“Has she found her dog?” Yanik called.
He could only mean Bernie. “Not yet,” Hoffman called back.
“Is a lovely day, yes? The garayazi have gone. No more Stranded. I can save many bullets now.”
Yanik walked on, grinning. He didn’t fret about shooting anyone and he probably wouldn’t have lost a second’s sleep over stealing classified data, Hoffman knew.
We’ve all done things we’re not proud of just to survive. Or because we think it serves a greater good. Maybe I don’t have the right to judge Prescott.
But that was bullshit, and he knew it. If Prescott had a secret this late in the game, then it was big. And Hoffman’s duty wasn’t to a single politician but to use any means necessary to maximize the chances of humankind making it through the next few years.
Hoffman carried on walking, checking his watch every few minutes. Half an hour, I said. Baird’s probably cracked the encryption and found a way to turn the data disk into a perpetual-motion machine by now. He made his way back through the naval base, skirting around roped-off holes and working parties until he reached the disused lavatory block where Baird had set up a makeshift workshop of his own.
The corporal was sitting on one of the toilets in a cubicle whose door had long vanished. Its black plastic seat was folded down to make a chair, and in front of it was a bench made out of old ammo cases. An odd assortment of disembodied components was spread around the bench, linked by strips of ribbon cable and wires like a set of entrails in need of a body cavity. It wasn’t until Hoffman recognized a computer terminal—just the flat part of the screen, nothing else—that he realized what he was looking at. Baird had wired together an array of scavenged computer components to make a working system. He looked up, his expression grim.
“Couldn’t fit all this in a case,” he said. “Even if we had a spare one, which we don’t.”
Hoffman watched him for a while. Baird was a different man when he was playing with his toys. Hoffman actually felt sorry for him. Maybe that was why Bernie did, too.
“Well?” Hoffman said.
Baird shook his head slowly as he hammered at the battered keyboard. “You think I can do anything, don’t you?”
“Yes. Can’t you?”
“Not this time.” He stared at the monitor for a moment, but it was clear that he wasn’t seeing what was on it. He was just searching for the right moment to look Hoffman in the eye. “I can’t open it. I’ve never seen anything like it. Don’t think I’m making excuses—but this isn’t anything the COG’s ever used.”
Hoffman wasn’t sure what surprised him most, Baird’s defeat or the fact that he admitted it so openly. Disappointment gripped him. This wasn’t the time to tell Baird as much.
“You want to talk me through that, Corporal?”
Baird straightened up. “None of the COG security codes work, but you know that already. In fact, it doesn’t look as if it uses any of the encryption technology that the COG’s ever had—military or industrial. I’d guess that it’s something that Prescott had built for him specially.”
“I won’t ask how you actually know all the COG encryption codes,” Hoffman said.
“But you’re glad that I do.”
“Damn right I am.”
“I’m going to keep at it. Anything that’s encrypted can be unencrypted, and nobody locks me out forever.”
“Even knowing what you can’t do with it tells me something.” He thought of Cole for a moment and took his advice. “We rely heavily on your talents, Baird. I don’t take them for granted.”
Baird looked awkward. Bernie was right; for all his cocky bullshit, he really didn’t know how to handle compliments. “I mean, how unknown can an encryption key be? It’s not like Prescott has a whole bunch of scientists holed up somewhere working on cutting-edge tech just for him, is it? It’s got to be based on something we already know and use.”
“No.” Did Prescott think they had a chance of cracking it? He hadn’t seemed panicked, but then he never did, not even when he was about to press the button and incinerate most of Sera with the Hammer of Dawn. “Do what you can, Corporal. Let me know if there’s anything you need.”
Baird took the disk out of the computer’s disembodied guts.
“You trust me to hang on to this?” he asked, half-offering it back to Hoffman.
“You know damn well I do,” Hoffman said. “Make sure you don’t lose it.”
He knew Baird would now guard it with his life. It was a matter of pride as well as obsession. Hoffman walked away, careful not to look back, and reflected on the fact that Baird didn’t seem to feel at all diminished by having to use a goddamn lavatory for an office. That was confidence. He almost envied it.
