Gears of War: The Slab (Gears of War 5)

by Karen Traviss

  “So did you think that was a softer option?” Dom asked.

  “What?”

  “Forty years rather than a firing squad. You got it commuted.”

  “That came as a surprise to me, too, Dom.” Dom didn’t turn around so Hoffman took a step in front of him. “Maybe the Judge Advocate took notice of your letter. I have no idea. Maybe the Fenix name counts for something.”

  “He’d rather have been shot, sir. You know that.”

  “Yeah. I do. I damn well do.” Hoffman looked pretty cut up. Dom thought he looked a little puffy around the eyes, like he’d been awake all night sweating about it or maybe even crying. “Look, if I could have found one single damn reason for not having him charged, I’d have grabbed it with both hands. But I couldn’t. Make an exception for Fenix, and the whole thing falls apart. Everybody heard what went down on the radio. Where does that leave us if I say it’s okay for Fenix to do it, but anyone else gets shot at dawn?”

  “Sir, everyone knows he’s never done anything like that before.”

  “Men died who probably shouldn’t have. And you and Jace and Tai—what if you’d been killed in this goddamn insanity? You didn’t volunteer. Fenix didn’t even tell you.”

  “And if he had, I’d have gone with him.”

  Hoffman ignored that. A lot of officers wouldn’t have. Dom didn’t know if he would have knowingly disobeyed orders or not, but it was what he felt at that moment, and Hoffman could ram it.

  Hoffman took his cap off and turned it over in his hands a few times, making the leather creak. Then he tapped the colonel’s insignia on his collar.

  “See this?” He was right in Dom’s face now, so close that Dom could smell the coffee on his breath and the faint eucalyptus scent of shaving foam. “It’s not a reward or a privilege. It’s a fucking burden. No Gear gets to do whatever he wants, but this goddamn tin shit says I can’t stick by my buddies any longer. It says I’ve got to see the bigger picture and the greater good and all kinds of cold hard fuckery, whether I want to or not. And I don’t want to, you know that? I want to be Staff Sergeant Hoffman again, except if they gave me the chance, I’d know I was chickening out and leaving the tough decisions to some other unlucky bastard. So I do it. It’s my duty. Like it was Marcus’s duty to get that laser to Tomas. I bet half the Gears out there would love to go rescue their families rather than fight, but they don’t. That’s why Marcus Fenix is a disgrace to the uniform. He let his comrades down, and that’s all an army is—your willingness to stand with your brothers in arms, and die with them if need be.”

  It was all true and all the more painful for it. Dom felt his eyes brimming and the pressure building at the back of his throat. If he cried, he wouldn’t even know exactly why. He didn’t want to think any less of Marcus.

  “Who are you trying to convince, sir?” he asked.

  “No fucking idea, Dom,” Hoffman muttered. “But not myself.” Then he put his cap back on and stalked off.

  Dom stood on the steps until he realized he had no idea how long he’d been there. But the sun was setting behind the Tomb of the Unknowns, and he debated whether to find Carlos’s grave and explain the whole shitty thing to him.

  He didn’t pay his respects half as often as he’d intended. Carlos had been dead nearly twelve years now. Dom couldn’t think of anything better to do right then and made his way through the colonnade to the immaculately tended graveyard next to the mausoleum. This was where the COG interred its heroes. Marcus had been a hero once. Carlos hadn’t planned to be one, and maybe he’d fucked up too, but at the end he died so that Marcus didn’t. That was all that mattered to Dom right then.

  The gravel crunched under Dom’s boots as he came to a halt at the grave. The inscription on the headstone was as crisp as the day it had been dedicated. It was almost twelve years to the day that he’d died.

  PRIVATE CARLOS BENEDICTO SANTIAGO, ES, 26 RTI—FALLEN AT ASPHO FIELDS, OSTRI, 15TH DAY OF BRUME, 77TH YEAR OF THE WAR, AGED 20

  All three of them, brothers either in fact or feeling, all awarded the Embry Star for gallantry, and where were they now? Nobody remembered Carlos, Marcus was disgraced, and Dom—he felt like a goddamned ghost. He squatted on his heels, uncomfortable in his formal uniform.

