The noise level in the bar slowly ratcheted up into normal hubbub as everyone tried to pretend they hadn’t really tried to kick out a Gear for not being human enough. Marcus looked as if he was counting down the minutes until he could walk out with Dizzy without looking like they’d been driven out.
“First thing we do,” Bernie said, “is make sure there’s a sergeants’ mess set up in VNB.” Vectes Naval Base had become a familiar acronym overnight, just through repetition in fleet signals to the Ravens. “Even if we have to wait for the beer to arrive. I’d rather drink water in the right company.”
Marcus glanced at his watch again. It was hard to have a conversation under the circumstances. Eventually an older man passed their table and leaned over a little toward Marcus.
“You were awarded the Embry Star, weren’t you?” he said. “Aspho Fields.”
Marcus braced to repel hero worship. Dom watched his jaw set. “Yeah. So was Private Santiago here. And Sergeant Mataki got a Sovereign’s Medal.”
“I remember,” the man said, and moved on.
Dizzy scratched his beard. “Damn, never knew we was drinking with a bunch of heroes.”
“You’re not,” Marcus said. “You’re drinking with your buddies.”
After thirty minutes, Marcus seemed to decide that the point had been made, and got up to go. Dizzy showed off a huge, ancient truck that he’d driven up from VNB, and they killed some time debating why it mattered to drag Pelruan into the fold if they were going to rebuild Jacinto to the south anyway. Anya was overoptimistic—Dom would never call her crazy—if she thought that it was going to make for a better society in the long run. It was all about numbers; Jacinto’s remnant had them, and Pelruan didn’t.
Teresa edged closer to Bernie and eventually managed a few words. Dom was beginning to wonder if the two girls were so traumatized that they didn’t talk. That bothered him.
“They hate us, Sergeant Mataki,” Teresa said. “Is it going to be like this everywhere?”
“Not if we have anything to do with it,” Bernie said. “Right, Delta?”
Dizzy seemed to pick up on Bernie’s embarrassment. “Some Stranded are halfway to bein’ real people, sweeties. Domesticated.”
Bernie looked chastened. After Dizzy and his girls drove off back to the base, Marcus stood staring at the dwindling taillights for a few moments.
“Never thought you had any time for Stranded, Bernie.”
“Don’t recall seeing any Stranded in that bar,” she said. “And don’t think that Dizzy didn’t make me feel guilty, either.”
Dizzy had chosen to be a regular human as far as she was concerned. Dom thought it was interesting to watch where people drew their lines. Marcus just nodded.
“Don’t forget Hoffman’s waiting to talk to you,” he said, and walked off in the direction of the Ravens.
CHAPTER 13
It’s as if they waited seventy-nine years for us to finish the Pendulum Wars and drain ourselves dry. Then they made their move.
(GENERAL BARDRY SALAMAN, SPECULATING ON THE TIMING OF THE LOCUST HORDE’S EMERGENCE.)
VOSLOV BRIDGE, THIRTY-FIVE KILOMETERS WEST OF EPHYRA, SEVEN HOURS BEFORE HAMMER OF DAWN DEPLOYMENT, FOURTEEN YEARS AGO—1 A.E.
“What’s your position, Fenix?”
“Somewhere between totally screwed and up shit creek, Control.”
“Cut the crap. Can you see the convoy?”
“What’s left of it.” Marcus gestured to Dom for the field glasses. “It’s blocked the road, right on the bridge. So no point diverting refugee traffic that way.”
“The General says that we have to open that route in the next hour.”
“Well, Sherston, tell the General to get his ass down here and help push a few ’Dills.”
“Five thousand civvies looking for a way home, Fenix.”
“No pressure, then.”
Dom was happier when Anya was duty controller. She didn’t wind up Marcus as much as Sherston did. On a good day, she could almost keep him happy.
Today was not a good day. They were running out of time. At 0001 hours, Ephyra time, orbital laser strikes would destroy everything outside the city that the Locust could take and use against humans. With any luck, it would catch most of the bastards on the surface, too.
