CHAPTER 18

Until we can get radar ground stations in place, we’ll rely on ships. Reassure the people in Pelruan that we can maintain a radar picket that should give us almost complete coverage of the coastline to a range of sixty kilometers. Tell them not to worry—the navy’s here.

(CAPTAIN QUENTIN MICHAELSON TO LEWIS GAVRIEL.)

CHAIRMAN’S OFFICE, VECTES NAVAL BASE, TEN WEEKS AFTER JACINTO EVACUATION, 14 A.E.

“Where do you want me to start?” Hoffman asked. “It’s a long goddamn list today.”

From the window of Prescott’s office, he could see the Indie submarine, real and black and troubling. The appearance of a boat from history was something of a sensation. A growing crowd of seamen and Gears had shown up to stare at it.

“Let’s start with Michaelson’s private war,” Prescott said. “We give him free rein to maintain maritime security. I don’t mind how many pirates he sinks. But I’d like more intelligence on who’s out there—the island communities we don’t know about. We didn’t destroy Jacinto to resume another war. We did it to save what little was left of humankind. We need people —numbers.”

“He says that was the idea. Clement didn’t attack Darrel Jacques.”

“Perception is everything. In due course, we might have some damage limitation to do.”

For a man who’d taken the decision to incinerate most of Sera, Prescott could have weirdly prissy moments. Hoffman gritted his teeth. The Chairman seemed to have forgotten that the last city-sized remnant of humanity was clinging to life here, however idyllic the country seemed. Most of it was still living on board ships or in crowded dockyard accommodations. Hoffman decided he couldn’t get too worked up about a few gangs until the more pressing problems had been solved.

It wasn’t a grub leviathan. That was all that mattered. A few time-forgotten Indies—he could handle them just fine.

“So is the Indie submarine a surprise to us all, or just me ?” Hoffman didn’t expect to get an answer, but he asked again anyway, battening down his natural urge to bang Prescott’s head on that damn desk. “If there’s any more classified material around, it would be a good idea to declassify it now, because we don’t know what’s relevant and what isn’t.”

Prescott did a slow head shake, apparently racking his memory. “I can’t think of anything.”

Hoffman decided he no longer had an obligation to be straight with Prescott. It wasn’t sulky retaliation, just the last exhausted stage of trying to maintain a one-sided relationship. There was no point asking about the freakish life-forms—the sires—and other bizarre discoveries that Delta had made back on the mainland. He bet that he wasn’t alone in his frustration, either, because Marcus Fenix was almost certainly feeling the same way about his father’s connection with the Locust. That was in the past now.

If I sat down with Marcus over a beer, would he discuss it with me?

Hoffman realized he was thinking of him as Marcus again, not Fenix. It was a barometer of the state of their relationship.

“So we’re moving from a land forces doctrine to a maritime one,” Prescott said. “How do you feel about that?”

I know you’re going to enjoy playing me off against Michaelson, and you won’t even realize you’re doing it, you bastard. So give him my job, if you like. He’s a good man. And I’m frigging tired.

“Feelings don’t matter, Chairman.” Hoffman was still watching Zephyr, moored alongside Clement, and marveled at the endurance of damned pointless ideas. What kind of fool would bust a gut maintaining a submarine for all those years, wasting precious resources and sweat on something that was useless without a fleet to work with it? Maybe a fool who just hoped that one day he’d find that fleet. “We’re recolonizing our own land. We’ll need to secure fuel and mineral supplies back on the mainland, and then we’ll need to reclaim it, grubs or no grubs. It’s a maritime operation.”

“You don’t feel threatened by it, then.”

“No, just conscious that Gears will have to adjust to being seagoing soldiers.”

“Perhaps threatened wasn’t an appropriate word,” Prescott said. “I meant that change is unsettling for us all.”

“I’m all for a change that lets my Gears sleep and get their sanity back.”

“You’re more diplomatic than Dr. Hayman.” Prescott looked Hoffman up and down as if he was checking for leaks. “She says traumatic stress is endemic, and we’re such a small population that it’s already become a culture of abnormal psychology. Sometimes she says we’re all frigging lunatics instead, of course. Now that we’ll have to mix with relatively … normal people, we have to take account of that.”

We’re all fucked up. You don’t need a medical degree to work that out.

“I know Pelruan folk think we’re all dangerous psychos,” said Hoffman, “but I like us that way. It’s what we are. And it’s not exactly abnormal to be strung out when you’ve had grubs chewing your collective ass for fifteen years. It’d be abnormal to be relaxed.”

“Yes, but it concerns me to hear evacuees and Gears looking down on the local population as having had it easy here.”

“Well, they have.”

“Even so, we have to build bridges. We need them, Victor. As support, as people. We need cohesion.”

“One happy family.”

“We can’t afford to rebuild Sera from a divided society. Schisms only get bigger. We’ll learn from history.”

Of course we will. The new political will. My ass.

And now the Indies were back, in small bite-sized pieces, so Prescott could test his will right away. Gorasnaya was only a tiny fractious corner of the old alliance, a bunch of guerillas rather than a major player like Pelles, but it had the potential to be trouble. In a world that had shrunk to a small city, people like that punched above their weight. Hoffman wanted to see their credit rating before he’d accept them on the lifeboat. Prescott checked his watch again. “Commander Trescu’s late.”

