And then voices erupted in his earpiece, and he knew he wasn’t crazy.
“Oh God, oh God, oh God—”
“Shit, they’re here.”
“Where are you? Where the fuck are you?”
“Fire!”
The screaming and yelling lasted five chaotic seconds before the ground under him shook and he started running. He bolted back into the city, not even thinking, letting his reflexes take him. The pavement ahead collapsed into a long narrow trench like opening a zipper, and he jumped clear, but the subsidence was streaking away from him, sucking down concrete and paving slabs as it made for the center of the Port Farrall camp. He could hear screaming already. The civilians were packed into the southern part of the abandoned port, and they knew as well as any Gear what was happening.
The grubs were back.
And all he wanted to do was get at them the moment they broke through the surface. He couldn’t see them. There was no more radio traffic from the underground stores, so he guessed that was where they’d entered; they’d come in under the city using tunnels obligingly dug for them by humans years before. It didn’t matter that these were just a handful left out of a vast army. They could still kill. They’d effectively been let loose in a cage full of humans, at a time when humans were an endangered species.
I wanted to take a crack at them one last time, didn’t I?
Tell me I didn’t make it happen somehow.
“Control, Santiago here—I’m following the tunnel collapse. You got any sightings?”
“They’re emerging around the communal buildings. Food center, medical stations, latrines. All squads, engage.”
“How many? I said, how many?”
Dom lost track of the welter of voices. He could pick out Mathieson, and then he heard Marcus calling for fire support. A battle had erupted in the center of town. Dom could see the flashes of light and hear the explosions. He was now running against a tide of civvies heading down the street toward him, women carrying kids bundled in just their nightclothes, some folks clutching the grab bags they’d been so thoroughly drilled to snatch and run with when disaster struck. It was blind flight; Dom was still looking for something to kill. The civvies could have been running into more grubs, but he had no way of knowing or stopping them. He just needed to hook up with his squad.
Where’s Anya? Oh shit. Did she make it back to CIC?
Thunder rumbled ahead. He saw what he thought was billowing smoke, but it was dust; he inhaled it as he ran on, dodging lumps of masonry in the road. A building had collapsed. By the time he got out of the cloud of debris, he’d reached the city square where the food center had been set up, and then he found his grubs.
The center was always busy. It took all day to serve meals and allocate rations, so there were plenty of people pinned down there. Bernie and Baird were easy to pick out among the Gears firing from cover because they never wore helmets, but Dom couldn’t see Marcus or Cole. He would have tried to raise Anya on the radio, but that wasn’t what his body was telling him he had to do, and he ended up flat against the nearest wall, taking shots from the cover of the corner of a derelict bank.
A couple of dozen drones sprayed the food center with gunfire as civvies tried to escape or run back inside. A Berserker lurched around the square in a killing frenzy; the chain from her harness flailed wildy. She’d probably tracked the human scent, because that was all the female grubs were good for—mindless, savage bitches, even by grub standards. Dom waited for her to swing around, blocking him from the main direction of the drones’ fire, and then ran for Baird’s position.
The Berserker stopped and turned to focus on Dom.
Oh shit…
Now he’d find out how many reloads it would take to drop her. He was caught in the open. Suddenly he didn’t care.
So what? So what? I’m going to kill them all, and if I take out a female, I stop her from dropping any more litters.
Dom ran at her, firing with some half-assed idea that he could hit her underbelly, and knew he was going to die doing it. At that point, life became perfectly clear, sane, the calm eye of the storm. He knew what he had to do, and there was no need to worry about what he would have to live with afterward when the adrenaline stopped pumping.
There wouldn’t be an afterward.
The Berserker closed the gap. Dom could smell her. He was sure he wasn’t imagining how bad grubs smelled even when they weren’t dead.
And I’ll die, and so will you, bitch.
