Gears of War: Anvil Gate (30 page)

Baird was at the instinctive reaction stage now. His mouth was dry with terror, but the rest of his body carried on with business as usual, doing split-second things he couldn’t have managed if he’d stopped to think about them rationally. There was something even more devoted to preserving Baird than Baird himself. It was
that primal part of his brain that really didn’t give a shit about his mind or his soul or anything beyond keeping the meat alive.

The small remaining scrap of Thinking Baird observed that reflex with amazement every time. He decided that was how those frigging crazy Raven pilots functioned most of the time.

Smoke and flame belched from the rig just fifty meters away from the hovering Raven. Sorotki was still holding the helicopter steady just above the water. Metal structures could have fallen and shredded his rotors, another explosion could have sent him crashing into the sea, and there was no telling what could burst from the water and take him down with it. But he just seemed to park in midair while Mitchell got a steady lock on the stalk.

Baird could see the rapid muzzle flash as Mitchell fired between the platform’s legs. Sam elbowed Baird to get his attention.

“Hey, we’re not out of polyps yet. Move it.”

“Yeah, okay. Lead me to ’em.”

Cole jogged up to them. “Somebody oughta check those lifeboats are still around if this all goes to shit.”

There was another loud boom. A hatch just in front of them burst open, maybe from the shock wave, and more polyps spilled out. Baird decided he’d take grubs any day. Even a tank-sized Corpser was somehow less hideous. It was the fact that these things
swarmed
. They were knee-high and they just kept coming, blindly single-minded, triggering some primal dread of being drowned in a wave of exploding meat.

Sam took out the first rank. The three of them were getting into a routine now, like an old-style rifle platoon forming ranks and reloading while the other sustained fire. Polyp debris spattered the metal walkway. When the firing stopped, Baird’s ears were ringing.

“Stalk down.” That was Mitchell’s voice in his earpiece. The Raven lifted and circled. “I think I’ve put a few holes in the rig, but the stalk’s pulped now.”

“Okay, let’s mop up the stragglers,” Sam said.

Firing continued from all directions. As they worked their way along gantries picking off the remaining polyps, the noise thinned
out and became more sporadic. Voices started calling in on the comm net.

“No more polyps coming through,” Marcus said. “How are we doing?”

“Running out of targets.” That was Rossi. “Everyone okay?”

“Two rig crew missing,” Jace said. “Hey, can anyone give us a hand with this fire?”

The accommodation section was now belching black smoke. The threat had shifted from polyps to something that had previously held the top award for Worst Possible Shit to Happen on a Rig. Baird hoped all that flammable fuel Marcus had piped to the decks to repel the polyps wasn’t leaking.

Hoffman’s voice cut in. “Is the platform secure? Can’t see anything else moving from up here.”

“Just finishing up,” Marcus said. “KR units, stand by for casevacs.”

The relative quiet that suddenly fell across the rig was weird. Baird could hear the whoosh and thump of the waves again, and metal clanging as people ran along gantries. Raven engines faded in and out on the wind.

Then there was a dull, echoing thud. Baird thought it was something settling from the damage, maybe the fire spreading and buckling plates, but then he heard Marcus, and knew it wasn’t.

“Shit,” Marcus said. “Stalk! We got another stalk! More polyps, coming through the other side of the well bay!”

So Mitchell was right. There was another stalk to take its buddy’s place.

“Shit,” Baird said, and ran for the center of the platform.

Dom never paused to consider what would kill him first, a polyp or a vapor explosion. He was living a second at a time, unable to think outside the moment until the mass of polyps he was firing into finally slowed or stopped.

The creatures boiled up through a buckled sheet of steel and met a hail of automatic fire from Marcus, a Gorasni driller, and
four of the roughnecks. Dom wasn’t surprised to see Trescu burst into the compartment and open fire as well. It just seemed a regular thing for the guy to do.

But the polyps kept coming. Every minute or two there was a long pause, as if the stalk had run out of ammo, and then it would start up again. Dom had lost track of the time. Hours, minutes? Minutes. Maybe fifteen. Maybe thirty. He couldn’t stop to check.

“Where else are they getting in?” Marcus yelled, reloading. “Can we get a fuel hose down here and burn them out?”

