Okay, not a Raven, but…
A voice he didn’t know came over his radio. “Now, you know how women drivers are, honey, so I suggest you boys move aside. Let Ailsa solve your problem.”
“We hear you, Ailsa. And we’re movin’.”
Cole had no idea what the tank was going to do. Rounds were pinging off it from across the river like flies hitting a bug zapper, so Foxtrot’s new friend was probably going to move in and give them cover while they tried to reach Baird. The Mammoth groaned over the incline and thudded down the bank. It took out the intact section of the grub bridge right away, setting off the charges and just ignoring the explosion like it was an annoying fart.
Man, that was impressive. Cole gaped for a moment.
“Holy shit on a bike,” Dickson said. “But I bet she can’t park that thing.”
“She’s going to sink,” said Alonzo.
“It’s a bridge layer. It does rivers.”
The Mammoth had definitely distracted the grubs. Cole took the opportunity to move down the bank and get level with Baird’s raft of splinters and high explosives. The Mammoth suddenly paid out a couple of sections of its bridge and spanned the river right opposite the grubs, then crossed and just kept going. The grubs, dumb assholes, maintained fire and tried to fall back, but the tank was on the far bank now and moving a lot faster than they expected. It rolled right over them.
“Man… that’s messy,” Dickson said.
Ailsa seemed to be backing up a bit to make sure she’d got them all. “Can you see any more grubs, boys?” she asked.
“In one piece? No, ma’am.”
“Good. I’m goin’ to come back now. You got someone in the water?”
“See the raft?”
“I’m relyin’ on cameras, honey. You’re goin’ to have to help me out.”
It took a while to maneuver, but the Mammoth returned to the bank, headed downstream, and bridged the river again to trap the raft with Baird still on it. Cole and Alonzo managed to get onto the raft and manhandle him up onto the Mammoth’s hull.
“Hey, what is this?” he mumbled. His hair was sticky with blood. “Ooh—this is interesting…”
“He’s concussed,” Alonzo said. “At last. We finally found a way to stop him bitching.”
Ailsa opened up the tank’s main hatch and watched Alonzo checking Baird over. She was—just as she sounded— a Stranded lady with an Operation Lifeboat badge on her overalls, maybe late thirties, all blue-black hair she probably wasn’t born with and a real nice smile. Baird had just had his ass saved by a Stranded bum, and a female one at that. Cole wished Baird had been alert enough to savor the irony. He was none too keen on having ladies in the army.
“You boys need a ride home?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Dickson said, obviously not thinking too carefully. “The Stranded stripped our Packhorse, the assholes.”
“Well,” said Ailsa, “we better go pick up what’s left before the assholes take the rest, right?”
Cole elbowed him. “No offense, ma’am. We’re just kinda strung out.”
“Time’s gonna come,” Ailsa said, “when you folks are gonna be just like us, except we’ll have a head start on you.”
Cole didn’t spend much time talking to Stranded beyond yelling at them to get clear of this place or that, but when he did they made an awful lot of sense. Somehow they’d survived everything the COG and the grubs could throw at them without an army or any fancy technology, and they just seemed to be getting tougher and smarter by the day.
“That’s a thought, ma’am,” he said.
“Survival of the fittest.” Ailsa hummed happily to herself. “Hell, we’ll still be here long after you’ve gone.”
“Where are we?” Baird asked.
“Eatin’ humble pie, baby,” Cole murmured, knowing he’d remember that. “Eatin’ humble pie.”
CHAPTER 21
SITREP #475B
Extent of contaminated zones and stalk ingress at 0001/BL/10/15
CURRENT BOUNDARY OF CZ: 22 km approx. north of VNB, 30km west.
RATE OF SPREAD: Currently no activity. Irregular in shape and rate.
FORECAST: suspended. Action: Daily monitoring to continue. Evacuation contingency team to remain on one-hour alert.
WEEKLY RECON TASKING: KR-239 to East Tyran seaboard; KR-15 to SW Pelles; KR-80 to Central Massif.
