Gears of War: Jacinto's Remnant Read online

  No workshops. No bakeries. No computer network. No drugs manufacturing. We didn’t have much in Jacinto, but now we’ve even lost most of that.

  The CIC truck’s interior looked like any small office, minus windows. It smelled of damp wool, fuel, coffee, and sweat, packed with weary and stressed people trying to grab a hot drink to keep them going while they worked out humanity’s chances of survival on the back of a used and reused notepad.

  This was an old emergency management command vehicle from the pre-Locust days, a mobile base for the response team, designed to go wherever a civil disaster occurred. Anya almost didn’t recognize Prescott when she walked in; he was sitting on one of the desks, in a thick pullover and ordinary pants like the rest of the civilian team—no smart tunic, no medals, no gold braid. It might have been common sense—civilian rig was warmer than his uniform—but it looked like a subtle message that he was in it with the common people, suffering what they suffered. Design or accident, it certainly seemed to have had the right effect. The EM team looked energized. Even Dr. Hayman looked more relaxed. After what they’d all been through, that was some impressive inspiration in action.

  No, you’re not just any old bureaucrat, are you, sir?

  “Okay.” Prescott was partway through some agenda item. “So we’ll leave people on board ships for the time being, except for those in open vessels who need immediate shelter. Can the larger vessels take any of them?”

  “Stuffed to the gunwales already, sir.” Royston Sharle had drawn the shortest straw of all as the EM chief. He’d served in the COG navy, and it showed to Anya in all the right ways. “Disease is going to be an issue if we push that. You know—confined spaces, overloaded waste discharge. We’ve rigged tents with heaters for the time being, and for tonight, we just have to get as many under cover as we can. Those in vehicles—they’re better off staying put until we can move into the buildings. Latrines and water in place, and soup wagons will be operational within the hour.”

  “Good job, Sharle.” Prescott rubbed his forehead, looking down at a sheaf of notes in his hand. If it was an act, it was beautifully performed. “Thank you. Fuel?”

  “Sovereign sent a marine recon team into Merrenat and there’s still imulsion in at least half the tanks that Stranded couldn’t get at. And there’s no telling what else is still stored in that complex—it was built to withstand a full Indie attack in the last war.”

  Anya listened, the landscape of crisis shifting before her eyes. From a single city under siege, held together by necessity, defined by a physical defensive line, humankind was now in free fall. The biggest threat was itself. The word secure brought that home to her. Citizens had probably stolen, feuded, and connived throughout the war, but the Locust threat was right on their doorstep—easy to focus upon, familiar, oddly unifying. Now the Locust were gone. Simply staying alive was suddenly even harder. Anya could sense a communal fear of the truly unknown.

  Prescott glanced up at her and looked relieved; he even managed a quick smile. Maybe that was his political psyops at work again. The sobering thing was that she felt herself respond to it like everyone else did. She was willing to work until she dropped.

  “How many people did we lose?” Prescott asked quietly. “Do we have any idea yet?”

  There was a brief silence. Hayman looked at Sharle for a moment.

  “I can only tell you how many haven’t made it out of the treatment station alive so far,” she said. Hayman had to be at least seventy years old; she was in the vulnerable elderly category herself, even if her don’t-mess-with-me attitude disguised that. “And that includes trauma and those who’ve died of heart attacks in transit. But if you’re asking for an estimate overall—we’re thinking in terms of thirty percent losses.”

  But we said we’d evacuated most of the city. I said it. Anya tried to come to terms with what most meant. Is that the best we could do?

  Yes, 70 percent was a good majority, achieved under attack and with the city literally vanishing under them. It still didn’t make 30 percent acceptable. And it didn’t include any Stranded, because the COG had no real idea of how many people lived in wretched shantytowns outside the protection of Jacinto. There could have been more than a million dead now. A drop in the ocean after so many over the years, but—

  No, Anya couldn’t take it in. She just let it register on her brain as a statistic, allowing the shock do what it was designed to do—to numb the pain temporarily so that you could concentrate on surviving. Prescott chewed over the news for a few moments, then slipped off the table to stand upright, fully in command. It was perfect use of body language; he probably did it automatically, a habit learned at his father’s knee. This was simply how statesmen behaved.

