He pressed his mike. The Raven sounded even noisier than usual. He hoped it had been serviced recently. “You’re doing okay, Major.”
Anya hauled another ammo belt across the deck for Barber, all twenty kilos of it. She was doing her damnedest. I should be doing that. She tottered back to the seat, struggling on the tilting deck in those dumb high heels—why the hell do we make our women officers wear those?—and leaned over him.
“Sir, you’re still bleeding. I really should fix that.”
“I’m not dead yet, Lieutenant.”
“Sir, about Marcus …”
Here we go. Poor kid. What the hell am I going to do about him? “Later, Anya.”
“It’s not like him, sir.” She adored Marcus, and despite the fact that Marcus had never shown her the slightest affection in public, Hoffman knew the deal and didn’t lecture her on officers fraternizing with enlisted men. “You know he’d never abandon his post.”
“Anya, not now.”
“Sorry, sir.” She got up and took the first aid kit out of its bulkhead bracket. “Hold still.”
Hoffman couldn’t see what she was doing. Whatever it was, it hurt, and he hated anyone fussing over him. But this was Anya, one of the few people he would never snarl at: loyal, uncomplaining, reliable, unflappable Anya.
“Ah, we’ve got radio again,” Barber said, more to himself than anything. “Well, we’ve got the Hammer relay, and we’ve got ten other Ravens.”
Hoffman perked up. Maybe Marcus had come to his senses and was on his way back. “Strachan?”
“No, wrong comms kit. Problem, sir? I thought he was evacuating.”
“Nothing important.”
Gettner interrupted. “I’ve got a visual on Chancery.”
She didn’t elaborate. She didn’t need to. She banked the bird and Hoffman found himself looking along the glittering path of the river, down into the granite gorge that cut deep into Ephyra from the south. He could see the pillars and suspension cables of Chancery Bridge. On a normal day it was a six-lane highway, but today it was a battlefield wreathed in smoke. For a moment, he thought the carpet of broken gray and black was chunks of tarmac or vehicle debris, but where the haze of smoke thinned out he got a better look.
It was Locust drones, a whole seething column of them. It was hard to see the Gears’ line. “Come around again,” Hoffman said. “I don’t see Tomas.”
Gettner lifted out of small arms range and looped back again, this time coming in from the northern pier of the bridge and heading straight down the line of cables. Hoffman leaned out of the crew bay as far as he could. Grubs were already on the northern side of the gorge with Brumaks, crashing through the toll booths a hundred meters up the road. Where were the Gears? He caught a brief glance of a Centaur on its roof in the river below. If bodies had fallen into that torrent, the current would have carried them away by now. But there was small arms fire: he could hear bursts of it. A grenade round shot out and hit something in the center of the bridge.
Then he spotted them. High on the suspension towers, a few Gears were clinging to cables and trying to pick off grubs with Longspears and Lancers. It was valiant but utterly futile.
“Have we got radio contact with Four-ELI?” he asked. “Get on it, Anya. Warn them they’re going to run into grubs if they don’t swing further north.”
Hoffman strained to look at the south pier. There were more grubs advancing. All he could do now was collapse the bridge, and he’d have to do it with men on it.
“Goddamn,” he murmured.
Anya was right beside him. He didn’t realize that until he pulled back into the crew bay and tried to work out the best area to paint with the laser. Common sense told him to hit the span as near to the southern edge as he could. That would at least stop more grubs crossing, even if most of them had surged across now.
Is it worth it?
Will the numbers matter?
The Gears on the bridge were going to be dead men anyway. There were still a few companies from what he still thought of as the 4 ELI—the 4th Ephyran Light Infantry—trying to make their way to Jacinto, and the grub advance would run right into them.
We should have blown the bridge from the start. Hindsight. Fuck it.
“Get us in close, Major,” Hoffman said. “South pier. I need a target.”
“I won’t be able to hold position long if the grubs spot me. You okay with that laser?”
“Sure.” How hard could it be? “Realistically, Major, can we winch those guys off the cables?”
“I’m willing to try.”
