“Sir! Over here!” It was Carlile, one of the combat engineers, driving a small ATV. “Get in.”
Hoffman scrambled into the cab. “That’s got to be the pipeline.”
“I don’t think so, sir.” Carlile drove at speed down the winding track into what looked like the tail end of a dust storm. “I heard explosions—detonations. Timed. Regular intervals. That’s the sort of shit I use, sir.”
The main road—the only road—through the pass was three hundred meters from the base of the ramp. As soon as Carlile steered right and joined the road, the scale of their problem became painfully obvious.
The pass was a narrow gorge between two big, rocky cliffs that were getting on for mountain-sized. That morning, it had been a deep-cut V shape.
Now it wasn’t. It was a wall of rock at least twenty-five meters high, and the road had vanished beneath it. Carlile stopped the ATV, put on his helmet, and jumped out with Hoffman. The avalanche debris was still clicking and moving as the rock settled.
Hoffman leveled his rifle and waited for shots. But it was a lot of trouble to go to for an ambush. Pad emerged from the side of the road and jogged over to them. The debris shifted as he passed, sending him sprinting to avoid further rock falls.
“The whole road’s blocked,” he said. “They brought the whole hillside down. From what we can see up top, it’s taken out a two-hundred-meter stretch, at least.”
“They?” Hoffman said. “You think it’s enemy action?”
“Bloody sure of it,” Carlile said. He went as if to climb up the artificial hill that had formed in less than a minute, but stopped as the rocks shifted again. “Look at the slope up there.”
Hoffman followed where the engineer pointed. He could see it now. The top of the cliff looked as if it had sheared off.
“Could be a fluke,” Carlile said, “but if I was going to do a spot of counter-mobility and pack explosives into a hillside to bring it down, that’s what it would probably look like afterward.”
It wasn’t imulsion vapor, then. It wasn’t bad luck or shitty timing. Hoffman began wondering how long it must have taken someone to pack those cliffs with enough explosive to change the map of Anvegad.
“Shit,” he said. “The bastards have cut us off from the rest of Kashkur.”
CHAPTER 9
Where’s the nearest land when you’re at sea? It’s always in the same position—right under your hull, buddy.
(CPO FRANK MULLER, NCOG, INSTRUCTING GEARS IN THE ART OF AVOIDING RUNNING YOUR VESSEL AGROUND)
TWO-KILOMETER ANCHORAGE, OFF VECTES NAVAL BASE: PRESENT DAY, 15 A.E.
“Wow,” Dom said, looking up from the Marlin. “That’s the weirdest damage I ever saw.”
The deserted cruiser rode at anchor, a sensible distance from the shore. Nobody knew what the hell had punched that hole in her. In daylight, the massive void in her bow and foredeck looked even less explainable to Dom than it had the previous night.
Marcus brought the Marlin alongside and cut the engine. He stood at the helm controls, studying the daylight slanting through the ruptured bulkhead. “So what can ram clean through a hull at that angle?”
“Had to be low in the water to slant up like that.” Dom secured the Marlin’s line to the cruiser’s ladder and reached for the handrail. “If I was guessing from scratch, I’d say she steered onto a reef in heavy seas and skewered herself on a freak chunk of rock, then the swell took her off again.”
“And then there’s the tree,” Marcus said.
“Look, I said guessing from scratch.”
“And the blood.”
“Okay. I get it.”
The name painted on the bow was Steady Eddie. If there’d been a home port named on there, it had been worn off or scraped clean long ago. Dom pulled himself onto the deck and powered up his Lancer’s chainsaw. The navy salvage crew hadn’t found anything on board last night, but that didn’t mean there was nothing here, because they’d just done a quick search of the main compartments in the dark with a flashlight. Dom couldn’t begin to piece this together. So he’d assume the very worst until proven wrong.
And he wasn’t afraid. Not even nervous. That struck him as weird, because any sane man needed a little spark of fear in an unknown situation, but he didn’t have it. It was like it just didn’t matter anymore, as long as it was him going in first and not Marcus.