He sidestepped to reload, weirdly relaxed and easy. Someone yelled at him and he caught the word asshole, but he took no notice until a Centaur roared past on his right. The next thing he knew, he’d been slammed flat on his back with a weight across him, winded, and a massive explosion showered him with wet debris. The firefight carried on. He tried to get up. Grenade rounds flashed over him.
“Are you fucking insane?” It was Marcus. He pinned Dom to the ground. “Stay down!”
Huge tires passed so close to Dom’s head that he could smell them, as pungent as the stink of the Berserker, a choking stench of rubber that caught the back of his throat. He struggled to turn his head to see what was happening. The tanks had moved in to finish the grubs.
Shit.
“Clear! Suck on that, assholes.” That was Cole, a few meters away. “Yeah, we’re done, baby. Anyone got a flamethrower? Let’s clean the drains …”
Marcus got up and looked down at Dom for a moment before giving him a hand up. Dom was lobbed back into reality, his detachment suddenly gone, leaving him with a pounding heart and ragged breath.
Oh shit. I’m crazy.
“Dom, don’t do this.” Marcus grabbed his shoulder one-handed as if he was going to shake some sense into him. “You’re going to get through it. There’s no point beating these assholes if you throw your life away.”
Dom could decode Marcus well enough by now. Guilt crashed in on him again, but this time it wasn’t about Maria. He tried to be his old self, as much for his own reassurance as for Marcus.
“Sorry, man. I just get mad.”
Marcus let go of his shoulder, then walked from grub to grub as if he was tallying the corpses, nodding. “I know. Just remember that a Centaur round up the ass is going to ruin your day, and mine.”
The Centaur gunner leaned out of the tank’s top hatch and called down to them. She had a good vantage point way up there.
“There’s not many. I make it less than forty.” She pushed back her goggles and pressed her earpiece, listening for a moment. “Yeah, small raiding party. We’re going to keep getting stragglers, but at least they’re down to their womenfolk now.”
“Small by the old standards,” Marcus said. “But not when they get loose among civvies.”
Dom watched casualties being carried away. “They’ve got to stop sometime. The numbers are dropping.”
A woman with bright red curly hair walked up to him carrying a little boy in her arms, maybe four or five years old. Dom thought she was just going to ask him for help until she got closer and he realized that the kid was dead. The boy’s head lolled right back; there was a clean entry wound in the upper chest. Dead kids were the hardest thing Dom had to cope with.
“We were supposed to be safe here,” the woman said, completely dry-eyed but shaking with shock. “You were supposed to keep us safe, you bastards. What am I going to tell his father?”
She might as well have backhanded Dom across the face. It felt like she had, and he wanted to tell her he knew exactly what it felt like to lose your kids, but he didn’t even know where to start. The woman walked off, straight into the arms of one of the civilian medical team, and Dom teetered on the edge between tearful grief and complete shutdown. Then he blanked the whole thing, because he had to. Marcus steered him back toward the barracks.
They were still passing civilians with bags. They were heading out, or at least it looked like it. Marcus stopped a middle-aged man with two teenage boys as they passed.
“It’s over,” Marcus said. “You can go home now.”
“Home, my ass,” the man said. “There’s no home anymore. We’re going to find the nearest Stranded community. They seem to survive okay.”
Dom watched them disappear down the road. They weren’t alone; he passed a few dozen on the walk back to the old school. Whatever had held people together in Jacinto was starting to come unraveled.
“Vote of no confidence,” Marcus muttered. “Over to you, Mr. Chairman …”
Dom wasn’t sure that even Prescott’s spin skills could make people feel good about Port Farrall. Like a car wreck, you were relieved to stagger out alive, but then you realized you were hurt and a long way from home with no way of getting back.
This was the core of what was left of humankind, and there was no rescue service on the way.
“Yeah, shit,” said Dom.
CHAPTER 6
Don’t keep things from me, Mr. Chairman. Not even opinions. I can’t do my job if you don’t level with me. There aren’t enough of us left to dick around with this need-to-know bullshit any longer.
