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

by Karen Traviss

  (Lieutenant Anya Stroud to Prisoner B1116/87, Fenix M.M. Letter not delivered.)

  HOUSE OF THE SOVEREIGNS, JACINTO: FROST, 12 A.E.

  Hoffman rarely watched the news these days because he already knew what the headlines were going to be.

  He didn’t need some half-assed parasite at Tyran State Broadcasting trying to convince him it was all under control. The hell it was: he knew exactly how bad things were, but he couldn’t tell how much worse they’d get, or how fast, because grubs hadn’t been to strategy classes at the Academy. They didn’t follow COG doctrine. They didn’t have any other kind of military logic as far as he could see.

  But they weren’t stupid, and they were winning.

  He studied the recon imaging coming in from the Ravens and tried to make sense of the composite map that was forming on the CIC wall. The noise wasn’t making that any easier. Drilling and hammering around the building as the maintenance teams repaired damage was making his back teeth ache. In the room itself, printers chattered and radio operators collated reports from pilots and artillery positions. Hoffman concentrated on the red line that marked the city limits of the sprawl of Ephyra. It was now mostly in grub hands or laid waste, and to the east, right on the coast, lay the last district that the COG had managed to hold—or hold most of, anyway: the port of Jacinto and a small slice of Ephyra beyond its boundaries. It wasn’t a clear line. Grubs made sporadic incursions across it. The arrogant gray bastards even got as far as the Tomb of the Unknowns.

  That’s the last place I’ll let them take. Even if I have to stand there on my own with just a fucking knife to defend it.

  He’d been waiting for the big push every day since Chancery Bridge. The grubs had been attacking in small waves, but nothing like what he’d been expecting after their assault on Ephyra.

  What are they waiting for? What’s next? Why don’t they use all the assets they’ve got?

  He was so focused on shutting out the noise that he didn’t even hear Prescott walk up behind him. That was piss-poor situational awareness in this job.

  “Here’s what I don’t understand.” Prescott’s polished vowels made him jump. “They never press home their advantage. Is it won’t or can’t?”

  “If we knew that,” Hoffman said, “we’d be halfway to beating the bastards.”

  Sometimes Hoffman found common ground with Prescott, and sometimes he loathed him, but he could never find a concrete reason for that. This was his head of state, a man tasked to take the cold, high-level decisions. He wasn’t supposed to be his best buddy. But Hoffman could never read him and knew somehow that Prescott made sure nobody ever would. He felt shut out of something and couldn’t even define what it was.

  “I think they lack capacity and have to keep restocking their menagerie, for want of a better word,” Prescott said.

  “Is that a guess, sir?”

  Prescott hesitated for a fraction of a second. Hoffman noted that and wondered how calculated it was. “An educated guess, I suppose,” Prescott said. “What kind of force launches a global assault that takes out a quarter of the population in a few days, and then spends more than a decade unable to finish it off despite overwhelming numbers?”

  “An enemy with its own supply problems, running out of steam.” None of this was news. Hoffman had just become used to the idea that nobody knew what the grubs were, where they’d come from, or what they wanted, beyond the annihilation of every human on the planet. “Or an enemy that’s dicking with us for some reason and hasn’t contacted us with terms for our surrender. But we’re fighting flat out with all we’ve got, so we don’t have that many strategies at our disposal. We fight until we win or die. That’s all we’ve got.”

  Prescott was standing right next to him now, almost touching shoulders as he studied the map on the wall. “I’m not going to ask you how long we can hold out.”

  “Good, because I have no goddamn idea from one day to the next.”

  “I know, Victor. I’m sorry.”

  And he sounded it, too. Hoffman decided to take that at face value. “We’re seeing more of those kryll things at night. The only good news is that the grubs don’t seem to like them either, so it looks like it’s cut down on their incursions after dark. But that means the things are either one of their own engineered creatures gone wrong, or something else entirely.”

  “I don’t want to get your hopes up, Victor, but I’m really pushing the DRA team on the Lightmass bomb.”

