Gears of War: Anvil Gate Read Online Free Page B

families with them. Or maybe they’d just paired up with coworkers because this was a lonely and scary place. Dom was finding it less sharply painful now to think about other folks’ families; Maria was gone, and at least now he knew she was gone for good, not just missing and suffering in ways he could only imagine. He hated himself for sometimes feeling relieved by that.
    These days, it was his kids he felt worst about. He felt he hadn’t mourned them enough.
    “Okay, we’re done here.” Marcus hauled himself over the edge of the deck by a grab rail and stood up. “We’ll ship out as much equipment as we can on the next inbound tanker.”
    “And when will you send Gears to bravely defend us poor ignorant Gorasni?” Gradin asked, straight-faced.
    “Soon as I radio back to Vectes,” Marcus said, equally expressionless. “And they’ll bring their own supplies.”
    Dom couldn’t work out if Gradin had finally decided the COG wasn’t the worst that could happen to him or if his war still wasn’t over yet. The whine of the Raven’s engine starting up cut through all the sea and machinery noises like someone calling Dom’s name in a crowded room, and he found his legs making for the helipad a few seconds before his brain engaged.
    Gettner was in more of a hurry than usual to get airborne. She lifted clear before everyone had strapped in. Barber had his head down, hand pressed to his right ear as he listened to voice traffic.
    “Never mind us,” Baird said. “We’re just ballast. Dump us overboard anytime, Major.”
    The cockpit door was dogged open. Gettner seemed preoccupied, because she didn’t tell Baird to go fuck himself like she usually did.
    “Going back via the scenic route,” she said. “Just to check what’s getting our new friends so excited. I don’t suppose you asked them about their missing frigate.”
    Marcus grunted. “They weren’t in a chatty mood.”
    “Well, their CIC’s crapping themselves about that ship. What are you getting now, Barber?”
    Barber didn’t answer for a few seconds. He was staring straight ahead with his palm resting against his right ear, listening intently to his radio.
    “Wreckage,” he said at last. He must have been listening on a Gorasni ship-to-ship channel. Dom wondered what language they were speaking if Barber could follow the chatter. “They’ve found a couple of buoys and some polyprop line. Nothing else. They’re discussing how fast she went down. I’m missing a lot, but that’s the gist of it.”
    “Shit.”
    Marcus did a slow head-shake. “It was broad daylight. Even without radar—you can navigate by sight and charts. You sure they said
grounded?
”
    “That’s another weird thing,” Barber said. “The ship was nowhere near any hazard. Sandbanks can shift over a few years and catch you out if you don’t keep charting them, but rocks can’t. And we have to be talking about a big, rigid obstruction here.”
    Dom could guess what everyone was really thinking. The Stranded pirate fleet could have raised its game. He couldn’t imagine how patrol boats could take out a frigate, though, not even with a belt-fed grenade gun, but he said it anyway.
    “Shit, you think the Stranded got lucky with a missile system?” No, that was dumb. He tried to think of the ways he’d been trained to sabotage a warship as a commando. They were all beyond the scope of the average Stranded. “Or was the frigate a wreck waiting to sink?”
    “Last radio message said they’d struck something beneath the hull,” Gettner said. “They must have based that on instruments, ship handling, noise, whatever. They’d know if they’d been hit by anything explosive … Wait one, I’ll try offering assistance again. Because those paranoid assholes aren’t going to volunteer anything.”
    Gettner switched to the shared emergency channel. Dom hadto retune to eavesdrop. He caught Marcus’s eye, then Baird’s, but neither was offering theories.
    “COG