Gears of War: Jacinto’s Remnant (29 page)

“If there’s anyone on Vectes, then they probably haven’t seen COG personnel in fifteen years,” Anya said.

“That’s going to be interesting.”

“If that biohaz stuff got out of hand, they’ll have two heads. Shit, man, you saw those things we found at New Hope, whatever the hell
they
were.” Baird eased his elbow out of Bernie’s side and checked his Lancer. “Maybe we’ll find Indie troops there who don’t even know the Pendulum Wars are over.”

“I don’t care if we’ve got pirates coming out the storm drains,” Dom said. “Smell that air.”

Bernie could. It was the kind of scent that they just didn’t get on the mainland, the promise of cleaner skies. Vectes loomed on the haze of the horizon.

Marcus squeezed through into the forward section and settled down at the port-side gun. “Okay, Major, ready when you are.”

Gettner took the Raven in a cautious loop around the island. It was a seventy -kilometer crater, a long-dead volcano, and the coast was a hoop of granite cliffs that cradled fertile lowland in the bowl. On a chart, that was just data and contour lines. To the eye, it was another thing entirely.

Despite the warning signs and hazard buoys, the solid buildings of the naval base looked almost welcoming, and mostly intact; the old navy certainly built things to last. The metal jetty structures had seen better days, and some of the dock basins housed rusting, half-submerged wrecks as well as solid-looking vessels in dry dock, but there seemed to be so little overgrowth that Bernie wouldn’t have been surprised to see lines of naval ratings drilling on the parade ground.

“Good start,” Gettner said. “Sorotki, we’re heading inland now. But I think we’ve got our operating base identified.”

Vectes now didn’t look at all like the frayed oval on the naval charts. The grid said it was around five thousand square kilometers, and at this height, Bernie could no longer see the sea. She could have been anywhere on the mainland continent in the pre-Locust days. There was open country, forest, fields—yes, fields with clear boundaries, obviously maintained—and a river. In the distance, she could see granite highlands off to the west. It all looked solid and permanent, even comfortable, not a windswept rock in the middle of an ocean at all.

“Shit, rivers ?” Cole pointed at the broad ribbon of water snaking beneath. “Man, this is going to be
nice
. I might take up fishing.”

This place could support Jacinto’s remnant just fine, Bernie decided. It was bigger than Galangi, and that was pretty comfortable. They could start planting crops right away in this climate; people would now see some end in sight for minimum rations. The higher-minded civvies might have been bleating about organizing city governance and councilmen, but average humans didn’t give a shit about that. They wanted to eat and stay warm, and not get killed by grubs. It wasn’t much to ask at the end of a war.

“Well, maybe we won’t need to lynch Prescott after all,” she said. “Good call, Chairman.”

“Up ahead,” said Baird.

“What?”

“I said, look up ahead.”

Gettner cut in. “Yeah, I see it. House.”

“They’d have needed living quarters here,” Anya said, sticking to the past tense, when all Bernie could see now was an island where someone was still maintaining things. “Not just for the naval personnel, either—they’d have needed to be self-sufficient for long periods because resupply wouldn’t have been easy.”

“You mean like that?” Marcus said. He was staring down the sights of the door gun. “Nice tidy furrows.”

Gettner banked the Raven. Fields didn’t plow themselves, and as they passed over, a man in overalls straightened up from a power tiller, watched the Raven for a few seconds, and then began jogging in the direction of the house.

“Confirmed, still inhabited,” Gettner said. “So, you want to say hi, Lieutenant, or do a covert recon, seeing as they now know we’re here?”

Anya straightened up in her seat. Gettner was taking her frontline familiarization seriously, too. Bernie waited.
Come on, Anya. You make life-or-death calls every day. It’s no different on the ground, except that you’re in
the line of fire, too
.

“Look for some obvious center of population,” Anya said, sounding more confident. “If we go covert now, it could look hostile. Try raising them on the radio. They probably don’t get too many visitors.”

That’s our Anya. Good going, kid
.

Anya was in her thirties, but she would always be Major Stroud’s kid. Bernie didn’t see that as a bad thing. Gettner seemed to cut her a hell of a lot more slack than normal, too. She was even talking her through the procedure, and doing an unusually diplomatic job of it for a woman who could etch glass with her insults.