  “Yeah, Adam Fenix never did finish that, did he?” Damn: Hoffman had said the name, and suddenly it all came rushing back, the stuff he’d had to make himself forget just to get the job done. He glanced around to make sure Anya wasn’t in earshot. “If we could get the bastards while they were still in their tunnels, it’d make all the difference.”

  “As soon as they get the targeting device working properly, we’ll deploy it,” Prescott said. “Deal with those kryll nesting sites, too.”

  “Yeah.” Hoffman studied the map again, out of ideas and resigned to firefighting. “I’m going to let the artillery deal with Reavers for a while. We can’t keep dogfighting with Ravens. The assholes are just degrading our air capability.”

  “I agree.”

  Then Prescott did an odd thing. He actually patted Hoffman on the shoulder before he walked away. It had to be calculated, because Prescott definitely wasn’t one of life’s back-slappers, but Hoffman felt both oddly comforted and taken in by the probably fine calculation of it.

  Fenix. He tried to put Marcus out of his mind again, but couldn’t. There were days—weeks, sometimes months—when he never even thought about his own dead wife. He needed to get back to that same state of oblivion with Marcus.

  Damn, he missed Margaret so badly some days that he felt actual pain in his chest. He needed someone to unburden himself to, if nothing else. He also needed to matter to someone beyond being the guy in charge who was supposed to have all the answers.

  “Sir?” Aigle appeared at his side. “Sir, it’s Mathieson. His patrol’s been hit.”

  And there’s my wake-up call. Self-pity.

  That kind of news always felt the same. A familiar name, a kid who deserved better, and his gut turned over. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, not Donneld.”

  “He’s alive, sir, but he’s lost both legs. They’ve airlifted him to JMC. Two of his Gears are dead, though, Witmann and DeVere. The others are okay. Just minor blast injuries.”

  Okay was a relative term. Hoffman ran his hand across his chin and switched off just to get through the day. Even if he tried to get angry and grieve these days, the feeling was ripped away from him by the reflex he’d cultivated over the years. He didn’t have a conscious choice about it any longer. All he could do was go through the intellectual process of reminding himself that Mathieson was a nice kid and that it wasn’t fair. Everybody liked him. But he wasn’t going to be playing thrashball again, even if he survived.

  “I hope they’ve got a half-sober trauma surgeon on duty today.”

  “It’s Hayman,” Aigle said. “I always check. That’ll increase his chances.”

  “I’ll have to meet her one day. Next best thing to an army surgeon.” Got to get on with it. Come on. Do something useful. Hoffman defaulted to what he always did when he’d had that kind of news. He wanted to go out and face it all personally. “I’m going to check out the arty positions. Time they saw my face again. Back in an hour or two.”

  “You want a car, sir?”

  “I’ll take a Pack. No point tying up a driver.”

  “Lieutenant Stroud’s back on watch at fifteen hundred.”

  Anya usually pulled double watches. Hoffman understood that completely. She wanted to saturate every second in the day with work, work that stopped her thinking beyond the events right in front of her. He tried to do that, too. It didn’t always work. He knew Anya went out on Dom’s endless trawls for his wife, but he didn’t have that option, so any downtime was best spent asleep. And that meant staying busy unt
il the moment he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer and he collapsed on his bunk in the officers’ quarters.

  Hoffman never recalled his dreams when he woke these days. He simply knew he’d had them from where the sheets ended up or how soaked with sweat his pillow felt when his eyes jerked open. Nature could be merciful when it felt like it.

  “Do me a favor, Aigle,” Hoffman said, pulling on his gloves. “Make sure she’s had something to eat, will you?”

  “Will do, sir.”

  The Packhorse parked outside was one of the old wrecks converted to run on reclaimed cooking oil. It had had taken one close blast too many. Its panels and chassis—welded, hammered, straightened, riveted—didn’t stand much chance of withstanding another blast on patrol. Hoffman fumbled for the keys left in the ignition and started it up, catching a pleasant whiff of fries from the exhaust as he leaned out of the window to reverse out of the parking space.

