Muller corrected. He stood with one hand on the helm and the other on the radar console, pressing buttons. “It’s not fog until the visibility is half this, ma’am. This time of year, it’s almost guaranteed around here. It’s two currents meeting.”

Anya stood in the open wheelhouse door, scanning the mist bank through binoculars. There were three vessels in there, bouncing back small profiles on radar, but that didn’t seem to tell Muller everything he wanted to know. The intermittent radio chatter they’d picked up had stopped eight hours ago.

“So much for two vessels,” Muller said. “I’m glad they’re not going soft on us.”

Anya shrugged. “Well, we didn’t tell them one of ours was a submarine, so we’re even.”

Marcus was leaning on Falconer’s starboard machine gun as if he couldn’t find a comfortable firing position. The shoulder braces hadn’t been designed for someone in heavy armor. Michaelson stood to one side of him, watching.

“I didn’t expect them to stick to the rules,” Michaelson said, checking his watch. “I hope you’ll feel better about us blowing them to kingdom come now, Sergeant Fenix.”

It was hard to get a sense of scale with nothing on the water to use for comparison. Anya found that if she lowered the glasses and changed her focus slowly, the cloud layers transformed themselves into distant mountains, and the sea below became a lake, an empty plain, a desert—or even more cloud. It could look like anything you wanted it to be.

And I could make a hell of a lot of mistakes out here if I don’t learn fast.

“Lesser Islands Free Trade Area,” Anya said. “Have you come across them before, sir?”

“Not by name. But gangs often pool resources and intelligence, so they’ll probably have links to my old customers, friendly or otherwise. Some of them operate entirely from ships.”

“A few torpedoes would shut them down for good,” Anya said.

“As if anyone would do such a thing.” Michaelson winked at her. “I just wish I knew where they got their fuel. They certainly get around.”

Marcus peered down the sights of the machine gun, apparently ignoring the conversation beside him. Anya didn’t need telepathy to work out that he thought this wasn’t a safe place for her. It was just as well that Michaelson was rather malleable when it came to women asking favors of him.

I’ve been stuck behind a desk for nearly eighteen years. I’m retraining, Marcus. Give me a break. The empty vastness was unnerving, but somehow it also made Anya feel safer. There was nothing lurking within derelict buildings, nothing hiding in the dark, nothing that would erupt from the ground. Beneath Falconer, the sea was probably just as dangerous in its own way as the Locust-infested mainland had been, but she didn’t feel that constant uneasiness in the same way she had in Jacinto. She was simply aware of safety precautions to be followed.

And who would try to take on Falconer? The boat wasn’t a Raven’s Nest, but she looked twice the size of Chancellor and better armed—several deck-mounted guns and a grenade launcher, just on Anya’s quick inspection—so with Clement skulking around somewhere, Anya felt as safe here as anywhere. Sergeant Andresen walked around from the foredeck and stood watching Marcus, brow corrugated with intense concentration, taking everything in.

“Enjoying yourself, Rory?” Anya asked.

“Learning plenty, ma’am.” He took out a small notebook and scribbled from time to time. “I’m okay with the guns. We need training to carry out boardings, though.”

“It’s like building clearance with nowhere to run,” Marcus said, gaze still fixed on the water. “For us or them.”

Andresen took no notice. “Ma’am, we’re going to have to do things we never did on land. It’s a whole new game for us now.”

“Yes, we’ll need to cross -train Gears,” Michaelson said. His binoculars hung from a leather strap around his neck. He seemed in his element now, as if this was his war. “It’s going to be about maritime operations now.”

Marcus grunted. “Somebody better tell Cole. He might want a transfer.”

Keeping a constant ear on the radio net, Anya bit back a reflex to plunge in and start directing the operation. Either Clement must have been close to the surface or Baird had repaired her towed antenna, because she heard Garcia report in.

“Clement to Falconer, I’m not picking up any engine noise at the moment, just sporadic sounds I can’t identify. If they’ve got working radar, they must have detected yours by now.”

“I thought submarines could hear pretty well everything over huge distances,” Anya said. Michaelson looked amused. “They can hear plenty, but sometimes they can’t pinpoint something until they hit it. Omniscience isn’t in their armory. But don’t tell anyone.”

Anya was a little disappointed, but if she believed a submarine could do anything, then pirates probably believed it, too. That was all that mattered in the deterrence game.

