Gears of War: The Slab (Gears of War 5)

by Karen Traviss

  Adam leaned back with some difficulty and took a slow, cautious breath. He pointed at a group of people coming out of the main office building, a couple of women and three or four men, one in army fatigues. There were quite a few military personnel here, mostly in the black uniform of the Onyx Guard. But men and women in uniform were so much part of the daily fabric of life in Tyrus that Nevil had long since ceased to notice any other kind of uniform.

  “What?” he said.

  “Recognize the older man?”

  “Oh God.” The man had lost weight and he was much grayer now, but that profile was distinctive: Bardry. Nevil was shocked, and given the torrent of ugly surprises he’d been subjected to over the past couple of weeks, he didn’t expect to be capable of reacting any longer. “He’s supposed to be dead. They said he was dead.”

  “Yes. General Salaman Bardry. Prescott needed quite a cover story to explain his going missing.”

  “You said he blew his brains out because he couldn’t live with deploying the Hammer of Dawn against cities.”

  “Because that’s what I was told. I had no idea either.”

  “So he was brought here?”

  “Prescott needs parallel armed forces ready to take over.” Nevil didn’t know Hoffman all that well, but he felt instantly sorry for the poor bastard, under siege and holding it together on his own for the last eight years. If he could have picked up the phone to Hoffman and told him right then, he would have. He could imagine the colonel losing sleep over the suicide, maybe even blaming himself in the way that people did when someone they knew did something terrible and without warning.

  “You’re all lying bastards, you know that?” Nevil said. “All of you. You don’t even think twice about it.”

  “You ever wondered why they didn’t ship me out here right away, their head of research?”

  “Because Prescott might be a deceitful ball of slime, but he’s not stupid. It takes one to know one.”

  “Nevil, don’t think I escaped my punishment.” Adam tried to turn to look him in the eye, but Nevil couldn’t take it. He just focused on Bardry, alive and well, like so many of the other key people who’d gone missing over the years but turned up here. “They’ve let Marcus think I’m dead. He’s serving forty years in the Slab for disobeying orders to try to save me, as well as thinking he’s failed me. So if you think I’m reveling in this, you’re very much mistaken.”

  He’d even brought his son down. What a selfish son of a bitch. Nevil could only take this in small doses. He wasn’t even sure what use a physicist would be now, given the nature of the real threat facing them, but he didn’t have any choice, and he’d have to work with Adam. Right then it was the last thing he wanted to do. He stood up to go. Lights sparkled in the palm trees, some kind of firefly.

  This isn’t happening. I think I preferred Jacinto. That’s reality. That’s what we’re facing.

  “You didn’t even tell your own son,” he said. “Don’t expect me to apologize for turning you in.”

  “I don’t.” Adam looked as if he was chewing something over. “No, I never told Marcus. He’s like Hoffman in so many ways. Ironic, isn’t it?”

  “So we’re all serving a sentence, one way or another. I think we’re going to choke on irony before too long.” Nevil found himself groping for what was right. He wanted a moment of clarity, that voice in the back of his head that said you really ought to do this, however tough it seems. But there was nothing he could think of except venting his disgust. “You’ll have to excuse me, Adam. I can’t deal with this right now.”

  Adam didn’t try to stop him. He probably thought he’d come around after a few weeks. Did they even have that much time? Nevil had no idea. He just felt utterly alone, an exile among aliens, and he had no idea how he was going to cope with this enforced stay. It was going to take a hell of a lot more than a five-star restaurant and all the luxuries that the rest of Sera had forgotten even existed to stop him wanting to lash out.

  Bardry was still standing on the steps of the office building, chatting in the balmy evening breeze and occasionally flicking away a firefly with a sweep of his hand.

  And people mourned over you.

  Nevil walked back to his suite, half-expecting to see Emil, wanting to see him, but knowing the COG had no reason whatsoever to fake the death of an ordinary Gear.

  CHAIRMAN’S TEMPORARY OFFICE, AZURA.

