Gears of War: Jacinto’s Remnant (22 page)

“Sorry, I stopped at
warmer.”
Baird accelerated. “Warmer’s good for me. Oh, and you wouldn’t have to bury so many little old ladies. It’s a win-win.”

Cole didn’t mind either way. He’d do his duty. The COG had played fair by him, and he’d play fair in return. Port Farrall was never the ideal spot for starting over anyway, not with the shitty winters this far north. It was just closest, and safer.

Only it wasn’t safe enough.

“How we gonna do it all by ship?” Cole asked.

“The navy’s really good at moving stuff. Here’s the chance for them to do something useful for a change.”

Well, at least Baird was chipper about it. If there was a flaw in the argument, he was the kind of guy to find it, worry at it like some yappy terrier, and drop it all chewed up at the boss’s feet. He hadn’t.

“You’re
happy,”
Cole said.

“Why wouldn’t I be ? I’m doing shit I
like
now. My dad said I had to enlist or I could kiss goodbye to my inheritance—I wanted to go to engineering school.”

“But you didn’t
get
any inheritance, you said, ’cause the grubs showed up.”

“And the moral of the story is …”

“You’ll do anything for the right amount of bills?”

“No, skills are the new money.”

“And there I was thinkin’ you was just content in your oily-fingered vocation.”

Yeah, Baird was going to be a useful guy in a world that needed rebuilding and repairing. And he knew it. Maybe it was the first time he felt he was worth anything. That was kind of sad, and explained a lot. Back at the barracks, Baird started his daily maintenance on the ’Dill like it was his own personal transport, and Cole left him to it. He had his own maintenance to do—keeping himself on top of his memories. He’d run out of paper to write his routine letter to Momma, and he didn’t want to beg any off Anya or Mathieson. Now he was down to old wrapping paper, smoothed out as best he could. It didn’t matter, because nobody was left to read it; what mattered was just
writing
it, getting his head straight in the process of telling his mom what he’d been doing. All he had to do was write nice and small and make the most of it. There was no telling when he’d get some more.

He settled down in one of the lavatory stalls and braced his elbow on one knee, writing carefully. A man could get some privacy in here if he didn’t mind the constant traffic.

Dear Momma, I’m seeing the damndest things in this town …

The main door swung open, banging against the cracked tiles on the wall. “Man, I’ve got to pee just to warm it up.” It was Dom, still making a real effort to be cheerful when nobody expected him to. There was the metallic
zzzz
of a zipper. “That you, Cole Train?”

“Yeah …”

“I just saw Hoffman and Michaelson looking
intense
, going into Prescott’s office.”

“Cupboard
. It ain’t that big.”

“Well, something’s going down.”

Cole slipped the paper back in his belt pouch and came out. Dom was washing his face, leaning over one of the few basins that was still in one piece, and his COG-tag slipped forward out of his collar. Cole did a double take. No, it was something else; Dom had his tag, all right, but he was wearing an extra chain attached to it, something silver.

Aww, shit. I bet I know whose that is
.

It was definitely a lady’s necklace, a thin chain with a ring-shaped pendant. Dom hadn’t worn it before. Cole would have noticed it by now.

Dom straightened up, rubbing his face. “What?”

“Nothin’.”

Dom looked down for a moment and seemed to notice that the chain had slipped out. He pushed it back inside.

“It was Maria’s,” he said, not that he owed anyone an explanation. Cole could usually work out the right moment to tackle the awkward stuff, but this was a tough call even for him. “It’s way too small for my neck. I looped it on my chain instead. We always retrieve tags, right? Whatever it takes.”

Everybody had their own way of coping with shit that was just too much to take in, Cole decided. He wrote letters that nobody else would read; Baird tinkered with that damn ’Dill when it didn’t need it, Anya was busy trying to be her mom, Bernie tried to feed everyone, and Dom hung on to his wife’s necklace like a fallen buddy’s tag. Marcus always looked like he carried on as normal, but Cole was damned sure that he kept something in his head that got him through the day.

“Yeah, we do, baby.” Cole went back into the stall and sat down to unfold his wrapping paper letter again.

