Gears of War: Jacinto’s Remnant (5 page)

No, not days.
Hours
. The temperature was plummeting. Nobody had the luxury of time.

“Anya?” Hoffman strode up to the APC, boots crunching on the frozen slush, and indicated somewhere back down the line of parked vehicles with his thumb. “The CIC truck’s operational now—heating and coffee, people. Get down there. No point freezing your asses off. Stroud, you’re rostered off. Get some sleep.”

“I told her, sir—” said Mathieson.

“I’m fine,” she said.

“Maintaining rest breaks is part of your duties, Stroud. Got to keep you operational.”

That was Hoffmanese for “I worry about you.” She found it rather endearing. “Understood, sir. But I can’t sleep now. Don’t they need people to … well, at least hand out hot drinks or something?”

“I said
rest
. What’s the key thing in any planned emergency?”

“Know your task and carry it out, sir.”

“Right. Let the designated teams worry about everything else until they ask for assistance. You’ll be busy tasking Gears sooner than you think. Public order, security details … yes, it’s a different kind of soldiering now.”

Hoffman paused and looked past her at something in the crowd of refugees. A Gear—forties, with a wild beard and a straw hat that marked him out as press-ganged from the Stranded—was working his way back through the tide of bodies, calling out a name: “Maralin?
Maralin!
Sweetie, you okay? Where’s Teresa?”

A teenage girl struggled through the press of bodies and flung her arms around his neck. People parted to avoid them, and Anya watched a tearful reunion. Then another girl, just like her—no,
exactly
like her, a twin—appeared in the crowd and elbowed her way through, yelling, “Daddy!
Daddy!”

“Well,
someone’s
happy,” Hoffman muttered. “Grindlift driver. Glad he found his kids.”

Anya had a hard time distinguishing Stranded from citizens now. Many refugees were so ragged and scruffy that they could have been either. And while that Gear had found his family, others were still searching the human chaos for faces they recognized. A man stood to one side of the stream of people, calling out: “Anyone seen my son? Tylor Morley. Fourteen, brown hair, skinny. Anyone?”

He repeated it over and over, like someone standing on a street corner selling newspapers. Anya knew there’d be many more desperate searches like that in the days to come. The satisfaction at evacuating most of Jacinto was now giving way to the guilt and dismay of realizing how many had been lost.

“That’s the hard stuff,” Hoffman said. “I’m thankful that the emergency guys can handle all that. Fighting grubs was the easy bit.” He paused. “When Santiago reports in, ask him to see me.”

“Will do, sir.”

Hoffman looked as if he was going to say something else, but he just turned around and walked back toward the EM truck. Anya wiped her face with the back of her hand. Her skin was starting to sting with the steady barrage of snow.

“Better get moving,” she said. She shut the hatches and started the engine. “I want to check out the medical tent. I’ll drop you off at CIC.”

“What’s all that about Dom?” Mathieson asked.

Anya went into protective mode. Dom had defended her from intrusive interest when her mother was killed, and now it was her turn to watch his back.

“I didn’t think you knew him,” she said.

“Everyone knows Dom. Won the Embry Star at Aspho. Screwed his career defending Fenix at the courtmartial. Hoffman’s favorite. Spends all his free time looking for his missus.”

“Yes, that’s Dom.” Anya steered the ’Dill out of the line, keeping to the vehicle lane marked in the grass by reflective cones. She kept a wary eye out for stray pedestrians. “Like you said, Hoffman’s favorite.”

It was as good an explanation as any. She’d get to Dom before the gossip started. So far, the only people who knew weren’t the gossiping kind: Delta Squad, Hoffman, and herself. It was nobody else’s business. When she reached the CIC truck, she jumped out of the ’Dill’s cab to find herself ankle deep in slush and regretting not changing into combat boots and fatigues. Mathieson swung himself out on prosthetic legs that were the best that the COG could manage to make, and that wasn’t very good at all. Anya made a note to sweet-talk Baird into seeing what modifications might be possible. Baird wasn’t exactly the most bighearted Gear, but he couldn’t resist a mechanical challenge.

