CHAPTER 3

Would Prescott do it? If the Hammer of Dawn could still incinerate every city on the planet, would he target Vectes to get rid of the Lambent? He wiped out most of Sera to try to stop the Locust—and I hear he took that decision with Hoffman. Men who can see millions of lives as collateral damage aren’t really worried what happens to a handful of farmers.

(Pelruan resident, expressing doubts to Mayor Lewis Gavriel)

THE JACKSEN FARM, ONE HOUR AFTER THE STALK INCURSION.

It was a damn small gate, just tractor-sized, and Betty was broad in the beam. Something had to give. And it wasn’t going to be Betty.

Dizzy Wallin slowed his beloved grindlift rig to a crawl and sized up the terrain before bringing her to a halt. A small, miserable-looking guy was sitting on the tailgate of a pickup parked in the field. When Betty’s shadow fell across him he glanced up, looking like a depressed weasel.

Dizzy opened the side window and leaned out as far as he could. He loomed two meters above the man. There was no way to look nice and reassuring while driving Betty.

“Reckon I’m gonna have to roll right over the fence, sir.”

The miserable guy stood up with his hands thrust deep in his pockets. “Go ahead,” he said. “It’s not like things can get any worse.”

“I’ll give you a hand repairin’ it later.”

“That’s nice.” His face didn’t change. “Thanks.”

Dizzy released the brake and rolled forward. He didn’t even feel a bump as Betty crushed the flimsy wooden gate and the hedge to either side of it. Now he was face-to-face with the first complete stalks he’d seen. Goddamn, those things were big. They didn’t look much like the chunks that Dom and Marcus had brought back from a wrecked ship a few weeks ago.

He’d heard all the stories about the ones that sank the Indie imulsion rig, though. Where the hell did they stow all those polyps? He’d served on imulsion tankers. It still twanged a nerve in him.

Prescott stood with his back to the stalks, talking to Hoffman and Lennard Parry as if they were all just doing a nice spot of sightseeing at a monument. Bernie stood a few meters away with that scruffy hound of hers on a tight leash.

The Chairman was wearing what Bernie called his lord of the manor rig—rubber boots, oilcloth jacket, and woolly jumper—and Dizzy caught her eye for a moment. She winked at him and did a subtle nod in Prescott’s direction. Just look at him. Yeah, folks’ breeding always showed on their faces, no matter how much cow dung they had on their boots. Prescott had pedigree.

There’d been a time when Dizzy had been sure he’d shoot Prescott if he ever met the asshole. This was the man who’d told the world it had three days to get to Jacinto before he vaporized the rest of Sera. This was the man who’d caused the deaths of millions and made Dizzy and his family into Stranded.

Not Hoffman. I know he was top brass when it happened, but I don’t blame that man, no sir.

Dizzy found he could stomach Prescott because his girls needed him to. A man really could endure anything for his kids.

“Hey, Diz!” Parry signaled to indicate where he wanted Dizzy to pull up, and walked across to meet him. “Feeling adventurous?”

Dizzy gave him a thumbs-up. “You point me to the spot, Staff, and I’ll make a damn big hole in it.”

“Okay, we need to see how far down these stalks go.” Parry was clutching a small monitor and a coil of cable in his arms. “Whether they have roots. What kind of rock they’ve come through. That sort of thing.”

“You got it. Let’s drill.”

“See if we can uproot one of ’em first so we can do a test bore underneath. Help me get some chains on the one on the left.”

“Oughta be like pullin’ up daisies.”

“I wish.”

Dizzy climbed down out of the cab. The grass beneath him was brown and dead. “So the weed killer didn’t work, huh, Len?”

“Not guilty.” Parry took another look at the dead grass. “Maybe we ought to hose down our boots when we’re done. I don’t like the look of that.”

Marcus wandered over to them with a bundle of thick twigs tucked under his left arm. He was whittling one to a point with his knife.

“Just an experiment.” He stabbed the twigs into the ground at regular intervals around the edge of the brown patch. “Check these markers later and see if it’s still spreading.”

“Whatever it is, it’s toxic,” Parry said. “But lots of plants pump out poison that kills other species around them. Walnut trees, for a start. Can’t plant clover or tomatoes within twenty meters of ’em.”

