Gears of War: Anvil Gate (62 page)

Humor her
. Baird looked whenever the Raven banked far enough for him to see out of the door, but his mind was elsewhere.
How many red cars can you see, Damon? Shut up in the back there. Yeah, like a goddamn day out with the folks …

“Hey, I see it,” Cole said. “Well, damn—you got that mutt trained, Boomer Lady! Look at him!”

“What?” Gettner snapped.

“It’s the dog,” Cole said. “He’s down there, tryin’ to keep up with us!”

Marcus hung on to the safety rail and leaned out. Baird couldn’t see what he was looking at until the Raven descended to hover and he suddenly got a good view of the meadow below. Yes, it
was
Mac: he was trotting around in a circle now, head lowered against the downdraft as if he was a Gear waiting for extraction.

“Thank God for that,” Bernie said. “He’s a fast learner. Raven noises mean the food lady as far as he’s concerned.”

“He should run for office,” Baird said. “Even if he does lick his own ass, he’s still a more impressive candidate than Prescott.”

Gettner brought the Raven down slowly. “Okay, I’m setting down. Nat, keep an eye on the pooch in case he gets too close. Mataki? Stand by to grab him.”

It was a small scrap of good news but sometimes that was all it took to lift everyone’s mood for a short while. Bernie jumped out and ran at a crouch to grab Mac by his collar to haul him back inside. By the time he landed on the deck with a thud, claws scrabbling for purchase, it was obvious that he hadn’t had much fun in the last few days. He looked pathetic, in fact, with patches of matted fur.

“That better not be catching,” Baird said.

Bernie checked him over as the Raven lifted. Baird grabbed a safety line to hitch to his collar just in case Gettner did some fancy flying as the chopper headed west to resume the coastline recon.

“What are you trying to do, lynch him?” Dom said. “If he falls out, he’ll just strangle himself.”

“Okay, so I’ll make him a proper harness. You want to hold him?”

“Hey, cool it.” Bernie tried to examine Mac in a forest of boots. There was very little deck space in the crew bay with six personnel embarked. “We’ve got him now. Thanks, everybody.”

Cole frowned. “Looks like he’s been
welding
. He’s covered in burns.”

“Polyps.” Baird risked parting Mac’s fur to check the injuries. The matted patches revealed raw skin. “I bet he’s been hit by an exploding polyp.”

Bernie cuddled the dog. “Awww, brave boy! You took on the polyps? Good Mac! We’ll get the nice doctor to take a look at you.”

“Yeah, Doc Hayman’s going to love veterinary practice,” Baird said. The burns were starting to worry him. They looked new. “How long does it take a burn to heal? Just checking.”

“Depends.” Marcus turned his head. “Why?”

“These burns are
fresh
. As in not a week old, which was when we last saw a frigging polyp land ashore.”

Marcus shut his eyes for a second. “Then we’ve still got polyps on the loose.”

“Better find them fast.”

The deck tilted as Gettner swung the Raven around again. “No way of telling how far a dog’s traveled, is there, Mataki?”

“No,” Bernie said. “He could cover half the island in a day or two.”

“Okay, then we head back to his last position and center a search on that.” Gettner took a breath and her radio clicked as she opened a channel to CIC. “Control, this is KR-Eight-Zero—possible Lambent contact, north of the island. No visual yet but signs of a recent attack. We might have more polyps on the loose.”

Mathieson’s voice snapped back instantly. “Roger that, Eight-Zero. I’ll alert all call signs.”

“Make sure you pass it on to the civvies too. No telling where those things might be.”

The Raven skimmed low over the trees, following a square search pattern from the point where they’d found the dog. Barber peered down the sights of the door gun, looking for scuttling movement beneath the branches.

“Do they breed?” Baird asked. “Polyps, I mean.”

“You want the pick of the litter?” Dom said.

“Ha, very funny. Just wondering how much we have to worry about glowies being on the loose—just hyperventilate a little, or totally shit our pants.”

There was still nothing out of the ordinary to be seen, but then polyps were small targets to spot from the air even without trees and vegetation obscuring the view. A herd of cattle suddenly scattered and ran across the field below the Raven.

“Hey, Major,” Dom said. “You’re spooking the cows.”

Gettner sounded puzzled rather than indignant at being warned for low flying. “They don’t normally bolt like that.”

Baird craned his neck to see when the cattle ran out of steam and stopped. But they didn’t. They kept running. One actually cleared a low hedge like a horse jumping a fence.

“Shit! Did you see that?”

“What?”

“Show-jumping cow. Wow, I’m waiting for the complaints from the farmers to start flooding in, Gettner.”

And then Baird saw what had scared the herd.

The trees shook violently. For a moment he thought it was a sudden gust of wind, but then the green pasture below split open like an earthquake had hit it, exposing dark soil and roots.

“Hang on!” Gettner yelled. “Whoa!”

The Raven banked sharply. Baird was on the opposite side of the chopper and saw only blue sky for a few seconds. Then the horizon leveled again and he was looking at a vastly changed skyline.

A charcoal-gray twisted column towered above the trees, its trunk covered with glowing red blisters. The last time Baird had seen anything like that, it was punching its way into the Emerald Spar imulsion platform. The trees were still shaking violently. Then another stalk punched through the soil, and another.

“Oh, fuck.” Bernie gripped Mac’s collar tightly. “They’re here.”

“Control, this is KR-Eight-Zero, contact in grid Echo Five.” Gettner always sounded irritably bored on the radio, but not today. Her tone was even but Baird could hear her voice shaking a little. “We’ve got a major stalk incursion, grid Echo Five—three stalks so far. We need some firepower up here fast, Mathieson.”

Baird had seen all kinds of depressing, terrifying, and incomprehensible shit over the last fifteen years. But this was the moment when he started to think that the end was really coming. Vectes was the last place on Sera where humanity thought it was safe. But it wasn’t safe any longer. The stalks had reached the island. They were growing in its heart. There was no escaping them now.

Baird aimed his Lancer, futile effort or not. He couldn’t see if they were disgorging polyps yet. And as much as he liked the taste of adrenaline, this wasn’t quite what he had in mind.

“We’re
so
fucked,” he said.

Marcus didn’t turn a hair. He never did. He just scowled at the instant forest of grotesque, glowing stalks and took up the door gun position opposite Barber.

“Get us as close as you can, Major,” he said. “This is going to take some time.”

Baird squinted down his sights and wondered what the hell those blisterlike things on the stalk’s trunk were for.

He knew he was about to find out the hard way.

Novelist, screenwriter, and comics writer K
AREN
T
RAVISS
is the author of five
Star Wars:
Republic Commando novels,
Hard Contact, Triple Zero, True Colors, Order 66
, and
Imperial Commando: 501st;
three
Star Wars:
Legacy of the Force novels,
Bloodlines, Revelation
, and
Sacrifice;
two
Star Wars:
The Clone Wars novels,
The Clone Wars
and
No Prisoners;
two Gears of War novels,
Aspho Fields
and
Jacinto’s Remnant;
her award-nominated Wess’har Wars series,
City of Pearl, Crossing the Line, The World Before, Matriarch, Ally
, and
Judge;
and a Halo novella,
Human Weakness
. She’s also the lead writer on the third Gears of War game. A former defense correspondent and TV and newspaper journalist, Traviss lives in Wiltshire, England.