Whatever the pirate vessels were doing, it didn’t make sense yet. Anya put it down to missing a few reality checks over the years, in much the same way as the Stranded out here didn’t seem to grasp the size of the COG

forces they were provoking. Perhaps Massy’s comrades were too used to targets with the bare minimum of technology, if any, or maybe they thought that NCOG was in an even worse state of repair than it was. Everyone has a blind spot. Everyone on top of their food chain gets lazy until something goes wrong. The urge to check everyone’s position was hard to resist; old ops room habits died hard. She needed to keep that three-dimensional plot in her head, visualizing every asset and man, every position and movement. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Falconer’s radar. She simply felt lost without information streaming into her ear. Her perception of the war had almost always been a stream of sound converted in her mind’s eye to an image of the battlefield, rarely the real thing encountered this closely.

Vessels one, two, and three there, Falconer here … and where’s the submarine?

Clement had broken contact now, so she could only imagine the submarine drifting below in a watery twilight. But it was in her head, plotted and visualized, even if her location turned out to be wildly wrong. She was beginning to realize that the navy wasn’t just limping along with obsolete and failing equipment—its crews were below the safety minimum, and they hadn’t had much serious practice for fifteen years, if ever. The most competent COG asset was still the average Gear.

But the armaments work. And the ships float. That’s all that matters. Right?

She pulled her concentration back to the boat when Andresen and Michaelson moved along the deck. Marcus looked over his shoulder at her, a fraction away from actually smiling.

“You look happier,” he said. “Suits you.”

These were the conversations that hurt. They were just the throwaway things that other lovers said without thinking, but they were so rare between her and Marcus that she had to treat them like fragile peace negotiations. One wrong word, and the shutters would come down again.

Seventeen years. And we’re still at the stage where I never know if the relationship’s on or not. And when it is, I’m wondering when he’ll stay the whole night. I must be insane.

She tried to look casual. “As our gallant captain would say, nothing like the prospect of firing a broadside to put roses in a girl’s cheeks.”

Marcus never reached the smile. What little he’d managed faded slowly. “Yeah. He’d say that.”

Anya balanced on the knife-edge of a response but found she wasn’t ready to risk it. She’d settle for the broadside. Firefights seemed less fraught with danger. She was almost relieved when Muller’s voice diverted her.

“Range three kilometers. We should have a visual on them soon.”

“And they’re well within firing range, once I see them,” Marcus muttered.

“Corporal Baird,” Michaelson said. “Bring Massy to the wheelhouse, please.”

Dom and Cole edged along the waist of the boat toward her. “Are we actually going through the motions of transferring Massy?” Dom asked. He was wearing minimum armor, clutching a life jacket in one hand. “I’ll take the Marlin. I can do that.”

“Plan is to just to parade him on the foredeck while we confirm we have targets that Michaelson wants, and then …”

Then what? It was the unanswered question. It was also still unasked. Exactly what would happen to him? This was too far into the murky territory of COG Intelligence, as she remembered it, and she wasn’t sure if she was cut out to be part of that. Either way, Massy didn’t know the plan. Baird was still guarding him in one of the stores compartments. Bernie was on deck, wandering around as if she didn’t trust the sea if she couldn’t keep an eye on it.

“Confirmed, modified gunboats,” Muller said. “I can see the lead vessel now—twenty-five meters, thirty tops, machine gun mounted. Nobody visible. The other two are twenty meters or thereabouts, and I can’t see any armament. Shall I call them up, sir?”

Michaelson came out. “Anya, you might want to get in the wheelhouse now.”

She took it as an order to keep her head down. The wheelhouse felt rather un-nautical, more like the cab of a grindlift rig, with instruments arranged like an oversized dashboard. Baird had brought Massy up to the wheelhouse, and now the man was sitting on the bench seat behind the helm position with Baird, trying to look out at the boats. Then he saw Anya and stared at her. She stared back. Muller’s voice—repeating Falconer’s call sign and waiting for a response from the pirate vessels—faded into the background. Anya had never been this close to a rapist and a murderer, as far as she knew. She found herself searching his face for something that would show her how very different he was from the people she knew and trusted, but there was nothing. He was just another man—aggressive, arrogant, and repellent, but that described a lot of men who didn’t do the kinds of things that he did.

“No response, sir,” Muller said. Anya could see the hulls now, just sitting in the water less than two hundred meters away. Falconer slowed.

“Lookout, is anything moving?”

“Can’t see any life, sir.”

For a moment, Anya’s gut tightened and she wondered if the ambush was about to be turned back on the navy. Michaelson looked around, unfazed.

“Mr. Massy,” he said, “any idea what your colleagues might be playing at? Busy taking tea below, perhaps?”

“No idea, asshole.” Massy didn’t seem worried. “But you’re safe as long as I’m aboard.”

“How comforting.” Michaelson flicked switches on the comms panel and picked up a mike. “This is warship Falconer, warship Falconer to Lesser Islands FTA vessels, are you receiving?”

