“You think he’s going to mix it with gunpowder and set fire to it, like they did in the old days?” Dom asked. “Because that’s about the only analysis he can do now.”
“Prescott?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe.” Marcus was getting worried about all this, because Dom rarely heard him speculate, regardless of what was going on in his head. “I can usually work out what he’s up to. But not this time.”
“Maybe he’s finally panicking.”
“Wouldn’t be good for people to see the Chairman lose his shit.”
“Hey, we function without him pretty well. Where’s the strategy coming from? Hoffman, Michaelson, and Sharle. Not him.”
“Everybody needs a figurehead,” Marcus said, handing back the jar. “If only to have an ass to kick.”
Dom had to admit that Prescott was good at holding people together. He’d never realized just what a messy job that was until he saw civilians with every reason to squabble suddenly not squabbling. The Gorasni were getting docile and the Pelruan locals had gone from a certain amount of resentment of the Jacinto newcomers to accepting that everyone’s fate was linked. The army had well-honed methods for doing that and the structure to enforce it, but not civvies. Even in the COG, they still had to be more persuaded to do the sensible thing than ordered.
“Yeah,” Dom said. “I’m not sure what the COG would look like now without him.”
VECTES NAVAL BASE, VEHICLE COMPOUND.
“Dad, can we come along?” Maralin asked. “Please? We haven’t been out of the camp for weeks.”
Dizzy climbed up to Betty’s cab and balanced on the step with one hand on the open door. “Ain’t nothin’ much to see out there except trees, sweetie. I’ll be back in a few hours.”
Teresa pitched in to back up her sister. They were twins, fourteen going on forty like all teenage girls, and Dizzy found that trying to be mom as well as dad to his daughters was stretching his parenting skills these days. They needed a woman’s guiding hand. They were good girls, no trouble at all, but having to spend so much time without their dad had made them clingy. They were scared to let him out of their sight now.
“Sam’s going,” Teresa said pointedly.
Dizzy stood his ground, trying to let common sense wrestle his guilt into submission. “Sam’s a Gear, and she’s ridin’ shotgun.”
Sam wandered up behind the twins with her Lancer and revved the chainsaw for a second.
“When you can handle one of these, you can go off-camp. You don’t want to run into glowies without one.” She ambled around to the other side of Betty and swung up onto the step in one movement. She made it look easy. “Here’s the deal. You go help out in the school, and I’ll give you firearms lessons. I’ll check with Mrs. Lewelin, mind.”
Teresa nudged Maralin. “Okay, Sam. See you later, Dad.”
Dizzy didn’t dare argue. Yeah, every kid needed to learn about rifles in this world, and Sam was the right one to teach them. He waited for the twins to walk away and slammed the driver’s door shut. Sam settled into the passenger seat and rested the Lancer on the open window.
She patted his arm. “Diz, we’re so busy staying alive that we’ve got kids now who can barely read and write. If your girls teach the little kids, everyone gets something out of it, right?”
“I ain’t complainin’. You got a way with ’em. They look up to you.”
“Teenagers, see. I look like a rebel to them.”
“Goddamn,” Dizzy said, starting the engine. “I always thought I was doin’ the right thing.”
“Bringing up two kids on your own is tough enough without doing it outside the wire.” She didn’t use the word Stranded, but it wouldn’t have offended him. It was what he used to be. Maybe he still was. “You did fine, Diz. They’re good kids.”
Dizzy drove out of the compound and took the perimeter road to the main gates. He’d been driving this rig for six years, the price of keeping his kids fed. Operation Lifeboat. Lifeboat for who, goddamn it? Wasn’t for the good of our health, Chairman, was it? It was an honest job and he took pride in it. But he still wondered if the girls would have been happier if he’d stayed Stranded and been a full-time dad.
Maralin probably wouldn’t have survived, though. Maybe he’d have been dead by now, too.
“I left my girls alone with strangers for weeks at a time,” he said. “That ain’t right.”
“Diz, the Lifeboat camp was organized.” Sam always went out of her way to make him feel better. “Qualified people, taking care of everyone’s kids. Not exactly strangers. How else were you going to feed them properly and get medical treatment?” She adjusted the wing mirror as Betty rumbled north. “My mother raised me alone too. So did Anya’s mother. We didn’t turn out so bad.”
