Gears of War: Jacinto's Remnant

by Karen Traviss

  The chopper was definitely very close. The noise was deafening, and she could feel the downdraft. She still couldn’t take her eyes off the grub. If the pilot hadn’t seen her by now, he never would. The grub looked up, though, and she could almost see its thoughts; it was too exhausted to swim away, its enemy was hovering above, and all it could do was revert to instinct and grab for safety, however short-lived that was.

  And it did.

  It must have found purchase on the submerged brick, because it sprang up from the water with a massive bark of effort, crashing down on top of her. It landed with its head level with her waist. Its claws hooked on her belt, and it began hauling itself upward.

  Its breath stank.

  This was just a frozen second, but the smell and the sheer weight of the frigging thing on top of her triggered a memory in Bernie that she still tried hard to bury: helpless, pinned down, unable to fight back. She wanted to kill. It was all she could see, think, feel, taste. Kill it. She rammed the knife into the first place she could reach—its shoulder—but it was like trying to stab concrete.

  It bellowed. Had she even scratched the thing? It still clung to her, crushing the breath out of her. She drew back her cold-numbed arm to stab blindly again, and again, and again, until the blade didn’t pull clear and she didn’t know if she’d finally pierced its thick hide or snagged the knife in something. She struggled to pull it out. All she was aware of was a fierce downward wind sandblasting grit onto her face, a wall of screaming noise that made her head hurt, and a frenzied rage that closed her throat as tight as a stranglehold.

  Yes, there was a Raven right above. She thought she caught a glimpse of someone aiming a rifle at her. But the grub was still clinging to her, one hand on her belt and the other hooked into her chest-plate; it had to die. She pulled the knife back one more time, looked down into the grub’s nightmarish face—mouth open, venting meaningless noises and terrible, rotting smells—and rammed the slim blade as hard as she could into its ear canal.

  Now … that worked.

  The grub screamed, a long gurgling noise, and hung from her belt by one fist as it flailed helplessly at the knife. It was going to drag her down with it. And she wanted her knife back. A fight was never cold logic, and all kinds of insane shit went through her mind at times like this, but right now her knife mattered more than anything, and she yanked it clear. Then she dug the point hard into the back of the grub’s massive hand and ground the point around like a screwdriver.

  The grub was still screaming. Her belt broke. The creature thrashed for a second as it fell back into the water below, and then it was gone.

  Now she could look up. The downdraft from the Raven almost blinded her. The chopper backed off a little, and she could see someone with a black do-rag squatting on the open deck, gesturing with a bright orange rescue sling.

  Marcus.

  Bernie couldn’t hear him above the noise, but she knew what to do. She just didn’t know if she had the strength to do it. The line hit her in the face, not that she could feel much now, and she grabbed it one-handed. But that was as far as she got. She couldn’t get the loop under her arms because her back-plate and rifle kept snagging it, and she didn’t have the energy or strength to struggle with it. The harness slid out of her grip and vanished back into the Raven. Shit, were they giving up, or trying again?

  It was Delta. They wouldn’t leave her here.

  She shut her eyes for a moment to get her second wind. Then something heavy crashed down next to her. If that grub had come back, she was going to have to bite out the bastard’s windpipe this time—but when she looked, Marcus was standing on the steep slope of the gable, hanging on to the winch cable.

  “Brace your feet against my boot,” he yelled over the noise. “Sit up. Come on. Up.”

  She reached above her head and cut the line that now tethered her to the sinking building. Whether she sat up on her own or Marcus hauled her, she wasn’t sure, but the sling was around her and she crunched hard against Marcus as the cable went taut again and her boots left the brickwork.

  “Shit, am I glad to see you.” She was so cold that she had trouble making her mouth work. “I owe you one.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  Dom and Baird reached to pull them inboard when they were level with the deck. It was an undignified scramble and she ended up in a tangled heap with Marcus while Baird disconnected the slings. She was still slumped on the deck as the Raven swung around and headed north again. Dom closed the doors on both sides of the Raven’s bay. The noise level dropped instantly.

  “It’s damn cold,” he said. “You need to get your body temperature up again.”