“Better not buzz their quaint homesteads.” Gettner took the Raven higher. “Nothing like low-flying gunships to upset the natives.”

The occasional single -story home below became ones and twos, still small scattered farmhouses, but then the horizon resolved into something more familiar—a man -made landscape of roofs. It was nothing like Jacinto, no towers or domes or skyscrapers, but it was recognizably a village. The Raven climbed higher.

“Fenix, what are you seeing down there?” Gettner asked.

“No anti-air batteries, but watch out for assholes with rifles.”

“Try the more strategic analysis, Sergeant.”

“Low technology level, judging by the roads. Low -rise buildings. Sweep the whole area and I’ll give you a better estimate.”

“Okay, let’s see if anyone’s home.” Gettner started repeating the radio contact litany. “This is COG KR-EightZero, inbound from Port Farrall, calling Vectes ATC. This is COG KR-Eight-Zero, calling Vectes ATC …”

Cole peered below. It was fascinating to watch him forget to feel sick when he had something that completely distracted him. “Cows! When did you last see a cow in a field?”

“Steak.” Baird nodded to himself, evidently satisfied. “Cream. I’m in.”

“Farmers,”
Bernie said pointedly. She couldn’t imagine them being keen to share this with a city-load of strangers. “If I had a place like this, living on what I could grow and raise, and interlopers showed up, I’d need some serious smoothing over.”

“We’ll be suitably nonthreatening,” Anya said.

“Well, at least we can bang out fast if it all goes wrong.”

“How many other human enclaves are there going to be in the rest of Sera, do you think? Not just Stranded.”

Anya seemed to think of the Stranded as being voluntary outcasts, too, then. “People who couldn’t relocate.”

“There’ll always be some.”

And they’d all be small, all isolated, all running by their own rules. Bernie was prepared to hope that some would have retained a semblance of civilization, but so far she hadn’t seen much to encourage her.

“No radio response,” Gettner said. “Maybe they don’t have the tech.”

Baird shrugged. “Maybe they’re pretending they’re not in.”

This didn’t look like any Stranded settlement Bernie had ever passed through. Maybe the navy had never really left. Life in uniform meant accepting that you’d never be told the full story, even in the senior ranks, but Hoffman vented his frustration off duty with more foul language than Bernie had ever heard him use even in his NCO days. All she had to do was nod when he paused for breath. It seemed to do him some good.
Poor Vic. You used to be so much happier
.

That was nearly forty years ago. A lot of shit had slid down the sewer since then.
What a nice
, tidy
little place …

The settlement beneath them now looked like a fishing port. Small boats bobbed inside a breakwater, riding a noticeable swell even in the sheltered harbor. The buildings nearest the shore were older and more haphazard, but the ones further back looked more carefully planned, newer, painted with chalk wash, more … civilized. People were visible—looking up, hands shielding their eyes against the sun, some running back toward the town, some with kids.

Stranded? Governance by the most violent, for the most violent. Can’t tell until you get down there
.

“I’m setting down on that cliff,” Gettner said. There was a promontory north of the inlet, an inviting expanse of lush green turf. “High ground, good visibility, unimpeded takeoff. Okay, boys and girls, try not to found a cargo cult, will you? But I doubt they’ll think you’re visiting gods.”

“Ma’am,” Cole said, “just wait till they see my best moves.”

Bernie caught a glimpse of more people moving onto the shoreline. The town was turning out to watch the show. The Raven descended, flattening a circle of short grass with its downdraft, then settled on its wheels.

“I’ll go on ahead.” Marcus jumped out. “Delta—stay back, wedge contact formation, and
low-key
. Bernie, Anya—on me. Women can defuse situations. You look less threatening. Usually.”

They walked slowly down the slight incline, weapons conspicuously slung and hands well clear, but Bernie could imagine what the locals would notice first—not a gray -haired old woman and a slight blond girl, or the familiar and welcome uniform of a protection force, but a big, surly, scarred, heavily armed man who’d just jumped out of a helicopter gunship.

