“Yeah, count me out, too,” said Baird. “Wow, listen to that silence out there. Isn’t it weird?”
The sea was pretty noisy, and so was the wind. But there was no traffic, no animal sounds, and no distant thump of artillery or mortars. It took some getting used to. Cole and Marcus patrolled the town on foot, as much for the novelty of breathing in clean, mild air as getting into alleys that were too narrow for the ’Dill.
The locals had built a really nice place here.
“Is Dom really doin’ better?” Cole asked.
Marcus shrugged. “Up one day, down the next.” He let out a long breath. “Thinks he can save the world if he works hard enough.”
“That world’s gone, man. Gotta draw the line. Save the new one.”
“How do you teach a man who never quits that he’s done all he can?”
Marcus was no good at letting go of stuff, either. “Well, maybe you gotta show him.”
If there was anything good about the last fifteen years, Cole decided, it was that shared pain saved you from having to explain what the problem was. Everyone—Gears and civvies alike—had been through a lot of the same garbage, more or less, so you never had to feel you were crazy or abnormal, seeing as normal meant you were just like everyone else. And that meant seriously fucked up.
Pelruan looked like its worst problem might have been feeling lonely. It was so small that they could cover it all in thirty minutes at a slow amble. Every time they did a loop around the Ravens up on the cliff, Sorotki and Barber were sitting in KR-239’s bay, chatting happily with buddies on long-range comms.
“It’s okay here,” Cole heard Barber saying. “I can’t believe all this shit is finally over.”
Marcus stood staring out to sea.
“What’s that?” he said.
Cole followed where he was pointing. It looked like a dim, intermittent white light on the water. Then it was gone.
“Reflection?”
Marcus stared a little longer. “Don’t think so,” he said. “Cole Train, go wake everyone.”
PELRUAN, 0300 HOURS.
If there was anything out there on the water tonight, then it had to be human, and Dom hadn’t had to deal with a human enemy in a very long time.
He kept to the spongy grass above the pebble shore so that he could hear better instead of drowning out everything with crunching boots. Once he’d adjusted to the sound of the sea, he tried to filter for other noises. At one point he was sure he heard the puttering noise of an old outboard motor.
Damn, my hearing used to be better than this. That’s what comes of never wearing a helmet. Eighteen, nineteen years of noise, noise, noise …
Dom scanned the shore with his field glasses, picking up what little moonlight there was. A small flock of seabirds huddled against a cliff north of him, heads tucked under wings; gleaming shapes in the water turned out to be seals of some kind, eyes narrowed in weirdly smug human expressions. If it hadn’t been for the voice traffic in his earpiece, Dom would have believed he was the last man left on Sera, alone with more wildlife than he’d seen in years. He was out of visual range of everything and everybody.
It would have been a great place to bring up kids.
Baird’s voice in his earpiece made him jump. “Dom, see anything?”
“All clear.”
“There’s something out there, man.”
Anya cut in on the radio. “Marcus, I’ve just left Lewis. He’s disappointed that everyone’s been told to stay inside and leave us to it. Some of the locals are pretty pissed off.”
“When his guys have trained with us and know how to stay out of our fire, we’ll deploy together,” Marcus said. “Until then, they’re safer indoors.”
In the middle of nowhere, the list of potential intruders was short. If it wasn’t the heavies from the Stranded camp, then there was a whole new problem out there that they hadn’t thought of.
Big island. Long coastline. A few thousand people stuck in one town and a few farmers here and there can’t possibly keep an eye on who comes and goes.
“Massy would have to be crazy to start anything,” Baird said. “Is he seriously going to go up against Gears? Dumb asshole.”
Bernie had been unusually quiet. She didn’t have a lot to say when she was working, but she’d been checking in with only the occasional grunt, nothing more.
“Hey, Mataki—what d’you think?”
She took a little while to answer. “He might be doing what damage he can before the whole bloody COG shows up and smokes him. He knows there are only ten of us. And he doesn’t seem worried by the locals.”
“Rules of engagement,” Marcus said. “Remember that we have them, Delta.”
