Gears of War

by Jason M. Hough

  The enemy whirled on Gabe, a sneer of rage distorting his face. The battle around them seemed to melt away.

  “Do you realize what you’ve done?!” he shouted, spit flying from his lips out of absolute anger.

  “Yep,” Gabe said. “It’ll take years to clear that pile of rock. Not something either side could pull off in wartime, I think. So Knifespire’s off the playing field again, just like the rest of these islands.”

  A long, long moment passed as the enemy officer stared at Gabriel Diaz, and in that time his shock and anger crystallized into something worse. Resolve.

  Without taking his eyes off Gabe, he activated his own comm. “The ridge is clear,” he said. “Scorch it. Every… last… inch.” Then he switched the device off, narrowing his gaze.

  From the east, out at sea, the battleship opened fire once more. Her massive deck guns lit up the night and, seconds later, Gatka Ridge began to boil and shudder under a thunderous barrage.

  The man renewed his hold on the Booshka. One hand on the grip, the other curled around the midsection where a cartridge of grenades should have been. He held the bulky weapon expertly, as if it weighed nothing more than a stick.

  A sudden blur of movement as he stepped in and jabbed.

  Gabe dodged, made to counterattack with a backhanded punch. The enemy anticipated this and lurched away, but Gabe’s blow had been a feint. Instead he went for the man’s leg, pulling a small knife from its holster on the Gorasni’s calf.

  They squared off again. The fact that Gabe was now armed only served to amplify the gleam in his opponent’s eyes. The bastard was enjoying this. He smiled as he flexed his fingers on the grenade launcher.

  Gabe went in low, slashing at the legs. The blade found only air as his enemy leapt backward. He brought his own weapon down, but dodging Gabe’s knife had drained the energy from the attack. The barrel of the grenade launcher still hit Gabe’s shoulder hard enough to send a spike of pain all down his arm and across his collar, though.

  Gabe twisted away, switched the knife into his left hand, and plunged it into the enemy’s gut all the way to the hilt.

  The man did not make a sound. He simply lurched away, so fast the handle of the knife slipped from Gabe’s grasp. Gabe was too surprised to take advantage of the situation, and could only watch as his opponent moved two steps back and glanced down at the hilt protruding from his stomach.

  Without so much as wincing, the man grabbed the blade and pulled it smoothly free. Blood trickled thickly from the wound, but it must have hit only muscle because no pain whatsoever showed on the UIR officer’s face.

  He flicked the blade once. Blood splattered into the dirt between them.

  “You’ll pay for that,” he said, still grinning.

  “We’ll see—” Gabe started.

  The man’s wrist flicked again. Toward Gabe. The knife flew, spinning once in the air as it crossed the distance between them with incredible speed. Gabe had no time to duck away, or even to blink. He managed only to turn his head slightly, saving his eye. The blade bit deep, slicing through his cheek and scraping off the bone beneath.

  Hot blood gushed across Gabe’s face.

  His opponent rushed in. Two long strides put him in striking distance again. Free of the knife, he’d flipped the Booshka around and now held it like a spear, the stock aimed at Gabe’s face.

  The butt of the weapon slammed into Gabe’s throat, forcing him backward, and he almost tripped again. His hands went to his neck, trying to somehow stop the pain. His mouth opened and closed as he gulped for air like a fish out of water. His cheek throbbed from the knife wound.

  Still smiling, his opponent jabbed again. The stomach this time. Gabe dropped to his knees, unable to stop himself. He doubled over, his body at once trying to pull in a breath and force out the air—as well as the contents of his stomach. The pain tore through him, and his body’s battle to breathe made it a thousand times worse. The worst pain he’d ever experienced…

  Until the enemy kicked him in the stomach.

  The force of it filled Gabe’s vision with stars and sent him tumbling onto his back. He lay in the dirt, staring up at the smoky sky. Coughed, and blood fountained out of him. It splashed down into his face, his eyes, so that he writhed from the sting of it. He would have wiped the blood away if his body would just fucking cooperate.

  The bald man laughed. Slung his Booshka and picked up the pistol Gabe had dropped. He turned it over in his hand, admiring it.

