That’s for Bennie. That’s for Sylvie. That’s for my kids, you ugly fuck.
Bone fragments stung his hands even through his gloves. Dead wasn’t enough. He took another slice at it. Yeah, it felt right to kill them. It felt like sweet relief if only for a few moments and he never wanted it to stop.
“Gas!” Jace yelled. He was right behind Dom. He seemed to come out of nowhere, spattered with blood. “Smell it?”
“Shit, you mean nerve agent?” Dom wasn’t sure why he said that. Did the grubs have chemical weapons? “What is it?”
“Methane gas.” Marcus was suddenly jogging toward him from the other direction and Dom had no idea how he’d gotten there. “They fractured a gas main. Or maybe it’s sewer gas. Either way, that shit’s combustible.”
For a moment, the three of them ignored the battle raging around them and looked back down Correll Road. There it was: at the crumbling edge of the e-hole, a bright yellow pipe was sticking up at a crazy angle. Grubs were still clambering out of the hole like the line was never going to stop.
“Jace, I’m out of frags.” Marcus held his hand out for a grenade, impatient. “Quick. Give me one.”
It was that simple. Marcus ran a few steps forward, pulled the pin, swung the frag by its chain and then let go. He always did have a good eye for distance. And it was a damn big e-hole. A couple of grubs noticed the lone grenade arcing through the air and started running, but by then it was too late.
The explosion sent brick and paving high into the air on a column of flame. The blast nearly knocked Marcus off his feet. Dom ducked, and when he straightened up the flames were still roaring from the e-hole like a blow torch.
So that was one access point now closed to the bastards.
“That’s fucked them,” Dom said. He turned and started running after the grubs that were now breaking through to the command post, a lot fewer, but it only took a handful to cause chaos. This had to be the last of them. They were surrounded and cut off from reinforcements now, and Tai, usually the most mellow of guys, went scything through them with his chainsaw, screaming tribal stuff that Dom couldn’t understand. Every Gear who was still standing converged on the grubs. It was a bloodbath. Dom didn’t manage to get his hands on another one. For a moment, it seemed to be over, at least on Correll Road. It was hard to see anything in the financial district because it was a dense forest of skyscrapers and towers packed so close together that you had to be on the tallest roof to get an overview. But he could still hear the whomp of artillery a few blocks away and the occasional rattle of Lancer fire. He tried his radio and got a burst of static and garbled voices.
“Hey, have we got grubs elsewhere now?” Maybe it was just Reavers on an air raid, although that was bad enough. “Listen to that.”
“I’m not getting anything on the radio,” Jace said. “Where now?”
“Where’s Hoffman?” Marcus pressed his earpiece, looking around. “Shit, is the net on the fritz again?”
Marcus started jogging up the road to the command post and Dom automatically followed. It was the obvious point to regroup. Dom could now see Hoffman leaning over Aigle as the corporal wrestled with the portable transmitter. The colonel looked up, not a happy man at all, and now Dom could hear the voice traffic that seemed to be pissing him off.
“Bastards are jamming us,” Hoffman said. “But I don’t think this was the main event.”
“… KR-Four … Reavers, inbound at …” Dom struggled to make out the words, but the signal was breaking up. “… Exchequer … Prince’s … at least a thousand …”
“Fuck it.” Hoffman’s lips compressed into a thin line. He wasn’t an Academy grad officer like Marcus’s dad. “They’re not using the sewer. They’ve found a way into the metro system.”
The underground rail network had been shut down a few years ago. It didn’t extend beyond the plateau so there must have been another fissure nobody had mapped. Dom was distracted for a moment by a glimpse of more Reavers heading northwest at low altitude and wondered where the Ravens were.
Hoffman took the radio handset off Aigle. “Command to all callsigns, anyone currently engaging grubs, call it in.” He waited, staring down the road, jaw clenched. The firefight a few blocks up seemed to be intensifying and the arty boys were hammering something hard, but nobody was reporting in. “Command to all callsigns, report current contacts.”