“Ah, maybe this is ’cause I got girls,” Dizzy said. “They’re that age, y’know? They’re going to be dating soon, and that’s when it all goes to rat-shit. I dunno where the hell to start.”
“Jacinto’s a small community now. It’s not like they’re alone in the big city.”
“You know what’s funny?”
“What?”
“We ain’t worryin’ about grubs or glowies bein’ the dangers, either of us. We’re worryin’ about other humans.”
Sam checked the charge on her Lancer. “Oh, I think we’d better start worrying about the glowies again, then. They can ruin your entire day.”
Dizzy was nowhere near the fissure zones yet, not that he was worried about polyps. Betty had shoveled them up like rubble when they attacked the naval base. Hell, she could even roll right over mines; just a few weeks ago she’d been sweeping the main road with a chain flail, detonating devices planted by the Stranded gangs. She could take a hell of a pounding and keep right on going. He felt safe in her.
“So you’re just going to drive in and knock the trees down with the scoop,” Sam said.
“That’s the plan. Open up a gap so we can roll out some trackway and the tankers can get in to pump off the juice.”
“I hope it’s a big deposit. Or whatever you call it. Funny that the stalks came up through it.”
“Maybe they’re the way it got to the surface.”
“Baird’s bound to have a theory on that.”
“We never did get that picture of him on his throne.” Sam burst out laughing. “It’s still on my to-do list. I want it framed and hung in the mess.”
It was a nice day and Dizzy decided to enjoy the drive. He’d learned to live in the moment, not because he was happy to find himself alive for one more day like some of the folks he knew, but because he’d found a way to unplug himself from his memories. He didn’t look back because it hurt too much. He just looked forward. That meant his girls’ futures.
“You readin’ the map?” Dizzy asked. “I don’t want to uproot the wrong wood.”
“Keep going,” Sam said. “I’ll tell you when to turn off the road.”
“Goddamn, I’m gonna piss off another farmer by churnin’ up his fields, ain’t I?”
“Stick to the edge of the field wherever you can.” Sam checked the map against her compass. “Can’t rely on the satellite positioning anymore, but you’re never alone with basic fieldcraft. Okay—another eight hundred meters, then go right.”
Dizzy glanced at the dials on Betty’s dashboard, calculating the distance, then dropped a gear to approach the turnoff. “Hang on to your hat!” Betty lurched off the road, bouncing a little as her sheer weight ironed out the bumps in the grass. He picked up the radio handset. “Len, we’re headin’ your way. You got all your folks clear?”
The channel clicked. “We can hear you coming, Dizzy. You knock them down and we’ll clear them away.”
“Bear left,” Sam said.
“Okay, I’m heading for that hill.”
“Stay on this course.” She sighed. “I feel bad about this. Felling healthy trees, I mean.”
“Just shut your eyes and don’t look, sweetie,” Dizzy said. “It ai
n’t like we’re gonna waste the wood, after all.”
“Well… it’s all going to end up dead anyway from whatever toxin those stalks crap out everywhere.”
Dizzy checked his bearings with Parry. The forest was a wall of trunks with a thick dark roof of leaves, nothing complicated or delicate. This was what Betty was built for: drilling, dragging, digging, and generally creating paths through battlefields in any plane or direction. Dizzy slowed and slipped the clutch.
“Okay, Diz, whenever you’re ready,” Parry said. “Go for it.”
Dizzy whooped. “Whoo-hooo! Brace for impact, Sam!”
Betty rumbled into the first rank of trees and a slight shudder ran through her chassis. The noise of creaking wood rose up the scale. Then the trunks fell in slow motion, crashing onto the undergrowth and sending up clouds of leaves, insects, and twigs. When Dizzy reversed to take another run at it, he could see the ragged root balls exposed to the air, still shivering.
“I’m gonna keep goin’ until I can’t drive forward anymore,” Dizzy said. “Then I’ll back off while they drag the trunks clear.”
“You mind that you don’t get bogged down,” Sam said. “We don’t know what’s under the soil. There could be pockets of imulsion. Voids. Whatever.”
