Dom wasn’t sure how long he sat in the janitor’s room with his head in his hands. He could hear sawing and conversation outside as Bernie cut up the carcasses. Later, he heard single shots from a distance, shattering the still air.
“Waste of ammo,” Marcus muttered.
But that was all he said. He simply sat there and waited until Dom decided he could stand up again and face the rest of the day.
Despite his expectations, he did.
CIC CONTROL ROOM, 2200 HOURS.
It was way past dinnertime. Hoffman’s energy was flagging. He wanted to take a leak, and he wanted the steak that Bernie had surely put aside for him very badly indeed, but he also wanted commitments from the Chairman before he rostered off, or at least some acknowledgment that plans might have to … adapt.
“Look, I agree with you, Victor,” Prescott said. “We haven’t trained Gears for civil policing. But if it worked for fifteen years in Jacinto, we can still make it work now.”
“That was when we had grubs knocking on the door, sir.” Hoffman’s biggest fear had been that he would screw up the defense of Jacinto and humankind would be wiped out because he wasn’t up to the job. He’d dodged the bullet on that, and now another fear had taken its place: that he didn’t have the peacetime skills that this beleaguered society needed to pull itself together again. “The grubs have gone, so the lid’s finally off—plus we really are in deeper shit than we were a week ago.”
“I’m going to visit the local Stranded and offer them amnesty. Usual terms.”
You’re not listening to me. “And if they tell you to ram it?”
“Then, because of the acute supply shortages, I authorize Gears to shoot Stranded as looters if they’re found inside the perimeter.”
“You tell them that.”
“I will. And I expect your men to follow that order.”
“What makes you think they won’t?”
“It’s very hard to shoot civilians, Victor. Any Gear will open fire if he feels his life’s threatened, but it’s another thing entirely to pull the trigger when the target is making off with a loaf of bread.”
Hoffman tried not to lean back in the rickety chair. Once his shoulders touched the backrest, he knew he’d slump, and then he’d find it hard to stay awake. The Stranded were just a fraction of the problem, one of a list of potential flash points. Most of the trouble, he suspected, would come from a simple question asked over and over by the people in this makeshift city: why did food, medicine, or any other resource go to another person and not to them? They were already griping about how much easier folks had it on the ships, and that they didn’t have enough ashore.
“The only thing we have on our side at the moment is a windfall of fuel,” Hoffman said. “And that was luck. Nobody expected Merrenat to have imulsion left where the Stranded couldn’t get at it. But we don’t have the hardware yet to make decent use of it. Heating systems. Buildings with roofs and doors and windows Plumbing. People can only take so much, Chairman. We took them out of their last familiar haven, squalid as it was, and dumped them in a freezing hole.”
“That’s Sharle’s problem to address. And he is dealing with it.”
“But he’s using my engineers. And the security situation is my problem, too. So I can’t ignore the root causes.”
“What are you asking, Victor?”
“When will we decide that Port Farrall isn’t viable? Because this was a last-minute panic choice. It’s too far north, given the infrastructure we don’t have.”
“We don’t have that option. This was a last resort, after all. Every city we considered as an evacuation center is going to be like this, or worse.”
“But we’ve got another three or four months of this weather, plus serious shortages. Ask Hayman how many will be left alive then. We’ve already got rustlung and some kind of dysentery.”
Out of uniform, Prescott sometimes looked like an art teacher on a day off. It was the pullover and the beard. Without that tunic and medals, he looked pretty ordinary—until he moved or opened his mouth, and then everything about him exuded a certainty that he was in charge, and that it was the natural order of things. Hoffman couldn’t imagine him having a single moment of self-doubt. From the time he took over the COG and deployed the Hammer, the man knew exactly what he wanted done.
“We’re ultimately talking about restocking Sera with humans, Victor. If we lose vulnerable people, the older ones, we can still … oh, I hate to use the word breed, but that’s the reality.”
“Hayman says you can keep humankind going just fine on a gene pool of two thousand people, but do we want to run on empty if we have a choice? Otherwise we might as well be the Stranded.”
