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

by Karen Traviss

  Adam also had his brilliant wife’s research papers, though. His brilliant dead wife.

  Imagine being so curious that you’re willing to die to find out something nobody else ever has. To be the first, to have your discovery named after you. Scientists. Such vanity.

  And how extraordinary for a man to be willing to work with those who killed his wife. Adam’s more of a politician than I gave him credit for. Or perhaps he’s just as seduced by the problem solving and thrill of discovery as his wife was.

  “How are you today, Adam?”

  Adam looked up at Prescott over his glasses. He had those same unsettling pale blue eyes as his son, and he was still a big man, built like the frontline Gear he’d once been. Sometimes that reminder caught Prescott off-guard. “How’s my son?”

  “Marcus is doing fine,” Prescott said. “I’ll make sure you get a regular update on his welfare. Now, is there anything you need that’s not been provided? I’m heading back to Jacinto shortly. I can’t be away for more than a day or so, or too frequently, or else my cover starts to wear thin.”

  Adam sat hunched over his desk at an awkward angle, probably to relieve the pain in his healing ribs. A cup of tea, milk fat congealing on the cooling surface, sat on a pile of reports and lab tests next to a framed picture of Elain. She’d been a very pretty woman then: fine-boned and clearly aware of her looks, Prescott decided, not some dowdy absent-minded professor in a scruffy cardigan. The portrait looked on as if Adam needed her there to supervise his efforts or perhaps bless them. Prescott glanced around for a photo of Marcus, but there was just Elain. Perhaps the other pictures were in his suite. Dury had definitely retrieved them from Haldane Hall.

  Adam gave Prescott that professorial scrutiny look. “How do you account for the Raven going off the plot?”

  “You don’t know how you got here, do you?”

  “I was unconscious at the time, I believe.”

  “It’s easier to go under than over. Although you can, if your aircraft has the altitude. A submarine dives under the churn of the Maelstrom, and then surfaces near Endeavour Naval Base to rendezvous with a Raven. I’m glad you don’t recall being winched onto the boat. Rather too exciting in a high wind. So—do you need anything or not?”

  Adam did a slow unblinking sweep around the room, then shook his head. A couple of lab technicians were busy behind the glass wall on the far side. Prescott caught a glimpse of a row of jars holding something yellow and translucent, backlit by a fluorescent strip. “Oh, we’ve got everything we could possibly wish for, except a solution. Would you like to see what we’re doing?” He picked up the cup of cold tea and took a sip, then frowned. “Come on. I’ll show you.”

  He was almost affable now, probably distracted by this new scientific puzzle to solve, but then he was hardly in a position to be indignant. Prescott followed him and stood at the glass wall.

  “This is the first time I’ve worked directly with organic chemists.” Adam folded his arms. “Or any biologist, to be exact.”

  “You didn’t work with your wife, then.”

  “You know she didn’t share this with me.”

  “I meant in general.”

  “No, I didn’t.” Adam gave him a quick frown as if he couldn’t believe Prescott’s ignorance about scientific disciplines. “Anyway, we’re propagating the samples here. The Lambent pathogen. Then we can test destructive methods.”

  “Before you fully understand it?”

  “They’re two sides of the same coin, Richard. We have to be able to kill it, and that’s part of understanding it.”

  Prescott watched the technicians. They were fully covered in hazmat suits, gloved and masked, despite the fact that they were handling the substance in the safety of a fume box, yet Adam had been keeping it in simple glass jars in his home for years.

  It still looked like imulsion, the fuel that had transformed Sera’s economy and started eight decades of war.

  “Dr. Bakos is going to share some previously classified material with you,” Prescott said. “You had your research secrets, we had ours. Were you aware of the health concerns about imulsion?”

  “Emissions? Yes. Like any combustible material. Particulates, volatile fractions, that kind of risk.”

  “I mean teratogenic. Mutagenic. Have I used the correct terms? Causing malformations and changes at the genetic level.”

  “Oh. We suppressed those findings, did we? Can’t upset the imulsion companies with health scares.” Adam looked as if he was going to start some sanctimonious lecture, but backed off, shaking his head. “Share prices are hardly our biggest problem now, I suppose.”