  “What would you do, Carlos?” he whispered. “Hey, like I need to ask. You thought he was worth dying for.” He wiped his nose on the back of his hand, eyes welling. “I better get him out of there, right? Yeah. That’s it. You rest easy, Carlito.”

  The walk back to the barracks was the longest he’d ever taken. Marcus had been his friend since Dom was eight years old and the world couldn’t possibly be the same without him. Dom had spent the last few weeks trying to get used to him not being around but it was impossible. He’d look over his shoulder, expecting to see Marcus, or remember something he needed to tell him, and Marcus simply wasn’t there. Now that was going to be permanent unless he damn well did something about it.

  I should be out there looking for Maria. Stranded camps shift all the time.

  Dom didn’t want to get used to Marcus being gone. The more pain he felt, the more he was motivated to do something about it.

  Like Maria. If I ever stop feeling lost without her, I’ll stop looking for her. And she’s still out there, I know it. She needs me to find her.

  And Marcus needed him, too.

  Dom went back to his quarters, hung up his uniform, and started working out what it would take to get Marcus out of the Slab before that place finished him off.

  JACINTO MAXIMUM SECURITY PRISON, CPSE HESKETH, AKA THE SLAB.

  The dogs were going crazy.

  Nikolai Jarvi leaned on the wrought iron rail, arms folded, and watched the lockdown begin on the grimy floor below. There were no prison officers down there. They weren’t needed. The gallery that ran around the upper floor of the jail was by far the safest place to be, and it wasn’t just because of the prisoners.

  The warning siren sounded in a steady pulse. “Twenty seconds,” said the public address system.

  Frantic barking and thuds almost drowned out the count. The dogs flung themselves against the wooden door like they did at every lockdown, demanding to be let loose. The door was all part of the calculated psychological process. It was the only one in here made from hollow softwood panels instead of heavy mahogany or metal, because the animals could pound against it and make a terrifying noise without actually injuring themselves. It was like beating a drum. The wild noise said uncontrolled savagery could be unleashed at any moment, and it also hinted that one day the dogs would smash the door down before the final siren and start tearing prisoners apart anyway.

  It always did the trick. Any prisoner stupid enough not to obey the order to get back to his cell in time knew what would happen when that door opened.

  It was the first thing Niko had been told when he was drafted to work here: the Slab ran on three doors—one to the warders’ territory, one to the kitchens and latrines, and one to the dogs. The dogs could be released pretty well anywhere in the prison using the remote-controlled portcullis gates in the network of mesh runs along the corridors. It worked a lot better than sending officers down there to sort a guy out. Trap a difficult bastard in one of the mesh passages, open the gates, and suddenly he wasn’t in the frame of mind to be a bad boy ever again.

  Niko had never authorized that on his watch. What went on when he wasn’t there was another matter.

  “Ten seconds.”

  The big, empty floor was already deserted. Every prisoner was back in his cell, willing the bars to slide shut and protect him from the crazed pack.

  And they got a psychiatrist to work that out. A doctor. An educated man who’s supposed to help people feel better, not terrify the shit out of them. Hypocritical asshole.

  It wasn’t that Niko had any sympathy for the bastards banged up in here. He didn’t; most of them deserved a bullet, not humane care. But that was a separate issue. It was the sadistic creativity of nice middle-class pro
fessionals that unsettled him. Sometimes he wasn’t sure where the line lay between the criminals he had to keep away from society and the people who told him how to do it.

  “Lockdown.”

  The steel bars on each cell slid shut with a loud clang a second before the wooden door opened and the dogs raced out. It was a daily ritual, although not usually at this time of day. The dogs charged up and down outside the cell doors, snarling and barking in the echoing gloom; the prisoners yelled at them and called them every unholy fucker under the sun. Then everyone got back to normal business.

  Most of the dogs were the same breed—Pellesians, tall things with short tan hair and a broad black patch from the top of the head to the tip of the brush-like tail. A couple of the pack were black Tyran mastiffs—big, slow chunks of meat with permanent but deceptive grins that dripped slobber. They were the ones Niko trusted least.