“To make it worth leaving here,” Prescott said, “it would have to be more than hardship. I would need to be convinced that staying here would endanger the majority of survivors.”
“I’ll monitor that situation. Sharle or no Sharle.”
“Where else would we go? Where is the proverbial better hole?”
“Islands,” Hoffman said. “There have to be plenty out there that never had a visit from the Locust. Somewhere warmer.”
“Would any of them be large enough, though?”
“We lost a lot of people on evacuation. I think it’s going to reach fifty percent losses.”
Prescott just looked past him in slight defocus, stroking his beard.
“Let’s consider it,” he said eventually. “Talk to Sharle. And it’s going to put the naval contingent on a different footing.”
“Meaning?”
“We’ve let the navy decline.”
“It was always peripheral, even in the Pendulum Wars.” And they didn’t like that much. Hoffman had probably spent more time with amphibious ops than any other COG commander. “You only have to look in the dockyard now to see that.”
“Well, if we ever decide to reestablish the COG offshore, then we need more than a trawler navy, and not just for transport. When you’re ready, let’s assess their officers. I admit I’ve neglected the service badly.” Someone knocked at the door, and Prescott looked around. “Any other business before I turn in?”
“Any other classified information you haven’t shared with me, sir?”
Prescott gave him that look—the I-hate-apologizing-to-the-hired-help look. “I’m sorry about that, Victor. Yes, I’ve told you about every facility in COG territory now. The trouble with politics is that not volunteering information becomes a default in the best of us. It’s a mechanism we learn to stop ourselves from blurting out things at inopportune moments.”
That’s not an answer. But you’ve told me what I need to know anyway. Asshole.
“Thank you, sir,” Hoffman said. “Sleep well.” He raised his voice. “Come in.”
Prescott reached the door just as Bernie Mataki walked in. She held something balanced on a large sheet of metal, covered in a piece of camo fabric, and managed to salute the Chairman without dropping it.
Hoffman waited for Prescott’s footsteps to fade. The man had a lair overlooking the sports field, with one of his priceless rugs on the floor, and for a man born to rule he seemed oddly happy with that.
“Asshole,” Hoffman said. It felt better to say it out loud.
“That’s no way to talk to room service, Colonel.”
He smiled. “One day you’re going to have to peel me off his throat.”
“Well, better keep your strength up, then, sir.” She laid the metal sheet on his desk and whipped off the cover like a waitress to reveal a mess tin cradling a lump of brown meat and a few pale root vegetables that could have been anything. She’d even found some decent cutlery. “It’s as tough as old boots, but we didn’t have time to hang it. Cole hammered it with a mallet for a while, though.”
“Steak?”
“Venison steak. You could have had liver pâté, too, but some bastard cat got it. But I got the cat, so we’re even.”
Bernie could always make him smile. He looked dow
n at the tabby-fur boot liners that had instantly cemented her reputation with Delta Squad. Anyone who could skin and eat cats earned a certain cautious respect.
“You’re primal, Sergeant Mataki.”
“Go on. Eat.”
“Don’t go. I need company.”
Hoffman hadn’t had a steak in nine, ten years—maybe longer. He certainly couldn’t remember having game at all. He chewed, eyes closed, overwhelmed by the intensity of the flavor, and suddenly found tears running down his face.
She sounded as if she’d sighed. “Are you okay?”
Maybe it was just fatigue, or the lid finally coming off after years of keeping it clipped down, or just vague memories of a vanished world that had restaurants. Either way, he was embarrassed.
“Yes,” he said, wiping his face with his palm. “Hell … I don’t know. Things you forgot existed.”
“A few nights’ sleep would do you the world of good, sir.”
“It’s Vic. Remember? Let’s pretend it’s still the NCOs’ mess and all this tinsel on my collar never happened.” He opened the bag he kept under the desk—everything he owned—and took out the flask of brandy he’d been keeping for something special. He’d always imagined it would be one last toast to absent friends before he took a final stand, or used that one last round any sensible man saved for himself. “Here, rinse that cup out. Drink with me, will you?”