  Prescott debated whether to tell him about New Hope or leave it to Esther Bakos. No, he’d plunge straight in with the most difficult issue and hope he’d picked up enough research jargon to sound in control. “Esther seems to think human tissue would be the best test option.”

  “We have plenty of that in the medical lab, I’m told.”

  “She used the phrase in vivo.” You can explain yourself to

  Adam, Esther. “She suggested I run it past you.”

  Adam’s dark brows knitted in a frown again. “No, I can’t accept volunteers. We have no idea what this pathogen can do in a human being. Informed consent would be impossible.”

  “We know what imulsion does to humans.”

  Adam blinked. “But this isn’t imulsion any longer.”

  “I’ll get to the point. If human subjects are needed, I can get them from the prison—”

  Adam hit the heel of his hand square on the glass. His face was expressionless but somehow luminous with outrage, intense pure ice. The technicians flinched and twisted around to look, almost jerking their hands out of the fume box.

  “Absolutely not. No. Absolutely out of the question.”

  “Your choice. One day you might decide a child murderer’s life is worth a world.”

  “Cheap false equivalence. I will not experiment on a human being. Any human being.”

  “Sorry, I forgot. Omitting to mention an invasion force—fine. Building and deploying weapons of mass destruction—fine. Vivisecting the worst kind of criminal—not fine. I’ll make a note of that.”

  Adam was staring into the glass. Prescott could see that he wasn’t focused on the laboratory on the other side. Yes, it was an obvious shot, and Prescott knew he should have been above taking it, but Adam needed to be broken down and rebuilt like a Gear recruit again. He needed to have his nose rubbed in his little pile of stinking guilt until he lost all delusions of having rights, a guilt so unthinkable that even Prescott was still coming to terms with the enormity of the decision Adam had taken in isolation. His wife had done much the same, although the unlucky woman hadn’t known until it was too late that the Locust would be hostile.

  I make mistakes. I’m not a saint, much less a martyr. But I would at least have rushed to share the burden of that knowledge with someone who might know more than I did. Chairman or not.

  Adam dragged his eyes away from the glass. “As obscene as that sounds,” he said, “that’s exactly the way it is. If human tissue is necessary, I won’t accept a volunteer, and I certainly won’t accept a victim. I’ll find another way.”

  There was no point trying to win an argument with him. Prescott turned and walked away. It was simple: Adam would do as he was told, and if a live human was what the research required, Prescott would get one and shove a needle in the bastard himself if necessary.

  It wouldn’t have been the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last. With millions of lives on his conscience already, Prescott knew he wouldn’t burn any more hotly in hell for a few more.

  26 RTI BARRACKS, FORMER WRIGHTMAN HOSPITAL: STORM, 10 A.E.

  “Where are you going, Dom?” Jace leaned against the door frame, scrubbing the detached chain of his Lancer with a wire brush. “You want some company?”

  It was an unusually mild early evening. Half the company seemed to be doing their cleaning and maintenance ou
tside on the white stone steps. The hospital had been built in the old COG style, like barracks with a central square, and apart from the old metal signs still on walls and washrooms that were a bit more comfortable than the army standard, it didn’t feel medical to Dom at all. He squatted beside the motorbike to check the tire pressures.

  “It’s okay, Jace,” he said. “Just going to check out a new Stranded camp.”

  “Happy to help, buddy.”

  “I’ll be okay. Anyway, Anya’s coming along.”

  No, Dom wasn’t going to be okay. He knew he’d never be okay again, not until he found Maria, but now Marcus was gone too, and that had hit him even harder than he’d expected. The dead, however much you missed them, didn’t beckon all the time. They were in their allotted place and you couldn’t do a single damn thing about it except remember and regret. Dom hadn’t come to terms with the deaths of his mom or dad, or Carlos, and certainly not Bennie and Sylvie. Maria was probably still out there—his heart said definitely, his common sense said a fighting chance—but Marcus was confirmed and located, there but not there, stuck in a frigging shithole where Dom couldn’t even phone him to keep him going.