  One of the Pellesians sprang back as a stream of piss shot through the bars and drenched him. The dog seemed baffled for a moment, as if this was some attempt to communicate with him in his own language but the mutt didn’t understand it because of a heavy accent. Niko laughed his ass off. Then the dog started snarling—yeah, he finally got the message—and the handler, Parmenter, stormed out onto the floor. He went along the cell doors like an angry ticket collector on a train looking for fare dodgers. Then he stopped at the guilty party’s cell.

  “You bastard, you pissed on my Jerry,” he yelled. “I’m going to—”

  Parmenter was drowned out by guffaws and whoops of derision from the whole block. He didn’t interact much with the inmates, and never quite got the hang of dealing with verbal abuse. It didn’t pay to let these scumbags rile you.

  “Ooh, your Jerry! You two do it doggy style?”

  “Yeah, ’cause he got doggy breath!”

  “Yo, pooch-shagger! Goooood dog! Hey, shouldn’t you be doin’ it with a bitch, you big nancy?”

  “I’m going to let him chew on you sick fuckers next time,” Parmenter snapped. “Just remember who operates the gates.”

  Things quieted down instantly. Parmenter put the leash on Jerry, who took that as his cue to go nuts. As soon as the leash went taut, he was up on his hind legs, straining against it and snarling. Yeah, dogs could be just like humans. Jerry was all mouth when there was no chance of getting a kicking. But Niko was never going to turn his back on the thing, no matter how well-trained it was. He watched the dog trot back through the door. Jack Gallego—Gally—walked along the gallery to the metal gantry and joined him, jangling his keys.

  “So who’s our special studio guest today, then?” he asked.

  “They’re transferring Marcus Fenix.”

  “Should I know who that is?”

  “Seeing as you’re pig-ignorant and never read a newspaper, no.”

  “He’s got to be at least a serial killer to be worth all this security. Maybe a kinky one.”

  “Sergeant Fenix. Hero of Aspho Fields? Ring any bells, Gally?”

  “I’m too young to remember that.”

  “The hell you are.”

  “What did he do? To end up here, I mean. Don’t the grunts deal with their own shit?”

  “He slugged his CO and refused an order. Goodbye Ephyra.”

  “Wow.” Gally frowned. “But couldn’t they just shoot him?”

  “Fenix.”

  “What?”

  “His dad’s a hotshot scientist. Old money, ancestry, big estate.”

  “Oh, too good for us, huh? He’s going to have a hard time in here, then.”

  Gally walked off, whistling. He was the single most uncurious human being Niko had ever met. Niko put it down at first to being thick as two short planks, but over the years he’d been here, he’d worked out that it was how Gally coped with the job. He switched off. It wasn’t like he’d had a choice. If you weren’t in a wartime reserve occupation—essential factory work, police, firefighter, farmer, merchant navy, imulsion jockey, medic, the kind of job needed to keep the COG running—then you served your time as a Gear, and if you weren’t up to that for any reason, usually medical or general fitness, you got assigned where the government needed you. Being drafted as a warder in the last prison left in Ephyra wasn’t exactly the top career choice for Niko, and he doubted that Gallego had dreamed of being a screw either. Most guys and an awful lot of the infertile women preferred being Gears, grubs or no grubs. Niko understood that.

  He waited, watching the arched doorway at the far end of the floor. This was how they brought in the new boys to break them in.

  Any minute now, Marcus Fenix would come through that door flanked by two warders, and get his first taste of what it meant to be stuck here for the rest of his life.

  The building still had some of the elegant architectural detail that Tyrus liked even in its public lavatories, but it was crumbling and filthy, and if the smell of mold and piss didn’t bring this Fenix guy up short, then the crumbling stone facing on the pillars and the old blood that still hadn’t been washed off the walls would tell him everything he needed to know.

  Forty years? He’ll be lucky if he lasts five. Yeah, it’s a life sentence, good as.

  Well, it broke the monotony for everyone. There were forty-three prisoners left in the Slab and only a handful had been sent here since E-Day, so a new arrival was a major event for the inmates, even if it threatened to disrupt the settled pecking order of their lives. Fenix would be let out for free association after a day or so. Then he’d be on his own. He’d have to work out how to survive.

  The door finally opened.