Bernie considered him with her head cocked to one side, then chuckled. “Yeah, Vic, I will.”
She took a metal object from her belt pouch that he first thought was a pocket watch, but she gave it a shake in her hand and it extended into a small cup. She placed it on the desk.
Hoffman examined it, fascinated. It was made of concentric tapering steel rings. “That’s very clever.”
“Collapsible. I travel light.”
“We’re the last of our kind, Bernie.” He poured a generous and gentlemanly measure for her. “To the Twenty-Sixth Royal Tyran Infantry.”
“Two-Six RTI,” she said. “The Unvanquished.”
“We beat the goddamn grubs, anyway.”
“And we’re not the last. There’s Fenix and Santiago.”
“I meant our generation.”
“Then we’re definitely the last.” She stared into the cup, then raised it again. “Absent friends.”
There were so many of those now. Hoffman used to be able to recite names, but the best he could do now was remember individuals sporadically. “I heard about Tai Kaliso.”
“Ah, the Baird Broadcasting Service.”
“And Santiago.”
“All of it?”
“Maybe not. I haven’t caught up with him yet. I keep meaning to.”
“It’s grim. He found his wife in some grub cell. Marcus said she was blind, couldn’t speak, couldn’t recognize Dom, looked like a corpse. He didn’t know what the hell to do. She was too far gone.”
Bernie took a pull at the cup, then put her forefinger to her temple, thumb extended, and squeezed an imaginary trigger. Hoffman was about to take another mouthful of steak. He couldn’t.
“Oh God …”
“Bloody hard. Doesn’t matter if it’s the kindest option or not. Been there. Or been close, anyway.”
Hoffman thought of Margaret more these days. It wasn’t that he missed her, not like Dom Santiago would mourn his wife; he just felt worse about her each year. It wasn’t even a tragic love story, just a mediocre, mutual toleration like so many marriages. But even if he hadn’t pulled any trigger, he’d certainly killed Margaret.
“I’ll talk to him,” Hoffman said, and started eating again. “I’m still his CO. Hell, I remember the night his daughter was born.”
“Aspho won’t go away, will it?”
“Do you want it to?”
“Not really.”
So it was Bernie and Vic again for a while, just an hour or so, and one of the few times in his life when he regretted the path he’d taken, not as a soldier but as a man.
“Is it ever too late in life to put things right?” he said.
“If I thought it was, I wouldn’t be here.”
Bernie probably meant that insane journey across Sera to rejoin the COG ranks after so many years. But maybe she didn’t.
He’d find out.
CHAPTER 5
The Coalition of Ordered Governments still exists, the rule of law still exists, and our social covenants still exist. We may no longer be in a state of war, but we still have a battle ahead to survive and rebuild, and in these difficult days there will be no tolerance of lawlessness and antisocial behavior. Unity defeated the Locust. But disunity will be the certain end of us all.
(CHAIRMAN RICHARD PRESCOTT, TO THE REMNANT OF JACINTO’S POPULATION, PORT FARRALL.)
CNV SOVEREIGN, MERRENAT NAVAL BASE, TEN DAYS AFTER THE EVACUATION OF JACINTO, 14 A.E.
“Would you mind stepping in the footbath, sir?”
There was a large metal tray full of purple liquid at the foot of the ship’s brow. A commander—Alisder Fyne, Anya’s list said, the most senior serving officer left in the COG navy—stood sentry at the top, making it clear that not even the chief of defense staff and the chief medical officer would get on board unless they followed procedure.
“What a good boy,” said Dr. Hayman. “Up you go, Colonel.” Anya watched Hoffman carefully. A lesser man would have snarled, but the colonel just paused as if someone had reminded him he’d forgotten his keys. He paddled his boots in the disinfectant, shook off the surplus, and strode up the brow. Dr. Hayman followed.
“Opposed boarding,” Marcus muttered. “Send in the shock troops first.”