So that’s where I’ve gotten to. Always had to have a purpose. Used to be the family. Then it was finding Maria. Now it’s all about keeping Marcus alive.
Dom decided he felt a lot better. He’d forgotten he’d thought he had nothing much left worth living for.
“I’d call this a motor schooner,” Marcus said. “This cost a lot of money once.”
She must have been a beautiful vessel in her day; she was a vintage design, more like a yacht. But now she was a scruffy heap, even without the recent damage. Her wheelhouse was rotting and her glass was cracked.
But she had a deck-mounted machine gun. Every fancy cruiser needed one, Dom thought. It looked in good condition. Whoever had owned her had clear priorities.
“Start from the bow and work back,” Dom said. He aimed down into the hole in the deck as he peered in. It was a huge well, nearly the entire width of the deck at that point, and the splintering flared upward. Steady Eddie had been struck from beneath the bow, not from above. Whatever had hit her had taken a chunk out of the chain locker as well. “Upper deck, then down below.”
“Aye, skipper,” Marcus muttered.
“You could live on a boat like this.”
“Or die on one.” Marcus studied the hole, then dropped his legs through and lowered himself to the deck below. “Yeah. Shit. Blood.”
“Literally shit?”
“No. Literal blood, though.”
Dom dropped down after him. The hole in the boat’s side matched the gap in the deck, as if whatever struck had gone in at forty degrees. If it had entered a meter lower, the boat would have sunk. The sun lit up the lower deck, revealing a bulkhead sprayed with blood.
“Now here’s the freaky detail,” Marcus said, prodding something with the tip of his chainsaw. “One for Baird to chew over.”
There really was a huge stalklike object embedded in the transverse bulkhead behind him.
It had lodged in the doorway of the compartment, at an angle from whatever had gone through the hull. Dom had never seen anything like it. But they were in more southerly waters now, and he didn’t know much about the kinds of trees growing around the islands. This one looked more like densely packed creeper instead of a conventional tree, as if the stems had coiled together to form a solid, gnarled mass. He decided it was probably tropical. It also looked as if it was long dead, although there were no signs of decay.
And it was as hard as concrete.
“Never seen wood like that,” he said.
Marcus tilted his head slightly as if to get a better look. “Me neither.”
If it hadn’t been for the sprays of blood, Dom would have settled for the explanation of a freak grounding in a storm, a million-to-one accident as the boat smashed down onto a sharp outcrop on an island.
Yeah, weird shit happens. But somehow I don’t think this is going to be it.
The chaotic state of the interior didn’t prove a thing. Clothing and equipment, including a harpoon with the shaft still attached to the line, were scattered everywhere. Dom worked his way aft. Although there was no more serious damage, there were bullet holes in the deck and halfway up the bulkheads, as if someone had been firing down at something and missed.
It looked like the damage that had been done to Harvest. But there were plenty of possible reasons for loosing off a few rounds below deck besides hauling up Lambent marine life.
Marcus checked another compartment and disappeared into the gloom.
“Well, they weren’t unarmed,” he said.
“What?”
“Look.” Marcus stepped back out and let Dom peer inside. The compartment
was stacked with boxes of ammo, plastic-wrapped rectangles that were probably explosive, and loops of wire. “Might be part of the resupply chain to the gangs back on Vectes.”
“Might just be routine precautions, given the freak show around these waters.”
Marcus shrugged. “Let’s check out the wheelhouse.”
They came up on deck at the stern hatch. When they looked over the side, a rainbow layer was drifting on the water surrounding the boat.
“She’s leaking fuel,” Marcus said. He opened the wheelhouse door and stepped in. “Nice comms fit. No expense spared.”
Dom poked around in the console and pulled out some dog-eared charts that had been folded carelessly. Then Marcus checked the radio and turned the dial; it was still switched on, just as the engines had been left running. The crew didn’t seem to have had the time to shut the ship down before abandoning her.
Marcus looked at the preset channel controls on the radio, picked up the mike, and pressed the first one.
