Day 447. 06:00 hours.
Central Luzon.
Subic Bay.
The Freeport Pier.
The army assembled on the pier at dawn, twelve thousand men in columns of four, the columns stretching from the pier head to the Freeport gate a kilometer north. The men stood in the gray light with their rifles and their tactical suits and their particular silence that was not discipline but exhaustion — the silence of men who had not eaten enough and who had slept on concrete and who were now standing in formation because the captain had ordered it.
Navarro stood on the pier head with his dark eyes on the columns and his binoculars in his hand, his gray beard trimmed, his tactical suit clean. The captain who had slept four hours in a bed and eaten a full meal, now looking at an army that had done neither.
'The port rations will last twelve days, the march takes six — the army arrives at Olympus hungry.' Navarro filed, his jaw set beneath his trimmed beard.
The rumors had come from the coalition channels, from the traders who moved between factions, from the rescued children who had been moved through coalition networks and who talked about a fortress south of Manila where food did not run out and a captain who had weapons nobody had seen. The rumors were rumors, but rumors in a starving country were more valuable than intelligence, and Navarro had filed the rumors and marched twelve thousand men south because the rumors said food and the port said starvation and the math said the only food left was at the fortress.
Lieutenant Reyes stood beside him, the son who had planned the route, mapped the roads and the fuel stops and the water sources, the son who had not slept in thirty-six hours.
"The route — south on the North Luzon Expressway to Manila, three hundred kilometers, four days of marching." Reyes reported, his voice flat. "The NLEX is intact to Bulacan, then damaged at the Balintawak interchange. We bypass Manila via the Skyway, which is intact. South Luzon Expressway to Batangas, two hundred kilometers, two days. Total: six days. Olympus on Day 453."
"Fuel." Navarro pressed.
"Enough for the technicals for four days — the technicals lead and scout, the infantry marches on foot. The technicals will be abandoned at the fuel limit, approximately Tarlac on Day 449." Reyes confirmed.
'Abandon the technicals at Tarlac — two hundred kilometers on foot after that.' Navarro filed, his dark eyes on the columns.
"Water." Navarro pressed.
"The freeze has frozen most surface water — the army will melt snow for drinking, the snow is everywhere, the fuel for melting is the constraint." Reyes reported. "We have enough fuel for melting through Day 451. After Day 451, the army drinks cold melt, which will lower body temperature and increase cold casualties."
"The prisoners." Navarro pressed.
"Eight hundred Pampanga prisoners integrated, issued rifles and port rations — they march with the columns, morale is low, integration is incomplete, desertion is likely." Reyes confirmed.
'Eight hundred prisoners who will desert, taking their rifles and rations into the white.' Navarro filed, his dark eyes on the columns. 'The math still says I reach Olympus.'
"We march — columns advance, North Luzon Expressway, south, the army marches." Navarro declared, his voice low.
"Copy." Reyes confirmed, his hand finding the radio.
The radio crackled. The order went out. The columns moved. Twelve thousand men began to march south.
— • • • —
Day 447. 12:00 hours.
The North Luzon Expressway.
Kilometer 80.
Bataan.
The NLEX was a six-lane highway that ran south from Subic Bay to Manila, the primary north-south artery before the freeze, now a six-lane river of cracked asphalt and frozen debris — abandoned cars, fallen signs, the particular emptiness of a road that had once carried a hundred thousand vehicles a day and now carried twelve thousand men on foot.
The army moved at three kilometers per hour, the marching speed Navarro had set to conserve energy, the speed the hungry could sustain, the speed that would cover three hundred kilometers in four days if the army did not stop and the army did not break.
The technicals led the column, six vehicles running on the last fuel, scouting ahead, the vehicles that would be abandoned at Tarlac when the fuel ran out.
Marcelo Reyes marched in the third column with his rifle on his shoulder and his boots on the cracked asphalt, his eyes on the back of the man in front of him — the man who was also a prisoner, who had also been Pampanga, who had also chosen to join because joining was the only way to eat.
'Watch the back — the back moves, I move, the back is the march.' Marcelo filed, his boots on the asphalt, the farmer who had become a killer and a prisoner and a marcher, filing his own transformation with each step.