“I’m sure Fyne will see sense …”
Marcus was so close behind Anya that she could smell carbolic soap. Everyone was scrubbing themselves raw these days. It wasn’t just infection control. There was some psychological tic sweeping the ranks, like a need to wash off the past.
At the top of the brow, there was a bucket of soapy, strongly scented water.
“Hands,” said Fyne. “Please.”
“I’m glad to see you’re taking hygiene seriously.” Hoffman washed like a surgeon. “Dr. Hayman’s going to give you a great report.”
“We’re a confined space.” Fyne, definitely wary, beckoned them to follow. “I’ve got more than eight thousand people on board. We don’t need any more problems.”
Once they were off the weather deck, the air inside the ship was blissfully warm. Anya inhaled a heady cocktail of oil, cooking, and bodies—not unpleasant, just a silent reminder that the carrier was crammed to the deckheads.
Fyne stood back to usher them into a compartment with CAG BRIEFING T-6 stenciled on the bulkhead next to the door. As Anya stepped over the coaming, she caught Fyne looking past her at Marcus with a wary look on his face. Maybe he thought he was the security detail; it was clear that the community of ships here was starting to see Port Farrall as Anarchy HQ as well as a source of contagion.
“Marcus Fenix?” he said.
“Correct… sir.”
Marcus had subtly different ways of saying sir according to whether he had any regard for the officer concerned or not. Anya thought for a moment that Fyne knew him from a previous operation or had known his family.
Then it struck her that some only knew Marcus as the Sergeant Fenix who’d been jailed for abandoning his post. The court-martial of an Embry Star hero tended to stick in people’s minds.
Anya felt herself brace instinctively, ready to defend him against whatever sneer or comment followed, but Fyne said nothing more, and they sat down at the table. Flight suits hung against the bulkheads; not enough locker room, then. All the King Raven pilots were now based in Sovereign. It had taken just days for the beginning of a divide to emerge between the refugee existence ashore and the relatively comfortable world afloat. The navy had declined to send more medic-trained personnel ashore to support Hayman’s struggling unit. And it claimed it couldn’t accommodate anyone else.
“Comma
nder.” Hoffman rested his elbows on the table. “I’d like to do this by negotiation. But I often have to do things I don’t like. Dr. Hayman’s team is going under, and I’d really like you to release some of your corpsmen.”
Fyne nodded at Hoffman, then aimed his reply at the doctor. “When you evacuated Jacinto Medical Center, ma’am, we made Unity the infirmary ship. We’ve got a lot of critically injured Gears and civilians who need acute care. I know what my job is, what my orders are—to preserve this crew, this ship, and this fleet. I’m not going to second-guess JMC’s chief of medicine about who we can afford to let die.”
This was the game. Hoffman would growl, Hayman would indulge in some shroud waving, and then Anya would suggest a compromise position.
And if that didn’t work, Marcus had orders to remove Fyne from the ship. He hadn’t been happy with that.
Yes, it’s not going to inspire anyone to pull together. Authority’s fine, but when you impose it in a situation like this …
“I’m losing a long list of civvies every day, sonny,” Hayman said. Fyne must have been in his forties. “You can’t do much about hypothermia, and we don’t have that many surgical cases because they’ve conveniently died, the poor bastards, but you sure as hell can help with the medical ones. Respiratory cases, mainly.”
“Rustlung and viruses. I’m aware of the disease issue.”
“By the way, footbaths are terrific for controlling livestock diseases, but not the ones we’re likely to develop. Five points for trying, though.”
Anya felt sorry for Fyne. Hayman could emasculate any man with a razor-edged word. It was diplomacy time.
“How about pooling our resources?” Anya said. “Trade you a few surgical staff for nursing assistance. Or we can look at making Unity into the central COG medical facility and move all our cases on board.”
Anya learned the lines Hayman fed her. It was a threat. Hoffman could have forced anything on Fyne, of course, or shot him for failing to jump when he said so, but there was a time to crack down and a time for restraint. It always surprised her that Hoffman—gruff to the core, not even a veneer—could navigate that psychological maze.
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