  “Thanks, Dom.” She propped herself up but could only reach his leg, so she patted that. He nodded, then slipped through into the gunner’s compartment as if he wanted to leave them to it. “And you, Blondie. Thank you. No sign of Niall Sorrens? He was right behind me.”

  Baird helped her to the aft bulkhead seat and draped a blanket around her. That was so unlike him that she really wasn’t sure what to say. She wondered if she was in worse shape than she thought.

  “Nobody else, Granny,” he said. Well, at least a bit of the normal me, me, me Baird was functioning. “Creative knife work, by the way. Very entertaining.”

  “I’d do it to every last frigging one of them,” she said, carefully reburying all the memories that the fight had dredged up. She was shaking uncontrollably—from cold, fatigue, ebbing adrenaline—and she didn’t want to look weak in front of Baird. “But we finally finished the bastards, didn’t we? Except the stragglers. Just send them my way. I’ve got scores to settle.”

  “Yeah, Granny,” said Baird, still unnaturally civil. The jibe didn’t even feel offensive anymore. “Next grub we find is all yours.”

  She craned her neck to see what Dom was doing. Through the narrow hatch, she could see him manning the gun position, staring out into the growing dusk. He looked wrong somehow; so did Marcus. Even Baird didn’t have his usual perma-sneer in place. Bad news was imminent. She could feel it. And there was someone missing, someone she expected to see with Delta Squad.

  “Cole?” Her gut somersaulted. Cole was a force of nature, an endearing blend of raucous humor and solid wisdom, and she had a soft spot for him. He was not replaceable. “Where’s Cole? No, not Cole, I couldn’t—”

  “Don’t worry, he got out on Hoffman’s flight,” Baird said. “With Anya.”

  No jokes, no sarcasm, even from Blondie. Shit. What’s coming?

  Bernie was running out of names to play guess-who-didn’t-make-it. Marcus braced one hand on the bulkhead above her, leaning over with a look in his eyes that said he was working up to telling her something that even he couldn’t quite handle. And that was starting to scare her. She’d known him—and Dom—when they were young Gears in the Royal Tyran Infantry, before anyone had ever heard of the Locust. Even in a world where everyone had suffered and grieved, though, Marcus looked especially ravaged by loss, and it wasn’t just those facial scars.

  “Just tell me,” she said.

  “Tai’s gone.” His voice was almost a whisper. Tai Kaliso was a South Islander, like her, another comrade they’d both fought with at Aspho Fields. “Did you ever meet Benjamin Carmine? He’s gone, too.”

  Marcus paused. It was clear he hadn’t finished. He’d always been self-contained, but she could see accumulated years of anguish in his eyes. This was the Marcus she’d glimpsed a long time ago, distraught at the death of his buddy Carlos, Dom’s brother.

  “Marcus,” she said, “just tell me, sweetheart.” She could call him that. She was twenty-odd years older, so she could play the veteran sergeant with him. “Whatever it is.”

  “It’s Dom,” he said at last. She couldn’t hear him now. She had to read his lips. “He found Maria. He had to … stop her suffering. Shit, Bernie, he had to shoot her. She was just this skeleton, this brain-damaged skeleton. I told him it was okay.”

  Bernie had steeled her
self not to react. But it was so far from what she was expecting to hear that she actually felt her mouth open in shock. Her immediate instinct was to go to Dom as if he was still that teenage kid she first knew, give him a hug, tell him he’d get through it, that everyone would help him. But it was complete bollocks.

  She knew, because she’d been seconds from putting Carlos Santiago out of his misery at Aspho Fields. And she knew that if she’d pulled the trigger, then she would have found that bloody hard to get out of her head every night, every time she tried to fall asleep, every unguarded moment.

  She didn’t ask for details. There’d be a proper time for that. She caught Baird’s eye as he watched her and Marcus, but he looked away fast.

  “Does everyone else know?” she asked.

  “No.” Marcus straightened up. His eyes looked distinctly glassy. “And I want to make it as easy as I can for him.”