“Yeah,” Baird said, “but do they?”
“Just saying. They’re not grubs. Self-defense or defense of COG citizens when presented with lethal or injurious force.”
Baird didn’t argue. That didn’t mean he wouldn’t find a reason to shoot, though.
Dom wondered how Bernie felt about that.
“Bernie, can I ask you a question?”
“Yeah.”
“If you shot some of the bastards to start with, why didn’t they kill you?”
Marcus sighed. “Dom, drop it.”
“Hey, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Fair question.” Bernie seemed relaxed about it, but that didn’t mean a thing. “You want a blow-by-blow account, all the details?”
“God, no. I’m sorry.”
“I think they wanted value for money,” she said. “You have to be alive to suffer, remember. That’s why I felt a bit… cheated after I killed them.”
“You got that cleaver with you, Bernie?” Baird asked. Dom couldn’t remember the last time he’d called her Bernie. He was definitely doing his best to be nice to her. “The one for making omelets.”
“I thought it was for chopping nuts.”
“We’ll swap recipes.”
The squad was now spread out along the kilometer of shore, with Anya patrolling the landward boundary in the ’Dill. She was pretty safe in that; Stranded weren’t likely to have grub firepower. But Dom was sure she’d just drive right over anyone who got in her way, because she had that same streak as her mom, the ability to shut out everything else and go for a target.
She was still getting to grips with the physical stuff. When she did, she’d be scary.
“Hey, something moving,” Baird said. “Hear it?”
It was running fast along the pebbles, something pretty small by the sound of it, a rapid skittering noise at a gallop pace. Dom picked it up in his binoculars: two goddamn dogs. After the feral pack in Merrenat, he wasn’t taking any chances. He could hear the hah-hah-hah of their panting as they raced in his direction.
But they streaked past him. They didn’t even slow down to check him out. He wondered if they were chasing rabbits, or whatever had left its crap over the short turf here, but a few moments later they started barking their heads off. Then two, three, four shots rang out. The barking stopped.
“Game on,” Baird said.
Raven engines cut through the night air as the birds lifted in complete blackout. If anyone was coming ashore from the sea, they had to do it at Pelruan, between the break in the cliffs that gave the town a sloping shoreline and a harbor. Dom dropped to one knee, Lancer ready. In the town behind him, dogs took up the barking.
“KR units, on task.” Gettner said. “Sorotki, keep an eye on the back door.”
“On it, boss.” KR-239 broke away and headed inland.
“Contact, hundred meters out, on your two o’clock, Fenix—rigid inflatables.”
“I see ’em.”
“And here,” Cole said. “They’re spreadin’ out. I got a bunch of three inbound, slow-movin’.”
“I see you, Cole, and I have a shot—lead boat of group of three.” That was Bernie. “Ready when you are.”
Dom ran toward the slope of the next cliff to get some elevation. He could see what
Gettner had eyeballed now—another group, four small raiding boats, coming in slowly. The swell hid them in the troughs until they were almost ashore. Then they hit the throttles and stormed in.
Shit, they had to be crazy. They had to hear the choppers and feel the downdraft, even if they couldn’t see any lights. Maybe they assumed the COG was too gentlemanly and civilized to unleash its superior firepower on a bunch of randomly armed civvies.
Wrong call, asshole.
The night suddenly lit up as Gettner switched on the Raven’s searchlight. A brilliant white shaft raked the shore and shallows, picking out one of the inflatables like a cabaret spot. For a moment, just a moment, the raiding party stared up, hair flattened by the downdraft, spray whipping around them.
“I really wanted to see fishing nets,” Gettner sighed. Then the bullhorn boomed. “Drop the fucking weapons, vermin, or I will open fire.”
Dom’s eye caught upward movement as an assortment of rifles lifted and aimed. He didn’t take in anything else, only the weapons. A pipe-like barrel jerked up almost vertically just a split second before a yellow ball of discharged gas blew out behind it. A grenade round hit the Raven. Fire spat from the air down at the boats, raising a neat line of water.
