Gears of war, p.23
Gears of War, page 23
The line clicked several times, then she answered. Despite the distance and the switching, her voice still made his heart skip a beat.
“Anya, it’s me. You sound good.”
“This is a surprise, a welcome surprise.”
“Not a bad time, is it?”
“No, not at all. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
He scratched at the back of his head. “I had to hear your voice. And… we have to go dark. A week.”
“I understand.” Her tone shifted to very matter-of-fact. “What can I do? What do you need?”
“Nothing. I think we’re five days out and back. I’ll know what we need then.”
“You’ll be careful.”
“Yes. You need to watch your six, too. This is some seriously sick shit. We’ll send you everything, in case the mission is a bust.”
“Don’t let that happen, Marcus Fenix.” Anya’s tone softened slightly. “Your tomatoes aren’t going to pick themselves, you know.”
“Understood…” Marcus hesitated, his throat beginning to thicken. “Remember how we thought the fighting was done, that we’d earned tomorrow?”
“Of course.”
“Now’s the time we earn tomorrow for everyone else.” Marcus exhaled slowly. “I love you.”
“I love you, too, Marcus. Very much.” The line fell silent, and he feared for a moment he’d lost her. “Be safe, my love, and bring everybody home.”
“I will. And I will talk to you as soon as I can.” Marcus returned the receiver to the set and flicked the unit off. I wish you were here, Anya.
Brandon knocked on the doorjamb. “Is the phone free? Cole offered me use of a suite at the arena, so I want track down my pilot and see if he’s interested when the season starts… You okay, Marcus?”
“I think so.” Marcus poured himself a glass of water from the tap. “Having everyone here, it feels good, the way it’s supposed to—but it doesn’t feel the same as before. The pressure, it’s still there, but it’s not the same as it was.”
“It’s not, because you’re not the same.” Brandon started packing the sat phone back into its case. “That settlement camp, that’s been my home since forever, but every time I go back it feels different. It hasn’t changed, not fundamentally, but I have. When you were fighting the Locust you were in a long, dark tunnel for a very long time. Now you’re out of it. You’ve seen how people survived during the time you were fighting. You’ve seen their lives, and what they’ve made of them.”
Marcus sipped his tea. “And now I get to see how some people want to use the grubs as their own personal army. Not something I’d ever thought possible, back then.”
“Think about it. Those days you were fighting to stop the extermination of all human life. Now you’ve got a better perspective on all the different ways life gets defined.” Brandon shrugged. “For some people it’s shooting skeet. For Otto it’s the work he loves at Harkness Glen—same for Cole’s career, right? Damon’s all about how he can make life better just by playing with technology.”
“And Anya is doing everything she can to keep people alive, the way she used to do for me and Delta.” Marcus shook his head. “As for me… I don’t know.”
“Sure you do.” Brandon patted him on the shoulder. “It’s doing the right thing so others can live their lives—and it’s going to be kicking a sourdough starter’s ass when you get back home.”
Anya’s words came back to him. Your tomatoes aren’t going to pick themselves. He set his water glass down. “Go make your calls. See if you can get your guy for emergency standby. I’ll set up everything else. At dawn we head out to make sure other people get to live their lives as they want. Except for those who think it’s a good idea to try and stop us.”
7: MINISTRY OF SANITATION
EPHYRA, SERA
9 FROST 18 A.E.
Anya entered the outer office in Jamila Shin’s suite at the Ministry. Thomas wasn’t at his desk, which wasn’t wholly surprising. Anya walked through the chamber and paused in the doorway to Jamila’s office. Thomas busied himself in the corner, moving files from a cabinet and into an old document box. Jamila sat at her desk, staring at the computer screen, but her hands remained folded in her lap.
Concern arrowed Anya’s brows together. “What’s wrong, Jamila? What’s going on?”
Jamila glanced up, her face expressionless and her flesh sallow.
Thomas looked up from his work, then turned toward Anya. “Now is not a good time, Minister. If you wouldn’t mind…”
“What’s wrong? I can help.”
“Please, Minister…” Thomas shook his head and positioned himself to prevent her from entering any further.
“No, Thomas, it’s okay. If you can give us a moment. There are things you can do from your desk, yes?” Resignation flooded through Jamila’s words. She sounded thoroughly exhausted.
“Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
“If you need anything, I can be here in a second.”
“Yes, Thomas, thank you.”
He gave Anya a hard stare. “Be careful. She doesn’t need to be hurt anymore.”
“Yes, Thomas.” Anya stepped aside so he could exit the office, then crossed to the desk and sat in one of the chairs in front of it. “What’s happened, Jamila?”
The older woman sat forward, resting her elbows on the desk, her hands clutched together in front of her mouth.
“I don’t think you’ve met my son, Simon. He and Thomas have been lifelong friends, but are nothing alike. Simon, well, my husband and I indulged him, compensating for all the horror he’s seen. As difficult as it may seem given the world’s collapse, he grew up with more advantages than most. He’s never truly suffered, never worked a day in his life, and we promised him that after the Locust were gone, things would return to the halcyon days of his childhood.”
