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

by Karen Traviss

  That was when common sense seemed to get the better of the drones under the highway, and they made a run for it. They were heading straight across the heath.

  “Goddamn.” Marcus laid down the binoculars and held out his hand to Niko again. “Give me the rifle.”

  “What?”

  “Give me the frigging rifle.”

  “I can’t.”

  “For fuck’s sake, I’m going to shoot grubs.” Marcus’s voice had dropped to a growl. “Cut the crap and hand it over. I’ll give it back when I’m done.”

  “They can’t get in here.”

  “I don’t care about that. I don’t want them surviving to kill more Gears. You got that?”

  Niko had eaten dog and handed keys over to inmates. Giving a trained Gear a rifle seemed pretty sensible by comparison. Marcus took the weapon from him, checked the magazine, slid the safety off, and sighted up. The grubs were jogging across the open ground, dodging fire from the highway. Marcus waited, one elbow resting on the parapet, squinting down the sights.

  Then he fired. Niko didn’t even see the round strike, but a grub was on the ground and Marcus aimed again. Crack. Another grub went down. This time Niko saw the round take a chunk out of its skull. Marcus kept going, patiently picking off a grub every few seconds until one of them found the nerve to stop dead and return fire. Something zipped past Niko like a bee. It took him a few moments to realize he’d just missed getting his brains blown out. Nobody had ever shot at him before, and he wasn’t sure if he was rattled by the close shave or indignant. Marcus seemed to take it in his stride.

  That was what the guy been waiting for all these years: to kill more grubs. But he didn’t seem to be glorying in it. He was absolutely silent and deliberate, simply taking shot after careful shot. Niko couldn’t tell if he’d brought down a grub every time, but he was definitely ahead on points. Marcus was now almost leaning over the parapet, firing down at a tight angle. Then he stopped and knelt back on one heel.

  “Lost ’em,” he said. He put the safety catch on and handed the rifle back to Niko. “Happy now?”

  A couple of ’Dills were hurtling at full speed toward the prison, presumably chasing the grubs. Niko took the rifle back and stared at it, sobered at what it could do in the hands of an expert.

  “Are you?”

  “Not until I kill every last one of those assholes.”

  Marcus hung around on the roof for a while, still looking out in the direction of the highway as if he was longing for a few more targets. The shelling had stopped. The automatic fire was coming from behind the Slab, as if the Gears had caught up with the grubs on the edge of the escarpment and were hosing them.

  “Well, there goes the JD’s excuse for not sending supplies,” Marcus muttered, grabbing the handrail and stepping backward down the hatch. “Better call your clerk and tell him to pull his goddamn finger out.”

  “Hey, Fenix?”

  “What?”

  “You’re pretty good at what you do.”

  Marcus’s expression shifted for a second from his permanent frown to something like regret. “Yeah, I was,” he said.

  He could have shot me. Then picking off Ospen would have been simple. And then he could have just unlocked the doors, and everyone would be out. But he didn’t.

  If a dodgy delivery truck showed up, Niko was sure now that he’d help them shove Marcus in the back even if he had to truss him up to do it. Whatever Marcus’s beef was with the army, he really shouldn’t have been in this dump.

  Niko now had to get the Slab back on what passed for a normal security footing. He unlocked the main doors and followed Marcus back into D Wing. But Campbell and the others would soon be back on duty, and Parmenter would have a blue fit about the dogs. Nothing else had changed, though. Niko still had to run this place with three warders, and now that the dogs were gone, maybe the JD would decide he didn’t really need Parmenter either. It was like they were leaving him with no choice but to abandon the place, with or without the inmates inside.

  Merino was sitting in the yard having a smoke. Niko decided to stay social now that everyone was behaving. He risked walking up to the door with Marcus, knowing the rifle wouldn’t save him if the prisoners decided to get assy.

  “You look almost cheerful, Fenix,” Merino said. “Did we win?”

  “He shot a few grubs,” Niko said. Marcus didn’t join in and just walked up the yard, hands shoved in his back pockets. “Made his day.”

  “But is the road open again?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thank fuck for that. They’ve got to send us some decent food now, right? If only for you guys.”