  There wasn’t much traffic about in Jacinto now, just military traffic or municipal vehicles. Each fuel station he passed was either closed and converted to an observation post or field kitchen, or had notices scrawled on A-boards on the forecourt: NO GAS UNTIL NEXT WEEK. They rarely specified the week by date. It seemed more like a hope than an announcement. Nobody sane was going to be driving far anyway, certainly not outside the wire when they knew no Gears would be sent to rescue them. The sign at the vehicle checkpoint on Timgad Bridge meant what it said: ALL JOURNEYS PAST THIS POINT AT YOUR OWN RISK.

  People walked a lot now. Jacinto wasn’t that big. Hoffman slowed down to check out the AA gun position on the site of the old cinema, a maze of sandbags, concrete blocks and canvas. He got a casual salute from the Prince Ozore’s Artillery sergeant sitting behind the gun. The man was obviously feeling the cold. Shoulders hunched, chin buried in his upturned collar, he thrust his hand back in his pocket right away. Waiting for Reavers was a miserable and tedious job. Hoffman stopped the Pack and got out.

  “Morning, sir.” The gunner’s voice was muffled by his collar. “Embry weather, innit?”

  The army was small enough now for everyone to know Hoffman by sight and not to be thrown into a panic when he showed up in person. He preferred it that way. The men on the ground knew him for what he was, too. “Yeah, I’m countersunk too, Sergeant. How’s it going?”

  “No trade yet.”

  “I’m pulling back the Ravens for a few days for maintenance and to rest the crews. You’ll get some action later, I expect.”

  “Fine by us, sir.”

  Another gunner appeared from beneath a canvas awning with a steaming tin mug in each hand. He saw Hoffman, did an about-face, and emerged again with an extra mug. Hoffman curled his fingers around it. The metal was blissfully hot even through his leather gloves.

  “That’s decent of you, Gunner.”

  “It’s only beef tea, sir. Well, if you’re flexible on the definition of beef.”

  “Beats that barley coffee.”

  “What do they want, sir?”

  “What?”

  “The grubs. Why come up and trash the place if they don’t set up camp on the surface?”

  It was a good question, but it was just one of many that didn’t look likely to be answered and was less pressing after so many years than are-we-going-to-survive-the-night. People always forgot why wars were fought and just went on fighting them.

  “Maybe they’re scared to,” Hoffman said. “Or maybe they’ve got problems we don’t even know about.”

  The three of them sipped in silence for a while, looking up at the gray sky. The city was the quietest he’d ever known it. Were the grubs finally grinding to a halt? No, it was too much to hope for, and if they were, it was too late for the likes of Mathieson anyway. Hoffman wondered if he’d ever recognize the end of the war if he saw it. There certainly wouldn’t be a formal surrender with treaties signed and speeches made, like the Pendulum Wars.

  It might never end. Or he might not live to see the end of it.

  “Anything you boys need?” he asked, draining his mug. “Other than the usual.”

  “Toilet paper, sir. Any kind, really.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Hoffman got in the Pack and drove off again. He passed food stores with long lines outside as civilians queued for their supplies, clutching their ration books in their hands. One young woman was chatting with a guy standing behind her, clearly flirting if all that fiddling with her long hair was any guide. People waited in line for so long that they now treated it as a social event for catching up with the neighbors or checking out newcomers. Humans coped, one way or another. Hoffman detoured to three more artillery positions to be seen and to chew the fat, then found himself waiting at a red light.

  There was no traffic. The lights were still on automatic settings, and he just waited, hands clasped on the steering wheel, not so much at a loose end as unable to think of a single positive thing he could do today except try to boost morale. Random thoughts hit him. Marcus Fenix. He wasn’t going to go away today, was he? Hoffman would forget him for months and then the court martial would suddenly bounce back at Hoffman time and time again like one of those annoying kid’s toys, a bat with a ball on the end of a piece of elastic. The worst thing was that Hoffman hated himself, and now he was getting flashes of something else—hating Fenix for making him hate himself more than he already did.

  How long had Marcus been in prison? Two and a half years? Three? Hoffman couldn’t remember. But in the growing pile of shit he had to deal with, personal guilt was way down the bottom of the list.