  Then he kicked Gabe onto his side and placed one booted foot on the side of Gabe’s head. Gradually he put his weight on that foot, pressing Gabe into the gritty soil.

  “It’s over,” he said casually. “Imulsion or not, I’ve won.”

  Gabe could only lie there. The words almost didn’t matter at this point. He was fading, and found it suddenly hard to care about this man, Imulsion, or the war. He cared only for his Gears, hiding on Gatka Ridge as hell rained down on them. The soil beneath Gabe shook over and over as the shelling pulverized the island.

  And he cared about—

  “Gabe?” a voice in his ear said.

  Wyatt’s voice.

  Gabe lay there, too stunned to react. Wyatt? He must be imagining it.

  “Gabe, come in.”

  His brother was still out there, somewhere. Far away, with any luck.

  “Gabe, I’m aboard the enemy battleship. Found the fuel tanks, Gabe.”

  No…

  “Remember Plan B, brother? You said I’d know what to do. I’m going to do it.”

  “No, Wyatt,” Gabe muttered. The words came out as a groan. His tormentor laughed.

  Of course, Gabe’s transmitter was fried. He couldn’t tell Wyatt to stop if he wanted to. But the part that hurt the most was the seed of hope that had formed in some wretched part of his mind. The part that still wanted to do his duty, to win.

  “Wyatt, stop,” Gabe muttered. “Leave.”

  “What’s that?” the Gorasni asked, leaning over Gabe. “Famous last words?”

  “Gabe,” Wyatt said, and then coughed. He’s wounded, Gabe realized. The voice was weak, and not from a poor connection. “Gabe, I know you said I had nothing to prove to you. That I didn’t owe you anything. You or Oscar. And you know what? That’s what I love most about you two. You never, not once, made me feel as if I did.”

  Gabe’s eyes welled with tears. His opponent chuckled dryly at this, and pressed his foot down even harder.

  If Gabe could have moved, he would have grabbed the man by the throat and strangled the life out of him. But he couldn’t lift a finger. His body had shut down, the only movement it allowed were the convulsions of his stomach and the shuddering, pathetic gulps for air. His head felt like it was about to split like a melon.

  “Goodbye, brother. Give my best to Oscar, will you? I hope this turns the tide.”

  And as was Wyatt’s way, the explosion followed instantly. No waiting. No hesitation. He just did the job, and moved on. Beyond the pale, this time.

  The first boom was not unlike the firing of the deck guns. Except that it went on much longer. Even with one ear pressed into the dirt, and the other covered by the enemy’s boot, Gabe still heard the whoomp as the fuel tank blew.

  It was the second explosion, though, that caught the Gorasni’s attention. Lying there, Gabe thought it might be even louder than the sound the mountain had made when it fell. The whole world around him bloomed white hot for an instant, and then faded. Despite being half a mile away and protected by the island, Gabe felt the heat of the blast all across his body.

  The battleship’s ammunition room must have gone up.

  A series of tertiary blasts crashed across the landscape. This was something Gabe had expected—planned for, even. By sending in his Corvas, the enemy frigates would close ranks around their lead ship. When it exploded so catastrophically, the shockwave and barrage of shrapnel took these support vessels out, too.

  Gabe knew it to be the case at once. His rival took on
ly a second longer to understand what had just happened. And when he did, he staggered backward. Not much. Not even a step. But it was enough.

  Despite the pain, despite the lack of breath, Gabe knew this was his chance. Likely the last he’d get. He had to find the strength to use it. He had to use the gift Wyatt had given him.

  And that single thought of his brother’s name created one final explosion. An explosion of rage and strength Gabe didn’t know he had left.

  With one sputtering cough he twisted. The weight on his head, lessened but still there, kept him pinned, but he could move his legs now. His left he brought up and coiled around the Gorasni’s torso. His right he bent as far as he could, then kicked, hard. Not at the groin, but an even more painful target: the knife wound in the Gorasni’s midsection.

  A bellowing howl of agony rushed from the bastard’s mouth as he fell backward.

  Another figure emerged from the dust and smoke.

