Gears of War: Anvil Gate (49 page)

Sam revved the bike and braced the butt of her Lancer against her belt. “I bet they wish they didn’t glow.”

Bernie opened the Packhorse door and nudged Anya to get in. The polyps seemed to be regrouping. “You know that girls’ day out we never had because I hit a mine?” she said. “Let’s make up for it now.”

“I’m in,” Sam said. “Better mop up these stragglers before the next wave.”

Sam set off along the concrete path toward the bushes, steering one-handed like a cavalry lancer on horseback. Maybe the polyps didn’t see in the same spectrum as humans anyway, so operating without lights might have been a waste of time. But it certainly made the bastards easier to see by contrast.

The bike roared and twisted as muzzle flash lit up the undergrowth. Sam swerved around, spraying fire. The polyps weren’t so bloody clever when they were up against a fast opponent. Bernie decided it was time to risk playing that game in the Packhorse.

And one of the things could detonate under the vehicle, and it’s goodnight Mataki. But sod it. I can’t keep running around
.

“You want to drive, ma’am?” she asked.

“No,” Anya said. “I want to shoot.”

The Stroud genes were forcing their way out now. The last hour or two had made Anya a lot more confident—and aggressive. She was psyching herself up for the next attack, just like her mother used to do.

She’s doing fine, Major. I promised, remember? I said that if she ever picked up a Lancer in earnest, I’d make sure she was ready
.

“KR-Two-Three-Nine to all call signs.” Sorotki was circling overhead without nav or cockpit lights, a wandering noise over Bernie’s head. “I can see the leviathan’s lights under the water now.”

“Stroud here—are you pursuing it?”

“We’re going to brass it up as it comes up the beach. It’s moving in again.”

“Stand by, all call signs,” Anya said. “Wait for the Raven.”

“Yanik, you okay?” Bernie called.

A voice drifted out of the gloom. “I want a drink. I want to pee. I saved an old soldier from getting
polyped
, and he spat on me. Apart from that, life is
fabulous.
”

In another life and another time, Bernie would have lived happily among the Gorasni. They had that appealingly grim humor, they were good soldiers, and they would fight to the death. But she would never forget the expression on Frederic Benten’s face. She had no right to forgive what she’d never endured.

“Glad to hear it, Yanik,” she said.

The Raven’s engine noise told her it was heading inshore fast. Sorotki, usually a one-man comedy act, sounded pumped up on angry adrenaline for a change. “KR-Two-Three-Nine, following the glowie bastard in—stand by to repel
things.
”

After all the waiting—which had probably only been half an hour, maybe forty minutes—the next assault unfolded on Pelruan in seconds. The Raven’s door gun raked the harbor. It was an instant, short-lived fireworks display, a show of muzzle flash and living lights as the polyps were catapulted ashore from the leviathan before they scattered for an attack. The Raven hovered, firing into the water. Bernie saw the leviathan rear and thrash around. Its head was picked out in blue-white points of light. Mitchell was targeting them; she saw the rounds strike. She couldn’t hang on to watch the outcome, though, and turned the Packhorse in a screeching tight circle to head for the surreal river of bobbing, scuttling polyp lights.

Anya leaned out of the passenger window, Lancer ready. This was going to be harder than Bernie had thought. APCs like the ’Dill had gun turrets on both sides and a top hatch, but maneuvering a Packhorse for a gunner on the opposite side to the driver—that was another matter.

Point and swerve. That’s all I can do
.

Bernie drove right at a column of polyps. They scattered. She yanked the wheel hard right, swinging the vehicle’s tail around, and Anya opened fire. Something hit the Packhorse’s door like clods of mud.

“Gotcha!” Anya’s voice was a hiss. “Come about, Bernie. They’re going left.”

Bernie had to keep moving. If one of those little glowie shits managed to scramble aboard, she and Anya would be dead. She couldn’t see the surface she was driving on, she couldn’t avoid mud or deep shingle, and she was now totally disoriented because she’d lost a sense of where everyone else was. She could only drive by instinct—and by the direction of rifle fire. Radios didn’t help at all.

Anya leaned out further. “Left! Go left!” She fired in short controlled bursts, just the way she’d been trained. Some of the spent casings flew into the cab. One smacked Bernie in the cheek. “Stop! Back up!”

