Gears of War: Anvil Gate (34 page)

“Not banking on the refinery fighting to the last man, then.”

“If the rest of Vasgar rolled over, then why should they die in a ditch for a few cans of fuel? They’re only civvies.”

The wait-and-see was getting to Hoffman. But there was no point doing anything else. If the Indies showed signs of moving north of the refinery, then the vintage guns would see them off. Hoffman did his rounds again, checking on the machine gun and antiaircraft positions and noting how few civvies were on the streets.

It was hard to draw a line to mark where the garrison ended and the city began, other than the security checkpoint on the gates of the vehicle compound.

“Lieutenant.” Sheraya Olencu stepped out from between the columns of the council building as he passed and walked along with him. “Is there anything else you need me to do?”

Hoffman thought of Sheraya only in terms of dealing with local procurement, handling the traders and drivers who kept the garrison fed and supplied. Then it struck him that she might well want to be around Byrne if the shooting started. She was pregnant. He had no idea how that was affecting her, but it made sense to him that she’d be anxious about separation at a time like this.

“Did Sergeant Byrne do as I ordered and get the alderman to marry you two?”

“Yes.” Sheraya lowered her eyes. “He always follows orders.”

“Thank God for that,” Hoffman said. “Look, I’m going to risk the captain’s wrath and say this—I’m giving you permission to stay within the garrison if you feel the need. Special circumstances.”

She slowed her pace a little. “You’re a considerate man, Lieutenant. Is it because you miss your own wife?”

Hoffman hadn’t thought of himself as considerate or even sentimental, but he certainly missed Margaret. “When there’s a war on, I don’t believe anyone should put anything off longer than necessary.”

“There’s
always
been a war on. Even my grandfather can barely recall a time when Sera was at peace.”

“Well, the war’s right here, right now.” Hoffman wished he hadn’t put it that way. “Or as close as it’ll get for Anvegad. Come on. You can sit in the mess until Sam’s off duty.”

Sander wouldn’t mind. There’d been a time when Hoffman would have objected to having wives inside the garrison other than in designated married quarters, but he couldn’t work up any outrage at the bending of regulations these days. He was starting to feel agitated about the road being blocked. It was the same feeling he got when he had to sit down with his back to a door. He wanted to turn around and face it.

He stopped Carlile on the way through the vehicle compound. “How are we doing on the bulldozer, Sapper?”

“It’s not left Lakar yet. Shavad might need it for the next two days, apparently.” Carlile looked irked. “Fucking typical if you don’t mind my saying so, sir.”

“Well, we’ve got two weeks before we need to resort to cannibalism,” Hoffman said. “I need to get up to speed with what’s happening there.”

“That’s your regiment, isn’t it, sir? Two-Six RTI.”

“Yes. It is.”

“The engineers out there say the Indies put special forces behind the lines into Kashkur before they invaded Vasgar, judging by the amount of sabotage the lads are dealing with. Apparently they’ve got snipers all over Shavad.”

“You hear more than I do.”

“That’s only because I’ve been stuck on the radio trying to get Lakar moving.”

Hoffman climbed back to the gun floor and looked out over the plain again from the observation position. Sander stood on the opposite side of the chamber, field glasses pressed to his eyes.

“Frustrating,” he said. “They’re just in range. But I can wait.”

“Cheer up, sir. They didn’t get their hands on the imulsion supply.”

“It’s only a matter of time before the power stations start running
out of fuel. That’s going to put some pressure on them.” Sander lowered the glasses and glanced across at Hoffman. “No word from Lakar?”

“They haven’t dispatched the bulldozer yet. Carlile says it’s had to divert to Shavad. Like the Ravens.”

“Damn. We’re not a priority, are we?” Sander took out a small pad and started sketching. “I’ll have an entire mural done before they pull their finger out and get around to us.”

It was late afternoon, all long shadows and a blue haze on the mountains, before the knot of UIR vehicles around the refinery showed signs of movement. Hoffman watched, noted, and calculated.

Evan slapped the part of the gun barrel he could reach like he was patting the neck of a racehorse.

“They say that an Indie guard post and a COG one faced each other across a border for ten years and didn’t so much as exchange a shot,” he said absently. “I forget where it was. I bet they did, too.”

Sander had been leaning against the wall. He pushed himself away and stretched his back. “Just going to put a call into Brigade Command about the Behemoth,” he said. “If we lose Shavad, they’ll need this route open one way or another.”

He turned toward the steel door that led down the stairs. As he got halfway across the gun floor, Hoffman heard a shout from the ramparts.

“What the hell’s that?” Sander said casually, looking out. “Oh,
shit—
”

The gun floor was engulfed instantly in a blinding yellow light. Hoffman heard the whoosh of a backdraft, two loud bangs like a car crash, and the air around him exploded. Something hit the back of his head; his mouth was filled with a searing pain, he could taste blood, and he suddenly felt the cold stone floor under his cheek. He couldn’t hear a thing. He couldn’t move. He was sure he was flailing his arms, trying to get up, but he wasn’t moving at all. Then the sound rushed back in and all he could hear was the garrison siren, panting screams, and a strange, gonglike sound. Everything else was just muffled underwater noises.

But he could see. Now he was looking up into Evan’s face, a mass of blood and pale gray dust. The gunner was leaning over him.

“Sir! Come on, get up! Fucking rocket—they’re behind us! They’re fucking well
behind
us!”