  Prescott fully understood Nevil Estrom’s reaction to the sheer incongruity of Azura in a world of slaughter, rubble, and famine.

  The fresh pot of coffee in the office—genuine coffee, not some ingenious but completely unconvincing cereal concoction—smelled tantalizing, but he had to resist. He didn’t want to reek of coffee and invite questions when he returned to Jacinto in a few hours. Nobody forgot what the real thing smelled like.

  But it was more than that. Prescott felt uncomfortable enjoying what the average citizen no longer could. His sense of entitlement, that subconscious expectation that his exceptional job demanded exceptional rights, had slowly evaporated year upon year. He clung to that realization. It surprised him that even after nearly ten years, even after giving the order to raze Sera’s cities to the ground with the Hammer of Dawn, he still needed reassurance that he had a conscience.

  I’m still human. I’m not a monster. I just have unique burdens that I have to bear in unpalatable ways.

  He slipped some documents into his briefcase, checking that they weren’t on conspicuously new paper. Dury was due any moment. Prescott heard footsteps in the corridor, but they weren’t heavy and male, and then there was a hesitant tap on the half-open door. Esther Bakos, the head of biochemical research, hovered in the doorway.

  “Chairman, have you got five minutes?” She clutched an old folder to her chest. “I wouldn’t trouble you, but I need your clearance to share a document with Dr. Fenix.”

  Esther had been based on Azura since the Pendulum Wars: her children had been born here and had never seen the mainland. They’d never seen a live Locust, and neither had she.

  “Come in.” Virtually everyone here seemed to have a Ph.D. Prescott teetered on the edge of saying Professor but decided he’d stick to first names. “I suspect we’re long past the secrecy stage now, Esther.”

  She laid the folder on his desk. He could see the security stamp on it and the year. It was very old, its red stenciled label faded to a pale orange, but it was still very much a live document:

  TOP SECRET

  TERATOGENICITY STUDY

  (SAMSON)

  “We’re still working through Dr. Fenix’s notes and discs—Elain Fenix, I mean—but Adam’s already made some very valid observations about the Lambent pathogen’s relationship to imulsion,” she said. “This research into the teratogenic effects of imulsion was sealed years ago, but I think he should have access to it.”

  “I agree. Go ahead.”

  Esther just looked at Prescott as if he hadn’t answered her question.

  “Is there a problem?” he asked. “I have a question, sir.”

  “Fine.” Prescott spread his hands. “Ask away.”

  “We need to know what happened to the rest of Niles Samson’s New Hope research. The children with abnormalities.”

  Prescott watched her expression: a little disbelief, a little fear, and a fair amount of hope. It was hard not to put two and two together, but it was also unscientific, he knew that much. He tried to meet professionals on their own terms.

  “If I had it,” he said, “I would hand it over. We searched for those children for years.”

  “We could go back and recover the Sires.”

  “No. The facility has to stay locked down.”

  “Sir, we know imulsion can cause changes in human physiology, and I think Adam’s established the link between imulsion and the pathogen.”

  “We’ve been living with imulsion for more than a century and Samson wasn’t the only one looking at its possible toxicity. How did we miss the fact it’s alive? If
it is, of course. I’m going with Adam’s theory for the moment.”

  “Imulsion itself showed no signs of being alive, as you put it. The only evidence of that is Adam’s samples, which came from the Locust tunnels. That pathogen has all the characteristics of imulsion, but also of an organism.”

  “Keep it simple for me. Is the pathogen a form of imulsion?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Will all imulsion …” Prescott chose his words carefully but still felt foolish. “Will all imulsion come to life? I realize that’s a layman’s interpretation.”

  “We don’t understand its lifecycle enough yet to know. But if you take the rock shrew samples and the field reports of bioluminescent Locust, that’s strong evidence that it can jump the species barrier. We need to acquire some live test subjects.”

  “Straight question, Esther. Can we work without the Sires? Yes or no?” Dalyell had always been very cagey about their existence and origin. Prescott had been kept out of the loop: it had suited him not to know about mutated humans, poisoned humans, but it was a gap he now needed to fill. All he could do when he took office was keep the New Hope facility quarantined and hope he never had to open the lid. “Transporting them here is going to be difficult to say the least. They might not even have survived.”

