Gears of War: Anvil Gate (12 page)

Hoffman hadn’t interrogated anyone for more than fifteen years. Nobody took grubs alive, so the COG had a serious case of skills-fade when it came to questioning prisoners. His stomach knotted as Trescu got up and walked over to the window to gaze out as if he didn’t have a care in the world. Loris and Enador had obviously braced themselves for the worst. Enador’s jaw was set in defiance, but one hand gripping the sheet betrayed his anxiety. Maybe Trescu had a point.

The door opened and a burly Gorasni sergeant walked in with Enador’s teenage son in a restraining arm-hold. The kid was red in the face. Enador looked him over.

“Son, what have they done to you?”

“Nothing, Dad.”

I get it
, Hoffman thought.
This isn’t going to be pretty
. Kids could—and would—kill you just as easily as an adult. This one made bombs. Hoffman reminded himself that kids younger than Nial Enador were considered grown men in other cultures.

Burkan said nothing. Hoffman waited for him to start roughing up the boy. Trescu just looked at his watch.

“One last time,” he said. “And that is something I never usually
concede. Mr. Loris, tell me where your camps and arms caches are.”

So … he was going to lean on Loris, and the suspense would rattle Enador, who would do anything rather than see his kid harmed, and …

“You’re finished, COG—and you, Indie.” Loris struggled for breath as he sat up a little more. Hoffman preferred enemies who earned his contempt, but these bastards were as tough and committed as any Gear. “Your world order’s gone up in smoke but you won’t accept it. Believe me—you’ll end up just like us Stranded, except we’ve had years of practice, and we’ve weeded out our weaklings. You’ll just fall apart. Natural selection. It’s a bitch, isn’t it?”

“So it is,” Trescu said.

Then he drew his sidearm and put it calmly to Loris’s head. There was no threat, no pistol-whipping, no yelling, none of the plain old-fashioned brutality Hoffman had expected. Trescu just pulled the trigger.

The loud crack filled the room. Blood sprayed the scrubbed wall behind the bed and the yellowing starched sheets.

It was over instantly.

Hoffman was aware of Nial gaping—he
was
a kid, just a kid—but the next second went on forever, a ringing silence that turned into one thudding beat of Hoffman’s heart.

The second of silence was many things; disbelief, shock, even that weird moment of horrified realization that a thing like that could never be undone, and how very short that terrible, irreversible moment was. Hoffman had seen many men die in far worse ways, men who were his friends, but he’d also pulled a trigger and felt less of a man for doing so. The past rushed after him and stood breathless at his side like someone he’d crossed the road to avoid. It would never leave him alone.

And then that second was gone. His heart hit that second beat, and another, and now it was hammering. Trescu took two unhurried steps to the other bed and put his pistol to Enador’s temple. Nial was screaming abuse and struggling in Burkan’s armlock.

“I will find it just as easy to kill your father.” Trescu reached out and grabbed the kid one-handed by his collar, hauling him up so that they were almost nose to nose. “You’ll come with me now, Nial, and we’ll talk
sensibly
, yes?”

“Don’t touch my dad!” The boy burst into tears. “Leave him alone! You lay a finger on him and I’ll fucking kill you!”

But he wasn’t going to kill anyone, and he wasn’t going to hold out for long now. Trescu looked like he knew it. It was a neat mind-fuck. Hoffman hadn’t seen it coming.

“Burkan, clear up this mess and see that Mr. Enador is comfortable,” Trescu said. “There’s no need for you to be present, Colonel.” He indicated his earpiece. “Everything Nial and I discuss can be monitored by your splendidly efficient Control personnel.”

Hoffman finally found his voice. But it didn’t sound like the man inside, the man who’d seen one death too many, and sometimes walked the knife-edge between never being able to pull a trigger again and never being able to stop. Trescu probably thought he’d lose his nerve and let the boy go.

“Just remember to record every detail,” Hoffman said. “And leave us to do the rest.”

He had to go. He adjusted his cap, feeling for the metal badge and lining it up with his nose, and grabbed the handle. The clatter of boots at a run outside grew suddenly louder and the door burst open and hit him. Hayman stood in the doorway, white-faced and furious. The old girl must have seen some bad shit in her time, but Hoffman had never seen utter shock on her face before. It took her a few seconds to take in the room and speak.

“Get the fuck out of my hospital, you
animal,
” she snarled. “And make sure you never end up in my ER. Because I’ll let you bleed out on the goddamn floor.”

She was talking to Trescu, but Hoffman had the feeling he was included. He didn’t need prompting to get out anyway. He paused to look into Hayman’s face just so she knew he didn’t buy all that territorial shit.

“Take it up with the Chairman,” he said. “I’m going to be too
busy working out how they managed to blow up another trawler. All hands lost, in case you give a damn.”

Hoffman seized the moment of silence to stalk out to the parade ground.
What next?
The upside of a continual stream of trouble was that he never had time to dwell on anything, and nobody expected him to. He had the Pelruan locals to worry about. And Michaelson—what the hell was the navy playing at? Couldn’t they even manage to defend a few fishing vessels now?

I’m going to put my boot up your ass, Quentin. We have to do better than this
.

Hoffman paused to call Anya on the radio. He could feel his hand shaking as he put it to his ear.

I hope that’s just old age
.

“You okay, sir?” One of the Gears on base security duty, Jace Stratton, jogged up to him with his rifle ready. The shot must have been heard halfway across the base. “Negligent discharge?”