“He’s a whole war late, Chairman.”

Hoffman resisted attempts to fill the small-talk gap. There was nothing to do but wait for Michaelson and Trescu. Prescott had set up his offices in a former sail loft in the oldest part of the base, a relic from a navy that predated the COG by centuries. The room was light and airy, at odds with the utilitarian furniture, chart boards, and filing cabinets that had been taken out of storage. If Hoffman wanted to leave anything in the past he’d get little chance today. Not even the UIR would let him forget it.

Prescott got up and shunted papers and maps around a meeting table that looked like a canteen trestle. It probably was. “And Sergeant Mataki’s issue is resolved, I take it.”

“I haven’t had a chance to speak to her yet, but I believe so.”

“Don’t you think it’s time she retired? I’m very uncomfortable about a woman of that age doing such a physically grueling job.”

“Islanders are hardy people, Chairman, and I can’t afford to lose specialist skills like hers.” No, this is my turf, Prescott. You stay away from my Gears, and most of all you stay away from her. “And it’s not a job. It’s a way of life, a tribe. Nobody wants to rob her of that comfort after all she’s been through.”

“Just trying to be a gentleman,” Prescott said.

For God’s sake, hurry up, Quentin.

It took ten long, silent minutes for Michaelson to arrive. Trescu was about forty, with a close-trimmed beard and buzz-cut hair. Michaelson took Hoffman to one side while Prescott showed Trescu the naval base panorama from the loft.

“Don’t mention the war,” Michaelson whispered, winking. “He’s got some rather useful assets.”

“So you’ve gone through his pockets and stolen his wallet already.”

“Wait and see.”

If Trescu recalled Hoffman’s name, then he showed no sign of it. Most Gears over thirty-five were Pendulum Wars veterans anyway, so there was nothing remarkable about any COG officer that Trescu might meet. They’d all been enemies, and neither side had much to boast about.

But Hoffman had to remind himself that it was Anvil Gate that Trescu might link to his name, not the fact that he was one of the commanders responsible for the Hammer of Dawn assault. Nobody outside the COG military knew or cared about Hoffman and Salaman, anyway. It had always been Prescott’s baby in public. Trescu seemed to be managing not to punch Prescott in the face, so perhaps it was an issue that time and a lot more deaths had closed for the time being.

If Trescu did finally swing for the Chairman, at least Prescott had a great comeback. He’d incinerated a large area of Tyrus, too.

“So you finally used the Hammer of Dawn against Jacinto,” Trescu said, glancing into the cup that Prescott offered him. Now there was a man used to a contaminated water supply. “We got word from the Stranded network that the Locust have been very few and far between lately.”

Well, at least the Hammer raised its head early in the conversation. Boil lanced, then.

“So where has Zephyr been all these years ?” Hoffman asked. “Not that we could keep track of all our own damn ships, of course.”

“We’ve moved her from place to place, Colonel. Gorasnaya’s ports were overrun several times, but the grubs couldn’t sweep the whole continent every day.”

“Are you going to tell us where you’re based now?”

“Not on the mainland,” Trescu said. “But that’s all I’m saying until we work something out.”

“What do you want from us ?” Prescott asked. “We’re always relieved to find more human beings alive, of course, but you made it clear you had an offer for us. And why now?”

Trescu reached for the large-scale map on the table. He ran one fingertip down a meridian and intercepted with his other forefinger along a latitude line. The point was in the sea, around seventy kilometers north of the Lesser Islands chain.

“We still have an offshore imulsion rig near a Gorasnayan protectorate,” Trescu said. The UIR had never admitted to having colonies or invading poorer countries that had something they wanted. They always protected the lesser nations they walked into. All the old arguments came flooding back to Hoffman. “It’s still producing. More than our small community can make use of.”

No wonder Michaelson had pounced on Trescu like a mugger. He couldn’t run a working fleet without a lot of fuel, and even the windfall from Merrenat would run out. Yet again, Hoffman felt the future change on a single throwaway line in a meeting.

“How small?” Prescott asked.

“Four thousand people, maximum.” Trescu smiled. “You see my point already.”

“Your fuel in exchange for sanctuary here.”

“I really do think of it as the strength of pooled assets, Chairman Prescott. You get fuel without having to drill for it on the mainland, plus our modest fleet, troops, and population. We get the protection of being part of a larger community. I’m sorry for ruining your operation with Jacques, but what he sees as vigilantism is what we see as hijacking our fuel supplies and food.”

Prescott persisted. “You still haven’t answered my question. Why now? You’ve had years to contact us.”

“We wouldn’t have been much better off in Jacinto, but out here, things can be very different. When you put to sea … a submarine can hear a lot, Chairman Prescott. Especially when targets don’t even try to be stealthy. How do you think we knew where you were? Your fleet made a lot of noise shuttling back and forth to the mainland. And we keep good tabs on piracy.”

Hoffman avoided meeting Michaelson’s eye. He seemed desperate to make this deal work, but Hoffman wanted to be sure it was what it seemed to be. If Trescu wanted in, then he was going to have to answer a lot more questions.