They were on the open net now and it was just a series of staccato bursts of words. Then a stronger signal broke through, a voice that they all knew. It was Anya.
“Control here, sir, they’re coming up through the metro.” Dom, watching Marcus’s expression intently, could hear more explosions in the background, either right outside the bank or inside it. “They’ve cut us off. They’re in the building. We’re going to have to—”
The radio went dead. They were all listening to static now, not even fragments of voice transmission.
“Shit.” Dom looked toward the Bank of Tyrus tower instinctively. It was the tallest structure in the financial district, a perfect spot for a radio mast, and one of the few buildings he had line of sight with. He couldn’t see Reavers, but he could see a pall of black smoke from the roof like a chimney fire that had run out of control. Reavers didn’t have the firepower to take out a whole building. They’d taken out the comms aerials on the roof instead.
Hoffman kept trying anyway. “Anya? Lieutenant Stroud, do you read me?”
“Lost everyone, sir,” Aigle said, fiddling with the receiver. “All comms are down.”
“We need to get to CIC,” Marcus said. “Sir?”
“Wait.” Hoffman held up a hand. “Check what you’re running into first. Aigle, have we got any contact with the Ravens? We don’t know where else these fuckers are coming up now. I need aerial recon.”
“Some still have the navy comms fit, sir. I’m going to try those channels.”
The artillery radio net was down, so there was no sitrep from the gunners either. But you could always rely on a Raven pilot to think laterally. The noise of rotors suddenly blasted the square and everyone scattered as a Raven descended and landed with an alarming bounce. The crew chief jumped out and sprinted for the command post. It was Kevan Mitchell, just a kid who’d been flying for less than a year.
“Colonel, they’re coming up through all the central metro stations,” he said. “Old Exchequer, Museum Plaza, Prince’s Street, and Forbridge. They’ve overrun the tanks. Best estimate is ten thousand grubs, and more coming.”
The blood had drained from Hoffman’s face. “Aigle, get those other damn channels working.”
“On it, sir, but I’m counting on pilots realizing I’ll be trying the navy net and switching channels.” Aigle was hunched over the radio. “Wait one.”
“Mitchell, did you get a look at Chancery Bridge?” Hoffman asked.
“They’re holding it, sir, but the grubs can come up at the metro terminal now. There’s nothing to stop them.”
“And then they’ll be around the back of us.” Hoffman shut his eyes for a second. “Okay, we pull back north of Sovereign’s Parkway. Everybody—pass it down any way you can. Clear everyone out. Have we got any muster point left for landing birds?”
“We’re using the Treasury roof,” Mitchell said.
“Fenix, go check if anyone’s left in CIC. Then RV with me on the Treasury roof.” Hoffman stuffed a couple of ammo clips in his belt and reloaded his Lancer. “How are we doing, Corporal?”
“Got the En-COG net up, sir,” Aigle said. “Some of the Ravens have the comms kit to use that, so we’ve got some eyes in the air again now. I’ll work on taking over the police frequency now—most personal radios can switch to that if we get word out.”
“Do it, then, people. I’m going to round up whatever armor we’ve got left.”
“You ought to wait for an escort, sir,” Dom said.
Hoffman turned and started running for Redoubt Street. “There’s nobody left, Santiago. Go get Stroud and her team
out. And take the bot—don’t lose him.”
Crazy old bastard: he thought he was indestructible. Dom was about to run after him when he looked around and saw that Marcus was already halfway up Almar Boulevard with Tai and Jace at his heels.
Dom had his orders. He ran after Marcus, but he looked over his shoulder just as Hoffman vanished behind the Stock Exchange building, and wondered if he’d see his old CO alive again.
BANK OF TYRUS, BULLION DEPOSIT VAULT: FOUR HOURS INTO THE LOCUST ASSAULT.
Anya had no idea how long she’d been sitting here in the pitch blackness with her back against the door, hugging the CBs to her chest.