“This is Steady Eddie calling,” he said. “Anyone out there looking for this boat?” He released the receive button and waited for a moment. “This is Steady Eddie. Position … just south of Vectes.”
Marcus paused again, frowning. Dom felt the hair on his nape bristle. Then the speaker above the windshield made a loud clunk.
“Who’s that?” a man’s voice demanded. “And where the hell are you? We’ve been searching for you for three days.”
“Jackpot,” Dom said quietly.
Marcus took a breath. “This is Sergeant Fenix of the Coalition of Ordered Governments.”
“Ahh, shit. You assholes again.”
“Let me guess. Lesser Island Free Trade Association?”
“Don’t dick with me. Where’s the crew? Have you murdered them yet? That’s what you usually do.”
Word got around, then. The Stranded bush telegraph had a bigger range than Dom had imagined.
“The boat’s wrecked,” Marcus said. “We found it. We want to know what happened to it, not claim salvage.”
The channel went silent for a few moments.
“Every time we lose a ship, it’s you bastards sinking them,” the voice said. “Cut the crap.”
“Not this time. You’ve got bigger problems out here.” Marcus waited, but there was no response. The channel was still open, though. Dom thought he could hear breathing. “Fair enough. You want to talk—you know where we are. Fenix out.”
Marcus put the mike back in its cradle and tried the ignition. The engine spluttered but then ran smoothly. He shut it down again.
“It’s safe to bring it in,” he said. “Then Baird can pick it over.”
“We need a biologist.” Dom climbed down into the Marlin and slipped the line. They headed back to the naval base. “Not an engineer.”
“Baird did okay with his grub theories. He was usually right.”
Dom wondered if Marcus would ever say that to Baird’s face. Baird still bitched about Marcus making squad sergeant instead of him, but Dom knew it was just griping for the sake of it. Baird was happy as long as everyone accepted that he was smarter than the rest of them. He hadn’t shown any signs of enjoying authority when he led the squad on that refugee camp patrol, so Dom wondered just how much he really wanted it. Baird looked out for Cole, and he even managed to show some concern for Bernie in small doses, but it was beyond him to care much about those outside his small circle. And he seemed to know it. Dom was convinced that Baird had been deliberately insubordinate to sabotage every promotion he’d had in the past, to make sure he was busted back down to corporal every time. He just needed the reassurance that people thought he was good enough to be a sergeant. He didn’t actually want the emotional responsibility of being one.
Marcus gave Dom the fixed stare. “What’s the joke?”
“What? Oh, Baird. I’d miss the cabaret if the asshole got himself killed.”
“First time I’ve seen you amused for some time.” Marcus sounded almost relieved. “He has his uses.”
An impatient Baird was waiting for them when they landed. “You didn’t bring me back samples? I could have gone with you.”
“Relax, they’re bringing the whole boat back,” Dom said. “It looked like it was running arms and ammo for the Stranded, so they must have been landing it here in inflatables or something.”
“Whoa, retribution. That gives me a warm glow. So is it a tree?”
“Maybe. Weirdest tree I ever saw, if it is. More like a giant vine—a stalk.”
“So we’re four vessels down in freaky circumstances in a couple of months.” Baird nodded, looking satisfied. “I say it’s glowies. Can’t all be down to shitty seamanship.”
Marcus didn’t look convinced. “But the last boat didn’t blow up. What’s the tree got to do with it?”
Baird shoved his goggles farther back on his head with that know-all expression. “I’ll work it out.”
It took Michaelson’s salvage team an hour to bring Steady Eddie into the naval base and berth her securely. By that time, Michaelson was pacing around waiting to board her. Trescu stood farther along the quay, talking to one of his submarine crew. Maybe he was getting edgy because Clement had gone out to do some active pinging and she hadn’t reported in yet.
Baird headed straight for the hole in the deck with a handsaw and came out five minutes later with a small chunk of the unidentified stalk. He held up the saw in disgust.