And humanity was now facing a future with even less technology at its disposal. Although that was obvious, and everyone knew that abandoning Jacinto meant leaving behind almost all the trappings of modern society, the full realization hadn’t hit Anya until then.

No workshops. No bakeries. No computer network. No drugs manufacturing. We didn’t have much in Jacinto,
but now we’ve even lost most of that
.

The CIC truck’s interior looked like any small office, minus windows. It smelled of damp wool, fuel, coffee, and sweat, packed with weary and stressed people trying to grab a hot drink to keep them going while they worked out humanity’s chances of survival on the back of a used and reused notepad. This was an old emergency management command vehicle from the pre -Locust days, a mobile base for the response team, designed to go wherever a civil disaster occurred. Anya almost didn’t recognize Prescott when she walked in; he was sitting on one of the desks, in a thick pullover and ordinary pants like the rest of the civilian team—no smart tunic, no medals, no gold braid. It might have been common sense—civilian rig
was
warmer than his uniform—but it looked like a subtle message that he was in it with the common people, suffering what they suffered. Design or accident, it certainly seemed to have had the right effect. The EM team looked energized. Even Dr. Hayman looked more relaxed. After what they’d all been through, that was some impressive inspiration in action.

No, you’re not just any old bureaucrat, are you, sir?

“Okay.” Prescott was partway through some agenda item. “So we’ll leave people on board ships for the time being, except for those in open vessels who need immediate shelter. Can the larger vessels take any of them?”

“Stuffed to the gunwales already, sir.” Royston Sharle had drawn the shortest straw of all as the EM chief. He’d served in the COG navy, and it showed to Anya in all the
right
ways. “Disease is going to be an issue if we push that. You know—confined spaces, overloaded waste discharge. We’ve rigged tents with heaters for the time being, and for tonight, we just have to get as many under cover as we can. Those in vehicles—they’re better off staying put until we can move into the buildings. Latrines and water in place, and soup wagons will be operational within the hour.”

“Good job, Sharle.” Prescott rubbed his forehead, looking down at a sheaf of notes in his hand. If it was an act, it was beautifully performed. “Thank you. Fuel?”

“Sovereign
sent a marine recon team into Merrenat and there’s still imulsion in at least half the tanks that Stranded couldn’t get at. And there’s no telling what else is still stored in that complex—it was built to withstand a full Indie attack in the last war.”

Anya listened, the landscape of crisis shifting before her eyes. From a single city under siege, held together by necessity, defined by a physical defensive line, humankind was now in free fall. The biggest threat was itself. The word
secure
brought that home to her. Citizens had probably stolen, feuded, and connived throughout the war, but the Locust threat was right on their doorstep—easy to focus upon, familiar, oddly unifying. Now the Locust were gone. Simply staying alive was suddenly even harder. Anya could sense a communal fear of the truly unknown. Prescott glanced up at her and looked relieved; he even managed a quick smile. Maybe that was his political psyops at work again. The sobering thing was that she felt herself respond to it like everyone else did. She was willing to work until she dropped.

“How many people did we lose?” Prescott asked quietly. “Do we have any idea yet?”

There was a brief silence. Hayman looked at Sharle for a moment.

“I can only tell you how many haven’t made it out of the treatment station alive so far,” she said. Hayman had to be at least seventy years old; she was in the vulnerable elderly category herself, even if her don’t-mess-withme attitude disguised that. “And that includes trauma and those who’ve died of heart attacks in transit. But if you’re asking for an estimate overall—we’re thinking in terms of thirty percent losses.”

But we said we’d evacuated most of the city
. I
said it
. Anya tried to come to terms with what
most
meant.
Is
that the best we could do?

Yes, 70 percent was a good majority, achieved under attack and with the city literally vanishing under them. It still didn’t make 30 percent acceptable. And it didn’t include any Stranded, because the COG had no real idea of how many people lived in wretched shantytowns outside the protection of Jacinto. There could have been more than a million dead now. A drop in the ocean after so many over the years, but—

No, Anya couldn’t take it in. She just let it register on her brain as a statistic, allowing the shock do what it was designed to do—to numb the pain temporarily so that you could concentrate on surviving. Prescott chewed over the news for a few moments, then slipped off the table to stand upright, fully in command. It was perfect use of body language; he probably did it automatically, a habit learned at his father’s knee. This was simply how statesmen behaved.

