Gears of War: Anvil Gate Read online

  “The voice of experience.”

  And you know where I acquired it, don’t you, asshole? “Nothing’s more trouble than hungry, bored people.”

  “Where is Trescu?”

  “With Michaelson, working out tanker rosters.”

  “Good.” Prescott lost interest in the refugees right on cue. He checked his watch and took a couple of steps up the jetty in the direction of his office. “I want a permanent detachment of Gears on that rig. Can’t be too careful.”

  “Already in hand, Chairman. I’m putting Fenix and Santiago on it. They’re heading out shortly to do a security assessment.”

  “Wouldn’t they be better tasked rooting out the Stranded? We can destroy a Locust army, but suddenly we can’t eradicate a few hundred half-starved vagrants.”

  “I know who my best problem-solvers are, Chairman.” And I’m the frigging chief of staff here. I decide how I deploy my men. Hoffman ignored the sly criticism. “That imulsion platform is going to be a bigger problem than pest control.”

  Prescott gave him a brief frown but didn’t ask for an explanation. It didn’t take a genius to work it out anyway. Gorasnaya couldn’t protect that damn rig—or maintain it—without having to crawl to the COG for help. It was going to tie up COG resources. But the COG needed the imulsion to keep the fleet running, build a city, and drag this damn place out of the last century.

  Prescott gave Hoffman his best statesman’s public relations smile—no display of teeth, just a curl of the lips. “I have absolute faith in you, Colonel. We would never have survived this far without your leadership. I look forward to the report.”

  Prescott had a way of saying things that Hoffman knew were anything from bullshit to barefaced lies, but that were somehow true as well. Not a single word ever escaped Prescott’s mouth by accident or without being cross-checked first. The bastard probably thought Hoffman was an overpromoted grunt who couldn’t grasp the real meaning. He had that slightly amused you-don’t-get-it look.

  Hoffman threw up a perfunctory salute and took a shortcut to CIC on the way to see Michaelson. He was halfway along the next quay before he fully unpicked the words. Prescott was lining up someone to blame if the shit hit the fan. Leadership was Prescott-speak for responsibility. As in—not his. Mine. Crafty asshole. Even though Prescott had absolute power, his politician’s reflex to duck and dive was as strong as ever.

  Not entirely true. His power comes from my Gears. Always has. And now—even more so.

  Ah. I get it. He’s testing the water with me. Is he starting to worry what the army will do if things don’t turn out as he’s promised? Is he scared of a coup?

  Hoffman paused to look up at the anchor and cog naval crest that towered above the base, a striking stone column against a glass-clear turquoise sky that made the season look more like Bloom than Storm. Optimism wasn’t his style; but just being in a place where the walls weren’t bullet-pocked, the pavement wasn’t shattered by grub emergence holes, and the horizon wasn’t permanently shrouded in dark smoke made him dare to believe things might be on the upturn.

  He’d never admit to that, of course. Everyone would think he’d finally gone senile. He walked into the ops room, and the duty watch sat bolt upright in their seats.

  “All quiet, Lieutenant?” he asked, leaning over the comms desk to check the incident log for Stranded raids. There were a couple a week, a lot of damage but relatively few serious civilian casualties yet. Any dead civvie was bad news for morale, though. “Are those vermin breeding in the sewers or something? I’m catching hell from the Chairman.”

  “One more enemy contact an hour ago, sir.” Donneld Mathieson edged his wheelchair away from the console. “Two confirmed dead by Sigma Squad.”

  “And where’s Lieutenant Stroud?”

  “Out on patrol. Testing canine units with Sergeant Mataki. Remember?”

  Yes, he did. He’d promised Anya more frontline tasks and now he had to honor that. “I’m all in favor of low-tech solutions.”

  “And I need to task that woman who used to be in Major Reid’s EOD team.”

  Reid. Two-faced asshole. “Which woman?”

  “Private Byrne.” Mathieson paused. He had a habit of punctuating with silences, and the longer the silence, the more negative adjectives he seemed to leave unsaid. “Sam Byrne. The one who does everyone’s tattoos.”

  “Ah. Her. Yes, it’s a Kashkuri thing.”

  “You knew her father, didn’t you? She mentioned it.”