  “I’m going to insist on it,” Niko said.

  For a moment or two, their positions and the reason why each of them was in the Slab were forgotten. Things would improve now, at least for a while. Niko locked the door, more out of habit than fear that anyone would escape, and went up to the office to yell at the JD clerk. Once he’d vented his spleen on him—would it have killed them to do one air drop?—he’d see if he could get hold of Maura.

  “You know they don’t give a shit.” Ospen was fidgeting with his keys, wide-eyed and shaky. It was hard to tell if that was because he’d now be heading for boot camp sooner than he thought, or because the immediate prospect of Piet Verdier’s enforcement had made him crap his pants. He was probably safer fighting grubs. “We won’t get anything. Hey, call Campbell and Parmenter. Tell them to get their asses in here so I can go home.”

  “Whatever,” Niko said, and started dialing.

  Maura was too busy in ER to come to the phone, the receptionist said, but at least she knew he was okay. The JD clerk said there’d be trouble about the dogs, seeing as they were COG property, which was fascinating because he’d never said a word when Niko submitted the report about inmates killing each other. Calls made, Niko went off to sit on the windowsill overlooking the yard and smoke his last cheroot. The sudden quiet was unnerving. The only sounds he could hear to remind him there was still a war going on were Ravens in the distance.

  It was four hours before Ospen came to find him. “At frigging last,” he said. “Just had a call. There’s a supply truck and a few visitors heading our way. Prescott.”

  “Oh, fuck.”

  “I told you not to shoot the dogs. Don’t expect me to cover for you.”

  “Yeah, thanks.” Niko almost went into a pre-inspection panic and then remembered the place was a slum and there was nothing he could do to make it look nicer for the Chairman. He gave up on the idea of having a quick shave, too. “Is anyone coming in to relieve us?”

  “Campbell. Parmenter’s going to be along later. Probably with a pickax, to avenge Jerry.”

  Niko waited at the front gates with the door open, watching the weed-covered, crumbling road across the heath. Eventually a ’Dill came into view, wobbling in the heat haze like a mirage and kicking up a faint cloud of dust. As it got closer, he could see a Packhorse behind it and a small delivery truck bringing up the rear. Was that Verdier’s driver? It couldn’t have been, not with Prescott around.

  Nobody got out of the ’Dill. The APC just parked at the gates with a Gear on top cover, gun aimed out across the heath. Prescott got out of the Packhorse with his bagman, that hard-faced guy with the captain’s insignia on his collar, and walked in as if nothing had happened, rather modestly dressed in a light summer jacket and open-necked shirt. Campbell jumped out of the passenger door of the supply truck.

  “I understand things got rather unpleasant inside,” Prescott said. “And that you managed to kill a few Locust. Would that be your marksmanship?”

  “No, sir,” Niko said. “That was Fenix.”

  Prescott seemed to remember the way in. Niko found himself following him. Ospen appeared in the entrance and Niko gestured at him to let the truck in.

  “That would explain it,” Prescott said absently. “I’d like to see Fenix, please. No need to take me to an office. I can stomach reality pretty we
ll.”

  Yeah, this is how we exist. This is the pointless frigging prison you like to keep open. Time you saw it all, maybe.

  Niko didn’t notice the smell these days but he could see that Prescott and his captain—Dury, that was it, Dury—definitely did. They both stopped breathing for a few moments, then looked like they couldn’t work out if it was better inhaling through the nose or the mouth. Even Campbell looked taken aback by it. Niko stood at the mesh security gate and yelled.

  “Fenix? Somebody get Fenix. It’s the Chairman.”

  Niko wasn’t sure if that would speed things up or not. Eventually, Marcus wandered up the passage and stood at the gate, completely expressionless.

  “Chairman,” he said. He did it again. His voice changed completely, back to the guy who had money and pedigree. “You’ve come all this way to see me.”

  “How are you, Marcus?”

  “Alive.”