“Fucking Lambent walnuts,” Marcus muttered. “That’s all we need.”

He walked away and stood guard with his Lancer cradled in his arms like he was expecting more polyps. Prescott joined him, which was kind of odd; they were never social. They just stood there a meter apart, avoiding looking at each other.

“You think that piece o’ pantie elastic’s gonna hold, Len?” Dizzy asked.

Parry winked. “You sure that oversized junker of yours can handle that chain?”

“Don’t you let Betty hear you say that. She’s real sensitive about her weight.”

“I don’t know how heavy that stalk’s going to be. You might need to weld her back together again.”

“Only one way to find out. Hitch her up and see what breaks first.”

Dizzy trusted Parry’s common sense. The man was a Logistics Corps staff sergeant, and that meant he was one of a special breed. His ragbag crew of engineers and tradesmen, cobbled together from the survivors of three support regiments, had kept Jacinto powered, watered, fed, and housed for fifteen years. They rebuilt the city every day after the grub attacks and never bitched about it—well, not often. No, uprooting a few stalks wasn’t going to bother Parry, not one damn bit.

And he always treated me right. Yeah, he remembers way back. And so do I.

Parry shackled the chains to the rig’s winch and Dizzy climbed back up to the cab. Once he shut the door with that satisfying clunk, he was in another world. No goddamn thing could touch him. He sat behind a steering wheel meters off the ground and far from the chaos beneath his wheels, the master of all he surveyed thanks to Betty. He probably wasn’t half as safe as he liked to think, but it still made him feel good.

Ah, Betty. We’ve been together a damn long time too. Ain’t gonna damage you if I can help it, sweetheart.

He loved this rig. Folks said it was downright unhealthy to love a machine, but she’d never let him down, she’d never lied to him, and she’d saved his ass more than once. That was a lot more than he could say for flesh and blood.

“It’s okay, darlin’.” He patted the dashboard. “This might sting a bit, but all you gotta do is pull. Then we can see what’s under that grass. You ready? Okay. Easy does it, sweetie…”

He started the engine. Betty rumbled into life with a steady vibrating pulse as good as a heartbeat. Up here, he wasn’t a Stranded bum or a drunk. He was a derrick driver, a combat engineer, the man who literally dug you out of the shit. Gears depended on him.

Dizzy hadn’t seen his life working out like this, but he reckoned nobody was where they planned to be these days. Being alive was the only measure of success worth a rat’s ass. He jiggled his shirt pocket to feel the reassuring slop of liquor in his flask and reminded himself to start brewing another batch that evening. Potatoes. Damn, those made some real fine hooch.

Dizzy gave Parry a thumbs-up and waited for him to get clear. The winch mechanism whined. Then he felt a jolt as the cable took up the slack. Metal groaned. He held his forefinger on the motor control as Betty began dragging the stalk out like a weed, swiveling on his seat to try to catch a glimpse in the wing mirrors.

“How we doin’, Len?” he called.

“It’s starting to give.” Parry was looking to one side of the field, getting hand signals from one of his team. He raised his arm and beckoned Dizzy forward. “Just a couple of meters, Diz… that’s it… come on… steady.”

Dizzy slipped the clutch and Betty crept forward, creaking and rumbling. Things were going fine, but then he felt the engine start to struggle. He put his foot down. Betty was starting to churn soil now. He could feel the tires losing purchase. On the dashboard, the winch warning light lit up red.

“Diz, slacken off!”

“Whoa—goddamn!” Dizzy didn’t drop the revs fast enough and for a second he felt he was treading air. Then there was a crack loud enough to hear over the engine noise, and Betty lurched forward. Something smashed against the rig’s tail panel like a hail of bricks. The chain had broken.

“Hang on, Diz—the stalk’s snapped at the base,” Parry yelled. “Shut her down.”

Dizzy scrambled down from the cab to inspect the damage. The stalk had broken clean off just below ground level, but most of it was still rooted firmly in the soil. Betty’s winch assembly dangled from its mounting, held in place by a couple of bolts. Apart from that she was in one piece.

“Sorry, honey.” He patted her as the others clustered around the stump to examine it. Marcus bent to pick up a fist-sized chunk of stalk. The broken surface was gray and honeycombed with holes, a lot like pumice but much harder and heavier.

