Gears of War: Jacinto’s Remnant (52 page)

It bothered Dom, too. But he forgot about it when he came alongside one of the drifting boats and helped Baird board it. It was badly shot up, and there’d obviously been a firefight before Massy’s chums had been overwhelmed. There were still bodies on board.

“Shit,” Baird said. “Doesn’t any asshole clean up after himself these days?”

He manhandled the bodies overboard. As they hit the water, Dom wondered for a moment if the guys had families who’d now never know what happened to them, but that was their occupational hazard, and there wasn’t much he could do about it.

Marcus didn’t say a word. He just kept looking over the side until Baird got the boat started, and both vessels headed back toward
Falconer
.

CNV
FALCONER
.

Jacques hadn’t been joking about Massy. He really was making him pay for something. Sound carried. And Bernie felt she had to stay and listen. She’d chosen to remain on deck, because if she went below to get away from the sounds of Massy screaming his head off, then she had to ask herself if she’d been wrong to take her vengeance on his two buddies.

If I’d caught him when I did the others, I’d be doing the same as Jacques. Can’t turn squeamish now
. She didn’t know what they were actually doing to Massy, or what he’d done to get their attention, but she could only imagine his fate within the limits of her own ingenuity. Michaelson was waiting for
Trader
to finish putting a tow line on the other salvaged boat and head back to base. Bernie wasn’t sure what he was trying to achieve, other than making sure Jacques left the area and
Clement
followed her home. It was only postponing the problem. You couldn’t do deals with these people. But Michaelson probably hadn’t. He didn’t seem to see any agreement with Stranded as binding.

Cole wandered up to her and leaned on the rail. His skin tone looked distinctly gray. She didn’t think the boat was moving around that much, just gently rolling on the swell as the wind picked up. The mist was gone. It had the makings of a nice day.

“I’m all puked out, Boomer Lady,” he said. “I ain’t gonna be much use in this new seagoin’ world that Michaelson keeps talkin’ about.”

“I don’t think we’re going to run out of things to do ashore, somehow.” Bernie patted his back and took a firm grip on his belt. She hadn’t a hope in hell of stopping a man of his size from falling if he tipped over the rail, but she did it anyway. “We used to have drugs for seasickness. Maybe we can find some.”

“You got a cast-iron gut.”

She tilted her head in the direction of
Trader
. “Massy, you mean.”

“That as well.”

“I’m not gloating. I’m just making sure I’ve still got the courage of my convictions.”

“And then you leave it all behind you, right? Promise me.”

“Yeah. I think I purged my anger a long time ago. But some things get to be habit.”

Cole frowned and shook his head every time Massy shrieked. The sounds were muffled; the man was begging now. So his gang didn’t own the sea around here after all. She wondered if they were doing this in
Falconer’s
earshot to make the point that Jacques now ran the show and wasn’t afraid to go to extremes to enforce it.

“You gonna come inside, Bernie?”

She wanted to, but she couldn’t. “In a while. You go and get some fluids down you. You’ll be dehydrated.”

She went back to leaning on the rail, and Massy fell silent for a while. A couple of men from
Trader
boarded the second patrol boat they’d captured from Allam’s gang. After a few minutes,
Trader
got under way and headed west at a leisurely pace, trailing a wide wake of churning white foam. The patrol boat followed a hundred meters behind. And somewhere below,
Clement
was tracking them.

If Massy was still screaming for mercy, she wouldn’t hear him now. It was over. The sense of finality surprised her. Beneath her boots, the deck shivered as
Falconer’s
engines picked up speed and the patrol boat turned back to Vectes. The other gunboat bobbed in the wash as
Falconer
swung around. Bernie walked down to the stern to watch
Trader
vanish and found Baird eyeing the salvaged gunboat with a frown, binoculars hanging from his neck.

“They wouldn’t let me drive it home,” he said.

“Let ’em do their sailor thing, Blondie.”

He pressed his earpiece. “Garcia’s not happy about something.”