The operating procedures were clear: keep the confidential books—the CBs, the codebooks containing the COG’s authorizations—from falling into enemy hands at all cost. So Anya had done just that when the Locust smashed up through the floor and opened fire on the three Gears unlucky enough to be in the comms room at the time. She couldn’t outrun drones, so she did the next best thing. She sprinted out the back door to the service stairs, darted through the basement using the currency stacks for cover, and locked herself in the bullion vault behind not one but two doors.
It would take them days to break in if they got in at all. But now nobody—except the grubs, perhaps—knew she was in here.
She pressed her earpiece and worked through all the comms channels again, but she was sealed in a giant steel box, effectively a radio screen. Getting a signal out meant opening the door.
Were they out there waiting for her? If she found the light switch, would there be a crack in the wall or some other chink of light to give away her hiding place?
Sealed in here, she had no idea if she was the last human left alive in Ephyra. But she was alive, and she had an objective: to get out with the CBs, find Hoffman or whoever was now senior commander, and regroup.
Or whoever … no, he’s not dead. Hoffman’s too smart. And Marcus is out there too. He wouldn’t get himself killed and leave me on my own. Come on, Mom, what would you do now?
Major Helena Stroud—posthumously awarded the Embry Star, the COG’s highest award for bravery—had thrived on impossible odds. One day her luck had run out though, and Anya had been in CIC with no choice but to listen to her mother’s final moments as if she were a stranger.
How did you feel, Mom? Were you scared when you charged that tank? You never sounded it. When you realized the blast was going to take you with it, what were you thinking about? My father? Me? Winning? Losing?
It didn’t matter. All Anya wanted to know was whether heroes, real honest-to-God, have-a-go crazy heroes like her mother, thought the same small things as lesser mortals like herself when death was imminent.
Marcus won’t tell me. He’s a hero too. Embry Star. Won’t talk about it, won’t let me in. Dom and Colonel Hoffman, too—Embry Star heroes who tell me it’s just their job when I know it isn’t. I need you to show me, Mom. Show me how to be at least half the Gear you were.
Anya wasn’t going to get anywhere until she assessed her environment. She’d thought the vault was just a big square room, but it wasn’t that simple, and she’d slammed the door to spin the hand-wheel before she’d noted where the controls were or even checked the place was empty. The door had been ajar. Anything could have sneaked in to wait.
This is how you do it. Get on with it.
It was her own voice in her head, she was sure, but it sounded like an order. She didn’t want to put the books down and not be able to find them, so she tucked them under one arm and slid her back up the cold steel door to stand. Then she turned around and groped one-handed along the metal surface to her left until she felt the surface change to warmer, more textured plaster. There had to be a light switch one side or the other. She worked her way along a pace at a time for what felt like meters until she brushed against a corner or a shelf at 90 degrees to the wall, then swapped arms to work her way back again. Her foot hit something heavy and soft—a body?—and she nearly tripped. She stifled a yelp and froze.
Whatever she’d kicked didn’t move. She squatted to feel it, heart pounding, and realized it was an upholstered chair lying on its side. Not a grub, then. Okay. I can do this. Why didn’t I make sure I had a pistol? She felt for the wall again, edged past the chair, and finally felt the raised surface of a switch panel.
One … two … four switches. Here we go.
She flicked the first switch: nothing. Was it a light at all? Was the power supply cut off? What about air? Was this place airtight? How long could she stay in here? Damn. Then she tried the second switch and a harsh yellow light flooded the room. She turned around, half expecting to see a grinning Boomer waiting for her, but it was just an empty vault after all, just steel shelves, a row of deep metal drawers at floor level, a chair, and desk. There were alcoves off it, but she could see into every one of them easily. Perhaps that was a security measure so that no bank employee could take anything without the security cameras seeing it.
The cams were dead. She knew that because she’d tried to get the monitors working from upstairs. Nobody would spot her down here, Gear or enemy. Now she had the measure of her hiding place, she felt more confident and laid the CBs down where she could grab them in a hurry. What she needed now was a weapon. All she had was a pen, and the chair was a box construction type with no handy legs she could break off and use as a club. The desk was too sturdy to break apart, but she marked that mentally as a possibility for later.