“That stuff’s like heavy-gauge steel,” he said. “Look what it’s done to my saw.” He jumped back onto the quay and handed the chunk to Trescu. “Sure you didn’t find any of this when your frigate went down? Or are you still too shy to talk about that?”
Trescu didn’t seem offended by Baird’s tone. Either he cut Baird a lot of slack for being useful, or he regarded him as an insect hardly worth reacting to.
“We found very little debris apart from what would have been on deck,” Trescu said.
“Are you sure you gave us the right search area?” Michaelson asked.
“Why would we lie to you?”
“Probably the same reason that we tend to assume we control everything. Unconscious cultural habit.” Only Michaelson could get away with saying that. It took a bit of charm. “Clement’s taking a look along this boat’s likely course, but it would be very helpful if we could pin down the last location for Nezark. Because Commander Garcia hasn’t found that geological formation your people reported.”
Trescu spread his arms. He really did look surprised and indignant. Dom believed him.
“Why would we invent such an insane excuse?” Trescu asked. “You don’t believe me? Very well. Take Zephyr. Take the crew who did the sonar search. Check for yourself. The best location we have is that sector we gave you.” He took a step toward Michaelson. “I have no explanation. I want one. Nezark wasn’t a disposable wreck, and her crew were not faceless strangers. We grieve too, Captain. The COG has no monopoly on civilized sentiment.”
Michaelson nodded politely. “Let’s look again, then,” he said. “Full sonar and aerial sweep of that whole section of the grid. With our best teams.”
“Do I get to go with Clement?” Baird asked. “Ravens—been there, done that.”
Dom took it as read that Baird was automatically included in best, and so did he. Michaelson slapped his shoulder.
“Of course, Corporal. I’m counting on you to find out what’s sinking these vessels before I lose my whole damn fleet.”
NCOG SUBMARINE CNS CLEMENT, AT LAST REPORTED POSITION OF GORASNAYAN FRIGATE NEZARK, NORTHWEST OF VECTES.
Baird had been allowed to tinker with Clement’s systems—encouraged to, even bribed to—but this was the first time he’d been out on a patrol.
He’d earned the right as far as he was concerned. He’d built a towed side-scan sonar for Clement by cannibalizing a fish-finder taken off one of the trawlers. If there was anything worth seeing down there, this baby could image it clearly enough to see the frigging whiskers on
barnacles.
But he didn’t want to look too excited. A guy needed to preserve some dignity. He squeezed into the torpedo compartment and listened to the rumbling, humming, and whining all around him. She was running on batteries now, two hundred meters below the surface. It was the most perfect machine he could imagine.
“Baby, you’re lookin’ radiant,” Cole said. He kept hitting his head on the deckhead pipework. He wasn’t a submarine-sized guy. “That imulsion rig’s gonna know you’ve been cheatin’ on her with a sub.”
“You know me. I’m shallow. I go for looks every time.”
“Well, now it’s dived, it don’t make me puke like most ships do, but I ain’t gonna get serious with this lady anytime soon.”
“Cole, you know what this is? Forget the water. This is as near as we get to a spaceship. The most complicated weapons platform ever built. Even counting the Hammer of Dawn. Operating under the sea is harsher than orbit, man.”
Cole just looked at him straight-faced for a moment, then burst into raucous laughter. “When they gonna make a full-size one?”
Baird didn’t find submarines claustrophobic. They were just cramped, no worse than some of the spaces ashore that he’d had to live in. Everything was made to fit. Things stowed away or folded back into bulkheads or doubled up as something else. It was like heavily weaponized camping. Yes, he loved it. He even loved that weird smell.
In the control room, things were even more cozy. Garcia stood hunched over the sonar operator, studying the screen with one of the Gorasni crew, Teodor, while another Gorasni stared at the charts with apparent disbelief. They were doing a parallel search of the seabed in a fifteen-kilometer square from the position in Nezark’s last radio message.
“You sure?” Garcia asked Teodor.
“Sure. Your chart is wrong. Your position is wrong. Crappy.”