“Yeah, you’re too sleepy to go out now.” He stroked her hair. “Maybe the doc needs to look at your dose again.”
“Have a nap if you feel like it,” Marcus said. “You don’t have to entertain me. We’ll wake you up when dinner’s ready.”
Maria leaned back in the chair and fell asleep in minutes. Dom crept over to her to check, listening to her breathing; yes, she was definitely out of it.
Marcus got up slowly and gestured to the kitchen.
“It’s just a year,” Dom said, closing the door behind him. “I’m pushing her too fast.”
“Anything I can do. Just say.”
“Yeah.”
“And stop blaming yourself.”
“She’s the one with the blame problem. She’s still saying that if she hadn’t sent the kids to her folks’ for the day, they’d be alive now. She thinks she let the grubs get them.”
“Shit, Dom …” It wasn’t as if Marcus hadn’t heard it before. But it always seemed to upset him to be reminded of it, and he looked as if he was about to offer some insight. “Ah, forget it. Explaining to someone why they’re not to blame doesn’t actually help. They have to work it out for themselves.”
Dom assumed it was all about Marcus’s mother. When she went missing, he was sure that Marcus felt responsible, in that weird way that anxious kids often did.
“I need you to see something,” Dom said. “I feel bad showing you, but I have to show someone.” He beckoned Marcus to follow him, and led him upstairs to the bedrooms. “I don’t even know why I’m doing this, but… maybe it’ll make more sense to you next time I come out with some crazy shit or other.”
Dom opened the door of Sylvia’s room. Marcus just peered inside, going no further than the doorway.
So it hits him that way, too.
Nothing had been changed since the day that Sylvia—two years old, born the night Dom had taken part in the raid on Aspho Point—had been collected by her grandparents for a day out. Her stuffed toys were still on the windowsill, minus the green striped caterpillar she insisted on taking everywhere.
All her bedding, the clothes in the drawers, even the clothes in the laundry basket hadn’t been moved. Maria just cleaned around it all.
Marcus drew a deep breath and stepped back. He might have said shit to himself. Dom wanted him to understand what haunted him when he tried to sleep. If Marcus couldn’t make sense of it, then nobody could. Dom shut the door and then opened Benedicto’s room.
Marcus leaned against the door frame as if he expected the paint to be wet, and just scanned the room again, halted at that invisible barrier. It was hard not to follow his eyes; they were almost unnaturally pale blue, so they always drew Dom’s focus. Marcus started blinking a lot. Even if he’d been the chatty kind, he probably wouldn’t have had much to say about this. He drew back after a minute or so and wandered across to the window on the landing.
If he was anything like Dom, then it would have been the tiny pair of thrashball boots on the bed that finished him off.
“Yeah, I just can’t go in there,” Dom said. “Not even Bennie’s room. Maria spends hours in one room or the other. Now, is it me who’s nuts for not being able to go in, or her for not being able to get rid of it all?”
Life had to go on, war or no war, and Maria’s folks wanted as much time with the kids as possible. Bennie—four, Dom’s heart and soul—had been really excited about seeing their new apartment. They had a cat, a stray that had shown up out of nowhere, and Bennie wanted to play with it.
“Nobody’s nuts,” Marcus said. “Everyone finds their own way of coping.”
“I shouldn’t lay all this shit on you.”
“It’s okay.”
Marcus could usually make Dom feel that things really were okay, but some situations were beyond that. They went back to the kitchen, listened to the radio news channel in silence, and then served dinner, all three of them somehow managing to keep up the illusion of enjoying the event. Maria seemed a little brighter.
No, it wasn’t an illusion. It was an affirmation. Dom had to see it that way. He believed that if he tried hard enough, if the state put enough effort into it, then the war would end and life could begin to get back to normal, even if it took five years—ten, maybe. But it would come.
He just didn’t know what it was going to take to turn the tide.
Marcus kept taking a discreet look at his watch, probably trying to work out the best time to call his father. He might even have been working up to it. He never seemed to find it easy to talk to him.
