Gears of War: Anvil Gate by Karen Traviss Page B

stories high, all winding stairs, varnished floorboards, and dark green paint. Dom and Cole struggled against a tide of Gears and emergency volunteers coming out of the main doors. Dom took the stairs to CIC two at a time, tidying his fatigues as he went, although nobody had given a shit about uniform standards for a damn long time. As soon as he walked into the room, the wall of sound hit him—radio chatter on the loudspeakers, Ops staff with phones to one ear and radio headsets held to the other. A group of the Vectes locals was maintaining a tote board on the wall to keep track of the various incidents and plotting them on a hand-drawn map. Mathieson swiveled in his chair and pointed Dom and Cole at a comms desk near Anya without breaking his conversation.
    “Just as well Marcus kicked me off the hunting party,” she said, not making any sense. “It’s gone crazy out there. Dom—get on the radio and find Sigma Two. They haven’t called in. Cole—keep a line open to Pelruan. They haven’t had any incidents yet, but I need a rolling sitrep from them.”
    Anya had a few scratches on her chin. She’d rolled up her sleeves, and when she reached out to pick up the phone, Dom could see a big bruise ripening just above her elbow.
    “You okay?” he said.
    “Yes, it went off some distance behind us.” She glanced past him at the tote board. “Only one of fifteen so far, though. Two Gorasni dead, four Gears, and some nasty injuries. I’m lucky.”
    Ops was a lot harder than Dom expected. It was the waiting, the inability to grab a rifle and use all that spare adrenaline the way that nature intended. He found himself following a dozen one-sided conversations while he cycled through the frequenciestrying to raise Sigma. The transport squadron was trying to rig a mine-clearance vehicle, construction workers up at the new housing site had found a suspicious patch of freshly dug soil, and the operating theater needed an electrician to fix some lights. The words
serious abdominal wound
leapt out at him and he made a conscious effort to ignore it.
    Carlos
.
    Sometimes Dom didn’t think about his brother for days at a time, and then he’d be all he
could
think about, even seventeen years later. Time definitely didn’t heal. It just left longer gaps between the hurt. All you could do was fill your mind with the here and now, and not give the past a space to squeeze into until you felt up to dealing with it again.
    Hoffman strode into CIC with Michaelson. Dom had his back to the door and was trying to read what one of the civvies was chalking on the tote board, but Hoffman’s voice, even at a whisper, always got his attention. The colonel was his old CO. Part of Dom’s brain was still tuned to him even now.
    “Until we know what they’re using for explosives, we can’t break the supply chain.” That was Michaelson. “Are they
stealing
agricultural chemicals? Are they making them? Damn, Vic, they might even be shipping them in. Even with radar pickets, I can’t make the coast watertight.”
    Hoffman grunted irritably. “Well, if Trescu’s so sure he can instruct us in the finer points of sucking goddamn eggs, let
him
run the patrols.”
    “Well, if we’re talking about resupply from the sea—I’ll be damned if I’m going to waste time and fuel on rummage crews,” Michaelson said. “I’m not doing customs interdiction for contraband. Any vessel that isn’t one of ours—we sink it. They’ll get the message fast.”
    “Here he comes,” Hoffman said. “Put on your grateful face, Quentin.”
    Prescott walked in with Trescu. Dom watched discreetly. Trescu was used to being a head of state and being treated like one, even if that state was a few thousand people. He had thatI-make-the-decisions-around-here air about him. Prescott seemed to find that funny. If Dom could see that, then Trescu sure as shit could too. The two men were having one of those icy arguments that were all clenched teeth and no raised