They piled into the ’Dill and headed back. Anya took the wheel. Cole sat back and tried to read what was going on—and there was a lot a guy could read in a bunch of tired, shattered people.
Bernie linked her arm through Dom’s, not a word said, and Dom let her, then shut his eyes. It was a real nice motherly thing to do. Anya took a quick look at Marcus a couple of times, and he looked back in a way that wasn’t exactly a smile but wiped a few lines off his face for a moment. Baird sat dismantling a Lancer chain, not making eye contact, probably because he didn’t know how to tell everyone how glad he was that they were all alive and could actually think about a real future, not just the bullshit one that Prescott always used to talk about to make people forget they probably wouldn’t see tomorrow.
Yeah, nobody had to say a word. Everyone understood.
“I’d like to think that wasn’t me back there,” Bernie said quietly. “But it was, and that’s the thing that’s going to be the thin end of the wedge if we let it.”
Dom didn’t open his eyes. “You’d have stopped yourself. I’m not sure if I would have.”
Nobody needed to add that they wouldn’t have blamed him. Cole hoped he knew that.
CHAPTER 3
We can’t stop them. We don’t know where they come from. We don’t know what they want. They don’t even seem to want territory. All they do is kill. We can’t even begin to negotiate with them, or work out their objectives, because we just don’t know the first damn thing about them. That’s not an enemy, Mr. Chairman. That’s a monster.
(GENERAL BARDRY SALAMAN, CHIEF OF THE COG DEFENSE STAFF.)
CHAIRMAN’S OFFICE, HOUSE OF THE SOVEREIGNS, EPHYRA, ONE YEAR AFTER THE LOCUST EMERGENCE, FOURTEEN YEARS AGO.
Father was dead, but even if he’d still been alive, he would have had no advice or answers to give his son now.
Richard Prescott wasn’t fighting his father’s war anyway. It wasn’t about energy supplies or land. Nobody on Sera had ever fought this kind of enemy before; there were no rules or precedents, and a year and a month after the Locust Horde had erupted from the ground, Sera—human Sera—was close to collapse.
I’ve been in office two months. I wouldn’t even be here if Dalyell hadn’t dropped dead. What do I know?
I know that we’re all going to die if I don’t pull this out of the fire now.
“Sir?” The office door opened slowly. “Sir, I’ve got Premier Deschenko on the line now. I’m sorry about the delay.”
The delay had been ten hours; Prescott had been trying to get hold of the man since last night. Jillian, his secretary, hadn’t left the office in days, but then few of his staff went home regularly each night now, and it wasn’t just a primal human need to huddle together with familiar faces. It was desperation. Somehow, there was a feeling that the answer might be around the next corner if they just kept on trying, or spent one more hour looking for a break.
“Good,” Prescott said. “Put him through.”
He pressed the phone to his ear and shut his eyes. It was easier to concentrate that way. He needed to hear every nuance in Deschenko’s voice, because he was going to ask the impossible, and he had to know if he was actually going to get it.
“Yori? How are you?”
“I’ve just had to order the retreat from Ostri.” Deschenko sounded hoarse and exhausted. “I mean the whole country. I’ve lost nearly twenty brigades since E-Day, and now I need the few troops I have left to defend Pelles.”
Prescott hadn’t expected good news anyway. But that wasn’t what he was seeking. “You know what I’m going to ask.”
“Richard, I can’t send troops to Tyrus or anywhere else. I have millions of refugees pouring over the border, and the best I can do is try to hold the north.”
“You still have chemical weapons.”
Deschenko fell silent. The Coalition of Ordered Governments was a strange beast to control. Prescott was its chairman, and its heart was—and always had been—in Ephyra, in Tyrus, but the operational reality was very different. It was a global alliance. Heads of COG states had to want to cooperate, or at least fear the wrath of the others if they tried to break ranks. Unilateral enforcement—the kind that didn’t require extreme measures, at least—wasn’t in Prescott’s gift.
