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

by Karen Traviss

  “So how old is this one?” he said, trying to get a look in. He cast around to check where Marcus was but couldn’t see him. There was no sign of Merino, either. “Six months? Three?”

  “A week.” That was Leuchars. His nose was almost touching the paper. The guy hadn’t had a new pair of glasses in years. If the cops had only had the sense to take his specs away the first time they’d arrested him, they might have saved a few lives. “It’s even got an up-to-date map.”

  “Of what? Somewhere else none of us are ever going to go?”

  Reeve spread his shoulders a little to ease his way into the pack without starting a fight. Now he could see it. It was a mauled copy of the Jacinto Daily, which was now more like an occasional weekly sheet because they didn’t have enough newsprint and everyone relied on the state radio or Ephyra World Service anyway. And it was a map, all right. It was one of those graphics things that journos loved, a map of the Ephyra plateau centered on Jacinto with all the grub front lines drawn in and marked by almost cartoonish images of drones. Reeve had only seem them on the TV news in shaky, badly lit recon footage, but they didn’t look funny at all.

  The other thing that didn’t look funny was the lines.

  “They’re getting fucking close,” said Leuchars. “Look.”

  He traced his finger along what would have been contour lines or something. Reeve could see the granite areas marked out in black, the places where volcanoes had erupted millions of years ago and been eroded by time, leaving the plugs of lava as granite and basalt. The Slab stood on one of the smaller ones, things they called side vents, cut from the granite itself. The boundary of the granite wasn’t a smooth line, though. It had lobes, almost like petals of a flower, narrow bits that stuck out into the softer ground, and the Slab was on one of those. For a moment, Reeve felt the place was stuck on a pier and that it could be surrounded and cut off at any time.

  “They’ve got to get in first,” he said. Yeah, that was right, wasn’t it? “Remember why they put this place here. So nobody could tunnel their way out. If we can’t get out, they can’t get in.”

  Leuchars straightened up and took off his glasses. He looked more like a bank manager than a bank robber. “You ever heard of climbing over walls, Reeve? Or flying? Those assholes have Reavers. And ladders.”

  “They’ve had ten years to fly in and fuck us up. Why now?”

  “Why ten years ago? Because they’re grubs and they just kill humans. It’s what they do.”

  Most of the huddle broke up and wandered away, leaving Leuchars leaning on the table and staring at the map as if he was planning a raid. Reeve looked up and saw two of the warders, Gallego and Campbell, leaning on the gantry rail and just watching. Reeve snatched the paper from under Leuchars’s hands and held it up like laundry.

  “So, have we got an evacuation plan?” he called.

  Gallego shrugged without moving his arms. “I’ll ask the Department.”

  They didn’t even have a fire drill. There was a muster point in the gardens if the fire alarm went off, but they’d still be stuck inside a locked maze with fifteen-meter walls until someone found another secure place to take them, and he wasn’t sure that the COG had anything like that left.

  If he’d been Chairman Prescott, he would have had everyone quietly shot by now. It was the only sensible thing to do.

  But if they just opened the doors—how much difference would that really make? I mean, the world’s up to its ass in homicidal monsters already, and maybe they’d take out a few of the human ones too.

  The public address system whistled with feedback for a second or two before a metallic, nasal announcement made Reeve’s fillings rattle. “Prisoner Alva, report to the infirmary for your appointment, Prisoner Alva …” Well, the medic was still paying the occasional visit, so at least somebody cared. Reeve wandered slowly back down the broad hall, glanced into Marcus’s cell—army-tidy, the crabby blanket and threadbare sheets tucked so straight and tight on the metal bed that you could bounce a coin off them—and wondered if he was in the east wing. That was where the kitchens were. A guy could have accidents in there unless someone was around to look out for him. Reeve speeded up discreetly and started composing a good reason for going there that didn’t make him look like he was kissing Marcus’s ass. It would raise questions, and then everyone else would find out about the smokes, and he’d be hassled for them. A quiet life, that was all Reeve wanted.

  He was heading for the far end of the hall when he heard Chunky’s raised voice. Someone was giving him a hard time. The trouble with long, straight halls was that you had to get pretty close to be at the right angle to see who was inside the cells, and Reeve couldn’t hear the other voice yet.