  “Want me to warn people off?” Every Gear who knew Dom would ask him if he’d found his wife yet. Every Stranded, too, if they’d survived. The man had spent ten years shoving a photograph of Maria in front of everyone he met, asking if they’d seen her. “It’ll save a lot of painful questions.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “No detail. Just that he found a body, so they’ll shut up about it.”

  “Thanks, Bernie.” Marcus patted her shoulder, distracted. “He’ll know we’ve got his back.”

  Bernie rested her head in her hands and let the airframe’s vibration lull her into something approaching sleep. Shit, what a letdown. She’d always thought that defeating the Locust would be a cause for celebration, but if there was one thing she’d learned about wars, it was that their endings were just temporary lulls. Rebuilding human society was going to be hard, slow, and generations long; the entire human species—the tiny remnant that remained—was bereaved. And it no longer had an external threat to hold it together. It didn’t have something to live for yet, just the shared instinct that said stay alive.

  Survival’s an ugly thing. Seen it. Done it.

  Bernie found it was a lot easier to forget her own traumatic memories when she thought of Dom.

  Poor little bastard. What a shitty way to begin the first peace we’ve ever known.

  She looked up and started to rise from her seat, planning to make her way to the gun bay and just sit with Dom to let him know everyone was there for him. But when she glanced through the opening Marcus was already there, just standing over him with one hand on his shoulder, staring out into the dusk.

  If anything was going to rebuild humanity, it was comradeship. Gears had that in shitloads. Bernie knew exactly what kind of society she wanted to see emerge from the ruins.

  CHAPTER 2

  The first thing you do is split the team into two shifts—because this is going to go on for a lot longer than you think, and by the time you realize you’re too tired to think straight, you won’t have anyone ready to take over.

  (STAFF SERGEANT LENNARD PARRY, COG LOGISTICS CORPS, BRIEFING CIVILIANS CO-OPTED FOR EMERGENCY CONSTRUCTION DUTIES.)

  PORT FARRALL EVACUATION ASSEMBLY AREA, NORTH TYRAN COAST, THREE HOURS AFTER FIRST FLOODING.

  Anya Stroud couldn’t tell if she was looking at fifty thousand people or half a million.

  She stood on the Armadillo’s open ramp with her jacket wrapped tightly around her, hands thrust in pockets, watching a slow-flowing river of refugees streaming past, many clinging to junkers that didn’t look capable of carrying so many people. The icy sleet had now turned to snow. It was the worst possible time to evacuate.

  And it was the first time in fifteen years that Anya had absolutely nothing to do for the time being, except worry—about Marcus, about whatever the hell Dom had meant about Maria, about the next twenty-six hours, about whatever tomorrow meant now. Their Raven had landed safely, she knew that much. She didn’t dare hog overloaded comms channels for personal chitchat. Behind her in the rear of the APC, Lieutenant Mathieson was manning comms, keeping a tally of Gears and tasking them as they reported in. He was diverting some to security duty, others to rest periods. It was a well-rehearsed plan.

  How many civilians did we lose? How many Gears? How long is it going to take to check everyone on the list?

  “Anya, you should get some sleep.” Mathieson turned in his seat. He’d lost both legs in combat and hadn’t taken enforced desk duties well. “You’re back on watch in seven hours.”

  “I’m okay,” she said. “If I sleep now, I’ll feel like hell when I wake up.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Mathieson turned back to the comms console again. Anya went on scanning the scene around her. To her right, she could see the abandoned city of Port Farrall through the line of parked trucks and Centaur tanks. The nearest buildings were backlit by APC lights as Gears moved in to secure the area before the EM teams and sappers moved in. Nobody was under any illusion that the Locust threat was entirely over. There’d be pockets of stragglers. And they’d be just as dangerous. When she turned to face the rear of the Armadillo, the upperworks of CNV Sovereign were visible, picked out by navigation lights as the warship sat alongside in Merrenat Naval Base.

  We all know the drill. We’ve had evacuation plans in place for years. But even so … how are we going to pull this off? How do we get an abandoned city habitable in days?

  No, not days. Hours. The temperature was plummeting. Nobody had the luxury of time.