  Sorotki. Gabe had never met the man, but he knew it to be him the instant he saw him. The cords of the pilot’s parachute still dangled from his back, tangling around his legs. He shambled forward.

  The pilot’s face was a mess of scrapes, but there was a grim determination in his eyes. He went not for the enemy on the ground, but for Gabe, and for one brief second Gabe thought Sorotki meant to kill him out of sheer confusion.

  Instead, Sorotki reached out, put his hands under Gabe’s body, and lifted. One last burst of strength had Gabe back on shaky feet. One last effort, then Sorotki collapsed into the mud, passed out cold.

  Gabe had time to think. He stumbled toward the enemy officer, who was already on his knees and starting to scramble forward once more.

  Gabe’s foot kicked a lump of metal. A Snub pistol. He knelt, grasped the weapon, and lifted it just in time to press it against the forehead of the oncoming Gorasni.

  Even as the man tackled him, the weapon discharged from the sheer force of the jarring impact. The last thing Gabe saw before he passed out was a spray of red mist mingling with the smoky air.

  * * *

  When he came to, Gabe’s first thought was that he’d been captured.

  Dirt and sand scraped beneath him as someone slowly dragged him by the neckline of his armor through the jungle. When he tilted his head he expected to see some Gorasni regular pulling him, but instead he saw Sorotki.

  “Thought you’d left,” Gabe mumbled. “Disobeyed or been shot down—”

  The man glanced down. He slowed his pace and knelt. Gabe saw they were both in equally bad shape.

  “Rough landing?” Gabe asked him.

  Sorotki chuckled, dryly. Spat some blood into the dirt. His upper lip was badly swollen, a gash across it. “I almost did leave,” he admitted. “What you asked… it was insane. It worked, though. You were right, Lieutenant Colonel.”

  “Yeah,” Gabe nodded at him, “it was insane. But it was the only way.”

  “How’d you know the mountain would come down like that?”

  Gabe would have shrugged if he could summon the energy. “A guess. My sniper, Davis, mentioned stress fractures in the rock. I guess everything has a weak spot.”

  The pilot offered him a grim smile of acknowledgement. Then he started pulling Gabe again, glancing off into the distance.

  “They’re landing reinforcements,” he said, matter-of-factly.

  “Already?” Gabe asked, shocked despite himself. “We need to regroup with the others. Find a place to hide out and defend ourselves.” He pushed the pilot’s hand away and rolled over. First coming to his knees, and then, after a few long seconds of dizziness, to his feet.

  “Not them,” Sorotki said. “Our reinforcements.”

  Gabe stared at him for a second, and then turned south. Sorotki had dragged him all the way to the low end of Gatka Ridge, where it sloped suddenly down to the water.

  As Gabe watched, a small armada of COG vessels were pushing ashore to the exhausted shouts of gratefulness coming from the wounded and battered Gears waiting for them on the beach.

  One Gear in particular, Corporal Blair, seemed to sense she was being watched. She turned and looked up. Her face lit up with relief when she saw Gabe. The expression vanished when she realized the state he was in, though, and by the time Gabe’s knees gave out and he collapsed once more, Blair was rushing toward him, shouting for a medic, with Gian at her side.

  Blair reached him first. “We were just getting a team together to come back for you. Are you okay?”

  Gabe reached for her shoulder, missed, and staggered. The world around him began to spin. “You know,” he said to her, “these islands, they were supposed to be a reward posting.”

  And then he hit the sand, and darkness fell over him.

  16: REFLECTION

  Gabe stood at attention, ignoring the offered chair.

  He felt… not better, not by a long shot. But Blair, Gian, and others had carried his unconscious body onto a boat and patched him up as they sailed for Vectes. Being dead to the world during that journey was probably the best thing that had happened to him in days, Gabe thought.

  This debriefing was likely to be the worst. That is, aside from what had happened to Wyatt. Nothing would ever eclipse that.

  Two sailors had met him when his boat arrived and marched him straight to the Captain’s office. That he would be debriefed was a given. That it would happen so quickly wasn’t exactly a surprise, either, but Gabe had hoped he might be afforded a visit with a medic, and perhaps a chance to grieve, first.

