Gears of War: Jacinto’s Remnant (32 page)

They jumped down from the other door and began walking. Anya saw Bernie circle the motor cruiser, then climb the access ladder to the deck.

“Hey, anyone home?” Dom called. He was still close enough to the Raven to run for cover if he needed to. He turned around full circle, back to back with Marcus and a few meters apart, and waited. “We’re from the COG. How about a chat, so we understand each other?”

There was a creaking sound from the cruiser. Anya moved to look, and there was Bernie, Lancer held vertically, leaning against the wheelhouse while a young guy in a heavy tunic backed out of the door and began climbing down the ladder. He seemed torn between worrying about her and sizing up Cole.

“Come on, folks,” Dom called. “We know you’re in—”

Suddenly doors edged open and men—no women in sight—began appearing in the paths between the shacks. They were armed with an assortment of half the weapons that Anya had ever seen: hunting rifles, a couple of Gnasher shotguns that no civilian should have had, snub pistols, and even a Hammerburst. Why the guy needed that—or how he got it—Anya couldn’t imagine, but scavenging had been a daily necessity for fifteen years. Extraordinary things were traded from place to place. It didn’t mean the man had fought Locust or even seen one.

“I hope you understand our shoot -to-kill policy now, Lieutenant Stroud,” Will said quietly. “We were never armed, and so we’ve got very few personal weapons. We’ve traded for whatever we can get.”

“You’ve got us now.” Bernie wandered past, right behind the man she’d flushed out of the cruiser, who kept glancing at her as if he was expecting to be shot in the back. “Cole, cover me, will you?”

Anya couldn’t sit this out. She jumped down, trying to tread the fine line between looking like she meant it and not provoking an incident. She hadn’t managed to nail that Gear body language yet. It was an effortless movement where the rifle became an extension of the arms and eyes, and she knew she’d need to achieve that or remain the useful desk jockey that everyone else had to protect in a tight spot.

One of the Stranded must have passed a ribald comment about Anya to his buddy within Bernie’s earshot. Bernie paused and gave him the angry sergeant stare.

“You so much as
smile
at the lieutenant,” she said, “and you’ll be pissing through a straw.”

The man with the Hammerburst didn’t look as if he was going to shoulder the weapon anytime soon. “Well, fancy seeing the COG here at last. Welcome to Massy’s territory. That’s me, by the way. You’re on my turf.”

“The COG’s moving back in.” Marcus just rolled over the challenge as if he hadn’t heard it. “Looks like we never left.”

“Shit, you’ve come to the middle of nowhere to find another place to kick us out of, asshole?”

“We’re just asking you to be more considerate neighbors to our citizens.”

Massy was probably forty or so, balding, bearded, unusually heavyset for a Stranded. They looked much betterfed here. “I’m seeing three of you—oh, and the dick from the town hall—and about thirty of us. You good at math?”

“Top of my class.”

“You want to check your figures again?”

Marcus just looked at him, then back at Bernie and Anya. “Dom, check my working-out, will you?”

Dom shrugged. “Well, there’s
five
of us, and Mr. Berenz, and then there’s the missile launchers and guns on the Raven, and a bored chopper crew, so I make that outgunned plus eight. But maybe I forgot to carry the one.”

Anya heard the rasp of metal bearings, like someone opening a reluctant jar. Sorotki trained his gun in the vague direction of the shacks, making more noise than he needed to.

Oh God
.

Anya felt the jolt of adrenaline flooding her thigh muscles. She was scared. But…

I hate even thinking it, but I feel alive. Seriously alive
.

She’d never expected that. She wasn’t new to life-or-death situations, but she’d never been physically involved in them until the last few weeks. And she didn’t want to die, but right then she wouldn’t have traded places with Mathieson for anything.

“Okay.” Massy sounded relaxed, and he shouldn’t have been. He lowered the rifle, and every Stranded male did the same. “Here’s the deal. You keep away from us, and we’ll let you stay awhile.”

