“I’m tasking fire support and a KR to get some light on those grubs. Don’t hog all the fun, Fenix.”
Stragglers were inevitable. And this time, they were almost welcome. Dom had unfinished business that drowning the grub bastards hadn’t resolved. Yes, it was a Corpser. He could see its lights in the darkness now, wobbling as it worked its way through the trees.
“So, we wait here, or we go get it?”
Marcus started walking. “Manners are the bedrock of civilization. Let’s meet the asshole halfway.”
Dom was up for that. A switch flipped somewhere inside, and he wanted destruction, vengeance, some vent for the pressure building within. He was jogging some way ahead of Marcus when he heard the Raven approaching. It swooped low overhead and the brilliant blue-white searchlights lit the field up like moonlight. Dom saw movement behind the Corpser. Shit, it was a mixed bag of Locust—a dozen drones, a couple of Boomers, and a Bloodmount.
Marcus sighed. “Ahh, shit…”
“You think they’re a recon party?”
“I think that’s a bunch of grub refugees doing what we’re doing and getting the hell out. Higher ground, old e-holes—they’ve kept ahead of the flood.”
Well, they weren’t coming to kiss and make up, that was for sure. Dom could already hear the noise of ’Dills behind, racing to the contact point. He dropped behind the nearest cover with Marcus, took aim, and waited. On open ground the motley band looked grotesque rather than terrifying, but if they got into the camp—no solid buildings for protection, masses of civilians who were already scared shitless—the panicked stampede alone would cost lives, let alone any damage the grubs might inflict.
Maybe the grubs didn’t realize they were on an intercept course for a human camp. They looked in complete disarray. The Bloodmount was going nuts, thrashing its head from side to side even with its rider hanging on to it for grim death. If the rider was thrown, the thing would revert to blind instinct and sniff out the nearest human flesh.
Maybe the grubs would veer away when they realized how outnumbered they were.
No. Bring it on. Come to me. Come and die.
As far as Dom was concerned, one grub was too many. Prescott was right: it was a genocidal war. The Locust started it. But now humans had to finish it, and grub stragglers weren’t just a hazard, they were potential breeding stock. They all had to die.
This is why I’m still alive. This is what I’m meant to do. I get it now.
Dom could now see headlights playing on the hummocks in the snow from behind him as the APCs raced to their position. There was no way the grubs could miss that, not in complete darkness on open land. Dom bet on them feeling just like he did then—that they wanted to make someone pay for what had happened to their buddies and their shitty little bit of Sera, and they didn’t much care if they died doing it.
“Want to take a bet on how many Locust were down there?” Marcus said.
“No idea. Thousands. Hundreds of thousands. Millions.”
“I think we’ve got about fifty or sixty heading this way.”
“Maybe some of the Lambent made it out, too, and that’s who they’re running from.”
“Like we’re the softer option?”
Dom centered his sights on a Boomer. “They got that wrong, then,” he said, and opened fire.
ARMADILLO PERSONNEL CARRIER PA-776, RESPONDING.
“Cole, let me in.” Anya Stroud hammered her fist on the ’Dill’s hull as it revved up. “Cole!”
Anya was only a little slip of a thing by Cole’s scale of reckoning, but she was close to putting a dent in the metal. Bernie leaned across the crew cab and went to hit the hatch control.
Baird snapped his goggles into place with a loud thwack of the strap. “It’s ladies’ night, Cole.”
“Anya ain’t frontline.” Cole would have driven off, but he couldn’t see exactly where Anya was standing and he was afraid of flattening her. “She’s gonna have to sit this one out.”
“Bollocks, her mother was my CO, and she’s coming with us,” Bernie said. She hit the switch. “Mount up, ma’am.”
Cole wasn’t sure that answer made sense. But he didn’t have time to argue, and Bernie had her killing face on. She was still mad as hell about her squad—or something. There was plenty to be mad about. Anya scrambled into the cab.
“Okay, ma’am, just be careful, that’s all.” Cole understood that rush of blood that made a Gear want to get stuck into a bunch of grubs. It was only natural, but not in a skirt and high heels. That was asking for trouble. He sent the ’Dill racing down the perimeter lane. “If I bring you back with holes in you, Hoffman’s gonna yell bad words at me.”
