Read Online Gears of War: Anvil Gate by Karen Traviss - Free Book Online Page B

him loose and grab the rifle two-handed if they ran into trouble.
    Ricochets. Shit. Can’t fire in a small space like this
.
    But that was what the chainsaw bayonet was for. Combined with a dog, it made her feel invulnerable. The explosion that hadnearly killed her felt like it had happened to someone else—for the moment. Adrenaline was a wonderful thing.
    Baird squeezed past her. She tried to elbow him out of the way before it occurred to her that he was moving forward to cover a right-hand fork in the passage. She patted his shoulder in silent apology. This wasn’t the public kiss-my-arse Baird.
    And, somehow, it wasn’t pitch-black in here, either. As her eyes adjusted, she could see Baird’s scrubby blond hair lit up like a faint halo by dim light. It wasn’t from their armor indicator lights. There had to be other vents in the rock here.
    A hand grabbed her shoulder and she almost shat herself before she realized it was Marcus.
    “
Smell,
” he whispered.
    The faint odor she inhaled was a cross between a greasy diner and a cow shed—old fat, burned meat, and a hint of animal shit. There was a metallic rasp as Baird pulled something out of his belt.
    “Go,” Marcus said.
    Now it was down to the dog. As soon as Bernie snapped the leash from his collar, he shot into the tunnel and vanished. Marcus went after him. The passage was too narrow and uneven for running, and Bernie stumbled a couple of times. Baird grabbed her webbing and hauled her upright. The diffuse light was getting brighter; she expected to hear barking and firing any second, and glanced down to check that her chainsaw indicator light was on, but she could now see what looked like a bright chamber at the end of the tunnel. Marcus stood silhouetted in the light.
    “Nobody cough,” he said.
    Baird edged past Bernie again and looked over Marcus’s shoulder. “Hey, talk about overkill. Look out for a trip wire. Bernie? Careful where you put your boots …”
    The chamber looked so regular that at first she thought it had been built that way, but it was natural, a void left by lava. There was an opening at the top like a chimney. And most of the space was filled with old fuel drums and other rusty containers. It tookher a few seconds to add it all up and realize the Stranded were making nitrate bombs, or at least storing the stuff here.
    “They can’t have gone far.” Marcus poked around the floor with slow care. “Warm ashes.”
    “Where’s Mac?” Bernie asked.
    Marcus pointed down the continuation of the natural tunnel. Baird started examining the haul, crawling around the stacked drums as if the risk didn’t apply to him.
    “I don’t see wires on most of these,” Baird said. “But that doesn’t mean we’re not five seconds away from being ground beef.”
    The element of surprise was gone now, and locating this stuff at least meant that it wouldn’t be used against the COG. But Mac was still on the trail. Bernie set off after the dog, suddenly aware of bruises and pulled muscles every time she stooped to negotiate the twists in the rock. Marcus followed her.
    “Great, you’re leaving me babysitting the explosives?” Baird called.
    “Come on,” Marcus said. “When we get a radio signal again, call it in to Control.”
    “Can you hear a Raven?”
    Bernie couldn’t hear anything over her own ragged breathing now. Sorotki had their position. Shit, if he was hovering overhead now, and those bastards were making a run for it—or maybe they were already an hour away, already in some other hideout. It looked like there was another way out of the honeycomb of passages under the hill. Mac hadn’t come back.
    Now she was relying completely on the faint light from three sets of armor. For a stomach-churning moment, she wondered how the hell they’d find their way out again if they hit a dead end. Somehow she’d never worried about that while going after grubs. Fear didn’t bother with logic.
    And Andresen’s gone
.
    She kept