Gears of War: Anvil Gate (31 page)

“Baird, get back over there and let’s see what we can do,” Marcus said quietly. “The Ravens can’t take them all.”

There were only a few people left to pull from the water. One of them was Aurelie. She’d lost her flamethrower, which was just as well, and she submitted to Cole wrapping her in a stained emergency blanket. There was no sign now of stalks or polyps.

“How long is that going to burn?” Dom asked.

“We stopped pumping.” Gradin looked terrible. “But we didn’t complete a shutdown. If the seals hold … it’ll burn itself out.”

The platform was sagging visibly now. Another gangway collapsed into the sea. The whole rig was falling apart, sinking piece by piece, and for Dom it was one reminder too many of watching Jacinto vanish under the water.

He turned his back on the destruction and leaned on the lifeboat’s canopy. “Sometimes I think we’re going to sink the whole planet.”

“Or blow it apart,” Baird said. “Look, what’s the common factor here? Why are these things coming out to sea?”

“Who cares?”

“Us. Either they hate us, dumb as they are, or there’s something that draws them to us. Ships. Rigs.”

“Engine noise? That travels a long way in water.”

“Hello, submarine? Stealth? Low cavitation props?”

“Okay, what, then?”

“Fuel. Imulsion. They’re following the imulsion.”

“The first trawler wasn’t running on imulsion. That was some vegetable oil.”

“You sure?”

Dom wasn’t, actually. He looked at the pretty spectrum of colors shimmering on the waves in the fading light. That stuff got everywhere. It leaked from ships. It was dumped from tank-flushing. Its more volatile fractions dispersed on the breeze.

Imulsion traces crisscrossed the ocean.

And at least one big imulsion trail led to Vectes, to all the vessels that came and went, from the naval base to the fishing grounds to the imulsion platform.

It was almost dark now. Dom still had his back to the burning rig, watching the reflection on Baird’s goggles.

“Whoa,” Baird said, looking past Dom. “Photo moment. One to show Prescott, so he can kiss his new empire good-bye.”

Dom shuffled around to look back at the rig. He turned just in time to see another explosion send a ball of searing yellow flame into the sky. Then there was another, and another, and a firecracker sequence as the smaller tanks ruptured in the fierce heat. When the loud boom died away like the echo of an artillery barrage, another sound drifted across the water, quieter but more disturbing.

It was almost like an animal. It started as a low moan but then rose up the scale to painful peaks before falling back to rumbling agony again.

It was the creaking and tearing of metal. The platform was collapsing.

The rivets and welds of its framework were gradually giving up under the stresses of buckling, red-hot metal. The whole structure lurched as something gave way and half the topside slid into the sea, sending up clouds of steam. There was a crack almost as loud as the last explosion before the rest of the rig dropped like a beaten man falling to his knees.

Then the rig vanished.

Dom stared at the clouds swirling on the surface for a while. He couldn’t tell if they were just steam or smoke from the burning fuel floating on the waves.

But Emerald Spar was gone. Like Jacinto and Tollen, it had simply drowned. There was a long silence across the water. All Dom heard was the lapping of the waves on the hull and the sound of Raven engines, followed by Baird swallowing.

“Man, that breaks my frigging heart,” Baird murmured. He meant every word. Dom saw his lips set in a thin line. “Fantastic engineering.
Fantastic
. Just fucked in a couple of hours by things that probably don’t even understand what it is.”

It was Sera’s fate in a nutshell. Dom couldn’t bring himself to berate Baird for focusing on the loss of objects and not people. For some reason, he kept thinking about a Pesanga Gear who gave up his place in a boat so that Dom could see Maria and the
kids again. It was after the raid on Aspho Point. The guy didn’t make it. Dom tried hard to recall his full name. All he could manage was Bai.

People—no, grieving for people just hurt too much. Mourning machines was bad enough.

“Fuck ’em,” said Baird, to nobody in particular.

CHAPTER 11

Hoffman paused on top of the mound of rocks to look up at the approaching helicopter. It had taken the COG HQ at Lakar an hour to get a bird in the air, but at least it was one of the new Ravens. Hoffman knew he was going to spend a lot of his career looking up at the undercarriage of one of those.

It circled for a while before the pilot came back on the radio.

“Yes, you’re up shit creek,” she said. “This is going to take more than a shovel and a bucket.”

“I’m glad you came all this way to tell us the goddamn obvious.” Hoffman didn’t like the way the rubble under his boots shifted from time to time. “No signs of any infiltration out there?”

“Negative. It’s like the end of the world between here and the next city—just scrub and goats. Do you need any immediate assistance? Any casualties?”

“Don’t let me keep you. Our phones are out and we can’t move vehicles, but apart from that it’s a goddamn vacation.”

“Sorry, but it’s going tits up at Shavad. They need every helicopter they can get. If Shavad falls, you’re going to get pretty lonely out here.”

“Okay, we’ll wait for the heavy engineering boys.”

We just have to sit here and blow away anything that comes from the south. And that’s what we’ll have to do until the road’s open
.

The Raven banked away and vanished. Carlile, the combat engineer, was making his own plans to clear the gorge. He clambered over the stone and then gestured to Hoffman to climb back down. It was scarier than being shelled. Every handhold felt like grabbing thin air, and the constant rumbling and clicking threatened another collapse. When Hoffman’s boots hit the road, he was more than relieved.

