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

by Karen Traviss

  “You would have made a good burglar,” Niko said. “Come on. Access is this way.”

  A flight of narrow wooden stairs led up to a roof space full of header tanks. Niko climbed the metal ladder to the roof hatch and trod carefully on the flat section of the roof that ran behind the parapet. On a good day, the visibility was twenty-five kilometers, but even on an overcast afternoon, he could still see far enough to know that the outage hadn’t just affected the prison. Smoke hung in the air about five klicks away as an artillery piece boomed in the distance. He could hear the sound of Centaur tanks grinding but the area around the prison was completely still and deserted.

  Marcus leaned on the parapet and adjusted the binoculars. “This would be easier at night.”

  “Yeah, we might still be cut off by then.”

  “No street lights or illuminated signs that I can see. But that doesn’t mean anything.”

  Niko pulled out his street map, looking for landmarks that might give him a clue. There was an electricity substation a kilometer north, but there was no line of sight with it. How long could he leave it before he fueled the generator or went out and got some help? He decided to give it a couple of hours. When it started to get dark, then he’d split the fuel between the generator and the Packhorse, secure the cells, let the dogs out into the runs, and drive for the nearest checkpoint.

  Yeah. Two hours.

  It was freezing. He slung his rifle and shoved his hands under his arms to keep warm. Marcus wandered up and down the parapet for a while, checking out the full panorama, then sat on the parapet with his legs dangling over the edge. He didn’t seem to have any fear of heights.

  “When did this place start looking normal to you?” he asked.

  Niko shrugged. “I don’t remember. That’s what scares me.”

  “It’s all wrong.”

  “What is?”

  “Killing the psychos. I don’t know where the line is anymore.”

  Niko waited for him to go on but he’d just ground to a halt. What would happen if I just gave him the keys to the Pack and told him to get lost? Niko could guess. He’d go find a rifle somehow and finish his war, either with his buddies or without them. He wouldn’t go back to see his girl or his best friend. Marcus’s line was more clearly drawn than he realized.

  “Would you do it again?” Niko asked.

  “What?”

  “Try to save your dad. Tell your CO to fuck off.”

  “Probably.” Marcus was still looking out over the heath toward the city center, binoculars pressed to his eyes. “So I’m in the right place after all.”

  “You know there’s no right answer to it, don’t you? Damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.” Everyone forgot Marcus wasn’t just jailed and disgraced. He was still grieving, too. Most people were, but that didn’t make it any easier. “How would you feel now if you’d left him to face the grubs alone?”

  Marcus just grunted. Niko wondered how bad things would need to be before he’d decide to abandon the Slab, go grab Maura, and get out of Jacinto, but he knew that point would come and that he wouldn’t lose sleep over it. He sat back and checked his watch: forty-five minutes. The sky was getting darker with clouds that would probably spit sleet, rounding off a perfect bastard of a day, and he didn’t dare try to go home until this place was sorted. Maura would be worried sick if he wasn’t back when she left for her night shift. When the power came back on, he was going to get a radio transmitter from Sovereigns even if he had to walk in and rip it out of somebody’s office personally.

  He waited in silence with Marcus. From time to time there was automatic fire that sounded much closer because of the wind direction, and a couple of Ravens circled over a position on the other side of the highway. When he leaned back against the pitched roof next to the hatch, sound wafted up from the floor beneath—dogs still barking, someone still hammering on metal, isolated sounds in a silent building. Damn, it was bitterly cold up here.

  One and a half hours. Okay, we’ll split the gas and that’ll give us three hours of power on the gennie. I take the Pack, find a patrol, get word to Sovereigns, and call Maura. Then I come back.

  He found himself thinking that if the grubs were in town, then maybe Maura would be safer here, but she’d have to travel into town every day for her shift, so there was no getting away from a city that felt more under threat every day.

  “You think this place is safe?” Niko asked.

  Marcus, still sitting on the edge of the parapet, took a long time to answer. For a moment Niko wondered if he’d heard him. Then he shrugged.