“Nobody’s ever really dead unless we forget ’em.”

CIC, PORT FARRALL; OVERNIGHT TEMPERATURE, FIFTEEN DEGREES BELOW FREEZING.

“Humor me, Chairman,” Hoffman said. “We’re not short of fuel, and we only need commit one squad to this, two at most.”

Michaelson pulled a rolled chart out of the pile.

“We have options,” he said.

Anya helped him lay the chart on the table, flattening it out as best she could wearing gloves. The gloves weren’t achieving much. Her fingernails still had a distinct blue tinge when she checked them. Outside the window, the overnight snow was a thin dusting that belied the intensity of the cold. Anya could just about see the old school sports field through a porthole of clear glass that she’d rubbed in the icy condensation. Most of the trees that had taken root after the place was abandoned had already been hacked down for emergency firewood and building repairs. Even a small city’s worth of humans changed a landscape fast.
We’re going to strip this area completely. What’s going to be left in the spring?

“Here’s my priority.” Prescott shoved his hands under his folded arms. “Keeping this city—this community—

together. I’m not actively stopping civilians from leaving yet, but we may have to, and I’m going to have to sell this move to people, because simply giving them orders to go isn’t enough.”

“Really?” Hoffman’s only concession to the cold was a scarf just visible under his collar. “Because it always worked fine before.”

“The foundation of the COG’s always been that the citizen is protected by the state, and in exchange the state expects the citizen to make a few sacrifices for the common good.” Prescott seemed to be trying a softer approach, but Anya suspected that there was a good dose of pragmatism behind it. If the exodus was what he considered to be nonessential citizens, then it was a good way of saving their food rations. “So if we can’t keep our end of the deal, what motivates them now?”

“Put it this way,” said Hoffman. “If the cold doesn’t kill us, the last of the grubs will, because they know we’re here and they keep coming. And even if we’ve drowned ninety percent of them, they’ll
still
be able to finish us off if we stand here like goddamn targets long enough.”

“Every evacuation costs lives, Victor, however efficiently it’s done.”

“It’s damage limitation,” Hoffman said. “Do we lose more people by staying put than by moving? It’s a calculated gamble.”

Life had been one long gamble since E -Day. Anya found herself thinking almost enviously of the Pendulum Wars, when the rules seemed easy to follow: human versus human, motives known, limitations understood. And somewhere, if you traveled far enough, there was always a border that could be crossed to reach places where some aspects of life went on almost normally: restaurants, warm beds, shops, perfume, books, small luxuries, second helpings.

Anya even found herself missing the squalid bars in Jacinto. There was no haven left on Sera now. Port Farrall was as good as it got—a vast refugee camp of derelict buildings. Anya didn’t want to imagine that there were Stranded outposts that had made a better job of things than the COG. It mocked every sacrifice of the past fifteen years.

“Chairman, Captain Michaelson has as good a knowledge of COG naval bases as anyone.” Anya decided she had a voice in this, too, damn it; she was an
analyst
. She wasn’t just there to answer the phones, she was there to
task Gears
, which meant she had as much to contribute now as any other officer. She bristled, pitching in to back up her colonel. “But even if none of those places is habitable, then at least we’re
seen
to be pulling out all the stops, not just sitting on our—”

She wanted to say
asses
, but stopped short.

“
Asses
,” Michaelson said obligingly. She could have sworn he stifled a smile. “You’re worried about civilian morale, Chairman? Then this could give it a real boost.”

“So what are our options ? If we’re going to relocate, then I need to stop the engineers wasting resources on facilities we’ll end up abandoning.”

“We need somewhere that hasn’t been destroyed by Locust—which means islands on the far side of the abyssal trench. The Locust couldn’t tunnel that deep. It’s kilometers to the seabed.” Michaelson leaned across the table and dragged his finger down a strip of scattered islands. “Then, somewhere big enough for a small city population. Unless you want to spread the community along a number of islands—good for disease control, bad for governance and logistics—then you’ve got a choice of Erevall or Vectes. Vectes should still have infrastructure, because it was a big naval base in the Pendulum Wars, but it’s off-limits because of contamination. Erevall’s mostly at sea level, so it’s prone to storm inundation, but—”

“Let’s try Vectes.” Prescott stared at the chart, stroking his beard with his forefinger. “It’s within Raven range without refueling, yes?”