  “Hey, c’mon, why pick on me?” Chunky was saying. He wasn’t any trouble to anyone, at least not the other inmates. “Don’t, you asshole, you’re gonna rip it—”

  Then someone stepped backward out of the cell, not paying any attention to who was behind him because he didn’t have to. It was Merino, and he had the rag rug in one hand. Just stupid, childish bullying, beneath Reeve’s contempt in the real world, but in here it was a much bigger deal because this was all they had, the only pecking order they would know until the day they died, because for the COG, life meant life, and a sentence often meant life even when it wasn’t.

  But this was Merino, and Reeve picked his battles.

  “It’s a real nice rug,” Merino said, laughing his ass off. He wasn’t looking behind him. The boss wolf didn’t need to watch his back. “You can make another.”

  Chunky was on his feet now at the cell door, almost in tears. “It took me three fucking years to collect the cloth, man.”

  “Well, we’re none of us going anywhere, so—”

  That was the moment when Reeve saw Marcus appear behind Merino like he’d stepped clean out of the granite wall. Merino must have realized he was there a second later. Marcus just reached out, expression completely blank, and the next moment Merino’s face was slammed against the bars and Marcus twisted his arm up behind his back. The first thing Merino did was to look up, checking who was watching. A sprained arm was nothing compared to a bruised reputation.

  “You’re going to wish they stuck you up against a wall, Fenix,” Merino grunted. He was doing his best to look casual about it, but there really was no dressing it up. “Time to start looking over your shoulder.”

  “Shouldn’t argue over your knitting, ladies,” Marcus said. “He’ll give you the pattern if you ask nicely.”

  He peeled the rug out of Merino’s hand and tossed it into Chunky’s cell, then walked on, back turned on them. But his fists were balled. For a moment Reeve expected the confrontation to erupt into a full-scale fight. Heads popped out of the other cells to watch, and he could have heard a rat fart if the rats hadn’t already abandoned the place.

  Don’t look at Merino. Don’t make eye contact.

  “You want to finish this, Fenix?” Merino called. “Then we can all settle down and get back to normal.”

  Reeve risked looking up behind him for a second, just to see where Campbell and Gallego were. They were just watching. It was what the warders always did.

  Marcus got to his cell door and turned around. “Yeah, why not?” he said, like he’d been invited for coffee and cake. “You’ve probably got nothing to lose. And I’ve got less than nothing.” Then he went inside and sat down.

  The longer the silence went on, Reeve thought, the more Merino would feel he had to assert his authority. Now it was a coin toss, a gamble as to whether he could take Marcus or not. And Marcus had his back to the wall, quite literally.

  I can’t just stand here. Can I?

  Everything told Reeve to let them get on with it. Merino started walking from the far end of the hall, a casual stroll for a few paces, then speeded up. The guy didn’t exactly have a choice now. There were rules in here, the things that kept the place stable. Someone had to be top of the pile. Merino obviously wasn’t so cocksure
of his position that he could laugh off Marcus, though, and he paused at the cell door for a split second to reach into his back pocket. That was a mistake.

  Marcus was on his feet instantly. There was a loud crack like a chicken wishbone snapping and Merino stumbled backward from the door. He might have fallen: maybe he tripped. Either way, he scrambled to his feet as Marcus came at him, pulled his blade from his pocket, and lunged upward. Reeve didn’t see if it connected or not. He just watched Merino headbutt Marcus, knocking him back a pace, and then Marcus just went for him. Shit, the blow didn’t slow him down at all. He landed a hell of a punch in Merino’s face and followed it up with his elbow. Merino fell flat on his back and Marcus just jumped straight on him, on his knees, fist raised again. That was the moment when Reeve found a reflex he didn’t even know he had and dived in to grab Marcus’s arm.

  It was a good way to lose some teeth. Reeve braced. Marcus seemed to snap out of it instantly and stood up, flexing his hand. Merino got to his feet, blood streaming from his nose, just as the barking started and the wooden door flew open.