It’s got to be done, Marcus. Your dad’s right.
But that’s easy for me to say—I’ve got nothing left to lose outside Ephyra. What about Tai and Pad?
“Come on, guys,” Marcus said. “Let’s get creative. Fast.”
The grubs were frugal bastards, Dom had to give them that.
From the cover of the bridge control booth, he could see about fifty of them on the far bank, stripping everything they could carry from a line of trucks, APCs, and Packhorse utility vehicles. The ambushed convoy had blocked the road. The route-proving vehicle at its head was still smoking, skewed halfway across the two eastbound lanes of the bridge, and everything else had piled up behind it. It couldn’t have happened more than thirty minutes ago.
Shit, if only we’d moved faster, been here sooner…
“Can we take ’em?” Dom whispered. He glanced over his shoulder to see if the others were up for it. “How many Longspears have we got left?”
“We’ll just blow up more shit and they’ll scatter,” Padrick said. “A Raven on a strafing run would be handy, but we’re fresh out of those at the moment.”
Marcus crouched as if he was about to sprint out from cover. “I want that bulldozer down there left in one piece. Save the anti-armor rounds for later.”
The bulldozer could have cleared the bridge of wrecks, but it had its own problems. The cab screen was shattered. The whole rig was off the road, facing west, as if the driver had reversed and turned it to face the oncoming Locust ambush.
And there was a big, open expanse of road—a marshaling area—to cross before they got anywhere near the bridge itself. It was a bascule structure that opened to let ships pass. Nothing much had ventured downriver for the past year, and the control booth had been abandoned.
“Well, at least I’ve finally visited Shit Creek,” Dom said. “Look at those assholes down there. They must have more of our equipment now than we have.”
The grubs were taking everything; ammo, weapons, ration packs, even dismantling the vehicles. The COG convoy was being taken apart a component at a time and ferried back by a chain of drones to whatever sewer the grubs called home. Dom sighted up on one of the grubs as it ripped open the door of a truck and hauled out the Gear slumped at the wheel to strip the armor from him.
When it tried to pull off his helmet, Dom could see that the guy was still alive. He started to struggle.
“Shit.” Dom snapped a scope on his rifle, racked up the magnification, and saw blood coming from the man’s mouth. “I got to do something.”
Marcus must have checked through his own scope, because he just grunted. Dom’s instinct said to blow the grub’s head off. Common sense said to finish the Gear. He didn’t know what to do, and both solutions were bad. In the three seconds he tried to decide, the grub solved the problem for him and put a few rounds into the man’s head to finish him. Then it went on scavenging his armor and kit.
“Bastard,” Dom said.
“It only did what we would have done.” Marcus started prying open the door of the control booth from a squatting position. “Motives don’t make any difference to the guy on the receiving end.”
And if I’d shot him, done the decent thing, we’d be under fire now, too.
It still didn’t make him feel any better. He knew what he’d want Marcus to do for him in that same situation.
“You look like a man with a plan, Sarge,” Padrick said.
“If there’s still power to the bridge, then yes.” The door splintered around the lock. Marcus went on rocking it carefully, forcing a gap he could get his fingers into. The grubs wouldn’t hear anything over the noise of their own scraping, hammering, and hauling. “Gravity is a wonderful
thing.”
The door suddenly gave way and Marcus fell back on his ass. The four of them crawled into the booth, keeping beneath the level of the windows, and Marcus knelt at the operator’s position.
“Pad, scope through and tell me what’s happening out there.” He ran his fingers over the bridge controls, frowning. “Where’s the power supply?”
Dom crawled around, looking for clues. “Hey, it’s in the on position. Are you going to open the bridge?”
“Ever tipped garbage down a chute?”
“What’s that going to do, apart from clear the bridge?”
“Shunt a line of traffic back onto the grubs, and keep them busy while Tai lines up a few Longspears to ruin their day.”
“You’re nuts.”