The march continued. Twelve thousand men on a frozen highway. South. Toward Manila. Toward the fortress with the food that did not run out.
— • • • —
Day 447. 18:00 hours.
The North Luzon Expressway.
Kilometer 95.
Pampanga Border.
The column halted at 18:00, the army stopping for the night, the men who had marched thirty kilometers since dawn dropping their rifles and dropping their bodies onto the frozen asphalt. Too tired to dig foxholes, too cold to sleep, lying on the highway with their rifles across their chests in the particular state between sleep and waking that soldiers enter when the body cannot do either.
The cold came at 19:00 with the particular certainty the freeze had established, the cold that dropped the temperature to minus forty-five and found the men on the asphalt and took them.
Six men died on the first night. Six men who had lain down on the asphalt and had not woken, the six the medics found at 06:00, stiff and blue, carried to the side of the road and left because the army did not bury the dead, the army marched.
'Six per night — the cold is the second enemy.' Navarro filed, his dark eyes on the six bodies at the side of the road.
— • • • —
Day 448. 06:00 hours.
The North Luzon Expressway.
Kilometer 95.
Pampanga Border.
The march resumed at dawn, the column forming again, the men who had survived the night standing and shouldering their rifles and beginning the walk. Another thirty kilometers today, the walk that would bring the army to Bulacan by nightfall.
Marcelo marched. His boots were on the asphalt. His eyes were on the back.
The desertions began at 08:00. The first deserter was a Pampanga prisoner from Marcelo's foxhole at the San Fernando line — a man who had survived the courtyard and the silos and the fire and had joined the Subic army and was now walking south on a frozen highway toward a fortress with weapons he had never seen. The man dropped his rifle. The man stepped off the highway. The man walked into the frozen rice fields to the east. The man did not look back. The man disappeared into the white.
No one stopped him. The Subic officers saw him go and did not pursue.
'He chose the white over the march — I don't blame him.' Marcelo filed, his boots on the asphalt, his eyes on the back.
More deserters followed. By noon, twelve prisoners had walked into the white. By evening, twenty. The army shrank as it marched, the twelve thousand becoming eleven thousand nine hundred and eighty and then eleven thousand nine hundred and sixty, the particular attrition that desertion produces.
— • • • —
Day 448. 08:00 hours.
Olympus.
Level 2.
The Command Deck.
Mei had not slept. Twenty-six hours on the deck, her crimson hair falling loose, Chocho asleep in the carrier, her violet-blue eyes tracking twelve thousand thermal signatures moving south on the NLEX.
"The march is on schedule — Subic forces have covered sixty kilometers since dawn yesterday." Mei reported, her fingers pulling up the thermal overlay. "Current position: NLEX kilometer ninety-five, Pampanga border. Marching speed: three kilometers per hour. The army is on schedule to reach the Batangas approach on Day 452."
"Desertions." Jae-min pressed from his chair, his dark eyes on the map.
"Twelve desertions since 08:00, all Pampanga prisoners — the deserters are walking into the frozen rice fields east of the NLEX." Mei reported, her fingers highlighting the twelve thermal signatures walking east into the white and disappearing. "The Subic officers are not pursuing."
'Acceptable losses — the phrase warlords use for men who choose the white over the march.' Jae-min filed, his dark eyes on the map.
"The cold casualties." Jae-min pressed.
"Six dead on the first night — the cold is taking approximately six per night." Mei confirmed, her voice flat. "Projected cold casualties over six days of marching: thirty-six."
'Thirty-six to the cold, nine hundred to desertion — ten thousand four hundred will reach Olympus.' Jae-min filed, his jaw tightening.
"The frames are warm — the army marches, the army arrives on Day 453, five days, Olympus prepares, Olympus holds." Jae-min declared, his dark eyes on the crew.
"Copy." The deck confirmed, and the crew turned back to the map, the twelve thousand thermal signatures moving south, the deserters walking into the white, the cold taking its six.
Jennifer sat on the bench by the window with her icy-blue hair loose and her blue eyes on the map, her hand on her belly where the seventeenth was growing. She was watching the thermal signatures moving south, watching the deserters disappear into the white, watching the army that was coming for the fortress where she sat carrying a child.