  “They’ll have a hard time getting in here,” he said. “Unless they dig into a sewer like they did a few years ago. But yeah, this is as safe as anywhere. Just more vulnerable to a siege.”

  “I don’t know how we’ll defend the place if that happens. A couple of rifles and a hundred rounds.”

  “Shit. Is that all you’ve got?”

  “That and an evacuation plan.”

  “Surprised you’ve got one.”

  “Well, in the absence of a bus, which we don’t have now, I’ll just open the goddamn doors and everyone can take their chances.”

  Marcus turned his head slowly and looked at him. “You know how long you’ll last unarmed against grubs?”

  “What else can I do?”

  Marcus looked like he was going to make a suggestion when the fire alarm went off again. In the gray and brown haze of the city in the distance, pinpoints of light appeared.

  “Hey!” It was Campbell, yelling up the ladder. “Niko? We got lights. It’s back on.”

  “Thank god for that.” Niko got to his feet, his ass numb with cold. “Saved by the bell, Fenix. Come on.”

  “Don’t get too excited until you find out what happened,” Marcus said, climbing down the ladder ahead of him.

  The corridor was just as grim and dark when Niko walked down it to the staff office, but the place was alive with the humming and ticking of pumps, motors, and fans. For a ruin, it still had systems that hadn’t yet failed. He motioned Marcus to wait outside—probably the only prisoner he would trust to do that—and tried the phone. The dialing tone was back. Parmenter stuck his head around the door.

  “Still no cell locks, or heating,” he said. “The circuits must have fried when the power came back on. Smell it? The wiring in here’s at least fifty years old. It’s a death trap.”

  “Does anything work?”

  “Well, there’s access to D Wing. And hot water. The dog runs are open, but we can’t shut the individual gates, so we’re just letting them run around the circuit.”

  “Okay. Check what’s happening on the floor.”

  There was a definite smell of burned rubber. That worried Niko more than the access issues. He picked up the phone again and dialed the Justice Department, not really expecting to get through or for anyone to pick up, but he got an answer after a few rings.

  “JD,” said a voice. “Admin office.”

  “Hesketh, Officer Jarvi here,” he said. “We lost power for a couple of hours. What happened?”

  “You and the whole south and west of the city. The Locust hit the power substation on Ginnet Drive.”

  “Wow, they got that far inside the wire?”

  “They dug through a conduit. I don’t know all the details.”

  “Well, we’ve still got problems. The cell door system’s screwed. It’s an electrician job.”

  “You might have to wait.”

  “How long?” Niko asked. “We kind of need locked doors. And some heating.”

  “Can the prisoners get out?”

  “No. They’re locked in, more or less.”

  “Then you’re going to have to wait your turn.”

  “But what about the heating? If we get another cold snap, we’re going to have guys freeze to death.”

  “They’re lifers,” the clerk said. “So what?”

  There was no point debating that delicate moral issue. Niko gave up. Maybe
he could get Edouain to take a look at the wiring, given his technical skills, and make himself useful for a change. Niko went outside to find Marcus leaning against the wall with his arms folded, chin down.

  “I heard,” he said.

  “What?”

  “The grubs. They dug through again.”

  “Yeah. Come on. Let’s get you back to your cell.”

  “You should be worried.”

  “Why?”

  “Because nobody thought they could get as far as Ginnet Drive,” Marcus said. “They’re finding ways into the city, granite or no granite. And that means they could come up in here.”

  It was only a matter of time. Niko knew that, had always known it, but time could be ten weeks or ten years. All anyone could do was wait.

  “So what do we do now?” Niko asked.

  “The only thing we can,” Marcus said. “When the day comes, we fight.”

  CHAPTER 13

  I will forsake the life I had before so I may perform my duty as long as I am needed.

  (From the oath sworn by recruits to the army of the Coalition of Ordered Governments.)