“I’m out of options.” Marcus always looked the quiet type until he opened fire or came up with a maximum-risk plan. He was still getting to grips with the bridge controls. “Okay—power, warning signal, safety gates, motors. I need to bypass the warnings.”
“What if they’re safety-interlocked with the motors?”
“Then the grubs work out what’s coming, but they’re still going to be caught in a lot of sliding metal.”
Tai assembled the Longspear launcher control with a satisfied expression on his face. No, not satisfied; serene.
Pad scrambled to another position in the booth to look west. “Nothing’s ever going to wipe that smile off your face, is it?”
Dom could see why Pad thought he was slightly unhinged. Tai just took every bit of shit that came his way with a kind of certainty that it was all going to work out, whether he survived it or not. Faith was a wonderful thing.
Dom preferred taking fate into his own hands, preferably with an assault rifle. He traced the cables back from under the control desk, lifting sections of the floor. It was like a kid’s toy down there, cabling sheathed in vivid red, blues, and yellow, with oversized transformers in cheerful bright green housings. Even the nuts and bolts on the metal cases looked comically toy-like. There were also isolation switches for servicing. The COG was nothing if not thorough. Everything was stenciled and labeled.
“This is the power to the gates,” Dom said. “I can switch that off. Now, the lights and horns—”
“Found it.” Marcus interrupted. “Emergency control. Just raises the bridge, maximum speed. In case of imminent vessel impact.”
“Tough shit if you’re on the bridge,” Pad said.
“Tough shit anyway if a ship hits you. Ship’s likely to cost more lives.”
It was the kind of throwaway comment that could silence everyone in these last few days. Every frigging decision came down to the same thing. One life or five? Ten or a thousand? The rest of Sera or humanity itself? Nothing was ever easy.
Pad rested his rifle on the sill of the booth’s front window, adjusting the scope as he observed the Locust scavenging team. “If you’re thinking of pressing that button, now would be good. Nice big bunch of them trying to deal with a truck.”
“Handle,” Marcus said. “It’s a handle.”
“Well, whatever it is, Sergeant Pedant, do it now if you want maximum buggeration factor for our ugly friends down there.”
“Tai, you ready?” Marcus said. “Do as much damage as you can, but avoid the bulldozer.”
The door creaked as Tai ducked out of the booth. Dom got ready for the follow-up.
It wasn’t going to kill all the grubs, and they’d have to go down there and finish the fight. “This better work.”
Marcus grasped the handle and pushed it to the raised position. It worked, all right. There was a loud clunk as gears engaged and motors started up. The vehicles on the bridge started to vibrate. For a few moments the grubs took no notice, and then those on the bridge itself seemed to realize something was wrong. Maybe they didn’t make the connection with the control booth, either, but it was too late for that because the span of the bridge had now clearly opened in the middle, rising faster than Dom expected, sending vehicles sliding onto the grubs standing between them. Some started screaming, crushed between fenders; some jumped clear into the water. As the bridge sections tilted more steeply, the vehicles skidded and tumbled rather than rolled, falling onto the vehicles behind. Dom couldn’t see much now and darted outside to start dropping as many grubs as he could from this side of the river.
Tai knelt on one knee, apparently oblivious of the crashing and creaking metal ahead of him, with the Longspear launcher resting on his shoulder. The first round arced high in the air. Dom thought the missile was going wide, but a massive explosion threw up a fireball and visible chunks of truck, grubs, and APCs. A sheet of fire swept under the vehicles and engulfed the whole logjam in smoke and flames. Dom could hear the grubs shrieking.
“I would let the flames die down before we deal with survivors,” Tai said mildly, standing up and slinging the launcher on his back again. “It will be easier to see.”
“Shit,” Padrick said. “Nice shot.”
“Fuel truck.” Tai bobbed his head in a bow. “Thank you.”
“Can you see the bulldozer?” Marcus leaned out of the booth. “Is it okay? Otherwise we’ve wasted our time, because we can’t drive the damn vehicles clear now.”
“I can see its back end,” Pad said. “It’s okay. Can you drive one?”
“How hard can it be?”
