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

by Karen Traviss

  He stopped to look down at a potted plant pushed up against one of the basement windows, a succulent of some kind. Most of its leaves were gone but a couple were hanging on to life with grim determination, dusty and stunted. Like most of the other windows that hadn’t already been blown out by the blasts, the panes were cross-taped from the inside to reduce shattering.

  Sylvie would be what, fourteen or fifteen now? I’d be worrying about her dating boys. I got Maria pregnant at sixteen. Yeah, I’d be a real overprotective dad …

  Dom buried the pang of memory and moved on. He wasn’t killing time here today. He was looking for an office. Some of the houses were missing doors, blown out by direct hits from Reavers, and it was hard to work out the numbering. Half the properties had unhelpful names like Oaks Villa or Tyr House because they were too posh to have ordinary numbers. The lawyer had said his office was at number 86.

  Dom kept checking and counting, peering at the doors. A face loomed up at one of the windows, blast curtain drawn back, and startled him so much that he jumped back. He wasn’t wearing uniform or armor: he must have looked like a looter on the prowl.

  “It’s okay,” he said, holding his hands up. The guy behind the glass couldn’t hear him. “Number eight-six.” Dom mouthed the words again, exaggerating. “Number eighty-six. Where’s number eighty-six?”

  The blast curtain twitched and fell back into place. The front door opened.

  “This is fifty-three,” the guy said, looking him up and down. Civvies in Jacinto didn’t usually have firearms, but Dom didn’t take anything for granted and was ready to draw his sidearm if he had to. “Other side of the road, and down there.”

  “Thanks. Just passing through.”

  “You a Gear?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay.”

  So maybe he didn’t take me for a looter. Even in civvies, Gears were conspicuously different, bigger and healthier-looking than the general population because they got the extra rations. Dom carried on down the other side of the road where the buildings were mostly intact, and counted the doors until he found the one with a small engraved brass plate screwed to it: B. L. AMBERLEY, ADVOCACY SERVICES. The short path was swept clear of debris. He tried the door, pushed it open, and stepped into the hall. The place was crammed with piles of box files, books, and brown card folders stacked against the walls.

  “Anyone home?”

  “On your right,” a voice called.

  Dom followed the voice through the obstacle course of filing and found a guy sitting at a desk surrounded by even more files. He looked like a Gear dug into a sangar. All that was missing was the machine gun.

  “Dom Santiago,” Dom said. “You Mr. Amberley? Sorry if I’m late. Hard to find the house.”

  “You’re not that late.” Amberley was about fifty, balding, dressed in a sweater and casual pants rather than the office suit Dom was expecting. He gestured at a battered chair among the files. “Take a seat. Sorry about the clutter, but I had to salvage everything from the offices when we evacuated. There’s nowhere else to work now.”

  Dom eased himself into the chair and waited while Amberley rummaged through a cardboard box. Officialdom terrified him. He felt helpless and insignificant. Anya would have handled this much better, but it wasn’t fair to ask her. No, this was his responsibility.

  Why didn’t I just ask Marcus why Hoffman diverted us to extract his dad? He wouldn’t have lied to me. I know he wouldn’t. Then I could have stopped him and we could have sorted this out ourselves, no court-martial.

  Dom had turned the what-ifs over in his mind for month after month, all the things he could and should have done. Anya did, too. It was all if-only; if only she’d radioed the pilot and grounded the Raven, if only Dom had queried the new orders, if only … and Adam Fenix would probably still have died. The rescue attempt had been doomed either way.

  “Ah, here we are.” Amberley opened a folder and took out a sheaf of papers. “I’m sorry this has dragged on so long, but processing Justice Department admin isn’t a priority these days. That’s the problem with the Fortification Act being in force—almost every crime’s dealt with by summary courts. The appeal system’s pretty well fallen apart.”

  “I know, sir, but you’ve got a response, yes?”

  “Yes. But it’s not good news, I’m afraid.” Amberley held out a sheet of paper to him. Dom found he was looking at the typed words without being able to take them in. All he saw was the COG Justice Department seal printed on the top of the letter. “The JD’s ruled that there aren’t any grounds for appeal on mental health grounds, even if Mr. Fenix agrees to one.”