  For a moment, Niko wondered why Will Chalcross and Bradeley Campbell had brought in another prisoner instead of Fenix. He was expecting the son of an old, wealthy family—a guy of average build who’d look around this cesspit and cower, war hero or not, a rich kid fallen from grace into a human sewer. But this guy was huge, all muscle in a prison-issue singlet and pants, black hair cut brutally short, with the life-worn face of a man who wasn’t afraid to swing a punch or take one. He was too old to be Fenix. And he looked harder than most of the men already in here. This was a guy to avoid in a bar.

  No. Shit, this was Marcus Fenix.

  Niko could only stare. Fenix walked past the cells that formed the walls to either side, eyes straight ahead. The usual barracking and hooting started but died away gradually, cell by cell, as the prisoners saw what they were getting for a new neighbor.

  The gantry was about five meters above the floor, so Niko was now looking at Fenix head-on at a shallow angle. The man just raised his eyes and looked at—no, through—Niko for a few beats without breaking his stride. Niko was used to eye contact with men who would slit his throat out of curiosity, but Fenix’s stare was unsettling in a totally different way—ice blue, unblinking, but not unfeeling. The look in them was a distant, distracted anguish, a snatched glimpse through a briefly open door into some kind of private hell.

  Chalcross glanced up at Niko and just raised an eyebrow as Campbell unlocked the cell door manually. Then Campbell—a nice guy, really quiet, never voiced an opinion about anything—stepped back with the big bunch of keys gripped tight in his gloved fist, and smashed Fenix across the face with them.

  “That’s for my fucking son,” Campbell said.

  Shit, Niko wasn’t expecting that from Campbell. But Fenix just took it. He didn’t even lose his balance. The look on his face was more surprise and indignation, like he couldn’t work out what he’d done, and his fists clenched. But he kept his arms at his side. He had an audience, though, and the yelling started from the cells. It was a really bad idea to take a swing at a guy and make him look instantly unbreakable. It just encouraged the others.

  “Hey, screw, you found one you can’t knock down!”

  “Whoa, you better not turn your back now, Campbell …”

  “He don’t look the forgettin’ kind …”

  Fenix stared into Campbell’s face for a few seconds, blood trickling down his chin. Niko had to stop this fas
t.

  “Campbell?” he yelled. He jogged along the gallery to the doors. “Campbell! Lock him in and get up here—now. That’s a goddamn order.”

  Campbell looked up to the gantry, flexing his hand. The punch must have hurt him almost as much as it hurt Fenix. “Anything you say, sir …”

  Chalcross shoved Fenix in the back to get him to walk into the cell, then took the keys from Campbell and locked it. The shouting was going from cell to cell now and as Niko watched to make sure the two warders left the floor, he caught some of the approving comments. Fenix had taken a punch in the face and been ready to fight back. The rest of the inmates loved it. Fenix was either going to go straight to the top of the food chain or start a lot of fights. But at least he wasn’t young or pretty. Nobody was going to slug it out over whose bitch he was going to be.

  Great work, Campbell. You made a hero of him inside five minutes. Terrific.

  Maybe it would settle things down faster, though. Niko had to hope. The worst bastards could start worrying about whether Fenix was even more violent and unstable than them, and the quieter ones could make up their minds to be really careful. Keeping a lid on this place was a delicate balancing act: there were only twelve guards, six of those on the day shift, and even with a dozen psychiatric cases locked up in solitary it was hard. How the hell did those assholes at Sovereigns think he could manage that without cutting every corner? Niko did what each senior warder before him had had to do—the Slab was forced to rely on prisoners keeping other prisoners in line. It also relied on prisoners managing day-to-day life down there on the floor for themselves, and that had worked pretty well so far, at least from Niko’s end of the deal. The prison ran like an ant farm. The ants were enclosed and went about their business in a sealed ecosystem while Niko and his fellow officers kept an eye on things from a distance and hoped they never had to enter to empty out the container and clean things up.

  That meant the floor down there was a no-go zone and the service areas, like the kitchens and boiler room, were a kind of no-man’s land that either side could occupy. Without the dogs, without the network of mesh passages that meant they could let the pack loose like a living, snarling moat, Niko wasn’t sure if any of his colleagues would risk going down there at all.