“You have people and assets that you can’t move, in places you can’t reach easily and defend, is that it?”

Prescott said.

“Yes. There’s a limit to how long a small group can survive on its own.” Trescu took out a pencil and held it over the map. “I’ll show you where when I know your intentions.”

Prescott sat staring at the map, stroking his upper lip with the knuckle of his forefinger. Hoffman could guess what was coming next. No enclaves. It was the bedrock of his policy.

“If you come here,” Prescott said, “then you join the Coalition. And then you get full protection and benefits. I have to insist on unity.”

Trescu chewed his lip for a moment, eyebrows raised, which looked more like amusement than indecision. His pencil hovered over Gorasnaya on the map. Hoffman wondered how the good folks of Pelruan would take another influx of strangers.

“Ah, my father’s no longer alive to call me a traitor,” Trescu said. “He wouldn’t have understood Sera as it is now, anyway.”

Prescott extended his hand for shaking. Trescu took it. One war had ended, at least. ARMADILLO PA-207, EN ROUTE FOR PELRUAN, TWO DAYS LATER.

“I thought they had two squads permanently billeted at Pelruan already,” Cole said. “Sending us in too is a bit overkill for a little town of nice fisherfolk an’ that. Not that I don’t like the place.”

The ’Dill rumbled along with its hatches open, another sign that Cole’s world had changed a lot. Back on the mainland, open hatches would have earned a faceful of Hammerburst fire, not a fresh breeze that smelled of trees and green stuff. Baird even seemed to be driving more carefully, not tearing the ass out of the ’Dill’s clutch for a change, so maybe the relaxing feel of the place was settling him down, too.

“Prescott’s worried about the natives getting restless over the Indies,” Marcus said. “They know us. If anyone’s a safe bet on the ground today, it’s us.”

“You mean we’re the friendly face of the COG ?” Dom laughed. Cole hadn’t heard him laugh in weeks, so maybe the guy was on the mend. “Shit, things are worse than we thought.”

Cole felt sorry for Lewis Gavriel. The poor guy had done his bit for the COG—done his bit for Pelruan, too—

and now he was getting shit from the locals because he was the COG official in town and they didn’t like what was happening. That was just unfair. Pelruan had to suck it up like everyone else, not that there was anything to suck up other than knowing that a load of strangers had moved in at the far end of the damn island. It wasn’t like having the water supply cut or rations being halved. It was just that dumb scared panic that human beings were good at, and that turned to something nasty if it wasn’t smacked down and dealt with.

“It would be funny,” Dom said, “if the Indies turned into the loyal COG citizens and Pelruan went rogue.”

Marcus grunted, scanning the fields around them like he was expecting trouble from the cows. “No, it’d be a pain in the ass.”

“I told you there’d be some Indies around who still didn’t know the war was over,” Baird said.

“They know it’s over, baby.” Cole could see the sea now, which meant they’d be in Pelruan in ten minutes.

“They just didn’t want the fun to stop.”

“Imagine keeping one submarine going.”

“They got a tanker, a frigate, and some patrol boats, too, Muller says.”

“So when are their people arriving?” Dom asked. “In other words, how long have we got before some civvies start spitting on us for being the bastards who launched the Hammer strike on them?”

“Aren’t they all technically Stranded?” Baird asked.

Dom shrugged. “I suppose so.”

“You saw active service in the Pendulum Wars. I didn’t. Does that make you feel weird about having Indies around?”

“Not half as weird as knowing what the former Indie states looked like after we fried them.”

“We fried COG states too,” Baird said. “Hey, Marcus, did Gorasnaya take a direct Hammer strike?”

Marcus turned his head and gave Baird the real acid blue stare this time, even though Baird’s line of sight was blocked by the ’Dill’s periscope. “You think I was given the complete fucking list?”

Sometimes Cole could work out what was really on Marcus’s mind. The guy didn’t get mad often, but occasionally he got snappy, and it was always over stuff that went deep and personal. This was all about his dad. Baird was just asking, Cole knew, but the Hammer was old man Fenix’s baby, and that twanged a raw nerve in Marcus. Cole tried to imagine how he’d feel now if he’d found all kinds of shit recorded by his dead dad in the Locust computers, but with no damn explanation. And in front of his squad. Shit, Marcus knew everyone was asking the same questions as him, too scared to talk about it because they knew he didn’t know either. That had to be driving him crazy.

“Baird, you just want to play with another submarine.” Cole went for a diversion. “Admit it. Too many old movies. You’re all up scope and crash dive.”

“Just saying that if human beings run out of enemies, they have to invent new ones. Or get the old ones out of the attic.”

“Hey, if our Indie sailor boy brings a load of fuel with him, I think folks will settle down real fast.”

“Hilarious irony. We all got along when the grubs were around. If we’ve really wiped out those assholes, we’ll need to breed some more so we don’t have to kill each other.”

“Welcome to Dr. Baird’s school of social psychology,” Dom said. “But he’s right. And I hate it when that happens.”

