Day two without power, and Linyuan Harbor turned viciously hot.
No wind. The stink of the sea crawled in low across the ground. By first light a line had formed outside the barracks—applicants for the Ember Guard, from the gate all the way to the granary's back wall: last night's old hunter still hungry after watching the volley, a butcher with his cleaver on his belt. Chen Jin gave them one sentence: "Slots aren't open. Queue anyway. Standing in line is training too."
Beside the line, Chen Xiaosui worked down the row with a military canteen, her four or five little ones trailing her, each toting a chipped bowl. When a kid asked whose canteen it was, her chin came up. "My brother's barracks. I pour water where I want."
That morning, third floor of the old customs house: the Harbor Defense Council's temporary HQ.
HQ meant one big unpowered office. Candles, oil lamps, twenty-odd bodies sweating into a stew of smell—sweat, mildew, pipe oil. A machine gun stood wrapped in canvas in the corner; a row of enamel mugs lined the long table; one old clerk had stood a spent rifle casing in the corner as an ashtray, ash mounded half full. On the windowsill, somebody's salted fish dried in a row under a note: WHOEVER TAKES, PAYS. Two old clerks huddled in a corner, whispering. "Half a pound of grain a day, and sand in the grind. A man can't live on this." "Shh. Quiet. Get heard, and you'll lose even the half pound."
Talking stopped on half its strands when Chen Jin came in.
He was two days and two nights without sleep. Eyes gritty, temples pounding, the shoulder wound freshly dressed and the bandage stiff enough to lock the arm. He didn't sit. He stood at the window frame.
"We're all here." The old harbor-master at the head seat tapped his mug. "Session's open. First item: command authority for the city's defense."
Deputy Captain Zhou Zhengting rose, unhurried.
Forty-some, cuffs worn white, an enamel mug in his hand with the paint worn down—the slogan had read SAFETY FIRST; three letters had survived: SAFETY FIRS. He didn't look at Chen Jin. He topped up his own mug with cold tea first.
"Let me be clear. This isn't about the man. It's about the facts." He took a sip. "Harbor Garrison Ordinance, Article Nine: command authority rests with commissioned officers appointed by this council. Third-class trooper Chen Jin ranks last in the entire garrison."
"One. Two nights ago he opened the shelter gate on his own authority. Let in three thousand more mouths. Rations are half a pound per head per day. Who feeds the extra?"
"Two. The barracks. A man goes to sleep and wakes up to a barracks growing by the granary. Twelve men, twelve rifles. Where'd the rifles come from? The blueprint? Accountability Ordinance, Article Fifteen: organized armed units must be registered. Was it registered?"
"Three." Only now did Zhou turn his head and look at Chen Jin. "The day before yesterday he was an ammo hauler. Yesterday, Tier-1 enhancement. And where exactly did that come from? Can he explain it?"
"And one step further—" his voice stayed low, "a man who opens gates today opens warehouses tomorrow. Ask him now, gentlemen. Wait, and you won't get answers anymore."
Quiet in the room. A candlewick popped.
Chen Jin looked at the enamel mug for two seconds and, for no reason at all, thought of the bowl of noodles Xiaosui took with extra sauce. He strangled the thought faster than a man stubs a cigarette.
A few voices murmured that Old Zhou had a point. Others found reasons to go inspect the wall and slipped out.
Lei Changgeng crouched at the door without coming in, an unlit cigarette between his fingers. An officer waved him to a seat; he shook his head. "Room's smoky enough. I'm rationing."
At the other side of the doorway, Big Liu stood guard with his rifle, head bobbing. Lei Changgeng reached out and steadied him with one hand. Said nothing.
Chen Jin heard it all out, then asked one thing: "Finished?"
"Finished." Zhou set the mug down on the table. "Explain it, then. Can't explain it, we go by the book."
"Carry it in."
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The doorway answered. Big Liu and two Ember Guards squeezed in carrying a door plank, a hound-class corpse strapped down on it—the big-headed one from west city, a size larger than the rest. Big Liu slid it off beside the conference table and straightened up, wiping sweat. "Heavier than two crates of ammo, this thing."
The rot hit the room like a slap. The nearest old clerk clapped a hand over his mouth and bolted, then was too embarrassed to leave, hanging off the doorframe to watch.
Chen Jin drew his knife and crouched. The blade traced the skull seam of the head-bug—lever, pry, lift. A plate of head-armor came up whole, exposing a fist-sized knot of gray-white soft meat under it, crawling with fine ridges, like a brain with its shell peeled off.
The bug was dead through and through. The knot of meat was still pulsing. Faintly.
"Look well." Chen Jin pointed with the knife tip. "Last night's whistle came out of this. When the bugs go up a wall, when they pull off—which side, how hard. This thing decides."
He stood and swept the room once.
