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

by Karen Traviss

  Yes. I am. I damn well am.

  It was the best Hoffman could do. It would still never be enough.

  Dom got a few meters, then turned, almost stumbling a few paces as he walked backward. His expression was one of disbelief. “I’m going to bring him back, sir. You hear me?”

  Hoffman no longer knew if Marcus deserved what he’d got. It didn’t change what Marcus had done, and it didn’t mean it would have been right to send a willing platoon back there to find him and maybe lose them too. But Marcus was 26 RTI, regiment, family—and however angry and confused Hoffman felt right then, he wanted Marcus to live. Dom, like his brother Carlos, was ready to die to make that happen.

  Would I do this for any other Gear, any other regiment? No. I’d do what it took to save most lives. But they always said I was overpromoted, and now I’ll prove them right.

  “I haven’t got time to stop you, Santiago,” Hoffman yelled. You know me, Dom. We took Aspho Point. We fought at Gossar Pass. You know I’m just a regular guy, not a monster. Understand what I’m saying now. “And if you go on this goddamn jaunt without an extra Lancer and a few spare plates and get yourself killed, then I’m going to kick your corpse’s ass all the way back to Wrightman.”

  Dom stopped in his tracks. For a moment, he did that little frown that always made Hoffman think he was going to burst into tears, ambushed by an unexpected gesture. His lips moved but he didn’t manage a word, and then he opened the ’Dill’s side hatch. But he didn’t take the vehicle. He just dismounted Jack, the on-board bot, one of the last few operational smart bots the COG had. The small machine unfurled its twin arms, ejected from its housing, and glided out to float beside him awaiting instructions. Dom glanced back at Hoffman, then ran off with Jack following him at head height.

  Mansell looked dumbfounded. “What the hell are you doing, sir? He’s taking the damn bot. The last prototype.”

  “Yeah, thieving little bastard.” Hoffman turned away. Dom stood a better chance of slipping into the Slab unnoticed without a big noisy target like a ’Dill. He still thought like a commando. He’d take a rifle for Marcus, too, and that would also be overlooked one way or another. “Discipline’s gone to rat-shit lately. I’m going to write a stiff memo.”

  “Sir, he should be stuck on a charge. We can’t just—”

  “Yes, but you’ve gone blind, Lieutenant, and I’ve gone deaf, so who can safely say it even happened? Move out.” Hoffman started walking toward the Raven. He made sure he was out of Mansell’s earshot but hoped he was in range of the fates or God or whatever else might be eavesdropping and willing to lend Dom a hand. “Good luck, Dom,” he said to himself. “You bring him back, you hear? You bring him back safe.”

  Hoffman would have to put on a show of outrage when Marcus finally showed up, but he could manage that. Part of him was furious with Marcus for starting this shit, and part of him was repelled by his own do-it-by-the-book reaction. It would have been bad for morale if he begged Marcus’s forgiveness.

  He climbed into the crew bay and looked down at Anya. It was hard for a lovely kid like that to look wretched, but she did. She wasn’t so much clasping her hands in her lap as wringing them.

  “Goddamn,” Hoffman said mildly, sitting down beside her. “Dom’s a disobedient asshole, isn’t he? Pardon my language, Lieutenant.”

  “Sorry, sir?”

  “He’s just taken Jack and gone haring off to the Slab with a spare Lancer and some armor. Damn, I’m going to have to put him on latrine duty for a week when this war’s over.”

  Anya just looked at him, then shut her eyes for a moment. “Oh.”

  He patted her arm. “I’m none too proud of myself, Anya.”

  “Even the best of us do terrible things sometimes,” she said. “And we don’t even know why.”

  “Amen.”

  “I meant Marcus.”

  “I meant me.”

  Marcus had done something shockingly out of character, and now Hoffman had too, but Hoffman wasn’t sure which of his actions was going to prove worse—not going back for Marcus right away, or giving a favorite Gear more breaks than some other grunt. He wasn’t sure if that made them even or if it was just one of life’s harsh lessons in the sameness of all flesh, that even a man who sweated over his moral compass could do something unconscionable in a split-second’s moment of weakness, even if he would never dream of living his entire life that way.