Something seemed to have caught Bernie’s attention. She walked past the shacks along the shoreline, along a row of small boats upturned on the pebbles. She looked them over as if she was thinking of buying one. Massy seemed to notice her for the first time. “You got a problem, lady?”

Bernie turned around. Anya could see she was chewing the inside of her lip. A couple of the Stranded men had moved round a little so that she’d have to walk past them. Anya’s warning bells went off, but Cole was already prepared and made a noisy show of cocking the Lancer manually and blipping the chainsaw for a second.

“The blue dinghy,” Bernie said, fixing on Massy. Anya was sure she had the other Stranded in her peripheral vision. “Anyone want to admit to owning that?”

“You want to make an offer?”

“Simple question. Is the man who owns it here?”

“No.”

“Shame,” she said. “I’ll have to keep looking.”

“Okay, we’re out of here.” Marcus motioned everyone back to the Raven, and the tension seemed to drop.

“Glad we’ve reached an understanding.”

Then Anya learned how fast a situation could veer from calm to a fight. As Bernie passed between two of the men, one moved to jostle her. Anya didn’t see the moment of contact. He might have just shoved Bernie, or maybe he’d touched her backside or something, but he had just enough time to start a leering grin before she spun and smashed the butt of her rifle hard across his mouth. Metal cracked against teeth. He went down like a stone. Anya’s instinct said to pitch in, to back up her squad. But she’d hardly moved before Dom was on the second guy, Lancer shoved hard in his chest, and Cole was blocking Bernie. Everyone froze; every weapon was now raised. There was an awful pause.

“Anyone else want some?” Bernie said, aiming at the man on the floor. She didn’t look like steady, goodnatured Bernie now. She looked like she wanted an excuse to fire. “No? Good call.”

“Yeah, I know who you are now,” one of the men called. “Stupid bitch. You’re really going to get what’s coming to you now. Didn’t you learn your lesson?”

“You need to stay out of my frigging way.” She began backing away with Dom and Cole as the Raven’s rotors started up. “Because you never learned
yours.”

Sorotki’s voice came over the comms. “Move it, people. You’ll be late for diplomacy class.”

Marcus covered their exit and then jumped aboard. The Raven lifted clear. Nobody said a word while Bernie put her head in her hands for a few moments, then sat up straight again.

“Shit, I’m sorry.” She looked dreadful, every year of her age and then some, as if something inside had crumbled. She was a veteran Gear, no stranger to violence; Anya had seen her simply shrug off close calls with Locust. Something was wrong. “I could have got you all killed. Baird’s right. I’m a liability.”

“There’s nothing wrong with your reflexes, Bernie,” Dom said. He ruffled her hair as if she was one of the men. “It’s okay. Nobody got hurt.”

Cole joined in the vigorous hair rubbing. “Well, apart from the guy spittin’ out teeth, that is. See, that’s why I
never
played ladies’ thrashball teams. Girls get
rough.”

“It’s
not
okay.” Bernie submitted to the horseplay. Anya thought that was revealing, seeing as she’d reacted so violently to someone else touching her. “I just lost it. I’m old enough to know better.”

Nobody asked what the man had meant by knowing who she was, and that she hadn’t learned her lesson. Anya tried not to guess. But she was already starting to fill in gaps despite herself.

“Bernie, we’ve all done it.” Anya reached across between the seats and grabbed her hand. “Even I’ve hit a guy. Okay, anyone here who
hasn’t
lost it with someone?”

Marcus shrugged. “Got kicked out of junior school for fighting. Had a fight on my first day at Olafson Intermediate, too. And I hit Hoffman.”

“Well, I just do friendly
taps,”
Cole said. “But yeah.”

“See, Bernie?” Anya squeezed her hand. “You’re in the company of serious scrappers. Everyone’s been there.”

“I feel better already,” Bernie said, clearly not meaning it.