  Knew him? One of my own. Twenty-sixth Royal Tyran Infantry. Anvil Gate just isn’t going to let me forget it today.

  “I did,” Hoffman said. “Team her up with Mataki and Stroud. I pity the Stranded asshole who runs into that gang of harpies.”

  Hoffman never openly expressed concern for a female Gear’s safety, but Mathieson probably knew him well enough to decode the comment. There was no allowance for gender. Either women could do the job as well as a man or they couldn’t, and if they couldn’t—then they didn’t serve on the front line. But Anya Stroud lacked experience, and Sam Byrne always had to prove she could take more risks than a man even when she didn’t have to. Bernie would have her hands full keeping an eye on two liabilities at once.

  Bernie knows what she’s doing. She’ll be a steadying influence. Stick Byrne with the men, and she’ll be too busy picking fights with them.

  “Indeed, sir,” Mathieson said. “I’ve always thought that women are a lot worse than us when they get going.”

  Maybe it was a general comment. Maybe it was about Bernie, because her line in rough justice had evolved from common knowledge into regimental mythology now.

  Either way, Hoffman didn’t take the bait. “Wise to steer clear of the ladies. How many patrols have we still got out?”

  “Eight, sir. One more thing—probably nothing, but I took the precaution of monitoring the Indie ship-to-ship channels. One of their frigates is in trouble.”

  “They’ve only got one. What kind of trouble?”

  “It struck something submerged, radioed for assistance, and then lost contact.”

  “Ran aground? What kind of goddamn weekend sailors are they?” Quentin’s going to be pissed off. He really wanted that frigate for NCOG. “Have you told Captain Michaelson?”

  “Not while he’s with Commander Trescu. I don’t think the Indies know we can eavesdrop on that frequency. And I don’t know how Trescu keeps in touch when he’s ashore, because he doesn’t route calls through here.”

  “You’ll make a politician one day, Donneld.”

  “No need to be insulting, sir …”

  Hoffman would have taken that entirely as a joke if he hadn’t known how badly Mathieson wanted to return to a combat role. With the limited prosthetics available now, that wasn’t going to be anytime soon. The COG had sunk most of its technology along with Jacinto. Everything that could have helped Mathieson walk again was under a hundred meters of seawater.

  There was a hell of a lot of rebuilding to do, and it wasn’t all bricks and mortar.

  “Keep me posted,” Hoffman said. “I better go see how our gallant captain is getting on.”

  CNV Sovereign was the navy’s flagship, but that wasn’t saying much these days. She was overdue at least five major refits. The daily struggle to keep the carrier running showed, from the rust streaks on her superstructure to the broken jackstaff at her stern. She was an equally sad picture below decks.

  As Hoffman made his way through the passages to Michaelson’s day cabin, he had to duck to avoid jury-rigged cable conduits sagging from the deckheads. The wiring was exposed in some places and even routed through vent hoses in others. Even in the cabin itself, cables snaked across the deck and vanished under the bunk. The captain sat in one of the timeworn blue leather chairs, chatting to Miran Trescu just like the two of them had been buddies at naval college. It all looked a bit too cozy for Hoffman.

  “Don’t let me interrupt, Quentin,” Hoffman growled. “I can come back when you tw
o are done discussing barnacles. Commander, do I hear you’ve got a ship in trouble?”

  Trescu didn’t turn a hair. “A missile frigate, Colonel. Nezark. We have patrol vessels out looking for her.”

  “Do try to keep me up to speed with these things.” Hoffman parked his backside on the edge of Michaelson’s desk and gave him a meaningful look. “We’re all COG now. Your military secrets are our military secrets.”

  “Force of habit, Colonel—my apologies.” Trescu’s mouth smiled but his eyes didn’t. “Probably a major electronics failure. No radio and no radar.”

  “That would explain the collision, then.” Michaelson twitched an eyebrow. So Trescu hadn’t told him that. Hoffman didn’t elaborate, because he knew he’d learn more by comparing what he already knew with what Trescu told Michaelson when he was gone. “And I take it you’re happy now for Delta Squad to land at Emerald Spar for a security assessment.”

  Trescu smiled. “We can trust one another. We have kept our bargains, yes?”

  “We have.”

  “Then they may board the platform. I advise caution.”

  “Why? Your guys a little trigger-happy?”