And he was on his own now. He knew it.
Where was the coalition? Every state had been hit hard by Locust attacks, and each was fighting its own war for the privilege of being the last to fold and die.
You’ve all given up. You cowards. You parochial little cowards.
“Yes, I have weapons,” Deschenko said. “But they’re my last resort, to defend Pelles. And they’ll kill us along with the grubs. They’re for the endgame, Richard.”
Oh yes. They are.
Apart from the names of cities and precise numbers of dead, this was a script that Prescott had almost learned by heart over the past few weeks, because every COG leader so far had taken the same position. They couldn’t think beyond their own boundaries. Nobody was ready to sacrifice the defense of their own citizens to support a combined strike.
They’ve given up. They’re just letting these bastards pick us off.
This wasn’t about Pelles, or Ostri, or Tyrus, or any other member state. This was about Sera, the entire world. This was about the survival of humankind.
“I realize I’m asking a great deal,” Prescott said carefully. “And I know I’m seen as the boy who’s just taken over the family firm and has to learn how things are really done around here. But I don’t have time, and neither does Sera.”
“Spell it out, Richard.”
“I’m asking you what I’ve asked every member state. Agree to this—a joint and coordinated assault on the main Locust infestations. Break their back.”
“Many of those locations happen to be in Tyrus…”
“There are no national boundaries now, Yori. The Locust don’t give a damn about our petty administrative detail. We’re all the same to them. Are you with me?”
Deschenko sounded as if he was swallowing repeatedly. He might have been grabbing a coffee, or just agonizing over a choice between disaster and apocalypse. But Prescott knew the answer would be the same either way. He just needed to know he’d done all he could to carry the argument.
“No, Richard,” Deschenko said at last. “I’m afraid I’m not.”
It was such a polite way to usher in mass destruction.
“Thank you, Yori. I understand your position.” Prescott paused, almost automatically wishing the man well, or luck, or some other banal blessing that would never come to pass. But it felt like a lie. He hadn’t yet learned to lie that easily. “Goodbye.”
Prescott stood staring out the window for a few minutes, aware of the TV screens on the walls on both sides of him, sound muted, spewing news bulletins that never seemed to change, but focused instead on the physical world he could see with his own eyes. Helicopters tracked across the sky. It was a beautiful sunny day, at odds with the ugly work that had to be done. If he switched off those TV sets, he could almost believe that life was going on as normal. He didn’t. He walked to the other window, the one that overlooked the rest of Ephyra, and stared at a view that stretched for twenty miles. Palls of smoke were visible, and old skyline landmarks had vanished. The Locust were almost at the gates.
One more try?
They’ve all turned me down, except the South Islands, and they’ve got nothing to contribute except Gears. This is going to take more than manpower.
“Jillian?” He held his finger on the intercom. “Get me the Attorney General, please. Not on the phone—ask him to come here as soon as he can.”
“Yes, sir. You know his brother’s still missing, don’t you?”
Everyone was grieving. “I do.”
Prescott sat down to wait, and turned up the sound on the monitors to watch the latest headlines. It astonished him that camera crews were still willing to go out and film the destruction. But what else could they do? In crisis,
humans reverted to doing what they knew, part reflex, part comfort.
He was doing the same. He sat wondering why the final refusal from Deschenko—the confirmation that he had no control, that he’d failed to convince the rest of the COG that drastic action was all that was left—hadn’t crushed him. He felt cleansed by it. A burden had lifted.
God help me, do I actually want to do this?
No, he wasn’t a monster. He was sure of that. He knew what monsters looked like now. They were gray, and they came in many hideous forms, and they delighted in the suffering of humans.
And they had to die, or all of humanity would be wiped out.
What have we done?
We should never have let it get this far. It has to stop, right now. Any way we can.
He pressed the intercom again. “Jillian, it’s time you went home.”
“I’m fine, sir.”
“Do you have family anywhere else? Outside Jacinto, I mean.”
“Only my sister, sir. She’s in Tollen.”
