Gears of War: Jacinto's Remnant

by Karen Traviss

  “I decided Prescott could cope without me,” Hoffman said. “And if I had to watch Major Reid trying to crawl up his ass one more time, I might have taken a chainsaw to him. Am I being unreasonable, Anya?”

  “One reason I take care of you, sir, is that I’d prefer not to work for him,” she said. “Come on. Meet the loyal caretakers.”

  The Raven circled once before heading back to Vectes naval base with Will Berenz. The advance party of Ravens had landed to get essential services running before the first tranche of evacuees came ashore. Anya had half imagined some kind of single event, a historic and camera-worthy moment where the remnant set foot on safe ground for the first time, even though she knew that the landings and transfers would have to be done in stages.

  Cole and Baird were working on the quay, cutting lengths of wooden planking with their Lancers’ chainsaws. Okay, chainsaws were chainsaws. You could use them for more than just killing grubs. But it still made Anya smile. A couple of small boys watched the two Gears, clearly fascinated.

  “Where’s Mataki?” Hoffman asked.

  “Visiting the Stranded with Sergeant Fenix. They’ve gone with Sorotki and a local farmer for an aerial recon.”

  “Are the local vermin rabid or something? Never known them try to take on Gears. I don’t agree with amnesties for them, but Prescott insists. I think they’ll tell him to kiss their asses. They usually do.”

  “They’ve had soft targets for too long. They’re not used to facing superior firepower.”

  “Well, they’re going to get damned used to it now. Crazy bastards. Did anything set them off, or are they always that suicidal?”

  Anya wondered how much Bernie had told Hoffman. He probably needed to know that she had more issues with Stranded than the average Gear, but this was thin personal ice to step on.

  “I think they were just making the point that they owned the place, but then they found out they didn’t,” Anya said. “We made contact with them earlier in the day, and it was pretty hostile.” God, do I tell him? Maybe he knows the rest. “Sergeant Mataki slugged one. But she had good reason.”

  Hoffman slowed his pace to an occasional step. “How good?”

  “One jostled her.” No, that didn’t cover it at all. “Sir, were you aware she was gang-raped by Stranded?”

  Hoffman obviously wasn’t. He stopped dead. He didn’t even look at Anya, and his usual reaction to any news was to fix the messenger with a stare that could drill holes in sheet steel.

  “I was not,” he said. “Are we talking about the same Stranded?”

  Anya lost her nerve. There was only so much strain she could put on Hoffman’s heart before he turned pale enough to scare her. “It’s complicated.”

  “I’d need to know.” He hadn’t even let loose with his usual stream of expletives. He was definitely shaken; the blood had drained from his face. “Mataki and I go way back. Do you fully understand? I’d personally take a Lancer to any man who upset her.”

  “I believe she dealt with two of them, sir.” I should never have started this. I should have left it to Marcus. “I’m sorry, I realize you’re close. I should have handled this more diplomatically.”

  “Damn glad you told me, Anya,” Hoffman said. “Because she wouldn’t. Leave it with me.”

  He walked on, shaking his head, fists balled. Anya thought better of pouring fuel on the fire by mentioning the boat that Bernie had taken an interest in.

  When Gavriel met them in the town hall, Hoffman seemed to snap back to his old self, blunt and business-like.

  “So some of your residents think we’re going to be a pain in the ass,” he said, turning a chair around and straddling it. “Well, we’re not going to be on your doorsteps for a long time to come. You’ll have seventy kilometers of breathing space. But the Chairman will not tolerate segregation and no-go areas in COG territory. There has to be some integration.”

  Gavriel looked ashamed, if anything. “I think they’re afraid of overcrowding and violence. Competition for food. Some remember the Pendulum Wars, and from what Lieutenant Stroud tells me, that was civilized by comparison.”

  “Gavriel—”

  “Lewis, please.”

  “Lewis, we fought genocide. Do we have to draw a picture? Goddamn it, we’re not animals. We’re not Stranded. My Gears are disciplined soldiers, and the civilian population is under martial law. They’re not some plague that’s going to spoil your comfortable existence here.”