Once he’d called in the Hammer strike, they’d know the bridge was doomed. Chances were that it wouldn’t collapse completely. Yes, Hoffman was willing to try, too. He didn’t ask Anya. This wasn’t a vote, and things were agonizing enough as it was. He leveled the laser and wondered how the hell he was going to manage without the targeting optic.
“Okay, get me in position, Major.”
Anya leaned close to Hoffman. “It’s pretty much like a Lancer sight,” she said. “You don’t need to be so accurate with a big, stationary target.”
Hoffman was too fond of her to say he knew that well enough and he didn’t have any goddamned choice anyway, because Marcus had run off with a key component. He just concentrated on what he could see as Gettner slowed the Raven to a hover about a hundred meters above the end of the bridge and held it steady.
Anya fiddled with her earpiece. She was usually the Hammer of Dawn interface at CIC anyway. She worked with this system far more than he did. “Hammer sat online. Ready when you are, sir.”
It really was like aiming a rifle. The reticule settled on the tarmac a few meters onto the span but wouldn’t lock on. He struggled to hold it steady. But like Anya said, the bridge was a big target and it wasn’t going anywhere fast. Hoffman pressed the trigger to activate the laser targeting and waited.
If I could do this to a world, I can sure as shit do it to one goddamn bridge.
He counted. One, two, three …
A stream of fierce white light punched through the cloud and held steady on the bridge. Suddenly the surface erupted as if it had been detonated from below and a ball of flame and smoke obscured the target for a moment. When it cleared, there was a thirty or forty meter chunk missing from the span and Hoffman was looking down at the concrete stumps of a pier, bent and frayed metal girders sticking out of it at all angles. On the south bank of the gorge, a blast area had taken out the toll booths and the grub column had scattered.
“Nice shot, sir.” Barber fired a few short bursts at something Hoffman couldn’t see. “I’ll hold them off now while we get those guys off those cables.”
All Hoffman could think was that if he’d been here sooner, then he would have been hitting the north side of the gorge and the grubs would have been cut off, or at least held up until the COG forces could regroup. But he was just doing damage limitation now.
Much as he tried to save it for later, he couldn’t stop himself thinking about Marcus, still unable to believe it. “Yeah, let’s do it, Corporal.”
There were still grubs on the bridge itself. Most had now streamed across, but a few were waiting and taking pot shots at the Raven. Hoffman was now in Gettner’s hands. She banked again to give Barber a clear arc and went in for a strafing run. Heavy caliber rounds ripped through the road surface and cut some of the grubs in half.
“We’re hit,” Gettner said. “Nothing serious, though. One more trip around the buoy, Nat?”
Barber slapped in a fresh ammo belt at remarkable speed. “Yeah, let’s not risk a perforated undercarriage while we’re winching. Bring her around, Gill.”
Hoffman hung on to the safety rail and tried to see how many Gears were still up there to be extracted. He could only see two as Barber opened fire. A couple of rounds hit the frame of the Raven’s door but Hoffman couldn’t tell if they’d passed through or embedded themselves.
“You’re going to need me on that gun, Barber,” Hoffman said. “I haven’
t the first idea how to operate a winch.”
The automatic fire from below seemed to have stopped. Hoffman peered over the side at two men clinging to a narrow ledge on one of the towers. Judging by the thumbs-up gesture, they got the idea.
“Sure, sir,” Barber said, swinging out of the gun seat. “Remember that you’ve got a blind spot below.”
“I’ll go nose-in,” Gettner said. “Just make it snappy.”
Hoffman hadn’t used a heavy-cal gun in years. If circumstances had been different—if this had been a small victory rather than the aftermath of the unthinkable—then he would almost have enjoyed it. The Raven hovered with its tail over the river at 90 degrees to the bridge while Hoffman laid down bursts every time he thought he saw something move below. It was only when he heard the sound of a Lancer that he realized Anya had picked up his rifle and was loosing a few off from the other door.
And she’s not qualified on a Lancer. Good girl. You’d be proud of her, Helena.
“How’re we doing?” Gettner asked.
“Five meters …” Barber said. Hoffman glanced back for a moment and saw the two Gears dangling from the same winch line. “Three … two … one … on deck, disengaged.”
“Okay, we’re gone.”
