Gears of War: Anvil Gate (11 page)

Muller’s voice came over his earpiece. “All stop … Okay, everything’s clear, Baird. No mines that we can detect—nothing. Not for thirty klicks. You can launch the Marlin now.”

Baird swung the inflatable into the water and held it on the line while Sam climbed in.

“Can’t be a sub, can it?” she said. “Wouldn’t be the first to pop up and surprise us.”

Baird was about to remind her that the sonar had drawn a blank, but seeing how the Indie submarine
Zephyr
had gone undetected until she was almost up the COG’s ass, he wasn’t so sure.

I’m shit-scared again. Got my wish. Great
.

They moved into a thin mat of drifting debris made up of pieces so small that it was hard to identify them as a boat. Sam propped her Lancer on the gunwale one-handed to reach into the water. She scooped up some pieces in her palm and peered at them.

Baird was looking for bodies. He was also watching out for drifting mines, keeping one of the Marlin’s oars within easy reach.

“We should be seeing chunks,” Sam said. “Even if you swallow a grenade, you still get chunks. Not confetti.”

“Shit, maybe they hauled up a mine with the catch.”

“Well, you better tell ’em to ditch their catch and get the hell out,” Sam said. “But I still don’t think this is an old mine.”

Sam was still staring at the contents of her palm. Baird looked around to see
Trilliant
bearing down on the Marlin, close enough now for him to read the name on the bow.

Sam looked around at the surface of a vast ocean with no enemy in sight. Then she looked over the side, and Baird knew what she was thinking—that whatever lurked down there could be as deadly as grubs that erupted from solid ground.

“If this is the Stranded,” she said, “we’re in deep shit.”

Doctor Hayman shut the ward door behind her and stared into Hoffman’s face.

“Unless your Gorasni chum has a bunch of flowers and some grapes, I don’t want him in my hospital,” she said. “Those men are
patients
. Assholes or not.”

Hoffman factored Hayman-wrangling time into his day. The old girl knew her stuff, but she was hard work.

“Those men gave you a ward full of blast injuries,” he said. “I think that entitles us to ask a few questions.”

“If you expect me to put these men back together again when you’ve mangled them, then you’ll damn well abide by my medical decisions.”

“And the next time your emergency room fills up with my Gears, and they end up like Mathieson, you’ll be fine with that, will you?” It was a cheap shot. He knew how much amputations distressed her. He also knew it would work. “Let me do my job, and maybe you won’t have to do so much of
yours.
”

“You’re a bastard, Hoffman. You really are.”

Hayman was in her seventies, but age hadn’t mellowed her into a sweet old lady. Hoffman had to think hard to remember
her first name; she was just Doc Hayman, and if he hadn’t seen her records, he would never have known she was called Isabel. She definitely didn’t look like an Isabel.

“And I’m a bastard who wants an end to this,” he said. “So are they well enough to talk to Trescu?”

“Depends how he’s going to question them.” Hayman fumbled in the pocket of her lab coat and pulled out a half-smoked cheroot. “You’ve got any number of people capable of interrogating them. Why Trescu?”

“Prescott’s orders.”

“Hand-washing, more like. My job still has some ethical demands. I don’t patch people up for others to damage them all over again.”

“That’s all military medicine is, Doc.”

“You know damn well what I mean. I expect you to make sure these patients aren’t tortured. You’re not a brute, Hoffman, for all your bluster.”

Hoffman wasn’t sure if he was a brute or not. He’d done things he regretted, terrible things, some entirely of his own volition. If he made some principled stand and refused to be party to this session, then Trescu would do it anyway, with Prescott’s blessing.

I went through this over the Hammer of Dawn. Same argument. Same excuse. If I didn’t do it, someone else would. Better to be a man and front up
.

So the two Stranded would get a good hiding. They’d probably get the same from any of Andresen’s buddies, too. If it meant he never lost another man like Andresen, Hoffman could live with it.

“Fine, wait until they recover,” he said. “You get a clear conscience. But they get the same end result. Except in the meantime, you might see more patients with their goddamn legs blown off or worse.”