Maria picked up the phone from the sideboard and set it down in front of Marcus. “Nobody’s too busy to want to hear from their own son.” Then she started clearing the table.
It was the first time she’d said anything like that in a normal tone—even the word son—since E-Day. Dom followed her into the kitchen while Marcus called his dad.
“You okay, baby?”
“He’s got to talk to his dad. They shouldn’t be apart this much.”
So that was starting to get to her: separation, not letting kids get too far from you. “We’ll get through this, I promise.”
“You never give in. That’s what I love about you. You never quit.”
Dom seized the briefest change of mood and clarity. This was how recovery started, the doctor said. “I’d never give up on you.” He took her hand out of the dishes and wiped away the soapsuds. “I need to get you another ring, don’t I?”
Maria’s hands had swollen so much when she was pregnant that she’d had to have her wedding band cut off. She hadn’t worn a ring since. It made Dom feel uneasy, because a guy’s wife had to have a nice ring, a symbol that someone loved her more than anything.
She touched the pendant he’d given her. “I’ve got this, Dom. I’ll wear it until the day I die.”
“Yeah, but—”
“What have you got? You don’t have a ring.” It was true; rings snagged inside his gloves, and they were a real hazard when handling cables and machinery. “You’ve got to have something. I’ve never given you something to keep with you. We’ve got to have something so that we’re together.”
She wiped her hands and started looking through the kitchen drawers where most of the household paperwork ended up. Eventually she pulled out a photograph and grabbed a pen.
“Here.” She wrote something on the back of the photo and handed it to him. “Remember this?”
It was a picture that Carlos had taken of them in a bar off Embry Square, just before Dom began commando training. Dom turned over the photo to read what she’d written.
“So you’ll always have me with you,” she said. “Don’t let me go. Keep it in your pocket. Please.”
“You know I will.”
When he put his arms around her these days, he felt as if she was clinging to him for safety. There was nothing harder than picking up his holdall and leaving her behind. He was determined to cherish every minute of the leave he had left, even if it meant stopping her from sitting in those dead, frozen bedrooms.
“He’s busy.”
Marcus’s voice made Dom jump. “Your dad …”
“He got a call to see the man.” Marcus shrugged. He’d put his I-don’t-really-care face on. “His secretary at the uni said she didn’t know when he’d be back. Can’t say no to Prescott.”
“Sorry, Marcus.”
“Hey, got to go. I’ll pick you up when it’s time to ship out, Dom. Take care of yourself, Maria.”
And Marcus was gone, just like that: no hugs, no gradually edging toward the door, just a clear signal that he was going, and he never looked back. He wasn’t keen on goodbyes.
Was anybody these days? Goodbyes had a habit of being permanent. The worst thing, Dom decided, was that he could remember none of his.
CHAIRMAN’S OFFICE, HOUSE OF THE SOVEREIGNS.
All politicians were assholes, but at least Prescott cut the crap and said what was on his mind.
Hoffman could find som
ething in that to admire. How long would it last, though? The idealistic and the outspoken all got ground flat in the end—not that some of them had far to go.
Adam Fenix was supposed to be here.
And Prescott wants me here because …
The last time Hoffman had been summoned to this level of meeting with Fenix present, he’d been tasked with sabotaging a weapon of mass destruction. The damn grubs must have come up with a new toy. It wasn’t as if they needed it. Maybe they were just getting bored with having to gut every human by hand, and they wanted the planet to themselves sooner rather than later.
“Attorney General,” Prescott said, “what are my options under the Fortification Act?”
The AG, Milon Audley, was past retirement age and looked like he’d seen it all before. “You may use it to declare martial law in part or all of the COG territories. Normally, the vote is carried even if—”
“No voting.” Prescott faced them across a table, not lounging behind his desk or staring out the window as if they were incidental to his plans. “I have the authority to declare martial law without consulting the assembly, haven’t I?”