Pelruan looked pretty normal when they rolled in. Folks were going about their business, and there was no mumbling discontent going on that Cole could detect. Gears had a sixth sense for trouble brewing. Rossi’s squad was rostered to do the day patrol, and there was Rossi himself, standing around talking with a bunch of locals outside the town hall, helmet under one arm. Baird stopped the ’Dill a few meters away. Civvies around here tended to get nervous when APCs rolled right up behind them in narrow streets. Rossi broke off from the chat and walked over to the ’Dill. “Oh, look—they’ve sent Hoffman’s big boys to check up on us.”

“We’re just here to make the place look prettier, baby,” Cole said.

“Well, we might not be pretty, but at least none of the houses burned down on our watch.”

Marcus looked around. “Nobody rioting, I see.”

“Only because they’re confused,” Rossi said. “They don’t know what to riot about first—the fact that we’ve moved in, or that we’ve invited complete strangers to join us for cocktails in our new resort.”

“Prescott should have told them in person,” Dom said.

“Yeah, that would have made all the difference. What are you here for, anyway?”

“Reassurance,” said Marcus.

“Ours or theirs?”

Marcus dismounted. “Baird—park up on the shore where they can see you. Everyone else—it’s walkabout time.”

Cole was okay with that. He had a choice of being the Cole Train or a Gear for these folks, and if he played up his thrashball star side for them—shit, he was still a name in Pelruan—then maybe he’d get through to them a little better than just being a big guy with a rifle. The squad split up and ambled through the streets, working on being nice. When Cole passed the town’s main store, a couple of guys in trawlermen’s overalls came out, and Cole recognized the older one from the boat that had put in at Vectes when the Harvest was lost.

“So is it true?” the man asked. “The Indies are back?”

“Only a few. They sink pirates, though. That’s got to be worth something.”

“Are we going to be safe to fish now? We’ve been stuck in harbor for days.”

They had a point. “Maybe we need to talk to Captain Michaelson about getting you some protection, and then you can fish again.”

“That would help a lot.”

Cole decided to tread on the thin ice. “You mind answerin’ a question for me?”

“Go ahead, Mr. Cole.”

“Do folks think we’re bringing nothing but trouble here?”

The older guy looked embarrassed. “Well, some people are saying that you’re provoking the pirates. But there’s nothing to say they wouldn’t have come here anyway, sooner or later. Tell us the truth—should we be afraid?”

“The folks from Gorasnaya won’t be a problem, if that’s worry-in’ you.” Cole meant it. The COG needed extra help, and a few more boats and extra fuel made a lot of difference. “Hell, they might even look after your trawlers. But they need somewhere, sir. They really do. My family had to leave their own country—it ain’t fun, I’m tellin’ you. And we tend to be real grateful for the chance to earn our keep when we get to somewhere that lets us stay.”

Cole could have reminded them that they didn’t have a say in this at all, but he still believed most human beings had a decent streak that he could find if he pressed the right button. These fishermen offered to share that butt-ugly eel thing with him; they were basically nice people, just scared shitless. And he couldn’t blame them. There was so much happening to them after years of relative quiet. Stranded pirates were a known quantity, but Indie submarines were right out of nowhere, and they hadn’t even got used to the idea of having Jacinto folk move in next door.

“Your family still alive, Mr. Cole?”

“No, they got killed. All of ’em.” Forgive me, Momma—I ain’t using you to persuade ’em to be nice to refugees. Just happens to be true. But you’d want ’em to welcome folks in need, wouldn’t you?

“Makes you see the world different.” Cole began walking away. “I’m gonna ask the Captain about some protection for your boats. I promise.”

Fishery protection. That was what they called it. Cole remembered the phrase just as he got to the waterfront and saw the ’Dill. Baird and Gavriel were standing alongside it. Baird had his finger pressed to his ear, talking on the radio, while Gavriel stood with arms folded, occasionally turning to look out to sea. Baird waved Cole over.

“There’s a pall of smoke.” Baird seemed to be talking to CIC or Marcus. “You don’t say … You think they burned their toast ? I said pall… No, I’m not looking at it, one of the farmers called it in. I thought there was a Raven patrol checking that shit daily.”

Cole listened in on his earpiece.

“Control to Delta, KR-Eight-Zero is going to check it out. Stand by to hear from Gettner.”

“Roger that, Control.”

“Baird, it’s Marcus. I’m on my way to you. Vigilante action?”

“I’ll check. Wait one.” Baird turned to Gavriel. “You’re sure nobody decided to settle a few scores now most of the Stranded have moved in with the COG?”

“It’s not our doing,” Gavriel said. “We let the dogs run loose in case the Stranded tried to disappear inland, but Dilland Jonty is the only one might torch their camp, and he’s the farmer who called this in.”

Now that Cole had seen Stranded waging their own civil war at sea, his first thought was that it was gang-ongang violence. It would be damned hard to keep an eye on everyone who came and went on Vectes. The coastline here had to be at least 250 kilometers, and that was an impossible border for anyone to patrol. Serves me right for telling ’em they had nothing to worry about. Temptin fate. Dom showed up, walking fast but definitely not running. That always made civvies nervous. Townspeople still paused to look, though.

“Gettner will be pissed off she didn’t get to set the place on fire herself,” Dom said. They all clustered around the ’Dill, listening for comms traffic. “She took that damage to her bird personally.”