  Me? Him? Damn you, Marcus. Look what you’ve done to me.

  “Sorotki, are we going to hang around all frigging day?” Hoffman barked. “Turn and burn.”

  The Raven lifted clear. Anya reached across and squeezed Hoffman’s hand. The chain of command was forgotten for a moment.

  “Thank you, sir,” she said. “He’s paid for it. But I know he’ll keep paying for the rest of his life.”

  And so will I. We all have our Anvil Gate.

  “Debt paid,” he said.

  CHAPTER 18

  It’s been a few hours. I can’t hear anyone else out there. Reeve hasn’t come back. The grubs can’t get at me now, but I’m trapped. So … everyone probably thinks I’m dead. Anyway, if they find me, then they’ll find this letter, too, and if it’s too late, at least you’ll know what was on my mind at the end. It was you.

  (Prisoner B1116/87 Fenix M.M., writing to Lt. Anya Stroud. Letter not sent.)

  TWO KILOMETERS FROM THE SLAB: ONE HOUR LATER.

  “Jack, cloak yourself, will you?” Dom said. “This is meant to be a covert op. And stay off the radio.”

  The bot was just under a meter across without his mechanical arms, a steel and composite egg-shaped unit with a propulsion system, one of the most expensive drones the COG had ever developed. Dom had worked with bots before in the last war, but Jack was the latest and the last of his kind. He could also disappear by literally bending light around himself. Dom didn’t understand the physics behind the skin of carbon nanotubes that did the trick, but it was just what he needed right now.

  And Dom had always talked to bots like they were Gears. It seemed rude not to. They were smart, independent, and aware of what was said to them, and that was good enough for him.

  Jack blipped and the air around him shivered like a mirage on a sun-scorched road as he faded into transparency. Dom could still hear the faint noises—the hum of his propulsion unit, the whirr of servos—but to any casual observer, Jack simply wasn’t there any longer. Dom could look straight through him. They were now at the intersection of the main highway to Andius and the underpass that ran from West Barricade to the edge of Wenlau Heath. Somehow, they had to get through the grub lines and then cross open ground to reach the prison.

  Dom dropped onto his belly at the edge of the elevated section of the northbound highway and crawled forward to get a look at the grub traffic on the southbound carriageway slightly below. He could see the metal stairs that connected the pedestrian footpath to the underpass, but he could also see a steady trickle of drones with Brumaks. The Reavers seemed to be elsewhere. At least he could avoid being spotted from the air.

  “Shit, Jack, I’m going to have to break a few track records,” he said. “Any ideas for distracting the grubs?”

  Jack was smart but not much good for conversation. It was a shame the research program had been cut short before they added speech to the system. But maybe that would have made Jack just a bit too human for Dom’s sanity.

  Yeah, remember Pad and his bot. Used to call it Baz, after his buddy who got killed. That can’t be healthy. Bots are designed to take the risks humans shouldn’t, maybe even take a bullet for a human. Just another way to feel like you’ve lost your buddy twice.

  Dom checked his watch, feeling the sweat trickling down his spine. He’d kept up a steady jog all the way from CIC with an extra rifle and a kitbag of armor, with five klicks still to go. He had no way of knowing if Marcus was already dead. Now he found himself starting to rehearse the idea and how he’d react to it, just to make sure he didn’t lose it completel
y and fall apart if that was what was waiting for him in the Slab.

  His mind raced and tripped over itself, fretting about how he’d recover the body, how he’d break it to Anya, and how he’d cope with having both brothers dead. He almost had to punch himself to make it stop. He brought his right fist down hard on the back of his left hand, crushing it against his Lancer for a second.

  Get a grip.

  Plan it. Visualize it. Do it. Goddamn, I’m a fucking commando. Think like one, then. Believe it.