  Prescott definitely looked pained. It wasn’t the general squalor. Niko could read men pretty easily now. It was one upper-class guy looking at another and feeling bad that one of his own kind had to share space with the worst of the plebs without even a butler to polish his silverware. Prescott reached inside his jacket and took out an envelope. He held it up for a moment, then slid it through the gate between the center bars.

  “I promised the Lieutenant I’d deliver this personally,” he said. Marcus’s jaw clenched. “Loyalty’s a rare and precious thing, Marcus. Be glad you receive so much of it.”

  He took the letter and stared at it. Then he opened it. Knowing how long he’d sat on the last two letters, Niko was surprised that Marcus started reading it there and then. His jaw was still locked, but his expression shifted slightly from I’m-not-going-to-react to I’m-going-to-blow-my-stack, and then he looked up right through Prescott as if he wasn’t there. Prescott blinked a couple of times, then nodded.

  “And you’re sure you’re well? In reasonable health, anyway.”

  The words came out more as a breath than a growl. “Never better.”

  “Very well. I’ll see you again.”

  Prescott turned away to walk back down the corridor and Niko wheeled around to see him off the premises. He caught Campbell’s eye for a second. The guy looked away. Niko’s radar told him there was something up, but he’d have to worry about that later. The most important thing was to get that food unloaded—without Ospen—and then go home and see Maura. Dury walked beside Niko, checking his watch, then inhaled pointedly.

  “Drains. Definitely the drains.” Dury wrinkled his nose. “You really should get them fixed.”

  “Maybe your boys should stop blowing up the sewers. That’d help.”

  Yeah, it was probably drains. The whole place was a plumbing nightmare now. He hadn’t checked on the flooding in the old psych wing for ages.

  But it could wait. There was probably coffee and soap on that truck. Niko didn’t let himself think one second beyond that.

  CHAPTER 15

  I hadn’t had a letter from you in years. I know I asked you to forget me, so I can’t complain, and I shouldn’t be making life harder for you by writing now. But there are things I should have said to you while I had the chance, and right now I really need to say them more than ever.

  (Prisoner B1116/87 Fenix M.M., writing to Lt. Anya Stroud. Letter undelivered.)

  JACINTO: EARLY FROST, 13 A.E.

  It was the longest lull between grub attacks that Hoffman had ever known, and that made him more worried than ever.

  He felt like something out of an old Pendulum Wars movie as he stood next to the anti-aircraft gun on the roof of the House of Sovereigns. It was a crisp early winter day, with good visibility and the scent of woodsmoke from Stranded encampments on the air. The gunners sat with their backs against the sandbags, smoking. One of them was lying flat on his back with his fingers meshed behind his head, staring up into the blue sky and occasionally squinting one eye as if he was checking out something at altitude. From time to time a Raven wandered across the skyline as if it was in need of something to do.

  Hoffman’s radio crackled. “Control to Hoffman.” It was Mathieson, now standing in for Anya on the few occasions she could bear to tear herself away from CIC. She didn’t want time to sit and brood, something Hoffman understood all too well. He pressed his finger to his ear.

  “Go ahead, Mathieson.”

  “It’s Pad Salton, sir. He’s on the radio.”

  Pad usually just showed up unannounced at a checkpoint and ambled into town. If he was calling in, then it was urgent. “Patch him through … Pad? Where are you?”

  “I’m just outside Ilima,” he said. “Been talking to the Stranded. They’re starting to see Reavers again. So I had a look around and kept obs on a gorge about two klicks east. Took a few weeks, but I saw them coming out of a fissure. You know the way bats come out at dusk? Like that. Not sure if it’s their Reaver factory or whatever they call it, but they’re back again.”

  Pad thought nothing of living in a hedge for months at a time, one of the things that made him such a great sniper, so if he said that something took some time, then he’d put in some serious surveillance far beyond an ordinary man’s endurance. It must have worried him.

  “Are they still emerging?” Hoffman started thinking of the Lightmass device. If the DRA guys were that close to making it operational, then targeting the tunnels where the grubs bred their Reavers was the best way to test it for real. “Is it safe to go back and check?”

  “What d’you mean, back? I’m still there. I’m looking at it.”

