“I don’t want to overstate the case,” she said. “But Vectes can save humankind. You can save it. We have nowhere else to go.”
Gavriel licked his lips for a moment, staring at the table, then nodded, but Dom knew damn well that he didn’t know what he was nodding about. He glanced sideways to catch Bernie staring at her clasped hands.
“I feel very bad not offering you some refreshment,” he said. “Would you …?”
“You’re very kind.” Marcus had taken over again. He had something on his mind. “I’d like to go check out the naval base first. You probably need to do some explaining to your people in the meantime.”
“You’ll need Will to show you around, then.”
“We’ve got the plans,” Marcus said. He seemed in a real rush to get out. “We just need to get the feel of the place. Any operational defenses?”
“They’ve been dismantled, but they could be restored.”
“And how much trouble are the Stranded?”
“Sporadic raids. I’m armed for a reason. People have been killed here. The Stranded know the deal—if they set foot in the town, we shoot on sight now. They haven’t been around for a while.”
“Understood,” Bernie murmured.
Dom kept right behind Marcus all the way back to the Ravens, doing his best to look reassuring, the kind of Gear who had come to make things better. Cole was glad-handing enough for the whole COG. He was turning out to be quite a distraction, and that was a big help right then. Marcus was pissed off about something, and that didn’t help him look more friendly. The civvies stared. No, they’d never seen Gears quite like this before.
But then they hadn’t seen grubs, either. That would have made everything a lot clearer for them.
The ’Dill was now parked between the two Ravens while the flight crews lounged on the grass, helmets by their sides, chewing ration bars like they were on a picnic.
“Okay, it’s Vectes base,” Marcus grunted. “Who’s driving?”
“Why, yes, I’d be delighted to transport you, Sergeant Fenix.” Sorotki got to his feet and did a curtsey. He seemed to be enjoying himself. “Your ill-articulated wish is my command.”
Marcus didn’t react. “Thanks, Lieutenant.”
He turned away to stare out to sea while they waited for Will to show up. Dom saw Bernie roll her head slightly as if she’d resigned herself to doing something, then start the slow stroll toward Marcus to talk to him. Dom decided that was his job. He shook his head at Bernie to divert her and moved in.
“Hey, Marcus, what’s the problem?”
Marcus didn’t turn around. “No problem.”
“Bullshit.”
“I said no problem.”
“And I said—bullshit.”
Marcus did his slow head turn. “You want to know.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, the COG’s going to roll in here and take over this island. We ought to spell that out, because there’s sweet fuck-all the guy can do about it anyway. But instead, we start with a lie—by omission, but that’s as bad. Poor reward for a loyal COG servant who stayed at his post waiting for orders for fifteen frigging years, and because he has, we can ship in refugees a little easier.”
“Hey, Marcus, I’d have done the same, okay? Get them used to the idea gradually, make them think it was their own.” Dom put the people he knew and loved first, and wasn’t ashamed of that. But Marcus worried and sacrificed just as much for the stranger, too, and sometimes you just couldn’t do both at once. You had to choose. “Kinder than walking right in and saying, ‘Thanks for your service, asshole. Now beat it.’ Right?”
It wasn’t like the islanders could have caught the next boat back to Ephyra anyway. Dom didn’t see staying put as an heroic last stand on a burning deck, up to their asses in grubs. They’d just been marooned in a pretty safe place.
Marcus stared at him for a few long seconds, then nodded. But Dom could see how a guy who wouldn’t abandon his post on doomsday would really touch a nerve with Marcus.
“Baird—stay here in case anyone gets too interested in the other Raven.” Marcus turned back to the squad as if nothing had happened. “Rest of you—we check every facility there ourselves. If Will can’t open a door, we blow it. I don’t want to find any more surprises in decommissioned COG facilities.”
“Yeah, even Hoffman didn’t know about that last place,” Cole said. “Man, was he pissed. He ain’t good at hiding it, either.”