You can do better than this. Think.
Anya wandered around the vault, thinking—sharp edge, sharp point, heavy weight. Then she peered into one of the alcoves and saw the four bullion bars.
The bars were marked with their weight, the bank’s crest, and the gold’s purity. They were ten-kilo bricks, but they were long and narrow, and that made them more manageable than the smaller but chunkier bar she’d been using as a paperweight. She picked one up, surprised by the heft of it, and practiced a few swings that nearly ran away with her. It was a hell of a lot heavier than a Lancer rifle. And that was heavy enough.
Come on, Mom would have cracked a few skulls with this if she had to.
But Mom wouldn’t have been in a combat zone without a weapon.
Anya had once felt constantly in her mother’s shadow but now that shadow had become a shield, a source of comfort and example. Both hands free. Come on, find a bag. She put the bullion bar on the shelf and took off her pullover, knotting the arms to make straps and pulling her belt tight around the open end of the waist. It worked fine. It took the CBs with a little room to spare. Now she had both hands free to wield that bullion bar if she had to.
But first she had to check outside.
She stood next to the door with her eyes shut for at least fifteen minutes, straining to hear any sound outside. The silence meant nothing. The vault might have been soundproofed. She thought she could hear distant booming, but it was hard to work out if she was imagining it and it was her own pulse playing tricks on her.
But she couldn’t stay here. Nobody had any reason to look for her. She switched off the light so that she wasn’t an easy target when she finally got the door open, and was still working up to turning the wheel when she thought she heard gunfire in the distance, a firefight that went on for what felt like ages.
It could be anywhere. I can’t tell. But I have to get out.
She placed the gold bar between her feet and began turning the hand-wheel a little at a time, slow increments that probably wouldn’t get the attention of anyone outside. By the time she finished, she couldn’t hear gunfire any longer, and wasn’t sure if she’d actually heard it at all.
The door groaned a little as she inched it open and grabbed the bullion bar. There was no light outside. She held her breath and listened for movement before squeezing through the smallest gap she could open and edging along the wall.
Then her eyes began to adjust to the gloom. It wasn’t pitch black, not quite. She could see denser black patches that were the shoulder
-high pallets of banknotes. If anything was lurking there and waiting for her, it had detected her by now and there was no point standing still, so she lunged for the stack, then the next, and the next. She was moving toward where she thought the door had been.
Then a loud metallic clunk shattered the muffled silence.
She was right. The door was ahead of her. But someone was trying to get in. She ducked behind the next pallet, clutching the bar two-handed, ready to fracture the skull of the first grub bastard through that door or die trying.
That’s my girl. Anya.
Anya.
Someone was calling her name.
For a second, her hair stood on end. But it wasn’t her mother’s voice. It was a man’s.
It was Marcus.
“Anya? Anya! Let’s have some light, Jack. We’re not leaving until we’ve checked everywhere.” A brilliant white beam swept across the far wall, a bot’s tactical lamp. “Anya?”
She was safe now, but suddenly much more scared. Her bravado and her plans to brain a grub with the gold bar evaporated. “Marcus?”
She dropped the bar and stood up. The light shone in her face, blinding her for a moment, then it moved away and she could see Jack, one of the COG’s last prototype bots, hovering in the gloom like an oversized egg with his jointed steel arms folded back. Marcus was suddenly right in front of her. For a moment she saw him as a stranger might—big, grim, and lethal, not her lover at all.
“You okay?” he asked.
I was going to fight. I was ready to fight, Mom. Honestly, I was.
Anya found her legs shaking, a tremor that traveled up to her chest and throat, and she hated herself for not being two-fisted Helena Stroud, the officer who embraced death to save her Gears. Her voice shook. “They’re all dead. Everyone. I just ran and hid, Marcus—I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t stop them—”