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

by Karen Traviss

  Niko got to the stairs just as Campbell and Chalcross were shutting the inner doors behind them.

  “Well, that was fucking clever,” he said. “Way to give the guy an instant rep. What the hell got into you?”

  “My son’s a Gear.”

  “Yeah, we know.”

  “So he’s putting it on the line while that asshole gets the kid glove treatment. They should have shot him, you know that? Anyone else—straight up against the wall. But him, he’s too special.”

  “Well, he’s not exactly got a room at the Redoubt, has he?” Niko didn’t know if he was more pissed off at Campbell’s miscalculation in the mindfuck game or just shocked that a nice guy had smashed a new inmate in the face. Fenix wasn’t really a criminal. This was army shit, some technicality or other, nothing that would get a guy arrested in the civilian world. “Let it settle down there, for God’s sake, or we’ll have a riot.”

  “So?” Chalcross followed Niko and Campbell into the staff room. “We just let them kill each other and we’ve got less to worry about.”

  “We get paid to run this place,” Niko said. “We’re not here to sit on our asses.”

  Chalcross started making himself a coffee. It was just roasted barley, utter crap, but nobody recalled what the real thing tasted like now. He sniffed the contents of the cup as if he thought it was going rancid.

  “He’s a big bugger, though, that Fenix. What did he do?”

  “Punched out the Chief of the Defense Staff, refused an order to take some hardware somewhere, and eventually lost us Ephyra.” Niko helped himself to the pot. “He went to save his father. The big weapons scientist, remember? Adam Fenix. He didn’t dismember and eat anyone. Pretty damn girly by our entrance standards.”

  “You sound like you feel sorry for him,” Campbell said.

  “He’s not a serial killer. He’s just a grunt. Rich boy or not.”

  Chalcross slurped his coffee. “So, does someone hate Fenix and want him to go crazy in here, or has he got friends in high places who saved him from a firing squad and think they’re doing him a favor?”

  Niko reached inside his jacket and pulled out the custody sheet, the form that the prison service used to make sure they had the right prisoner and knew his relevant medical status, mental or physical. Warders needed to know if an inmate was likely to infect them, collapse on them, or had a mental condition that made him even more dangerous. Niko read the form again. Fenix was predictably fit and healthy, as he should have been on Gear rations, and he was apparently certified sane, whatever the hell that meant these days. He held up the form and pointed to the section marked SPECIAL NOTES.

  “Look,” he said. “Prisoner is not to be exposed to unnecessary risk or privation, at the request of the Office of the Chairman. A weekly welfare status report is to be submitted.”

  “So when did we last do a welfare report for any of these lice?” Chalcross asked. “Who the hell cares about any of them now?”

  “Obviously Fenix still has some serious connections.”

  Parmenter came in with Jerry, but Chalcross gave him a black look and he took the dog outside to tell it to sit and wait. Chalcross didn’t like it wandering around the food prep areas.

  “Who’s got connections?” Parmenter asked.

  “Fenix. We’ve got to make sure he stays hale and hearty. Chairman’s orders. Except this genius here just smacked him one but he took it like a gentle tap, so now we’ve got us a bad boy with a reputation.”

  “Way to go, Campie. Fuck our lives up some more, why don’t you?” Parmenter rummaged through the fridge and took out some slices of raw bacon. He was going to waste them on that damn dog, Niko knew it. “Prescott must belong to the same country club as his father, then.”

  Chalcross stared at Parmenter until he put the bacon back in the fridge. “If he’s that well-connected, why is he in here at all?”

  “You think he should be in here?” Niko asked.

  “What, he’s not bad enough to get a suite?”

  “No, I mean what makes a guy who’s served in two wars and been decorated for bravery suddenly decide he’s had enough? I mean really crack up. He hit his CO and went to rescue his father. That sounds pretty emotional and screwed up to me.”

  “Stress,” Chalcross said. “Shell shock. Battle fatigue. PTSD. Whatever they call it now.”

  “Exactly.”

  “They’re all shoveling the same shit, Niko,” Campbell said. “They don’t all crack.”