Hayman stuck the cheroot in her mouth unlit. It didn’t go with the white coat. However bad things got, she always managed to keep that coat bleached to a pristine whiteness. It was shiny with wear in places, and frayed at the cuffs, but by God it was
white
, and Hoffman never knew if it was just an act of professional reassurance
for the patient in a grubby, primitive world, or some kind of manifestation of her need to erase something. But he didn’t have time to analyze all that shit. He had enough invisible stains of his own to worry about.

“Okay, I’m as bad as Prescott. Salving my conscience. Self-delusion.” Hayman patted her pockets for a light and started walking down the corridor toward the exit. Then she turned. “Oh, and your lady friend—retire the poor bitch or give her a desk job before she gets herself killed. I know these South Islanders are tough native stock, but they die just like the rest of us.”

“Don’t sugarcoat it, Doc,” Hoffman muttered. “Say what you mean.”

Hoffman didn’t like the idea of Bernie risking her neck, but forcing her off the front line would break her heart. Worse, in fact; the idea terrified her, like it was the beginning of the end, and he knew it. He asked himself if he’d have retired a man of her age, or even a woman he wasn’t emotionally attached to, and the answer was—shit, he didn’t know. All he knew was that he couldn’t do it to Bernie and that she deserved better from him.

He waited outside the ward door, reading through the note that one of the medics had left for him. The Stranded bomb makers were Edwin Loris—the one Sam Byrne had given a fractured pelvis, two cracked ribs, and concussion—and Mikail Enador, who was doing pretty well for a man who’d been half-eaten by that rabid mutt. Enador’s son, Nial, was unhurt but terrified. All the medic had been able to get out of the three of them was their names. But Hoffman had already asked Dizzy Wallin to keep an eye on the Stranded community inside the wire to see who their friends or family members might be. It made sense to know who the grudge-bearers were.

I ought to leave you to clear up your own shit, Prescott
.

But Hoffman didn’t. He couldn’t walk away from anything. Then his radio crackled in his ear. It was Anya.

“Sir, we’ve lost another fishing vessel. There’s been an explosion—all hands lost. Baird’s reporting no visible signs of attack, but he doesn’t think it’s a stray mine.”

“Does Pelruan know yet?” Hoffman asked. The civvies in the
small town—the island’s
only
town—wouldn’t take the news well. It was the second trawler lost from a tiny fleet in a few months, more trouble brought to their door by the arrival of the COG. “I’m going to have some explaining to do to Lewis Gavriel.”

“Oh, they know,” Anya said. “The trawler fleet always stays in radio contact with Pelruan.”

Shit
. “Get hold of Gavriel and tell him I’ll come and see him as soon as I’m done here. Have you told the Chairman?”

“You needed to know first, sir. I’ll get a briefing note together for you.”

What a loyal kid
. “Thanks, Anya.”

How the hell are they doing this? What have they got that we don’t know about?

Hoffman’s first thought was another submarine. Nobody who’d been caught with their pants around their ankles when Trescu’s
Zephyr
popped up would ever rule that out. But boats like that took a lot of maintenance, and if the Stranded gangs could manage to run one, then they were a much bigger problem than he’d imagined.

He paced slowly down the echoing corridor and back again while waiting for Trescu to show, inhaling an institutional smell of carbolic soap, decay, and misery. He could shut out the smells. But the nagging voice getting louder in his head was a tougher irritant to ignore.

Trescu’s testing Prescott, and Prescott knows it. A pissant tribe just a fraction of the size of the COG. If Prescott wanted that imulsion, he could just take it
.

But maybe the Chairman knew that nobody had the stomach for another war, however much peace still seemed like a strange and purposeless new country.

Boots suddenly echoed along the tiled corridor. Hoffman was surprised to see Trescu emerge around the corner on his own. He radiated the confidence of a man used to power, much more power than just control of a village-sized population.

A village with control of an imulsion rig. And we’re a town that’s got the Hammer of Dawn. Funny how the world scales down
.

Trescu strolled up to Hoffman and nodded politely, then indicated
the closed door with the slightest jerk of the head. “Our friends,” he said. “Are they well enough to receive visitors?”

Hoffman pressed the handle and swung the door open. “I’ll leave you to decide. Prescott’s orders—your show.”