Baird rummaged in a locker. Cole caught a glimpse of a Lancer being handed over as he focused on the driver’s periscope.
“Okay, ma’am,” Baird said. “Tell me which end makes the big noise.”
“I still have to requalify with this weapon every year, Baird.” Anya checked the safety and the ammo clip, then powered up The short burst of chainsaw noise in the confined space made Cole wince. “Think of this as saving me from skills fade.”
“We only got a few grubs, and there’s a whole army of Gears headin’ their way, so form a line,” Cole said.
“Just in case, then.”
Maybe she felt she still had something to prove, what with having a kick-ass mother like Helena Stroud and everything. Shit, that was some serious lady to live up to. Bernie had told Cole some hairy stories about the major, and he believed every word. He glanced at Anya for a moment to check whether her expression said scared shitless or red mist, but it looked more like she was trying to recite some drill under her breath. She had a point, though—frontline meant squat now. Nobody was going to get the luxury of sitting at a fancy desk all day, even if the COG still had any of those. Which it didn’t.
“Whoa, they started without us,” Baird said, finger pressed to one ear as he listened to the comms chatter. There was a weird mood going around, that crazy state between finding everything funny and wanting to cry for days. People did dumb shit when they felt like that, but it was sinking in that the grubs were busted and humans were back on top again, even if that was top of a pile of nothing. You had to make allowances. “Hey, Cole, see all the muzzle flash? It’s a mixed grill. A little of everything on the Locust menu.”
“Shit, it’ll all be over by the time we dismount.” Bernie didn’t sound like she was joking. “But they won’t be the last.”
“I promised I’d save a live one for you, Granny.”
“That’s my boy. I’ll remember you in my will.”
“Not fair,” Cole said. “You promised to leave the kitty-fur boots to me, Boomer Lady.”
“You get the country estate. You’re my favorite.” Bernie’s voice wasn’t right. Her mind was on something else. “Is it true what they did to Tai?”
Cole didn’t want to think about it yet. It wasn’t the right time to lose it. Maybe later. “Depends what you heard. But he’s out of it now, so—”
“I told her,” Baird said.
Everyone stopped yapping. Anya laid the Lancer on her lap. Baird hadn’t told Anya, and now Cole could tell she was imagining the worst. Maybe she couldn’t imagine anything that bad.
No, she was a CIC dispatcher. The bots’ cameras had shown her the war in close-up for years. It’d take a lot to shock her, but then maybe Tai was one mutilated body too many.
“Now, where am I gonna park?” The ’Dill bounced over the rough ground. This was close enough. Cole brought it to a halt next to three other APCs—none of which had their full armor plating—to provide extra cover. “End of the line, ladies. Check you got all your luggage with you.”
Another squad was already laying down fire to the right, and when Cole followed their aim, he could see that the Corpser had broken away and was trying to circle around the defenses. Shit, get a Centaur down here and pop this bitch with a few shells. They were now in a meadow due south of the camp, runnin
g parallel with the road to Jacinto. More refugees were still streaming in. And they’d heard that the grubs were back in town, judging by the screaming.
Shit, the last thing anyone needed now was some kind of stampede and civilians rushing every damn where. They had nowhere to hide. But there was no point telling them to leave the cleanup to the Gears and carry on into the camp like nothing was happening. They knew the grubs were around, and grubs meant ending up dead.
“Ma’am, get up in the ’Dill’s hatch and give us fire cover.” Bernie gestured to Anya. “Because you’re not fully mobile in what you’re wearing. We’ll put that right later. Okay?”
“Who’s herding the civilians?” Cole asked. “Someone ought to be keeping a line between them and the grubs in case they bolt the wrong way.”
Anya vanished and the top hatch flew open. She had a vantage point now, and she could see stuff Cole couldn’t. She rested her Lancer on the hatch coaming while she activated her radio. “We need some crowd control down here, Mathieson.”
“Tell him to put some armor between us and the refugees,” Baird said. “We’re overmanned down here. Just keep the civvies out of our way and stop ’em going shitless.”