'They are coming here.' Jennifer filed, her blue eyes wet, her hand tightening on her belly.
Alessia's hand found Jennifer's, the fundamental holding the telepath. Alessia did not speak. She held Jennifer's hand and watched the map and felt the five signatures in her chest — Jin forty-eight days from arrival, Jennifer's, Ji-yoo's, Yue's, Gabriel's, all stable, all present.
'Five days — the war comes before Jin.' Alessia filed, her hand on Jennifer's hand, her black eyes on the map.
Hua stood in the doorway with Eun-hae in the sling, the fifty-one-day-old baby sleeping against her mother's chest. Her violet-blue eyes were on the map, on the thermal signatures moving south.
'The army is coming — and we have a wall that is not the AEGIS.' Hua filed, her hand on Eun-hae's back.
— • • • —
Day 448. 12:00 hours.
The North Luzon Expressway.
Kilometer 110.
Bulacan.
Marcelo marched. His boots were on the asphalt. His eyes were on the back. The back moved. Marcelo moved.
The column had passed the Pampanga border at 10:00, the army crossing the invisible line that separated the province where the war had been fought from the province where the war was going. The line meant nothing because the war did not recognize borders, the war recognized food, and the food was south.
Marcelo's stomach was a knot. The morning ration had been two hundred grams of rice, the port ration that was not the granary rice because the granary rice was ash. Two hundred grams was not what a body needed — two hundred grams was what a body survived on, and surviving was not living, and the march was six hundred kilometers of surviving.
The silence was the hunger. The men who had been shouting on the first day, talking and cursing and complaining, were now silent because the hunger had taken the words, the hunger consuming the energy that words required, reducing a man to the minimum — the minimum that was walking, the minimum that was watching the back.
'The hunger is the silence — I do not speak because speaking takes energy.' Marcelo filed, his boots on the asphalt, his eyes on the back, the farmer reduced to the minimum, filing the reduction without emotion because the emotion had been the first thing the hunger had taken.
The column moved south. The highway stretched. The sky was gray. The cold was coming. The march continued.
— • • • —
Day 449. 14:00 hours.
Tarlac.
The North Luzon Expressway.
Kilometer 180.
The technicals died at Tarlac. The six vehicles that had been scouting the column's route sputtered and coughed and rolled to a stop on the shoulder of the NLEX, fuel tanks dry, engines silent, the machines that had carried the scouts becoming the machines that would sit on the highway and rust and freeze.
Navarro stood beside the last technical with his hand on the hood and his dark eyes on the fuel gauge that read empty — the end of the machines, the gauge that meant the army was now entirely on foot, the scouts would walk, the scouts would march, the scouts would be men with rifles instead of men with technicals.
'No more fuel — the army is on foot, four hundred kilometers remaining.' Navarro filed, his hand on the hood.
"Abandon the technicals — strip the ammunition, strip the fifty-cals, the ammunition goes to the infantry, the fifty-cals go on tripods." Navarro commanded, his voice low. "We set up two heavy weapons positions. The rest is abandoned."
"Copy." Reyes confirmed, the son who would oversee the stripping, the son who understood that the war had just changed from a mechanized war to a foot war.
The technicals were stripped. The ammunition was distributed. The fifty-cals were mounted on tripods fabricated from technical roll bars. The army marched on, south, on foot, the machines left behind, the men walking, the war walking with them.
— • • • —
Day 449. 22:00 hours.
Tarlac.
The North Luzon Expressway.
Kilometer 185.
Marcelo sat beside the highway with his rifle across his knees and his back against a fallen road sign, his eyes on the charcoal sky that had not lightened in four hundred and forty-nine days.
The column had stopped for the night. The men were on the asphalt. The cold was coming. The cold would take its six, quietly, without shooting, without screaming, the way the cold always took them.
Marcelo's stomach was empty. The port ration had been two hundred grams of rice and a quarter protein bar — not enough for a body marching six hundred kilometers, not enough for a body that had been surviving on the minimum for four days.
'Four more days — then the fortress, then the captain with the weapons we have never seen.' Marcelo filed, his hands on the rifle, his eyes on the sky.