  Dom never mentions him. But I know damn well Anya hasn’t stopped thinking about him. I catch her writing letters. She thinks I don’t see her, but she’s always making envelopes and takes waste paper from the recycling dumpster, so who else is she going to be writing to? Goddamn, that’s some devotion after all these years. Not a damn word from him, and she’s still waiting.

  And if Anya hadn’t forgotten Marcus, then neither had Dom. Hoffman didn’t have to ask him to know that.

  Life went on, though. One man didn’t make an army. The casualty list was full of men—and women—whose families and friends missed them and whose lives had been torn apart. The void that Marcus had left was of his own making.

  You asshole. How dare you make me feel guilty.

  The lights changed through amber to green and Hoffman slipped the Pack into first to pull away. If he turned right at the next intersection, he could call in at JMC and make nice with the medical staff, seeing as they were picking up the pieces when the army surgical unit at Wrightman was swamped. He could tell how close he was getting to the place by the sudden increase in traffic. The roads went from near-deserted to moderately busy. As soon as he turned into Florenz Place, he could see vehicles parked anywhere and everywhere—ambulances, Packhorses, junkers, police cars, so many that the road was suddenly choked to a single lane. He found a spot a hundred meters away and walked up to the building, ignored by the civvies on all sides because he was just another Gear to them. The main doors opened and he found himself in another world of weird smells, chirping alarms, and a crush of people, injured, sick, or clearly distraught about someone else who was, trying to find seats or waiting at the reception desk. A constant background of paging over the public address system let him know just how overwhelmed the place was. He stood and watched for a few moments, mainly because he didn’t feel able to muscle his way to the front of the line and demand attention when the place was packed with people who needed to be here more than he did. But he also took it all in, and was glad the emergency response stuff was Royston Sharle’s job. It was another war in its own right.

  “Can I help you, Colonel?” said a voice.

  Hoffman turned. A very young woman in a white coat was frowning at him, clutching a tattered clipboard. She obviously recognized rank insignia. That impressed him, given that he had a scarf obscuring most of the stars on his collar.

  “I’m Colonel Hoffman,” he said
. “I was going to ask to see your chief of ER, but I’ve caught you at a bad time.”

  “There’s never a good time, sir,” she said. “Problem?”

  “Just wanted to say thanks.”

  “Oh.” She didn’t seem to be expecting that at all, judging by the quick frown. Her name badge said DR. J. ADEMI. She crooked her finger at him to follow her. “It’s Dr. Maryon-Hayman today,” she said, then lowered her voice. “She prefers Hayman. We think she ate her last husband after mating.”

  Hoffman thought the kid was just putting him at ease until he followed her into a side ward full of oxygen bottles and stacks of cardboard boxes marked STERILE. A woman in scrubs, fists on hips, was bawling out some lad still wearing a surgical cap and gloves as if she’d hauled him out of theater. When she paused for breath, she realized someone was behind her and turned. She was past retirement age—thin, white-haired, deeply lined—but it didn’t seem to have affected her lung capacity one bit.

  “Have you washed your hands, soldier?” It wasn’t kindly meant. “What do you want?”

  “Colonel Hoffman, ma’am. Chief of the Defense Staff.”

  She pointed at the ceiling with a nicotine-stained forefinger. “Your boys are on the fourth floor.”

  “Just called in to thank you, Dr. Hayman.” My mistake, obviously. “We appreciate the care you’re giving our Gears. Perhaps you could pass that on to your team, too.”

  Hayman looked surprised for a moment, but it didn’t last. “You’re welcome, Colonel. Can I continue coaching my goddamn useless staff now?”

  Hoffman knew he was short on charm but he could usually get a better response from women than from men. With any luck, he wouldn’t have to run into this bitch again. “Carry on, ma’am.”

  He retreated to the corridor, duty done. Dr. Ademi caught his arm.

  “You want to visit your Gears? We’ve got about six surgical cases at the moment.”

  Hoffman nodded. “Is Donneld Mathieson out of theater yet? Double amputation.”

  “I’ll check.” She herded him into the elevator and stood staring at the indicator panel as the car creaked its way upward floor by floor. “I deal with rustlung, basically,” she said. “I’m a medical registrar. I’m glad I don’t get many trauma cases because I’d probably end up like Dr. Hayman.”