  “Rigs are dangerous places. For anyone.”

  “I’ll be sure to pass that on.”

  Hoffman headed back to his office. Maybe Prescott had started him off on the wrong foot today, but he found himself picking over Trescu’s comments for hidden meaning. There were probably none to find. He always assumed the worst, so the only surprises he ever got were that the situation wasn’t quite as badly screwed as he first thought.

  When Hoffman reached his office, the door was ajar. It was only a midsize storeroom but it had a wonderful view, and that was all he needed, chief of staff or not. When he sat down at the desk, its varnish polished thin by decades of someone else’s elbows resting on it, he found a gray-furred lump sitting on a sheet of old paper. There was a note scribbled on it: THE REST OF THE RABBIT IS IN A STEW. IT’S WAITING FOR YOU IN THE MESS.

  So it was a rabbit’s foot. Yes, he could see the claws now. He thought these things had to be cured and preserved longer than a day or two, but maybe Bernie decided he needed some urgent luck. At least the borrowed dog was earning its keep.

  He had to smile. “Crazy woman,” he said to himself. The severed foot would stink the place out in a few days. “You South Islanders. Feral, the lot of you.”

  KING RAVEN KR-80, INBOUND FOR GORASNI IMULSION DRILLING PLATFORM EMERALD SPAR, 350 KILOMETERS NORTHWEST OF VECTES.

  It was a lonely thing marooned in the middle of a vast ocean—the tallest man-made structure left in the world. If Dom Santiago needed reminding how little remained of the old Sera, the pre-Locust Sera, this rig did the job just fine.

  White cascades of bird shit and rust coated its upperworks. Dom scanned it through his binoculars, one hand gripping the Raven’s safety rail. A group of platform workers huddled on the edge of the landing pad. Gray gulls were lined up on one of the crane jibs like an honor guard. Beneath their roost, something equally gray turned and twisted in the wind, but the Raven banked too sharply for Dom to work out what it was. It might have been a weather-shredded flag.

  He couldn’t even recall what Gorasnaya’s flag looked like. Stripes? An eagle? The geography lesson was long forgotten. Gorasnaya had never been all that important until now.

  “Man, that’s a long way from home,” Cole said, staring out the crew bay. “Imagine being stuck there and runnin’ out of coffee.”

  Baird seemed riveted by it. “Awesome engineering. You know how deep that water is? Three thousand meters. Our submarines can’t go much below three hundred. Those tethers had to be sunk via a remote.”

  “Aww, Baird’s in love with another hunk of metal,” Cole teased. “Baby, you gonna end up marryin’ a bot. Maybe we better ask Jack if he got a sister.”

  “Come on. It’s clever shit. Admit it.”

  Cole laughed. Dom didn’t find the rig awesome at all, however impressive it was. He didn’t like the idea of somewhere he couldn’t walk or swim away from if things went to rat shit. He wasn’t even sure where the nearest land was. “You certain that thing isn’t going to fall over? Looks top-heavy to me.”

  “They all look like that,” Marcus said, unmoved.

  Gill Gettner’s voice cut into the radio circuit. “Those things are built to withstand hurricanes. It’s exploding in a fireball that you ought to worry about.”

  “I meant the shitty state of repair, Major,” said Dom.

  “Good point. Jump out and test the helipad for stability.” Gettner never sounded as if she was joking. She probably wasn’t. Her crew chief, Nat Barber, peered out of the hatch as if he wasn’t too sure either. “I’ll just hover.”

  Dom wondered how the hell the battered platform had lasted this long. How did Gorasnaya maintain it, let alone defend it? They had even fewer resources than the COG. When the Raven settled on the pad—Dom never trusted that crazy bitch Gettner not to be literal—he half-expected to hear the creak of buckling metal. But it held. He jumped down after Marcus, and the squad went to meet the Gorasni welcome wagon.

  They were a grim-looking bunch, and Dom couldn’t help but notice all four of them were cradling huge wrenches. Maybe they had a lot of servicing to do today. He didn’t plan to turn his back on them and find out the hard way.

  “So you’ve come for our dowry.” The biggest guy held out his hand to Marcus, but Dom noted he still had a firm grip on that wrench. Marcus shook the man’s hand without a blink. “Remember that looks aren’t everything. I’m Stefan Gradin. This platform is my personal kingdom, so nobody fucks with it, okay?”