“No.” Hoffman needed to get a grip of himself before he walked into Ops. He’d take a few minutes in his quarters. “Just Indies showing us how to deal with prisoners. Stand down. Nothing we can do.”

Stratton glanced past Hoffman as if he thought trouble might be coming through that door at any time. He didn’t seem that much older than the kid who’d just seen his father’s buddy shot through the head. But he’d been through a war on the front line, and he’d watched his family killed. That put some years on a man.

“You just say the word, sir,” Stratton said. “They executing them now? Is that how it’s going to be?”

Trescu’s right, the asshole. Think about Andresen and the others
.

“It’s academic.” Hoffman carried on walking. All the administrative offices—CIC, the infirmary, Prescott’s office, even some of the barracks buildings—overlooked that space, making it impossible to cross unobserved. “We’d have shot the bastard anyway.” He opened his radio link. “Anya? Tell Prescott that Trescu shot one of the prisoners. And get hold of Gavriel for me.”

“He’s called in, sir. He wants to come down and see you.”

“Send a ’Dill to collect him. I don’t want civvies splattered all over the road.”

“Will do, sir.”

Hoffman’s quarters were a couple of small attic rooms in the roof of the HQ building, nothing fancy. He took the fire escape to avoid conversations he didn’t want to have yet. As soon as he shut the door behind him, he ran cold water into the washbasin and rinsed his face. He wasn’t even sure why. It just made him feel calmer.

They killed our guys. I should have done it myself. Shit, what’s wrong with me?

Hoffman felt like a traitor to Andresen’s memory for wasting even a scrap of conscience on those bastards. The nagging voice started up in his head again, the one that reminded him that he’d once been judge and jury too, dispensing justice with a single round, because it had to be done to save lives.

Okay, yes, I get it. Self-loathing. Transfer. Hypocrisy. All that shit. Trescu and me, cut from the same cloth. But knowing that doesn’t stop it
.

He ran his palms over his scalp and sat down on the edge of his bed to stare at the bare floorboards. For a moment, he could have been in his old quarters at Anvegad, right down to the small window with the endless view.

We do the same thing over every day until we die
.

He wasn’t sure how long he sat there. It was probably just minutes. Then the stairs creaked, and he lifted his head just enough to see a pair of boots planted firmly in the doorway.

“Vic?”

Hoffman sat upright, hands on his knees. Bernie leaned against the door frame.

“I just needed to compose myself before I see our glorious leader,” he lied.

“Bullshit.”

“You’ve heard.”

“It’s hard to miss a gunshot in here. Or Hayman in full rant demanding to see Prescott. It’s all over the base now, Vic.”

“Saves me explaining, then.”

Bernie squatted on her heels to look into his face. Her bruises were already yellow and fading. “A few months ago you were ready to blow John Massy’s brains out for what he did to me, and not a second thought about it. Why is this different? Those tossers killed Andresen and crippled half a dozen more Gears. I’ll volunteer to slot the other two personally.”

There was no lying to Bernie. However many years they’d been apart, she still knew him better than anyone alive. And she knew the old Hoffman, the
real
one, the confident NCO before he became something he should never have been.

“I think it’s Anvil Gate,” he said. “The last few days—every damn thing seems to remind me of it.”

Maybe he’d done too good a job of not talking about the siege. Anyone old enough to remember it knew it had been desperate and didn’t fit the COG’s ideal of honorable combat. But they didn’t know all the details. The only ones who did were dead, except Hoffman himself.

“We make a habit of not telling each other things, don’t we, Vic?” Bernie said.

When Hoffman had told Bernie that they were the last two of their generation left of the 26th Royal Tyran Infantry, he hadn’t been sure how true that was. Since then he’d worked through the battalion list as it appeared on the day before he’d taken up his commission, the NCOs and enlisted men and women, and he realized it was completely accurate. They
were
the last survivors.

“Where were you thirty-two years ago?” Hoffman asked. “The summer of Anvil Gate? Shit, I can’t even work out the real year. The
old
calendar. Let’s stick with the new one.”

It was now recorded as 17
B.E
., Before Emergence, seventeen years before the Locust erupted out of nowhere and brought mankind to the brink. Bernie shook her head.

“I was in Kashkur too,” she said. “But I was at Shavad. And I hadn’t seen you for some time.”

That was what felt so strange. There were huge gaps in time, years when he hadn’t even known where Bernie was or if she was
even alive. Yet he’d first met her forty years ago, and it felt like continuous time, every void filled and closed in his mind.

“I better tell you, then,” Hoffman said. “But let’s clear up this pile of shit first.”

It was time he told her what the official record didn’t say about the siege of Anvil Gate. He was sick of secrets.

He vowed he was never going to keep one again.

CHAPTER 5

This was the ass-end of the world, Hoffman was certain.

No amount of fine Silver Era architecture or magnificent history was going to change the fact that Anvegad was a lonely rock of a place. He wouldn’t miss it when he left.
Three months down, four to go
. He was counting down the days to the end of the deployment on a calendar pinned to the wall.

It was one hell of a view from this window, though.

He paused mid-shave and reached out to push the wooden
frame fully open, letting in cold air that made the foam on his face tingle. The plain spread out below him could have been from another world. There was nothing out there but stony yellow soil with occasional thornbushes and the pale line of a single lonely road running parallel with the imulsion pipeline into the refinery in the distance. Generations of goats had grazed the place to bare rock. On mornings like this, the refinery merged with a backdrop of mountains that looked like ragged purple clouds on the horizon.