Anya knew that fixed expression. Hoffman did, too, because she watched his lips compress into an even tighter line. Prescott had knowledge that they didn’t.

“It’s off-limits,” Michaelson repeated. “It was the old chemical and biological weapons site. We mothballed the base.”

“I think it’ll be safe now.”

Hoffman’s face was a study in suppressed anger. Anya always thought he’d have a heart attack at times like this. “Chairman, I was under the distinct impression that we’d agreed need -to-know meant that we
all
need to know.”

Prescott looked as if he was embarrassed at forgetting something. If he was acting, then he was at his peak performance today.

“Apologies, Colonel.” He frowned as if he was irritated with himself. “It’s one of a very long list of things that crossed my desk in previous years and seemed irrelevant. Until now. If I recall correctly, the facility was fully decommissioned by the time we started the Hammer of Dawn project. The quarantine was left in place because we had no immediate plans for the base.”

Hoffman took a long, shallow breath that struck Anya as counting to ten.

“Vectes it is, then,” he said.
Strained
didn’t quite cover his tone. “Captain, can you add reserve tanks to a Raven?”

“I’m sure we can bolt on some extras that Major Gettner will approve of.”

“Very well, Victor, make it happen,” Prescott said. “No doubt you’re tasking Delta again.”

“Fenix gets the job done every time, Chairman.”

“Almost
every time.”

Anya had to make an effort not to put Prescott straight. It was hard. No, it was impossible. “We’d all be dead without Delta, sir.”

Prescott looked as if he was about to say something pointed, but thought better of it. “Indeed,” he said. Anya rolled up the charts and made a point of getting Hoffman to open the door to walk out ahead of her. She didn’t want to leave him to have a closed-door argument again. Michaelson gave her a knowing flash of the eyebrows. The three of them headed down the corridor to CIC, saying nothing until they were out of earshot.

“Lying asshole,” Hoffman muttered. “Excuse my language, Lieutenant.”

“You normally use worse, sir. And it’s okay.”

Hoffman turned to Michaelson. “Damn, Quentin, we’re going to have to wring every last bit of information out of him.”

“It’s a reflex,” Michaelson said. “They were all like that, if I recall. If you ask him if he knows the time, he’ll just say yes. Assume any politician is only telling you what he wants you to know, until proven otherwise.”

“You think Vectes is safe?”

“Well, I wasn’t kept in that loop back in the day. But one thing I’m certain of, Victor, is that politicians need a critical mass of humans to exercise power over, so he’s hardly likely to be taking risks with his … subjects. Sorry, I almost said
electorate
. How old-fashioned of me.”

“Okay.” Hoffman put his hand on the CIC door as if testing it. “Better get Sharle in on this, because there’s no point finding somewhere if he’s not ready to evacuate from here. Oh, and I hereby place you back on active service.”

“I never really retired, Victor.”

“No, but much as I admire that lieutenant commander of yours, I’m breaking the news to him that
Sovereign
is now your ship and you’re going to be in command of all maritime assets.”

Michaelson gave Hoffman a mock salute. “A Raven’s Nest of my very own. How nice to be free of the smell of shrimp.”

“Just make sure those choppers can reach Vectes from here.”

Michaelson strolled away with a spring in his step.

“If only everyone was as happy with their lot,” Anya said. CIC was now noticeably warmer since more personnel had moved into it. The EM manager’s staff were a heat source in their own right. “Don’t let Prescott get to you, sir. The captain’s right—it’s just force of habit.”

“Anya, I have to deal with it, because I can’t afford to hate him. Nothing’s going to destroy this community faster than a feud within its leadership.” Hoffman braced his shoulders in a way that said he hadn’t quite steeled himself to the idea that even now, he would never be told everything. “You were quick enough to put him right about Delta, though.”