“You have a problem with this? Then think of your dead sergeant and his comrades.” Trescu put one boot across the threshold and paused. “Because I shall certainly think of mine.”

Hoffman caught a first glimpse of Enador and Loris propped up in their beds, looking confused rather than defiant. Hoffman wondered how much painkiller the doctor had pumped into them. They watched him warily as he pulled up a rickety wooden chair and sat down in the corner, probably expecting him to be running the interrogation because he was wearing a colonel’s insignia.

“You don’t look like a medical man, and neither does your bagman,” Enador said, glancing at Trescu. No, he didn’t sound drugged at all. In fact, he seemed pretty chipper for a man whose head was swathed in field dressings. “Where’s my son?”

“Under guard.” Hoffman wasn’t sure what Trescu was going to do. Prescott seemed more keen to make sure the jumped-up little shit felt he’d won rather than get any useful intelligence. “He’s not been harmed.”

“No, you’re the good guys, aren’t you? You don’t beat up kids.” Enador indicated Loris with his thumb. “You’ve got rules about how you treat enemy wounded, right?”

Hoffman wanted to punch the crap out of him. “You’re a waste of medical supplies,” he said. “I’ll leave you to our guest.”

Loris turned his head with difficulty. It was hard to tell that he was in worse shape than his buddy. There wasn’t so much as a scratch on his face. “Ah, nice to see we’ve brought you two together at last.”

Trescu walked across the small room and lifted a tubular metal chair by its frame, then set it down by the side of Loris’s bed. If it hadn’t been for the faded black uniform, he might have passed for a concerned relative.

“Gentlemen,” he said. “I am Commander Miran Trescu. I am Gorasnayan, which should mean something to you. There are
very few of us left, so every citizen I lose grieves me very deeply. I thought I would mention that so you understand why I must be
insistent
in asking you questions.”

Enador watched him with mild interest. “Yeah, we know what Gorasni are like.”

“Good.” Trescu folded his arms and leaned on the edge of the bed. “So this would be a sensible time to tell me where you get your arms and ordnance, and where your camps are.”

“I’ll bet,” Loris said. “Ram it up your ass, Commander.”

“And how are your friends sinking our ships?”

Enador paused for a beat, as if he really didn’t understand the question. “We haven’t touched a boat since the last imulsion shipment. We don’t sink them, Indie. We
commandeer
them.”

“Two trawlers and a frigate.”

“I told you—we’d keep them, not sink them.”

Trescu didn’t bat an eyelid. “I
had
hoped we could work together.”

“Now what? You going to beat the crap out of me? Break a few teeth?” Loris strained to look past Trescu at Hoffman. He probably hadn’t worked out who was in charge here. Maybe he thought they were pulling some nice-and-nasty double act. “Does he do your dirty work for you, Colonel? We thought you liked to do your own.”

The asshole couldn’t have known how near the mark that comment was.

“Very well.” Trescu glanced at his watch. “My father gave me this. It still keeps good time.
Very
fine workmanship. I shall count five minutes on it, by which time I would like an answer to my question.”

Hoffman wasn’t sure what effect this was having on the two Stranded, but it was certainly unsettling him. The longer Trescu sat there doing nothing, the less Hoffman knew what was coming next. And that was the idea, of course. Uncertainty—fear—softened up a prisoner more than actual pain. He got the feeling that Trescu would suddenly punch Loris in the guts to make the most of that shattered pelvis.

Is that what I’d do? Why did it even cross my mind?

The fact that he could even imagine it shamed him. He wanted to walk out and not have to watch this, but he stood there, complicit and conflicted. The worst thing was that he believed Enador about the ships. He really did. It wasn’t the gangs’ style not to brag about their kills.

Trescu’s fine gold watch ticked away audibly in the silence. He studied it, distracted, then ran his thumb across the glass as if to clean it.

“I am waiting,” he said.

Hoffman waited, too, expecting that blow to land at any moment. Eventually, Trescu sat back in the chair and sighed theatrically.

“Very well. You had your five minutes.” He took a radio earpiece much like the old COG issue from his breast pocket and pressed it into place. “Burkan? Please come to the isolation ward now.”