There was no response. The crewman on lookout gestured over the side, and his voice crackled on the radio.

“Sir, there’s drifting debris. Wood … fuel slick … paper, metal drums. Not sure if it’s a vessel that’s broken up, or just old garbage doing the world tour.”

Michaelson definitely wasn’t acting now. “Collision?”

“Possibly.”

Massy went to stand up but Baird shoved him back in his seat.

“You assholes expect me to believe all this shit?” he snarled. “Let me look. Let me see what’s out there.”

“Good idea,” Michaelson said. “Muller, take us in closer. Corporal Baird, walk Massy out on the foredeck. Perhaps they’ll feel better if they eyeball him.”

Anya watched the foredeck as Baird frog-marched Massy onto the deck. Bernie stood off to the port side with Dom, checking her ammo clips and giving Massy an occasional glance. But there was no sign of life on the boats, no movement—nothing at all.

Massy seemed to be getting rattled, though. He stood on the deck with his back to the wheelhouse, head turning right and left as if he was searching for something. However pirates did business, this didn’t appear to be going the way he expected.

“Hey, Cormick!” he yelled, as if he could be heard at that distance. “Cormick ? Man, what the hell are you playing at? It’s me! Get me off this frigging ship, will you?”

“Baird, ask him if he recognizes the vessels,” Michaelson asked.

There was a pause while Massy checked. After some discussion, Baird came back on the radio. “He got technical on me. He says he knows the two smaller boats but not the bigger one.”

“Maybe it’s a new acquisition.” Massy couldn’t hear Michaelson anyway, but the captain dropped his voice when responding on the radio. “Okay, let’s assume the worst here. Falconer to Clement, where are you?”

The submarine commander came back on the comms net, and Anya started to understand why the submarine was so unnerving, whatever its limitations. She had no idea where it was at any given moment. It was like having grubs tunneling beneath her. It was another monster lurking under the bed.

“Clement to Falconer—we just pinged something, and we thought it was a cetacean, but the acoustics weren’t right.” Garcia paused. “Is Sergeant Fenix there? Ask him about the Locust leviathans.”

Marcus cut in. “No idea what they sound like underwater, Commander.”

Anya took another look at the vessels through her binoculars. The machine guns on the main boat were still secured. “If they’re planning to open fire, they’re going to have to step outside to do that.”

Michaelson nodded. “And we didn’t intend to board, so we’ve lost the advantage of stealth. Massy’s our insurance—if they want him alive, that is.”

“You think they don’t?”

“Perhaps he’s expendable and they’ve got other plans,” he said. “They wouldn’t abandon vessels like these for no good reason. Too valuable. And we need to know what that reason is, for our own security if nothing else.”

Anya kept an eye on the largest boat’s wheelhouse. As the distance between the vessels gradually closed, the lookout’s voice came over the radio again.

“Small arms damage to the main boat, sir—inboard. Just above the wheelhouse door.”

Michaelson raised his binoculars to check. “Might not be recent, but given the debris, let’s assume it is.”

Anya tried to focus on the damage, but something else caught her eye as she adjusted her binoculars. There was suddenly movement on the lead boat. She saw a man come to the wheel, waving slowly and deliberately.

“I see him,” Michaelson said. “Stand by, all guns.”

The radio crackled again. “Falconer, nice of you to join us. You’ve got something we’ve been looking for.”

“This is Captain Michaelson. Am I speaking to Cormick Allam?”

“No … Mr. Allam can’t come to the bridge. This is Darrel Jacques, and let’s just say we’ve carried out a company takeover. We’d really like to have Massy, please.”

Anya interpreted that as a mutiny. Michaelson gestured to Muller, then picked up his radio mike again.

“Baird, see if the name Darrel Jacques rings a bell with Massy, will you?”

Anya watched Baird dip his head slightly as he spoke to Massy, and suddenly it was clear that Massy knew the name, and not in a good way. Baird still had hold of his arm, but Massy pulled back as if to make a run for it—

just reflex, because there was nowhere to run. Anya heard a few words of the argument as Baird jerked him back. Bernie watched, no expression visible at all.

“You can’t do that, man, he’s gonna frigging kill me.” Massy didn’t look as if he was putting on an act. “No!

Fuck you, you can’t do that to me!”

Baird got on the radio. “In case you missed that,” he said, “Jacques is from a rival gang. He’s got plans for Massy for stiffing his guys over something. It sounds painful.”

Michaelson scratched the side of his nose. “How convoluted. Well, I came here to remove the threat of piracy, so I don’t care which camp they’re in. And we can only use Massy for this sting once, so let’s hand him over and see what else we can get out of this.”