  “What do you mean, agrees?”

  “You can’t force the subject of an appeal to agree to it. It’s not something you can force on an unwilling person.”

  “But he’s not … normal. Sane. Whatever. Can’t I lodge an appeal for him?”

  “You need power of attorney to act for him, and you’d only get that if he agreed to it, which seems unlikely given his response to the idea of an appeal, or if he was sectioned by a doctor under the Mental Competence Act. But you won’t get any doctor to certify him because the medical report says he’s fine. You’re stuck in a loop, Mr. Santiago. There’s no action you can take.”

  “But Marcus—normal Marcus would never have done that. He’s Mr. Perfect. He never put a foot wrong. Ever. He’s got to be unbalanced.” It felt like betrayal to talk about Marcus like that, but it had to be done. “How the hell can they say he’s normal? Have they had a doctor look at him?”

  “He’s examined regularly.” Amberley cleared a space on his chaotic desk. “But read that report—okay, let me summarize it for you. Mr. Fenix reacts like a normal, sane man. There’s no reliable medical evidence that he suffers from any traumatic disorder or that his judgment was impaired by it.”

  “Marcus always sounds perfectly normal. But he isn’t.”

  “There’s nothing you can do.”

  “There has to be.”

  Amberley looked at Dom for a few moments, frowning, like he was racking his brains for another answer. “You want to know my personal opinion, rather than my professional one?”

  “I’ll take anything you’ve got.”

  “Mr. Fenix has already had his sentence commuted, and that’s very unusual. He’s also being examined regularly, which is unheard-of for Hesketh.”

  “That’s no real comfort, sir.”

  “My point is that he’s already being treated with exceptional leniency, so whatever favors his family is due appear to have been called in. If he’s in jail, then that’s because the Office of the Chairman wishes it, probably to set an example to any other Gear who’s finding life a little trying at the moment.” Amberley held out his hand for the report. “They’re making an example of him. Which is why you can do nothing. And the fact that he won’t see you or his young lady, and isn’t responding to letters, simply reinforces what I’ve been told—that he believes he belongs there. And I can’t say if that reaction’s sane or insane, but it’s certainly logical given the facts.”

  Dom was crushed. It wasn’t the lawyers and the doctors who’d destroyed his hopes, though. It was Marcus. The stubborn bastard was martyring himself. This do-the-honorable-thing bullshit would kill him.

  “I’ve got to get him out,” Dom said, realizing he sounded like a dumb asshole for repeating that when the guy had just told him pretty damn clearly what the situation was. His face prickled and burned with sudden sweat. “I have to.”

  “Well, you’ve exhausted all the legal avenues.”

  The words were out of Dom’s mouth before he’d even thought to the end of the sentence. “What about illegal avenues?”

  Amberley just stared at him for a while. Dom wasn’t even sure what he meant, but now he was suddenly thinking how anyone got out of the Slab if it wasn’t with the government’s blessing or in a coffin.

  “We shouldn’t really be having this conversation,” Amberley said. “I’m o
bliged to advise you that planning to extract a prisoner from jail is conspiracy. But as you’re my client, mentioning that unadvisable course of action remains between you and me.”

  Dom wasn’t sure what he meant by that either. It could have been a straight warning not to talk to him about breaking the law, or something else Dom didn’t quite understand. He reached inside his jacket and took out the ration coupons that he’d counted before he left the barracks, a month’s supply of meat, cheese, and beer—an amount that Dom could have saved up perfectly legally, but trading them for other things was definitely an offense. It took food out of the mouths of those who needed it. Amberley took the bundle and counted it, then slipped it into his desk drawer.

  So he was fine with illegal. That was the only way anyone could lay their hands on extra food coupons.

  “Is that covered by the client-lawyer confidentiality thing too, Mr. Amberley?”

  Amberley shrugged. “Best I can do is give you a list of my former clients with a history of that kind of arrangement. Any conversation you might have with them—well, I wouldn’t know anything about that. Hesketh does have a reputation for having employees willing to enter into unusual and informal agreements to look the other way at certain times.”