Gears would scare the shit out of anyone, whether their Lancers were aimed or not. They were physically incapable of looking like they’d dropped by to have a nice chat.

Had the locals even seen a chainsaw bayonet before? Not if they’d been cut off since E-Day. Somehow it looked a whole lot more menacing than the old Lancer she’d been used to.

A path of small rocks and pebbles crushed into the soil led down to the shorefront buildings. Ahead, two men with shotguns, backed up by a crowd of about thirty, had formed a roadblock of bodies.

“Easy, Delta,” Marcus said. “If we’re moving in, might as well show what good neighbors we can be.”

That was the way to do it. Even though they’d just stepped out of a long, dehumanizing war, Gears could snap straight back into being civilized, disciplined, law-abiding—everything the COG stood for, everything Bernie had come back to find again. She’d been like that once, and then—

Crack
.

The shot was either very badly aimed or
meant
to go over Marcus’s head.
VECTES SHOREFRONT .

“Hold your fire—Delta,
stand down!”

As soon as the first shot cracked and the insect whine of a round passed over their heads, Dom knew that diplomacy here was going to be basic. His automatic reaction to coming under fire was to drop down and return it. It was hard to override something that had been so hard-drilled in him for nearly twenty years that it was now instinct.

“Delta, maybe you should withdraw.” Gettner’s voice didn’t sound agitated, but Dom could understand why a pilot sitting in a Raven with extra fuel tanks was a little nervous around weapons discharged by strangers.

“Barber’s covering you.”

“Stand by, Major,” Marcus said. “They just don’t know how lovable we are yet.”

Baird muttered something under his breath and pulled his goggles over his eyes. Dom took a few cautious steps forward so he could see better. Marcus seemed to put an awful lot of faith in psychology, but all Dom could think was that even a Stranded asshole who couldn’t shoot straight was capable of a head shot at that range, and Marcus never wore a helmet. That do-rag wasn’t going to save him.

Dom had to strain to hear what the civvies were saying, but everyone else was loud and clear on the radio.

“Hey, I’m not shooting, citizen,” Marcus said.

The man out front—forty-five, fifty, sandy hair—still had his shotgun leveled. “Who the hell are you?”

“Sergeant Marcus Fenix, Coalition of Ordered Governments. Why don’t we put down the weapons and talk?”

“All kinds of vermin can get hold of COG armor these days. Prove who you are.”

He definitely had Marcus there. A COG-tag wouldn’t prove a thing. The crowd was getting bigger.

“If I give you my earpiece,” Marcus said carefully, “I can probably get Chairman Prescott himself to talk to you.”

That usually didn’t cut much ice with Stranded. Dom prepared to open fire if anyone’s finger so much as moved on the trigger again, and waited for the frozen pause to turn into the usual abuse about fascist assholes. But the guy with the shotgun seemed taken aback.

“Damn, after all these years…”

“I’m
Marcus.”
Yeah, he had this crowd control thing down pat. No ranks now, just
people
. “And this is Anya Stroud, and Bernadette Mataki. You want to catch up on the news?”

The guy lowered his shotgun, although the other man just angled his down forty-five degrees.

“Gavriel,” he said. “Lewis Gavriel. Head of maintenance at the naval base. Been here since before the COG

decommissioned it. More than twenty years.”

Marcus held out his hand for shaking. It always surprised Dom that he could switch back instantly to the wellmannered heir to a big estate, who knew the right titles to call people and how to read a wine list.

“Nice place you got here,” Marcus said. “We used to call it Toxin Town”

“And we knew how to keep the lids sealed.” Gavriel motioned to the other guy to lower his weapon. “That’s all gone now. Are you planning to bring the rest of your men?”

Marcus turned to wave the squad forward. Baird trotted down the slope, but Marcus held out his arm to halt him.

“Goggles off.” He only had to give Baird the two-second ice-cold stare these days to get him to do as he was told. “Easier to communicate when the other guy can see your eyes.”

Well, it always worked for Marcus. Baird parked his goggles on his head again without a word. Gettner’s voice filled Dom’s earpiece. “We’ll sit this out—call if you run into problems. Sorotki and Mitchell are going to prep the ’Dill.”