  “They were in suspension, sir.”

  “Nobody’s been inside New Hope for years. Don’t you use tissue samples these days? We have samples of Locust tissue, and now we have a viable supply of the Lambent pathogen. Lambency. Sorry, I’m really not sure what to call it yet.”

  “In vitro research is no substitute for in vivo,” Esther said. “A complete living organism, and I don’t just mean mice.”

  “Why? What’s the biggest threat to us? Contamination of other forms of life, or of ourselves? I’m still struggling for clear priorities here, Esther. The Locust told Adam they were literally at war with Lambent creatures—they were being killed by them. But does Lambency kill its hosts? Does it just change them? Is it even a survival advantage?”

  Good grief, why am I asking that? Because I’m clutching at straws. Perhaps I’m not the first to start down that path.

  Esther’s expression hardened a little. The argument seemed to ring unwelcome bells with her. “The Locust told Adam that some Lambent began to self-destruct—literally detonate. If you’re thinking it has a future as a defense against the Locust, I suspect you’d have had an interesting conversation with Dr. Samson.” She looked down at the faded folder on the desk as if that would give her an answer. “Whether it’s the global threat that the Locust and Adam Fenix think it is, or we’re mistaken and it’s actually a new tactical advantage, we still have to fully understand it first so that we can control it. And given the inarguable evidence of human mutation, this is research we also need to do in humans. Not cell cultures.”

  Prescott thought she was still asking for access to the Sires. It was a massive risk: there were too many unknowns, and the last thing he needed was to unleash any extra problems that he couldn’t put back in the box. There was another option he could live with, but he wasn’t sure that she could. Scientists had unpredictable ethical boundaries.

  “If I can find you a human specimen or two,” he said, “would that help? Not a Sire. A basic human.”

  Esther’s face fell slightly. “But who’d volunteer for that, sir?”

  “I didn’t say volunteer.”

  “Oh, you mean …” Her face fell a little further. “Actually, I don’t know what you mean.”

  “We’ve still got a small supply of utterly worthless people I’m willing to use.”

  “Stranded?”

  “Prisoners. From the Slab.” He waited for a shriek of outrage, but she just seemed to be listening patiently. “I’m sure they have a few pedophiles or serial killers stashed away who owe society a debt.”

  Esther didn’t react at all. She just cocked her head on one side, looking slightly past Prescott, as if she was debating whether a child molester had the right genome for the job.

  “You’ll have to run it past Dr. Fenix,” she said. “Thank you, Chairman.”

  She walked out, leaving the file on the desk. Prescott was always wrong-footed by scientists. That troubled him. People thought politicians had no scruples, but at least those missing scruples were easily definable. It was much harder to guess where a scientist might draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable. Prescott tried to unravel it, but every time he settled back into his own default: his line lay at what had to be done for the good of the majority. He would have been paralyzed into indecision otherwise.

  I’ve pressed a Hammer command key and condemned millions of innocents to death. I wonder if that feels any worse than facing an individual living creature and injecting it with a substance to watch and learn from its suffering.

  Dury appeared in the doorway. He felt like blessed relief, the reliable and the knowable. “Am I interrupting, sir?”

  “Not at all, Paul. I need to leave at fifteen hundred, and then I don’t think I can come back here personally for quite some time. I’m going to have to leave Professor Fenix in your capable hands for a while.”

  Dury nodded. He didn’t look happy. “Sir.”

  “Speak your mind.”

  “Grubs to fight, sir. Just guilt for doing the spa deployment, that’s all.”

  “I understand. No reason to live on ration packs here, though. Nobody’s going to think less of you for it.”

  “I’ll think less of me, sir.”

  Dury was cut from the same cloth as Hoffman, at least where his Gears were concerned. But he seemed to find it easier to accept murky politics. Hoffman functioned perfectly where he was right now, in a different world where the senior command could still concentrate on warfighting—hands-on, immediate, the stuff they signed up to do. He would never have coped with the maneuvering and politicking in the Defense Department, but he certainly had the ruthless skills needed for the top job in a world fighting for its life.