The rumors had reached the prisoner pen on the second day, carried by the Subic soldiers who had heard them from the coalition traders who moved between factions. A fortress south of Manila. A captain with weapons nobody had seen. Food that did not run out. The rumors were rumors, but in a starving army marching south, rumors were the only thing that kept the men walking — the rumor of food, the rumor of a fortress, the rumor that at the end of six hundred kilometers there was a place where the hunger ended.
Marcelo did not know if the rumors were true. Marcelo knew that south was away from the corridor, and south was the direction the army was marching, and the army was marching because the captain had said march, and the captain's orders were the only thing between Marcelo and the white, and the white was death, and the march was also death, but the march gave food first.
'The march will not kill me — the fortress will kill me, if the rumors are true.' Marcelo filed, his hands on the rifle, his eyes on the sky, the marcher filing his own death four days before it happened, the marcher who knew that the march was not the war, the march was the approach, and the war was waiting at the end, and the war was the fortress and the captain and the weapons he had never seen.
The cold came. The cold took its six. The march slept. The march did not sleep. The march waited for the dawn that was the gradual shift from black to gray, the gray that was the war, the war that was the march, the march that was walking south toward the food that did not run out.
— • • • —
Day 451. 06:00 hours.
Olympus.
Level 5.
The Engineering Workshop.
The first AEGIS was not ready. The first AEGIS would not be ready for four more weeks. But the AEGIS components that were ready, the components Aiko and Daniela had fabricated in the twelve days since Koko booted, were enough to build something that was not an AEGIS but that served a purpose — a wall.
Not the sixteen-point-eight-meter titanium-tungsten platform with the four-layer armor and the Guardian Shield and the hydraulic ground anchors. Not the platform that would hold the line while the HERACLES maneuvered. The thing Aiko and Daniela had built was a wall made of AEGIS armor panels that had been fabricated but not assembled into a platform, the panels four meters tall and two meters wide, now being bolted to the Forbes Park perimeter fence at fifty-meter intervals. The panels would not stop an army, but they would slow one, channel the attackers into the kill zones Mark Jordan had designated.
Aiko stood at the workshop console with her black eyes behind her eyeglasses tracking the assembly feed, her fingers on the haptic interface, the engineer who had designed the AEGIS and who was now watching her armor panels repurposed as a fence.
"The perimeter wall is at sixty percent — thirty-six panels installed on the Forbes Park perimeter, covering the north, east, and west approaches." Aiko reported, her voice flat. "The south approach is the mountain. The panels will not stop eleven thousand men, but they will slow them and channel them into the kill zones where the frames will engage."
"The frames." Jae-min pressed, his dark eyes on the workshop feed.
"Six frames, warm — the GENESIS, the SAMURAI, the REAPER, the DARKNESS, the REVOLUTION, the SPECTER." Aiko reported, her voice steady. "The pilots are ready, the void is ready, the Satellite Link is charged, Koko has completed its mapping of all six frames and is ready to deploy with the GENESIS."
'Koko is ready — the first keeper on the field.' Jae-min filed, his dark eyes on the workshop feed.
"The proxies." Jae-min pressed, his dark eyes finding Gabby.
Gabby stood at the back of the workshop in her tactical suit, her golden eyes dim, the flyer who was not flying because the flyer was grounded and the flyer was training a boy and the boy was not ready.
"Lia blinked at seven-point-one meters yesterday, Renz flew at eight-point-four meters vertical for twenty-two seconds." Gabby reported, her golden eyes lifting with effort. "They are close. They are not ready. The war is tomorrow. The formation will be at six."
'Six frames — no ASSASSIN, no SONIC.' Jae-min filed, his jaw set.
"Olympus holds — the wall holds, the frames hold, the void holds, Olympus holds." Jae-min declared, his dark eyes on the workshop, his voice low.
"Copy." The workshop confirmed, and the engineer and the flyer and the captain turned back to the wall and the frames and the war that was tomorrow.
— • • • —
Day 451. 14:00 hours.
Central Luzon.
The North Luzon Expressway.
Kilometer 250.
Bulacan.
Maria Santos had been walking for eight days. She had left the ditch on the second night, the dark arriving at 18:00, the dark that let her and her two children climb out and walk west on a road full of bodies and suitcases and the particular debris that fifty-caliber fire produces of civilians. Maria had walked with her children's hands in hers and her eyes on the asphalt because looking at the bodies was not possible and looking at the road was the only way to walk.