Marcus caught up with them and all they could do now was wait for Gettner to take a look at the place.

“Have we got any Stranded still pending on amnesty while the locals check them out?” Baird asked. “If any fail the vetting, we’ll have nowhere left to dump them.”

“No. But if we did, we’d find somewhere.” Marcus spread out a map on the ’Dill’s front scoop and squatted down to look at it. “Michaelson’s talking about a radar picket to pick up inbound vessels, but that’s not going to be airtight.”

Cole leaned over Marcus’s shoulder. Yeah, if some gang had slipped through for some retribution, then that really was a lot of coastline to patrol.

Gettner was back on the radio in less than ten minutes. “Control, Delta—this is KR-Eight-Zero. I’m over the site and I’m just seeing burning huts and a few junkers on fire. There’s nothing else down there. Going in for a closer look.”

“Gettner, we’ll follow up and do a search,” Marcus said.

“Roger that, Delta. Okay … confirmed, no boats, no bodies, no live ones, nothing. Nearest I’ve seen to clean. Cleared out, unless they’re all piled up in the huts for some reason. I’ll take a look and see if they’ve just moved inland. That many people leave some kind of visible track, usually.”

“Wouldn’t they take the junkers?” Dom asked.

Marcus climbed into the ’Dill. “Not if they left by sea. Let’s make sure they’re gone. I don’t know how these people share information, but if they know what happened to their buddies, then they’ve got one more grudge with us.”

Baird took the ’Dill down the narrow track that led from the inland cliff and stopped a few hundred meters away from the settlement. Cole thought that was extra-cautious, but they’d been caught out once too often in the last week. Gettner was right. It looked tidy. That was a damn odd thing to say about a burning shantytown, but it was true. The flames had already died down and the place simply smoked and smoldered, stinking of burned plastic and unburned fuel. The houses here had just been flimsy huts and shacks, quick to catch fire and crumble into ash.

Cole realized why it looked so clean when he passed the first charred wooden frame of a house. Fires didn’t always burn every last scrap, and all kinds of lightweight stuff got scattered around in the drafts, sad little bits and pieces that said something about the folks who’d lived there. But there was nothing like that here. The shacks looked like they’d been picked clean of everything the Stranded could carry.

Marcus ducked his head down to look inside one of the buildings that still had a roof.

“Don’t go in, man,” Baird called. “The roof might collapse on you.”

“Just looking.” Marcus walked across to another house where there was no sign of walls, just a big sheet of corrugated metal on the ground—probably the roof, all that was left. He lifted the edge of the sheet and peered underneath. “Nothing. No bodies.”

It was sometimes hard to tell charred bodies from other stuff, but Gears had learned to do that pretty well over the years.

“Looks like they did it themselves,” Cole said, scuffing through a pile of ash. The sky was still clouded with smoke. It was so much like the places he’d had to pick his way through back on the mainland that his gut still said grubs, but he knew it wasn’t. That still didn’t stop the reaction. “Looks too orderly. Not enough burned stuff here.”

Marcus nodded. “These guys just wanted to destroy everything they couldn’t take with them.”

Marcus had said it, so it was true, and Cole felt it was safe to breathe again. “Trouble is, I can never see anything for what it is anymore,” he said. “I see a damn ugly fish and I think it’s grubs. I see a pall of smoke and I think it’s grubs.” He tapped his skull. “The war ain’t over up here.”

Baird snapped his goggles into place. “Peace hasn’t broken out, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

There was something else that bothered Cole now. Most of the Stranded from this camp had taken amnesty. Most of those who hadn’t—the ones who seemed to have made a run for it—were the menfolk. That meant an awful lot of families had broken up, or else there were plenty of women and kids who were expecting to see their old man back again sometime. Either way, that didn’t sound like a happy foundation to become a loyal citizen of the COG.

Nothing got sorted out cleanly anymore. Baird was right. Peace hadn’t started yet. They were all in limbo. Nobody could come up with an instant cure for all the problems the war had left behind.

“Wasting all that fuel just to stop us using their shitty wood and plastic,” Baird said, pausing to examine a melted lump in the ash. “Asset denial. Like we’re goddamn grubs or something.”

Marcus squatted to touch the remains of a length of water pipe like he expected it to still be hot. Some of the metal in the ruins was. He picked it up and hefted it in his hand.

“Imagine that,” he said.

VNB, 1800 HOURS, FOUR WEEKS LATER.

It was always the dumb-ass little things that started Dom off.

Today, it was walking through the locker rooms and catching someone singing his head off in the shower—

nothing out of the ordinary, but it was a song that Maria loved. Even off-key and mangled by a Gear, the lyrics hurt like hell. He found himself heading blindly out of the barracks just to get away from that song, looking for a quiet spot where he could think in peace, but privacy was getting harder to find every day; the base was full. Every spare building had been turned over to accommodation, and it was going to stay that way until new housing was built.

He walked to the dockyard walls, up narrow brick steps to the old sentry points where men had once stood guard with muskets. It was a hell of a view of the sea. Nobody would look twice if an off-duty Gear went up there and stayed for a while. People who’d spent way too much time underground needed to see open, infinite space.