Someone pulled him upright. He felt like he was spinning on a fixed point, about to keel over again. He fell against Evan. As he looked around, trying to work out what the hell had happened, he saw the mess all around him—blast marks, blood, an armor backplate, black fabric. Someone had been hit.

“He’s dead,” Evan said. “Captain’s dead, sir. Come on.
Out.
”

Hoffman knew he was concussed because he kept wondering why nobody had fired the guns. Evan pushed him through the door and he nearly fell over Jarrold on the way down the stairs. He ended up sitting on the step, distantly aware of yelling and noise wafting in from the city.

“Hit my head,” he said.
Sander’s gone. Shit, he’s gone. He’s dead
. “What the hell was that?”

“Someone out on the rocks,” Jarrold said. “This side of the city. Some bastard put an RPG through the observation window. Shit, sir, it’s a miracle we got out alive.”

Hoffman found his mouth was working even though he didn’t feel it was connected to his brain.
Rocket attack in confined space. Yeah. Why
am
I still alive?

“Are we still under attack?”

“Dunno, sir.”

Hoffman tried to press the button on his headset, but missed. It took him two stabs with his finger to activate his radio.

“This is Lieutenant Hoffman,” he said. “Byrne, Salton—get out there and find who fired that. Gunners—I need a crew to check the main guns,
now
. And somebody monitor the refinery, because I can’t see straight.”

It wasn’t even his voice. It was drill, and ten years of taking incoming fire, and the instinct that said if he didn’t get a grip of this then nobody else would. He knew he was hurt; he knew Sander was dead. He just needed the autopilot Hoffman to carry on while
he tried to reconnect all the torn, loose, and terrified parts of himself.

Two things preoccupied him for the next few minutes, and neither was urgent, he knew.

One was that the glass of his watch was broken, and he couldn’t see the second hand. The other was that he had no idea what he was going to say to Ranald Sander’s pregnant widow.

CHAPTER 12

Bernie found it hard to tell what hit people hardest when they heard the news about the imulsion platform.

The mood around New Jacinto felt like a communal bereavement. Even Mac trotted along beside her with his head lowered. She walked through the construction sites and new dirt roads that now stretched a few kilometers out into the farmland to the north, and tried to work out if this was the point at which the Old Jacinto population, the folks who’d stoically endured unending grub attacks and privation for fifteen years, would finally snap.

It wasn’t about the fuel. They didn’t give a shit about shortages of things they’d never had much of anyway. It was about hope being dashed again and again. There were only so many times you could take something away from people, hand it back, and then snatch it away again. It broke them. It made them shut down.

Whatever the Lambent were, they were worse than the grubs. And they were out there somewhere, in forms and shapes that people couldn’t even begin to guess at.

I really thought it was over. I really thought the worst monsters we had to face from now on were going to be human
.

“Hey, dog-lady!” The shout made her turn. It was the Gorasni sailor called Yanik who seemed to have struck up a rapport with Baird. Friendship was too strong a word. “The shit gets deeper, yes?”

“I’m really sorry about your mates on the rig,” she said carefully. It wasn’t the time to mention fuel shortages. “Poor bastards.”

“So what use are we to you now? No fancy frigate, no imulsion, and your doctor thinks we are all murdering scum. The old Pelruan soldiers cross the road to avoid us. I think our wedding is over.”

“Honeymoon,” Bernie said automatically. “The phrase is
the honeymoon’s over.
”

The conversation had turned very awkward very fast. Mac must have sensed her shift of mood, because he stood growling at the back of his throat in his let-me-kill-him pose—ears forward, lip curled back, eyes fixed on the threat. Bernie held her hand against her leg and snapped her fingers to distract him.

“You think it is?” Yanik asked. He didn’t seem bothered by the growling at all, or maybe he had a lot of faith in her ability to control Mac. “Because Trescu is now in trouble, I think. And that is
not
good for anybody.”

Nothing was clear-cut for Bernie these days. One thing she’d accepted as an inarguable fact since childhood was that the Indies were the eternal enemy. The Pendulum Wars had become so embedded in every state’s culture that she’d been a Gear for a
couple of years before she even started to ask herself why any South Islander—conquered and colonized nations, not willing volunteers—would see the COG as the natural good guys. But the UIR were a bunch of empire-building shits, too. Who could you trust? Well, she thought that she couldn’t trust the Stranded, either, but then Dizzy Wallin showed up and took that certainty away from her as well.

At least I know the dog isn’t cooking up a scheme. That’s something
.

“I don’t know what Prescott thinks,” she said. “But we’re all in the same shit together. And we’re probably better off having you here than not having you, imulsion or no imulsion.”

Yanik clapped her on the shoulder and nodded at the two rifles—one Lancer, one Longshot—slung over her shoulder. Mac rumbled a warning again. “Good. I know I get no bullshit from you. You know how to deal with
garayaz.
”

He gave her a finger-to-brow salute and walked on through the construction site toward the naval base gates. Mac watched him for a few moments as if he was debating whether to go and sink his fangs in his face after all, just to teach him not to touch his pack leader.

“Come on, Mac,” Bernie said. “Just because we’ve got monsters, it doesn’t mean the Stranded have taken the day off.
Seek!
”

Bernie wondered if Yanik thought she was a reliable guide to COG attitudes because of Hoffman, that she knew more of what was going on than the rest of the Gears. They didn’t miss a damned thing, these people. But that was what came of living in a big village. Everybody knew your business sooner or later. A close community had its downside.