So that was why Massy didn’t recognize the main boat: it wasn’t one of his. It was a hijack. That explained the damage to the wheelhouse. The whole mission was starting to veer off course, but Michaelson didn’t turn a hair. Anya had him pegged as a gambler.

“Either they tailed Massy’s people, sir, or they intercepted the messages about coordinates,” Anya said.

“Good point.” Michaelson flicked the mike’s switch again. “Mr. Jacques, you’ll excuse my directness, but what’s in it for us?”

“Maybe we can do a deal.”

“Explain.”

“We’ll deal with the likes of Massy’s people in exchange for being allowed to carry on our normal business—

taking care of the islands. We’re not pirates. The worst you can call us is vigilantes, and I’m not sure that’s such a bad thing anyway.”

“Will I notice the difference?”

“We see our job as getting supplies where they’re needed, making a fair living from it, and looking after our communities. We’re in the same profession, right?”

Michaelson paused for a moment and seemed to be thinking it over. Anya had no idea what he was going to do next. Perhaps he didn’t, either.

“Let’s both show some goodwill and step out onto our respective decks,” he said. “You’ll understand why I’m reluctant to send my crew across to you on trust.”

“Same here,” said Jacques. “Let’s do that.”

Michaelson broke the link with Jacques and switched to the crew frequency.

“All hands, I think we can modify Plan A,” he said. “As soon as Massy is handed over and the boats are clear, let them go, unless things start to come unraveled. Clement— this is our chance to track them back to their home port. I think your deterrent value is best kept for when we have an audience to appreciate it.”

“Clement to Falconer, understood.” Garcia sounded disappointed. “And we’re still picking up odd acoustics. Is Fenix sure about that leviathan?”

“No, I’m not,” Marcus said. “But if I see it, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

“Don’t waste a torpedo chasing phantoms, Garcia,” Michaelson said, and stepped out onto the deck. Massy wouldn’t shut up. He was still spitting abuse and demanding his rights when Baird slammed him down on the deck to stop him struggling.

“You can’t do this to me, asshole. You’ll regret it. I got rights. And friends.”

“Do you come with an off switch?” Baird said. “Tell me where it is, or I’ll have to make one the hard way.”

Dom looked down at him. “If he wants to swim for it, let him.”

“Maybe Jacques is his best buddy and this is some dumb-ass act.” Baird had his knee on Massy’s back. “Hey, how close are we going to get to that boat? You think Michaelson knows what he’s doing?”

Dom didn’t think Massy was acting at all. He was crapping himself. He didn’t seem too scared of the COG, but he obviously knew what his own kind did to settle disputes. If that was worse than anything Bernie had in mind, then Dom wasn’t sure he wanted to know the details.

“He’s run counterpiracy operations before,” Dom said. “And we’ve got three guns trained on them. We’re as safe as they are.”

Michaelson strode out onto the deck. The pirate gunboat started up its motor and chugged slowly forward, edging clear of the mist that was now starting to lift as the sun rose higher. A short, thick-set guy with closecropped white hair came out of the wheelhouse and took up position at the bow. So far, so good; nobody had opened fire. Dom grabbed a pair of field glasses from the nearest crewman and checked out the gunboat for himself.

There were at least three men in the wheelhouse, and half a dozen more came out to stand and look conspicuous. Dom checked out the two smaller boats as best he could, but they were still dead in the water, with nobody visible. There was now less than a hundred meters separating the lead gunboat from Falconer. It slowed and stopped twenty meters away.

“So you’re based on Vectes, yeah?” Jacques called.

“News travels,” Michaelson said.

“We pick up stuff here and there. Now, we owe Jonnie Boy some justice that’s long overdue, so how about you bring him over?”

“How about telling me how you plan to keep his colleagues in line?”

“Well, here’s a token of our intent.” Jacques turned around and gestured to one of his men. “Bring him out.”

Dom glanced at Bernie to see how she was taking all this. She had her Lancer resting on its sling, cradled in both arms, with an expression on her face that gave no clue to the personal stake she had in this. He wondered how long it had taken her to come to terms with it. Maybe she hadn’t and was just good at acting normal. Her occasional lapses told him it was the latter.

Life goes on. It has to.

Two of Jacques’s men hauled a battered figure up to the gunboat’s bows. He slumped between them. Dom could see they’d made a mess of him. It was hard to tell if he’d been shot as well. He was still alive, though.

“Captain,” Jacques said, “let me introduce Cormick Allam.”

Massy squirmed. Baird hauled him to his feet.

“Take a look,” Baird said. “Is that your boss?”

Massy blinked a few times, then his face contorted. “Shit, Cormick! Cormick! What did they do to you, man?”

Allam raised his head a little, probably as far as he could.