  The dead couldn’t suffer any longer. The separated living could. Dom now woke up each day and kept breathing for only one reason, to bring Maria and Marcus back home. The Locust could have the rest of the goddamn world as long as he got to keep the last people left alive that he loved.

  “Hey, Dom. Ready to roll?”

  Dom glanced up, catching a glimpse of civvy boots and fatigue pants. Anya stood over him, out of her smart gray officer’s skirt and woolly pulley for once. She’d made a brave attempt at looking averagely inconspicuous. But she was Anya, and not even scruff rig and no makeup could make her look anything less than luminously beautiful. That wasn’t a good idea when venturing into Stranded camps.

  “You better put on a ballistic vest or some plates.” It was a sensible precaution but it would also disguise her shape. Even mentally, Dom couldn’t bring himself to say the actual B-word. They were just her … shape. This was Anya, his friend, effectively his superior officer, and she was Marcus’s, so none of the normal, casual, harmlessly natural things a guy thought about women—especially women who looked like Anya—could ever be allowed into his head. “And these bikes kick up a lot of shit, so better put a scarf over your mouth. Oh, and bring your sidearm. I mean it. Ma’am.”

  Anya nodded and jogged back into the barracks. Jace watched.

  “She ain’t okay, either, is she?” he said.

  “Would you be? And stop checking out her ass. You’re disgusting.”

  “Sorry.” Jace almost shook himself. “Look, whatever it takes, man. You think of a way to get Marcus freed, you just say the word and I’m in. And Tai. The whole of Two-Six, probably.”

  “I’m still thinking. I’ll let you know.” Dom slid onto the bike with his Lancer slung across his back. Anya reappeared, swamped by an EOD blast jacket and a scarf that covered her hair and chin. “If we’re not back in a couple of hours—ah, shit, I’ll be on a charge by then anyway. See you later.”

  Anya swung onto the pillion seat. She really didn’t have to do this. But she’d always make herself do things that scared her, and that was the definition of guts as far as Dom was concerned. He was damn sure that her gung-ho mom had had to steel herself and get on with it more than once, no matter how confident she’d always seemed and no matter how many medals got pinned on her. Any asshole could be oblivious to danger out of sheer ignorance or cockiness, and maybe that didn’t matter as long as they did the job, but Dom knew what Anya saw and heard daily in Ops, the terrible stuff that came over the radio and the video feeds, so she knew damn well what the stakes were. She’d heard her mom die, for fuck’s sake. Desk jockey or not, she understood. And since Marcus had been gone she’d been getting a lot more assertive.

  Now she was bending the regs to go out with Dom to pass Maria’s picture around some roach-infested camp and ask if anyone had seen her. Hoffman turned a blind eye to it all. Dom gathered all kinds of intel while he was out, Hoffman said, so if Dom wanted to risk his ass and burn a little fuel getting it, it was okay by him.

  I can get away with anything with Hoff. I thought Marcus could, too.

  The potholes and broken paving began about fifty meters outside the Jacinto wire and Dom found himself weaving around obstacles. Maybe it hadn’t been such a great idea to let Anya come after all.

  “Okay back there?” he yelled.

  The slipstream and engine noise snatched his words. He had to slow down anyway. If he bent the forks on this thing, he’d be in real, can’t-get-out-of-it trouble. They’d stopped making parts for the bike years ago. It would cost time and resources they just didn’t have these days.

  “Fine,” Anya said. She didn’t sound it. “Kind of.”

  “Grab hold of my belt.” She was gripping the small handle behind her seat, which felt precarious at the best of times. He could feel her knees brushing the back of his legs as she tried to hang on without making a fuss. “Or waist. But for God’s sake don’t fall off. Marcus will kill me.”