“Now that’s different.” Baird took it off him and turned it over in his palm. “The internal structure, I mean. Last one we chopped up was more like a tree trunk. Yeah, my money’s on them evolving.”

Prescott looked at Baird as if he’d discovered gravity or something. “Or perhaps it’s a mature one.”

“Then why do they look different as soon as they come out of the ground?”

Prescott nodded as if that made sense somehow. “See if you can cut some sections out of it.”

“You want a souvenir paperweight?” Baird asked. Damn, he was a rude asshole, even to the Chairman. “Because that’s all it’s good for. We don’t have any way of analyzing except to look at it under Doc Hayman’s microscope. She’ll love that. Not.”

For some reason Prescott didn’t give Baird an earful. He didn’t look down his nose at him, either. There was something going on, something weird, and when Dizzy looked in Hoffman’s direction, the Colonel was watching the pair of them like an impatient buzzard who thought his dinner was taking too long about dying.

“You never know, Corporal,” Prescott said. “Our Gorasni friends might have hidden talents when it comes to analytical skills. I’d still like some specimens. And some of the dead grass, too.”

“If you’re ready, sir, I’m gonna start drilling,” Dizzy said. “Give Betty some elbow room. Might be a lot of grit flying around.”

Betty could drill a vertical shaft wide enough to drop a two-man grindlift. A little bit of granite wouldn’t bother her. Dizzy lined up the telescoping drill over the stump, hit the starter, and felt a kick as the bit engaged with the ground.

It was like drilling through the Ephyran bedrock to break into the grub tunnels under Landown. Poor old Tai. Damn, we lost a lot of good Gears that day. Sometimes the past interrupted the present so often that Dizzy wondered if he was getting those traumatic flashbacks that Doc Hayman kept talking about.

The drill bit flung out gobs of turf, mud, and stalk, then slowed as it went deep and started hitting denser rock. Betty shuddered. All Dizzy could do was watch the depth indicator and wait.

Twenty meters… come on, girl.

Betty twitched a couple of times. Now the drill note changed. Whatever was beneath the stalks wasn’t solid and the bit was finding voids.

Dizzy powered down, hoisted the drill clear, and reversed Betty clear of the shaft.

When he clambered down from the cab again, he made sure he brought his rifle with him this time. Parry and Marcus were kneeling to peer down the hole. Betty had sunk a shaft clean through the stalk and the ground next to it, giving Parry a good cross section to examine.

“Spot on, Diz,” Parry said. “Now let’s take a shufti at what’s down there.”

Dizzy checked the hole and marveled that he could still be that accurate with a few drinks inside him. He wasn’t sure he could have done it sober. Parry plugged the cable into the monitor and lowered into the hole, but Baird did a double take at what was on the business end of the cable.

“Hey, that’s a bot camera!” he said, none too happy. “Have you been stealing my spares? Aww, come on!”

“Keep your wig on.” Parry winked at him. “We’ve got fifteen bot cams and one damn bot. How many does that teddy-bear substitute of yours need?”

“I’ve got to keep Jack operational.”

“And I’ve got to look down holes. But I can drop you down there for a personal inspection if you prefer.”

Baird humphed and sulked. Dizzy edged around so he could see the portable monitor.

“Yeah, it’s a fissure. That fits the survey map.” Parry knelt back on his heels. “Stalks follow the path of least resistance. Like everyone does.”

Dizzy kept looking. Bernie’s dog suddenly lunged for the hole and she had to hang on to his lead to hold him back.

“I’m going to defer to Mac’s risk assessment skills,” she said, sliding her rifle off her shoulder one-handed. “He can hear something. Be careful, Diz.”

Stones and loose soil trickled down the borehole. Dizzy heard them tinkle on something hard so he stuck his head in the hole just to check if he could see the bottom of the shaft.

It looked real weird. “I can see water down there.” There was a faint shimmer deep down as it caught the light. “Goddamn, I sunk a well! Shame I don’t drink that stuff…”

Parry peered in and frowned. Then he lowered the bot cam again and paid out the cable to near its maximum. Dizzy looked back at the monitor.

