The best rooms in town—in VNB, anyway—were the married quarters on the western side of the base. Prescott was so keen to make the Pelruan folk feel united with the Jacinto folk that he’d invited more of them down to see the work being done. The buildings were the same style as the grand old apartment blocks in Jacinto, but if Prescott thought he was going to build a nice replica of the old place here on Vectes, he had a lot of sweat ahead.
Cole found it weird to watch the guy shift from stirring battle speeches to Gears about exterminating grubs to being Mr. Nice and practically kissing babies. It wasn’t like the man needed votes. Nobody had voted for years. Folks were only just starting to talk about that election stuff again, so maybe he was getting his campaign started early.
“I’m sure you never imagined this day would come,” Prescott said, hands clasped behind his back. “But Vectes—New Jacinto—is now the capital of the Coalition of Ordered Governments. From here, humanity will rebuild. From here, we will recover our strength and numbers, reclaim the mainland, and restore civilization. Your contribution—keeping this outpost going for so many years, and your willingness to welcome the survivors of Jacinto—has made the difference between extinction and a future for humankind.”
“Willingness,” Bernie muttered. “But not in their backyard …”
Gavriel and Berenz were in the crowd. They gave Cole a discreet wave. Well, they’d been willing; they’d kept the flag flying. Cole hoped they got whatever reward made people like that happy. They were probably just grateful to be told they could finally hand back the keys.
“So when we goin’ to stop callin’ Stranded Stranded?” Cole whispered. “They’re all different. I feel I oughta reflect that in my semantics.”
“Are you taking the piss?”
“I’m serious, baby. I need to know if we’re talking about gangsters, or bums, or homeless, or unlucky, or messed up in the head, or too afraid to go home, or what.” Cole liked Bernie too much to let her go on being bent out of shape every time that damn stupid S-word came up. “Or missin’ for ten years. Or just takin’ a long time returnin’ to base …”
Bernie didn’t look at him. She couldn’t. Eyes front, that was the drill. “Low blow,” she said.
“Shit, wasn’t meant to be, Boomer Lady.”
“I know, sweetheart. And I know you’re right, too.”
Baird was going to be a tougher nut to crack. He hadn’t been around the buoy a few times like Bernie. Cole decided he’d just have to learn the way she did, by hitting his head hard against the real world for a lot more years.
Cole tuned back in to the speech again. Damn, was the Chairman still boring the asses off those Pelruan people? He was. The man had stamina. Cole had to admire that.
“We still have a great deal of work to do bringing our people ashore,” Prescott went on. “We may ask a lot of you in the days to come. But your lives will improve, too. The first improvement you’ll see is to the security situation. You’ll no longer be subjected to attacks by Stranded. The criminal elements will be eliminated, and the rest have been offered a choice—to accept the rule of COG law or to leave.”
Man, he’d been doing so well up to then. Cole saw the fidgeting begin, and some folks looked down at their boots, because some of the audience really didn’t want to hear that Stranded could have a place at the table if they learned which fork to use. Cole also wondered just what Prescott meant by eliminated.
He had to admit he was starting to squirm a little more every time the lawlessness thing got dragged out into conversation. Fighting grubs was something you didn’t have to debate about—they wanted every human dead, they didn’t have much else except that on their minds, and it was clearly a Gear’s job to stop them. No gray areas there, baby. But Prescott needed a police force now, not an army.
The Chairman finished his pep talk and the small crowd broke up. Cole and Bernie hung around, under orders to look reassuring and helpful with the other Gears until the civvies moved on. Prescott still didn’t want them having free run of the place, so maybe he hadn’t gone totally soft yet after all.
“Bernie, you’ve fought humans, right?” Cole said.
She laughed. “Yeah. Hate ’em. I want them off my planet.”
“I mean the Pendulum Wars. I never fought another human before. I kill grubs. You think I can cap a human if I ever need to?”