  “I know that, Colonel.”

  “Remind them that their community only exists because the NCOG paid it to be here to support the naval base.”

  Anya winced. She liked Gavriel, and hoped he understood Hoffman’s savaging was nothing personal.

  “So how do we achieve integration, Colonel?” Gavriel asked calmly.

  “Same way any social animal learns to get along with a new pack. Gradually. We allow small parties of the remnant to visit Pelruan, and Pelruan sends small parties to see what life is like in Vectes. Eventually, anyone can go anywhere. But this will be one island, one nation. Chairman Prescott is most insistent on that. He’s asked me to pass on his invitation to your councilmen to visit VNB and meet the civilian community when they arrive.”

  Reading the riot act to Gavriel was redundant. The man still saw himself as a COG civil servant, fifteen years’ isolation or not, and so did many of his neighbors. But some didn’t, and Anya could only guess at where that divergence had started.

  And who’s the new animal and who’s the pack? That’s the problem.

  Perhaps once they saw how little impact the overnight city at the other end of the island made to their daily existence, then they’d settle down.

  And I’ll make damn sure they have a history lesson. They have to understand. But why should we have to justify ourselves to them, after all we’ve been through?

  Anya realized she’d almost let resentment get a hold on her. That was how easy it was, how simply it began. And now she knew what her objective would be in the immediate future. She might never become the exemplary fighting Gear her mother had been, but she could organize and analyze—and she could make people understand.

  “Martial law,” Gavriel said at last. “That would apply to all of us, would it?”

  “It would,” said Hoffman. “The Fortification Act is still in force.” He checked his watch. “It shouldn’t make any difference to your daily lives, Lewis, except that we’ll provide security patrols here—and at the farms. That should reassure your people.”

  “Some will see it as enforcement, but we can deal with that.”

  “Maybe it is. Citizenship is a two-way street. So we’ll deal with it.”

  Anya winced. Hoffman had never been a diplomat, but his honesty got him a long way. Now he wanted his walking tour of the town.

  “They might as well get used to the sight of me,” Hoffman said, “because this is all going to land in my lap. I can smell it.”

  “It’s actually quite a nice place, sir.”

  The whole concept of a nice place was almost a forgotten memory. Anya thought back a few weeks to when she’d believed that Port Farrall was as good as it was going to get, and that there were no more havens across a distant border where small luxuries were still available. Now she was standing in one of those havens. Her definition of luxury had scaled down considerably over the years, but fresh food, a quiet bar, and clean sheets were now real.

  And no grubs.

  That was the hardest thing to get used to. The monsters were still very much under every refugee’s bed.

  A few houses showed signs of fire damage from the raid, but workmen were already up ladders, hammering and sawing and repairing. Word of Hoffman’s arrival had spread around town, and people wandered out to look. The colonel looked every inch what he was—aggressive, uncompromising, and short on charm—but he seemed to switch into parade inspection mode, and went along inspecting and commenting favorably on the tidy state of the houses. Anya willed him not to go the
whole hog and order some unlucky householder to get down and give him twenty for having an untidy front yard.

  He couldn’t have looked that intimidating today, though. One of the small boys who’d been watching Cole and Baird now trailed them, and finally caught up with Anya. He looked about eight. He shot Hoffman a glance, but seemed to think Anya was the safer bet.

  “Miss?”

  “Hi. What’s your name? Mine’s Anya.”

  “I’m Josef. Does your gun work?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are grubs like?”

  “Horrible. But you don’t have to worry about them.”

  “Is that why the Gears look at the ground every time there’s a big wave or a noise?”

  Anya didn’t quite understand. “What do you mean, Josef?”

  “Why don’t they look up?”

  Hoffman grunted. “I think the boy means that every time there’s a noise they’re not expecting, Gears automatically look down. Grubs.” He patted the kid’s head. “You’d look up to see what it was, right?”

  “Yes.” Josef was now mesmerized by Hoffman and forgot Anya. “Is that because the grubs are under the ground?”

  “It is, son. They lived in tunnels and dug their way up to the surface. We never knew when they’d burst through and come to get us.”