Shit, that really didn’t look good. Now he could see something glittering, and knowing his luck it sure as shit wasn’t diamonds.

“Len, I don’t reckon that’s water.” Dizzy had to carry a Lancer like an infantry Gear, but reaching for it wasn’t second nature. This time he found himself clutching it like a lifebelt. “Len, we got lights. And it ain’t miners down there.”

Everyone reacted at once. The goddamn dog went crazy and nearly knocked Dizzy into the hole. Marcus pitched in and hauled Parry back by his shoulder. Dizzy scrambled upright and took a few steps back just so he could aim down into the shaft, and then polyps boiled out of the hole like cockroaches out of a drain. Everyone was firing. Some of the damn things escaped and went racing across the grass with Mac in hot pursuit.

“Dom—with me!” Marcus yelled, pulling a grenade from his belt. “Everyone else—give us some room!”

“Marcus—”

“Get clear, Diz! Grenade—out!”

Marcus slipped the pin and dropped the frag down the hole. The explosion threw a shower of polyps and gravel high into the air, then it all rained back down again. Dom moved in and emptied a couple of clips down into the smoke.

Everywhere fell silent except for cawing birds disturbed by the racket. Bernie jogged after Mac but there was a loud echoing crack like a grenade going off and she started running. Hoffman looked like he was getting ready to haul her back, but he caught Marcus giving him a look—that don’t-do-it look—and turned his back on her.

“Okay, now we know where these things are going to come up, we can avoid them,” Hoffman said. “That’s something. Len, I want a full plot of the island showing where the fissures are, and we make those no-go areas. It’ll mean moving anyone living near them. We’ll monitor a corridor either side of the fissures daily for stalks.”

Dizzy kept an eye on Bernie. She was on her way back with Mac on the leash, but he didn’t look too good. He was limping this time. He really had a thing about polyps. Dizzy expected him to be scared of them by now, but he just seemed to chase them like they were rabbits with extra legs.

“Silly little sod,” Bernie said, rubbing the dog’s ears. Mac started licking a singed patch on his leg. “I’d better get Hayman to take a look at him. He’s been through a lot these last few days.”

“Yeah, and you have, too, so stop chasing after him, Sergeant,” Hoffman snapped. Marcus looked embarrassed by the old married spat the two of them were having and took a sudden interest in the dead grass. “I need you fighting Lambent, not nursemaiding that goddamn poodle. If he ends up as ground chuck, it’s too frigging bad.”

Bernie suddenly got a real cold, mean look on her face. Marcus interrupted just at the right time. “Anyone want to take a look at the dead area?”

He tapped his boot against one of the wooden stakes he’d stuck in the ground. They weren’t on the edge of the brown patch anymore.

Hoffman let out a long breath. “Goddamn it…”

“It’s still spreading.”

“We better start measuring this shit properly.”

Baird sneaked up behind Parry and tried to take the bot cam, but Parry snatched it clear. “And then what do we do about it?” Baird asked.

“No idea,” Hoffman said.

The Gears could shoot polyps until Hell built a ski resort, but this creeping shit wasn’t going to be that simple to stop.

Dizzy decided that he was long overdue for that drink.

DISUSED LAVATORY BLOCK, VECTES NAVAL BASE, NEW JACINTO: LATER THAT DAY.

Baird wished he’d reminded Hoffman that engineering was his forte, not software.

The data disc definitely wasn’t Prescott’s shopping list or vacation snaps. It wasn’t going to give up its secrets without a fight. But he couldn’t resist a challenge, Hoffman was counting on him, and—ah, screw false modesty—he was probably the most technically able guy the COG had left.

Sometimes he wondered what had happened to all the real scientists and engineers over the years. He supposed it was inevitable that academics weren’t built for survival, but even so, one of the assholes could at least have had the decency to stick around and answer a few questions.

So it’s down to the likes of me, Parry, and Doc Hayman to fly the flag for rational analysis. Wow, we are so screwed.

At least the lavatory now had a makeshift door. Royston Sharle would never miss that wooden pallet. Baird kept one eye on it as he ran the decryption program just in case some jerk decided to drop in uninvited, and there was a high chance it was going to be Prescott judging by the way the guy had been looking at him today. Prescott wasn’t stupid. Who else was Hoffman going to ask to crack the security on the stolen disc? Prescott knew he had it and was just jerking them around by smiling sweetly and letting them sweat.