  “I’m not going to give you a stirring speech,” he said. “We face facts. Our society’s changed out of all recognition in three hours. We’re more at risk now than we were under Locust attack. We’ve lost even the most basic comforts we had in Jacinto. People will die of cold and hunger. People will become angry and scared very, very fast, and that’s the point at which we face collapse. It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. And it’s going to put enormous pressure not only on you, but on our Gears—we’re taking them out of a terrible war and plunging them straight into policing their own people, keeping order, because order will break down if we don’t impose it. Some Gears will find it impossible, and so might some of us. But the only other choice is to degenerate into savagery, and then the Locust will have won because we handed them the victory.”

  Prescott stopped and looked around at the assembled team. Anya had been so transfixed by the pep talk that she hadn’t noticed Hoffman behind her. She had no idea where he’d been, but he was here now, coffee in one hand, freshly shaven, smelling of soap. That was his substitute for sleep—coffee and a shower. Where he’d found running water and privacy, she had absolutely no idea, but Hoffman would have rubbed himself down with snow if he had to.

  “Well said, sir,” Hoffman said quietly, and sounded as if he meant it. “We now have security patrols on task.”

  So that was where he’d been. Anya had expected to be central to that tasking, but things were changing. The meeting broke up, and Hoffman beckoned her into another compartment of the vehicle.

  “I can’t find Santiago,” he said. “Now, what the hell went on with his wife? I heard that transmission.”

  Anya shook her head, trying not to think the worst. “I only know as much as you do, sir.”

  “Permission to go find out some more, seeing as you’re not going to sleep.” Hoffman folded his cap and tucked it in his belt. “I’ve got to do my quality time with the chairman. And please give Sergeant Mataki my compliments if you see her.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  It was all code. If Hoffman had ever been the type to openly admit he was worried sick about individuals, it was long buried. No commander had that luxury. Anya felt she had moral permission to use the radio now and leaned over Mathieson at the comms desk.

  “Okay, where’s Sergeant Fenix?”

  Mathieson consulted his roster. “Delta’s on stand-easy and they’re all logged off the radio net. Try looking in marshaling zone G. Tents should be up by now.”

  If Dom was losing it, Marcus would be with him. All she had to do was find Marcus. She drove the ’Dill slowly along the marked lanes, slowing to a crawl every time she saw a group of Gears. It took a long time, and then the APC’s headlights picked out a familiar figure—Augustus Cole. Apart from his sheer size, no other Gear was crazy enough to go around with bare arms in this weather. Baird and Mataki stood there with him, looking as if they were arguing, completely oblivious of the snow.

  Anya stopped and rolled back the Armadillo’s hatch. “Hi, guys. Where’s Dom? I’m on a mission from Hoffman.”

  “Marcus went lookin’ for him, ma’am,” Cole said. “Some serious shit’s goin’ down. What happened? I heard him, you heard him—”

  Baird cut in. “I don
’t believe it. The man was totally normal when we met up. Not a word about it. When you blow your wife’s brains out, you don’t just shrug and carry on, do you?”

  “Blondie, you’re all fucking heart,” Bernie said sourly. “Sorry, ma’am. Look, I say we shut up and leave this to Marcus for now. We don’t know what went on yet. We tell anyone who asks about Maria that Dom’s got proof she’s dead, and not to ask him about it. Okay?”

  “Good idea,” Anya said.

  Baird seemed genuinely shaken by it. “I mean, I saw what the grubs did to our guys down there, and shooting her had to be the—”

  “Shut up before I shut you up.” Bernie prodded him hard in the chest. “Dom’s in shock. We do what we have to, to get him through it, okay? And from you, that means no crass advice. Keep it zipped.”