“They burst one of the vapor tanks,” the driller said. “Yeah, you kill them. You kill us, too. The whole damn rig.”

Another explosion shook the metal grating Dom was standing on. The polyps rushed out of another gap in the deck. It was now impossible to tell what damage was down to exploding polyps igniting gas leaks, and what was part of the chain of disaster set off by the initial fire under the living quarters. All anyone could do was stand and fight and try not to die. The thickening fog of black smoke made that a challenge.

“Where’s all that smoke coming from?” Marcus yelled.

Dom couldn’t tell if it was drifting or if they were right underneath the seat of a fire. “Dunno. But we can’t stay in here much longer without breathing apparatus.”

Marcus emptied another clip into the bottomless well of polyps. While he was reloading, one of the things got its front legs over the edge of a deck hatch. Dom moved to fire just as Marcus put his chainsaw down through its head. It went off with a loud bang, throwing him back a couple of paces, but he kept his balance and opened fire again.

Apart from an occasional shout of “Gangway gone!” nobody was coordinating the defense of the rig now. Nobody could see what the hell was going on. Dom wondered why the Ravens weren’t taking over, but then it occurred to him: they couldn’t see much from the air, either.

For a few moments, the flow of polyps stopped. Dom risked looking into the opening, and Marcus called across the compartment to Trescu.

“We’ll need to evacuate if these assholes don’t call it a day soon.” Marcus wiped sweat from his nose with the back of his glove. “The smoke’s going to choke us either way.”

Dom expected Trescu to spit defiance and swear he’d die before he’d abandon the platform. But he didn’t.

“If Gradin tells me the fire has spread, then I shall order it.” Trescu stepped back and cupped his hand over his ear as he tried his radio. Another explosion—much bigger, much louder—shook the rig. “Gradin, this is Trescu. Is the fire contained?”

Dom didn’t hear the answer, but he saw the look on Trescu’s face. The man put his hand on Marcus’s back to get his attention.

“Get your people off,” he said. “There is still gangway access to the lifeboat under the flame boom. That will take thirty.”

“Yeah, and your guys?”

“Very well. We go too.”

It was an instant decision. They used the lull to run, dog the doors shut from outside, and head for the boats. Even in the fog of smoke, Dom could now see the state the platform was in.

Everywhere he looked was burning. The smoke was black and chokingly bitter, and he couldn’t stop himself breathing it in. Out of nowhere, a memory stopped him in his tracks: Maria, worried, scolding him for not wearing a helmet with air filters, telling him he had to at least cover his face with a scarf if he was going to go out into the ash-clogged air after the Hammer of Dawn had incinerated most of Sera. Dom shut it out of his mind and tried to concentrate on working out which end of the rig had the free-fall lifeboat. He was totally disoriented. He simply followed Marcus.

Astonishingly, some of the platform’s systems were still working. The immediate evacuation alarm started that bowel-gripping
honk-honk-honk
as he jogged along the walkways, spitting to clear his mouth of the acrid smoke. Polyps could have been lurking around the next corner, but they seemed the least of his problems now.

Marcus ran along ahead of him, grabbing rig crew by their collars and hauling them away from the flames.

“Leave the thing!” he yelled. “You can’t save it. Get to the boats. Jump. Anything. Just get off while you still can.”

Dom found himself counting as he went. He knew how many men and women were on this platform. He knew two were missing. So he counted every individual he saw and subtracted one from the total, and then shoved the person down the nearest intact ladder toward the boats or an open deck where a Raven could hover. It was completely pointless; he couldn’t work out how many survivors were left to evacuate, but it made him feel better trying. He was just one of a dozen Gears still on the rig struggling to evacuate everyone.

And some Gorasni still refused to give up.

Gradin was playing a jet of water into an open compartment, but it looked like steam was coming straight back out. Dom didn’t even know what was burning in there or if seawater was the right thing to use. But even if it was, Gradin might as well have been pissing on it. The whole platform looked red-hot. Marcus caught Gradin’s arm.

“You’re done here,” he said. “Trescu called it off. Let’s go.”

Gradin shrugged him away. Dom could feel the heat on his face even though he was a few meters away from the door. “I will
not
abandon this rig. You go.”