“Betty’s too big to fall down a hole.”
Sam had her elbow resting on top of the open side window. “She’s not too big to get stuck, though, and who’s going to tow her out?”
Dizzy moved in again, using the scoop as a battering ram. There was a satisfying creak and crunch, followed by two more trees collapsing in front of him.
Then something thudded onto the top of Betty’s cab.
“Keep your arm inside, Sam.” Dizzy backed up a few meters. “Gonna be a few branches fallin’.”
He glanced at her. She was holding her Lancer upright, two-handed, watching behind Betty in the wing mirror. “Okay, Diz.”
Thud. Another branch hit the cab roof, but he wasn’t sure where it had come from. Maybe it had just been caught up in the roof rails and slipped down.
Sam looked up at the cab’s head lining. “Diz…”
“What?”
She leaned forward to take a closer look in the wing mirror. “Oh shit, here we go,” she said. “Polyps.”
She reached for the handle to close the window, but dark gray legs scrabbled over the edge of the glass. That was all Dizzy saw before Sam shoved the Lancer out the window and opened fire. A loud bang made his ears ring and warm, sticky fluid splashed over his arm. Sam wound up the window as fast as she could.
“They’re all over the rig,” she said. “Back up and try to shake them off. Or I’ll have to get out and shoot the bloody things before they find a way in.”
“We’re okay. Betty’s built like a tank. They can’t even put a dent in her.” Dizzy could hear polyps scuttling all over the roof, legs tapping on the metal. Had he left a ventilation scuttle open? He couldn’t remember. He got on the radio. “Len? We got polyps all over us. You better look out.”
Polyps were bad enough on their own. But polyps on the loose with flammable imulsion everywhere were much, much worse.
“We don’t see them,” Parry said. “Where are they coming from?”
Sam pressed her face to the windshield to look up as far as she could. She flinched as a couple of polyps thudded onto the hood right in front of her, scrabbling at the glass. The damn things were now swarming all over Betty, prodding and poking to find a way in.
“Can’t sit here all day until they get bored, Diz,” she said. “Either I get out and pop them all, or we get Parry to do it.”
“With all this juice around? Sam, it’s gettin’ real lethal out there.”
“So let’s back away and find somewhere safer to do it. They’ll detonate anyway.”
Dizzy looked ahead, trying to work out where the things were coming from. It was only then that he saw the spots of greenish-yellow light in the dark canopy of leaves, right up in the branches, and they sure as shit weren’t carnival illuminations.
The polyps were sitting up the trees like goddamn vultures.
“Holy shit!” He grabbed the radio handset from the dash. “Len, they can climb! Up in the trees! They’re right above you!”
“Okay, everyone clear the area,” Parry said. “Everyone, get clear of the imulsion. Now!”
Sam started scooping ammo out of the dash and stuffing it in every available space in her pouches. “Change of plan, Diz,” she said. “Come on—I’ve got to get out of here and give the engineers some cover.”
“You damn well stay put,” he snapped. “You ain’t goin’ outside, Sam. Hear?”
There was suddenly a lot of chatter on the radio circuit. Parry was calling Marcus. “Parry to Fenix, we’ve got polyps at the imulsion site. We could do with some backup, over.”
“Diz, this is my job,” Sam said, reaching for the door handle. “I’m not Maralin, okay? I’m a bloody Gear.”
Dizzy hit the internal door lock on the dash and started backing up as fast as he could. “Yeah, but you ain’t fireproof. Sit tight.”
A cascade of polyps tumbled off the roof and landed in a heap on Betty’s scoop. Some of them detonated, spattering gunk everywhere, and now he couldn’t see through the windshield. He changed gear and lurched forward a few meters to try to shake the things off, then slammed Betty into reverse again and put his foot hard down. She wasn’t moving like he expected her to. Some of her wheels were spinning in wet ground.
“Fenix to Parry, on our way,” Marcus said. “Forget the imulsion. Get out of there.”
“There, we got the big boys comin’ to help out.” Dizzy wasn’t thinking too mathematically but it would be at least eight to ten minutes before Sorotki reached them. “Just gotta get these assholes off Betty before they mess up her paint job.”