Of course, Prescott—being a devious shit like all politicians—might have lured Hoffman into breaking open his desk drawer and then done the outrage act just to make sure that Hoffman didn’t go looking for something else that was much more interesting. Yeah, that was the Chairman all over. He was the sole survivor of a brutal jungle of twenty-four carat back-stabbing bastards. Poor old Hoffman was just an honest Gear with a bit of gold braid, a colonel trying to do a general’s job.

No contest. He’ll tear you up for ass-paper, Colonel.

But why would he want to put you off the scent unless you were getting too close to something dodgy anyway?

While the program was running, Baird rested his boots on his ammo crate desk and tried to imagine what secrets Prescott could possibly think were worth hanging on to at this late stage of the game.

The COG was deeper in the shit than it had ever been. They’d sunk Jacinto. Okay, they’d drowned the grub army and their snotty bitch of a queen too, but now they were stuck on an island in the middle of nowhere. The Gorasni imulsion rig was a pile of rusting steel somewhere on the seabed and they were running out of fuel fast. The Lambent freak show had taken over from the grubs as resident pain in the ass. Now if that didn’t mean it was time to fess up and tell everyone the truth, Baird didn’t know what was. And anyway—who the hell was left to keep secrets from? What would Prescott think was worth keeping to himself?

Maybe the slimeball had just flipped. Perhaps he’d finally lost the plot after years of trying to save the unsavable. Everyone had their breaking point.

Do I really believe that? That we’re all fucked and there’s nothing we can do about it? So why am I sitting in a lavatory like a total moron trying to decode this stuff?

Jack the bot was propped on a crate in the corner with a dust sheet draped across his open inspection plate, the last autonomous robotic drone left in the COG. Baird was determined to keep him running even if it meant ripping out some old lady’s pacemaker for parts. Jack was special. He was a prototype with a cloaking system.

Everyone bitched about the COG never developing cloaking for Gears, but how much use would it have been against a Berserker’s sense of smell, or a metal detector, or even this frigging glowie contamination? Sweet FA, that was how much.

Baird still wanted it, though.

“Okay, Jack,” he said. “If you were the most powerful leader in the world, not that that’s saying much these days, what would you hide? Top secret technology? A crate of gold bullion? A stash of chocolate and some interesting Ostrian porn?”

Jack didn’t seem to have a view on the matter. With his arms folded back and the sheet draped over him, he looked like a forlorn armored nun at prayer. Baird went back to his decryption.

The computer pinged and he sat up to check it. As he swiveled, something snapped under him and sent the plastic lid lurching off to one side. He grabbed the edge of the desk to stop his fall, relieved there was nobody there to see him topple off a frigging toilet, and checked underneath the porcelain rim at the back. One of the rusty bolts holding the lid had sheared off. He rummaged in his toolbox for another one and crouched down to screw it into place.

“So this is your state-of-the-art facility,” said a voice from the doorway. “Very minimalist.”

Baird looked up as Marcus wandered in. This was definitely not routine. Marcus wasn’t the gregarious kind and he didn’t drop by for chats. The most social thing he did was show up at the sergeants’ mess and have a drink, usually on his own and in total silence.

Marcus tweaked Jack’s dust cloth. “So… new low-tech cloaking system?”

“Hey, he’ll be as good as new when I’m done with him,” Baird said defensively. “What do you want fixed now?”

“Nothing. Just seeing if you’ve had any luck with the disc.”

It was the first time Marcus had acknowledged that it even existed. As far as Baird knew, Hoffman had told just five people that he had it: Baird, Cole, Marcus, Dom and Bernie. He wasn’t sure if the old man had even told his buddy Michaelson about it. So it didn’t get mentioned, just in case. Baird wondered how long they could keep a lid on it. The careful silence had lasted about two weeks so far.

“Zip,” Baird said. “I tell you, Prescott’s pulled out all the stops to protect whatever’s on this. No wonder he’s so fucking relaxed about Hoffman yoinking it.”

