The morning train rattled toward Sector Four. Caleb rested his head against the cold glass and kept his kit between his boots.
The corporate cruisers were hours behind him now. He had seen the woman put in binders and taken away. He did not know where she was or whether the restraints had done anything to her access.
The replacement chip stayed quiet behind his ear throughout the train ride.
The broadcast still belonged to the buyer. He had permission for one event, with further access depending on what he did there.
Barrett had ordered him to report messages through his equipment. Caleb touched the replacement chip, then let his hand fall. The last investigation had ended in a holding cell. He did not know what reporting the new route would do to his duty clearance this morning. He kept the phone in his pocket.
He shifted away from the glass. The train rocked his bruised shoulder against the seat. Whatever else he would have to explain, he needed his rifle and a working helmet before 0800.
The train slowed at the subterranean hub.
Hydraulic gears groaned through the bedrock. A station display showed residential blocks descending into reinforced silos while tungsten doors closed across the surface streets. The vibration came through the platform when Caleb stepped off the carriage.
He joined the dark-gray uniforms moving down the central corridor.
The staging hangar opened ahead of them. Someone had named it the Cathedral. It was large enough to hold an aircraft carrier, and every gantry seemed to have a crew working beneath it.
Arc welders threw sparks from above the First Division's artillery mechs. Loading drones moved between deployment bays with ammunition crates. Recruits shouted over the hiss of pneumatic equipment while veterans checked weapons against the noise.
Caleb could smell plasma exhaust and hot machine grease through the circulating air.
***
At the Seventh Division trench, he put on the returned surplus plates. The lining dragged at his joints as it closed. He fastened the gauntlets and took a standard combat rifle from the rack.
An armorer handed him a spare helmet. Caleb fitted it instead of looking for the one Oswin had carried away smoking.
The visor started in military blue. He checked the broadcast corner before loading the rifle.
[PUBLIC EVENT ACCESS: TEMPORARY]
[STREAMING RIGHTS HOLDER: PRIVATE ACCOUNT]
The public icon was green. Dinner's permission had reached the event feed. The owner's name had not become public with it, and the permission could still end with this deployment.
Caleb racked the rifle. The clack sounded loud inside the helmet.
The count climbed from zero to twelve, then forty. It reached a hundred and fifty before the first comments appeared beneath it.
[User99: wait is this the scrubber from the urban zone?]
[RedLine: yeah the pipe guy]
[GunnerFan: 1.2 percent? how does he carry that gear?]
[TitanSlayer: surplus guy carried Shishido out]
Five hundred became eight hundred while he checked the magazine catch.
People remembered the urban zone. An audience could earn him points and payments. It was not money in his family's account yet, but it was a chance the single-viewer lock had denied him.
"Treadwell."
Suzu came through the soldiers in clean white combat gear. Her brace clicked beneath the knee plate when she stopped two feet from him.
Caleb waited for a question about the restaurant. She checked his public profile on her wrist display instead.
"Your feed is active. The military monitors engagement during mobilization. Don't waste it."
"I plan on shooting things. That usually works."
Kei and Taichi jogged up behind her. Kei touched each ammunition pouch, counted along the row, then started checking them again.
Taichi's red-trimmed armor was clean. A fresh white bandage crossed his nose. He stopped with the scatter-rifle against his shoulder and looked Caleb over.
"Thought you might take a sick day. Seventh gets the worst deployments."
"They didn't give me the option."
Kei tapped his helmet. "People are linking our squad profiles from the trials. I've got three thousand watching."
Caleb checked his own number. Two thousand five hundred people were watching.
Kei smiled at him, then checked the pouch nearest his hip once more. Taichi rolled his shoulders beneath the armor and worked the scatter-rifle's action.
***
The floodlights went out.
A command tone sounded in Caleb's helmet. The public icon changed from green to amber.
[CLASSIFIED BRIEFING. PUBLIC VIDEO AND AUDIO PAUSED]
The chat stopped. A holding notice replaced the public camera output, while the military display remained live inside his visor. Caleb could still see the people ahead of him and hear the hangar's speakers. The viewers could not receive the briefing or its map.
A holographic projector lit the central dais. The city rose in blue lines above the divisions. Captain Rufus Barrett stood beside the command console with Mabel Bristow at his shoulder.
"Listen close," Barrett said. "Thirty minutes ago, the offshore perimeter grid went black."
Kei's hands stopped on his pouches.
"Civilian networks are calling this a standard Category Four coastal event. That report is keeping people from stampeding at the shelter doors. It is not what you're deploying against."
Barrett changed the map. Red spread across the coastline.
"A Danger Class-8 Titan is making landfall at the commercial docks."
Someone behind Caleb swore. An older soldier in the next row tightened a rifle sling until the strap squeaked.
The projected foot covered streets Caleb had driven along. At the disposal yard, a Class-4 carcass had filled a bay. He could not picture a crew opening this thing's chest, or a crane large enough to hold it.
"First and Second Divisions form the anvil," Barrett said. "Defensive line at the sector walls. Heavy artillery and sniper suppression. You hold it outside the inner civilian bunkers."
He looked toward the gray uniforms at the rear.
"Third and Seventh. You're the hammer."
The map enlarged the underground grid. Thousands of smaller red marks moved through the transit lines.
"Landfall started a subterranean stampede. Scavenger-class Yoju are burrowing through the subway system to get away from the Titan. You'll drop into the flooded tunnels and hold the choke points. You choke those lines with their corpses until the breach is contained."
Bristow stepped to the edge of the dais.
"Filters checked. Magazines loaded. Stay in formation in the dark. You don't leave a shield line to chase one."
Kei swallowed. Taichi grinned and slapped the side of his scatter-rifle, then checked its chamber.
Caleb looked between the red coastline and the smaller marks below it. The surface force would hold the Titan. His people would take everything trying to get away underneath.
He checked the route on his deployment manifest. Kei and Taichi were attached to the same underground element as him. Suzu's First Division post led to the surface defenses.
Bristow keyed the squad channel while the projector dimmed.
"Hosoda. Arakawa. Form with the Seventh tunnel element at the pods. Shishido, hold your surface assignment."
Suzu looked up from her wrist display. "I'm still responsible for his readings."
"Take them through the tactical link. The monitoring attachment doesn't change your deployment."
Suzu checked the route code again and nodded.
The floodlights returned. Command released the public hold after the classified map disappeared. The icon went green, and the chat resumed beneath a count of four thousand.
Nothing in the broadcast corner said the private rights holder had changed.
Caleb tightened his rifle sling and looked at Suzu.
"See you on the other side."
She moved toward the surface loading bays. Kei and Taichi turned with Caleb toward the underground deployment tubes, where Bristow was assembling the shield carriers ahead of the rookies.
Caleb joined the pod queue between them. His surplus armor pulled at the damaged shoulder, and the public comments kept moving at the edge of his sight.
He checked the rifle once more. This time there would be people watching when he used it.