  Josef looked stricken. It was a child’s nightmare, all right. “Did they kill people?”

  “Millions and millions.”

  “Worse than the Hammer of Dawn?”

  Hoffman missed a beat and swallowed hard. “Yeah. Worse than that.”

  “Wow,” said Josef, and darted off back to Cole and Baird.

  “Now there’s a boy whose sleep’s going to be disturbed for a few weeks,” Anya said.

  Hoffman shook his head. “I think he grasped the situation a hell of a lot quicker than some of the adults. Kids are better at imagining monsters.” He braced his shoulders again as if he was shrugging off a bad memory. He almost certainly was, but he had a long list to pick from, and Anya always had to guess which. “Now, under martial law we can requisition whatever supplies we need, but you’re going to tell me that’ll alienate our friends here, so what the hell do we barter to make ourselves feel like nice people when we need to take something?”

  “Fuel,” Anya said. “They’re using everything from wind turbines to wood stoves to vegetable oils. Repair the landline network. Provide labor to clear land. Give them TV in a few key places. That sort of thing.”

  “TV?”

  “Easy. Just tell Baird that you don’t think he can possibly cannibalize some of the monitors from the ships and make a closed circuit system out of them, and then stand back. Keeps the media busy, too.”

  “Yes, we really are wrecking their island idyll, aren’t we?”

  “Cooperation takes less effort than enforcement.”

  Anya was uncomfortable with the new face of the COG that some in Pelruan seemed to see: an occupying army, an invasion. It wasn’t how she saw herself or her comrades. It certainly wasn’t how Jacinto civilians had regarded the Gears who held the line between them and the Locust advance.

  A refugee city of people who still aren’t convinced they’ll live to see tomorrow, traumatized, hungry, bereaved—and a small town that hasn’t even seen a Locust. We’ve got a big gulf to bridge.

  Hoffman sat down on the low stone wall that ran along the quay and watched Cole and Baird sawing wood to length for the repairs. The air smelled of resin, sea, and cooking.

  “Damn nice, like you say,” Hoffman said absently. “We’ll make the new city damn nice, too. Prescott keeps talking about New Jacinto.”

  “When are you going back to VNB, sir?”

  “When I’ve seen Mataki,” he said. “I can wait. May I borrow your Lancer, Lieutenant?”

  He held his hand out for her rifle, then revved up the chainsaw and went to cut wood with his Gears.

  If she hadn’t known he was upset about Bernie, then she would have sworn he was starting to look at peace.

  MERRIS FARM, SOUTHERN VECTES, SAME DAY.

  “You just got to shoot them when they destroy crops or kill livestock,” the farmer said. “They’re a damn nuisance. You from farming stock? You sound like an Islander.”

  Bernie nodded. “Galangi. That’s mostly livestock. Grew up on a beef farm.”

  “Say ass.”

  “Arse.”

  He burst out laughing. “You got that accent.”

  His name was Jonty, and he carried an obsolete shotgun broken under one arm. Three black dogs with wild, mistrustful eyes kept close to his heels.

  “What about you?” he asked Marcus.

  “Strictly urban.” Bernie could tell from Marcus’s slow head turns that he was keeping watch on the dogs in his peripheral vision, avoiding eye contact. “Big garden. Nothing more.”

  One of the dogs edged forward and trotted over to Bernie to sniff at the cat-fur lining that was just visible through the straps on her boots. Bernie squatted down and offered a gloved hand for inspection, fingers carefully closed. The dog wagged its tail, apparently satisfied that she had the right canine attitude.

  “Probably wants to chase cats with you,” Marcus said.

  “No, he’s got a taste for Stranded.” Jonty snapped his fingers and the dog came back to heel. “They killed my other dog, the bastards. That was when I changed to using buckshot. They know the score now. If I catch ’em on my land, I shoot to kill. They got a choice of being civilized like the people up in town, or not, and they chose not, so I treat ’em like any other predator.”