Been there. Been on the receiving end of that, a long time ago.
Dom fired out of pure reflex. His save-yourself instinct was screaming: Watch out for the Raven, the bird’s been hit, it’s going down. But nothing hit him, and there was no fireball. When he turned, the Raven was hovering, firing short bursts into the shallows. More boats skidded up the shingle and Dom opened fire again, punching through one of the rubber hulls. Three men jumped out of it and ran ashore, and Dom jumped up to sprint after them. Automatic fire—some Lancer, some not—rattled up and down the beach. The bastards were landing at multiple points.
Marcus cut in. “Gettner, you hit?”
“If they’d done more than clip the boarding step, you’d know all about it.”
“Give me some light by the slipway, then.”
“On it.”
“I have a visual on the ’Dill.” That was Sorotki. “Heading for … yeah, I see them, three big junkers, heading into town. Going in to welcome them to Pelruan …”
“Hey, mind my tanks, shithead.” Gettner must have been taking more fire from the ground. “Barber, smoke them before they hit the reserve fuel, will you?”
Dom reached the edge of the buildings, panting. The Stranded had vanished into the streets. That was the last thing he needed. He couldn’t see the bastards, and the homes were mainly wooden structures that gave no protection to anyone inside, a bad place for a firefight. It was even worse knowing there were civvies huddled in every building who wouldn’t have a clue how to stay down and let Gears deal with the cleanup.
“Dom!” Baird sounded out of breath. “I’m heading right toward you. We’re going to intersect by the town hall.”
“Where the hell are you? Can you see me? I can’t see you.”
“Running parallel with the road where the bar is.” He paused. “Amateurs. Homemade firebombs—”
Glass smashed. A tongue of yellow flame leapt above the low roofline, and the whoomp of igniting fuel followed by more Lancer fire gave Dom something to run at. He skidded around the next corner, trying to orient himself by the light of the fire, and caught sight of one of the Stranded running full tilt down the road. He stopped and squeezed off a burst. The guy pitched forward and fell on one side. Dom was suddenly aware of screaming—a woman’s voice from out in the open, not muffled by walls.
Shit.
Dom had shot someone in the back. For a terrible moment he thought he’d dropped a civilian who’d come out to defend their property or something. He ran for the body, but Baird appeared out of a side alley and gave him a thumbs-up.
“Locals are firefighting,” he said. “Shit, I hate urban ops. You can’t hose anything.”
“I’ve lost at least two of them.”
“It’s a small town. How far can they get?”
“How much damage can they do?”
Wooden buildings, narrow streets, fire. Dom could work it out. Voice traffic had been almost zero for a few minutes, but now Dom’s earpiece went on overload.
“Shore, clear.” Bernie said. “Boats—clear. Eight-Zero, can you see anything else down there?”
“Negative, Mataki. Heading over to the town.”
“Anya, Sorotki—Fenix here. What’s happening your side?”
“Roadblocking.” Anya was shouting over the noise of a Raven. Sorotki sounded like he was almost parked on top of the ’Dill. “Because I can’t drive and operate the gun at the same time.”
Machine-gun fire started up in short bursts, and then the distinctive sound of the ’Dill’s belt-fed gun joined it. Dom could have sworn he heard Anya whoop. That was so unlike her that it shook him. He ran where the two Stranded had gone, following the light of another burning building, and straight into a knot of men from the town—shit, he hoped he could tell the difference—with a scruffy bearded guy pinned bodily to the ground. One of the men put a hunting rifle to the Stranded’s head and pulled the trigger.
Oh God oh God oh God …
For a few seconds, Dom was back in the Hollow, one simple movement of his trigger finger marking the line between finding what he’d searched for so desperately and destroying it forever.
Oh God, Maria, I’m so sorry …
The group of men looked up at Dom as if he’d crashed a party.
“What the hell’s wrong with you? The bastard asked for it.” There was a Gnasher shotgun lying on the road, COG issue. One of the men grabbed it. “We told you to let us deal with this. What the hell are you going to do now? Let them burn us out?”