She had walked west, away from the corridor, toward nothing — the nothing that was the freeze, the emptiness of abandoned villages and frozen rice fields, the emptiness that was not safe but was not the corridor.
The children were alive. The boy was still not speaking. The girl had woken on the third day and had not cried because the crying had been used up, the four-year-old who had seen things a four-year-old should not see and who had stopped being four and had become something quiet and watchful and old.
Maria had found food on the fourth day — an abandoned village with a looted store that had a back room the looters had not reached, three cans of sardines, a bag of dried fish, a container of salt. The food had kept them alive for four more days.
Now the food was gone. The sardines were gone. The dried fish was gone. The salt was all that was left, the salt in Maria's pocket, the salt that was not food but that was the only thing between Maria's children and the particular emptiness that happened when a body stopped eating entirely.
Maria was walking south because south was away from the corridor and south was the direction the refugees walked because south was where the food was. The rumors said a fortress, the rumors said a captain who had killed things that ate children, the rumors said food that did not run out.
'The fortress — the rumors, the food, the captain — I do not know if it is real.' Maria filed, her hand on the boy's shoulder, the girl on her hip, the salt container in her pocket.
She did not know the fortress was real. She did not know the fortress was twenty kilometers north of where she was walking. She did not know the army was walking toward the same fortress from the other direction. She knew only that south was the direction and the children were hungry and the salt was all that was left and the walking was the only thing.
Maria walked south. The children walked with her. The war waited at the fortress. And the war was tomorrow.
— • • • —
Day 451. 12:00 hours.
Manila.
The Skyway.
Kilometer 295.
The army crossed Manila on the Skyway, the elevated highway that ran above the ruined city. The Children of the Frost had not secured the Skyway because the Skyway was not a food source and the Prophet's followers did not guard things that were not food sources. The highway allowed the Subic army to bypass the capital without engaging the religious faction that had taken the city and was executing civilians in the warehouse district.
Navarro stood on the Skyway and looked down at Manila, the city that had been the capital and was now a ruin, the landscape of bodies in the streets and burning warehouses and the particular order that fanatics impose when everyone who resists is dead.
'The Prophet has Manila — I have the south, and we will meet again after Olympus.' Navarro filed, his dark eyes on the city below, the naval officer who understood that the war was not just Navarro against Olympus but Navarro against the Prophet against Olympus, the war that the freeze had started and that the food would end.
The army crossed the Skyway. The army descended to the South Luzon Expressway. The army marched south, toward Batangas, toward the fortress with the food that did not run out.
— • • • —
Day 452. 18:00 hours.
Batangas.
The South Luzon Expressway.
Kilometer 580.
The army was twenty kilometers from Olympus. The army was eleven thousand strong. The army had lost nine hundred men to desertion and the cold, the nine hundred who had walked into the white or who had not woken on the asphalt, the nine hundred who were filed and moved past.
Navarro stood on the shoulder of the SLEX with his dark eyes on the south, the direction of the fortress, the direction of the food, the direction of the war that was waiting. The army was behind him, eleven thousand men on the highway, eleven thousand hungry men with rifles and two heavy weapons positions and the particular desperation that hunger produces.
'Twenty kilometers — tomorrow, the fortress, the captain with the weapons, the food.' Navarro filed, his dark eyes on the south, his hand on his rifle.
The rumors had sustained the march. The fortress south of Manila. The captain with weapons nobody had seen. Food that did not run out. The coalition that operated from the fortress. The children who had been rescued and who talked about the captain and the compound and the food. The rumors were rumors, but rumors in a starving country were more valuable than intelligence, and the rumors had marched eleven thousand men six hundred kilometers and the rumors were twenty kilometers from being proven or disproved.
"Tomorrow." Navarro declared, his voice low, the warlord who was twenty kilometers from the end of the march.
"Tomorrow." Reyes confirmed, the son who was twenty kilometers from the war.
The army camped on the highway. The cold came. The cold took its six. The army slept. The army did not sleep. The army waited for the dawn that would bring the last twenty kilometers and the walls of the fortress and the captain with the weapons and the food and the war.