“Control’s blind, man.” Cole felt sorry for Mathieson, trying to task units without any visual on the battlefield. “Shit, the things I’m missin’ about Jacinto already …”
Bernie pointed toward the road. “Ma’am, if you want to head off any civvies, move the ’Dill—we’ll be fine.”
“Roger that, Sergeant.”
Bernie smiled to herself and jogged away in the direction of the firefight. Baird shoved Cole in the back. “Hey, come on, Cole. We got to keep an eye on Granny. She’s the one who knows how to cook all that wildlife shit, remember? That’s important now. Skills, man.”
Every Gear seemed to be converging on that bunch of Locust like they’d never seen one before. It was now total overkill; relief, probably, everyone finally seeing the last of the grubs and wanting to get a whole lot of shit out of their systems. The biggest danger now was probably getting in some other Gear’s arc of fire. APCs screamed out of the assembly area and headed for the road, taillights bouncing in a staggered line. Cole could hear a Raven heading his way.
But he had some shit to get out of his system, too.
He focused on a wounded Boomer trying to reload—baby, you had to be faster than that with Cole Train around—and ran at it, firing short bursts. Marcus was down there somewhere to the right, yelling at someone else.
“Stop pissing ammo!” Marcus didn’t yell much, but when he did, you could hear him the other side of Jacinto. “Shit, save your fucking ammo!” There was a roar of chainsaw, then a loud grunt. “We can’t replace this shit yet.”
“Yeah, that’s right, baby!” The Boomer looked up just as Cole put a burst into its legs to distract it. He sprinted inside its reach before it could aim its Boomshot and put two rounds through its eye socket—a handy ready-made hole in the skull, a whole lot easier than trying to get through that thick hide. “I’m on an economy drive. Baird, where you got to? Talk to me—whoo, we got light!”
The Raven was now overhead, sweeping the snow with searchlights, and Cole got an instant snapshot of the battle as far as the visible horizon. Dark gray mounds lay scattered: dead grubs. Baird and Bernie were running to intercept one moving toward the road. Cole could see it staggering, leaving a trail of blood on the snow. A massive explosion followed almost immediately by a second—a kind of boom-boom like a heartbeat—left him blinded for a few moments.
“Corpser down,” said a deadpan voice on the comms channel. A Centaur rumbled into the circling pools of brilliant white light as if it was taking a bow at an ice show. The tank was in its element, with plenty of space to do its thing. “KR-Three-Five, you see the Bloodmount? They’re just nasty. We want it.”
“KR-Three-Five to all squads, we have visual on the Bloodmount and rider. C-Twenty-Eight will engage. Stand clear.”
The Centaur fired another volley of shells just as the Bloodmount came racing toward the camp. Man, they were big ugly bastards even by grub standards. They ate humans if they got a chance. The rider must have known he was going to get his ass fried, and his pony’s, too, but he kept on coming like he had a chance of trampling the place.
They hate us that much?
Hell, that’s what I’d do …
“Fire.”
The Centaur trembled on its massive tires from the recoil. The Bloodmount was an instant ball of flame, and its rider was hurled so high into the air that a couple of Gears had time to start a run for his landing spot. The meadow was suddenly still except for the Raven tracking back and forth in a search pattern as it scanned the battlefield. It didn’t look like any grub had made it out.
The show distracted Cole for a moment, and he lost sight of Baird and Bernie when the searchlights moved. Then a ’Dill’s headlamps picked out the two of them. The grub they’d been chasing was down. And Bernie was on its back, like she’d tackled it. She probably had. Baird waved at him.
“Cole!” he yelled. “I promised Granny, okay?”
“What the hell you doin’, man?” Cole jogged across the snow. Another ’Dill rolled in, lights angled down, like it was illuminating the area for them. “Give her a hand. She’s gonna get hurt. You out of ammo or something?”
The grub was badly wounded, all blood and frayed flesh, but that didn’t mean it still wasn’t dangerous. Cole didn’t want to see Bernie survive the war—hell, two wars and whatever shit she did in between—just to end up creamed because she couldn’t resist settling one last score with grubkind. But she had the thing in a headlock, pinned it to the ground.
