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

by Karen Traviss

  “So we just wait,” Niko said.

  Marcus checked his rifle and patted down his pockets like he was checking where he’d put his ammo. “That’s about the size of it.” He walked over to the foot of the steps and listened. “The arty’s ramping up. And more Ravens. The grubs are already out there on the ground.”

  He ran up the steps and disappeared. Niko looked at Reeve.

  “He’s loving this, isn’t he?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say loving it,” Reeve said. “Finally got a real job to do, more like. He’s back in his comfort zone, which just happens to be hell.”

  Niko would have worded it differently but he didn’t want to say it out loud. Reeve probably thought the same thing. He just gave him that look: yeah, he deserves a better end. Marcus was pumped up for his last stand. It was frightening because they were going to have to make that stand too, but it was also tragic and upsetting because neither of them thought Marcus belonged here. They were watching a decent guy who’d had to choose between two wrong answers, a guy who was still willing to put it on the line to the very end, long after the army had forgotten him, and nobody would ever know about it.

  Niko left Edouain and Vance to it and went up to the yard with Reeve. Marcus was scanning the sky, hand shielding his eyes from the watery sunlight.

  “Did you get your radio working?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “You can’t patch into the CIC net, though. Hear the rest of the voice traffic.”

  Niko shook his head. “No, but I can call in.”

  “Probably just as well. Can’t work out what’s going on even with a full ops room plot.”

  “I spoke to her, you know. When I called CIC. She promised to pass a message to my wife.”

  “Yeah. I guessed you knew who she was.”

  “She sounds … well, as good as she looks.”

  “Yeah.” Marcus just nodded. Niko knew he wouldn’t look him in the eye this time. “Yeah.”

  “She told me to tell you she loves you.”

  Marcus paused for a few moments. “Shame I didn’t give you a message to pass on.”

  “Yeah,” Niko said. Marcus didn’t seem the type who’d take kindly to other guys poking their nose in his strained love life, but it was the right time to tell him. “So maybe I took the liberty of telling her what you would have said anyway.”

  Marcus turned his head slowly, the way he did when he was pissed off and almost challenging someone to dare repeat what they’d just said. But he just gave Niko a very discreet nod, eyes shut for a second.

  “Appreciate it,” he said.

  The artillery noise was getting louder, almost continuous booming like a rapid and irregular heartbeat. Niko could hear the rattle of Raven door guns but he couldn’t see the helicopters themselves. There was a battle going on outside. As they waited for whatever shit was about to spray off the fan in their direction, the door crashed open and Vance burst out.

  “They’re coming,” he said. “We can hear them down there. Stand by.”

  Marcus lit up like someone had plugged him into the mains. “Okay, everybody stand to. Runners—you make sure you report any movement to every position. We’ll stop them in the basement. Might be a feint, so keep a goddamn eye on every ingress point. Got it?”

  Everybody broke as if they knew where to go. Niko was as impressed as hell. Marcus headed for the basement at a sprint and Niko followed, not even sure where Parmenter and Campbell had gone, but when he looked back along the corridor to the kitchens he saw Campbell heading that way with Chunky and a few other guys. The line between jailer and jailed was completely irrelevant now. Down by the boiler room, Edouain and Vance knelt by the escape tunnel, listening.

  “Can’t tell how far down they are,” Edouain said. “You know what the acoustics are like.”

  Marcus nodded, rifle aimed down into the hole. “Hold off until they’re pretty well at the top. Otherwise it’ll just be a nice warm bath by the time it reaches them. They need scalding water full in the face.”

  “Lovely,” Niko said. He wondered how much use his sidearm would be against a grub when Gears needed a goddamn rifle and chainsaw to stop them. “What are they, anyway?”

  “Not drones,” Marcus said. “Too big to fit. I could hardly move down there. I’m guessing Wretches. Evil little shits about so high.” He indicated waist height with his free hand. “If you can’t boil them, shoot them or jump them with someone else. It’ll take two regular guys to pull one down.”

  “But one Gear.”

  Marcus shrugged and took aim again. “That’s why they fed us the extra calories.”