  He pressed up onto all fours and rebalanced his load. Jack could have carried some of it, but that would have defeated the point of having a cloaked bot. It was just a matter of slogging on. He worked out a path of cover down to the stairs—crawl along behind the crash barrier, sprint for the concrete bridge support, then take five or six steps down the stairs before dropping onto the grass verge that hadn’t been mowed short in years—and went for it. Jack brushed against him at one point and he almost crapped himself. He knew the bot was right on top of him because he could hear him and even feel the faint breath of air and warmth like an animal at his side, but just not being able to see what had touched him was disturbing. He rose to a crouch, pushed off on his hands like a sprinter leaving the blocks, and ran for the shelter of the stanchion.

  Nobody took a potshot at him. He pressed as flat to the concrete as he could and watched a patrol of grubs pass beneath him before cycling through the radio channels to listen in case there was any sitrep on grub numbers in the area.

  Hoffman knows I’m here. Is it going to make any difference if I call in? No, don’t push it. Stay off the net. Don’t rub his nose in it. If he wants to get hold of me, he can flash me.

  To the north, Dom could see more grubs with a Brumak about a hundred meters away. This was the break in the traffic that he needed. He slid over the metal handrail and landed on the stairs. He was sure the clanging of his boots must have carried halfway to Andius, but in five seconds he was over the side and falling into long grass, the first fresh growth of spring. Soft or not, he hit his elbow so hard when he landed and rolled that his eyes watered.

  Come on. A hundred meters down the underpass and I’m on the heath. Keep going. Just do it.

  “Jack, you still there?”

  A disembodied chirp confirmed it. Dom squatted and checked both ways before darting into the underpass and below the southbound carriageway, trying not to break into a run that might echo and alert the grubs on the road above. The pomp-pomp-pomp of artillery would probably have been enough to shroud the noise, but he didn’t dare risk it. If he didn’t go back for Marcus then nobody else would, not until it was too late.

  You should have sent a Raven for him, sir. I know it’s wrong, but most of the pilots would have volunteered.

  Dom struggled with the idea that Hoffman had abandoned Marcus. Nobody did that. No Gear was left behind. He knew it was irrational and emotional, and that Hoffman wasn’t allowed to think that way now that he was the senior commander with so many other lives at stake, but it still hurt.

  But he let me take all this kit and go find him. Either he doesn’t give a shit about me these days, or he’s still the Hoffman I know. Everyone’s going crazy lately. Marcus, Hoffman, and me.

  Wenlau Heath loomed ahead of him. He stood in the opening of the underpass, one hand on the broken tiles that had once been a mosaic mural of folk art depicting Tyran nursery rhymes, all cheery-looking monsters and heroes with swords. This part of the heath had been a picnic site with a play area before E-Day, but nobody ventured out here with their kids anymore. It seemed a weird place to site a family picnic area given that a prison overlooked it. Maybe it had been intended as one of those cautionary tales for kids, a friendly warning that if they didn’t behave they’d end up in there.

  The Slab could have passed for a country estate if it hadn’t been for the razor wire along the top of the walls. Dom estimated he had seven hundred meters to cover, a few minutes’ walk if he could just stroll in the open, but a potential killing ground if the grubs were still out there. He knelt in the cover of some thorn bushes and scanned the horizon. Warm air brushed his arm like a hair dryer on a low setting as Jack took up station beside him.

  “Jack, go up ahead and scout for me. You’ve got the floor plans in your database, haven’t you?” Dom looked over his shoulder to check whether he could see the bot’s faint mirage. The city skyline shivered a little. “Get to the gates and bleep me when it’s clear.”

  Dom felt the wash of warm air again as Jack flew away, and took out his field glasses to scan the heath again. No grubs. No Brumaks. Nothing big. He scanned upward and magnified the image to take in the top of the walls, and that was when he caught some movement. It wasn’t big enough to be a grub. He thought it might have been a crow or something, but then it paused in a gap in the parapet. Wretches. They were goddamn Wretches. His gut flipped, but he kept telling himself that breaching a building wasn’t the same as controlling it. The Slab was a big place. Just getting inside didn’t necessarily mean they’d penetrated every cell.

  “Come on, Jack,” Dom said. “Can you hear me? Are we clear yet? One blip for yes.”