“Really?” Bernie listened in to the voice traffic. “You reckon there’s a leviathan loose? Whatever that is.”

“Dunno.” He pointed. “Look.
Clement’s
got her radio mast up. Just breaking the surface.”

Bernie strained to look, but the entire ocean was spotted with foam and reflections. It was impossible to see whatever Baird was looking at. On the radio, Garcia was debating whether to ping the area with sonar and risk being detected.

“Can’t he tell what he’s hearing?” she asked Baird.

“The sea’s a noisy place. Picking out the sounds takes a skilled operator or really fancy computer analysis, and I don’t think he’s got either.”

“Fat lot of good he is, then.”

“It’s not like he’s up against a fleet of subs. But if we had a Raven here, some have sonar buoys.”

“Clement’s
got sonar.”

“Yeah, but it’s about stealth. If he pings, he’s given away his presence and exact position. The Raven’s just dunking a buoy.”

They both stopped to listen to Michaelson’s voice.

“Clement
, whatever the object is, is it going to compromise us?”

“If it’s a biologic, leviathan or not, it’s a collision risk, but—oh
shit.”

“Say again,
Clement.”

“Torpedo
—brace brace brace.”

Bernie froze. She didn’t look at Baird. A few seconds later, an explosion launched a plume of water into the air nearly a kilometer away. Was that
Clement?
She had no idea where the submarine was.

“Shit, she’s been hit.” Baird fumbled for the binoculars. “What the fuck did that? If it’s a leviathan packing torpedoes, then we’re in deep shit.”

Bernie’s gut knotted. “Grubs don’t have that stuff. What can you see? Come on, is there debris?”

“Wait—no,
Trader’s
gone. That was
Trader.”

Michaelson’s voice cut in.
“Clement
, what the hell have you done? I said
follow
her, not
sink
her.”

“That was
not
us. I say again, we did
not
fire, that was not
Clement.”
No, Garcia was still there; that was his voice on the radio, remarkably calm under the circumstances. “We heard the torpedo launch.
Not ours
. Time to worry.”

“Have you got a fix on it?”

“Nothing’s pinged us. We have an approximate bearing from the torpedo.”

By now, sailors and Gears had rushed out onto the deck to look. Bernie and Baird hung onto their front-row seats. If Garcia hadn’t accidentally fired a torpedo—and how the hell could someone do that, anyway?—then Bernie couldn’t imagine what else was out there, unless some Stranded had a submarine, and that was impossible. She’d have heard. It was just too big a deal for them to hide. They’d have used it before. Wouldn’t they?

Even Cole and Anya came out to watch. Marcus seemed to be checking where the life rafts were, which worried Bernie more than anything. She shut her eyes to concentrate on the radio, and the next thing she heard was the crew on the small gunboat. They were in one piece.

“You
bastards
. You gave your word.”

“We have
not
fired on you,” Michaelson said. “We have no idea what’s happened, but it wasn’t us. We keep our word, I assure you.”

Almost. Weren’t you going to follow them home to fry them later?

“Deal’s null and void, Coalition,” said the voice. “We can’t do business with you. Gloves off now.”

The small boat shot off at high speed. Bernie waited for it to vanish in an eruption of water too, but whatever had sunk
Trader
didn’t follow up. Maybe it had his hands full now evading
Clement
.

“We’re picking up faint propulsion sounds,” Garcia said. “It’s not biologic.”

“Locust bolt all kinds of devices onto living creatures.”

There was a pause. “Including ballast tanks?”

“What?” said Michaelson.

“Hydrophones just picked up something blowing its tanks. It’s another sub. Stand by.”

“You’re clear to engage.”

“We need to know what we’re firing at first, Captain.”

Bernie didn’t have a clue what submarines were capable of doing, or even if they could tell where a sound was coming from. Baird muttered something about needing hull sonar for
Falconer
. It was the first time Bernie had felt that this patrol boat, which seemed as solid as a fort to her, could be blown out of the water at any moment, and the only warning she’d get would be a streak of bubbles in the water seconds before a bloody torpedo ripped the hull apart. The guns mounted on deck were no use against that.