Hoffman had the kind of peripheral vision honed by years of trying to keep an eye on superior officers about to drop him in the shit. Salaman didn’t seem to be bothered. Martial law was just turning up the volume on what was happening now, after all. Prescott obviously wanted to keep his fledgling administration looking clean, doing everything by the book. Maybe he wanted to go down in history as the last and only moral leader.
“You do,” Audley said, “but it’s ill-advised, because you won’t be able to enforce it outside Tyran borders without effectively declaring war on every other COG state. You don’t want to do that, do you, sir?”
“All I want to know is whether it’s legal. Whether it’s constitutional.”
Audley was on the spot, and it was clear that even his lawyer’s shark brain couldn’t work out Prescott’s angle. Hoffman knew that look: the quick lick of the lips, a flicker of the eyes, the moment any adviser dreaded, when a yes or no to an apparently straight question would become something with a frightening life of its own, something that would come back to bite you hard on the ass. Hoffman had been there.
“It’s legal, Chairman, but it’s not a good move,” Audley said at last. Bets were hedged. Asses were covered. “I’d advise discussion with the Secretary for Interstate Relations.”
“I’ve passed that stage, Milon. I just needed to know that I wouldn’t be acting illegally. I do have a pragmatic reason.”
“Not a constitutional one, then …”
“I’m going to restore the Fortification Act and declare martial law throughout the COG.” Prescott looked away toward the door as it opened and Adam Fenix walked in. “Good evening, Professor. Take a seat.”
“Apologies, Chairman. Roadblocks.”
“Just so that we’re all up to speed … the Attorney General has advised me that I’m within my rights to use the Fortification Act to declare martial law.”
Hoffman had decided some years ago that whatever was admirable in Adam Fenix’s son had come from the maternal side of the gene pool. Fenix put a folder of papers on the desk in front of him but didn’t open it, almost as if he wasn’t sure he was in the right meeting and might have to up sticks and go find the right room.
“Would you like to give me some context, Chairman?” he said.
Prescott meshed his fingers and leaned his elbows on the table. “I want you all to understand that what I’m about to say is born of last resort. General, in layman’s terms, as of today, how do you evaluate our chances against the Locust?”
Salaman perked up a little. “Depends who you mean by us, sir.”
“I think I mean Tyrus. I’ve seen enough in the last few weeks to know that some states are closer to collapse than others, whatever they say.”
“We’ll still be overrun in a month, then,” Salaman said. “Militarily—we’re hemorrhaging. The infrastructure is collapsing globally. Civilian casualties—if they’re not slaughtered by the grubs, then they’re dying of disease, and refugee movement is spreading more cross-border infection. You can’t dump millions of corpses on the system and maintain disease control. We’re finished, sir. I’m sorry. The grubs are in pretty well every city on the planet.”
Fenix looked at Hoffman. Maybe he thought they had some kind of rapport and that Hoffman would have a different opinion. He didn’t.
“Remember that we no longer have any emergency command bunkers outside Ephyra, either,” Hoffman said. “We don’t even have the option of saving the chosen few and the art treasures and sitting it out, as we had in the last war.”
“All destroyed?” Prescott didn’t look disappointed for some reason. “Even Cherrit?”
“That’s the problem with underground facilities and a burrowing enemy, sir. I hope they appreciate fine art and canned beans.”
Prescott took a breath. He looked too young. He was in his late thirties, and there were a few gray hairs in his beard, but he was remarkably unlined. A few more months in office would put that straight.
But we don’t have months. It’s weeks.
“Gentlemen, I’m going to deploy the Hammer of Dawn,” Prescott said.
It wasn’t the first time that Hoffman had been caught totally off guard by a COG chairman, nor the first when the realization hit him that Adam Fenix was here to do the dirty science work.
And me. Now I know why I’m here, too.