The day wasn’t resolving quite as Hoffman had hoped. He wanted boils lanced and all hidden things made plain in the space of twenty-six hours. He wasn’t going to get far with Prescott’s secrets by midnight, but that didn’t absolve him from clearing up the unfinished business of more than thirty years with Sam, business he didn’t really know needed completing until Bernie pointed it out to him. Now was as good a time as any.
He wandered into CIC and found Mathieson. The lieutenant was eating a sandwich one-handed while he scribbled notes on a sheet of paper that was gray from repeated erasure and re-use. He pushed his headset’s mike away from his mouth with an unconscious flick of his finger every time he went to take a bite, then flicked it back again. It didn’t slow down his conversation with the patrolling Ravens one bit. He’d been stuck at that comms desk far too long.
“How you doing, sir?” he said, looking up. “It’s all quiet now the Stranded have run away. Can’t get used to it.”
“Make the most of it. Longest we were ever without some kind of trouble was six weeks, and that was between the wars. We didn’t get used to that, either.”
Hoffman was suddenly distracted by the rest of Mathieson’s meal spread around the desk. A water canteen stood next to the phone. There was nothing remarkable about a bottle of water, except this one was a UIR type, not COG issue. He knew all too well what they looked like. He’d stepped over them in the churned mud of battlefields, riddled with Lancer rounds and scattered around with the sad contents of wallets, and he’d drunk from one when his life hung on a thread at Anvil Gate.
Indies make me look at what I am. Maybe that’s why I don’t like Trescu.
The most traumatic memory he had to live with was an act of unexpected and shaming kindness that he repaid with a bullet. That was an indictment. He suddenly felt he could never stand alongside the Tollen vets in remembrance, because his nightmares were of his own making.
“Something wrong, sir?” Mathieson asked.
“Just admiring your canteen.”
“That’s from Yanik. Don’t worry, I didn’t have to trade anything for it. He was just being kind. He probably feels sorry for me.”
Poor Mathieson; he had no idea how much worse that made Hoffman feel. It was time to do something positive, something done for its own sake rather than to relieve his guilt. Benoslau. That was the officer’s name. Captain Benoslau. Hoffman wasn’t sure what he was going to do with that fact, but remembering the man’s name was the least he could do.
“They’re not all monsters, Lieutenant,” he said, and changed the subject. “Look, I need to find Byrne. Does she hang out in the main mess?”
“You after a tattoo, sir?”
“No,” Hoffman said. “I need a scar removed.”
Mathieson knew when to ask questions and when to keep his mouth shut. He didn’t say a word.
In the world they’d both known and lost, he would have gone far.
KR-80, ROUTINE SECURITY PATROL OVER CENTRAL. VECTES: TEN DAYS AFTER THE LAST POLYP ATTACK.
Barber hung out of the crew bay, snapping recon images of the terrain beneath the Raven like a crazed tourist running out of sightseeing time.
“We haven’t even scratched the surface of this place,” he said. “The map doesn
’t tell us a damn thing. For all we know, there could be imulsion reserves down there.”
The center of the island was an extinct volcano, four kilometers across with steep walls smothered in ancient forest. Baird stared down at the dense, deep-green ocean of the tree canopy, trying to concentrate, but all he could think about was why Prescott’s data disk wouldn’t give up its secrets to him.
“Sure there are,” Baird muttered, “and I’m going to devote my life to charitable work. If it’s okay with the tooth fairy.”
Shit, he hated this let’s-all-be-resilient, stiff-upper-lipness that was sweeping the camp like a dose of dysentery. The sooner people accepted they were even more fucked now than they’d been a month ago, the sooner they could get on with dealing with the situation. He wasn’t being negative. He was being realistic. He glanced around the crew bay at the faces of the squad and knew he wasn’t the only one.
“Bernie, you want to take a look over the northern sector?” Barber asked. “Might as well while we’re out here. The mutt’s probably running loose in the woods.”
