Gears of War: Anvil Gate (38 page)

“Lieutenant, we’re not going to be able to get help to you for a while,” said the female major on the radio. “We can’t even get a casevac chopper to you while Shavad’s going down the tubes.”

“I don’t need
help
, ma’am,” Hoffman said. “This is for your situational awareness. We’ve got adequate supplies and ammo for
the time being. We’re not under sustained attack yet. For all I know, it might be a disgruntled local goat-shagger with a grudge against the garrison. But the attack came from the Kashkur side of the border, so this might be Indies inserted behind the lines weeks ago.” Hoffman could take the shit as well as any Gear, but he felt angry now on behalf of others. “Captain Sander’s dead and his pregnant wife needs to be told. Gunners Dufour, Tovey, and Pole are also dead. We’ve got eight men wounded, two seriously.
And the fucking road to the north is still completely blocked
, so we can’t evacuate the goddamn civvies even if they wanted to leave. Are you clear about the situation
now
, ma’am?
Are
you?”

The major paused, but didn’t bawl him out. “I am, Lieutenant. Do you still require a Pesanga squad for recon?”

“What?”

“Captain Sander put in a request for them.”

Everyone knew the Pesangs’ reputation. This was the kind of terrain they lived in. One Pesang could cover the ground of five Gears. And they were
feared
.

If there were any Indie assholes hiding out there, they’d find them.

“If you can get them here, ma’am, we can make use of them.”

“We’ll think of something. I’ll expect a sitrep from you in ten hours, unless the situation deteriorates.”

Hoffman went to stand up. Sheraya and Reaves pushed him back down.

“Nine,” Sheraya said. “There are
nine
wounded. That includes you, Lieutenant.”

“I’ve got to go out there.” Hoffman felt he shouldn’t have been sitting on his ass in the first-aid station. “I’ve got a job to do, ma’am. Let me do it.”

“It can wait a little longer.” Sheraya kept looking past him. Hoffman wasn’t sure what state the back of his head was in, but Reaves was using a lot of surgical tape. “You hit your head that hard, then sometimes you collapse and die many hours later.”

“Fine. As long as I get the time to secure this garrison.”

At the makeshift operating table, Dr. Salka’s expression was changing to quiet desperation. Reaves slapped Hoffman on the shoulder. “Just as well you shave your head, sir. Makes this sort of thing a lot quicker.”

Hoffman stood bolt upright and regretted it as giddiness seized him. He could
not
give in to injury now. He had more than a platoon to run, more than a garrison, even more than a city full of civilians: he had to hold Anvegad. And he didn’t know yet exactly what he might have to hold it against.

He put his headset on properly, with the strap around his forehead and the audio bud in his ear. “Salton, anything out there?”

“Negative, sir.” Pad had gone searching the slopes around the fort with Byrne and a local man who knew a bit about climbing and had some equipment. “No sign of a vehicle on either side of the pass, either. We should set up an obs post to keep an eye out three-sixty degrees. The Indies over the border might be the least of our worries.”

“Do it, Pad. And they’re going to send us some Pesang troops.” Hoffman steeled himself to check on the gun floor again. “Sergeant Evan, are you making progress up there? Do you need more assistance?”

Hoffman couldn’t bring himself to spell it out in front of Sheraya.
Have you finished clearing the bodies? Do you want someone else to do it, so you don’t have to see your buddies like that?
He felt he should have done it himself. He hadn’t served with them for years, and they weren’t his own. He had more distance. The memories that inevitably came back later wouldn’t be as bad as they’d be for Evan.

“The guns are okay, sir. They don’t dent easy.” Evan’s voice was a bit shaky, but other than that he seemed fully in control. “No movement at the refinery yet.”

“Okay, we continue the lockdown of this city—we are at full defense alert. Ma’am—Mrs. Byrne—I’d like you to get the aldermen together so I can talk to them. There are measures we have to take. I’ll send Private Wakelin with you. I want you to have an escort at all times.”

Sheraya gave him an embarrassed half-smile. “This is my home, Lieutenant. If I’m not safe here, where will I be?”