“You might want to ask her to come and stay with you. Ephyra’s going to be the only part of Tyrus that’s safe from Locust. In fact, make it soon. The grubs are getting closer every day.”
Jillian paused, and that wasn’t like her. Prescott hoped she understood the urgency of moving her sister, and from that pause, he knew she understood at least a little of what he had in mind.
“Thank you, sir,” she said at last. “But I’ll wait here until the AG’s shown up. Is there anything else I can do in the meantime?”
Prescott wanted to sleep now. He decided he could manage a half-hour nap before anyone answered his summons.
“Yes,” he said. If it had to be done, it could be rolled up in one meeting. “I need to see General Salaman, too. And the Director of Special Forces—Hoffman. That rough little colonel with all the medals.”
“Yes, sir.”
Prescott had his quorum now. “And Adam Fenix. Get Professor Fenix. The meeting’s going to get technical.”
THE SANTIAGO HOUSEHOLD, EPHYRA.
“Maria? Maria, honey, are you there?”
Of course she was there. She hardly ever left the house now. Dom stood in the hallway and waited for a response. He knew where she’d be, and he could simply have walked upstairs and opened that bedroom door, but it was just too hard to see her sitting there staring at the cot. She wanted that quiet time, too. In the last year, they’d reached an understanding about no-go areas in this house as complex as any minefield in the war.
He’d rented this house for them to be happy in it, for the kids to have a big backyard to play in, but it didn’t work out that way.
“Maria, I brought Marcus back.” Dom waited, listening for movement, giving her time to get herself together. “I’m going to cook dinner. You come down when you’re ready, baby.”
Marcus was still standing on the doorstep, staring up at the birds. He always waited to be invited over the threshold now, as if he felt he was intruding, and that upset Dom; Marcus was family, and Dom’s house was his, anytime. With Bennie and Sylvia gone, Dom took nobody for granted now. He tugged at Marcus’s sleeve.
“Hey, come on. Kitchen duties.”
“You sure I’m not making this worse?”
“No. She likes to see you. You know that.”
They peeled vegetables and jointed the chicken in silence, while sounds of movement from upstairs indicated that Maria had left Sylvia’s room and gone into the bathroom. Dom knew her ritual: she’d close the door, and then spend fifteen minutes, almost to the second, putting a soaked ice-cold washcloth on her eyes to reduce the swelling.
But he’d still know she’d been crying for hours. No amount of sympathy or tablets could change the fact that their kids were dead—and their parents, and cousins, and half their friends. The fact that the Santiagos were like millions of other utterly broken and bereaved people across Tyrus—across the whole world—didn’t ease the pain one bit.
It just meant that the neighbors didn’t ask dumb-ass questions, or make stupid but well-meaning comments about time being such a great fucking healer, because they were mostly bereaved, too.
Bullshit. I haven’t even healed about Carlos, and that was three years ago.
Well, if they weren’t bereaved yet, they had family serving as Gears. It was only a matter of time.
“What do I do with these?” Marcus held up the wine. He was raiding his father’s priceless cellar a few bottles at a time, but he wasn’t much of a drinker, and he certainly wasn’t a chef. “Which one’s for the chicken?”
“The white one. Red makes everything a funny color.”
Marcus studied both labels, then uncorked the bottle of white. “I’m impressed.”
“Why?”
“You, learning to cook like this.”
“Well … you know.” Maria had problems getting her act together around the house some days, and Dom began doing stuff to stop her from feeling bad about it. Then it seemed to cheer her up a little to have dinner cooked for her. As long as he was cooking, he knew she was eating properly, even if it was only when he was home on leave. “I don’t know what else to do for her.”
“Look, I’m passing this on because I promised I would,” Marcus said. “Dad says Maria can stay at the estate anytime. He’s worried about her being here alone. He’ll hire someone to keep her company. And he’s got access to all the top doctors.” Marcus stopped dead. The quiet embarrassment on his face said that he knew his father meant well, but that Dom’s answer would be no. “Sorry, Dom. You know my father. He thinks science can fix anything.”