  Hoffman didn’t want Pad sitting right under the grubs’ noses a second longer than he needed to. If he sent a Raven to do a recon, though, the chances were that it would either tip off the grubs or expose Pad’s position.

  “Can you give me coordinates?”

  “I’ve given them to the kid in CIC. But I’ve got to sit it out, sir. You’ll need someone doing FAC, at very least.”

  “If the DRA have got their asses in gear, then it’ll be a ground strike. They’ve got a new gizmo.”

  “Yeah, the boffins always have. Tell ’em to make sure they put new batteries in it, though. I hate it when toys don’t work.”

  “You sure you’re going to be okay out there?”

  “I’ve been okay out here for years.”

  Hoffman tried to jolly him along. “Living on bats.”

  “Nah. The little bleeders are too fast. No bloody meat on ’em, either.”

  “Okay, Pad. I’ll get back to you. Hoffman out.”

  The gunners were sitting up now, listening to the one-sided conversation. Hoffman debated whether to go down to CIC or drop by Prescott’s office.

  “Reavers,” he said. “Stay sharp. They’re going to be back.”

  “Just in time to stop skills fade, sir.”

  “Yeah, they’re thoughtful like that.”

  Hoffman opted for CIC and a secure phone call. He didn’t have an office. He didn’t feel he needed one; it was a luxury they didn’t have space for, and anything he needed to say was probably something Mathieson needed to hear anyway. The kid looked okay, all things considered.

  “No Stroud?” Hoffman asked, picking up the phone.

  “I told her to get some sleep, sir,” Mathieson said. “I’ve gone down in history as the man who told Anya Stroud she looked rough. She can’t punch a cripple.”

  “You’re doing okay, Mathieson.”

  “You want some privacy, sir?”

  “No, I just need to talk to Prescott to see if we’ve got some new kit to deal with that location.” He pressed the internal code and waited. Mathieson put his headset over both ears rather than just one, his way of saying that he wasn’t eavesdropping, and Hoffman waited for Prescott’s secretary to pick up. “Hi Jillian. It’s Hoffman. Is he in?”

  “I’ll check for you, Colonel.”

  She was camped outside Prescott’s door like a frigging guard dog. Of course she knew if he was in. Maybe she just sai
d that automatically, but it pissed Hoffman off and all he wanted was for her to say she’d check if he was free. It sounded less like a half-assed lie. Hoffman drummed his fingers on the desk, wondered who had scratched the initials “PBD” into the grain, and waited.

  Prescott’s voice made him start. “What can I do for you, Victor?”

  “I’ve got a cave target, Chairman. Reavers. How close are we to getting the Lightmass deployable?”

  “I’ll check and get back to you. What do you mean by Reavers?”

  “Report from FAC. Salton’s spotted what might be a Reaver breeding area.”

  “Very well. Give me ten minutes.”

  Hoffman put the phone down and waited again. He didn’t like waiting and he didn’t like sitting at a desk, but it beat meetings. He was doing something tangible. He’d rather have gone out and joined Pad to stare down the sights of a Lancer and pull the trigger, but he had to make do with what his rank allowed. Mathieson wheeled himself away from the desk and went to the far wall to stick marker pins in the map. He was having trouble reaching a location north of the city, and Hoffman got up to help him, but the kid didn’t make eye contact and heaved himself up on one arm to stretch. He got the pin in the board eventually, but it was a struggle.

  “I’m okay, sir.” He flopped back into the wheelchair. “I can do this.”

  “I’ll get the carpenter to build a ramp,” Hoffman said. “No point making this any harder than it needs to be. You’ve got your invisible medal for being a stubborn bastard. You don’t have to prove yourself to anyone.”

  Mathieson didn’t look convinced. He stabbed the remaining pins into the lower half of the board with some force and went back to his desk. It was almost deserted in CIC today, just the quiet ticking of printers and the occasional burst of radio chatter, and when the phone rang it seemed much louder than normal.

  “Prescott here. I’ve spoken to Dr. Payne and he says his best estimate for the Lightmass going live is Gale at the earliest.”

  “That’s the goddamn New Year, Chairman. I need it in days. Weeks, at most. What the hell’s he been doing all this time?”