“Course you can, sweetheart.” She patted his back like he was a kid. “Once some bastard fires at you, experience takes over. You won’t care what the enemy looks like, and your forebrain won’t be making the decisions.” She looked at her Lancer. “I’m not sure how I’m going to cope with using a chainsaw on a human, but we used to use the old blade bayonets, and they’re pretty nasty in a different sort of way.”
Cole tried to imagine having this conversation with a local civilian. It would have been like trying to explain why he freaked out at the sight of that weird eel. People around him acted like two species now, those who got it when it came to the war with the grubs, and those who didn’t.
“Thanks, Boomer Lady.”
“Cole Train, you’ve never doubted yourself, ever. No reason to start doubting now.”
He almost asked her why she was worried about using the chainsaw on a human when she’d obviously done some pretty creative knife work on some guys, but he accepted that folks had limits that didn’t always make sense.
Three kids from the Pelruan party came over to stare at them. Cole had seen them around for a few days now. Bernie seemed to be her old self again since she’d caught her rapist, like she’d put all that shit to rest even without cutting his nuts off, and she squatted down to talk to the children like she hadn’t a care in the world. Damn, she was a pushover when it came to little kids.
“Hi, are you having fun?” she said. “I’m Bernie. This is Cole Train. He plays thrashball. What’s your name?”
Two of the kids just backed away and ran off. The little boy stood his ground. “Samuel,” he said, looking up at Cole. “Are you going to shoot us?”
“We only shoot monsters,” Cole said. That kid’s impression of Gears just didn’t seem healthy. “But only if they’re real ugly ones.”
Bernie frowned but kept it all quiet and soothing. “What makes you think we’ll shoot you, sweetheart? We’re here to look after everyone.”
“My mom says you will.”
“Really? I think she’s got that a bit wrong.”
“She says you’re all jumpy and you beat people up.”
Cole tried to imagine what the boy’s mom had actually said. Kids got the wrong end of the stick about detail, but they usually got the sentiment right, and that worried him. He squatted down next to Bernie—he often forgot how big he must have looked from a kid’s height—and tried to reassure the boy that Gears didn’t bite. Then a woman rushed up and grabbed Samuel like she was snatching him out of the path of a car.
“Let’s go, honey,” she said. “Don’t pester the Gears.”
“He’s no trouble at all.” Bernie stood up with her let’s-you-and-me-have-a-talk face on. “He thinks we shoot civilians, though. I was explaining that we don’t do that.”
“Okay, Sergeant.” The woman was backing away a step at a time “I don’t know what hellhole you people come from, but I don’t want any of you near my kids. You’re looking for a fight all the time. You’re angry at everything and everybody. You’re dangerous.”
“Ma’am, we—”
She stabbed a finger at Bernie. “I saw you assault a civilian. You hit an unarmed man with your rifle. Just stay away from us, okay?”
Bernie didn’t even try to explain, and just watched them go. The shock was written across her face.
“Shit,” she said after a long pause. “I terrify small children, and mothers think I’m a danger to society. Is that what I’ve become, Cole?”
“Bernie, she’s just a flake, okay? Forget it.”
“Yeah, I gave Massy a smack with the Lancer to get him down off t
he gate. If I think that’s normal, have I lost it?”
“Baby, listen to Doc Hayman. She said the whole damn city’s stressed as hell, not just us.” He thought of the eel that almost made him crap himself—just a damn ugly fish. “But these folks been livin’ in a nice little cocoon, so they’re naturally gonna think we’re all psychos.”
Bernie rubbed the back of her hand across her mouth. Shit, that had really upset her. She was scared of turning into an asshole like Massy and his thugs. Cole was almost starting to look back on Jacinto as a happy memory, a place where everyone understood that Gears had the kind of job that pushed them over the edge sometimes. It wasn’t like anyone was out of control—just messed up by a long war, nothing more than that.
“The day I was discharged from Two-Six RTI was like losing my family,” Bernie said at last. “Twenty-two years. My old man said he didn’t know who I was when I got home.”
“Shit, baby, I never knew you had an old man.”