Jacques did a big theatrical shrug. “Like I said, Captain, we’ll deal with these shits.” Then he pulled a handgun from his belt, turned to Allam, and put a round through his head. The crack sounded extra-loud in the quiet, damp air. “Job done.”

The two men threw the body overboard.

Dom flinched. But for the first time in weeks, it didn’t bring back memories that he couldn’t fend off. He simply noted that it wasn’t a straight link to Maria. It was just a bad bastard shooting another one of his kind. It was always shocking to see execution in cold blood, but it wasn’t the first time, and Dom was pretty sure it wouldn’t be the last.

Massy didn’t even manage to swear. He just took in a long ragged breath as if he was going to scream, but nothing emerged. He’d be lucky to get the same quick end that Allam had.

“Fifteen down,” Jacques said. “A few hundred to go. Leave it to us.”

Michaelson looked unmoved. “And what else would we be leaving to you? Or would we just be allowing one gang to oust another?”

“Like I said, we’re not scum.” Jacques put his handgun back in his belt. “We take a cut to survive, and we make sure nobody profiteers or hogs supplies. We don’t want to touch COG vessels.”

“How about the fishing fleet? We lost a trawler.”

“Definitely not us. But don’t underestimate the number of criminals with boats.”

Dom didn’t see how Michaelson could strike any deal with Stranded without Prescott’s say-so, but Falconer was a long way from Vectes, and he needed to get something going right now.

“How about an interim agreement ?” Michaelson said. “I give you Massy, you prove you’re not going to give me problems, and I’ll stay away from you unless I hear you get into bad ways.”

Jacques considered it, head cocked on one side. Dom didn’t believe for one moment that either man meant it, but he’d seen stranger alliances in the war.

“Done,” Jacques said. “Although I’d be interested to know how you plan to monitor that.”

“Oh, I’ll hear,” Michaelson said. He turned to Dom. “You wanted to do the cross-decking, you said.”

“Yes, sir.” Dom wasn’t sure if any of the sailors was up to doing a risky job like that. He was still waiting for something to go badly wrong. “And what are we going to do about the two smaller boats? I could bring one back with us.”

“Good question. I was hoping to liberate at least one.” He turned back to Jacques. “As a gesture of goodwill, we’d like to keep one of the boats.”

Jacques thought it over for a few moments and nodded. “They’ve got a lot of holes now. But feel free.”

Baird shoved Massy ahead of him toward Falconer’s stern and Bernie went to follow. Dom put his hand out to stop her.

“We can do this, Bernie. You make sure Cole doesn’t puke so hard he falls overboard.”

She gave him that look, as if he hadn’t done his homework and she expected better of him.

“Okay,” she said. “They probably wouldn’t let me stay and watch them beat the shit out of him anyway.”

“It’s their justice,” Dom said. “He gets what’s coming to him, and you get to keep a clean conscience. I think that’s a good result all round.”

“I wouldn’t have lost any sleep over that.” Bernie took a few steps back. “But Marcus has a point about hanging on to the few rules we still have.”

Andresen was manning Marcus’s gun when Dom squeezed past him. He jerked his thumb aft to indicate Marcus was already heading for the Marlin to lower it over the stern.

“He doesn’t delegate well,” Andresen said. “He still expects an ambush.”

“So do I,” said Dom. “Life’s like that.”

Baird had a hell of a job getting Massy over the side and into the inflatable. Dom had a moment’s hesitation: should the COG have been doing this ? But if it didn’t, what else was it going to do with Massy—execute him under COG law, or let him go? Someone had to do something.

“You know what they’re going to do with me?” Massy demanded. He landed on the Marlin’s seat with a thud, rocking the whole boat. “You know what those assholes do? You know how long they take to kill you? What they do to you?”

“Shut up,” Baird said. “Mataki would have taken longer.”

“You can’t do this. You’re supposed to be the decent guys. Civilization. Remember?”

Marcus stood aside to let Dom take the helm. He kept looking down at the water as if he was expecting something to emerge. All that talk of the leviathan had made Dom edgy, too, and he kept trying to tell himself that the thing they’d seen had to be a freshwater creature, and this was saline, so it couldn’t have come this far …

could it?

But there were unpleasant and dangerous things much closer to home to worry about.

“Can’t help noticing you never denied you did it, Massy,” Marcus said at last. Massy didn’t say anything else. Dom took the Marlin wide of the garbage drifting on the slow current. The scattered books, cans, and clothing made it look like a houseboat had been blown up. As they closed on the lead vessel, the flotsam became a thin mat of assorted debris. Dom assumed he was now in someone’s sights. Someone was usually in his, after all. When he glanced over the side at the debris, his stomach lurched. A body was floating facedown in the water, life jacket in place, but minus most of its head.

