Gears of War: Jacinto’s Remnant (53 page)

Until we can get radar ground stations in place, we’ll rely on ships. Reassure the people in Pelruan that we can maintain a radar
picket that should give us almost complete coverage of the coastline to a range of sixty kilometers. Tell them not to worry—the
navy’s here
.

(CAPTAIN QUENTIN MICHAELSON TO LEWIS GAVRIEL.)

CHAIRMAN’S OFFICE, VECTES NAVAL BASE, TEN WEEKS AFTER JACINTO EVACUATION, 14 A.E.

“Where do you want me to start?” Hoffman asked. “It’s a long goddamn list today.”

From the window of Prescott’s office, he could see the Indie submarine, real and black and troubling. The appearance of a boat from history was something of a sensation. A growing crowd of seamen and Gears had shown up to stare at it.

“Let’s start with Michaelson’s private war,” Prescott said. “We give him free rein to maintain maritime security. I don’t mind how many pirates he sinks. But I’d like more intelligence on who’s out there—the island communities we don’t know about. We didn’t destroy Jacinto to resume another war. We did it to save what little was left of humankind. We need people
—numbers.”

“He says that was the idea.
Clement
didn’t attack Darrel Jacques.”

“Perception is everything. In due course, we might have some damage limitation to do.”

For a man who’d taken the decision to incinerate most of Sera, Prescott could have weirdly prissy moments. Hoffman gritted his teeth. The Chairman seemed to have forgotten that the last city-sized remnant of humanity was clinging to life here, however idyllic the country seemed. Most of it was still living on board ships or in crowded dockyard accommodations. Hoffman decided he couldn’t get too worked up about a few gangs until the more pressing problems had been solved.

It wasn’t a grub leviathan. That was all that mattered. A few time-forgotten Indies—he could handle them just fine.

“So is the Indie submarine a surprise to us all, or just me ?” Hoffman didn’t expect to get an answer, but he asked again anyway, battening down his natural urge to bang Prescott’s head on that damn desk. “If there’s any more classified material around, it would be a good idea to declassify it now, because we don’t know what’s relevant and what isn’t.”

Prescott did a slow head shake, apparently racking his memory. “I can’t think of anything.”

Hoffman decided he no longer had an obligation to be straight with Prescott. It wasn’t sulky retaliation, just the last exhausted stage of trying to maintain a one-sided relationship. There was no point asking about the freakish life-forms—the sires—and other bizarre discoveries that Delta had made back on the mainland. He bet that he wasn’t alone in his frustration, either, because Marcus Fenix was almost certainly feeling the same way about his father’s connection with the Locust. That was in the past now.

If I sat down with Marcus over a beer, would he discuss it with me?

Hoffman realized he was thinking of him as
Marcus
again, not
Fenix
. It was a barometer of the state of their relationship.

“So we’re moving from a land forces doctrine to a maritime one,” Prescott said. “How do you feel about that?”

I know you’re going to enjoy playing me off against Michaelson, and you won’t even realize you’re doing it,
you bastard. So give him my job, if you like. He’s a good man. And I’m frigging tired
.

“Feelings don’t matter, Chairman.” Hoffman was still watching
Zephyr
, moored alongside
Clement
, and marveled at the endurance of damned pointless ideas. What kind of fool would bust a gut maintaining a submarine for all those years, wasting precious resources and sweat on something that was useless without a fleet to work with it?
Maybe a fool who just hoped that one day he’d find that fleet
. “We’re recolonizing our own land. We’ll need to secure fuel and mineral supplies back on the mainland, and then we’ll need to reclaim it, grubs or no grubs. It’s a maritime operation.”

“You don’t feel threatened by it, then.”

“No, just conscious that Gears will have to adjust to being seagoing soldiers.”

“Perhaps
threatened
wasn’t an appropriate word,” Prescott said. “I meant that change is unsettling for us all.”

“I’m all for a change that lets my Gears sleep and get their sanity back.”