Dom wondered if Marcus’s suspicion was actually a dread of finding more of his dad’s activities, not fear of turning up more secret shit. They’d found some weird research stuff in the last COG outpost, but the recordings of his father’s voice in the Locust stronghold had really rattled Marcus. He hated secrets. That was clear.
Will Berenz arrived clutching an old leather briefcase so stuffed with papers and plans that he couldn’t close it properly.
“This is going to take some time,” he said, holding up the case. “This is everything you need to know about VNB. I don’t suppose they even use the call sign anymore, do they?”
“Everything?” Marcus said.
“Yes.”
“I want to know all that chemical and biological stuff really is gone.”
“Okay. I can understand that.”
It was a silent ride to Vectes base. Marcus did his usual avoidance maneuver: eyes closed, arms folded, don’t-interrupt-me frown. Even after twenty-odd years, close as real brothers, there were still parts of him that Dom couldn’t fathom. Marcus could go through a two-day firefight and not turn a hair. But little things, little dumb things, made him fume. It was almost always about not being told everything.
His father had lied to him about a stack of things, like his mother’s disappearance, and probably for the kindest reasons, but Marcus didn’t seem to think so. Maybe hearing Adam Fenix’s voice on those damn grub computers, or that Locust bitch taunting him about his dad speaking highly of him—and none of the squad was going to mention that to Marcus again—had dredged it all up.
Marcus wasn’t like his father in so many ways.
When push came to shove, Adam Fenix was prepared to kill a world to save at least some of it. His son, Dom suspected, might not have been.
VECTES NAVAL BASE, CALL SIGN VNB, LATER THAT DAY.
“We could speed things up if we helped them out, Anya.” Mel Sorotki walked along a faded paint line on the parade ground as if he was walking a tightrope, arms extended. He looked bored out of his skull. “I’m up for a search. So is Mitchell.”
Marcus, Dom, Bernie, and Cole had already been gone three hours with Will Berenz. Anya charted their progress around the base as Will drove them from building to building in the site vehicle kept for checking the place over each month. The base was the size of a town, with roads that had colorful names like Admiralty Place, Weevil Lane, and Ordnance Row.
“He likes to keep pilots on standby,” she said, pressing her earpiece again. “Marcus, how are you doing?”
“Fine,” he said. There was a sound of creaking metal hinges in the background. “As in nothing so far.”
Mitchell appeared and began pacing around, too. “Anya, tell him they don’t mark dangerous secret shit with a skull and cross-bones and the word POISON, will you?”
“Tell Mitchell,” Marcus’s voice growled, “that we’ve seen enough dangerous secret shit by now to know.”
Mitchell smiled. “So ground-pounders don’t go deaf.”
Anya hoped Will Berenz understood that Delta came from a very different world, like every other Gear and Jacinto citizen. She wondered how people in this relatively peaceful island existence would cope with men and women who were constantly on edge, ready to swing a punch, and who didn’t even regard that as abnormal.
“Anyway, the environment guys in EM will want to check it out when they get here, too,” Sorotki said.
Anya cut the outgoing comms link. “Can’t be too careful. At Merrenat, we found fuel. New Hope outpost, Delt
a were attacked by things we hadn’t even seen before. Here—who knows what we’ll get in the prize draw?”
Sorotki broke out a deck of cards, one of the two universal distractions for Gears, and dealt three hands. From time to time, Anya could hear the vehicle in the distance. Vectes was quieter than any place she’d known—until sirens started wailing, and she almost tripped in her scramble to raise Marcus on the radio while she tried to find her respirator. Sorotki and Mitchell swung into the Raven’s cockpit, ready for a rescue.
Anya imagined the worst. She wasn’t even sure why she’d grabbed her gas mask. “Marcus? Delta, anyone, what’s happening?”
She could hear Cole laughing his head off. “Ma’am, Private Augustus Cole reporting that the base alarm works!”
“Just testing,” Marcus said. “Carry on.”
“They’re so fucking hilarious.” Mitchell scouted around for his cards. “Anyone remember what hand they had?”