“Anyone you know, Massy?”

Massy swiveled on the seat. It took him a few seconds to react. “No. Shit.”

“Who is it?”

Massy just shook his head. “How can I tell? He hasn’t got a frigging head.”

Dom brought the Marlin up against the stern and tied a quick-release line. The name on the transom was TRADER V; the boat looked like it might have been a sport boat in a previous life before it was cannoned up. Marcus waited, one hand on the stern ladder, the other on his rifle.

“Up you go,” Baird said to Massy, shoving him ahead. “Just in case this isn’t as cozy as it looks.”

Massy caught the rungs while Marcus held the boat alongside. Three faces appeared over the stern; Dom was ready for a double-cross, and knew only too well how vulnerable a Marlin was to gunfire. But pirates or not, they just hauled Massy aboard and made no attempt to do anything else.

Dom didn’t even have to set foot on Trader. The last thing he saw of Massy was him struggling as he went over the stern rail. “You’ll regret this, you assholes,” he yelled.

Dom wasn’t sure which assholes Massy was referring to, but there wasn’t much he could do about revenge now.

“You think Michaelson knows what he’s doing?” Dom asked.

Marcus shrugged. “Garcia can’t have had much warfare experience. Long time since the navy deployed a submarine in anger. But Michaelson’s been doing this for years.”

“Hey, do I get to drive the boat?” Baird said. “Captain Charisma wants that one, right?”

Dom listened in on the radio as Michaelson talked with Garcia.

“Just shadow them,” Michaelson was saying. “I want to know where they operate from. No point wasting a lead. I want the nerve center, not the odd vessel.”

Baird was listening in. “Is Michaelson too much of a gentleman to actually blow the shit out of them when he’s done a deal?”

Dom wondered if Jacques had a point about being vigilantes. It wasn’t as if the COG could do anything to reclaim or even protect the islands scattered across Sera, and the COG’s enforcement could be pretty brutal too. It all came down to legalities.

When Garcia responded, he seemed a lot less concerned about the definition of pirates than the underwater sound that he still couldn’t identify.

“There’s something down here, sir,” Garcia said. “I’m not going to use active sonar and advertise our position until I work out what it is.”

It bothered Dom, too. But he forgot about it when he came alongside one of the drifting boats and helped Baird board it. It was badly shot up, and there’d obviously been a firefight before Massy’s chums had been overwhelmed. There were still bodies on board.

“Shit,” Baird said. “Doesn’t any asshole clean up after himself these days?”

He manhandled the bodies overboard. As they hit the water, Dom wondered for a moment if the guys had families who’d now never know what happened to them, but that was their occupational hazard, and there wasn’t much he could do about it.

Marcus didn’t say a word. He just kept looking over the side until Baird got the boat started, and both vessels headed back toward Falconer.

CNV FALCONER.

Jacques hadn’t been joking about Massy. He really was making him pay for something. Sound carried. And Bernie felt she had to stay and listen. She’d chosen to remain on deck, because if she went below to get away from the sounds of Massy screaming his head off, then she had to ask herself if she’d been wrong to take her vengeance on his two buddies.

If I’d caught him when I did the others, I’d be doing the same as Jacques. Can’t turn squeamish now. She didn’t know what they were actually doing to Massy, or what he’d done to get their attention, but she could only imagine his fate within the limits of her own ingenuity. Michaelson was waiting for Trader to finish putting a tow line on the other salvaged boat and head back to base. Bernie wasn’t sure what he was trying to achieve, other than making sure Jacques left the area and Clement followed her home. It was only postponing the problem. You couldn’t do deals with these people. But Michaelson probably hadn’t. He didn’t seem to see any agreement with Stranded as binding.

Cole wandered up to her and leaned on the rail. His skin tone looked distinctly gray. She didn’t think the boat was moving around that much, just gently rolling on the swell as the wind picked up. The mist was gone. It had the makings of a nice day.

“I’m all puked out, Boomer Lady,” he said. “I ain’t gonna be much use in this new seagoin’ world that Michaelson keeps talkin’ about.”

“I don’t think we’re going to run out of things to do ashore, somehow.” Bernie patted his back and took a firm grip on his belt. She hadn’t a hope in hell of stopping a man of his size from falling if he tipped over the rail, but she did it anyway. “We used to have drugs for seasickness. Maybe we can find some.”

“You got a cast-iron gut.”

She tilted her head in the direction of Trader. “Massy, you mean.”

“That as well.”

“I’m not gloating. I’m just making sure I’ve still got the courage of my convictions.”

“And then you leave it all behind you, right? Promise me.”