Baird waited uneasily to see if Marcus was going to say anything else, because the man rationed words like there was only one box of them left in the world. Baird had served with him for eighteen months yet never really had a serious private conversation with him. It was a lot more scary than he expected. He wasn’t sure why.

“If it’s that sensitive,” Marcus said, “why wouldn’t he memorize the information instead?”

Damn, we’re talking. We’re actually talking. “You think it’s a decoy, don’t you?”

Marcus shrugged. “Wouldn’t put it past him.”

“I get the feeling you don’t approve. How else are we going to get the information? Beat it out of him?”

“He’s still the legitimate head of government. I don’t like playing games with him.”

Baird had expected a pat on the back for being resourceful. He was slightly miffed not to get it, but then Marcus always played it straight, even when he was dealing with utter bastards.

“You’re not,” Baird said. “It’s me and Hoffman who’ll get it in the neck if anything goes wrong. You only know about it. But I suppose that’s just as bad as far as you’re concerned.”

Marcus turned around and leaned on the door frame, looking out into the dusk. “Yeah.”

“It’s either complexity or volume.”

“What is?”

“The disc. If there’s anything on it at all and he isn’t just jerking our chain, then it’ll either be too much data or it’s too complicated to keep in his head. Or both.”

Marcus grunted. It was the longest conversation Baird had ever had with him, really with him rather than at him.

Shit, just tell me he’s not going to spill his guts about Anya next…

No, this was still Marcus. He probably didn’t even make small talk with her. Every word was measured and ground out for a pressing reason.

“Okay, try another tack,” Marcus said. “Not what. Why. Why would he need to keep anything to himself now?”

Baird wasn’t sure if Marcus wanted the question answered or if he was just thinking aloud for a change. “Because it’ll piss us off so much that we’ll shoot him,” Baird said. “Or it’ll put something at risk. It’s not personal stuff. I can’t see the guy giving a damn what we think about his bank deposit box or weird sexual kinks—if he’s got any.”

“Yeah.” Marcus looked back over his shoulder like something had suddenly occurred to him, tilting his head to check out the toilet bowl. “Are the sewers still connected to this block?”

“No idea. Why?”

“You’re sitting on an ingress point,” Marcus said, and walked off.

Baird stood thinking that over for a few moments and suddenly felt uneasy. But he finished tightening the bolts on the seat and sat down to check the screen. The program had quit again. It made him forget his worries about getting a stalk up the ass.

“Shit,” he said. “Shit, shit, shit.”

Now he’d reached the limits of his competence. He’d never hit that wall before and it scared him. He needed someone with better computer skills, but he couldn’t think of anyone with that expertise, let alone someone he would trust.

Whatever it is… it’s not magic. It can be cracked. Everything can be cracked.

Baird took his mind off the problem for a while by tinkering with Jack’s main servo, hoping a sudden idea would bubble up from his subconscious, but it didn’t work. He shut down the computer and tucked the disc inside his shirt. This time he put a padlock on the lavatory door, but that was only to keep that thieving asshole Parry away from his personal stash of spare parts. He rattled the lock and chain just to make sure, and went in search of Hoffman.

Looking for Hoffman meant entering Admiralty House, the main admin block. It was all a bit obvious. And Prescott hung out there too.

He knows I’ve got it. He damn well knows. He’s just biding his time working out how to make my life a total misery.

The easiest excuse to hang around was a visit to CIC. Sooner or later, everyone passed through it. Baird walked into the ops room and found Lieutenant Mathieson at his desk listening to the radio net, arms folded on his chest and his eyes shut. Baird thought he was taking a nap, but he gestured to Baird to wait—still with his eyes shut—and seemed to be listening to something riveting on his headset.

Baird cringed when he saw that the windows on one side of the room were still patched up with boards and plastic sheeting. That exploding leviathan really had done a lot of damage to the base. Yeah, maybe he’d left that detonation a little too late after all.

“Two secs,” Mathieson said, opening his eyes. “I’m trying to pin down a signal.”

Baird pulled up a chair to get in Mathieson’s eyeline. The guy was in a wheelchair because he’d lost his legs to a mine, and Cole kept telling Baird that it was rude to loom over him. Baird couldn’t see why it was different from any man sitting on his ass in a regular seat, but there was no point pissing off a lynchpin like Mathieson. He’d taken over from Anya as the control room boss, and that meant he was a person of tactical importance when it came to asking favors and watching backs.