“It’s easier to look on foot.” Bernie sounded as if she’d turned away a lot of helpful advice over the last few days. “But thanks, Nat. It’s kind of you.”
Mac the psychotic mutt had been missing since the night the polyps first came ashore at Pelruan. Baird was sure that the dog had been minced to hamburger by some exploding polyp, but he wasn’t going to say as much to Bernie. She loved the flea-bitten thing.
“If there was imulsion under here, they’d have drilled for it a long time ago,” Marcus said. He didn’t seem to have an opinion on the dog.
Dom didn’t join in. Even Cole’s lack of noisy cheerleading today was noticeable.
“So what do we do?” Gettner asked. “Sharle says we’ve reached the point where we can’t run the fleet and be sure we’ve got enough fuel to reach the mainland when the time comes.”
Gettner usually listened in to the crew bay chatter; it was hard not to when everyone needed the radio just to talk over the noise. But she rarely joined in the real conversation. Baird had never thought of her as being scared or in need of buddies like any other Gear. It rattled him a little.
“We won’t be going back for a long time,” Dom said.
“Yeah, but someone needs to make a decision now. We’re still burning fuel like there’s no tomorrow.”
“There’s not enough information to make a decision.”
“There never is, but it never stopped us doing pretty decisive shit before. Is Prescott up to this?”
“He’s been up to it for fifteen years,” Barber said quietly. “Compared to what we’ve been through, this isn’t even close to rock-bottom.”
“Looks like he can count on one vote, then,” Cole murmured.
Gears always griped. It was an art form, part of the military culture like bawdy songs and black humor. Baird felt he’d written the book on griping, not that he didn’t have plenty of reasons. But he hadn’t seen it creep over the edge into the unsayable stuff about lack of faith in the government before. Nobody thought the government could do much more than it already had. Even if Prescott wasn’t loved, nobody had illusions about omnipotence. He was in the same shit as everyone else.
Actually, the government was just Prescott. Unless Baird counted Pelruan’s town council, which had been carrying on in its own sweet elected way since the Hammer strike days, there wasn’t an assembly for New Jacinto. It was hard to think about that normal stuff when every day was fraught with real physical danger.
“Well, we said we missed the grubs,” Baird said. “We got our wish.”
Dom stirred. “No, you said that when we didn’t have any more grubs around, we’d start fighting each other, so we’d have to find something else to kill. And we did.”
“Let’s do the job, people.” Marcus stood up and hung on to the safety rail. If there was an argument brewing, he’d always make damn sure he cut it short. Baird took the hint. He didn’t so much feel intimidated as scolded and made to feel like a dumb kid. “Lots of island out there.”
The Raven banked and headed northwest, skimming over forest slopes that fell away into hills and then gentler plains—farm country. The signs that Vectes had once been a much busier island were still there in the just-visible boundaries of overgrown fields. Baird sat eavesdropping on the submarine net for a few minutes, bored shitless by a landscape that could only have been of interest to someone who liked spending their day knee-deep in cow pats. He could hear the voice traffic between the two boats as they tested Clement’s damaged systems. It was all very chummy now, with Zephyr’s crew fussing over Clement’s repairs and trying to help. Clement had taken a pounding when she blew up the first leviathan. With Dalyell still struggling to stay afloat and Fenmont out of action, the fleet was shrinking fast.
And that was what they’d need if they were going to get back to the mainland one day; lots of ships, and plenty of fuel to run them.
Baird managed to forget Prescott’s disk for a few moments to crunch some numbers. A Raven’s Nest slurped through half a million liters of fuel a day at full speed. Unless somebody came up with an alternative fuel source fast, the carrier wasn’t going to be sailing much further than the five-klick limit.
“Nice and peaceful since the Stranded banged out.” Gettner went on chatting. Barber looked at Baird and raised his eyebrows theatrically. No, this sociability wasn’t like the old harpy at all. “What’s the world coming to when we have recruitment and retention problems with parasites?”
