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

by Karen Traviss

  He waited with the engine idling, just in case. He could still hear Anya breathing, taking in the occasional deep breath as if she was getting ready to run. As he stared at the fuel station, he saw the first sign of movement, and a skinny middle-aged guy with a beat-up hunting cap and a rifle to match edged out from behind one of the concrete pillars. The dogs seemed satisfied that their masters had things under control and trotted away.

  “And why’d she be here?” the guy asked. More Stranded men started appearing behind him. “Seeing as she’s got a soldier boy to keep her fed in the city.”

  “My kids got killed and she went out looking for them,” Dom said. He’d said it so often now that the words blurred into one continuous cadence of sound, stripped of meaning like singing a song in a foreign language and having no idea what the lyrics meant. It helped him stomach them. “She never came back. You know what I mean. Tipped her over the edge.”

  A frank admission often did the trick. My poor damn wife went crazy. Half the survivors out here must have understood that level of despair. Dom studied the grim, haggard, suspicious faces and waited for the lines to soften and become baffled embarrassment, as they sometimes did.

  “Nobody here by that name,” the guy with the hunting cap said. His rifle dipped just a little and Dom noted one of the guys looking past him at Anya. Don’t even think about it, asshole. She’s my brother’s girl. You’ll be wearing your junk for a pendant. “Santiago.”

  Dom held his arms out away from his sides to show he wasn’t going to use the Lancer that must have been the first thing they spotted. “Maria Santiago. I’ve got a picture. Will you take a look?”

  The guy who’d been checking out Anya stepped forward while the other Stranded covered Dom. He had a shotgun. “Tell your buddy to keep his hands away from his pistol.”

  Dom heard a rustle behind him as if Anya had decided to hold out her arms too. The body armor had done a better job of disguising her figure than he’d expected. “No sweat, man. We just want to find my wife. Okay? I can’t offer much for the information, but I’ve got some hard candy for your kids if you want it.” Dom waited for the shotgun guy to get within five meters and then raised his hand. “Okay, I’m going to reach under my chest plate and pull out the photo, so relax.”

  The guy stopped and watched as Dom went through the motion that was automatic by now and slid out the photo of himself and Maria—more tattered every time, showing more creases, threatening to erase Maria completely one day. He held it up so the guy could see it.

  “I don’t have many pictures of her,” he said. “Just look and don’t touch. You understand.”

  “Okay.” The guy squinted and nodded. The man with the hunting rifle came over to look as well. “We’d remember her. Pretty lady. Even if she looked a bit different now.”

  “No luck, then.”

  “Sorry.”

  Dom reached slowly into his belt and took out the bag of candy. It was old and sticky, but kids would go crazy for it. “Thanks, anyway. You ever see her, find a Gear and tell him Dom Santiago needs to know. I’ll make it worth your while somehow.”

  Dom was used to abuse because his armor said one thing to Stranded: the COG, the government who’d hung them out to dry, and most of these poor assholes had been COG citizens before the Hammer strikes. So Stranded saw no reason to love Gears, and patrols often got stoned and spat at if they ever got close enough. Gears had an equally low opinion of Stranded, who could have enlisted and had three square meals a day. But Dom was careful to present himself as a guy on his own, worried sick about his wife and no threat to anyone. It usually worked. The shotgun guy took the candy, touched his cap, and stepped back.

  “Hope you find her, buddy,” he said. “Really.”

  Dom put the picture away and revved the bike. “Thanks. Stay safe.”

  “We hear the grubs are all over you in Ephyra. We’ve seen ’em moving up Corpsers, too. They’re still keen on digging around the plateau.”

  “Yeah.” That hurt more than Dom imagined. “Nobody’s safe now. Maybe we should learn a lesson from you guys.”

  Dom turned the bike and roared away. Maybe they’d feel better for knowing that the COG was getting its comeuppance a street at a time. But it happened to be the truth, even for a never-quit guy like himself.

  “Are they always like that?” Anya asked. Either he was riding more sensibly now or she was getting used to the bike, because she wasn’t squeezing the breath out of him. “The only way I can handle it is not to think about them. I was right there when Prescott gave the order.”