It was like a weird game, except losing it meant dying. Bernie
felt the tires bump over something and she waited for a scream or a detonation, but it never came. Anya reloaded as Bernie spun the wheel. She seemed to have lost all sense of fear and caution.

“Ma’am?”

“Keep going! I’m on a roll!”

Anya laid down a long sputtering line of fire through some bushes and wet polyp fragments splattered the windshield. Bernie caught a glimpse of the ’Dill coming at her broadside just in time to accelerate clear. She let the ’Dill move in and paused for a moment to work out where she was.

Above the harbor, the Raven was still at a steady hover and firing. Sorotki and Mitchell weren’t giving up yet. Bernie jumped out of the Packhorse to keep an eye out for stray polyps and looked back on the battlefield, and found she was a hundred meters from the harbor wall on the patch of open ground to the west of the town. To her right, she couldn’t see far because of the houses, but she could hear the rifle fire; ahead of her was a mass of overlapping fire from both directions. She was expecting someone to get shot at any moment. Then there was a loud
whoop
in her ear via the radio.

“KR-Two-Three-Nine—the bastard’s down! Got him!” Mitchell sounded as if he’d caught Sorotki’s adrenaline surge. Raven crews were generally flat calm. “Headshot. About five belts of headshots, actually. He’s belly up and floating. Not as big as I thought.”

“Stroud to Two-Three-Nine—you sure it’s not playing dead?”

The Raven lifted vertically. Bernie saw its searchlight cast a fierce white pool on the water. Then it crossed her mind what detonating a Lambent Brumak had done to Jacinto.

But that was with a Hammer laser. That was different
.

“Oh, I know when they’re faking it …” Mitchell said.

Bernie reached for her binoculars and had just lifted them to her eyes when a brilliant flash of light blinded her. The booming explosion seemed to come several seconds later. She heard Sorotki say “Shit!” and for a moment she thought the Raven was going down.

“
Mel!
” Anya yelled.

But the light died away and the Raven was still there. It came back to hover again. Bernie could now hear dogs howling and barking from the houses.

“Okay, it’s definitely not faking,” Mitchell said. His voice was shaky. “It just blew up.”

Sorotki’s usual cheeriness was forced this time. “We’ll get a little more altitude before we try that again. Anyone need a searchlight?”

Anya got on the radio again. “All call signs—the leviathan’s down. No more polyps. Let’s clear up what’s left.” She bent forward to look out the driver’s door. “Come on, Bernie. Let’s go.”

Bernie got in and started the Packhorse. “You don’t want Sam hogging all the big juicy ones, do you?”

“No.”

“Good.”

“This is weird.”

“You said it.” A wobbly cluster of lights was racing head-on toward them. Bernie steadied herself to swing the vehicle around. “Okay, ma’am, as they say in the navy—sixty rounds rapid—in your own time—
go on.
”

Bernie had been through the roller-coaster cycle of fear, adrenaline, anger, and hysterical relief so many times that she knew which stage she was at and when she needed to back off. Fatigue didn’t help much. She was definitely at the shaky, giggly stage. But Anya was still absolutely bent on destruction. She emptied two magazines before she realized she’d run out of polyps.

“Wow,” she said.

The rifles all seemed to fall silent at the same time. There was a lull, and then lights appeared ahead of them—the ’Dill—and Sam’s single headlight suddenly came bouncing out of the darkness across rough ground. The only sounds were the surf, the rumble of various engines, and the dogs going crazy.

“You okay?” Bernie asked.

“I’ll work that out later.” Anya was out of breath. Bernie could hear her swallowing hard. “Stroud to all call signs. Are we clear?”

“Ma’am, all clear this end.” That was Rossi. “Just going to drive the course and make sure.”

“We glorious sons of the Republic of Gorasnaya have also crushed the enemy in case anyone gives a damn.”

“Thanks, Yanik.”

Anya waited. The only troops left to report in were the few locals with rifles, including the veterans.

“Nothing moving,” Benten said at last. There was nothing relieved or triumphant in his voice; the poor old bugger just sounded resigned. “Permission to stand down now, ma’am?”

Anya, bless her, always knew the right thing to say.

“Stand down, Tollens,” she said. “Nice job. Thank you.”

The Raven spent a few minutes sweeping the town with its searchlight. Bernie waited, engine idling, just in case some stray polyp had escaped. Anya hadn’t called in to VNB Control yet.