  Dom had to repeat all that to himself to get the meaning from it.

  “You said a list.”

  Amberley took out a folder, thumbed through it, and then wrote something on a scrap of paper. “Here,” he said. “Three possibles. Number one hangs out in the bar next to the ferry terminal. The other two both work in the imulsion depot on Dyrham Street. Just exercise some caution. They don’t operate under Sovereign’s Regulations.”

  Dom had been doing the rounds of Stranded camps for the best part of a decade. A few regular criminals weren’t going to be any more risky to handle. “Thank you,” he said. “I’ll do that.”

  Amberley got up to see him out. “You’re absolutely determined about this, aren’t you?”

  “He’s my brother,” Dom said. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  Dom took the long way back to the barracks this time. He needed time to let it sink in that he’d done another immoral thing that would have really upset his dad. Eduardo Santiago had handed down his plain, honest code of right and wrong to his sons. No lying, no stealing, no cheating, and no picking on the weak: show everybody respect, take responsibility for your actions, and never let your friends down. It didn’t need any fancy language. There was no bargaining to be done with any of it, no avoiding the spirit of its intention.

  But I’m doing this for Marcus. This isn’t some goddamn theory. Where there’s a clash of rules, I have to choose, so I’ll follow the one that saves the people I care about.

  Dom ambled along the side of the highway, kicking small stones and brick fragments down the embankment. A few vehicles passed him in both directions, but it was a very quiet day, like everyone was in hiding and waiting for something to break. To his right, only a couple of kilometers away, he could see what was left of his old neighborhood, or at least where the last house he’d shared with Maria and the kids had been. It was just a house. Everything that made it a home had gone a long time ago, but it had still been hard to move out and let the government billet displaced families in it. One man didn’t need a big place like that. And Dom didn’t need to be cooped up with his memories. The things he couldn’t bear to part with—toys, clothes, discs—were in storage at the barracks in a couple of big cardboard boxes.

  When I find Maria, we’ll start over. A nice little apartment, like the first one we rented in Lower Jacinto.

  Smoke curled up in wisps right across the landscape. Some of it was cooking fires, and some was just fires still burning under the rubble. The body recovery teams were out there too, working through the debris to identify and dispose of remains. The areas they’d cleared were full of people returning to pick up the pieces of their lives and salvage what they could, supervised by civilian police or Gears. Dom hadn’t seen any actual looting in years. That was dealt with instantly.

  Could I pull the trigger? He’d had to police food riots and that still ate at him. Now he had a stash of illegally obtained ration coupons. You know what? I don’t give a fuck. A guy’s only got so much nice in him, and if you spread it too thin it doesn’t help anyone.

  He carried on, fingering the scrap of paper in his pocket and working up the courage to read it and do something about it. It took him a while. So this was the guy who might solve his problem—Piet Verdier. Dom put two and two together and decided this guy had to have transport access, delivery trucks or something, because the only other ways in or out of the Slab were tunneling out or using a helicopter to bypass the walls. Only the COG had helos. And nobody could tunnel out of the Slab—or into it.

  Bent warders, like Amberley said. Paid to look the other way.

  But Marcus has got to cooperate. Can’t kidnap him. How the hell am I going to persuade him when I can’t even talk to him?

  Maybe Verdier had an answer to that, too.

  Dom could hear a vehicle coming up behind him, slowing and crunching down through the gears. He knew the sound of a Packhorse. He stopped and turned. The Pack drew level with him and the passenger window opened.

  “Hey, Dom.” It was Rossi. Tai was driving. “What are you doing out here? You want a ride?”

  There was no point fueling gossip or speculation. “Just been to see a lawyer. They blew out an appeal.” He climbed into the back seat of the Pack. “Marcus isn’t crazy. Official. They tested him and he just wasn’t nuts enough to qualify.”

  “Assholes,” Rossi said. Tai offered no comment and the Pack roared off. “So what now?”

  Dom wondered whether to discuss it but decided that it wasn’t fair to drag anyone else into this. “No goddamn idea.”