“It’s just a fucking piece of metal,” Marcus said. “It’s not
people
. You can’t rebuild
people.
” And he knocked Gradin flat with a single punch.

The guy fell back and hit the deck. Marcus had only stunned him, but it put Gradin off balance long enough for Marcus to grab him bodily and heave him over his shoulder like a firefighter.

The enclosed boat hung on ski-slope rails, ready to free-fall into the sea. Marcus managed to run for the boat under the flare boom and force Gradin through the open hatch.

Dom found the hull was full of exhausted, wet, grimy people. It could take a few more, though. The boat wouldn’t have to wait long to be picked up. Marcus tried the radio.

“Anyone still on the rig—either jump
now
or get down the lifeboat at the flare end. I’m counting down two minutes.
Run!
”
He waited for responses. But there was always the possibility that someone’s radio had gone down, and most of the Gorasni didn’t have earpieces anyway. “Are all Gears accounted for?”

Hoffman responded. “All off the rig except Baird, Cole, Santiago, and
you
. We’ve got a few more civilians to winch clear.”

Trescu appeared at the end of the walkway, smoke-stained and disheveled. He was leading a guy with bad burns to his face and hands. Dom was about to risk running back into the smoke to find Baird and Cole, but they emerged from the smoke haze a few meters behind Trescu.

“We
go
,” Trescu said. “While we still have the light to find people in the water. Get ready to launch, Fenix.”

It was a brutal choice, but Dom knew it was the only one they could make. Dom thought about the stalks and wondered if everyone who escaped was only postponing the inevitable. A stalk could skewer a small lifeboat like a kebab.

“Who’s driving this thing?” Marcus said.

“Me.” Baird stepped through the hatch and sat in the helm position. “Always wanted to try this. Move over, Indies.”

The more flippant Baird was, the closer he was to pissing his pants. Dom would have to explain that quietly to some of the folks on board, because they’d lost buddies—maybe even wives. He waited with the hatch open until the two minutes were up and nobody was responding to last calls. When he squeezed into a seat, he found it was missing a safety harness, but he was ready to take a few broken bones if it meant getting out of this inferno.

“Hatch secure.” Marcus was already in the second helm position, watching for Baird’s cue to release the hydraulic mechanism that would send the boat shooting away from the rig. “Okay. Lower away.”

“Sure. Easy does it.” Baird reached for the handle. The seats all faced aft. This was going to be a crash dive. “All that shit’s for
davits.
”

It was a long way to plummet. Somehow, it was even weirder falling backward. Dom’s stomach caught up with him as the boat hit the water and he cracked his elbow hard against something. It
hurt worse than anything he could remember for a very long time. But it beat being burned alive, or worse. There
was
worse, he knew.

How much more? How many more times are we going to scrape through?

“Baby, that’s
enough
of the high seas this week …” Cole muttered.

Baird seemed to have taken over as skipper. He started the engine after a few stalls, and the boat chugged away. But even with the hatch shut, the light through the porthole was still visibly yellow from the flames.

“Far enough,” Marcus said. “Let’s see where we are.”

The stern hatch opened onto a small platform, just big enough for two or three people to stand very carefully in quiet seas. Marcus stepped out onto it.

“Ahh … 
shit.
”

Marcus had turned that one word into his own complete language, depending on tone. There was a dismissive
shit
, a regretful
shit
, and even a pleasantly surprised
shit
. But this was his weary, distraught, can’t-stand-another-death
shit
. Even Dom had to listen hard to get the right translation. He got up to look at what Marcus could see.

Emerald Spar was almost completely engulfed in flames, trailing long palls of black smoke in the wind. The ships heading from Vectes wouldn’t have any trouble finding it now. The rig was one big smoke flare. Now that it was getting near dusk, the fire could probably be seen for kilometers, too. Five Ravens hung around the platform, one of them still winching someone to safety. Dom couldn’t tell if they were plucking people from the water or the burning rig. Every time Dom saw a Raven pilot hovering above flames, or taking fire, or getting into some seriously lethal shit to haul someone to safety, he wanted to hug them and tell them that he loved every last damn one of them. Yes, even that snarly bitch Gill Gettner; he loved them all.