(Prepared by: Major G. Gettner and R. Sharle)
KR-239 ON RECONNAISSANCE SORTIE TO PORT FARRALL: APPROXIMATELY THREE MONTHS AFTER PRESCOTT’S DEPARTURE, BLOOM, 15 A.E.
“Well, there’s still somewhere left to park the dinghies,” Sorotki said. “But that’s about it. Do you even want to land, sir?”
“We can see enough from here.” Hoffman leaned out of the Raven’s door. He didn’t look like a man who’d just been vindicated. “At least I called that one right. Goddamn. What’s left?”
Trescu took no pleasure in watching the man’s hopes dashed. Merrenat Naval Base and Port Farrall, one single sprawl fanning out from the docks, was now a forest of stalks. Its ship basins and jetties were crumbling where the huge growths had broken up the concrete. Hoffman sat back in his seat and studied his map with Marcus Fenix, shaking his head occasionally.
This place had been the COG’s best hope for relocating as a single community. They’d have to think again. Sharle and Parry consulted their own chart.
“It was fine last month,” Sorotki said. “Which just goes to show. Plan B, anyone?”
“Look, we’re back to the dispersal scenario.” Sharle was right, but nobody wanted him to be. “I’ve scoped out every variation on it for you, so it’s your call. Just remember that if you disperse across more than fifteen settlements, we won’t have enough core skills to share between them. The tough decisions are going to be who gets told to go where. You’re going to have to break up a lot of teams.”
Hoffman passed the map to Trescu. “And the command team.”
“Well, we have to return to Gorasnaya. Whatever state it’s in.” Trescu couldn’t imagine going anywhere else. It was a lottery. Any place on Sera probably stood the same chance of coming under Lambent attack. “And if any of your people wish to come too, it would be ungrateful of me not to extend the same welcome to them as you did to us.”
“I’ll assume that’s not sarcasm.”
“Absolutely not.”
Everyone had a depressingly accurate picture of the evacuation sites, pieced together sortie by sortie over the weeks. The map on Trescu’s lap was covered with pencil marks that told the story of dwindling options. Towns had been circled and then crossed out: too far from the sea, too far from rivers, too hot and arid for crops, too cold in winter for humans, no infrastructure left, already occupied by Stranded—or already infested by stalks. Those that remained possibilities were either spread along the Tyran coast or hundreds of kilometers inland, isolated and hard to reach.
But it would always have been this way. Even without the Lambent. The entire world has to be rebuilt. Technology has to be reinvented. Whatever happens, none of us will live to see a Sera anything like the one we’ve lost.
“You’re going to need a decent warship to replace Nezark, then,” Hoffman said. “We’d better talk to Quentin when we get back. Sorotki, how are we doing for fuel?”
“We can swing past Gerrenhalt and Vonner Bay before we need to refuel.”
“Top of my list,” Sharle said.
Fenix turned his head slowly and looked at Hoffman. Trescu didn’t recognize either name. Who noticed or cared what happened to COG cities when Gorasnaya’s were being laid waste? They seemed to have some significance for those two, though.
“Good idea,” Hoffman said quietly.
The Raven hugged the coastline heading south. Trescu simply watched with interest, thinking of Branascu. It was only when Sergeant Parry began to look uneasy, gaze darting between his chart and the terrain below, that it occurred to Trescu where the flight path would take them.
They’d pass over Ja
cinto, or whatever was left of it.
Mitchell stuck his head into the crew bay. “Okay, gents, we’re ten klicks from Jacinto,” he said. “What do you want to do?”
“Just grab some images, Mitchell,” Hoffman said. “We know there’s no infrastructure left.”
There was a time when Trescu would have cracked open a fine vintage to celebrate seeing the COG capital destroyed. His father’s ambition was to roll through the streets with an armored division and pull down the COG flag from the House of Sovereigns. But you didn’t need to, Papa. They did it themselves. The coast below was dotted with town after town of buildings that looked as if they’d been cut off at the foundations with a scythe. Where their walls had survived, not one seemed to have a roof left. From time to time Trescu saw the occasional gray husk of a stalk, sometimes in the deserted streets, sometimes on the shore or a little way out to sea. He leaned out as the Raven banked, and saw a long spit of land curved around a huge natural harbor, almost on the scale of a volcanic caldera.