  The highway led into the center of the city. As the Pack got closer, the world looked deceptively normal except for the occasional missing building replaced by a shattered bomb site, and the razor wire and sandbags everywhere. People were out and about, repairing windows and queuing with their buckets and plastic bottles at supply tankers to get water. The engineers, poor overworked bastards, hadn’t reached this part of Jacinto to restore the water supply yet.

  “Might get a few days’ peace,” Rossi said.

  Dom hoped so. He had business to do. He’d head down to the ferry terminal tonight and look out for this Verdier guy. Then the radio bolted to the dashboard came to life just as they were turning off for Wrightman.

  “All gun positions, Reavers inbound, range ten kilometers. Sectors Kilo and Lambda. Stand by.”

  Tai stepped on the gas and Dom was thrown back on his seat. There wasn’t a whole lot that infantry could do on the ground when Reavers raided except pick up the pieces, but that was enough. Rossi grabbed the handset and called in.

  “You are troubled, Dom,” Tai said suddenly.

  “You’re a mind reader.”

  “I simply know you.”

  Tai was the guy who never let life touch him, who seemed to have a haven in his head that he could always retreat to. He treated the shit that life threw at him as having a purpose and a place in the chain of events rather than being random, unfair crap that made no sense.

  “Got any wisdom for me, Tai?” He had to know it was about Marcus. The rest of Jacinto had settled down to life minus Marcus Fenix, but Dom never would. “You know what my problem is.”

  Tai nodded to himself. “There is a chain that connects all events, Dom. Our lives are all links in it. One day, at one moment, you will look back at the events in your life, and Carlos’s, and Marcus’s, and Maria’s, and you will see that the chain could only ever have been made one way. You will see and understand the purpose of your life and death, and you will have perfect clarity and peace.”

  Dom’s nape prickled slightly. Tai sounded certain, absolute concrete-sure. Rossi hung up the handset and chuckled to himself, not laughing at Tai but probably embarrassed by his sincerity. Pad Salton wou
ld have told him to cut the crap and drive. He was from another Islander culture entirely. He thought dead was dead, and that the only hand that guided anyone’s destiny was pure fucking chaos.

  “Yeah, some clarity would be good right now,” Rossi said.

  Dom couldn’t answer. But he knew he’d remember Tai’s advice, even if it made no sense right now, and hoped he’d recognize that peace when it came.

  OFFICE OF THE CHAIRMAN, HOUSE OF THE SOVEREIGNS, JACINTO: BLOOM, 12 A.E.

  Politics taught a man many lessons, but the most surprising one that Prescott had learned was just how much could be forgotten when it was absolutely necessary.

  You can’t just work with the people you like and trust, Richard. You have to learn to work with those who can give you what you need. And they may well be your enemies, or just hateful people. But you have to look beyond that at what they can do for you.

  Richard Prescott sat back in his leather chair and tried to recall how old he’d been when his father had told him that. He’d been about ten, perhaps eleven. It sounded like an ugly, dishonest thing to do. He was at that age when friends mattered and friendships took on a deadly earnestness, and the thought of having to be nice to horrible people—not just the usual good manners—seemed awful. How did he square that with all he’d been taught about telling the truth and standing up for what he believed in? That was when he understood that he needed to be two people: the inner one who had his own rules and standards, and the outer functional shell that did what it had to, like one of those Silverback loaders the operator stepped into temporarily to become a different beast entirely. He found a bridge between the two personas in never letting himself tell a lie.

  There was omission, yes. He would have been dangerously naive if he thought a statesman could always tell everyone the entire truth, even if he knew what it was—which, quite frequently, he didn’t. Knowledge was never perfect. But he drew the line at falsehood. His language became precise, surgical, whole under scrutiny: not one word, not one syllable, was ever a lie. He was proud of the skill but also dependent on it, because it was the one lifeline that reassured him he understood where reality lay and that he had his own moral compass. He’d worked with so many colleagues who lied to the electorate, then lied to themselves, and then believed their own lies because they’d told them so often, so thoroughly, and so well.