Jamila turned a small, digital frame around, showing the image of a good-looking young man sprawled across a chair, relaxing on a patio somewhere, with a half-eaten apple in his hand.
“People treated him differently because of the Shin name. They deferred to him. My husband and I thought we had shown him that this meant he had a responsibility to uphold, to make society and the world a better place. I always saw the museum, for example, as something which did that. Apparently Simon only saw it as a massive building graced with his name. As far as he was concerned he owned it.”
Anya reached out and held Jamila’s left hand in both of hers. “I grew up with my mother having endured those expectations turned in the opposite direction.”
“So you did.” Jamila massaged her forehead with her free hand. “Forgive me, I do go on, but context, you know.”
“Of course. Take your time.”
“Well, the Locust are gone, but the times of plenty have not returned. Apparently Simon felt this was a promise I had failed to keep. In an attempt to show him how we were working to put the world back together, I shared with him a number of the things we are doing. Some people—I don’t know who—approached him with a get-rich-quick scheme where he agreed to use his influence to get them preferential treatment, once we hashed out the details for monetary reconciliation.
“As we had talked about, people with real-estate holdings in the hardest-hit areas have lost everything, and possess a skill set that isn’t going to translate into something we will need for a long time. The percentage at which we compensate them is something these people want to see increased. They’ve provided my son with a number of perquisites, which have the appearance of bribes being funneled through him to me.”
“Oh, God.” Acid bubbled into Anya’s throat.
Jamila slipped her hand from Anya’s and sat back. “These people sent me some files. Documents my son signed, some video of meetings they had, and a particularly vile snippet of my son in a sexually compromised position.”
“What do they want?”
“Not money, which shows they’re much smarter than Simon.” Jamila scrubbed her hands over her face. “They’ve said that someone who cannot take care of her own family certainly cannot take care of the rest of us.”
“They want you to leave the ministry?”
“They’ve not said that, Anya. However, I believe they want me to remove myself from consideration to be first minister.” The older woman’s shoulders slumped. “I think until I figured that out, I hadn’t realized how much I wanted to be first minister. I think I’m being honest about that. It would be such an honor to bring everyone together, to shepherd mankind through a recovery. I didn’t think of it as being a position of power, as much as an acceptance of incredible responsibility. But now…”
The pain in her friend’s voice pierced Anya’s heart, and then began to anger her. “We have to find out who these people are. Hasterwith, it has to be. Or someone connected to Pendergast. Possibly Aaron Griffin?”
“Not Aaron.” Jamila shook her head. “If he was coming for me, it would be face to face and he wouldn’t be hiding it. But, Anya, the who doesn’t matter. The sad part of this is that I should have seen it coming. The instant we agreed to call ourselves ministers and began shaping our roles, people began to angle for the top spot. We’ve not even formally ratified the nature of the office, and people lust after it. Everyone does.”
“Not me.” Anya shook her head. “This sort of thing is why I hate politics. I’ve been willing to play the word games for the sake of getting things done, but that’s not how I want to live. Let me get things set up, and then let me go so Marcus and I can raise a family and get to spend some time being normal.”
“There’s the problem, Anya. Special people like you and Marcus never truly get to be normal.” Jamila sighed. “There are rules in politics, and you’ve mastered many of them just by intuition. So here’s one that you can learn, and whoever did this didn’t. If you take a shot at the king, make sure you kill the king. As devastating as this was, this was not a killing shot.”
“But you’ll have to step down, won’t you?”
“That’s likely what they intended, but that isn’t the result they will get.” Jamila chewed her lower lip for a moment. “If we actually had a government, with laws and a justice system, yes, I would be gone and my political life would be over. Right now, what this requires is for me to remove myself from any committees dealing with monetary reconciliation, and recuse myself from any votes on the same.
“I can easily state that this is an issue which could materially benefit me.” Jamila’s expression sharpened. “I would maintain, therefore, I consider it vulgar and beneath my involvement. I will also recuse myself from consideration for the office of first minister. Finally, physically removing myself from this suite of offices will show that I’m serious.
“The plausible fiction we will put forward to explain my stepping back will be that my husband has been drinking too much, and I need to attend to my family. Simon will be put in a position where he’ll have no more contact with these individuals, and in a place where he’ll have to adapt to the harsh realities of the world in which we live. That lesson, for him, is long overdue.”
Anya blinked. “That’s a pretty comprehensive strategy.”
“One my mother used thirty years ago, during a leadership struggle within the museum’s social events committee. As much as some of our counterparts think themselves political geniuses, they’re infants compared to those women.”
Anya smiled. “During the time off, do you plan to eliminate your opposition? Identify the target and destroy it?”
“That I can’t do, not until the information about my son has been drained of its sting. Scandals go away with time, and something like this has a shelf-life of three years or so. The best I can do during that time is to lend my support to others, but only tangentially.” Jamila pressed her hands palms-down on her desktop. “So I can do nothing—but you, Anya, have no limitations.”
“Me? No. I’m not interested.” Anya shook her head firmly. “Diana is a much better choice, or Cara. At least they’ve been elected, so either has legitimacy. I’m not a politician. I just make things work, and that’s all I want. You pick either one of them, and I’ll back your choice.”