Apart from a lot of squabbling seabirds vying for roosting places, the base was peaceful again in that echoing, solid way of big empty structures. It was another hour before the battered pickup rattled back through the gates and pulled up next to the Raven on the parade ground. Everyone jumped out looking pleased—not just Will Berenz, but even Marcus. He was closer to a smile than she’d seen in a long time.
“We’ll take it,” Bernie said. “But the wallpaper’s got to go.”
Anya savored a flood of relief and radioed Port Farrall, exchanging thumbs-up gestures with Dom. Marcus did a slow turn and walked away again. If anyone was going to find it hard to adjust to peace, it was him. Anya sat down on the Raven’s bay steps, hand to her ear.
“Sir? Sir, I think we have a solution.”
Prescott let out an audible breath. “Is it viable, Lieutenant?”
“I’ll get more solid information sent to Emergency Management later, but yes. Delta just checked the base for hazards. We have a habitable area—power, water, some existing accommodation—and a few thousand COG citizens still living on the island. The base maintenance team’s been here since E-Day.”
Prescott didn’t respond for a moment. Anya thought she’d lost the link.
“Absolutely extraordinary.” He sounded as if he meant it. “Sovereign will be with you in around four or five days, and we’ll have Raven units with you in a day or so. The relocation starts now.”
“I’ll get the local maintenance team moving.” She paused, wondering if the next point would be too trivial. But there was now an entire generation who’d only known a shattered, burning landscape and a crumbling city. “It’s a very attractive island, by the way.”
“That’s important to know. Deploy the bot to transmit some images back to CIC. It’ll be a huge morale boost for everyone to see where they’re going—that it’s going to be a better life.” Prescott sounded as if he’d been interrupted. “Anya, Colonel Hoffman wants a word.”
Somehow, she was expecting more discussion. She recalled a time when people had spent longer deciding which restaurant to visit. But when you were out of choices and out of time, the really big decisions tended to make themselves—or they’d already been made.
“Anya? You clearly made the Chairman’s day. Now give me some good news. How do you assess the security situation?”
“Still on that, sir. I think the local population will be scared of being swamped by migrants, so we have to start handling that right away.”
“They’re definitely our people, then.”
“They seem to be. COG naval base team, and the town that serviced it. There’s an aggressive Stranded presence we need to assess, but I think the island’s big enough to maintain separate zones if we have to.”
“That’s COG sovereign territory, Lieutenant, not a private resort, and we are the government. We’ll be sensitive to local feeling, but we also have the remnant of humanity to look after.”
“When you put it like that, sir …”
“Well done, Anya. Good job. And now I owe Michaelson the last of my brandy.”
“Sir, they have a bar here.”
“Damn good job.”
The genuinely hard work was yet to come. But Hoffman sounded so caught up in the general optimism that she felt that this was the turning point, the moment at which life would change forever. Marcus ambled back across the parade ground, right on cue. Either he had uncanny timing or he’d been listening on the open circuit.
He put one boot on the Raven’s deck. “Better go fix the tourist brochure.”
“You heard, then.”
“It’s not like they can choose another destination.” He called to Sorotki. “Lieutenant—I want to take a look at the Stranded settlement before we lose the light today. Let’s move.”
Dom seemed almost excited. “Anya, they’ve got a hospital wing,” he said. “Some medical supplies, too. Doc Hayman might even be pleased for once.”
If Anya hadn’t known Dom so well, she’d have thought things were back to normal. A couple of months’ grieving wasn’t long enough, though, so she took it as simply getting the outward signs under control or being exhausted into a numb state of marking time. Sometimes he looked quietly lost, but then he’d find something small that focused him—the clean air here, a generator that still worked—and made him come alive for a while. Grieving had to be taken a moment at a time. Eventually, there were more good moments than unbearable ones in a day, and then you knew you’d turned the corner into a new road.
The Raven lifted clear of the parade ground and set off along the western coast.
“I’d call this blustery,” Sorotki said. The coast here was much more rugged, a narrow strip rising into the highlands that ran down one side of the island. “Those hills make a good windbreak.”