  “That’d be why your boss wants us to help you out—when you’re busy,” Baird said, but Cole nudged him in the back.

  Marcus grunted and peered over the side of the helipad. “What’s your capacity?”

  “One hundred and fifty thousand barrels a day at full production.” Gradin had a heavy Gorasni accent but he was perfectly fluent. “In practice, twenty thousand. We don’t need to process more and we haven’t got the bulk tankers anyway.”

  “What else haven’t you got?”

  “I thought you were here to look at our security.”

  “Yeah. So I am.” Marcus glanced at the wrench but didn’t wait to be shown around. He slid down the ladder onto the deck below and paced around, checking out the platform from various angles. Dom could see that he was working out how he’d launch an assault on the rig, noting the vulnerabilities and blind spots. “How many times have you been attacked?”

  Gradin followed him like close personal protection. “Six, maybe seven times this last year. But only the tankers in transit. Never the platform.”

  “Lose any men?”

  “Yes.” Gradin nodded. “And so did they.”

  Dom, Cole, and Baird trailed down the ladder after Marcus. Dom kept the three other wrench-wielders in his peripheral vision. It was a tough job to hijack a structure like this, but that wouldn’t deter the seagoing Stranded. He’d seen them take lethal risks even against the COG.

  But Stranded wouldn’t want to wreck the rig, of course—the imulsion was too precious. And they’d need the crew alive to run the drilling and processing, and that would eat up manpower. Yeah, it made sense to try to hijack the tankers instead. That way they got to keep the fuel and a ship.

  Marcus pointed down at the deck. “What’s below here?”

  “Crew quarters.” Gradin paused like he was debating whether to risk giving Marcus more information. They really had taken this no-surrender shit seriously, then. After a few seconds, he seemed to give up and pointed at various structures like a tour guide. “The section in the center is the drilling module. The other side of that is for treatment and condensate handling. That’s where gas is flared off when it builds up. The big flame. You know?”

  “I get it,” Marcus said. “And the only way to board is to fly in or climb the legs.”

  “Then it’s like hijacking a big ship.
Same problems, except it doesn’t go anywhere.”

  Marcus just nodded. Gradin seemed to have thawed enough to slip the wrench into a pocket on his pants leg. Now the squad got the rest of the tour. The crew accommodation looked ragged after years of neglect, but still pretty comfortable and well equipped, like a run-down business hotel that had seen better days. The deck vibrated under Dom’s boots in two distinct rhythms—the steady throb of machinery and the slower, more ragged pulse of pounding waves. It felt like ships he’d been in. When he got outside again and the spray peppered his face, he had a sense that the rig should have been heading somewhere.

  It was only when Dom reached the end of the drill module gantry and studied the cranes that the reality of life on Emerald Spar really hit home.

  A gull swooped in and took a peck at the tattered flag, making it swing around. Now that Dom was close enough, he could see that the ragged shape wasn’t a flag at all.

  It was the top half of a badly decomposed human body dangling from a rope.

  Marcus seemed to notice at the same time. Gradin nodded as if he’d been waiting for them to catch on.

  “They want to play pirates?” he said. “Good. We play pirates too. Amuse the gulls.”

  Baird perked up. “Does that deter them?”

  “We don’t care,” Gradin said.

  “Okay, so you can take care of yourselves.” Marcus made no comment about the half-pirate dangling from the crane. “But we’ll put a squad here. And I didn’t see any close-in defenses.”

  “We don’t have any.” Gradin tapped his wrench. “Just these—and plenty of rifles.”

  “Your navy can afford to lose a few deck-mounted guns. How many of your security cameras are working?”

  “About half.”

  Marcus looked at Baird, who just nodded. He was gagging to play with this rig and now he had his chance.

  “We’ll fix that,” Marcus said. “And you’ll need a detachment of Gears on every tanker run.”

  While Baird and Marcus went off to draw up a parts list, Dom explored the platform with Cole. One of Gradin’s wrench party trailed them at a constant five paces. A name was embroidered on his orange overalls—EUGEN—but there was no guarantee that it was his. He spoke for the first time when Cole swung ahead of Dom and went to climb a ladder for a better look at the drilling deck.