Dom snapped back to being Dom the Gear, ready to deal with anything. “You look after the firefighting,” he said, poking his finger hard in the man’s chest. “Leave the Stranded to us. Okay?”
“You started this. You provoked them.”
Baird caught up with him and they left the civilians to it, realizing that Gears weren’t coming across as the heroes of the hour in Pelruan. This wasn’t Jacinto. The locals didn’t see Gears as saviors, the last line of defense. They were just outsiders that they didn’t invite and didn’t understand.
“I’ve lost the other asshole.”
“Screw him,” Baird said. “Hear that?” There was crazed barking, but it was coming from outside now, not the houses. “They’ve let the dogs loose. Wow, they must train them to take out Stranded. I’m impressed.”
Dom stopped dead. “Marcus? Anya? Anyone need backup? We lost our quarry.”
The Lancer fire from the shore had stopped. Dom could hear people coming out of the houses, calling to their neighbors to check if they were okay. Baird yelled at them to get back indoors because it wasn’t over yet, not by a long shot. If they heard him, they took no notice.
“Ahh, shit.” That was Marcus with his radio channel open. Dom had no idea where he was. “Get back inside, lady … Cole, get them back inside. Shit. Dom? We’re clear shoreside. Get down to the road and mop up anyone from the junkers.”
Baird ran alongside Dom. “Next time we hit a new town, first thing we do is memorize the street plan.”
“Yeah.”
“We’d have been screwed without the Ravens.”
“I never said Stranded were dumb.”
There was one road out of Pelruan to the south, now marked by a pall of smoke and flame. The town was so small that if you stood at the right point, or got some elevation, you could see everything from the road to the shore in one axis, and from one headland to the next in the other. Even in darkness—it was 0405 now—the aftermath of the fighting was visible. Dom climbed up on a dry-stone wall and scanned the area. There were five or six fires, some already being damped down, and both Ravens were now out over the open country to the south, searchlights directed, guns occasionally loosing off bursts of fire.
Dom and Baird ran on. By the time
they got to the roadblock, Cole was hauling out bodies, and the two Ravens were heading back, their nose lights visible head-on. Two junkers lay on their sides, burning fiercely, and the third was upright with its roof ripped open like a tin can.
“I’d hate to see the Lieutenant when she’s in a pissy mood,” Cole said. “Damn, you seen the collection of toys these jokers got? There’s grubs with less firepower than this.”
The ’Dill had stopped at a point where the road sloped away sharply into the river on one side and soft ground on the other. Perfect choke point: Anya definitely had the right stuff. Dom just didn’t want to see her end up like her mom, killed in a magnificent but crazy single-handed charge. It might have been great for the movies, but it was shit for the people left to grieve. The top hatch opened slowly and Anya eased her head and shoulders clear. Dom wouldn’t have said she looked pleased with herself, not quite, but in the light from the fires she had a certain shine to her cheeks like she’d just come back from a brisk walk.
“You can’t see much from this gun position,” she said.
Baird clapped a few times. “Great debut.”
“I think Mitchell did most of the work.” She ducked back down and came out through the front hatch. When she saw Cole clearing up, her face changed, and Dom wondered if she’d suddenly made the connection at gut level that the targets she’d been firing at so diligently were actually flesh and blood. “How many of them are there?”
“We’ll count ’em proper when the Ravens are done playing fighter jocks,” Cole said. “Shit, seen that chunk out of Gettner’s bird? Whole step ripped off the crew bay. She’s lucky she ain’t toast.”
“We’ll hear all about it.” Baird collected the weapons, an assortment that was mainly automatic rifles and grenade launchers. He paused to take a naval officer’s ceremonial sword off a Stranded’s belt. “Whoa, Captain Charisma won’t like you playing pirates with that, buddy. Show some respect.”
Dom slid his hand inside his armor to check that his photographs were still safe. “You okay, Anya?”
“I’m … I’m fine, Dom. Just not trained for this.”
Gears of War: Jacinto's Remnant Page 25