She added it to the list of reasons why she didn’t like the sea.

Michaelson, shouldn’t you be heading away from here at maximum speed or something?

It felt like a long time before anyone spoke again, but it was less than a minute.

“Something’s surfacing,” Garcia said. “We’ve got a fix on it. About thirty degrees off your port quarter, range eight hundred meters. Standing by to fire torpedoes.”

Baird was glued to his binoculars. “I see it. Look for the foam.”

Dom squeezed into the gap next to Bernie. “If it fires on us,” he said, “we’re really going to regret standing around watching.”

“At least we don’t get trapped below,” she said. “Have we got enough life rafts and RIBs for the whole crew?”

And then a completely unknown voice broke into the comms net. It had a slight accent.

“Clement
, this is
Zephyr,”
said the voice. “We’re surfacing. We’re not hostile. Stand down.”

Bernie saw a sudden pool of foam, and followed it until a dull black sail rose out of the sea. It sprouted masts almost immediately, and when the submarine settled on the surface, she didn’t look like
Clement
. Her bows were smooth. She looked smaller, like a stubby cigar.

“Holy shit,” Dom said. “They’re breeding.”

As they watched, another sail broke the surface in a cascade of foam, then a distinctive black sonar dome appeared. It was
Clement
. By the time the submarine was fully surfaced, Bernie could see crew already at the top of the fin, scanning the scene just like
Falconer’s
crew.

“Zephyr,”
Michaelson said, “who are you, and why did you sink that damned ship?”

“Commander Miran Trescu, Republic of Gorasnaya, Union of Independent Republics,” said the unknown voice. “It’s been a long time. May we talk,
Falconer?”

Michaelson usually had a smart line for every occasion, but even he took awhile to respond to that bombshell. The UIR hadn’t existed since before E -Day. The COG had been at war with it for nearly eighty years before those short,
short
weeks of peace.
Gorasnaya
. Shit, they were one of the tiny lunatic republics that refused to accept the cease-fire. Nobody took account of them. They had very little left to fight with.
Unbelievable
didn’t quite cover it, though. They still had a submarine, and they still thought they existed.

“No hard feelings,” Michaelson said at last. “But I suggest you explain what you’re doing before this becomes a very short conversation.”

“You might want to let pirates go free,” Trescu said, “but we take a harder line, and we’ve been tracking Jacques for days.”

“We?”

“We may be a small presence compared to you, but we’re still worth plundering. As I said, may we talk? I have as many questions for you and your Chairman as you have for me.”

Marcus finally reacted. “It’s a frigging
Indie
. Fifteen years after the armistice, and he shows up
now?”

Bernie saw a crewman come out to the starboard bridge wing to take a photograph. Dom stared. “This is a joke, right?”

“Baby, I’m gonna take my seasick pills and lie down somewhere dark till this morning goes
away,”
Cole said.
Falconer’s
deck had fallen silent—mostly. The only sound Bernie could hear now was Baird, and he was chuckling to himself.

“I’m glad you find it so fucking funny,” Marcus said. “Because we just made a new bunch of enemies.”

“Shit, we were going to finish off Jacques and his gang anyway.” Baird handed the binoculars to Marcus. “At least we got another submarine and a gunboat out of the trip.”

“You think Trescu is going to hand it over?”

“Why else would he surface and not just run?”

Bernie had once found Baird an irritating know -it-all, but now she understood that he really did have a good brain in that head, capable of shrewd assessment. Trescu wanted something beyond settling scores with pirates. And Bernie was keen to find out where the rump of the UIR had been hiding.

Falconer
headed back to Vectes, trailed by the small gunboat, and
Clement
kept a close tail on
Zephyr
. It was a strange flotilla by anyone’s standards. Bernie spent an hour or two hunched over the chart table, trying to work out where Trescu might have come from, and then a thought struck her—a surprising one simply because it had taken so long to dawn on her.

Jonn Massy had been given his quick release. And she felt neither guilty nor cheated. Now she could move on.