“You’re more diplomatic than Dr. Hayman.” Prescott looked Hoffman up and down as if he was checking for leaks. “She says traumatic stress is endemic, and we’re such a small population that it’s already become a
culture
of abnormal psychology
. Sometimes she says we’re all
frigging lunatics
instead, of course. Now that we’ll have to mix with relatively
… normal
people, we have to take account of that.”

We’re all fucked up. You don’t need a medical degree to work that out
.

“I know Pelruan folk think we’re all dangerous psychos,” said Hoffman, “but I
like
us that way. It’s what we are. And it’s not exactly abnormal to be strung out when you’ve had grubs chewing your collective ass for fifteen years. It’d be abnormal to be
relaxed.”

“Yes, but it concerns me to hear evacuees and Gears looking down on the local population as having had it easy here.”

“Well, they
have.”

“Even so, we have to build bridges. We need them, Victor. As support, as
people
. We need
cohesion.”

“One happy family.”

“We can’t afford to rebuild Sera from a divided society. Schisms only get bigger. We’ll learn from history.”

Of course we will. The new political will. My ass
.

And now the Indies were back, in small bite-sized pieces, so Prescott could test his will right away. Gorasnaya was only a tiny fractious corner of the old alliance, a bunch of guerillas rather than a major player like Pelles, but it had the potential to be trouble. In a world that had shrunk to a small city, people like that punched above their weight. Hoffman wanted to see their credit rating before he’d accept them on the lifeboat. Prescott checked his watch again. “Commander Trescu’s late.”

“He’s a whole
war
late, Chairman.”

Hoffman resisted attempts to fill the small-talk gap. There was nothing to do but wait for Michaelson and Trescu. Prescott had set up his offices in a former sail loft in the oldest part of the base, a relic from a navy that predated the COG by centuries. The room was light and airy, at odds with the utilitarian furniture, chart boards, and filing cabinets that had been taken out of storage. If Hoffman wanted to leave anything in the past he’d get little chance today. Not even the UIR would let him forget it.

Prescott got up and shunted papers and maps around a meeting table that looked like a canteen trestle. It probably was. “And Sergeant Mataki’s issue is resolved, I take it.”

“I haven’t had a chance to speak to her yet, but I believe so.”

“Don’t you think it’s time she retired? I’m very uncomfortable about a woman of that age doing such a physically grueling job.”

“Islanders are hardy people, Chairman, and I can’t afford to lose specialist skills like hers.”
No, this is my turf,
Prescott. You stay away from my Gears, and most of all you stay away from her
. “And it’s not a job. It’s a way of life, a tribe. Nobody wants to rob her of that comfort after all she’s been through.”

“Just trying to be a gentleman,” Prescott said.

For God’s sake, hurry up, Quentin
.

It took ten long, silent minutes for Michaelson to arrive. Trescu was about forty, with a close-trimmed beard and buzz-cut hair. Michaelson took Hoffman to one side while Prescott showed Trescu the naval base panorama from the loft.

“Don’t mention the war,” Michaelson whispered, winking. “He’s got some rather useful assets.”

“So you’ve gone through his pockets and stolen his wallet already.”

“Wait and see.”

If Trescu recalled Hoffman’s name, then he showed no sign of it. Most Gears over thirty-five were Pendulum Wars veterans anyway, so there was nothing remarkable about any COG officer that Trescu might meet. They’d all been enemies, and neither side had much to boast about.

But Hoffman had to remind himself that it was Anvil Gate that Trescu might link to his name, not the fact that he was one of the commanders responsible for the Hammer of Dawn assault. Nobody outside the COG military knew or cared about Hoffman and Salaman, anyway. It had always been Prescott’s baby in public. Trescu seemed to be managing not to punch Prescott in the face, so perhaps it was an issue that time and a lot more deaths had closed for the time being.

If Trescu did finally swing for the Chairman, at least Prescott had a great comeback. He’d incinerated a large area of Tyrus, too.

“So you finally used the Hammer of Dawn against Jacinto,” Trescu said, glancing into the cup that Prescott offered him. Now there was a man used to a contaminated water supply. “We got word from the Stranded network that the Locust have been very few and far between lately.”

Well, at least the Hammer raised its head early in the conversation. Boil lanced, then
.