“Diz, if that imulsion ignites—”
Betty was a big, heavy, tin box with a lot of places for polyps to cling to. Dizzy pressed his face to the side window to try to see what Betty’s wheels were bogged down in, because he was sure the ground had been solid when he drove in.
He hit the gas again. Yellowish pearly liquid spattered the glass. Now he knew what Betty was stuck in.
“Sam, I don’t want to scare you none, but there’s another shitload of imulsion right under us.”
Sam stared straight ahead at trees full of polyps biding their time. Then she twisted around in her seat and peered at the mesh that separated the cab from the compartment behind.
“Hear that?”
Dizzy could. It was a kind of tapping, scratching sound, like a cat trying to get out of a garbage can.
“I don’t want to scare you, either,” Sam said. “But I think those little bastards have found a way into Betty.”
KR-239, INBOUND FOR THE IMULSION FIELD.
Marcus leaned out of the crew bay and pressed his earpiece. “Len, have you cleared everybody out yet?”
“No,” Parry said. “The grindlift rig’s stuck in a seep and Dizzy and Sam are pinned down by polyps. Take a look.”
“Nearly at your position.” Sorotki was flying low and flat out. Dom watched the tops of the trees streak by way too close beneath him. “I suppose strafing’s out of the question.”
“Yeah, unless you want deep-fried Dizzy. The imulsion’s going to go up like a blast furnace if it ignites. Betty’s built like a Centaur’s big sister, but she’s not fireproof.”
“Okay,” Marcus said. “You drop us and we go in on the ground.”
“That still doesn’t solve our glowie problem,” Mitchell said. “We’ll need to throw them a decoy of some kind.”
Dom moved from side to side in the center of the crew bay to try to keep both flanks in view as best he could. On his left, he caught a quick glimpse of the imulsion pools. A few seconds later, he looked right and saw the trail of churned turf leading to the trees.
“Got him.” Mitchell pointed. “Mel, loop around right and follow the tire tracks… oh shit. Vi
sual on Betty, your port side, Mel. Not looking good.”
As the Raven banked, Dom could see Betty was sitting in what looked like a marsh of imulsion, but that wasn’t her biggest problem. She was covered with polyps. They were clustered on every flat surface and even hanging on the side rails. Their lights looked more yellow now. These damn things changed every time he saw them.
“Either we get them off, or we get Betty out.” Marcus swung back inside the crew bay and pulled a couple of foam extinguishers off the bulkhead. “Dom, grab one of these.”
The units were ten years past their expiration date and designed for small onboard fires. Dom raised an eyebrow. “That’s a bit optimistic, Marcus.”
“Remember what Tai used to say.”
Dom hadn’t thought about Tai Kaliso in a while. We must be creative. He always said that when he grabbed the nearest and strangest tool to use as a weapon. It hadn’t saved the poor bastard from the grubs, though. Dom took one of the extinguishers and wondered if polyps would explode if he sprayed them.
“Okay. I’ll improvise.” The Raven was so close to the treetops below that Dom could see movement in the branches. “Those assholes are up in the trees, Marcus. But they couldn’t climb a few weeks ago.”
Marcus hefted the fire extinguisher. “So they’re a quick study. I’ll note it for the Chairman.”
“Ready to rope down?” Sorotki asked.
“I’ve got a better idea,” Marcus said. “Drop to a meter or so and we’ll jump. If we take a long run at them, it might draw them off.”
Dom wasn’t sure if Sorotki had heard what he said about the polyps in the trees and tried to interrupt. The next second, something large and gray with a lot of legs landed with a thud in the crew bay and Dom’s brain didn’t even pause to find a word for it.
“Whoa!” He booted the polyp over the side and it exploded in midair like a grenade cooking off. Debris peppered the Raven and rattled across the deck. “Shit, Sorotki, did you frigging hear me? They’re right beneath us!”
“Nice dropkick,” Mitchell said.
“Sorry, Dom, did I miss that?” Sorotki might have been oblivious of the close call or just at normal chill level for a Raven pilot. “Okay, stand by—forty meters—twenty—ten— okay, go!”
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