“Hoffman?” Baird mouthed.

Mathieson shook his head. So Baird waited. A couple of other Gears walked past the open door—Rivera and Lowe, Prescott’s personal protection team—and glanced at him as they disappeared down the passage.

Eventually Mathieson slipped off his headset. “Sorry,” he said. “If you’re looking for the Colonel, he’s gone back to Pelruan to address the restless natives.”

“Stranded?”

“What?”

“The signal.”

Mathieson shook his head. “No idea. I’ve heard it a few times before.” He put the headset on again. “I just caught a blip on a weird frequency, that’s all. Like a satellite databurst.”

“Sure it’s not another Hammer satellite on the fritz?”

“No, it was on the old meteorology sat frequency. And it’s the wrong sound. Sats all sound different. You want me to get Hoffman for you?”

“It’s okay.” Baird didn’t want to make it look too urgent and draw attention. “I’ll catch him later.”

“Baird, can I ask you something?”

Here we go. The whole damn base knows.

“Knock yourself out, Lieutenant.”

“You any good at making socket joints?”

That was a relief. “Might be. Okay, yeah. I am.”

“One of the Gorasni guys says he’s got someone who can make prosthetic legs if he can get the metal components.”

Poor bastard. Mathieson was determined to get back to the front line. Baird couldn’t say no. There was a time when he wouldn’t have seen it as his problem and not lost a second’s sleep over it, but not anymore. All he could think of was how Cole—or Bernie—would react if they found out he hadn’t done his bit for Mathieson.

“Yeah,” Baird said. “Can do. I’ll go talk to them.”

“Thanks,” said Mathieson. “I’m going to walk again if it kills me.” Suddenly he stopped and adjusted his headset, frowning as if he’d heard something that bothered him. “Damn, there it goes again.”

“You spend too much time at that desk,” Baird said. “You need to get out more.”

“That’s how I hear things nobody else does. I can spend time wandering around frequencies.” Mathieson gave him a knowing look. “But if you come up with the socket joints, then I’ll be able to get out of here. Won’t I?”

For once, Baird felt like the asshole everyone told him he was. There was a difference between being aware that he said crass things—people expected him to—and that horrible involuntary surge in his chest that warned him he’d feel like utter shit whenever he remembered what he’d just said.

“I’ll make you into a champion sprinter, Mathieson,” he said. “Leave it to me.”

Mathieson smiled and went back to the radio net. Now that Baird had taken up the challenge, he had to do it. And it was going to be a lot easier than cracking that disc. His technical morale needed a boost.

Rivera and Lowe were lounging around outside as Baird left the building. They gave him an up-and-down look as if they were deciding whether to piss on him. He’d never known them all that well, Gears or not, but it was the first time he’d noticed them acting as if he wasn’t on the same team. Maybe they thought they were in the fucking Onyx Guard or something.

Too grand now, are you? Or maybe Prescott’s told you I’ve got his precious disc.

“Isn’t it time you went back to doing a real job?” Baird said, slowing his pace but not stopping. “Who’s going to throw stones at Prescott now the Stranded are gone?”

Okay, there was always the chance that Hoffman would finally lose it and deck Prescott, but most of Jacinto’s refugees thought the sun shone out of the Chairman’s ass. They were still alive against all expectations, and oddly grateful for that.

“He’s the Chairman,” Rivera said. He and Lowe had stopped mixing with the rest of the grunts. “You might want to remember that sometime.”

Baird had to hand it to Prescott. He’d incinerated most of Sera with the Hammer of Dawn, killing millions—maybe even billions—and his grand plan to wipe out the grubs in their tunnels had ended with having to sink Jacinto and run for it. He might have been responsible for more dead humans than the Locust had. But still the idiots followed him.

Would the last chairman have done a better job? Baird would never know. What else could anyone do in a world bombed and burned back to the last century, except find somewhere to hide?

For once, Baird knew he didn’t have a better plan than that. And whatever great ideas and theories he’d come up with over the years, the world had simply stopped making sense to him roughly fifteen years ago, and now it had stopped making sense all over again.

And he was starting to remember exactly what E-Day had felt like.