  “I don’t think a coffee will send you sliding into the abyss of decadence, Paul,” Prescott said.

  “First it’s a coffee, sir, and then it’s a fancy pastry, and before you know it, you’re griping about the lack of the really good vintages on the wine list these days.” Dury dressed it up as humor but he couldn’t completely suppress the look in his eyes, which said that he meant it and that it irked him. It was so specific that it was probably from a real conversation he’d overheard. “Human beings habituate fast. I note that you don’t indulge yourself, sir.”

  Damn. He thinks I’m scrupulously principled. No, he’s too intelligent for that. “Hoffman can smell coffee at ten kilometers.”

  “I’ll have the boat standing by. Any special instructions regarding Fenix?”

  Adam wasn’t going anywhere, but Prescott had been hopelessly wrong about the man once and he couldn’t risk a second slip. This was one of the most technically able and intellectually gifted men of his generation. Some of the other scientists were like starstruck teenagers at the idea of having the great man working with them. If Fenix put his mind to getting a message out to Jacinto, there was a high risk that he would manage it.

  “Just remind him we have his son’s life at our disposal,” Prescott said. What an extraordinarily lucky break that had been. He couldn’t have created better leverage if he’d planned it. “Just make sure he’s kept under surveillance. Nevil has sufficient grievance with him to be a useful pair of eyes, and there might well be some malcontents among the biologists who resent him out of vain professional rivalry, so be creative.”

  “Understood, sir.” Dury slowly raised one eyebrow. “May I ask a question?”

  “An awkward one?”

  “I really need to know at what point you’ll agree to leave Jacinto.”

  “I’ll leave,” Prescott said, “if and when we have to evacuate the city. I know that’s counter to every emergency plan and best practice, but I simply cannot be seen to abandon citizens. W
hatever Dr. Samson’s nauseating cheerleading says, we can’t rebuild Sera from the population here alone. We need as many of our less illustrious residents as we can save.”

  Prescott could have sworn that Dury was on the verge of a rare smile. Damn. He hoped the captain didn’t have a higher opinion of him than he warranted, because duping honest men wasn’t a satisfying sport. For a moment, Prescott missed the thrust and parry of real politics, outwitting other politicians and maneuvering around journalists with a well-phrased denial or elegant omission, but perhaps he would live long enough to see it all return one day.

  “No, I wouldn’t breed from some of the people here, either, sir,” Dury said, and finally gave in to a smile. It was amused, not warm. “The next time I see you will be in Jacinto, then. Safe journey.”

  Prescott checked his watch and adjusted for Tyrus coastal time. He could fit in a visit to Fenix’s laboratory and still be ready for the submarine. It would be a couple of pleasant and much-needed walks, the kind he simply couldn’t have in Jacinto. It was almost funny being the most powerful man on Sera and yet the last who could make use of Azura. That was what the place was for—not just classified research and a repository for all that Sera needed to rebuild after a global catastrophe, but the emergency seat of government. Prescott had to tough it out in Jacinto with the rest of them. It was his duty. Politics was a dirty business carried out by even dirtier people—out of necessity, just like warfare—but he had his standards, the standards learned since childhood from his father, and those were clear. A leader had a duty to serve his people, however brutal the choices he might need to make for them.

  See, Fenix. I don’t cut and run. I can’t. This is all I am. No wife, no son. No legacy except history. And perhaps not even that.

  Adam Fenix couldn’t have asked for better facilities, Prescott decided as he strolled along the flower-lined path to the main lab. The laboratory was bright, clean, and airy, and certainly better-equipped than the one Adam had at the DRA; his suite of rooms had another study, luxurious and wood-paneled, very like the level of elegance he was used to at Haldane Hall. It still baffled Prescott that a physicist could do useful research in biochemistry, but history was dotted with rare polymaths who could find insights in every discipline they touched.