  Jack took a full minute to respond with a single chirp. Dom picked out a path across the heath, ten or twelve moves from the underpass to the gates, most of the gorse bushes so short that he’d have to cover the ground at a crawl with his Lancer resting on his arms, dragging the kitbag. He edged out and began the slow approach, pausing every so often to stick his head above the level of the gorse and check that he was still heading the right way. Shit, it was slow. Twigs snagged his face and he kept expecting to find himself staring at the boots of a grub and with nowhere to run.

  Just keep going. Right elbow forward, left knee … left elbow, right knee …

  He was sweating like a pig. But the next time he raised his head, he was almost in line with the small door set into the big black gates, and then he was suddenly crawling on sharp gravel across the width of a single-track road.

  “Jack?” He was right in front of the gates now, close enough to ease himself to a squat and slip to one side of the granite buttress. “Let me in, Jack.”

  For some reason he thought Jack would decloak in front of the gate, but he didn’t. The small door eased open. Dom stepped in and almost collided with Jack hovering in front of him. Right: he could ascend over walls, so he’d just dropped in and opened the gate from the inside. Useful things, bots. But now Dom had to search this place without a hint of where Marcus might be. All he could do was follow Jack into the building, checking around him at every step.

  The Slab stank to high heaven, the most depressing place Dom had ever seen, so dark and decaying that he couldn’t believe any human being could live there. How the hell had Marcus ever coped with this? It explained a lot. First Dom had been afraid of how he’d react if he found him dead, and now he was starting to worry about what a live Marcus would be like. Every few minutes, the metal grids set in the ceilings shivered and clanged as Wretches scuttled along them. Dom trained his rifle on the grids and gantries, looking for a clear shot or an excuse to drop some of the little bastards.

  All the doors hung open. There were gates and passages made entirely of steel bars or wire mesh, and the original fabric of the building with its heavy, carved wooden doors and metal bolts. At one point a Wretch darted out in front of Dom and he opened fire, shredding it with a long burst. He didn’t need to do that. He just wanted to. Now he found himself edging down a long corridor that looked like someone had built a giant chicken run in the middle of it. He could hear water trickling somewhere. Then he heard Wretches moving around again, and looked up. One of the things was right above him on another grid. He fired, risking a ricochet, and it squealed and ran off.

  “Find me D Wing, Jack,” Dom said. “Prescott said D Wing.”

  Jack knew where he was going. Dom stuck close and found himself walking through a series of doors into a big, empty hall with an upper gallery, a complete wreck o
f a place that made his stomach roll. The first thing he saw was the dead Wretches scattered around the floor. A table at the far end had been tipped over, and fallen masonry lay in piles at one end of the central hall.

  “Jack, you sure this is the place? Shit, you sure this isn’t one of the derelict wings?”

  Jack bleeped once, then twice. Now Dom could make out the individual cells set in the walls on either side. He started looking into each one, wondering whether to risk calling out, but decided to carry on in silence. In the end, he checked every cell on that floor and found nothing. He’d been in here an hour.

  How the hell did Marcus survive in here? Shit, what’s it done to him?

  He tried to put that out of his mind for the time being. “Jack, any other cells in recent use on your plans? How are we going to find Marcus now?”

  Jack moved off and Dom followed. The bot bypassed a couple of locks on security doors and floated down a flight of stairs into almost pitch blackness.

  “Hey, lights, Jack.”

  Jack’s tactical lamp shot out an intense white beam and Dom could see a short corridor with a metal door half-open. For some reason he was expecting to trip over human corpses, but there was nothing on the floor. Jack slowed down and went into the corridor. The only working light Dom had seen since he walked in cast patches of cold, bluish light on the stone floor. He couldn’t hear anything down here, not even a sound from outside or even from the floor above. Jack started sweeping his beam from right to left across the corridor and back again, then stopped at one of the cell doors.

  Dom fought an urge to say “What is it, Jack?” like the bot was a dog. But Jack had sensors, and maybe he could detect body heat and exhaled CO2, or even pick up sounds that Dom couldn’t. Overhead, a couple of Wretches stopped on the grid to spit down at him. He aimed at them and they scuttled off.

  The door had a small metal hatch. All Dom could do was slide it open and try to see what had grabbed Jack’s attention. He could have sworn he saw movement.