That was a sight to behold in itself. She was no kid, and she still wasn’t carrying enough weight to brawl like that, but she didn’t seem to care. She drew her knife and shoved the tip under its jaw-line. Shit, why didn’t Baird shoot the thing?
Baird looked at Cole and shrugged. “We got a live one. Hey, ladies first…”
“Damon baby, just kill it so we can go. I ain’t had my dinner yet.”
“Why? We never took one alive before. It’s interesting.”
Cole suddenly realized what Bernie was up to. Her teeth were clenched, and she didn’t look like the Bernie he knew. And it wasn’t just the sharp angles that the headlights threw up on her face.
“You know what I’m going to do with this, tosser?” Her face was right in the grub’s, close enough to get it bitten off if the thing had the strength left to go for her. “I’m going to do to you what you did to my mate Tai. Yeah. You like that idea? And I’m old, so I’m going to be a bit slow about it. Understand?”
The grub struggled weakly. Baird moved around and put one boot on its back to pin it down. Cole thought it was to stop the thing from throwing Bernie off if it got its second wind, but some of the Gears who were watching took it as an invitation to join in.
Cole didn’t mind chainsawing any number of grubs, but this wasn’t right. Bernie—and she was a kind woman, she really was—had kicked up a notch into something he hadn’t seen before. Andresen’s squad cheered. Nobody seemed to have any doubts; they all knew now what grubs did to human prisoners. And that was without the grievance about a few billion dead since E-Day.
“Bernie, just shoot the thing.” Cole debated whether to end the show himself. Baird wasn’t exactly helping calm things down. “Damon, that ain’t nice. Don’t get Boomer Lady all fired up when she’s had a shitty day.”
Baird shouldered his Lancer. “Why haven’t we taken any of these things prisoner before? Maybe this is a chance to learn something.” He lifted his boot and moved around to the grub’s head, kneeling down to look it in the eye. It just kept bellowing. It might have been crying for its mother or cursing them all to hell. Nobody knew; Baird was just about the only guy who stood a chance of working it out. He was smart when it came to grubs. “Hey, asshole—look at me. I know you get a kick out of this shit, but why pick on us? Your war w
as with your own buddies. Not our problem. And, seeing as we’re chatting, where the hell did you all come from?”
The Locust just went on bellowing, and Bernie dragged the tip of her blade down its neck, looking like she was putting all her weight into it. Grubs had thick hides; she wasn’t joking when she said that slicing it up would take some time. Cole was starting to feel really uncomfortable now, wondering if he’d have sawed up so many grubs if he’d had the chance to take his time over it. Something told him he wouldn’t have, but that didn’t help him work out why one felt okay and the other didn’t. It didn’t make the grub any happier, either way.
I never lost any sleep over ’em. Just over my folks. And my buddies. This ain’t the time to start judgin Bernie, maybe.
“I’ve got plenty of time, grub,” Bernie said. “Blondie, you think you’d understand an answer if it gave you one?”
Baird was still on his knees, peering at the grub like it was the underside of a truck. “Dunno. Try it and see.”
The group of spectators parted. Marcus wandered across, Dom behind him, and stood looking down at Bernie and Baird.
“Just shoot it,” he said.
Bernie still had a murderous grip on the grub, but she twisted around to look at Marcus. “Give me a reason.”
Marcus shrugged. “You’ll be bitching that your back’s giving you hell tomorrow.”
Bernie looked at him for a few moments, seemed to catch her breath, then eased off a fraction. She reached for her sidearm.
“Good point,” she said, and put the muzzle to the back of its head. “Okay, Blondie—clear.”
Crack.
If Marcus had just walked away like he’d put her in her place, it would have been awkward, seeing as she was the veteran sergeant. But he just held out his hand to help her to her feet. She took it. Everyone else thinned out. Getting a few hours’ sleep suddenly seemed a lot more interesting than messing up a grub or two.
“Terrific,” Baird said. “Now I’ll never know. Next time we find one—”
“I don’t give a shit what any grub’s got to say.” Marcus gave Bernie a shove toward the ’Dill. Cole reminded himself that they had history, regimental history. “Control? We’re done here. Returning to base.”
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