It was part of a ritual, and Anya knew it. Everyone rushed to reassure Bernie in this awful, semi-joking way, listing their own moments when they forgot discipline and procedure and just lashed out. But the real question wasn’t asked, and wouldn’t be until the civilian was out of range: what had happened before she rejoined the army?

Will Berenz just gazed at Bernie with undisguised admiration. He didn’t seem remotely curious. All he seemed to see was a Gear who would put the Stranded in their place, Stranded who’d terrorized him and his neighbors. Anya had seen the Stranded on the fringes of Jacinto as unlucky misfits at best, and lazy cowards at worst, but she was now starting to see another element—the utterly lawless who’d never been in fear of COG justice in places where civilization had completely broken down.

Back at Pelruan, Will opened up the town hall and gave the squad the keys to the emergency storeroom. “Just somewhere to eat and bed down for the night,” he said. “Unless you want to be billeted with families.”

“We’ll be fine here, thanks,” Dom said. “We snore.”

Marcus nodded. “Appreciate it, Will. We’ll mount patrols tonight, just in case. You’ll hear the APC. Anya, maybe you can draw up watch rosters for the Ravens.”

Now they were on their own, with no outsiders to limit their conversation. Bernie hauled out folding camp beds while Dom investigated the food stores. Gettner and Sorotki’s co-pilot, Mitchell, volunteered to cook dinner. To Anya it felt like a settled and normal night in barracks in Jacinto, except there were no grubs to worry about, just a handful of feral humans down the coast who would have been unwise to show their faces here. No, not
exactly
like Jacinto: there were no sounds of a crowded city, no urban noise—just the wind, roaring surf, and occasional voices outside. The squad and Raven crews played cards. But there was no barroom conversation this time, just bids and declarations. Cole couldn’t keep up the silence forever. Anya watched him picking his moment to steer Bernie to one side, taking an occasional deep breath as if he was about to ask something.

“Bernie, you want to do some liquid resource investigation at that handy little bar?” he asked.

“Maybe tomorrow,” she said. “But thanks.”

Cole laid his hand of cards on the table, frowning at it for a moment. “Baby, you ain’t obliged to explain a damn thing to us. But if you
want
to tell us what all that shit was about, you got a sympathetic audience.”

Bernie rearranged her hand in silence, shifting cards around as if she was doing some complex calculation, but Anya could tell she wasn’t really concentrating on the game.

“Okay, I’ll tell you a horror story,” Bernie said. “With monsters in it.” She laid down her cards faceup, an obvious bust. “And one of them is me.”

There’s justice, and there’s vengeance. Justice is vengeance administered impersonally by a bureaucrat in a standardized and
predictable way, so we all know how much punishment to expect and when we’ll get it
. (CAPTAIN QUENTIN MICHAELSON, NCOG, ON MAINTAINING SOCIAL ORDER.)

PELRUAN, VECTES, SEVEN WEEKS AFTER THE EVACUATION OF JACINTO, 14 A.E.

Gears were family, and families didn’t have secrets.

They had disagreements, and favorites, and annoying dumb -ass habits, but they didn’t keep serious shit from each other—especially if there was something that could be done about it. Cole hoped Bernie understood that.

“Ain’t prying, Bernie,” he said. The card game didn’t matter now. It was just to pass the time, anyway. “But we know you’re troubled.”

“Who isn’t?” she said. “The whole army’s a psychiatric ward. Our civvies are stressed shitless, too. Can’t live in a world like this and stay normal.”

“Hey, Gill, let’s check out that bar.” Mitchell stood up and went for the door. It was getting too grim and personal for him. Gettner took the hint. “This is
squad
business.”

There was a clear understanding of who was
squad
at any given time and who wasn’t—nothing personal, just the way Gears were. Bernie took a long time to say anything after they’d left.

“No point pissing around with a long tale of woe,” she said. “I was raped by Stranded a couple of years ago. So I went after them. I killed two of the guys, but the third got away. That’s about it. Anyone want to play another hand?”