  Bernie understood the man perfectly, but Marcus didn’t look comfortable. It might have been the smell of manure, because that was one thing you rarely got in Jacinto. Either way, he wasn’t happy.

  “So we could give you security cover,” Bernie said carefully She wasn’t here to do deals, but she’d struck up a rapport with the man, and it seemed a waste of goodwill not to broach the subject. “We’ll be reclaiming a lot of the open land for farming in due course, but in the meantime, we’ll need to find food supplies to top up the rations.”

  “I’m finding it hard to work this farm on my own these days,” Jonty said. “Now, if you had some spare hands …”

  “Oh, I’m sure we can find some.”

  “I think that would work out nicely, then.” He looked over Sorotki’s Raven with an expression of mild curiosity. “I never been in one of these things, y’know.”

  “They’re noisy buggers.” Bernie mimed ear defenders with her hands. “You’ll need a headset just to talk.”

  It took Jonty a few moments to convince the dogs that they should stay put and that he wasn’t being taken away. He talked to them like kids, which Bernie found painfully touching. Poor sod: stuck out here on his own, listening for every noise in the night, in case a gang of Stranded decided to cut his throat. Well, that was going to change.

  “So you negotiated a food supply,” Marcus muttered, out of earshot. “Nice. But it’s all COG land anyway.”

  “I know, but you catch more with honey than you do with vinegar.”

  “And if they don’t accept the honey, then you pour on the vinegar.”

  “Feel free to do better, Marcus.”

  “I’m impressed. Really.”

  “We’re going to need one hell of a lot more than a single farm’s output, anyway. One and a half to two hectares per person, preferably.”

  “You worked it all out. Now wait and see what happens when we have to offer the Stranded amnesty.”

  Marcus had never been sociable, but he was definitely keeping contact with Jonty to a minimum. Bernie knew she was in no position to criticize the farmer for taking potshots at Stranded or talking about them in pest control terms. But Marcus seemed to want to keep his moral high ground. For a man who had no qualms about killing Locust, he was pretty ambivalent about even the worst specimens of humanity.

  Easy to be humane if you haven’t been on the receiving end of them. But you must
have seen your share in prison, Marcus. You know I’m right.

  Mitchell stayed in the cockpit with Sorotki as the Raven lifted and circled the farm. Jonty pointed out the boundaries and the routes the Stranded took to get onto his land by following one of the rivers that ran down to their part of the coast. Local intel was precious. Bernie made notes.

  “So you’re going to bring all your big guns and troops into harbor,” Jonty said. “No wonder the vermin are getting restless.”

  “If they’re that dangerous, why haven’t they wiped you all out?” Marcus asked.

  “Animals generally stop eating when they’re full, and predators don’t wipe out their food supply, do they? But now you’ve shown up and upset the food chain.”

  “Have they ever asked to join you guys?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  “Would you accept them?”

  Jonty snorted derisively. “They think they can make anyone back down, even you, because we’ve been soft on ’em. We ought to go down there, all of us, every man and woman capable of holding a gun or a knife, and deal with them once and for all.”

  “So you’ve had your own war for survival.” Marcus’s tone didn’t change. “You get desperate, you throw everything you’ve got at it. Done that. Had to destroy the place. Twice.”

  “I don’t think they realize the size of the force you’re bringing with you, Sergeant Fenix.”

  “Time we told them.”

  “Hey, Fenix, are we just overflying the farms, or what?” Sorotki asked. “The next one’s ten klicks east.”

  “I want to check out the Stranded camp again.”

  “Why me every time?”

  “Because they shot up Gettner’s bird.”

  “They shot up this one, too. Just a recon, or you want another fistfight with them?”

  “Let’s see.”

  Jonty leaned forward in his seat and pointed at one of the door guns, its ammo belt loaded and secured. “You can stop them anytime you want. Permanent.”

  That was the problem with Stranded. Not the pathetic ones, who just eked out an existence from day to day; Bernie couldn’t get worked up about them like Baird did. He saw them as traitors who could have fought the grubs but left better men—and occasionally women—to do it. No, it was the violent, criminal ones that were the problem, but even the COG balked at wiping them out.