“I’m not going to give you a stirring speech,” he said. “We face facts. Our society’s changed out of all recognition in three hours. We’re more at risk now than we were under Locust attack. We’ve lost even the most basic comforts we had in Jacinto. People
will
die of cold and hunger. People
will
become angry and scared very, very fast, and that’s the point at which we face collapse. It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better. And it’s going to put enormous pressure not only on you, but on our Gears—we’re taking them out of a terrible war and plunging them straight into policing their own people, keeping order, because order
will
break down if we don’t impose it. Some Gears will find it impossible, and so might some of us. But the only other choice is to degenerate into savagery, and then the Locust will have won because we handed them the victory.”

Prescott stopped and looked around at the assembled team. Anya had been so transfixed by the pep talk that she hadn’t noticed Hoffman behind her. She had no idea where he’d been, but he was here now, coffee in one hand, freshly shaven, smelling of soap. That was his substitute for sleep—coffee and a shower. Where he’d found running water and privacy, she had absolutely no idea, but Hoffman would have rubbed himself down with snow if he had to.

“Well said, sir,” Hoffman said quietly, and sounded as if he meant it. “We now have security patrols on task.”

So that was where he’d been. Anya had expected to be central to that tasking, but things
were
changing. The meeting broke up, and Hoffman beckoned her into another compartment of the vehicle.

“I can’t find Santiago,” he said. “Now, what the hell went on with his wife? I
heard
that transmission.”

Anya shook her head, trying not to think the worst. “I only know as much as you do, sir.”

“Permission to go find out some
more
, seeing as you’re not going to sleep.” Hoffman folded his cap and tucked it in his belt. “I’ve got to do my quality time with the chairman. And please give Sergeant Mataki my compliments if you see her.”

“Understood, sir.”

It was all code. If Hoffman had ever been the type to openly admit he was worried sick about individuals, it was long buried. No commander had that luxury. Anya felt she had moral permission to use the radio now and leaned over Mathieson at the comms desk.

“Okay, where’s Sergeant Fenix?”

Mathieson consulted his roster. “Delta’s on stand-easy and they’re all logged off the radio net. Try looking in marshaling zone G. Tents should be up by now.”

If Dom was losing it, Marcus would be with him. All she had to do was find Marcus. She drove the ’Dill slowly along the marked lanes, slowing to a crawl every time she saw a group of Gears. It took a long time, and then the APC’s headlights picked out a familiar figure—Augustus Cole. Apart from his sheer size, no other Gear was crazy enough to go around with bare arms in this weather. Baird and Mataki stood there with him, looking as if they were arguing, completely oblivious of the snow.

Anya stopped and rolled back the Armadillo’s hatch. “Hi, guys. Where’s Dom? I’m on a mission from Hoffman.”

“Marcus went lookin’ for him, ma’am,” Cole said. “Some serious shit’s goin’ down. What happened? I heard him,
you
heard him—”

Baird cut in. “I don’t believe it. The man was totally
normal
when we met up. Not a word about it. When you blow your wife’s brains out, you don’t just shrug and carry on, do you?”

“Blondie, you’re all fucking heart,” Bernie said sourly. “Sorry, ma’am. Look, I say we shut up and leave this to Marcus for now. We don’t know what went on yet. We tell anyone who asks about Maria that Dom’s got proof she’s dead, and not to ask him about it. Okay?”

“Good idea,” Anya said.

Baird seemed genuinely shaken by it. “I mean, I saw what the grubs did to our guys down there, and shooting her had to be the—”

“Shut up before I
shut
you up.” Bernie prodded him hard in the chest. “Dom’s in shock. We do what we have to, to get him through it, okay? And from
you
, that means no crass advice. Keep it zipped.”