  COG RESEARCH STATION AZURA: LATE GALE, 13 A.E.

  Adam gazed at the backs of his hands and tried to recall what they’d looked like last week, last month, last year.

  He noted every hair, pore, and scar, but there was no visible change. He checked the calendar on the wall of his study. The best part of three years had slipped away since he’d regained consciousness on an island he’d never known existed and realized he was far from the only man on Sera weighed down by vast secrets, and he had nothing to show for it except understanding a little more of what Lambency had been a month or a year ago, but not what it was right now.

  In my blood. In my tissues. Look at me. It’s time that’s changing me. Not the pathogen. Time, and worry about Marcus.

  Despite injecting himself with the ever-evolving Lambent pathogen, sometimes every week, sometimes not for months, nothing seemed to have happened. He was perfectly well. Apart from the endlessly mutating proteins in his blood, there was no evidence that the organism had any adverse effect on him. Esther Bakos said she wasn’t sure if it was mutating to try to infiltrate his immune system, or if it was reacting to the steady assault of antigens that she’d developed. DNA research was in its infancy. She kept saying that one day, understanding genomes would transform Sera, and if previous Chairmen hadn’t been so ignorantly prejudiced against genetic engineering, then the world wouldn’t have been in this mess now.

  Adam wondered how much she knew that she still kept from him. He never assumed that he had the full picture, not even now.

  Well, would I trust me? Perhaps not.

  He dragged the razor carefully down to the line of his beard and watched his hand in the mirror.

  And you’re still unkillable, you little bastards. Just when we think we’ve finished you off … you come back. What do you want? What’s your plan? Blow me up and disperse your genetic material like a fungus? Mutate me into something to serve some other purpose? Just give me a clue. Any clue.

  He looked out of the bathroom window onto another perfect tropical day—perfect except for that permanent, static curtain of storm clouds—and tried to cling to the knowledge that this was all utterly abnormal. The rest of Sera was turning into a wasteland, a world on borrowed time. Myrrah knew it. So did he. For a moment he let himself hope that Lambency had finally found a species it couldn’t colonize and that it would never become active in humans. But the toll it would take on other life-forms was still an unknown threat to human survival. It wasn’t much good being immune if every food species on Sera died.

  And imulsion did cause mutations in humans. He knew that all too well now, as the COG had known for years. But the process by which it changed from an apparently biologically inactive fuel to a live pathogen remained unclear, as did finding parallels between imulsion’s teratogenic effects and its behavior as a pathogen. Adam suspected they weren’t linear stages of the same thing but evidence that imulsion was evolving, diversifying just like the first life on Sera had done. He’d been slapped down by Bakos once too often for taking intuitive leaps without the foundation of proof, though. He merely suggested routes she might explore.

  It’s not as if I haven’t been wrong before. But I’m right far more often than I’m wrong.

  Adam settled on humility for the day and checked himself again in the mirror, straightened his collar, and noted that his age was showing rather unkindly. Stress and insomnia had shaved kilos off him. His hair was thinning. He wondered if that was why the other scientists gave him a wide berth, as if anyone who worked with the pathogen was a leper, but it was probably just the fact that he was poor company these days.

  We know it’s not airborne. We know from animal studies that it isn’t transmitted by simple contact. So I shall have breakfast like a civilized human being for a change. I shall go out.

  He checked his overnight messages on the computer and bristled at Bakos’s request for another sperm sample, which had begun to feel more like a ritual humiliation than a routine lab test. Which might prove of little use in determining loss of fertility, she wrote, as men in their late fifties have low sperm motility and up to 80 percent of their sperm show abnormalities anyway. The bitchiness of scientists was more elegant than the lay variety. He toyed with the idea of taking a physicist’s revenge and reminding her of the cruel effects of gravity on connective tissue in females.

  And there was still no word on Marcus. He’d have to chase Prescott on that.