  She sometimes said that to Dom, almost confessional, as if she’d taken the decision herself. She was the ops room lieutenant. She just happened to be there. Nine years on, she still seemed to feel the need to remind him. He’d never heard her mention it to anyone else.

  “They don’t forget,” Dom said, “and I can’t blame them. But some are more polite about it than others.” He looked back over his shoulder for a second. “I’m going to ask about a legal appeal for Marcus.”

  “It’d have to be against sentence, not conviction. He pleaded guilty.”

  “You know about this stuff, then.”

  “Basic law’s the same, military or civilian. If you admit you did it, you can’t complain that the judge believed you. Unless they find you confessed to something you didn’t do.”

  “Okay, sentence it is.”

  “The Judge Advocate’s officers are mostly doing supply work now with Major Reid. We don’t have courts-martial often enough to keep them busy.”

  “So I see Reid?”

  “You could try. Or I could.”

  “I’ll do it, Anya. I know it’s awkward for you.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re an officer. Marcus is enlisted.”

  “He’s a civilian by default now. Dismissed from the service. Automatically.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “No, Dom, you can’t use that excuse for him now.”

  “It’s not an excuse. It’s regs.”

  “Well, screw the regs. I love him and I’m not giving him up without a fight.” Anya had never actually voiced her disappointment that bluntly before. She sounded angry with Marcus, but that was pretty much like the early stage of bereavement. “Mom would never tell me who my dad was. I’ll be damned if I become another Stroud girl who’s okay to screw but isn’t good enough to marry.”

  “Aw, c’mon, you know Marcus doesn’t think like that. It’s the whole fraternizing with officers thing.”

  “He’s in jail for dereliction of duty. Nobody gives a damn now who he did or didn’t sleep with.”

  “And it’s the way his upbringing made him. But he loves you, Anya. He’s never looked at another woman, I swear it.”

  “He never even stays the whole night.”

  “He has nightmares. I mean bad.”

  She paused, as if she hadn’t realized that. “Who doesn’t? I can handle it.”

  Dom cringed. This was a conversation they had to have well out of earshot of anyone else, painful private stuff that people probably knew anyway but nobody dared mention. Dom had known Marcus since they were kids, more than twenty years, and he’d become friends with Anya—an unlikely friendship, across class divides and across rank—in the last years of the Pendulum Wars. They’d all been at a medal ceremony, raw with grief and determined to close ranks against a curious world: Embry Stars for Marcus, Dom, and posthumously for his brother Carlos, and Anya was receiving the Embry on behalf of her dead mother. It was an agonizing way to forge a friendship. It also made it rock solid. And Marcus and Anya—that’s when it had all started.

  Marcus rarely said anything about her to Dom because he wasn’t a gut-spill kind of guy. Like Carlos used to say, you had to listen to his silences as much as what he actually said. But he loved her in that weird, distant, upper-class, Fenix kind of way. Maria had said it would never work out. Dom wanted it to work out better. But Dom knew it was just Marcus being
Marcus—not callous, not unfaithful, not even neglectful, just struggling to cope with intimacy and whatever side of himself that he felt he didn’t dare let Anya see. She was right. The officer-enlisted divide was now probably more of an excuse than a reason.

  Damn, Anya was patient, a saint waiting for crumbs of affection. Dom could only think of it like the Tyran lynx, solitary cats that mated for life but spent most of the year prowling and hunting alone, only getting together in season. Dom was too wary to do anything more than give Marcus an angry jab in the ribs occasionally and tell him to shit or get off the pot in case Anya got fed up and went off with a guy willing to at least admit he was dating her.

  She never would, of course. Dom could see her still waiting for Marcus in forty years, if anyone had that long to live these days.

  “Anya, he’s my brother. He’s my family.” Dom had to get this over with before they got back to the barracks. “I can’t sit on my ass. I’m going to get him a lawyer. The army wouldn’t give him a really good one, even if we had any.”