  “You ever been under fire?”

  “No, and neither have you.”

  Chalcross suddenly got that oh-I-get-it look. “Come on, don’t start about your uncle again.”

  “I’ve seen it, Will,” Niko said. He hated them dismissing it. They hadn’t got a clue. “Really. I have. Uncle Josh was as hard as nails until his ship got sunk and he spent two days in the water waiting to be picked up. Never the same since. Even the toughest guys go under.”

  “Well, you can feel as sorry for the asshole as you want, but whatever he did or didn’t do means the grubs are on our doorstep now, and he looks like trouble to me. I’m not going make him a cup of tea and ask him how he feels.”

  Working the Slab was the last job in the world that Niko wanted to do. There were maybe only three or four guys in here who might be of any use to society or wouldn’t offend again if they were let out. There was no rehabilitation or cure possible; there was no point teaching them a new trade, putting them in a nice suit, and expecting them to start life afresh having paid their debt to society. The Slab was here—officially, anyway—to stop the worst of the worst from being among decent people. It was a garbage bin. They couldn’t even be trusted to fight grubs, because they’d desert with their weapons in five minutes flat and resume their old habits. This wasn’t a place where a prison officer could do something useful and change men’s lives, even if any of the staff here had volunteered to join the prison service, which none of them had as far as Niko knew. He certainly hadn’t. The guys locked up here had shot people and set fire to buildings and raped and strangled and done stuff that defied human imagination. One of them was an Indie terrorist left over from the last war, and he looked like one of the nicer ones. Most of them were sane but rotten. Most of them were pretty choosy about who they preyed upon.

  But none of them were career Gears who’d finally lost it after years of endless, daily, unrelenting combat. Fenix, poor bastard, was probably just broken, not a criminal.

  God help me, I’m turning into a social worker. A frigging whiny do-gooder.

  “Well, someone’s got to fill out the goddamn welfare report,” Niko said. He thought of his uncle and how he wanted people to treat him. “Might as well be me.”

  D WING EXERCISE YARD, THE SLAB: TWO DAYS LATER.

  Millton Reeve was minding his own business and taking his mid-morning constitutional around the vegetable beds in the yard when Officer Jarvi stepped out and startled him. The screws didn’t have much face-to-face contact with the inmates, and they definitely didn’t hang out in the yard.

  “I’ve got a job for you, Reeve,” he said.

  “How much?”

  “Pack of smokes once a week.”

  “Done. Who do you want given a spanking?”

  “No spanking. I need you to look out for someone.”

  Niko Jarvi was okay for a warder. He quietly despised most of the assholes in here, but then so did Reeve, so that was fine. “I’m trying to guess who, and I’m guessing it’s the new guy. Seeing as we haven’t had anyone transferred in for years.”

  “Yeah, it’s Fenix. He’s had his time to settle in and we’re unlocking him now.”

  “Any special reason?”

  “Orders from the Chairman’s office. He’s connected. Embry Star, founding family, famous dad, the works. Just don’t let him get his throat cut. Or let him cut his own. If he’s looking longingly at ropes or belts, warn me.”

  “I didn’t see it, but I heard it. Campbell couldn’t even k
nock him down. Maybe you’re the ones who need protecting.” Everyone was talking about Fenix, taking bets on whether he could knock Dan Merino flat. “Poking my nose through his bars seemed a bit risky. He might be the kind that kicks the cat after a bad day.”

  “You’ll see.” Jarvi gave him a just-do-it nod as he left. “One pack a week, okay?”

  Reeve stood in the yard, hands thrust into the pockets of his overalls, and looked up at the patch of sky, the only sight he’d had of the outside world since before the grubs showed up. A light rain with the sharp feel of sleet pecked at his face. A helicopter passed high overhead, which might have meant Reavers were around, so he decided to cut the session short. He’d have to pace the floor inside instead.

  But it was as good a time as any to go meet this Fenix guy. In fact, it was probably better to do it now before one of the less benign residents decided to roll up with the welcome wagon.