Dom folded his arms on the granite blocks, rested his forehead on them and just let the sound of the waves below erase everything.

How long was it now? Nearly fifteen weeks since he’d found and lost Maria forever in a matter of minutes. He bounced between wanting to go on living because something good had to be around the next corner, and a sense of loss so bottomless that he thought he’d never be able to breathe again. His up days were getting better and more frequent. His down days still left him worse then empty.

She wasn’t around for ten years. What sort of Maria did I recreate in my imagination in that time?

He took out his pack of photographs. On some days, he hadn’t been able to look at Maria’s eyes. That was how he gauged his progress. It wasn’t even pulling the trigger that haunted him now; it was everything he didn’t know. Ten years. He knew now that she’d been one of the Stranded. He couldn’t kid himself that she’d been killed soon after she went missing, or taken by the grubs right away—because nobody could have survived that long in grub hands. He knew how Stranded lived, the miserable lives they had, the scum in their own communities who preyed on them. Now he couldn’t stop himself filling in the blanks, hoping Maria had been with people like Dizzy but terrified of even thinking that she might have stumbled into the likes of Massy. It was a terrible thing to add to imagining what the grubs had done to her to make her into that shell he found. He hadn’t even realized it until the last few weeks, when his mind was squarely on Stranded.

My wife was a Stranded.

She survived ten years because someone looked out for her. She wasn’t like Bernie. She wasn’t trained to survive. She couldn’t have done it alone.

Somebody else must have cared about her.

It was obvious now, but he just hadn’t thought it through before. Somehow, even though it was yet another unanswered question, it lifted him like nothing else had. One of the underclass he tolerated—didn’t love, didn’t respect, just tolerated— must have helped Maria. Maybe a whole group of them did. Now every Stranded he met who wasn’t an obvious bastard would look very different to him.

It was turning out to be a pretty sunset again. Dom watched a patrol boat heading out, a black speck on choppy amber water. It might have been a radar picket ship, or it might have been joining the trawler fleet as fishery protection. But whatever it was, this felt routine and normal. Life went on if you wanted it to. I do. I know I do.

Boots scuffed the steps beneath him. It had to be Marcus, or at least Cole or Bernie. He knew they still kept an eye on him, which was comforting, but his moments of wanting to die had melted down to not caring if he lived, and then to accepting he was staying around and so he had to make things work. He turned around, ready to tell Marcus—or Cole, or Bernie—that he was fine.

But it was Hoffman.

The colonel looked a lot smaller out of armor. He was still the squat wall of muscle he’d always been, but in fatigues he looked built to a more human scale. He took off his cap and leaned on the wall.

“I like it with more purple bits, myself,” he said, squinting into the setting sun. “Few more clouds for contrast.”

“It’s nice and peaceful.”

“Well, make the most of it.” Hoffman checked his watch. “They’re testing the sirens again in a few minutes.”

Dom waited to find out what had really brought Hoffman up here. The guy was his old CO, still with a mental list of Gears who were his, chief of staff or not.

“It’s working out, isn’t it, sir?”

“I do believe it is. How about you?”

“Yeah. This place feels solid. Port Farrall never did.”

“I meant how are you working out.”

“Doing better. Thanks.”

Hoffman was building up to something. Dom could see his jaw clenching. “You know how I lost my wife, don’t you?”

“She couldn’t get back to Ephyra before the Hammer strike.” Dom had heard other things, that the checkpoints had been told to turn her back to the city because she’d stormed off, but he didn’t want to unpick the private misery behind that. “You know what it’s like to pull the trigger. Is that what you were going to say, sir?”

“No. I was going to say that Prescott managed to tip off his secretary to get her sister back to Ephyra, but I played by the rules and never warned my own wife. And I lost her. I did it wrong at every stage, and she’s dead because of me.” Hoffman gave Dom that I-can-see-your-soul look. “I don’t know what her final moments were like and I wasn’t there to make them easier. But you were there for Maria. Nobody can ask any more of a man, Dom.”

Hoffman glanced at his watch again. Dom was still trying to think of some response when the air shook and he thought someone had rammed nails into his eardrums. The emergency sirens wailed all around the base, a rising and falling scream of a noise that instantly churned human guts on a primal level. Even if you’d never heard that sound in your life, it made you want to run for cover. And the sentry post was positioned right over one of the sirens.

Hoffman just put his hands over his ears and waited, still looking out to sea. Dom tried to block out the noise, but his sinuses vibrated, he was sure of it.

The silence that fell was sudden. Dom’s ears still throbbed.

“I think we can hear that okay, sir,” he said.

“Combine that with the radar picket, and everyone feels reassured. Time I was going. The sergeants’ mess is officially open tonight, and I’m expected.” Hoffman turned to make his way down the steps again. “Thanks for listening, Santiago. It never got to me in Jacinto. Now it’s like someone took off a tourniquet and the feeling’s come back. Every time I look at a line of ’Dills here, I can see those burned-out cars.”