  Niko could hear them now. Scurrying, scuffing noises wafted up from the hole, and a weird kind of mumbling that sounded like old men leering and hacking up phlegm at somebody. He’d never seen a Wretch and he despised them already. Edouain held up his hand like a race steward at the start line of the Ephyra Steeplechase.

  “Hold it … hold it …”

  The scrabbling was much louder now. Reeve held the drainpipe steady with what looked like a pair of ancient, rusted coal tongs while Vance gripped the valve that let the water flood out. Edouain seemed to be timing, nodding to himself as he counted under his breath.

  “I can see them—now!”

  “Bomb gone,” Vance said, and the boiling water shot down the pipe into the hole. Steam billowed everywhere.

  The squeals and screams below told Niko what he needed to know. Edouain held up a hand to signal stop. “Hold it!” No wonder Reeve was using tongs to steady the pipe. The water was so hot that the plastic looked slightly buckled. “That’s ruined their day.”

  He leaned over the hole to take a look. It was pretty damn brave, Niko thought, because there was no telling what was down there. Thrashball-sized spiders with teeth were bad enough. But Edouain had probably been a war hero back in Pelles, a guy much like Marcus, a man with the balls to operate behind enemy lines even if he was just a terrorist on the COG side of the border. Everyone held their breath. Steam still wafted out of the tunnel. Edouain leaned in a little further, hands flat on the ground on either side of the hole.

  “Can’t see any—uhh!”

  A gray shape shot out of the hole, shrieking, and smacked Edouain full in the face. Marcus didn’t even pull the trigger. He caught the thing square in the chest with an upward swing of the rifle and Niko heard the wet squelch, almost like he’d skewered it with a bayonet. The rifle didn’t have one. The creature landed on the flagstones with a thud and Marcus was right on it, pounding its face with the stock of the rifle until it stopped screaming and thrashing. Niko aimed his pistol down the hole, expecting another thing to follow, but it was hard to look away from the skewered creature. Marcus stepped back and poked the body with his boot.

  “That’s a Wretch,” he said. “Parboiled.”

  Niko stared. So did Edouain. Reeve and Vance were still focused on the hole, ready to open the sluices again. The creature was misshapen and monkey-like in a way, the flesh falling off its chest like overcooked chicken. Its face might have been a mess from the scalding water. It was hard to tell how pretty it might have been before.

  “Why didn’t you shoot?” Niko asked.

  Marcus grabbed the Wretch by its arms and dragged it over to the hole before rolling it back in. Niko heard it slither down the side of the tunnel and then squelch to a stop.

  “Saving ammo for something bigger,” Marcus said. “But now I’ve got to clean out the goddamn barrel. Got a cleaning kit?”

  “In the office. Somewhere.”

  “Go get it, will you?”

  Marcus just looked irritated that the Wretch had messed up his rifle. Niko ran as fast as he could, amazed at his own turn of speed when he needed it, and passed through the kitchens on the way to the back stairs.

  “What is it?” Campbell called after him.

  “Wretches,” Niko shouted back. “We’re boiling them. Everybody keep their hair on, okay?”

  Niko grabbed
the radio handset when he reached the office and shoved it in his pocket. He tried to call the Sovereigns switchboard. All he got was the recorded message saying the exchange was busy and to try later. When he went back to the boiler room, Edouain and Reeve were keeping watch on the hole. Every so often, Edouain said “Pour!” and Vance loosed a ten-second burst of boiling water while Reeve cocked an ear.

  “I’m not hearing anything now,” Reeve said.

  “They’re not going to give up that easily.” Marcus stripped down the rifle and pulled the cleaning rod through a few times. “Okay, Mataki would have kicked my ass for a sloppy clean like that, but we’re out of time.” He reassembled the rifle and looked down the hole for himself. “I miss bots. They’re great for recons.”

  Niko could still hear the boom of guns outside. He took the radio out of his jacket and checked the settings so he didn’t need to fumble for the channel if he needed to call CIC fast. But what good was that going to do? The army sounded like it had its hands full with the grubs too. In the background, he heard someone running down a corridor—human boots, but enough to make him start—and then Chunky raced into the boiler area.