He was a navy man. He knew his charts. He knew what was coming, but it still made his stomach knot.
“Dear God Almighty,” Hoffman said. He put his hand to his mouth as he looked down. “Dear God.”
The vast harbor was Jacinto. The city was gone. It was absolutely gone. Nothing broke the surface of the water. Along the new shoreline, rail tracks dangled in midair and bridges went nowhere. A fine old spire leaned at a precarious angle over the water, a roost for red-beaked gulls that scattered like confetti when the Raven passed.
“Yeah, that did the job,” Fenix muttered. He was a hard man to read, but Trescu was betting on dismay. “One Lambent Brumak.”
Trescu had to ask. “You detonated it.”
“It was all we had left.”
“I mean you detonated it.” Trescu needed to know for his own peace of mind. “Personally.”
Fenix gave him that slow stare. “Yeah. With the Hammer.”
“Actually,” Sorotki said, “it was me, Mitchell, Baird, and Dom too. Plus Stroud doing the backroom work. Just for the record. In case Marcus gets pilloried in years to come as the guy who took Jacinto off the map.”
“Maybe that’s my inheritance,” Fenix said, and went back to studying his chart.
Trescu assumed it was a reference to his father. For such a private man, Fenix sometimes provided surprisingly raw glimpses of his mind. Hoffman frowned briefly to himself as if it were a coded message only he understood.
There was a whole history between them that Trescu knew he might never unpick, but one thing was clear: when events changed the course of the war, that same small group was usually involved somehow. The key decisions that shaped the future of the COG, and with it the fate of Sera, had long been in the hands of a very small and powerful patrician clique such as the Fenixes and the Prescotts, aided by a few loyal foot soldiers. Trescu came from a clique too, generations of senior commanders. There was an odd sense of inevitability about finding himself in this circle.
Mitchell, braced against the edge of the open door, showed no emotion as he took photographs. The COG could not only think the unthinkable. It was also willing to do it, even to itself. And then it recorded it.
Trescu felt a pang of something that wasn’t quite fear, or even mistrust, but a reflex reminding him that his new allies would have finished off Gorasnaya without a second thought, and that he should never forget that.
And I would have finished them off, too. I promised my father I would. But here I am, thinking only in terms of individuals I would rather see survive than die.
The harbor that had been Jacinto vanished behind them. There were still stretches of unspoiled coastline between the ruined towns, which Trescu noted as somewhere to consider retreating with tents if things went from bad to worse. After half an hour, he began to see the cracked remains of paved roads again. It was hard to tell how much damage had been done by the Locust and how much by the Hammer of Dawn.
“Vonner Bay,” Sorotki said.
Sharle pointed. “And there’s Corren.”
“I’m going to set down. Eyes peeled, folks. Might be a popular Stranded beach resort by now.”
Trescu couldn’t see any smoke or other signs of habitation. When the Raven set down on the coast road, Mitchell took up position on the door gun and Fenix jumped down first. It was fascinating to watch Hoffman and Parry suddenly turn into frontline Gears again, scanning for sniper positions with their Lancers ready.
Sharle checked his handgun casually. “I think I still remember how to use this.” He winked at Trescu. “Navy.”
Trescu checked the magazine on his assault rifle and nodded. “Navy.”
Vonner Bay was a small town that looked as if it had escaped a direct Hammer of Dawn strike, but had been caught by the firestorm. Trescu was all too familiar with the aftermath. The intense heat turned paved areas into something that looked like badly fired ceramics, and there was always a vast crater left at the point where the lasers converged on the ground. Vonner Bay looked as if it had simply burned, and the buildings were mostly intact shells whose windows and doors had vanished. Parry walked down the center of the road, casting around on the ground for something. He stopped and took out his knife.
“Give me a hand.” He’d found a manhole cover. He raised it a fraction with the blade to get his fingers underneath and lifted it with Fenix. “Let’s see what’s left.”
He peered down the hole. Hoffman was looking out across the water at the remains of a city that hadn’t fared quite as well. The tower blocks were just jagged stumps and the few tall buildings that hadn’t been leveled stood at impossible angles, as if the ground beneath them had tipped up at 45 degrees. The colonel stared at it for a long time.