Dom stayed at the sentry post for a while after Hoffman left, knowing damn well who had actually done the listening, even if Dom hadn’t been the one talking. Hoffman was okay. Everyone —everyone— had done crazy, out-of-character things in this war, and the war before that, but it didn’t mean they weren’t fundamentally decent. It was definitely time for that drink. An invite to the sergeants’ mess was something tribal and special, not about getting shit -faced at all. It was hospitality. It was also a symbol of normal life making a comeback. Andresen and Rossi had gone to a lot of trouble to fit out the place, and not showing up when invited was bad form. He’d have to go.

The mess was a cramped space even before a lot of bodies tried to squeeze into it. Dom worked out from the plumbing and drains in the stone floor that it had been an ice store in the days before refrigeration, although how they got the ice there was anyone’s guess. A stack of ammo crates served as the bar; a couple of grub cleavers hung on the wall behind it. There was beer, or what passed for it, and something piss-yellow and evil-smelling, dispensed from a steel drum by Dizzy. One of the engineer corporals stared into its depths before tipping back his tin mug.

“Shit, that’s nasty.” He drained it on the second gulp, eyes screwed tight shut, and held it out for a refill. “We can rig some better distillation kit for you, Diz. Let’s discuss design.”

“That’s my finest vintage,” Dizzy said. “You just gotta let it rest some and get some bottle age, that’s all.”

“Mataki did the catering, guys,” Rossi yelled above the noise. “Those things on cocktail sticks are not meatballs, okay?”

Everyone was laughing their asses off. People needed to find something to celebrate, and being alive in a clean, dry, warm room—a stiflingly warm room now—with a drink and all your buddies around you was as good a reason as any. Dom couldn’t see Marcus, but Hoffman and Anya were there, and Bernie held Baird in a playful headlock while Cole guffawed and made no attempt to rescue him. “Who’s a clever boy? ” Bernie pinched his cheeks one-handed. Dom had never seen Baird tolerate her like that before. “Who made the guns work? Did you get the big guns working? Did you? Clever boy! Granny’s proud of her clever boy!”

“What gun?” Dom asked.

Cole wiped his cheeks with the back of his hand. “The cannon, baby. The naval base defensive guns.” He shook his head and started laughing again. “He’s been helping the artillery guys. Shit, there’s nothing Baird can’t fix.”

Humiliated or not, Baird looked pleased with himself. Dom felt guilty for ever thinking of him as a cocky, selfish bastard who didn’t belong in Delta Squad. It was that kind of evening. He decided to stick to one beer in case sentimentality got the better of him again.

Eventually, the door edged opened, and Marcus stood on the threshold of the mess like he was preparing to charge a grub position. Dom was sure he would have closed the door and walked away if someone hadn’t seen him and hauled him in by his sleeve.

“I’m still on duty, Dom,” Marcus said, holding up his hand to fend off a mug of beer. “Just being polite.”

“It’s your mess, Sergeant Fenix.”

“So it is.” He had his earpiece in place. Dom couldn’t remember seeing him without it lately, on duty or not. It was too easy to keep the comms net open the whole time just in case, and Dom couldn’t work out if Marcus did it for distraction or because he still felt personally responsible for fixing the world’s problems. “You know that shit makes you go blind.”

“All quiet out there?”

“Couple of drunk Stranded had a fight. That’s all.”

“They’re not Stranded now.”

“Okay, then two drunk assholes had a fight.”

Marcus was doing a discreet scan of the mess, and Dom knew damned well that he was checking where Anya was. Yeah, she’s over there with Hoffman, buddy. Do something about it. Then Marcus’s gaze settled across the room, target acquired for a moment, before he looked Dom in the eye again. It tipped the balance.

“I swear I’ll never stick my nose into your private life again,” Dom said. “But shit or get off the pot, okay? I saw your face when you thought she was dead. And I know what too late feels like.”

Marcus didn’t even shrug. He looked paralyzed for a moment, then put his finger slowly to his ear. Dom thought he was just avoiding the issue again until the chatter and raucous laughter around them was drowned in a noise that began like some huge animal gulping air. The gulp turned into a bellow that rose to a scream and fell again. The base alarms had gone off. They waited, but the siren showed no signs of stopping.

“Is nobody going to kill that goddamn siren ?” Hoffman yelled. Dom could just about hear him. “How many times do they have to test it?”

But Marcus still had his finger pressed to his earpiece. His attention was somewhere else.

“Hey, not a drill, people,” he shouted. “Listen up—we got an incident. A raid on Jonty’s farm.”

The mess fell silent for a moment. “What kind of raid?” Dom asked.

“The farmhouse and barns are on fire. One of the Ravens called it in. First six duty roster squads—get moving.”

The mess emptied and they pounded down the passage to collect weapons and armor. As Dom jogged toward the ’Dill, he could hear the whine of Raven engines as pilots did their pre-flight checks. Cole listened in to the voice traffic.

“I’m not convinced that siren is a good idea.” Marcus pushed past Baird and climbed into the ’Dill’s driving seat. “Scares the civvies too much.”

“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Dom said.

“Stranded settling scores?”

“Yeah.”

“Does that mean more landed?”

“Maybe they never left.”