  “There’s these monkey things coming in,” he said, breathless. “They’re in the main wing.”

  “There’s no ingress point,” Marcus said. But he was halfway to the steps, rifle ready. “Okay, we’ll plug that hole, wherever it is. Officer Jarvi, call CIC and tell them we’ve got Wretches in here. Reeve, with me.”

  “They’re not going to send backup, Fenix,” Niko said.

  “I know.” Marcus looked back for a moment. “But you still need to tell them.”

  Niko flicked the switch and held the radio to his mouth, wondering if he’d get Anya Stroud again, and also wondering if she would be happier or not for knowing that Marcus was still the man she’d always thought he was.

  COG RESEARCH STATION AZURA: GALE, 14 A.E.

  Nevil wasn’t afraid of the Onyx Guard, COGIntel, or even Richard damn Prescott himself. What was there to lose? Everything he cared about was gone: and he could never go home again, whatever home meant these days.

  He waited in the comfortable, well-equipped sitting room that served the two top-floor laboratories in the main building. The problem with Azura was that every element of it, even the most sinister bits, was tasteful luxury. The padded opulence around him deadened sound and made him feel as if he was being swallowed and digested by the place. If he was going to be interrogated and roughed up, he wanted it to be in a setting that fitted the occasion, preferably with a single naked lightbulb hanging from a frayed cable above a table in a dark, lonely cell scented with the previous prisoner’s terrified piss.

  But Paul Dury didn’t do things that way. Neither did Louise Settile, as far as he could tell. She looked the part in her blue suit—no spa-style casuals for her—but she struck him as a woman who’d rationalized the disturbing life an agent had to lead by reducing everything to the same dull level of necessity as her housekeeping. Feed the cat, collect the dry cleaning, neutralize two foreign spies, tap a phone. He tried to imagine her getting smoochy with Prescott, another creature of infinite self-control and unshockability, and completely failed. It was hard to believe there was any personal connection at all between them, let alone passion.

  Dury stirred the cups of coffee and handed one to him. “Just waiting for Professor Fenix and Dr. Bakos,” he said. “You okay?”

  That was the only question Dury had asked him. There’d been no pressure to tell him everything he knew about Adam, nor any subtle inquiries. Maybe that was Dury’s technique, just being the honest guy who asked straight questions and only shot you if you gave the wrong answer. Nevil liked him. They were on chummy first-name terms, Nev and Paul. It was impossible to spend hours on the range with Dury and not get to know him too well to do anything but admire his professionalism and directness.

  “I’d be happier if I knew what this was about,” Nevil said.

  “Agent Settile just wants to clarify a few things with your boss.”

  “You don’t have to euphemize with me, Paul.”

  “Okay, she thinks your boss is a lying toad and she’s going to find out what he’s keeping from her so she can sleep at night.”

  “Thanks.” Oh shit. “That’s what I needed to know.”

  “And you know what he’s up to, but you’ve already gone way beyond your own boundaries of loyalty by grassing him up to Prescott. So I’m not leaning on you to tell me, because if it was dangerous stuff, I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t sit back and let him be a complete asshole again. So … something dumb and annoying. But you know about vetting, don’t you? You’ve been vetted for your security clearances quite a few times. The questions. Every cough and spit about your family. What you’ve done. What you’ve done that you’d rather not have everyone know about. And you know that it’s not the answers that matter, Nev, but whether you’re prepared to lie. That’s all. Any answer is the right one, except a lie.”

  Nevil understood that. “How about failure to mention things?”

  “Well, I’d still say that’s a lie, and so would COGIntel, but Prescott would judge it according to who was doing the withholding and what was being withheld.”

  Nevil had now worked out Dury’s interrogation methodology. He’d tell you the absolute truth. In a calm, level voice, he’d tell you that he needed to know something, and that if you didn’t tell him, he’d break your legs. There’d be no threats or posturing. He’d simply be describing a sequence of events, and it would be up to you if you set those events in motion or not, but they would happen if you did.