(VICTOR HOFFMAN TO RICHARD PRESCOTT, DURING A FRANK DISCUSSION AT PORT FARRALL.)
THE HOFFMANS’ APARTMENT, JACINTO, FOURTEEN YEARS AGO, APPROXIMATELY ONE WEEK TO HAMMER DEPLOYMENT.
“Are you awake, Victor?”
Sleep was getting hard to come by since Prescott had penciled in the end of the world. Hoffman knew that lying awake with his eyes open invited conversation, and discussing his troubles with his wife was the very last thing he could do now.
His head buzzed from lack of sleep and his mouth tasted of metal. “What time is it?”
“Five o’clock,” she said. “You told me to make sure you got up.”
“So I did. Thank you.”
Margaret was a meticulous woman, and he respected that. She was also a lawyer. Her capacity for spotting a man evading cross-examination was unrivaled.
“Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?” she asked.
Hoffman padded over to the shower, wondering how much longer there’d be running water in the city. “Well, there’s the war, it’s bad, and we’re running out of body bags. That’s about it, really.”
“Don’t patronize me. We’ve been married nearly twenty years, and it’s all been war except for six weeks. Something’s changed.”
Hoffman turned down the water temperature to cool. “We’re going under. But you know that.”
“You’re doing field showering again, Victor.”
“What?”
“You do this every time you’re about to go on frontline duty.”
Margaret knew him far too well. Hoffman cut short his showers and ran the water colder to prepare himself for the basic facilities he’d get in the field—and he’d been lucky to get a shower at all most of the time. But he hadn’t realized he was doing it again now. His subconscious had told him he was going to pick up a rifle and do the job for real again.
Shit.
He switched off the water and wiped the condensation off the shower screen to check the clock on the wall: three and a half minutes. And the fact that I can tell that means I checked the time before I went in. He was more strung out than he thought.
“It’s gone beyond bad, hasn’t it?” Margaret said.
At least he didn’t have to lie about that. Maybe it was time he started getting her used to what was going to happen, and why. “It’s as bad as it gets. They’re going to overrun us sooner or later.”
She stood there looking at him in her bathrobe, arms folded, head slightly on one side as if she was expecting him to break down and confess in front of a jury. How the hell did he tell her that most of Sera would be a smoking wasteland in a week or two? How did he not tell her?
She’d be safe in Jacinto. She’d be fine, so it was okay for him not to tell her. The law said he couldn’t, anyway. He carried the burden of being privy to state secrets.
“Damn,” she said quietly. “Is this a case of saving the proverbial last round for yourself?”
“With luck, it won’t come to that.” Luck, and Adam Fenix. “But they’re a loathsome enemy, and I would not care to be taken prisoner, honey.”
“They don’t take prisoners, you said.”
Hoffman ran the razor over his scalp. “That may be their only virtue.”
“How long?”
“What?”
“How long have we got, do you think?”
Hoffman knew to within a few days when most of urban Sera would probably cease to exist. Operational security was just an excuse for not telling her that he’d be responsible for it.
She’d hate him for it.
It’s Prescott’s decision. Why am I assuming responsibility?
And if I wanted to stop the detonation … could I?
They’d do it with him or without him, command key or not. But it needed doing. He could see no other option. Maybe it didn’t matter who killed you in the end, just how quickly it was over.
“I’m thinking in terms of weeks,” he said.
Margaret didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “Is there nothing we can use against them? Didn’t we have all those chemical stockpiles? The satellite lasers?”
She was a smart woman. She asked logical questions.
“They’re in our cities,” Hoffman said carefully. “It’s not like they’re behind their own borders.”
Hoffman wasn’t sure if he was hoping she would guess the truth to spare him the eventual revelation, if he was encouraging her to see that weapons of mass destruction and 90 percent casualties made sense, or if he was just lying by omission.
“I’m going to ask you something that might offend you,” she said.
Here we go. No, she couldn’t possibly guess the full plan. Not even Margaret’s razor mind could extrapolate like that. “Ask away.”