  Parmenter came out with a crazy, snarling Jerry almost standing upright on the end of his leash. “Right, you assholes, break it up.” Jerry took a lunge at Merino first. “Everybody back in their cell. Fenix—hands behind your head and face that fucking wall. Merino—get out of here. And you, Reeve—what are you gawping at? Piss off.”

  Marcus just meshed his fingers behind his head and turned around. Merino looked stunned, possibly because nobody had seen a warder come down to deal with a fight before, even when it was pretty well over. Parmenter didn’t even mention the blade. Maybe he hadn’t seen it, but he wouldn’t have cared if he had. Reeve dodged around Jerry’s snapping jaws—he was still sure that dog was all mouth, like his handler—and took a slow walk back, looking over his shoulder while Merino completely ignored Parmenter and watched.

  “Okay, it’s solitary for you.” Parmenter grabbed Jerry by his collar and held him at arm’s length while he shoved Marcus in the back, a sort of half-hearted attempt at being a hard case. “You hear me, Fenix? If it was up to me, I’d just let the damn dogs have you. But I’ve got orders not to do that, so I’m going to think up some other ways to make your stay here memorable. Move it.”

  Marcus walked out ahead of Parmenter and didn’t look back. Reeve watched the door close, and glanced up at the gantry. Campbell, a pretty quiet kind of guy, was still leaning on the rail. Just as Marcus passed under the gantry, Campbell spat over the side.

  “Bastard,” he said. His son was a serving Gear. He pushed himself off the rail and walked away. “You’re going to get yours.”

  It could have been an empty threat, a prediction, or a promise. Whatever it was, Reeve could do nothing, and he was worried, and it was nothing to do with losing his payment of smokes.

  STAFF OFFICES, THE SLAB.

  Niko shoved his time card in the machine outside the deserted staff room and wondered if he was the only bastard left on Sera who could be bothered to work.

  Ospen had called in sick—busy drinking, more like—and Niko had given up his day off to cover, with the promise of extra food rations for his trouble. But Campbell, Gally, and Lasky should have been here.

  He couldn’t see them. He leaned over the stairwell and took advantage of the echoing acoustics. “Gally? If you bone-idle assholes are playing cards again, I swear I’m going to swing for you.”

  Niko didn’t like 1400 to 2300 shifts at the best of times. He got up in the morning, cleared the chores if his wife was working days at Jacinto Medical Center, and then the whole day was suddenly gone. He’d get back home just after 2400 to find nothing on the TV or radio, and Maura waiting to tell him what a shitty day she’d had, because every day was shitty at the hospital now—rustlung, burns, simple infections turning fatal because they were running out of antibiotics, and occasionally Gears with terrible wounds when the military medics were overwhelmed.

  Those seemed to upset Maura the most.

  Niko stuck his head into the staff room—deserted, cold cups of coffee sitting on the table, plates stacked in the sink—and paused to listen for signs of activity elsewhere. All he could hear was the general burble of conversation and occasional raised voices as prisoners gossiped and argued. If he’d recorded that and played it to folks without telling them the location, they would have thought it was just a regular bunch of guys in a warehouse or big, echoey workshop, not a garbage can for the most dangerous criminals in the COG. He couldn’t even hear the dogs, just the murmur of voices and the clank of tin mugs and cell doors, the usual sound of a few dozen men rattling around in a space built for a thousand.

  Great. Leave me to fill out the handover sheets, why don’t you?

  He took the clipboard off the hook by the range—how many goddamn times did he have to warn these guys about not leaving paper near a heat source?—and walked out onto the gantry above the main floor. All he had to do was tick the roster to say all prisoners were present, alive, and relatively healthy. He could do that easily from up here. Nobody had stabbed anyone else for a good couple of years; the place had found its own equilibrium. He’d go check on the psychiatric block later.

  “Hey, Edouain.” The Indie looked up from the grimy mop he was pushing around the main floor. The inmates were on cleaning duties, which was going to make the headcount harder. “Any guest checked out since oh-six-hundred?”

  Edouain cocked his head as if he was counting. “Alva went to see the medic some time ago. The COG’s in solitary.”

  It took Niko a second to connect COG with Marcus. Damn, what had he done? “Get Reeve. Know where he is?”