The Raven swung around and climbed in one alarming corkscrew movement as Gettner pulled out of the range of grub fire. Hoffman watched the shattered bridge dwindle beneath him. When he eased himself out of the gun seat, feeling his age as the adrenaline ebbed, the two Gears were sitting on the deck, exhausted and smoke-stained.
One of them was busy patching up a bleeding hand. The other looked up at Hoffman.
“Thanks, sir,” he said. “Fucking comm failure screwed us, didn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Hoffman said. He wanted to believe that. He wondered what it would do to morale when word got out about Marcus, as it surely would. “I’m sorry, son. Gettner, see if you can spot Four-ELI on the way back.”
Two men out of ten companies. Two men. With the most immediate crisis over, Hoffman had nothing to distract him from the hardest duty he’d ever had to perform. He couldn’t sweep this under the carpet.
Marcus Fenix was a goddamn hero. Most Gears were as far as Hoffman was concerned, but Marcus always went that bit further. He didn’t need to be ordered to do anything. He’d always seemed to have no sense of personal danger whatsoever. If there was a risk to be taken, he’d be the one grabbing for it, not out of some sense of invincibility but because he seemed to think the world’s troubles were his personal burden. And that was the problem. Hoffman realized that, even with his head throbbing and the taste of blood still in his mouth. Marcus would put himself on the line for anyone without thinking, even an ungrateful stranger, but this time his father had been the one who needed saving.
You asshole. Adam fucking God-Almighty Professor Fenix. This all is your goddamn fault. You’ve destroyed him. Your own son. What did you think he’d do when you called him to say goodbye, you self-centered prick?
Adam Fenix had been an infantry officer, 26 RTI just like Hoffman. He should have known better.
“Have we got comms with Jacinto yet?” he asked, looking at Anya. She was back on the bench seat again, looking ladylike if a little flushed. The Lancer was wedged between the struts. “We need to re-establish CIC there.”
“Aigle’s working on it. He’s good.”
That was all she said. All talk of Marcus was set aside. Whatever had happened, 4 ELI was still out of contact, and Hoffman couldn’t tell if they’d scattered. He spotted a small convoy of ’Dills and Packhorses barreling down the Jacinto highway at high speed, but he couldn’t see any trucks. Half an hour later, as he was wondering if he was so concussed that none of this was actually happening the way he thought, Anya touched his shoulder. Her face was stricken. It had to be bad news.
“Okay, I’ve got Temp CIC Jacinto,” she said. She indicated his earpiece. “Strachan’s Raven went down.”
Hoffman felt sick to his gut. The thought crossed his mind that fate or divine providence had stepped in to spare the regiment the shame of Marcus’s actions, but he hated himself instantly for it and could only think of Dom and the others who’d been on that sortie.
“Colonel? This is Reid. Ephyra’s pretty well evacuated now along with South Jacinto, and I’m starting on the casualty lists.”
Shit. If he was going to hear this from anybody, it had to be that asshole Reid, didn’t it? Hoffman gritted his teeth. “Go ahead, Major.”
“We lost the Raven, but Fenix was picked up alive.”
“Adam?”
“Marcus.”
There’d be no sorting it out privately now with a fistfight in one of the Raven hangars or a back alley, regimental-style. Hoffman had given up the right to that simple and effective summary justice the day he accepted a commission when he should have had the sense to remain an NCO. He was an officer now, not a sergeant. You’re the fucking Chief of Defense Staff. How in the name of God did that ever happen? The rules were different. He had to be seen to be obeyed, not for his own sake but for all the Gears who followed orders and didn’t have a father who was on first name terms with the Chairman.
“Is he conscious?”
“Not yet.”
“What about Adam Fenix?”
“Dead, sir. They found his remains in the rubble.”
“Who did? You sure?” Even with a cracked skull, Hoffman couldn’t make that all fit. And if some Raven crew had pulled Marcus and Bravo Squad out of there, then they’d work out in about two seconds flat that he’d gone to get his father. Plenty of Gears would have heard Hoffman yelling on the radio, too. It would be common knowledge eventually that Marcus had disobeyed orders. Hoffman had run out of choices. “Who extracted them? How? Where’s Professor Fenix’s body?”