“Farmer.” That was all she said. It explained some things but unexplained a lot of others. She glanced back over her shoulder at the civvies. “Stupid cow. She’ll come crying to us when she’s got Stranded swarming all over her.”
“Talking of which, what you gonna do with your pet asshole?”
“They don’t do well in captivity, do they?”
“You can’t hang on to him forever. Whatever the Chairman thinks, we ain’t got the spare food and manpower to keep folks locked up doing nothing for years.”
“Yeah, I realize that.”
“Not saying folks shouldn’t have justice, but it gets kinda complicated the longer you take over it.”
“If he was a grub, what would we do with him?”
“Slice and dice, baby. You wouldn’t have blinked.”
“The shitbag was right, then. We do have double standards, and we are soft.”
“See why I asked you about shootin’ human enemies?”
Bernie shrugged. “Then Massy’s business associates will want to avenge him. And so it escalates.”
“Yeah, grudges never rust.”
At least that made her laugh. Anyone who could laugh was still in one piece.
“Come on, we’ve got stevedore duty,” she said. “Plenty of ships still to be unloaded. Honest sweaty work.”
Cole looked back over his shoulder a couple of times as they walked away, and caught sight of two of the Pelruan women watching with mistrust all over their faces. So some of the locals thought Gears weren’t properly civilized like decent folk, and the Gears in turn thought the Stranded were a step outside the human race.
Man, there was a league table of society set up already. Nobody could ever accuse humans of being slow to find someone new to look down on.
SMALL SHIPS’ JETTY, VNB, NEXT MORNING.
“I don’t give a damn if it’s unsporting,” Michaelson said. “First sign of trouble—open fire.”
The small inflatable boat puttered slowly toward the jetty, trailing a square of grubby white sheet on a long radio aerial. Dom could see one man at the tiller: twenty, twenty-five, rifle slung across his back.
Marcus aimed down at the small RIB. The jetty was well above the water line, patrol boat level. “Yes, Captain …”
“I detect doubt in your voice, Sergeant Fenix. When we have a quiet moment, allow me to stand you a drink and tell you some unsettling stories about my experience of piracy tactics.”
Marcus grunted. “You got it.”
Dom wouldn’t have put anything past the Stranded now, rubber boat or not. He made a show of sighting up on them, too. The man cut the outboard motor and let the boat drift onto the jetty wall, grabbing the bottom rung of the metal ladder to hold his position.
Michaelson looked down at him from the top. “So you want to talk,” he said. “I’m Captain Quentin Michaelson. You look familiar. Haven’t I sunk you somewhere before?”
The Stranded guy didn’t look amused. “Call me Ed. You’re holding a member of our management, and we’d like to talk terms.”
“What makes you think we’d want to?”
“We hear he’s not dead, and you haven’t shot me up yet.”
“Assuming we’re interested, what terms could you possibly offer us?”
“If you hand him over, we’ll stay clear of Vectes.” Ed cocked his head and seemed to be keeping an eye on Marcus. “And you stay clear of our territories.”
Dom expected Michaelson to give Ed the full COG speech on whose territories all the islands were, but he just ignored the comment. “Why should I negotiate with criminals who attack unarmed fishing vessels?”
“We haven’t touched your boats, man. Not for a while, anyway.”
“Very public-spirited. Perhaps another subsidiary of your Stranded enterprise sank the Harvest, then.”
“I tell you, we haven’t been near your fishermen.” Ed sounded wary. He was probably expecting Marcus to open fire. Dom was fascinated at his willingness to come right into the naval base, trusting the COG not to ambush him. “You lost one?”
“You know damn well we did.”
“I ain’t wasting my breath trying to convince you.”
“If I were to hand this gentleman back to you, instead of standing him in front of a firing squad as he deserves,” Michaelson said, “then I would want that done by your management team in person.”
“I’ll ask. I’m just the messenger boy.”
“And to show goodwill, I’d like the handover to be at your main location.”
“We’re not that stupid. Or trusting.”
“Then they can meet us here. Discuss how things are going to be from now on.”