"A swarm is not a stampede. Something out there is running their war."
Nobody in the room picked that up.
"Deputy Captain Zhou." Chen Jin looked at him. "Does your ordinance cover bugs that fight like an army?"
Zhou stared at the soft meat for a long time. His Adam's apple moved. He didn't take that line. He raised the enamel mug, and set it back down without drinking.
"Even so—" He changed breath, holding the line. "Even so. The garrison's soldiers are the harbor's soldiers, not any one man's. Command needs standing. Needs handover. Needs—"
Boots pounded up the stairs. A sentry shouldered the door half off its hinges, cap askew:
"West city! Bugs seeping through the old market collapse! The captain's got men plugged at the crossing and they're coming around through both lanes! Wounded already—they can't hold—"
Zhou was on his feet in one motion.
"Your man's formation." Chen Jin was already at the door. He tossed the rest back over his shoulder. "Formed by the book, was it?"
Lei Changgeng stuck the cigarette over his ear and came off the wall. "Move."
West city's old market was old collapse country—buildings leaning on buildings, lanes too narrow for two men shoulder to shoulder.
By the time they arrived, the machine-gun line at the crossing was still firing by the book, muzzles flaring, rounds chewing up the broken walls on both flanks. A dozen-odd hound-classes were flowing out from under half-fallen shopfronts, folding around the gun crew's flank. A few militiamen stood pinned against a dead-end wall, bayonets up, not daring to charge. From behind the fallen masonry somebody recognized him and screamed it out half crying, "It's the third-class from the shelter! Chen! They can fight!"
"Ember Guard." Chen Jin's voice stayed level. "Second file, into the west lanes. First file, with me. Fire."
Gunfire closed on itself from two directions. In lanes that narrow, the first volley dropped the lead bugs in a heap.
[Kill confirmed: Hound-class x1. +10 Embers.]
[Kill confirmed: Hound-class x2. +20 Embers.]
The head-bug heaved out from under a shopfront and made straight for the gun crew. Chen Jin went to meet it—palms dripping, the knife skidding once in his grip. He rode the slip into a crouch, drove his shoulder into the flank plating, and sank the knife in behind the soft ribs. Twist.
[Kill confirmed: War-hound class x1. +50 Embers.]
They pulled two militiamen off the dead-end wall. Both alive.
[Humans saved x2. +2 Embers.]
Ten minutes and the lanes were clear. The Ember Guard took zero dead, two walking wounded. The loyalists on Zhou's side carried seven out, two critical. A militiaman with a snapped bayonet sat against the wall and watched the Ember Guard fall in and shoulder rifles, watched a long time—then quietly picked up his broken blade and wiped it on his trouser leg.
[Embers: 608.]
Zhou arrived trailing the gunsmoke. He stopped at the lane mouth, looked once at the stretchers, once at Chen Jin wiping his blade on his sleeve, and his lips moved. Nothing came out.
On the walk back, the two of them fell in side by side for a stretch.
"The book is dead paper," Zhou said at last, eyes forward. "I was twenty when I shipped out on a patrol cutter. My first captain feared nothing under heaven, swore on his chest he'd cut the route short. Half that crew went out. Six came back."
He let that sit a few steps.
"After that, I put my faith in the regulations. The book is cold. But the book never swears on its chest."
Chen Jin didn't answer. A few paces later he said, "The book runs the peacetime. The bugs don't read it."
"So the authority's yours." Zhou stopped, dug out an oil-paper packet from his jacket, and unwrapped it layer by layer: a dog-eared defense roster, and a brass command seal. "Put it in writing. If you can't hold it, the penalty's on paper, black and white."
"Done." Chen Jin took them. "One line to add: when we hold, the grain goes out by headcount. Shelter district first." The words left his mouth sounding like terms of a deal, and he heard it himself. "I'm not bargaining with you." That made it worse. He shut up.
Zhou looked at him for two seconds, drained the cold tea left in the enamel mug, and wiped his mouth.
"The pledge takes a thumbprint."
By evening, Zhou sent over two kettles of hot water and not one extra word. Big Liu hefted a kettle and grinned. "The old comrade's got manners."
The pledge was drafted; no ink pad in the shelter. Lei Changgeng dug out a half-box of red sealing wax. "This'll do." A match touched it, and Chen Jin's thumb went down—the hot wax bit him hard enough that his fingers flinched.
Night. The administration building.
Chen Jin soaked the guide organ in a jar of alcohol borrowed off the med station and set it in the corner of the desk. The defense map lay open; he circled collapse mouths in pencil, and halfway through a circle the world went dark at one corner—two seconds—then came back.
Two days and two nights now. He rubbed his eyes and kept drawing.
In the corner of the desk, the gray-white knot in the jar quivered. Faintly.
As if something, from very far away, had called its name.