  “Anya?” Hoffman strode up to the APC, boots crunching on the frozen slush, and indicated somewhere back down the line of parked vehicles with his thumb. “The CIC truck’s operational now—heating and coffee, people. Get down there. No point freezing your asses off. Stroud, you’re rostered off. Get some sleep.”

  “I told her, sir—” said Mathieson.

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  “Maintaining rest breaks is part of your duties, Stroud. Got to keep you operational.”

  That was Hoffmanese for “I worry about you.” She found it rather endearing. “Understood, sir. But I can’t sleep now. Don’t they need people to … well, at least hand out hot drinks or something?”

  “I said rest. What’s the key thing in any planned emergency?”

  “Know your task and carry it out, sir.”

  “Right. Let the designated teams worry about everything else until they ask for assistance. You’ll be busy tasking Gears sooner than you think. Public order, security details … yes, it’s a different kind of soldiering now.”

  Hoffman paused and looked past her at something in the crowd of refugees. A Gear—forties, with a wild beard and a straw hat that marked him out as press-ganged from the Stranded—was working his way back through the tide of bodies, calling out a name: “Maralin? Maralin! Sweetie, you okay? Where’s Teresa?”

  A teenage girl struggled through the press of bodies and flung her arms around his neck. People parted to avoid them, and Anya watched a tearful reunion. Then another girl, just like her—no, exactly like her, a twin—appeared in the crowd and elbowed her way through, yelling, “Daddy! Daddy!”

  “Well, someone’s happy,” Hoffman muttered. “Grindlift driver. Glad he found his kids.”

  Anya had a hard time distinguishing Stranded from citizens now. Many refugees were so ragged and scruffy that they could have been either. And while that Gear had found his family, others were still searching the human chaos for faces they recognized. A man stood to one side of the stream of people, calling out: “Anyone seen my son? Tylor Morley. Fourteen, brown hair, skinny. Anyone?”

  He repeated it over and over, like someone standing on a street corner selling newspapers. Anya knew there’d be many more desperate searches like that in the days to come. The satisfaction at evacuating most of Jacinto was now giving way to the guilt and dismay of realizing how many had been lost.

  “That’s the hard stuff,” Hoffman said. “I’m thankful that the emergency guys can handle all that. Fighting grubs was the easy bit.” He paused. “When Santiago reports in,
ask him to see me.”

  “Will do, sir.”

  Hoffman looked as if he was going to say something else, but he just turned around and walked back toward the EM truck. Anya wiped her face with the back of her hand. Her skin was starting to sting with the steady barrage of snow.

  “Better get moving,” she said. She shut the hatches and started the engine. “I want to check out the medical tent. I’ll drop you off at CIC.”

  “What’s all that about Dom?” Mathieson asked.

  Anya went into protective mode. Dom had defended her from intrusive interest when her mother was killed, and now it was her turn to watch his back.

  “I didn’t think you knew him,” she said.

  “Everyone knows Dom. Won the Embry Star at Aspho. Screwed his career defending Fenix at the court-martial. Hoffman’s favorite. Spends all his free time looking for his missus.”

  “Yes, that’s Dom.” Anya steered the ’Dill out of the line, keeping to the vehicle lane marked in the grass by reflective cones. She kept a wary eye out for stray pedestrians. “Like you said, Hoffman’s favorite.”

  It was as good an explanation as any. She’d get to Dom before the gossip started. So far, the only people who knew weren’t the gossiping kind: Delta Squad, Hoffman, and herself. It was nobody else’s business.

  When she reached the CIC truck, she jumped out of the ’Dill’s cab to find herself ankle deep in slush and regretting not changing into combat boots and fatigues. Mathieson swung himself out on prosthetic legs that were the best that the COG could manage to make, and that wasn’t very good at all. Anya made a note to sweet-talk Baird into seeing what modifications might be possible. Baird wasn’t exactly the most bighearted Gear, but he couldn’t resist a mechanical challenge.

  And humanity was now facing a future with even less technology at its disposal. Although that was obvious, and everyone knew that abandoning Jacinto meant leaving behind almost all the trappings of modern society, the full realization hadn’t hit Anya until then.