  I could just tell him. But I don’t think he really wants me to. Let’s see.

  “So you want me to tell you what I know about Adam.”

  “Not really,” Dury said. “Settile likes to do things evidentially, because she’s got different agendas to me, and I kind of like you the way you are, a pretty decent guy who’s motivated by outrage and decency rather than approval-seeking or fear.”

  Yes, Nevil had absolutely nailed Dury’s MO, and Dury seemed happy with the knowledge that he was so transparent to him.

  “Okay. I’ll just drink my coffee then.”

  “I got you about right.” Dury sipped contentedly. That meant he wasn’t going back to the mainland for a few days, time for the faintest trace of real, honest-to-god coffee to clear his system. “We understand each other.”

  “We do.”

  Nevil leaned back in the chair and wondered why Adam was so secretive. He wasn’t a dishonest or dishonorable man. He almost made a hobby of wrestling with his conscience. But a lot seethed inside, and there seemed to be a point where he refused to share as a point of principle. Maybe his father had never allowed him any privacy and he still had a need to keep some things to himself as a reassurance that he had any control at all. It was too easy to buy Prescott’s Adam-always-knows-best theory, the idea that Adam was so in love with himself intellectually that he didn’t think lesser mortals would understand what he was doing and would just spoil his brilliant science by chasing him from the village with burning torches and pitchforks. No, it was sadder and darker than that. Nevil had seen Adam’s tormented, uncommunicative relationship with his own son, and he knew.

  Eventually voices carried down the hall outside. No footsteps: the exquisite hand-knotted Furlin carpet was too sumptuously thick for that. Settile was chatting with Adam and Bakos but the words were just murmurs from all of them. She stuck her head in the doorway.

  “Would you gentlemen like to join us in the biohaz suite?” she said. “No need to gulp. I think you can bring your coffee.”

  Nevil didn’t even meet Dury’s eyes. Yes, he knew exactly what was coming. Bakos might have blabbed, or something else might have tipped off Settile, but Adam was going to get a spanking. All Nevil could do was keep his end up and focus on what this was about: finding a way of killing Lambency before it devastated Sera. It wasn’t even about killing Locust. It was strategic stuf
f. He drained his cup and followed Dury down the corridor. The lab was deserted for once, at at this time of the day that meant everyone had been ordered to disappear and not come back until they were told to.

  “Okay,” Settile said. “This won’t take long.” She walked along the bench to the microscope and stood by it like a TV presenter opening a worthy documentary. “I’d like you to show me some blood samples, Dr. Bakos. First of all, show me a stabilized slide of a sample with Lambent contamination, and a control sample of uncontaminated blood.”

  Nevil couldn’t tell if Bakos was privy to this or not. She didn’t flinch. But then she was complicit too, because she knew who the in vivo research subject was. She took a pair of fresh latex gloves from the dispenser and opened the storage chamber to select the slides.

  “Okay, now show me,” Settile said. “Regular blood first, Lambent sample second.”

  Nevil had never been sure what Settile’s background was. But she’d been one of the intelligence analysts who’d worked on the UIR’s orbital laser project, the woman whose team had said the Indies had the research that would give them a working weapon in a very short time, and whose advice had led to the raid on Aspho Point and the use of that stolen research to speed up the Hammer of Dawn project.

  And that’s where I came in.

  Everyone’s lives were inextricably linked. Louise Settile had caused Dr. Nevil Estrom, in a way. There was now one degree of separation. He watched, finding himself oddly disappointed that even if Sera was saved from its environmental disaster, the extraordinary mesh of individual lives that underpinned it would never be known and marveled over.

  “That’s a regular blood sample,” Bakos said, adjusting the focus and letting Settile look down the eyepiece. Settile took her time, then stood back to let Bakos load the next one. “And that’s a sealed one with the Lambent pathogen. Perfectly safe.”

  Settile bent over the microscope again. “I can see the difference, and I’m not a hematologist,” she said. “The speckling around the margins of the red cells is distinctive, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. It’s not even necessary to add dye to be able to see it.”