“Yeah. I think I purged my anger a long time ago. But some things get to be habit.”

Cole frowned and shook his head every time Massy shrieked. The sounds were muffled; the man was begging now. So his gang didn’t own the sea around here after all. She wondered if they were doing this in Falconer’s earshot to make the point that Jacques now ran the show and wasn’t afraid to go to extremes to enforce it.

“You gonna come inside, Bernie?”

She wanted to, but she couldn’t. “In a while. You go and get some fluids down you. You’ll be dehydrated.”

She went back to leaning on the rail, and Massy fell silent for a while. A couple of men from Trader boarded the second patrol boat they’d captured from Allam’s gang. After a few minutes, Trader got under way and headed west at a leisurely pace, trailing a wide wake of churning white foam. The patrol boat followed a hundred meters behind. And somewhere below, Clement was tracking them.

If Massy was still screaming for mercy, she wouldn’t hear him now. It was over. The sense of finality surprised her. Beneath her boots, the deck shivered as Falconer’s engines picked up speed and the patrol boat turned back to Vectes. The other gunboat bobbed in the wash as Falconer swung around. Bernie walked down to the stern to watch Trader vanish and found Baird eyeing the salvaged gunboat with a frown, binoculars hanging from his neck.

“They wouldn’t let me drive it home,” he said.

“Let ’em do their sailor thing, Blondie.”

He pressed his earpiece. “Garcia’s not happy about something.”

“Really?” Bernie listened in to the voice traffic. “You reckon there’s a leviathan loose? Whatever that is.”

“Dunno.” He pointed. “Look. Clement’s got her radio mast up. Just breaking the surface.”

Bernie strained to look, but the entire ocean was spotted with foam and reflections. It was impossible to see whatever Baird was looking at. On the radio, Garcia was debating whether to ping the area with sonar and risk being detected.

“Can’t he tell what he’s hearing?” she asked Baird.

“The sea’s a noisy place. Picking out the sounds takes a skilled operator or really fancy computer analysis, and I don’t think he’s got either.”

“Fat lot of good he is, then.”

“It’s not like he’s up against a fleet of subs. But if we had a Raven here, some have sonar buoys.”

“Clement’s got sonar.”

“Yeah, but it’s about stealth. If he pings, he’s given away his presence and exact position. The Raven’s just dunking a buoy.”

They both stopped to listen to Michaelson’s voice.

“Clement, whatever the object is, is it going to compromise us?”

“If it’s a biologic, leviathan or not, it’s a collision risk, but—oh shit.”

“Say again, Clement.”

“Torpedo —brace brace brace.”

Bernie froze. She didn’t look at Baird. A few seconds later, an explosion launched a plume of water into the air nearly a kilometer away. Was that Clement? She had no idea where the submarine was.

“Shit, she’s been hit.” Baird fumbled for the binoculars. “What the fuck did that? If it’s a leviathan packing torpedoes, then we’re in deep shit.”

Bernie’s gut knotted. “Grubs don’t have that stuff. What can you see? Come on, is there debris?”

“Wait—no, Trader’s gone. That was Trader.”

Michaelson’s voice cut in. “Clement, what the hell have you done? I said follow her, not sink her.”

“That was not us. I say again, we did not fire, that was not Clement.” No, Garcia was still there; that was his voice on the radio, remarkably calm under the circumstances. “We heard the torpedo launch. Not ours. Time to worry.”

“Have you got a fix on it?”

“Nothing’s pinged us. We have an approximate bearing from the torpedo.”

By now, sailors and Gears had rushed out onto the deck to look. Bernie and Baird hung onto their front-row seats. If Garcia hadn’t accidentally fired a torpedo—and how the hell could someone do that, anyway?—then Bernie couldn’t imagine what else was out there, unless some Stranded had a submarine, and that was impossible. She’d have heard. It was just too big a deal for them to hide. They’d have used it before. Wouldn’t they?

Even Cole and Anya came out to watch. Marcus seemed to be checking where the life rafts were, which worried Bernie more than anything. She shut her eyes to concentrate on the radio, and the next thing she heard was the crew on the small gunboat. They were in one piece.

“You bastards. You gave your word.”

“We have not fired on you,” Michaelson said. “We have no idea what’s happened, but it wasn’t us. We keep our word, I assure you.”

Almost. Weren’t you going to follow them home to fry them later?

“Deal’s null and void, Coalition,” said the voice. “We can’t do business with you. Gloves off now.”

The small boat shot off at high speed. Bernie waited for it to vanish in an eruption of water too, but whatever had sunk Trader didn’t follow up. Maybe it had his hands full now evading Clement.