  Breakfast could be taken in a number of places on Azura, but Adam wanted to sit outside and look at the sky, which struck him as a rather prisoner-like wish and one that made little sense to him. Escape for humans meant lateral movement, not flight. It was one of those rare cliches with no basis in fact. But did Marcus spend any time staring up at the clouds over Jacinto? Did his cell even have a window? Perhaps it was more about fresh air and sunlight. Marcus probably had neither. Sometimes it was almost too painful to think about him. Adam picked up coffee and pastries from the restaurant, nodded politely to colleagues whose obituaries he’d read years ago—damn, there were some he’d even written—and went to find a secluded seat overlooking the bay. Gray and yellow seabirds he’d never seen anywhere else wheeled in the air before diving into the waves to snatch fish.

  As he chewed and thought, the rattle of automatic fire drifted on the breeze. It was a sound he’d grown so used to over the years, even in the city, that it almost didn’t register on him. It took a few moments to break into his thoughts and make him look around to see where it was coming from.

  It didn’t sound like a firefight. At first it was single, evenly timed shots, then controlled bursts five seconds apart. Someone was doing Lancer drill. Adam finished his coffee, tipped the dregs out onto the grass, and ambled off in the direction of the noise. If someone was using live rounds there’d be a red pennant flying somewhere conspicuous to stop people wandering onto the range.

  The interior of Azura was unspoiled tropical forest with a few farms to support the research center’s population. In all the time he’d been here, Adam had rarely ventured out of the main complex to go on the field trips because it had seemed like a shameful indulgence, and it also meant being social with a group of people he’d still not come to terms with. Was his deception any worse than theirs? He still didn’t know. By now, he should have known everyone on the island. He suspected he was on name terms with only a quarter of them, and some of those were the housekeeping staff.

  The Lancer fire grew louder as he reached the top of the headland. On the close-cropped turf at the bottom of the long slope, someone had set up a couple of wooden targets, the old Pendulum Wars kind in the form of a UIR infantryman painted in thick black lines on a flimsy softwood sheet. Adam looked for the range warning flag, but couldn’t see one. He recognized the two men lying prone and squeezing off bursts, though. It was Dury and Nevil.

  Nevil wa
s drilling neat clustered shots in the thoracic triangle just as Adam himself had been trained to. Adam watched for a while, surprised to see his assistant handling a rifle like a seasoned Gear. It was rather touching. Nevil had always longed to serve. Adam waited until Dury knelt back on his heels and took the magazine out of his rifle before venturing any closer.

  “You kept that quiet,” Adam said, walking down the slope. Dury turned. “And shouldn’t you be wearing ear protectors?”

  “What do you think, then, Professor?” Dury asked. “Dr. Estrom’s up to Onyx Guard standards. I’m damn impressed. Are you?”

  “Absolutely. Why didn’t you tell me, Nevil?”

  Nevil slung his rifle and stood looking like an embarrassed teenager. “Because you’re not very forgiving of failure.”

  Adam cringed. Nevil, like Marcus, had never failed at anything. It was sobering to think that either of them might have been too scared to do less than excel. Is that how Marcus saw me? Adam was mortified. All he could do was hold out his hand for shaking. Nevil took it and smiled, still embarrassed.

  “Any word from Jacinto, Captain?” Adam asked.

  “I thought the Chairman called you last week.”

  “He did. I want to know how my son is this week.”

  “Well, the prison’s still having power supply issues with some of its systems, but Marcus is okay. Still safer inside than out at the moment. Have you been reading the CIC briefings?”

  Marcus wouldn’t want safe. He would want to be out there on the front line, dealing with it. Adam imagined the pain of his frustration on top of everything else. “Yes.”

  “Then you’ll know Jacinto’s taking a pounding. East Barricade’s almost permanently cut off.”

  Well, that was one way to break the news that his ancestral home was in ruins. Adam thought of all the paintings and antiquities that he should have had the sense to place in government storage years ago, but suddenly found he didn’t care at all. Dury started walking back toward the complex and Adam and Nevil followed him, lost for conversation.