“Sir, that’s just not possible.” Fenix seemed to think that Prescott was just kiting an idea. Hoffman could see he wasn’t. The man had a stillness about him—no fidgeting, no sweating, not a hint of uncertainty—that said he’d made his decision. “It’s not a tactical weapon. It’s strategic. You can’t deploy it in urban areas, and that’s the kind of war we’re fighting.”
“Losing,” Prescott said quietly. “Right now, we’re losing the war. And that will not happen on my watch. This is where it ends.”
Hoffman glanced at Salaman, and they both knew this was now about how it would be carried out, not if. Audley simply bowed his head and said nothing.
Fenix was still staring at Prescott, demanding an answer with raised eyebrows. Hoffman wondered if he ever yelled or lost his temper.
“You do know how the Hammer works, Chairman?” Fenix said.
“Not the physics, but I do grasp the fact that the satellite platforms cover the entire planet, which is what I require.”
“What are you going to target? Is that what you need me for, to advise on blast coverage?”
Salaman cut in. “Grubs don’t take over cities, sir. They clear them. They’ll only be in areas where there are humans to kill and resources to plunder. They strip a city and move on.”
“I know that, General,” Prescott said. “I know that very well. They’re using our own equipment and supplies against us. They adapt our own technology to kill us. We’re feeding their war effort. So we stop them. We destroy everything in their path. And a lot of grubs will die, too—not all, but this is about asset denial.”
I know where this is going now. God help us.
Hoffman found himself wanting to call Margaret, not to warn her but just to hear her voice, and he hadn’t felt that way about her for years. It was as close as he’d come in his adult life to panic. Fear—he’d lived with it for so long that he wasn’t sure if he could perform well without it. But this was different. There was no border across which life would go on after surrender or a victory.
“Okay, sir,” Salaman said. “Have you thought about what we’ll have left to fight the grubs who survive?”
“The only major center of population that they don’t appear to be able to penetrate far is Ephyra—Jacinto in particular,” Prescott said. He stood up and unfurled the global map on his wall. “Largest unbroken area of granite on Sera. And that’s where we’ll regroup. I want the entire Hammer network deployed. Salaman, I need a priority list, because we’re going to
have to do this in stages—am I right, Professor?” Prescott turned around, one finger still on the black type that said EPHYRA. “We feed in the coordinates for the first batch of targets, activate the lasers, then feed in the next batch, move the orbital platforms, and so on. We don’t have enough orbital devices to sweep Sera in one simultaneous attack, do we?”
Shit.
Shit, this is planet denial, not asset denial.
“What the hell do you propose to do with the people in those cities, Chairman?” Fenix sat back in his chair as if he’d been winded. “This is going to incinerate millions of our own people. Do you understand me? This is wholesale slaughter.”
I don’t want to hear this.
I know what the options are going to be.
And I helped the COG grab the Hammer technology.
Prescott waited a few beats, looking at Fenix as if he was the difficult kid in the class who just didn’t get the math and needed a bit of prompting. For a moment, Audley looked as if he was going to intervene, but he just shifted position and looked as if he’d given up. He wouldn’t be alone. Everyone else except Prescott had.
“I’m ordering an evacuation to Ephyra,” Prescott said. “We’ll give refuge to anyone who can make their way here. Three days after the announcement we deploy the Hammer.”
“We—can’t—move—millions—of—people—in—three—days.” Fenix slammed his fist on the table to emphasize every word. Fenix, Mr. Stiff Upper Lip, the man who never reacted, had finally lost it. Hoffman didn’t want to watch this disintegration; there was no satisfaction in it. It just confirmed that he was right to feel that he should be shitting himself right now. “They’ll die. They’ll all die.”
Prescott looked to Salaman and nodded for a response.
“Once we announce the recall, we have to assume the grubs will know,” Salaman said. “And when people start moving in numbers, they’ll just home in on them. So it has to be fast—or it has to be covert.”
“What, we don’t tell people we’re going to fry the goddamn planet?” Hoffman said. “So we just spare Tyrus? And who gets told it’s time to run?”
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