Sharle did a little embarrassed nod. “Corren,” he whispered. “He lost his wife and sister-in-law there during the Hammer assault. Or somewhere on the way back from there. I can’t remember if they ever found their car or not, but it’s not the kind of thing I’d want to ask him.”
Even to themselves. Trescu marveled at the COG sometimes, but for all the wrong reasons. Could I have done that to Ilina, even for my nation’s survival? For Sera’s? What are you left with in the end?
Hoffman looked down at his boots for a moment and then wandered back toward Sharle.
“I wonder what happened to Pad Salton,” he said, more to himself than to Sharle. It didn’t look as if Sharle knew who he was referring to or why the view of Corren had triggered the memory. “Well, what’s down there, Staff?”
Parry straightened up. “Plenty of cabling, sir. Even if it’s not connected to anything, it’ll come in handy.”
“Takes a lot of people to strip every town, Royston,” Hoffman said, looking almost satisfied. “Sera ran out of people fast. We’ll keep finding all kinds of useful shit, wherever we go.”
“A larger crude carrier,” Trescu said. “That would be useful. Even if every blade of grass on Vectes is poisoned, we might still be able to extract imulsion.”
Hoffman turned, frowning. “You’re not seriously suggesting anyone would stay there, even for short periods.”
“It’s in the contingency plan,” Sharle muttered. “It’s all in the plan.”
“It would be very much like living on a deep-sea drilling platform,” Trescu said. And it would be worth some sacrifice. “If we were forced to leave, we might still be able to continue extracting fuel for some time.”
A flock of gulls rose suddenly above the roof of a derelict store. Fenix spun around. Trescu’s immediate thought was of stalks, but he couldn’t hear anything or feel any tremors, and there were still birds sitting on the road sign at the other end of the street.
Stranded, maybe. They can’t miss us. They spot one Raven, and they pass on the word.
“I’ll check that out,” Fenix said. “Sorotki, you see anything?”
“Negative, Marcus.”
Fenix moved to the end of the road, rifle raised, and edged around the corner. Hoffman motion
ed Sharle and Parry to wait while he followed him. Trescu decided that didn’t apply to him. But before he could reach the corner, Fenix lowered his rifle, stepped out slowly into the road, and stood staring at something. He held his hand up to Hoffman in a take-it-easy gesture. The colonel joined him. The two of them just stood there, looking up the road.
Whatever it was had riveted them. Trescu crept up to the end of the building and peered around the shattered brick wall.
It was a stag in full antler. The animal stared back at them for a while, then lowered its head and went on grazing along the overgrown grass verges, moving back up the road toward the hills.
“Goddamn,” Hoffman said. “Doesn’t look like he’s been bothered by humans before.”
Fenix stood watching the stag for some time after Hoffman had walked away. If that had been Sergeant Mataki, she would have been sizing up the animal for meat and hide. There was no telling what Fenix was thinking. He looked almost wistful.
“You coming, Fenix?” Hoffman called. “We’ve got some ground to cover.”
Fenix turned and walked after him. “Sera’s still alive,” he said as he passed Trescu. Trescu wasn’t sure if it was a conversation or just thinking aloud. “So we can still save it.”
“Perhaps we can,” Trescu said, but the conversation ended there.
They spent the next hour wandering from street to street, identifying buildings for immediate occupation and checking for connected plumbing and other utilities. It was going to be a more primitive existence than Vectes, but the Stranded thrived in far worse conditions elsewhere.
“We could house a couple of thousand people here,” Sharle said. “What do you think, Len?”
Parry nodded. “Works for me.”
Trescu almost offered an opinion, but checked himself. This isn’t my concern. I have to focus on Gorasnaya. And if we disperse—when we disperse—I’ll probably never see any of these people again.
He hadn’t realized what a depressing thought that would be.
Sorotki did a couple of circuits over the town for Mitchell to grab more images before turning for Gerrenhalt. Trescu checked his watch and estimated they had about two hours left before they’d need to return to the ship to refuel. Perhaps there’d be time to visit Branascu tomorrow after all.