Marcus headed off through the base and waited in the holding area near the main gate for the rest of the vehicles. There was a storehouse near the gates that had been converted to temporary accommodation, and when Marcus opened the ’Dill’s hatches, Dom could hear a bullhorn echoing. He got out to look. Someone was driving around the civilian quarters, repeating a message that there was no danger, and that there would be further instructions if the situation changed. Yeah, the siren system needed a rethink. Dom could guess immediately which civilians were from Jacinto and which were locals who’d relocated. Jacinto people opened their windows to listen to the announcement, then closed them and got on with whatever they were doing. The locals were coming out into the roads, stopping any Gears they could see and asking what the hell was going on. They were terrified; Dom could hear their panicky questions. They were convinced they were going to die.

His guess was confirmed when a window flew open and a woman leaned out.

“Get a grip, for goodness’ sake,” she called out. The Pelruan civilians looked up to the window. “Whatever it is, it’s got to get past every Gear in the COG. What’s wrong with you people?”

The locals stared up at the window long after the woman had slammed it shut. Dom decided not to get involved, and climbed back into the ’Dill.

“Our civvies believe in us,” he said. “It’s kind of cute.”

Cole grinned. “That’s ’cause we’re so damn good, baby.”

Marcus switched the comms over to the ’Dill’s radio and listened to Control while they waited. Anya was back in CIC. Three ’Dills and a very old fire truck rolled up behind them. It was just like old times. The gates opened, and Marcus drove out in the direction of the farm.

“You know this guy?” Cole asked.

“Yeah. Met him the other day. Poor bastard lives alone.”

There was no traffic to speak of on Vectes, and it was a fast run out to Jonty’s farm. Dom could see the reddish glow in the distance long before they reached the place. Where were the nearest neighbors ? There was no fire service and no ambulance. It was now down to Gears and any locals who managed to get there to tackle the blaze and sweep the area—if the locals knew about it, of course. When the ’Dill turned the corner into the long tirerutted lane up to the house, the buildings were well alight. The barn was a ball of flame, and the roof of the farmhouse was gone. Given the distance between the two, it had to be arson.

Marcus jumped out to direct the squads.

“Dom, Cole, Baird—with me,” he said. “Everyone else—find the assholes who did this.”

The fire crew ran hoses and pumps from the farmyard supply and concentrated on the house. There was no sign of the farmer. If he’d been in the house when it went up, then they weren’t going to find any remains until the blaze died down and the debris cooled.

“He’s got dogs,” Marcus said. “Three big black dogs. Where are they?”

The blaze lit up a large area around the farmhouse, but it was still hard to pick out shapes in the hard contrast between shadow and the fierce yellow light. The ground was a mix of short grass and poured concrete. Dom was poking around the hedges at the back of the farmhouse when he heard Cole call out.

“Got ’em,” he yelled. “Shit, I’m losin’ my faith in human beings, I swear I am.”

Dom went running in the direction of his voice, toward the north side of the yard. Marcus and Baird were already there, staring down at something in the beam of Cole’s flashlight. Dom could guess what it was before he got there.

“Assholes,” Baird muttered. “But at least we get to shoot to kill now.”

Dillond Jonty was dead, laid out flat on his back in a pool of black blood that looked like lube oil in the light from the fire. His three dogs were laid out beside him. Dom could see that someone had intended them to be found and the message to be clear.

Marcus squatted down. “Shot, and throat cut. The dogs too. Shit.”

“I’d take a guess that our displaced Stranded just moved inland,” Dom said. “But if more have come ashore, then we’ve got a different problem.”

“Any bets as to how they’re going to take this in Pelruan?” Baird asked.

“We’ll worry about that later,” Marcus said. “Looks like we’re going to have to guard every isolated farm now.”

It wasn’t just about protecting citizens. It was about the threat to the food supply. Thoughts started racing through Dom’s mind about who was going to sort out the farm and if there were animals to take care of. If the Stranded were looking to cause disruption, they’d found some soft but effective targets.

“At least we’re not dealing with grubs,” Baird said. “The fight’s going to be a lot more equal.”

Cole looked at the bodies and shook his head. “Great start to New Jacinto,” he said. “Excuse me, gentlemen. I’m goin’ asshole hunting.”

Dom paused for a moment to watch the arcs of water playing on the burning farmhouse. He wondered if grubs ever did anything like this to their own kind. It didn’t matter now; humans did, and this was the new war, one that few Gears had fought before.

Somehow, it was the dogs that troubled Dom most.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

KAREN T RAVISS is the author of four Star Wars: Republic Commando novels, Hard Contact, Triple Zero, True Colors, and Order 66; three Star Wars: Legacy of the Force novels, Bloodlines, Revelation, and Sacrifice; two Star Wars: The Clone Wars novels, The Clone Wars and No Prisoners; Gears of War: Aspho Fields; and her award-nominated Wess’har Wars series, City of Pearl, Crossing the Line, The World Before, Matriarch, Ally, and Judge. A former defense correspondent and TV and newspaper journalist, Traviss lives in Devizes, England. Gears of War: Jacinto’s Remnant is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Copyright © 2009 by Epic Games Inc.

All Rights Reserved. Used Under Authorization.

Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

DEL REY is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc. Gears of War, Marcus Fenix, and the Crimson Omen logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Epic Games, Inc. in the United States of America and elsewhere.

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