Jamila stared down at her hands for a moment, then nodded. “I will respect your decision, Anya. Not because I think the others would be a better choice, but because you’ve already given more of your life than one could expect. We may be starting the world over from scratch, but there’s one traditional value that really needs to be brought forward: gratitude for the sacrifices others have made.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome, but please, remember one thing.” Jamila’s dark eyes became slits. “Those who want to be first minister may not believe your claim that you don’t want the office. They see enemies where none exist, and they move to eliminate them however they can. Be very careful, Anya. Don’t let them hurt you.”
8: IRON HILLS RIPARIAN PRESERVE
IRON HILLS, SERA
12 FROST 18 A.E.
Their trip in took them until dusk of the third day.
Snow began falling gently but steadily as they started south from Westbrook. While it made passage slower, it also covered their tracks, and the cloud cover would keep all but the most foolhardy pilot grounded. They calculated their chances at discovery as low, and kept cold camps at night so firelight wouldn’t betray them.
Cole and Karima Razek hit it off well. The two of them spent a lot of time discussing the business of Thrashball, including the resources necessary to establish a team and projected timeline for a solid ten percent return on investment. Marcus listened to them with interest. Their conversations provided him a glimpse of something he’d never before seen in Cole. He’d never believed in the dumb jock stereotype some wanted to ascribe to his friend. He’d always known Cole was bright, but the talk of business and finance clued him in to just how bright the man really was.
Karima argued that Cole’s numbers seemed optimistic, and that she’d want to see a proof of concept that a league could work in the new world.
“Baby, that’s what pre-season is all about.” Cole went on to outline a plan for a long pre-season, with teams barnstorming around to build excitement. “If a town has a flat expanse of open ground, we’ll play. Westbrook, their town square, I put the helo down at mid-field.”
That broadened the scope of the conversation, with everyone else tossing in suggestions. Things went from practical to absurd, and a generous portion of good-natured ribbing was doled out. Even with two civilians in the mix, it felt to Marcus like he had Delta back.
We lost so much, but there’s still so much here. Anya would love it.
Mid-afternoon on the third day Karima led them into the preserve and along a trail that ran parallel to the river but about a mile east of it. Wide enough that horses could travel two abreast, the trail wound down into a narrow canyon with a small, steaming pool of jade-green water, and natural caves. Ancient mud-bricks and stone partially closed them to the outside, providing shelter and a place to stable their horses.
“These ruins are four hundred years old, or so I was told when I first visited.” Karima led her horses to the pool to drink. “A hot spring feeds the pool. It’s good for drinking and bathing, though getting out of it in this cold would not be enjoyable.”
Marcus looked over at the south end of the canyon. “Where does that trail go?”
“We’re roughly a mile east of the mining camp. That trail will take us to the middle of the mine complex. It goes south, then comes back up north, then down to the floor. Likely half an hour to traverse.” She turned and pointed back the way they’d just come down. “Back up there was a crack in the rock. That leads directly east, and brings you out at the valley’s north end, right past what was the railhead for the mining train.”
“Sam, let’s you, me, and Karima run a quick recon.”
Clay looked up from snapping the barrel-assembly for a Longshot sniper rifle into the receiver. “Want me to head up the other way, and be ready to cover you?”
“No.” Marcus pointed to another set of ruins twenty-five yards away on the other side of the pool. “You and Cole set up there. If there’s trouble, we’ll lead them back here. If we’re chased, Brandon, you and Karima get the hell out. Karima, you find the both of you a nice place to hide, and Brandon, you call for evac. No questions.”
“And me?” Damon spread his hands wide. “I’m just supposed to stand here looking pretty?”
Sam shot Damon a quick look. “Someone hasn’t looked in a mirror recently…”
Marcus shouldered his Lancer. “Load up, move out. Baird, maybe you have some food ready for us when we get back?”
“You’re going to love the taste of algae, and…”
Marcus ignored whatever else the man said. He fell into line with Karima in the lead and Sam bringing up the rear. They skirted the pool, then headed upward. The trail quickly narrowed—a horse could have ridden it, but slowly, and the rider’s legs would be scratched all to hell. In a couple of spots he had to turn sideways to squeeze through in his armor.
As Karima had said, the way led south and a bit west, then cut back north. They did a steep up and down, then the trail leveled out and turned directly west. It began a gradual descent, and well before the narrow trail allowed him to see anything, Marcus smelled water and caught sounds that weren’t natural. About a dozen yards from the end of the trail Karima stopped them with an upraised and closed fist, then moved up along a spur to a lookout point.
The river canyon proved far broader than Marcus had expected. When the miners had first arrived they had blasted out a lot of rock and used the rubble to fill the riverbed. This meant that the river, which came in from the north, became much broader and far shallower through the middle of the valley. Though only ankle-deep, the center hadn’t frozen over entirely.
To the north, on the far side of the river, stood the old railhead, including a massive shed and a smaller side-building attached to it. Made out of corrugated tin, the structure seemed now to serve a single purpose, holding up a solar-panel array on its roof.