“Is anyone under that?” he asked.

Carlile studied the dam of rocks, fists on hips. “If they are, then we won’t know for a while. We need one of the big obstruction-clearance vehicles to even start to shift that. A Behemoth.”

Hoffman visualized the map, and the lowlands that ran the width of Kashkur like the mountains’ skirt.

“That’s got to come across from Lakar. A bit close to Shavad for my tastes.”

“Yeah.” Carlile caught his breath. Sweat dripped off his chin. “That’s going to take four days, maybe five. I’ll get on it.”

Hoffman had put his priorities in immediate order. The first worry was security—who was out there, whether this was the first
attack of many, and whether there were casualties. Gears had set up machine-gun positions on the fort walls to handle any close-in defense. So far—apart from the landslide—there was no sign of enemy activity, but Hoffman couldn’t imagine any enemy going to the trouble of altering the landscape and leaving it at that.

So being cut off wasn’t top of the list at the moment. Anvegad—both the city and the garrison—had two weeks’ supplies at any one time. People here, civilian and military, were used to being stranded by the weather or just not getting supplies on the day they were expected. It was nothing to shit bricks over yet.

Why now, and what’s coming next?

“This would have taken them some time to set up.”

“Oh, definitely, sir,” Carlile said. “It’s thousands of kilos of explosives. And to ship that in without being spotted, they’d have to do it on foot over the hills a load at a time. Then they’ve got to bore holes and set the charges. It’s a long job.”

“UIR spec ops pros, or local sympathizers?”

“Hard to tell. It’s the level of blasting skill that civvies in the mining industry have.”

Hoffman had to assume the road had been cut for a reason, not just because it was as close as the bastards could get to the garrison.

No point relying on Intel for help. We’ll have to go look for these assholes ourselves. If they’re not already back across the UIR borders by now, of course
.

“Well, we won’t get any assistance from Vasgar, so we’re stuck here until this road’s open again.” Hoffman kept a wary eye on the craggy slopes above as he moved back to the ATV. Pad Salton was perched high on the rocks with his sniper rifle, providing over-watch. “I’m just waiting for the next incident.”

“Look on the bright side, sir. If we can’t get anything south to the fort, the Indies can’t get anything through going north.”

“I’ll cling to that small mercy, Carlile. Thanks.”

Hoffman walked back up the access road, stopping every so often to look back at the landslide. He’d always been security conscious, even for a Gear, but now he was fixated on who might be out there watching.

We’ll need tighter security now. The locals won’t mind being stopped and searched when they go in and out
.

As he walked past the sentries at the city gate, crowds milled around trying to get a look at the destruction. The air was hazy with rock dust. A line of Gears and the local constabulary was stopping anyone from going outside the walls, on Captain Sander’s orders, but there was nowhere worthwhile to go anyway. Outside was definitely not the safest place to be.

Sander called to him from across the square. The captain was talking to a couple of the councilmen, no doubt doing his we’ve-got-it-all-under-control act. He was good at civilian liaison. Hoffman felt a little ashamed for thinking of Sander as a soft college kid who was more interested in painting than being a soldier, because he was actually proving to be a reassuring and steady presence for everyone.

And he had the sense to stock up to the rafters on supplies. Smart guy. Clairvoyant, even
.

Sander exuded concerned calm as Hoffman approached the group. “Lieutenant, Alderman Casani is making sure all the residents are accounted for. What’s the update on the road?”

“The sappers say it can be cleared with a specialist excavation vehicle,” Hoffman said, remembering to start with the can-do part of the news. Civilians need to hear that. “It’ll take a few days to get earth-moving equipment down from Lakar, that’s all. The phone lines might take longer, but we’ve got radio comms.”

Casani was a sober-looking, thin guy in his forties who looked like he should have been running an investment bank rather than this lonely outpost. “People will be sensible,” he said. “This is no different from being snowed in.”

“Snow doesn’t set out to kill you, Alderman.” Hoffman didn’t want these people to get complacent. “We’re on a war footing now. People have to take precautions, however well-defended this city is. Anyone who can close the road can do a hell of a lot worse if they put their minds to it.”

Sander’s fixed calm flickered a little. “We’ll step up patrols, Alderman. But I have to ask you to activate the civil emergency
procedures. Restrictions on movement, management of resources, cooperation with our security measures. Purely as a precaution.”

“But when the road is open again,” said Casani, “there will still be the UIR on our doorstep and the need to watch our neighbor suspiciously.”

“Yes, things have changed,” Sander said. “They changed the minute the UIR sent forces across the Vasgar border. We’ll all have to live with that.”

Casani did a little nod, as if the reminder of the invasion south of this border was an explanation for everything. Maybe the reality hadn’t sunk in. “This city understands its responsibilities, Captain. You will always have our full cooperation.”

Hoffman and Sander made their way back to the garrison. Most of Anvegad’s five thousand inhabitants seemed to have taken to the streets to try to get a glimpse of the damage or chat about it. Every damn surface was covered in a layer of dust. It was starting to settle, crunching under their boots like a dusting of dry, gritty snow.

“Usually,” Sander said, “civvies get a little wobbly when a big bomb goes off next door. These people just seem curious.”

“Anvegad’s never been captured. Makes folks feel bulletproof.”