“KR-One-One got to them, sir. On the spot right away. Not sure who called it in, but it’s pretty chaotic out there. East Barricade’s been completely overrun. So that’s most of Ephyra and part of Jacinto in Locust hands.”
“How about Santiago?” Dom was special. He’d been with Hoffman since Aspho Point, one of his commandos, just about the last one left, and Hoffman wasn’t ready to lose him. “Tell me Dom’s okay.”
“Yes, he’s conscious now. Stratton and Kaliso have minor injuries.”
Hoffman had to ask. “Did Santiago give any indication what his orders were?”
“No sir. Just seemed very upset about Professor Fenix and believes the mission to rescue him failed.”
Hoffman rubbed his eyes one-handed. That, at least, sounded more typical of Marcus. Even if he’d hijacked his squad and a Raven crew to go off on this goddamn rescue, he still made sure they wouldn’t be held responsible. He hadn’t told them he’d refused an order and misused COG assets.
But he was still willing to risk their lives, though. Asshole. The fact that all of them would have done that for him anyway without a second’s hesitation didn’t make it okay.
Sometimes you thought you really knew a man, knew him well enough to stake your life on him, and then you found out how wrong you were.
Once the risk to Dom and the others sank in, Hoffman’s decision was suddenly much easier. This wasn’t about punching out a superior. In a way, it was even more than defying an order and losing Ephyra or Jacinto, although that was what would appear on the charge sheet and what would change the course of the war. At the moral heart of it, lurking in the little sour taste at the back of Hoffman’s throat, it was about duping your buddies into taking part in the whole thing.
That was unforgivable, hero or not. But Hoffman had no other option anyway.
“Put a couple of MPs on standby,” he said. “And when Fenix regains consciousness, have him detained and charged with dereliction of duty.”
He didn’t take that thought any further. It hurt too much. The penalty for doing shit like that in wartime—let alone in the middle of a battle—was the firing squad.
Unless Marcus entered a plea of not guilty
and had some amazing mitigating circumstances to back that up, then Hoffman had just condemned one of the finest men he’d ever served with to death.
LOCATION UNKNOWN: DATE UNKNOWN.
The light was painfully bright. For a moment, Adam tried to reach out for the alarm clock, not sure what day it was, let alone the time. He’d be late for the office. Then a searing pain stabbed through his chest and stopped him from breathing for a few terrible seconds, an agony that said thrashball game, bad tackle, my fault. He heard a yelp and realized it was his own voice.
I’ve broken a damn rib.
How the hell did I do that this time? Haven’t played for years …
It took his fogged brain a few seconds to start assembling the pieces of reality. Rubble. I’m not dead. I’m in a hospital. Marcus. Where’s Marcus? Is he okay? And Dom. Where are my notes? Someone was leaning over him. He could smell antiseptic and coffee—antiseptic at close quarters, mixed with something floral, the coffee more distant—and then something pricked the back of his hand.
The fog began to lift. A middle-aged woman in green scrubs peered into his face and then stepped back. Hospital. Yes, I’m in a hospital. Crisp sheets felt cool and smooth under his hands. The bright light had resolved into a big window with a white roller blind, not a lamp at all. If this was Jacinto Medical Center, they still had better facilities than he’d realized.
“Is Marcus okay?” The voice that was somehow coming from outside his head didn’t say that at all, though. It sounded more like a whimper. “Where is he?”
“You can talk to him now, sir,” said a woman’s voice. “But if he starts getting agitated, call me.”
Sir? Hoffman. It had to be Hoffman. Adam struggled to look around, ready for the colonel’s surly disapproval, but then he realized that “sir” wasn’t Hoffman at all.
Richard Prescott was leaning against the wall next to a gold-framed watercolor of a lake. Whatever had happened in Ephyra, the urgency seemed to have passed.
“Feeling better, Adam?”
Prescott pushed himself away from the wall with casual slowness and went to reach for something out of Adam’s field of vision. Water glugged and a servo whirred, then the head of the bed rose slowly and Adam found himself sitting up. It still hurt. He yelped.
Gears of War: The Slab (Gears of War 5) Page 13