“We’re picking up faint propulsion sounds,” Garcia said. “It’s not biologic.”

“Locust bolt all kinds of devices onto living creatures.”

There was a pause. “Including ballast tanks?”

“What?” said Michaelson.

“Hydrophones just picked up something blowing its tanks. It’s another sub. Stand by.”

“You’re clear to engage.”

“We need to know what we’re firing at first, Captain.”

Bernie didn’t have a clue what submarines were capable of doing, or even if they could tell where a sound was coming from. Baird muttered something about needing hull sonar for Falconer. It was the first time Bernie had felt that this patrol boat, which seemed as solid as a fort to her, could be blown out of the water at any moment, and the only warning she’d get would be a streak of bubbles in the water seconds before a bloody torpedo ripped the hull apart. The guns mounted on deck were no use against that.

She added it to the list of reasons why she didn’t like the sea.

Michaelson, shouldn’t you be heading away from here at maximum speed or something?

It felt like a long time before anyone spoke again, but it was less than a minute.

“Something’s surfacing,” Garcia said. “We’ve got a fix on it. About thirty degrees off your port quarter, range eight hundred meters. Standing by to fire torpedoes.”

Baird was glued to his binoculars. “I see it. Look for the foam.”

Dom squeezed into the gap next to Bernie. “If it fires on us,” he said, “we’re really going to regret standing around watching.”

“At least we don’t get trapped below,” she said. “Have we got enough life rafts and RIBs for the whole crew?”

And then a completely unknown voice broke into the comms net. It had a slight accent.

“Clement, this is Zephyr,” said the voice. “We’re surfacing. We’re not hostile. Stand down.”

Bernie saw a sudden pool of foam, and followed it until a dull black sail rose out of the sea. It sprouted masts almost immediately, and when the submarine settled on the surface, she didn’t look like Clement. Her bows were smooth. She looked smaller, like a stubby cigar.

“Holy shit,” Dom said. “They’re breeding.”

As they watched, another sail broke the surface in a cascade of foam, then a distinctive black sonar dome appeared. It was Clement. By the time the submarine was fully surfaced, Bernie could see crew already at the top of the fin, scanning the scene just like Falconer’s crew.

“Zephyr,” Michaelson said, “who are you, and why did you sink that damned ship?”

“Commander Miran Trescu, Republic of Gorasnaya, Union of Independent Republics,” said the unknown voice. “It’s been a long time. May we talk, Falconer?”

Michaelson usually had a smart line for every occasion, but even he took awhile to respond to that bombshell. The UIR hadn’t existed since before E -Day. The COG had been at war with it for nearly eighty years before those short, short weeks of peace. Gorasnaya. Shit, they were one of the tiny lunatic republics that refused to accept the cease-fire. Nobody took account of them. They had very little left to fight with. Unbelievable didn’t quite cover it, though. They still had a submarine, and they still thought they existed.

“No hard feelings,” Michaelson said at last. “But I suggest you explain what you’re doing before this becomes a very short conversation.”

“You might want to let pirates go free,” Trescu said, “but we take a harder line, and we’ve been tracking Jacques for days.”

“We?”

“We may be a small presence compared to you, but we’re still worth plundering. As I said, may we talk? I have as many questions for you and your Chairman as you have for me.”

Marcus finally reacted. “It’s a frigging Indie. Fifteen years after the armistice, and he shows up now?”

Bernie saw a crewman come out to the starboard bridge wing to take a photograph. Dom stared. “This is a joke, right?”

“Baby, I’m gonna take my seasick pills and lie down somewhere dark till this morning goes away,” Cole said. Falconer’s deck had fallen silent—mostly. The only sound Bernie could hear now was Baird, and he was chuckling to himself.

“I’m glad you find it so fucking funny,” Marcus said. “Because we just made a new bunch of enemies.”

“Shit, we were going to finish off Jacques and his gang anyway.” Baird handed the binoculars to Marcus. “At least we got another submarine and a gunboat out of the trip.”

“You think Trescu is going to hand it over?”

“Why else would he surface and not just run?”

Bernie had once found Baird an irritating know -it-all, but now she understood that he really did have a good brain in that head, capable of shrewd assessment. Trescu wanted something beyond settling scores with pirates. And Bernie was keen to find out where the rump of the UIR had been hiding.

Falconer headed back to Vectes, trailed by the small gunboat, and Clement kept a close tail on Zephyr. It was a strange flotilla by anyone’s standards. Bernie spent an hour or two hunched over the chart table, trying to work out where Trescu might have come from, and then a thought struck her—a surprising one simply because it had taken so long to dawn on her.

Jonn Massy had been given his quick release. And she felt neither guilty nor cheated. Now she could move on.