“You’re safe from your own people, ma’am, but so was Captain Sander until some bastard put an RPG past us when our guard was down.”

She just nodded. In reality, there was little that Wakelin would be able to do for her if a mortar or a sniper round was aimed inside the walls, but Hoffman owed it to Byrne to at least show some willingness.

“Lieutenant?” Dr. Salka edged forward, wiping his hands. “I regret I failed to stop the hemorrhage. The young man is dead.”

There were routines that Hoffman fell into, officer or not. There were burial details, pay corps and next of kin to inform, ceremonies to be observed, all the tidy bureaucratic closure after losing a Gear in combat. He wasn’t sure where—or even if—the locals buried their dead. Maybe they cremated them. Pereira’s family would want his body returned home eventually, just like Sander’s widow and the others he didn’t know much about.

“Reaves, get a mortuary set up and work out where we can dig temporary graves.”

“Yes, sir.”

It was still daylight. Hoffman was expecting things to get worse when night fell. But he was holding a heavily fortified city with a sensible civilian population that wouldn’t present easy targets to anyone taking potshots. It was a matter of sitting tight—and blowing the shit out of anything that moved. There was no more wait-and-see.

Have I missed anything?

Can I do this? Can I really do it?

“Let’s work on the basis that we’re surrounded,” Hoffman said. He took a breath and wondered if he should have warned the aldermen what he was going to do, but he’d have to explain himself later. They’d had the warning siren. They should have been expecting the firing to start. “All fire teams and battery gun crews—stand by.”

Evan cut in on the radio. “Sir, we’ve got Indie tanks moving
forward. There’s only one place they can be heading. Or they might just be moving into range to shell us.”

Hoffman was more worried about infiltration. But he couldn’t just sit back and not show these assholes that the COG meant business.

“Start as we mean to go on, Sergeant,” he said.

The height of Anvil Gate now came into its own. All Evan or any of the gunners had to do was lay the sights on whatever enemy target they could see below them. They didn’t need a forward observer to adjust fire. The Indies could see that plainly, but they came on anyway.

Are they insane?

The border was seven kilometers away, and the first tank crossed it.

“Fire for effect!” Hoffman yelled.

At that moment, the order was all he could recall of fire discipline, the proper procedure for artillery. But he was an infantry grunt and the gunners didn’t expect him to do anything other than give them objectives. This was their garrison; he was just there to stop shit happening to them—and he’d already failed to do that.

Should have sent out patrols earlier. Should never have let that bastard get in so close with an RPG. All my fault
.

Hoffman knew the guns were about to fire. But nothing could have prepared him for the moment when they did. It felt like an earthquake had hit the fort. And the noise actually
hurt
. It resonated in his chest.

“Shot, out!” Evan yelled.

There was a long moment of silence, and then a sound like thunder in the distance.

“
Splash,
” Jarrold responded. “One tank, two APCs destroyed, other targets dispersing.”

Hoffman strained to see what they’d hit. There was a distant column of smoke rising, and when it cleared the Indies had spread out into a long ragged line. He had to watch a few moments longer to realize they’d actually come to a halt.

“That’s overkill, sir,” Evan said. “But they got the message.”

The guns were relics almost exactly like the ones on the old COG battleships, a piece of history in their own right. Maybe nobody these days knew what to make of them.

The tanks and other armored units were about 6,000 meters away now. Hoffman saw a flash and a belch of white smoke, and seconds later an explosion shook chunks out of the cliff slope right beneath the observation point. The blast plates on the windows rattled furiously.

Then Anvil Gate’s 155 mm guns opened up. The battle had begun. Hoffman had been under fire more times than he could remember, but this was different; this was standing still and taking it, with no chance of moving position or gaining better ground.

But you’re on a goddamn peak. Highest ground. Defended by rock. Impregnable
.