  “How? Lawyers don’t do it for free, even these days.”

  “I’ll think of something.”

  Anya didn’t say another word. About a kilometer from the barracks, though, just as they were crossing Timgad Bridge, she patted him on the back.

  “You’re the best friend anyone could ever have, Dom. We’ll get him out. And we’ll find Maria. Promise.”

  All anyone could do in a war was look out for the guy next to him. Dom looked out for Marcus and now he’d look out for Anya, because Marcus couldn’t. It was that simple. He dropped Anya off at the mess, returned the bike to the motor pool, and went back to his quarters, a metal-framed bed and a battered locker in what had been a side ward. Wrightman Hospital was where the rich had once sent their lunatic relatives, and some nights Dom lay staring up at the egg-and-dart cornice around the ceiling, wondering what kind of poor tormented bastard had been locked in this well-meaning prison. Everywhere Dom turned, he was surrounded by prisons and madness now.

  I must be crazy too. Who gets out of the Slab alive?

  He opened his locker. He didn’t have many possessions left, but one small item was worth something, a dull bronze medal with a red and black striped ribbon: his Embry Star. Without Carlos and now without Marcus, it wasn’t worth shit to him. They said some people still collected them, which was mad in itself, but the whole world was fucking mad now.

  Maybe I can get a medical appeal for Marcus. Battle stress. Nobody wants to talk about it, admit they’ve got it, least of all Marcus. Stigma my ass. He doesn’t have to prove himself to any bastard.

  Dom took the medal out of its small leather box and rubbed it on his pants. The inscription was just his name and rank, and two simple words: FOR COURAGE.

  Courage. It was every day, every hour, every minute. Dom couldn’t see the line between what he did at Aspho Point and everything else he made himself do when he couldn’t face the next second. Whatever Marcus was going through now would a damn sight harder than taking on the Indies at Aspho Fields.

  And he’d be doing it alone.

  CHAPTER 7

  Why would anyone want to escape from the Slab these days? It’s probably the safest place in Jacinto now. There’ll be people breaking in to hide there before too long, mark my words.

  (Kennith Heugel, former warder at CPSE Hesketh—aka the Slab.)

  LATRINE AND SHOWER BLOCK, THE SLAB: GALE, 11 A.E.

  Niko checked each toilet stall, pushing the waist-level swing doors open, as if anyone could possibly hide behind them. Reeve waited. It had to be important for a screw to risk coming down here on his own.

  “So he keeps his nose clean,” Niko said at last. He seemed satisfied they wouldn’t be overheard and pressed a small paper-wrapped package into Reeve’s palm. “He’s not looking terrific, though, is he?”

  Reeve squeezed the package and estimated there were five roll-ups in it, not bad pay for keeping an eye on Marcus Fenix. “He’s not eating much.”

  “See that he does.”

  “He’s built like a brick shithouse. I can’t make him eat his greens.”

  “But that’s what I’m paying you for.”

  It was simplicity itself to kill someone. Adequate planning and a steady hand, that was what it took, and Reeve could have written a textbook on it. Keeping someone alive when they’d lost the will was much harder. Niko gave Reeve that warning look, chin lowered. A faucet dripped somewhere. The place smelled less like a lavatory than D Wing. It was easier to keep clean.

  Niko tapped his pocket. “I’ve got two letters from his girlfriend.”

  “So?”

  “So I need to know if it’s going to tip him over the edge. Some guys, it keeps them going. But some just go mental. Can’t bear to be separated, can’t bear to think what she’s getting up to with someone else, whatever.”

  “So put him on suicide watch.”

  “We don’t do a suicide watch.”

  “Yeah, half the guys in here aren’t exactly the relationship kind. And then there’s the guys who prefer dead ladies anyway.”

  “Just tell me. Is this going to help or make things worse?”

  Prisoners were allowed a letter a week or one visit a month. Reeve couldn’t recall ever getting either, but his customers didn’t make house calls. One of the arsonists had a couple of visits from his mom some years ago, but then she’d stopped coming and everyone assumed she was dead. Most people in the outside world were.