  Reeve took pride in his work. He killed people—professionally, no undisciplined personal shit—and he also stopped some from getting whacked. That was his job. He was doing it for a different boss and working for smokes and soap instead of random-numbered untraceable bills these days, but as far as he was concerned, he was still employed and had purpose. That was how he kept going. Prison was an occupational hazard. It was no excuse to give up and get rusty. When he got out of here, and he was damned sure he would, he needed to hit the ground running.

  D Wing was the last operational block left in the Slab, a vast vaulted hall with a skylight roof and recessed cells set on both sides like a colonnade of shops in an upmarket mall. But that was all that was upmarket about it. The only part that had proper heating was the kitchens, even in the dead of winter, the water supply was almost always cold, and a bunch of men didn’t keep things spick-and-span even with Merino around to break their fingers if they messed the place up. There was a level of squalor that they sank to where civilization kicked in and they didn’t want it to get any worse, and that was the level they kept it at. The Slab was a slice of Sera, a miniature version of it, with the nice civilized guards living one side of the wire and the inmates, like the Stranded, surviving as best they could on the other.

  Reeve remembered the word now: microcosm. The Slab was a microcosm.

  The rest of the prison was empty now, except for the freaks who were kept locked up for everyone else’s good one floor below in the windowless solitary block. Reeve counted his way along the north side cells and passed Chunky.

  “Hey, Reeve. Man on a mission?”

  Reeve stopped and took a step back. The guys in here could read everyone like a book. “Pays to keep busy. How’s the knitting?”

  “You going to brief us on our war hero when you’re done with him?”

  “Who says that’s where I’m heading?”

  Chunky gave Reeve a toothy grin. Half the little runt’s bodyweight seemed to be teeth. “Man’s got to have a proper welcome. They say the screws are already shit-scared of him.”

  “Might be an exaggeration.”

  “Well, I’m damn glad to see a guy they probably can’t break. Not that they won’t try if they can.”

  “We run the floor,” Reeve said. “They won’t get a chance.” Reeve never expected this to be a private meeting anyway. The trick was to get the job done and not lose face or status. He came to a halt in front of Fenix’s cell and found the bars shut but the bolt wasn’t slid across, and Fenix didn’t look up. He was polishing his boots with a scrap of grubby cloth, hunched up in one dark corner of the cell like a zoo animal that wasn’t going to come out for the tourists no matter how many cookies they threw into the cage. The cold didn’t seem to bother him. His prison-issue jacket hung on a nail in the wall.

  Reeve tapped on the metal frame, because this place had rules. Fenix looked up very slowly as if he had to force himself.

  “Hey, I’m Millton Reeve,” Reeve said. “Thought somebody ought to say hi.”

  Fenix just stared. Then he stood up. He took a couple of slow steps over to the door and into the dim light. The guy looked huge sitting down, but seeing him unfold to full height was a bit like watching someone draw a big handgun and then put an equally big silencer on it. His lip was split and his mouth was swollen, but it looked like that didn’t bother him either.

  “Marcus,” Fenix growled.

  His teeth were intact as far as Reeve could see. Marcus. Okay, Marcus it was. Either he was an informal kind of guy or he didn’t want anyone using his surname. Reeve was making notes because attention to small detail could be all that kept you alive in this place.

  “You got a few minutes?”

  “At least,” Marcus said.

  He pushed the door open and Reeve walked in, keeping a diplomatic distance. A lot of guys didn’t like being crowded. Marcus stood with his arms folded. There was a regimental tattoo or something on his upper left arm, a skull on a pair of crossed rifles with a small motto that Reeve couldn’t read without looking way too interested for his own good. A lot of guys put on a tough act to fend off trouble, but Marcus didn’t need to. Whether it was genes or a hard life, it wasn’t just his size that said it was a bad idea to piss him off. He radiated something that made Reeve want to walk around him. That intense pale stare didn’t help.

  “You okay? That lip looks sore.”

  Marcus shrugged. “Had a lot worse.”

  “You want a quick run-down of the rules?”

  “Do I need one?”

  “You’ll live longer.”