  He was dead on his feet, both of which ached. Just like every other joint and limb. His cheek still burned from the knife wound, and felt stiff from the heavy bandage Gian had slapped over it on the boat. The cut would need stitches, of that he felt sure. But later.

  Gabe wouldn’t take the chair for the simple reason that Captain Phillips was not the only person waiting to hear his tale.

  Colonel Hoffman was there, too. Not exactly a surprise, but not really Phillips’s style, either. Gabe would have bet a round at the canteen that she’d want to hear this first, if only to have a chance to spin the story in a way that would put her in a favorable light as it went up the chain of command.

  That, of course, would be impossible now, because of the third person in the room. Which is probably exactly why Deputy Chairman Prescott is here, Gabe thought.

  The Deputy Chairman himself was not physically present, but represented as a grainy image on a small comms monitor that had been placed in the center of Phillips’s desk, facing Gabe. Phillips and Hoffman sat to either side of the screen, also facing him.

  The arrangement made the whole thing feel like an interrogation.

  They all waited as the politician attended to something just off screen. The thin man oozed an air of superiority that Gabe immediately detested.

  Captain Phillips, elbows on the table, looked at Gabe with a cool glare that said, “Don’t fuck this up any more than you already have.” Hoffman took on a more casual posture, unintimidated by the presence of Richard Prescott, whom he no doubt spoke with often on all sorts of matters.

  Waiting for Prescott to finish reading whatever it was he was reading, Gabe stared at the wall behind the trio, focusing on that same old crack in the plaster.

  “Right,” Prescott said, setting the document aside, off screen. “Let’s get to it. Introductions are unnecessary, I assume, Lieutenant Colonel Diaz?”

  “That’s correct, Deputy Chairman.”

  “Good. Let’s have it, then. In your own words. What the hell happened out there?”

  With that the politician leaned in slightly, staring through the screen directly into Gabe’s tired eyes. With his long, stern face and intense gaze, Prescott managed to be a forceful presence.

  Gabe took a breath, finding the last dregs of his energy and patience. He kept his emotions in check and his eyes on the crack in the wall as he told the story, deciding to start from the beginning for Prescott’s benefit, though he guessed the man already knew of the ini
tial missions to the island from the way he constantly checked his watch.

  The room became more tense when Gabe reached the part about Gatka Ridge, and all that had happened there. He spared no detail, no matter how gruesome. Hoffman lowered his head when Gabe told of the sacrifice Wyatt had made, but said nothing.

  There was silence when Gabe finished. Captain Phillips stared studiously at the floor, leaving Gabe to dangle in the wind. Hoffman’s face was impassive.

  But Prescott was staring directly at Gabe now. The man’s keen eyes bored directly into Gabe’s soul, it seemed, and there was more than a little anger behind that look. It was, of course, the Imulsion that he really cared about.

  Waiting for someone to speak, Gabe figured this would conclude one of two ways. They’d either pin the blame on him and throw him in the brig, or pin a medal on him for the victory. He had no idea which it would be.

  It never occurred to him that there could be a third direction, and that it would change his life.

  “Well,” Hoffman said, breaking the silence. “I just want to start out by saying what you achieved out there at Knifespire is remarkable. No one… no one… is arguing against that.” This last he directed at Phillips more than Prescott, as if daring her to argue, but she remained impassive. Hoffman went on. “Not exactly how we hoped things would go, but sometimes we have to play the hand we’re dealt.”

  For his part, Gabe couldn’t quite decide if this was a compliment or not. But Hoffman seemed to want a response, so he gave him one. “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m sorry to hear about Wyatt. Your brother was a good man,” Hoffman added, earnestly.

  Gabe knew that was coming. Had promised himself, in fact, that he would say a proper “thank you” but otherwise keep his emotions in check. Telling the story of Wyatt’s death brought up an unexpected avalanche of memories, though. Their childhood together. All the times he, Wyatt, and Oscar had gotten into some adventure, or out of the trouble that inevitably resulted. He saw Wyatt as that boy as much as the Gear who’d traded his life to save Gabe’s, only to be—