  The whole world. Wonder what it looks like out there now?

  “Let me find out.” Reeve held out his hand for the letter. “You want to leave it with me?”

  “No.” Niko narrowed his eyes. “It’s personal.”

  “Oooh …”

  “The governor’s checked it for security shit. You can take that look off your face.”

  “Come on, what could anyone possibly write in a fucking letter to a lifer that would compromise security? We’re safer in than out. And not just for ourselves.”

  “Rules,” Niko said. “I don’t make ’em.”

  He turned and walked off. Reeve waited for his footsteps to fade on the broken floor tiles, taking the opportunity to liberate a frayed floorcloth from one of the buckets before ambling back to the main floor, laughingly known as the recreation area, as if everyone enjoyed a piano recital and cocktails there of an evening. Normally, he could predict who’d be where at any given time and what they’d be doing. There was only so much time that the guys who weren’t in solitary could spend tending the gardens or trying to keep this glorified hovel clean. The mycoprotein vats in the east wing were automated and only needed shutting down and cleaning every couple of months when somebody got a seriously bad dose of shits from food poisoning.

  Busy was good in this place, though. Busy meant you were still alive instead of wide awake in your coffin, Reeve decided, and stopped the more antisocial residents from slicing you up out of boredom.

  You noticed that yet, Marcus? Have you noticed how different we all are? Prison’s like the army, despite the dirt. It has ranks and rules. Every society’s like that.

  Everything happened on the main open floor of D Wing. The screws could see most of what was going on from the safety of the gallery or the gantry, if they gave a damn, and the lags had the illusion of privacy, at least from above.

  But not from your fellow guests, of course.

  “Hey, Chunky,” Reeve called. The little guy was sitting in his cell cross-legged on the bed, working away at that damn blanket with a single needle. He’d blagged some more scraps off someone, then. “Can we see what it is yet?”

  “Patience, son,” Chunky said. “It’s a map.”

  “Now, if you were in here for knocking over a bank, I’d be interested …”

  “And if I’d buried the stash somewhere, it’d be worth shit now. But a rug, that’s another thing.” Chunky tucked the needle in the top pocket of his overalls and held up the chaotic mass of cloth, about the size of a
big bath mat. “Getting there, a square at a time. Nearly done.”

  “Bit small for a blanket.”

  “It’s a rug,” Chunky said, as if he was teaching Reeve a new word. “And it’s crochet. Not goddamn knitting.”

  Reeve couldn’t make out any detail in it. It was a steadily growing raft of all kinds of stuff—thin strips of cloth, bits of wool, thick thread, even dog hair, or at least Reeve hoped it was dog. If there was a rag or anything remotely weavable being thrown out, Chunky would pounce on it. Still, it made sense to have a good thick rug even if it didn’t look much like anything. The floors here were either poured concrete or granite slabs. In winter it was cold enough to freeze the balls off Embry’s statue.

  Reeve fished around in his pocket and took out the frayed floorcloth. The knitted cotton yarn was already unraveling so all Chunky had to do was finish picking it apart. “Compliments of the house,” he said.

  Chunky grinned. “I bet your momma always told you what a good boy you were, Reeve.”

  So there was another neighbor who’d owe Reeve a small favor one day. Life in the Slab was mostly a delicate balance of favors and diplomacy, occasionally interrupted by unpleasant things that Reeve could forget had ever happened if he tried hard enough. The rules weren’t the same ones the outside world was used to but if you followed them long enough, they seemed perfectly normal. Even a shithole like this was quiet routine most of the time. Violent offenders—he loved that word, offenders, like they all belched in public or something—couldn’t keep it up all day, every day, any more than a thrashball player could.

  But it was unnaturally quiet today. Reeve could see a row of asses ahead as a dozen or more guys leaned over the checkers table in a huddle, looking as if they were studying something. The Indie guy everyone ignored as if he didn’t exist, Edouain, hovered on the fringes like he usually did. When Reeve got close up he could see everyone was jostling for a newspaper, which were pretty thin on the ground these days.