“If it comes to it… I wasn’t joking about the last round. If it happens that way, if everything goes to hell, will you do it for me? Shoot me? Because I saw that news report from Bonbourg, and … I refuse to let them do that to me.”
It was one thing knowing that war was brutal, and another actually seeing the detail of an enemy that didn’t seem to want anything else but to cause suffering.
“Good grief, woman, you mustn’t think that way.”
“Victor, I have to know.”
“Okay. Yes. I promise.” Would I? Would I know when the situation was that bad? Would I regret it later? “I wouldn’t let anything like that happen to you.”
She looked relieved. He’d underestimated how much the Locust advance scared her. He thought she was the last person on Sera who’d let herself be intimidated, and that she’d greet those grub bastards at the gates by slapping a subpoena on them. That was why he’d married her: she didn’t take shit from anyone.
“Thank you.” Damn, how many women were happier for knowing their old man could give them instant oblivion with one round? It wasn’t the best of marriages, but he respected her. “You never pull your punches with me, Victor. That’s what first appealed, you know? No prevarication. No airs and graces. No lies.”
It stung, like ironic compliments always did. “As long as it wasn’t my flowing mane of hair.”
Hoffman chewed over the comment all the way to the House of Sovereigns. That had been his opening to tell her, to prove he was the plain-talking man she always thought he was, but he hadn’t. Everything from now on would compound the deceit. And despite a lifetime in the military, where the ability to keep your mouth shut was both demanded and necessary, this was the ultimate deception.
Margaret had family in Corren, in the far south of Tyrus. That was going to become an issue all too soon.
Salaman was already in Prescott’s office when the secretary showed Hoffman in, and the number of empty coffee cups on the chart table said he’d been there for a few hours. Prescott was standing at his desk, one hand in his pocket, phone to his ear.
“Sorry, Professor … No, what other data do you
need? … Well, that’s the update … No, I’m okay with that… Yes, we’ll still be here.”
Prescott laid the phone slowly back on its cradle and wandered over to the chart table.
“Fenix is almost ready to go,” he said. “From tomorrow, he says. He’s made allowances for programming new targets on the fly if need be.”
“So when he gives the word, you’re making the announcement, sir.” Salaman looked as bad as Hoffman felt. His face was waxy, very pale, and he kept pressing his fist to his chest as if he had bad heartburn. Everyone’s digestion was suffering now. “Still three days?”
“Yes. The longer the delay, the higher the chance of the Locust working out what’s coming.”
Hoffman traced the main cross-border highways into Tyrus on the chart with his fingertip. There were no civilian flights now; it was too risky for airlines, and they were struggling to keep running anyway. That meant vehicles, trains, and pedestrian traffic only. Maybe some would come into Ephyra via the port of Jacinto.
He found himself calculating how far anyone would get in three days.
If they can get a ride. If they can get a ticket. If they find a ship.
Oh, shit…
“So when do we start pulling back units?” Hoffman asked. “We can’t expect them to make a run for it with the refugees.”
Salaman didn’t look up from the chart. “That’s going to need some careful handling. If we’re not giving civilians more than three days’ notice, to maintain some element of surprise, then sudden troop withdrawals are going to clue in the grubs even more effectively.”
A man never knew where he drew the line until it was tested. Hoffman discovered his.
“If you’re suggesting that we leave Gears stranded, General, then serious misgivings hardly begins to cover it.” He wondered if he was looking for an excuse to get out of the general quandary. No, it pissed him off to his very core. “It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve sacrificed units for intelligence purposes, but this is an army that’s given more than everything it has.” So Gears are more worthy than civilians? Wrong argument to sway this guy. “And what’s the point of decimating enemy numbers if we reduce our own at the same time? We’re already hopelessly outnumbered. Even if we burn every Seran city to the ground, we won’t kill all the grubs. We need an army to crush what’s left when the smoke clears.”