  “I’ll skip it, then.” Marcus sat down again and picked up his left boot to resume polishing. “Thanks for your concern.”

  “No, you don’t get it. I need to make sure you’re okay.”

  Marcus did a slow head turn that would have been theatrical in any other guy. It gave Reeve the impression that he was reining in a lethal temper.

  “You call me Sugar,” he said quietly, “and I’ll break your fucking neck.”

  Oops. Too chummy, maybe. “Hey, I don’t get that lonely. Just been asked to keep an eye out for you, seeing as I can do that kind of thing.”

  Marcus’s frown relaxed, but only a fraction. “Hoffman’s idea?”

  “Who’s Hoffman?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  Reeve pressed on. “Okay, so here’s a quick guide to not having to pick your teeth up from the yard.” Reeve doubted there were more than half a dozen guys in here who stood a chance of even landing a punch on Marcus, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t run into other trouble. “Lockdown time—when you hear the count on the PA, just drop whatever you’re doing and get back to your cell before they let the dogs loose. Never ask anyone what they’re in for. And don’t join a gang.”

  “Dogs.” Marcus’s tone changed very slightly. “Yeah, I heard them.”

  “You scared of dogs?”

  He just stared at Reeve, unblinking. Ah, so he was. “Should I be?”

  “The screws let them loose in the passages. It’s like a network of mesh barriers in the corridors. You know, they’re separated like those pens and runs in cattle yards, with remote gates and everything. So the warders never need to set foot down here.”

  Marcus was still staring at him but his expression was now completely unreadable. “So what are you in here for?”

  Oh, so he’s decided to be a handful. Okay. Fine. “I’m not a goddamn nonce, if that’s what’s worrying you.” Maybe he didn’t know what that was, being upper crust. “A pedo. Child molester. Kiddie fiddler.”

  “Yeah. I get it.”

  “I’m a contract assassin. I’m a pro. Like you.”

  Marcus said absolutely nothing for a long five seconds. “I’m a Gear,” he said, so quiet that Reeve had to strain to hear. It wasn’t indignation. It was sorrow. “Or at least I was.”

  Reeve added that to his mental notebook and knew that unraveling all the stuff in those few words was going to take a long time, but would probably tell him every last detail about Marcus Fenix.

  This wa
sn’t what Reeve was used to. In the twelve years he’d been here, he’d met every kind of sick bastard under the sun, and had seen most of them die or disappear one way or another, but none of them had managed to disturb him as much or as fast as this guy. He was from another world.

  Reeve had to stick with it now, though, and not just because he wanted the smokes. Hanging on to his professional pride was what kept him from going under. “So … you’re going to look like a challenge to Merino. That’s Daniel Merino. He’s got a half a dozen guys who break bones for him when they need to. He organizes the place and keeps the inmates under control and the screws don’t get involved. Suits them, sometimes doesn’t suit us, but hey, we’re not here for being model citizens.”

  “I’m sure he’ll introduce himself.”

  “Bet on it. So seeing as you broke the rules already, I get to ask why a stand-up hero like you refused to fight.”

  “I didn’t refuse to fight,” Marcus growled. Ah, that was a useful raw nerve to know about, but Reeve decided not to twang it again unless he absolutely had to. “I went to save my father instead of other Gears. But he got killed anyway. So, not one of my better decisions.”

  “Hey, sorry.”

  “Well, now you know.” Marcus looked like he was making a point of changing tack. He indicated the prison-issue safety razor on the cracked washbasin bolted to the wall next to the toilet pan. The basin looked like he’d actually cleaned it somehow. “Can’t help noticing that they let us have sharp objects in here.”

  It was the “us” that struck Reeve. Every other guy who came in spent anything from a month to a year or more saying “you” because he didn’t think he belonged here and took some time to get used to the idea. Marcus just took it as read that he was scum now like everyone else. No airs and graces for all that privilege, then.

  “They let us have belts, too,” Reeve said. “Because if we kill ourselves or each other, it’s a win-win for them. They don’t even have to come down here. How else do you think this place runs on a dozen screws and a few dogs?”