High or not, the only line of sight he had was from the guns and the other firing positions that were fanned out around 300 degrees of the fortifications. The enemy couldn’t see within the city walls without aerial recon, but the defenders couldn’t see out, either. More shells thudded into the fortifications, shaving off rocks and making a lot of noise and smoke, but Anvegad stood and shrugged it all off. And it responded in kind, pounding the UIR column with its One-Fifties until a curtain of smoke hung across the plain.

Hoffman checked the terrain from every vantage point, still wondering why the hell a relatively small force like this was bothering to confront the fort head-on. He scanned the horizon, expecting to see a long plume of dust thrown up by more armor approaching from the west. But there was nothing.

Why the hell are they throwing their lives away like this?

Anvil Gate only had to sit it out and smack down anyone stupid enough to get too close. This was what it had always had done, even before the invention of cannon and gunpowder. It had swapped archers and catapults for cannonballs, and then for shells. It was all the same to Anvegad.

Hoffman could see that from the way its people behaved. He
decided against risking the external gantries to move around and made his way down the stone stairs inside the walls of the fort. When he emerged at the second floor, the streets he looked down on were quieter than usual but not deserted. Apart from his Gears and the occasional city official walking calmly between muster points, close to the walls and head down as they’d been told, some civvies were out delivering essentials and wheeling handcarts of produce through the streets. There was no sense of tension or panic at all.

Hoffman thought that was getting close to dumb complacency. Indie gunners would have a tough time getting shells over the city walls, but nobody knew where the guy with the RPG was now. He’d proved he could take an opportunistic shot at vulnerable spots in the taller structures.

The Pesangas can deal with him. Meanwhile—

Shit, I haven’t thought about Margaret once. I hope to hell this isn’t on the news. She’ll worry her guts out
.

The steady thump of artillery fire in both directions had suddenly become background noise. But one explosion broke the pattern as he crossed the compound to check on the Sangar manned by his own Gears. He almost dismissed it until the second
whump
a few moments later and the yell of “Incoming! Mortars!”

The explosion threw up a column of smoke and flame, almost as if it had gone off next to him. A rain of debris—fragments of roof slate, hissing metal, wood splinters—hammered down on the buildings around him. He ducked beside the wall and covering his head for a moment, then ran for the nearest Sangar.

He had to scramble up a short ladder to reach it. The three Gears inside were crouched behind the rocket screen, surveying the crags below the walls with field glasses.

“Where the hell did that come from this time?” Hoffman could hear the city’s small firefighting force honking its vehicle horns, trying to get through the narrow streets. Many of the city’s buildings were made of wood, a tinderbox in waiting. “That’s got to be
north
of us.”

“It definitely didn’t come from the Vasgar side, sir,” Dawes said.

Hoffman pressed his radio. “Byrne? Where are you?”

“The monastery tower, sir. I’m moving a couple of small guns up here. It covers our dead area, more or less.”

“Well, at least we know what their strategy is now.” Hoffman still wasn’t sure if his head injury was distorting his take on the situation or if he really had been a dumb asshole not to see this coming. “The frontal assault was to keep us busy while they moved up behind us.”

“Yeah, we’ll lose some civvies, sir, but they’re not going to take the city with a few mortars—not unless we let it burn down,” Byrne said, brutally pragmatic. “And half the place is still solid stone, so good luck with that.”

“We could really do with a Raven right now. Even a Tern.”

“I don’t think they’d have much more luck spotting these bastards than we would.”

“I’m going to get Carlile to rig some mortar grillage on the key buildings.”

“It’ll be dark in a couple of hours, sir. Good and bad—if we black out the city, we can move around above cover, but they can still fire on our position and be pretty sure of hitting something.”

COG bases got hit all the time. There was a big difference between doing serious damage and actually mounting an assault on a scale that could overrun them. They’d lose a few lives, a few buildings, as Byrne had said, but the city wasn’t going anywhere.

And neither was anyone else, not as long as that road was blocked. Hoffman had options, though. He had food, he had water, and he had electric power. And, if the worst happened, the civilians could take shelter in the network of tunnels deep in the rock.

Hoffman could sit it out for a couple of weeks. By then, Shavad would be won or lost, and that outcome was outside his control.