  It was just a figure of speech. Marcus had never so much as disagreed with him over an offside call in a thrashball game. But Marcus wasn’t there, and his absence was an aching void. The guy had been so thoroughly stitched into the fabric of Dom’s daily existence that all that was left now were holes—no Marcus on patrol to keep an eye on, no Marcus to swap rations with, and no Marcus to just give him that it’ll-be-okay look when yet another sighting of Maria turned out to be a false lead. And those voids in Dom’s day were now filling up with extra fears. Was Marcus getting enough food? Did he have some frigging psycho that he couldn’t turn his back on for a cellmate? Was anyone giving him any shit? Was he scared?

  Yeah, Marcus got scared like everyone else. Everyone seemed to think he was above all that. Dom knew better.

  “I put in a request for a visit,” Dom said. “They said one visit a month once his first three months is up. I didn’t realize you’d written.”

  “Sorry, Dom.” She had a firm grip on his belt but gradually her right arm slipped round his waist. Then she suddenly slapped her left hand over it as if she’d been working up to letting go of his belt, and hung on for dear life. He’d thought he was riding pretty sedately. “I don’t even know if he’s received it.”

  “Aren’t they supposed to tell us that stuff?”

  “I should be finding this out. Damn, I’m supposed to be the admin expert.”

  “Hey, it’s okay. We’re both missing him. We’re not thinking straight yet.”

  “He doesn’t really mean he doesn’t want to see us again. Does he?”

  Dom suspected Marcus really didn’t, but for very self-sacrificing, Marcus-like reasons. He brazened it out. “No. Of course not.”

  He tried to concentrate on what was around him. The route past the new Stranded camp had been swept by patrols a couple of times but grubs came up anytime, anywhere. It was a case of maintaining situational awareness and opening up the throttle to get the hell out if anything cropped up. Stranded had their own kind of personal radar when it came to grubs, though, and the fact that there were any left alive ten years after E-Day was proof. They had to stay one step ahead of these assholes. Dom wondered if grubs were just bone-idle and couldn’t be bothered to pick off small groups unless it was handed to them on a plate. He kept scanning back and forth, now alert to every shadow, swaying branch, or reflection off broken glass. It was a long, empty highway through a wasteland of burned-out cars and the stumps of buildings, the universal Seran landscape for the last decade, and he was looking for a fleeting landmark of sorts just west of the Ilima off-ramp.

  “See it?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Smoke.”

  “Got it.”

  Stranded were good at digging in. Sometimes he didn’t see a camp until he tripped over it. Centaur tanks were a lot higher off the ground and the guy on top co
ver could see for kilometers on a clear day, but Packhorses and ’Dills were too low on the ground and a bike was even lower. Smoke was usually the giveaway; smoke, or packs of dogs. Stranded who couldn’t tap into a power line or fuel a generator relied on wood-burners and open fires. This was one of those. Dom slowed down, giving the sentry plenty of time to check him out—he couldn’t see anyone, but there’d be a guy on overwatch somewhere—and rehearsed his opening line again. Gears were rarely welcome. He had to be diplomatic.

  Hey, guys. I’m Dom Santiago. Have you seen this woman? She’s my wife. She walked out of our home a year or so after our kids were killed and I haven’t seen her since.

  Mostly people shook their heads. Some didn’t, though. Some got that look in their eyes that gave him renewed hope. He heard the barking start up and knew he was in someone’s cross-wires now. He was approaching a fuel station—no roof, no pumps, and no doors—with what looked like a junkyard behind it.

  “Anya, just keep behind me, okay?” he said. “They don’t normally get awkward, but there’s always a first time.”

  “I’ve got my sidearm.”

  “Yeah, but can you still use it?”

  “I’m requalifying. Rossi’s helping me.”

  “Okay. But leave this to me.”

  Dom braked gradually to a slow putter and looked for a logical entry point so that he didn’t look like he was trying to sneak in the back door. The bike still sounded throaty, like the muffler had blown somewhere, but at least whoever was tracking him knew he was there. Now he saw the first dog. It was a scruffy brown and white thing barking its head off. Then all its buddies showed up behind it to stand in a group, yapping. If they went for him, he’d shoot, but he hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

  “Anybody home?” he yelled. There’d be a Stranded security party along soon. “Dom Santiago. I’m looking for my wife.”