  Anya was satisfied that Bernie had the situation—and Baird’s mouth—under control. She’d try raising Marcus again.

  “Hoffman thought you’d been killed, Bernie,” she said. “He wants to know you’re okay.”

  Bernie’s face was cut and bruised. She glanced away as if she was embarrassed at Hoffman’s concern. “Not in quite those words, I’ll bet.”

  “I’ll tell him you’re happy he’s okay, too.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Bernie said.

  In this game, a girl had to be multilingual. Anya could speak Hoffmanese, and she understood Bernie-speak pretty well too. She turned the APC around at the end of the lane and resumed her search.

  SOUTHERN PERIMETER, ASSEMBLY AREA.

  There was just enough light from his armor’s power status indicators for Dom to see the detail on the photograph.

  He squatted in the lee of a boulder, bent over so that his body shielded the picture from the falling snow, and went through the sequence that was now pure reflex after so many years. He studied Maria’s face—her cheek pressed to his as they posed for the camera—and recalled where they’d been when the picture was taken, then turned the print over to read what she’d written on the back. He’d done the same thing a dozen times a day for ten years. The photo was cracked and creased; Maria’s handwriting was gradually fading, the lines more smeared each time he took it from the pocket under his armor.

  So you always have me with you. I love you, Dominic. Always, Maria.

  That was the Maria he had to remember: beautiful, enjoying life, not the scarred and tortured shell in the Locust detention cell. Dom tried to fix it in his memory. That was how he’d been trained. When a commando was in the worst shit imaginable, he had to be able to think his way out of it—to concentrate on survival, tell himself a whole new story, believe the best, and ignore the nagging voice that told him he’d never get out of this shit-hole alive.

  Dom tried. But all he could see was her sightless eyes flickering back and forth as he tried to get her to recognize him, and a face that was only scarred and ulcerated skin stretched over a skull.

  Why can’t I see the rest?

  The last thing he could visualize was placing the muzzle of his sidearm to her temple as he held her. He shut his eyes at that point. He remembered lowering her carefully to the floor and taking off the necklace she still wore, the one he’d bought her when Benedicto was born, but the rest was a blank, and somehow he couldn’t see any blood in his mind’s eye.

  Was it her?

  You know damn well it was.

  Why didn’t I take her out of there and get her to a doctor? Wouldn’t any man do that without thinking?

  Why didn’t I find her sooner, try harder, go looking down there earlier?

  I had ten fucking years and I let her down.

  Dom knew the answers and that he could have done no more. But there was knowing and there was believing, and believing wasn’t much influenced by facts.

  He fumbled under his chest-plate for the sheaf of photographs he kept in his shirt pocket. It was the size of a slim pack of playing cards, carefully sealed in a plastic bag, and he could visualize each of the photos at will. His life was preserved in those fragile sheets of glossy card: his brother, Carlos; his parents; his son and daughter; Malcolm Benjafield and Georg Timiou from his commando unit. There was only one person in those pictures who was still alive now, and that was Marcus.

  Dom put Maria’s photo back in the pack and resealed it. He wouldn’t need to show it to anyone else again. He’d found her.

  What am I going to feel like tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that?

  He got to his feet and walked on, staring out into the snow, cradling his Lancer. Despite the noise from the camp—’Dill and Centaur motors, generators, the murmur of thousands of voices, occasional shouts and instructions—it was quieter here than anywhere he’d been in years. He could hear boots crunching in the snow, gradually getting closer. He didn’t need to turn and look.

  “Dom.”

  Marcus just appeared beside him, matching his pace as if they’d planned this patrol. He didn’t ask if Dom was all right; he knew he wasn’t. And he didn’t ask if Dom wanted to let it all out or talk it through, or why he’d gone off without telling anyone. It didn’t need saying or asking. It was simply understood. The two of them knew each other too well to do anything else.

  “Nothing moving out there,” Dom said.

  “Hoffman’s set up patrols in the camp in case the civilians get out of hand.”

  “Yeah, it’s a whole new pile of shit now.”