“So where has
Zephyr
been all these years ?” Hoffman asked. “Not that we could keep track of all our own damn ships, of course.”

“We’ve moved her from place to place, Colonel. Gorasnaya’s ports were overrun several times, but the grubs couldn’t sweep the whole continent every day.”

“Are you going to tell us where you’re based now?”

“Not on the mainland,” Trescu said. “But that’s all I’m saying until we work something out.”

“What do you want from us ?” Prescott asked. “We’re always relieved to find more human beings alive, of course, but you made it clear you had an offer for us. And why now?”

Trescu reached for the large-scale map on the table. He ran one fingertip down a meridian and intercepted with his other forefinger along a latitude line. The point was in the sea, around seventy kilometers north of the Lesser Islands chain.

“We still have an offshore imulsion rig near a Gorasnayan protectorate,” Trescu said. The UIR had never admitted to having
colonies
or invading poorer countries that had something they wanted. They always
protected
the lesser nations they walked into. All the old arguments came flooding back to Hoffman. “It’s still producing. More than our small community can make use of.”

No wonder Michaelson had pounced on Trescu like a mugger. He couldn’t run a working fleet without a lot of fuel, and even the windfall from Merrenat would run out. Yet again, Hoffman felt the future change on a single throwaway line in a meeting.

“How small?” Prescott asked.

“Four thousand people, maximum.” Trescu smiled. “You see my point already.”

“Your fuel in exchange for sanctuary here.”

“I really do think of it as the strength of pooled assets, Chairman Prescott. You get fuel without having to drill for it on the mainland, plus our modest fleet, troops, and population. We get the protection of being part of a larger community. I’m sorry for ruining your operation with Jacques, but what he sees as vigilantism is what we see as hijacking our fuel supplies and food.”

Prescott persisted. “You still haven’t answered my question. Why now? You’ve had years to contact us.”

“We wouldn’t have been much better off in Jacinto, but out here, things can be very different. When you put to sea … a submarine can hear a lot, Chairman Prescott. Especially when targets don’t even try to be stealthy. How do you think we knew where you were? Your fleet made a lot of noise shuttling back and forth to the mainland. And we keep good tabs on piracy.”

Hoffman avoided meeting Michaelson’s eye. He seemed desperate to make this deal work, but Hoffman wanted to be sure it was what it seemed to be. If Trescu wanted in, then he was going to have to answer a lot more questions.

“You have people and assets that you can’t move, in places you can’t reach easily and defend, is that it?”

Prescott said.

“Yes. There’s a limit to how long a small group can survive on its own.” Trescu took out a pencil and held it over the map. “I’ll show you where when I know your intentions.”

Prescott sat staring at the map, stroking his upper lip with the knuckle of his forefinger. Hoffman could guess what was coming next.
No enclaves
. It was the bedrock of his policy.

“If you come here,” Prescott said, “then you join the Coalition. And then you get full protection and benefits. I have to insist on unity.”

Trescu chewed his lip for a moment, eyebrows raised, which looked more like amusement than indecision. His pencil hovered over Gorasnaya on the map. Hoffman wondered how the good folks of Pelruan would take another influx of strangers.

“Ah, my father’s no longer alive to call me a traitor,” Trescu said. “He wouldn’t have understood Sera as it is now, anyway.”

Prescott extended his hand for shaking. Trescu took it. One war had ended, at least.
ARMADILLO PA-207, EN ROUTE FOR PELRUAN, TWO DAYS LATER.

“I thought they had two squads permanently billeted at Pelruan already,” Cole said. “Sending us in too is a bit overkill for a little town of nice fisherfolk an’ that. Not that I don’t like the place.”

The ’Dill rumbled along with its hatches open, another sign that Cole’s world had changed a lot. Back on the mainland, open hatches would have earned a faceful of Hammerburst fire, not a fresh breeze that smelled of trees and green stuff. Baird even seemed to be driving more carefully, not tearing the ass out of the ’Dill’s clutch for a change, so maybe the relaxing feel of the place was settling him down, too.

“Prescott’s worried about the natives getting restless over the Indies,” Marcus said. “They know us. If anyone’s a safe bet on the ground today, it’s us.”