“I think,” Ed said, “that they’ll want a neutral location. At a time of their choosing. You know how it is.”
Michaelson just folded his arms. “You’d better be able to put something substantial on the table and enforce it. Come back to me if and when you’ve got something to offer.”
Ed pushed off from the ladder and started the outboard. He left a lot faster than he’d come in, leaving a wide wake. Dom waited for Michaelson to tell everyone what he was really planning.
“Sounds like a nice simple deal.” Marcus lowered his rifle. “What’s the real one?”
“I imagine Ed is trying to work that out, too,” Michaelson said. “But this isn’t international diplomacy, Sergeant. We don’t have treaties with organized crime. And they are very organized. Let me show you something.”
He gestured to them to follow him and strode back toward the deepwater berths. It was a constant route march to move around VNB. Dom felt he spent most of his day walking around the place, and wondered if it would have been so hard to free up some vehicles and fuel to save time.
But I can walk anywhere without expecting the pavement to rip open and grubs to spew out of the hole. That’s got to be worth some boot leather.
He caught up with Marcus. “I always wondered what the navy did all those years when it wasn’t ferrying supplies. I’m starting to find out.”
“And Hoffman knows he’s doing this?”
“As long as Prescott knows.”
“Yeah,” Marcus said. “He always tells us everything. Never pulls need-to-know shit on us.”
“I think Michaelson’s making for Clement.”
“Shit. Armor off…”
Clement was a tight fit. A fully armored Gear wouldn’t even get down the hatch. They left their plates, weapons, and boots on the jetty—Marcus insisted on a guard for it all, even here—and squeezed into a whole new world that smelled of fuel and stale coffee. It wasn’t designed for really big men. Marcus kept scraping his shoulders on bulkhead instruments along the narrow passages, clusters of dials and tiny handwheels packed so tightly together that they looked almost comical. Dom tried to imagine locating the right control in a pitch-black boat after a lighting failure. That alone scared him enough to kill any thoughts of serving at sea. He’d take grubs any day, thanks.
“Welcome to the control center,
” Michaelson said. The passage opened out onto a slightly less confusing space that spanned the beam of the boat. “Commander Garcia here is one of our last Pendulum War submariners, and this is our only boat, so we take very good care of both. Even so, we haven’t been able to maintain all the boat’s systems.”
Garcia was a lot younger than the grizzled old sea dog Dom expected to see, maybe forty or so, hunched over a small chart table. Not much older than me. Shit. How much combat experience has he got, then? Can’t be much. When Garcia unhunched, he didn’t manage to expand much in the space available.
“We like Corporal Baird,” Garcia said. “Very able engineer. Can we keep him? Trade you a few packs of coffee.”
“Tempting,” Marcus said. “But I have to decline.”
Michaelson tapped one of the gauges on the bulkhead, frowning. “Okay, here’s the plan I’ve put to Hoffman. We could afford to ignore a lot of piracy when the COG had a mainland presence. It wasn’t our problem so long as it didn’t affect us. Now we can’t—Vectes shipping’s going to be the single richest target they’ll have, and we’ll depend on safe seas until we can reclaim the continent. So now’s the time to give them a serious smacking and not just dick around picking off the occasional boat when we run into it.”
“What did you have in mind?” Marcus asked.
“Find their bases. Cream their vessels and eliminate their members. Sends out a message to the noncriminal Stranded, too.”
“And pirates are harder to pin down than you think,” Garcia said. “We don’t have the reach or the kit these days. But at least we can listen better now, thanks to Baird.”
Garcia fiddled with a control panel that Dom couldn’t even begin to recognize, and a very broken-up radio signal filled the small space. Dom had to concentrate hard to make out anything. But then the sounds started to fall into place, and he realized he was eavesdropping on intercepted radio chatter between pirate vessels. It was patchy, but it was better than nothing.
“We know roughly where some of them are, and who they are,” Garcia said. “Some of these guys have been around for years, like the gang Massy’s linked to. So now we know that they want him back, he’s finally going to be some use to decent society for once in his life. As bait.”
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