“The Gorasni are still our best buddies, though,” Barber said. “Which beats the alternative.”
“Not in Pelruan …. Hey, look at the forest cover down there. And the waterfall.”
“Yeah, scenic.” Baird squinted at the picture-postcard scene. Prescott’s data disk superimposed itself on the image uninvited. “At least we’ll always have lumber and power.”
“You can build boilers for the ships,” Bernie said. “They didn’t always run on imulsion.”
Yes, he’d definitely oversold his skills. “I’m not so good with the miracles these days.”
“That’s defeatist talk.”
“Have I missed something?” Gettner asked. She had a finely tuned radar for the little things. “What miracles?”
Bernie, arms folded on her chest, looked tired and distracted. “Nothing, ma’am. Baird’s trying to develop a human personality because he admires our species. Just like in the movies.”
Baird didn’t manage to bite straight back with a withering response. He needed to learn to play off Bernie’s lines a little better to maintain the illusion that nothing weird was going on. He recovered a couple of seconds too late. “Did they have movies when you were a girl, Grannie? Didn’t you just daub paintings on cave walls and tell each other stories about them?”
“I dunno,” Bernie muttered. “Maybe I ought to ask your girlfriend in Stores. The one you keep making eyes at. You obviously prefer mature women.”
“Hey, I’m only nice to her because I need her supply of ten-millimeter bolts.”
Barber laughed. Maybe that was enough to divert him and Gettner from paying too much attention in the future. Baird went back to fretting about Prescott’s data, wondering if the man had ever been a straight-up guy before he got a dose of power.
That’s how it starts. You keep a secret from your buddies, the people you rely on to save your ass. It’s for a good reason. It isn’t even about not trusting them. You don’t want to drag them into it. Then it gets to be a habit. And the next thing you know, you’re hiding the really big shit, and you turn into Prescott.
Was that how politicians started? Did little Richard Prescott lie once to his mom about who took the cookies, found that it worked, and then never stopped?
“Okay, let’s take a look at Pelruan,” Gettner said. “We’re going to have to cut back on these patrols, you know.”
As they passed over Pelruan, Baird could see some of Rossi’s detachment wal
king the perimeter. One of them stopped to watch the Raven and raise his hand in acknowledgment before the chopper turned away and headed south again. They were just above the trees, about ten klicks along the path of a stream, when Dom reacted to something below.
“Dogs,” he said. “Look.”
Bernie twisted in her seat. It was the Pelruan pack. The townspeople let them run loose to keep the Stranded away, but even now that the bums were gone, the dogs still had their routine.
“See Mac down there?” Dom asked.
Bernie shook her head. “If he was still with the pack, Lewis would know by now.”
Gettner turned the Raven and headed down the next valley, where the stream flowed into the river. “Damn it, Mataki, we’re going to find that dog.”
“Doesn’t he come when called?” Baird asked. “I mean, don’t you have some kind of whistle?”
Bernie leaned back in the seat. “No need to humor me, Blondie. He’s gone, poor little sod. He’d have shown up by now.”
Gettner didn’t take any notice. She followed the river, dipping over every patch of open grassland. It was a waste of fuel. Baird didn’t want to be the one to say so, not in front of Bernie anyway.
“Bernie’s right—he could be anywhere,” Dom said. “That’s five thousand square kilometers to search.”
“You know how many hours I spend looking down on this terrain?” Gettner snapped. “I see the dogs and I know most of the places they go. Come on, an experienced recon team, and you can’t spot a dog the size of a damn pony?”
Humor her. Baird looked whenever the Raven banked far enough for him to see out of the door, but his mind was elsewhere. How many red cars can you see, Damon? Shut up in the back there. Yeah, like a goddamn day out with the folks …
“Hey, I see it,” Cole said. “Well, damn—you got that mutt trained, Boomer Lady! Look at him!”
“What?” Gettner snapped.
“It’s the dog,” Cole said. “He’s down there, tryin’ to keep up with us!”
Gears of War: Anvil Gate Page 46