  “Cleaning the urinals, I think.”

  “So go pull him out.” Niko pointed at a spot on the floor next to the checkers table. His stomach was starting to knot. “Tell him to wait there until I get back.”

  By now, a small crowd had started to gather on the floor. They all looked up at Niko, accusing and grim. This was the other world; his was up here on the gantry. The inmates weren’t out of control, not lately anyway, but Niko was suddenly conscious of the numbers again. Four warders—even all twelve—couldn’t make forty men do what they wanted unless they shot them from the gantry and even then the staff still wouldn’t win. The doors were locked, but this control was all based on an understanding, on consent. Humans looked for the normal in life, a way of getting along as a group: just as the inmates couldn’t behave like criminals every day, all day, the warders couldn’t maintain disgust every minute. Eventually there was always a glimpse of the person within. Niko didn’t have the energy to hate strangers permanently.

  One of the longest-serving inmates, Seffert, looked up with his arms folded. He’d done kidnaps with big ransoms and he hadn’t tolerated late payment. “Fenix got in a fight with Merino,” he said. “Campbell was shooting his mouth off.”

  That wasn’t Campbell’s style. Niko’s mental alarm bell went off. He gave the growing crowd of prisoners a wait gesture like a traffic cop and headed for the solitary block.

  It had to be for Marcus’s own safety. Merino wouldn’t let up until he’d won and proved he was the biggest frigging baboon in the troupe. Solitary wouldn’t be a lot of fun for Marcus, but it would keep him out of harm’s way, and that was what the Chairman’s office wanted—and maybe Marcus wanted to sit and fester on his own anyway. He wasn’t remotely sociable. Yes, that was it. Niko had constructed the whole explanation and was halfway down the flagstone corridor of the secure wing before he heard the noise.

  The acoustics of the rambling granite fort were unpredictable. A few meters away, all he could hear was the echo of his own boots, but as he passed the janitor’s store room it leapt out at him—the staccato of wet thwacks, punctuated by grunts, as if someone was pounding a steak but couldn’t maintain an even rhythm and was struggling for breath. And then a terrible voice, a man gasping but still roaring defiance: “Is that all you got? Is that all you fucking got? Go on! Just fucking do it! Finish
it—”

  It was cut short by another dull crunch. “Had enough yet, you bastard? Come on, asshole, you going to just stand there and take it?”

  One voice was Marcus Fenix; the other was Bradeley Campbell. Niko took a few slow seconds to work out that he was listening to Marcus getting the shit kicked out of him. He tried to pull back the sliding bolt, but the room was locked from the inside.

  That was why they were in there. They didn’t want interruptions.

  Niko started pounding on the steel panel. “Hey, what the hell’s going on in there? Open up.” There was a second of silence, but the thwacking and grunts started up again. “Campbell? I said open this fucking door.”

  He was about to go and grab a set of keys when the lock rattled and the door swung open. Gally stood in the doorway for a second before Niko pushed past him and found Lasky watching Campbell, who was poised with his baton drawn back, lining up for a swing. And there was Marcus, just standing there half-turned away, knees sagging and making no attempt to defend himself. The baton hit Marcus in the lower back at kidney level with a sickening thud, once, twice. He swayed. But he didn’t fall.

  Campbell steadied for another swing. Niko had a heartbeat to grab it or block him. His first reaction was to use his bodyweight and ram Campbell sideways to break it up, and the two of them almost fell. Campbell turned, face red with fury. Niko jerked his thumb over his shoulder at Marcus.

  “You want him? Then you’ll have to drop me first.” Niko took a step back to shield Marcus, drawing his own baton without thinking. It just happened. He didn’t plan it and he didn’t have any control over it. He just had to do it. “You heard me. Don’t think I won’t give you a frigging smack in the mouth.”

  Gally and Lasky froze. It was like they’d sobered up in a heartbeat. Campbell just seemed to be getting his breath back. Niko was looking at buddies he now didn’t know at all, reduced to animals and strangers, people he wouldn’t turn his back on again. They didn’t say a word.

  No, just ordinary humans. I know that, don’t I? Seen it before. One kicks it off, and we all fall into line and do the unthinkable.