Dom looked away and found the pan of rice suddenly of great interest. Gestures like that choked him up instantly. The Fenix family estate was a huge empty mausoleum of a place, intimidating and magnificent, and Adam Fenix was a bit too much like his home, a man with no idea how to be anything other than distant and focused on his work. But there was a kind father in there trying to get out, desperate to do the right thing; he just didn’t seem sure how regular people showed that they cared.
“That’s really, really generous, Marcus.” Dom felt his voice cracking. “Your dad’s a good man. Tell him thanks, but Maria needs to be here. You know. The bedrooms are …”
He didn’t finish the sentence. The word was shrines. Dom understood that completely, but it still freaked him out. He’d done it himself. He didn’t want to touch his father’s workshop; he could still see them all in it, tinkering with some engine—Carlos, Marcus, Dad, Mom wandering in with sandwiches. But he walked away from it, because that was how you made yourself accept that they were never coming back.
Maria walked into the kitchen and gave Marcus a big deliberate smile, but her eyes were dead. As always, though, she looked beautiful—perfectly groomed, hair immaculate, full makeup. That gave Dom hope that she’d mend, because she hadn’t let herself go. Shit, it was just over a year; how could anyone finish grieving in that time? He was expecting too much. But he just wanted to see her pain stop.
And then I’ll have nothing left to do but look at my own.
“Have you seen your dad?”
Maria’s voice sounded hoarse and thick. She had a habit of plunging straight into topics now, as if she’d been having a conversation in her head that had just leaked out. Marcus accepted a peck on the cheek from her, blinking as if he’d noticed.
“I haven’t seen him since I got back,” he said. “He’s pretty busy.”
“You’ve got to spend time with him.” Maria took firm hold of Marcus’s hand. “Promise me.”
“I’ll see him.” Marcus nodded, looking embarrassed. “I promise.”
“Come on, sit down, both of you,” Dom said, shepherding them toward the living room. It had to be her medication. She seemed much more spacey today. “Let’s have a drink while the dinner’s cooking.”
It was good wine. Dom didn’t know much about vintages, but the Fenix family was rich, seriously rich, and this stuff was twenty-six years old—older than him.
Whatever it was, it had cost a fortune; the chicken was swimming in something that had probably cost a week’s wages. But with rationing, money was ceasing to mean much. The chicken was a rare treat, not because he couldn’t afford it on a Gear’s pay—shit, they were getting paid on time, even now—but because the Locust had trashed farms and food factories, disrupted freight traffic, all the little invisible things that put food on the table of a big capital city.
“Animals,” Dom said, holding the glass up to the light while he racked his brains for another neutral topic of conversation. The wine looked more brick-red than ruby. Marcus always said that showed it had bottle age. “Animals are smarter than us. We get a power outage or some factory gets blown up, and we fall apart. We need so much stuff. Animals—they just get up in the morning, find food, and carry on. No piped water supply—we drown in our own sewage, but animals just stay clean. If they’ve got white fur, it stays white. Imagine the state we’d be in if we had white fur.”
Marcus looked as if he was going to say something, but just did a slow blink and nodded. He’d stopped himself at the last moment. Whatever it was he’d been planning to say, it probably had the word death or kill in it, and he never used either in front of Maria. It was one of those little silent clues that told Dom what really went on in Marcus’s head.
“That’s what shaving’s for,” Marcus said at last.
“You okay, honey?” Dom topped up Maria’s glass. She was looking distinctly distant now. “You didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“I remembered to take my pills.” The doctor had prescribed antidepressants. “I’ve got to go out later. Just a nap, and then I’ll go out. I go out every day when you’re not here. I have to.”
Dom didn’t have a clue what she was talking about, and hoped it was the medication talking. He wasn’t sure if she felt hemmed in by this house and its memories and needed a break from the four walls, or if she just went for a walk to stretch her legs.
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