“Good natural barrier for a lot of things,” Will said. “Keeps the Stranded out of our way most of the time.”
Bernie sat with her hands in her lap, clutching something. When Anya took a discreet look, it turned out to be a few downy feathers, black and white, like some of the seabirds nesting at the base. Anya’s first thought was that Bernie had been doing what she did best—scoping out the wild food supply and sampling it. When Anya looked up, Bernie’s eyebrows were raised slightly as if she was disappointed.
“No, I didn’t kill anything,” she said. “Just picked these up. I was going to make a fishing lure for Cole. You said you wanted to try fishing, Cole Train.”
Cole grinned. “Bernie baby, you remember the little stuff, don’t you?”
“If I kill something,” Bernie said, “I have to have a good reason. It’s not a hobby. It’s necessity.”
She bunched the feathers by their quills, took out a small tin to extract a fishing hook, and began binding the feathers onto the shaft with a fine thread.
Will gave her a wary look. Bernie returned it.
“I’m the battalion survival instructor. Not just a sniper.” She said it as if that would make Will feel safer. “So, are the Stranded that much trouble?”
“They’re not welcome in town. This is the COG, and either they abide by society’s rules or they leave.”
“That still doesn’t tell me what they do. But I can guess.”
“They steal, and they damage things we can’t replace.” Will patted his shotgun. “And sometimes they kill. Nobody’s going to come if we call the police, so … we are the police.”
Bernie just gave him a nod, as if she understood perfectly, and went on making the lure. Nobody said anything else until Sorotki cut into the comms about fifteen minutes later.
“Next stop, Stranded Villas, five minutes. Very picturesque.”
“Anywhere to land?” Marcus asked.
“We could just circle menacingly.”
“Just want to look them in the eye and say hello.”
Dom raised a finger. “I’m the Stranded wrangler. Let me do the introductions.”
Marcus watched Will carefully. “You ever come down here?”
“Only when we had to, once
.”
That said it all. Marcus did a slow blink. “We’re pretty serious about protecting citizens. You won’t get any more trouble.”
“Unless you want to fast-rope down and really impress the hell out of them, I’m going to try for that area at the top of the slipway,” Sorotki said. “If it can take that boat, it can probably take this bird’s weight.”
A clinker-built motor cruiser that had seen better days sat on blocks. The cement slipway was laid in sections, and already breaking up. Dom jumped out of the Raven after Marcus gestured to the others to wait.
In Pelruan, the townspeople had come out to see who was landing. Here, though, Anya could see signs of everyday life—laundry hanging from lines strung between scruffy shacks, a thin wisp of smoke from a metal chimney—but there was nobody outside. Anya wondered what kind of Stranded could reach this isolated place and survive, and decided they weren’t the urban Stranded she’d been used to back home. Armed caution seemed to be what everyone thought was appropriate here.
“Will,” Bernie said, “what did Lewis mean about any old vermin wearing armor?”
“A boat landed a couple of years ago. One of the men was wearing pretty well the full rig, but it was obvious he wasn’t a Gear. Didn’t talk right, didn’t walk right. And then … he didn’t behave right.”
“Got it,” Bernie said, but her voice sounded different. “Now, if they were me, they’d have a sniper position in that boat. Coming, Cole Train?”
“I’m all about fishin’ boats now, Boomer Lady. Lead on.”
They jumped down from the other door and began walking. Anya saw Bernie circle the motor cruiser, then climb the access ladder to the deck.
“Hey, anyone home?” Dom called. He was still close enough to the Raven to run for cover if he needed to. He turned around full circle, back to back with Marcus and a few meters apart, and waited. “We’re from the COG. How about a chat, so we understand each other?”
There was a creaking sound from the cruiser. Anya moved to look, and there was Bernie, Lancer held vertically, leaning against the wheelhouse while a young guy in a heavy tunic backed out of the door and began climbing down the ladder. He seemed torn between worrying about her and sizing up Cole.
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