“Better let me do it.”
Dom took up position in the cover of a tree and picked off any grubs he could see. It was hard to tell what was down there with the smoke and charring. One blackened shape stumbled to the riverbank, teetered on the concrete flood defenses, and fell into the torrent below. Dom took a shot anyway, even though it was a waste of ammo. Explosions still threw debris into the air as fuel tanks and tires burst in the intense heat. One chunk of engine smashed straight through the bulldozer’s cab.
“Fuck.” Marcus was as agitated as Dom had ever seen him, jaw clenching and unclenching as if he was chewing a brick. “That’s just terrific.”
“Hey, all we have to do is get it to move,” Pad said. “Trust a boy who grew up with combine harvesters.”
They waited and took potshots at anything that seemed to move in the inferno. After fifteen minutes, the flames began to die down. Acrid black smoke filled the air. Dom could taste the sulfur.
“Of course,” Pad said, making his way down the slope to the bridge, “we’ll die of some hideous lung disease now. Lower the bridge, Sarge.”
Reaching the bulldozer meant edging along the concrete flood defenses that lined the stretch of river; the crush of burning vehicles had completely blocked the road. While Pad got the bulldozer started and Marcus provided cover, Dom prowled the wreckage, shielding his face against the heat with his free hand, hoping there wasn’t another fuel tank simmering away and waiting to take his head off. For a moment he thought of the bodies of the Gears in those vehicles. He couldn’t retrieve their COG-tags, and he felt bad about that because their families would need to know for sure what had happened to them. But there was nothing he could do about it.
Tai worked his way down to the tail of the convoy. Dom heard him fire a few bursts into the trees, but there were no grubs left around. If they’d survived, they’d gone back into their emergence holes to whatever cesspit they came from.
It’s all going to look like this tomorrow.
Shit, how can I keep forgetting that?
Every big city—burned to a cinder like this.
Dom leaned over, free hand braced on his knee, feeling suddenly sick. It was fatigue, he told himself—everyone chucked up when they were this exhausted. Then he realized that the oily black debris he was looking at was moving.
Oh, shit. It was alive. It was a grub.
What if it’s not?
Dom realized he couldn’t tell a badly burned grub from a badly burned human. He was looking into a face, but he couldn’t see the eyes, so this could have been a guy he knew or the Locust boss bastard himself. He was so shocked that he didn’t
react until an arm lifted. Then he saw the bulky outline of a rifle that wasn’t a Lancer. He emptied a clip into the body.
It took all his nerve to squat down and feel for a COG-tag. There wasn’t one.
What if it hadn’t been a grub?
Shit, man, I couldn’t let a human suffer like that, anyway.
He wasn’t even sure if he would feel okay about leaving a grub to die slowly. Maybe he didn’t have enough hate in him, or he’d worn it out.
A sudden rumble followed by screeching metal made him look up. The bulldozer was on the move, shoving wreckage out of the way and pushing it into the river. It was the nearest garbage bin. Padrick never did mess about.
Marcus stepped behind the raised safety barriers, keeping clear of Pad’s destructive rampage. Dom joined him, feeling lost for the moment, and didn’t bother to switch back into the comms circuit. He didn’t want to hear the mounting panic in people’s voices. Even here, even in Tyrus, there were refugees who just weren’t going to make it to the safe zone by midnight.
Fucking impossible decision.
“Control, Fenix here. Control … come in, Control.” This was how Dom would always picture Marcus: finger jammed in one ear, head down, face like thunder, apparently pissed off at something or somebody. “Control, Fenix here … nice of you to join us, Sherston. We’ll have the route clear in thirty minutes. Tell them to reroute the convoy.”
He had to feel good about that, didn’t he? Dom would rather have been saving people he knew, but that wasn’t his job.
That’s the real test. Sacrificing one person to save a hundred is pretty rough, but it’s the obvious thing to do. Isn’t it? I mean, nobody would argue with that, would they? But what if that one person is your mother, your wife, your best buddy? What do you do then?
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