“You’re
not
okay, are you, Anya?”

“Oh, I’m fine,” she said. “That’s the scary thing. I want to do it again. I’m not finished. And all this hilarity—I hear it all the time in Control. But now I’ve done it myself. Tell me it’s normal. Tell me I’ve not got some terrible thing in me waiting to get out and kill and
joke
about it.”

“You’re normal. We all do it. It’s the animal brain taking over.”

“I wish I’d known this while Mom was alive.” Anya didn’t elaborate. “I better let Hoffman know it’s over.”

She took out her earpiece and picked up the handset mike from the dashboard. Her hand was shaking.

“All done, sir,” she said. “We’ll sit tight here until we’re sure there isn’t another leviathan out there.”

“Stay put until we’ve secured the naval base, Lieutenant,” Hoffman said. “It’s going to get rough down here for a while.” He paused. “Everyone’s fine.”

That was his way of telling her Marcus was okay. Anya hadn’t seen him for a while but didn’t even mention him, which was a sure sign she was fretting about him. Bernie couldn’t stand the avoidance any longer.

“You keep your head down, Colonel,” Bernie said.

The mike picked her up. “You too, Sergeant,” Hoffman said. “But remember I’m the one with the goddamn rabbit’s foot.”

Saving Pelruan suddenly didn’t feel quite as good as it had a few minutes ago. But Bernie didn’t have to explain to Anya. They both understood each other now.

After they’d checked in at the signals office, Rossi organized duty rosters and sent Bernie off for the night. She wandered back to Berenz’s house with Sam, feeling like she’d had a wild night that she would regret when she sobered up next morning and recalled her excesses.

“See, even the bloody hound doesn’t come out to welcome the conquering heroes,” Sam said. “Good night. See you at oh-five-hundred, Sarge.”

She was right; Mac hadn’t come racing to slobber affection on her. Bernie decided not to take it personally. She’d make her peace with him in the morning.

“I still think it’s the only option left,” Hoffman said. “We fight or run. And sooner or later, we’ll run out of ammo and fuel, and then running won’t be possible. Let’s end it while the Hammer is still more or less operational.”

Dom found it strange to have this kind of meeting without Anya or Prescott around. He knew why they weren’t there, but the mood in CIC had shifted; this was a soldiers’ gathering, no politics or long-term strategic shit. It was about staying alive for the next twenty-six hours.

And Miran Trescu and Lyle Ollivar were there at the table. Marcus kept giving both of them that very slow head turn, as if he was expecting the worst of them. He probably wasn’t. It was just the way he listened. But it was interesting to see the effect it was having on Ollivar. He was getting twitchy.

“So how do we concentrate the polyps in a kill zone again?” Marcus asked. “We baked a few. They catch on eventually. And
then there’s the Hammer laser. Remember what happened when we lasered that Lambent Brumak?”

It had collapsed the tunneled bedrock of Jacinto. The Hammer and Lambent combo was a city-killer. Dom found himself trying to calculate if a shitload of polyps added up to one Brumak, and what the blast radius might be. He gave up and decided to leave that to Baird.

“Yeah, but they’ve got one goal,” Baird said. “They go after prey. They don’t want to steal ships or any of that pirate shit. They’ll chase
us
. An orbital laser is beyond their conceptual thinking.”

Dom waited for Ollivar to punch Baird out for the pirate comment, but he didn’t seem interested. “So what about Marcus’s question?” Dom asked. “We sank Jacinto by targeting a big chunk of Lambent meat. If we try that here, we might get the same effect and lose the whole base.”

“Valid objection,” said Hoffman. “Shit.”

Baird was scribbling numbers on a scrap of paper. “Maybe not.”

“Not worth the risk if we can kill a leviathan out at sea.”

“And then we don’t get its polyp cargo, either. So how do we get it to the surface where we want it, and keep it there so we can paint it with the targeting laser?”

Marcus didn’t blink. “I’ll whistle for it.”

Dom didn’t care who played bait for the glowies as long as it wasn’t Marcus. Shit, he’d do it himself. Why did it have to be Marcus all the time? Dom wondered if what he sometimes thought was Marcus’s death wish—or at least not giving a shit about his own life—was actually an attempt to make amends for his father’s invention frying the planet.

No. He’s always been that way. Ever since we were kids. Always the first to wade in and defend someone. Always the first to throw a punch that needed throwing
.