Gears of War: Anvil Gate by Karen Traviss Page A

pretty well for a man who’d been half-eaten by that rabid mutt. Enador’s son, Nial, was unhurt but terrified. All the medic had been able to get out of the three of them was their names. But Hoffman had already asked Dizzy Wallin to keep an eye on the Stranded community inside the wire to see who their friends or family members might be. It made sense to know who the grudge-bearers were.
    I ought to leave you to clear up your own shit, Prescott
.
    But Hoffman didn’t. He couldn’t walk away from anything. Then his radio crackled in his ear. It was Anya.
    “Sir, we’ve lost another fishing vessel. There’s been an explosion—all hands lost. Baird’s reporting no visible signs of attack, but he doesn’t think it’s a stray mine.”
    “Does Pelruan know yet?” Hoffman asked. The civvies in thesmall town—the island’s
only
town—wouldn’t take the news well. It was the second trawler lost from a tiny fleet in a few months, more trouble brought to their door by the arrival of the COG. “I’m going to have some explaining to do to Lewis Gavriel.”
    “Oh, they know,” Anya said. “The trawler fleet always stays in radio contact with Pelruan.”
    Shit
. “Get hold of Gavriel and tell him I’ll come and see him as soon as I’m done here. Have you told the Chairman?”
    “You needed to know first, sir. I’ll get a briefing note together for you.”
    What a loyal kid
. “Thanks, Anya.”
    How the hell are they doing this? What have they got that we don’t know about?
    Hoffman’s first thought was another submarine. Nobody who’d been caught with their pants around their ankles when Trescu’s
Zephyr
popped up would ever rule that out. But boats like that took a lot of maintenance, and if the Stranded gangs could manage to run one, then they were a much bigger problem than he’d imagined.
    He paced slowly down the echoing corridor and back again while waiting for Trescu to show, inhaling an institutional smell of carbolic soap, decay, and misery. He could shut out the smells. But the nagging voice getting louder in his head was a tougher irritant to ignore.
    Trescu’s testing Prescott, and Prescott knows it. A pissant tribe just a fraction of the size of the COG. If Prescott wanted that imulsion, he could just take it
.
    But maybe the Chairman knew that nobody had the stomach for another war, however much peace still seemed like a strange and purposeless new country.
    Boots suddenly echoed along the tiled corridor. Hoffman was surprised to see Trescu emerge around the corner on his own. He radiated the confidence of a man used to power, much more power than just control of a village-sized population.
    A village with control of an imulsion rig. And we’re a town that’s got the Hammer of Dawn. Funny how the world scales down
.
    Trescu strolled up to Hoffman and nodded politely, then indicatedthe closed door with the slightest jerk of the head. “Our friends,” he said. “Are they well enough to receive visitors?”
    Hoffman pressed the handle and swung the door open. “I’ll leave you to decide. Prescott’s orders—your show.”
    “You have a problem with this? Then think of your dead sergeant and his comrades.” Trescu put one boot across the threshold and paused. “Because I shall certainly think of mine.”
    Hoffman caught a first glimpse of Enador and Loris propped up in their beds, looking confused rather than defiant. Hoffman wondered how much painkiller the doctor had pumped into them. They watched him warily as he pulled up a rickety wooden chair and sat down in the corner, probably expecting him to be running the interrogation because he was wearing a colonel’s insignia.
    “You don’t look like a medical man, and neither does your bagman,” Enador said, glancing at Trescu. No, he didn’t sound drugged at all. In fact, he seemed pretty chipper for a man whose head was swathed in field dressings. “Where’s my son?”
    “Under guard.” Hoffman wasn’t sure what Trescu was