  “You said it.”

  “Everyone thinks I’m a bastard, don’t they?”

  “The whole camp? I didn’t ask them all. But if you mean the squad—no. They don’t.”

  “They know what I did.”

  Dom was ready to freeze to death out here rather than go back and look Baird, Cole, or Bernie in the eye—or anyone else, come to that. It was like he’d sobered up after a crazy night and had to admit he’d been an asshole. He felt he had things buttoned down all the time he was in the Locust tunnels, but now he was safe—whatever that meant now—things were starting to come apart again. He didn’t know what the next minute would bring for him.

  Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Dom could repeat it like a litany. The well-meaning woman who’d counseled Maria after the kids died had listed it for Dom like a transport timetable, all the stations where you would stop on your way to the terminal marked Normal Life Again. But she’d never warned him that he’d feel all of it at once, or in random order, or that he’d never reach normal.

  “Dom, say the word, and I’ll tell them what happened. You don’t have to.” Marcus stopped to sight up on something. The snow was easing off; the cloud cover was thinning out. “They’ll understand.”

  “How can they understand if I can’t?”

  “We’ve all lost family. Nobody’s judging you.”

  “I should have saved her.”

  Marcus just shook his head. They were now a couple of kilometers south of the camp, in ankle-deep snow pitted with crisscrossing animal tracks. Dom had been certain that he’d react like Tai and blow his own head off rather than live with the horror that was trapped in his mind, but it didn’t feel that way at all. He could have done it ten times over by now. He hadn’t.

  Part of him had started grieving for Maria the day she really fell apart—when Benedicto and Sylvia had been killed. Whatever was happening in his head now wasn’t nice, clean, noble, predictable grief. It was full of other shit and debris, like the snow around here. It wasn’t as white as it seemed.

  “You did save her,” Marcus said at last. “Remember Tai Toughest guy we knew, and he wanted to die. That was after hours of what the grubs did to him, not weeks or years. If anything like that happened to me, I’d want you to cap me right away, because I’d sure as shit do it for you.”

  Dom didn’t know if Marcus could do it, because he hadn’t slotted Carlos when he’d begged him to. Marcus had still tried to save him. But that didn’t matter now.

  “We better report in,” Dom said.

  “Yeah.”

 
“You spoken to Anya yet?”

  “No.”

  “You thought she hadn’t made it. Don’t kid me that you don’t need her.”

  Marcus made the usual noncommittal rumbling sound at the back of his throat. “Yeah.”

  They turned back to camp, following a wide arc. Dom tried to imagine how he’d have felt if Anya had been the one to die and it had been Maria on that Raven. He was damned sure he’d have rushed to Maria’s side and never let her out of his sight again. But Marcus had been raised in a big cold house full of silence, where emotions were kept on a leash, so he probably didn’t even know where to start.

  The temperature was falling fast now. The snow was turning rock hard, and the sounds it made had changed slightly. Dom strained to listen.

  “Shit.” Marcus held up his hand to halt him. They covered each other’s backs automatically. “Hear that?”

  Dom had to hold his breath to hear it. Whatever it was sounded a long way off, like something moving erratically through the belt of forest to their south, breaking branches as it went. It could have been an animal. There were enough varieties of hoof and paw prints on the ground to fill a zoo. But some sounds were deeply embedded in memory, and Dom wanted it to be just his tormented mind misreading everything and trying to fit it to familiar patterns.

  “Corpser?” Dom said.

  Corpsers were too big to manage a stealthy approach, and they had too many legs—great for excavating the grubs’ tunnels and ferrying drones around, but piss-poor at surprise attacks on open ground. Something was crashing in this direction at high speed.

  “I hope his mother knows he’s out late.” Marcus pressed his radio earpiece. “Fenix to Control, enemy contact, two klicks southwest of camp, possible Corpser approaching. We’re engaging.”

  “Roger that, Fenix,” Mathieson said. “You’re not rostered on patrol. Are you alone?”