Gears of War Aspho Fields by Karen Traviss

Author:Karen Traviss
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780345502490
Publisher: Random House Worlds
Published: 2008-10-22T00:00:00+00:00

CENTER CONVOY.

Hoffman’s calf hurt like hell.

It was a great way of staying alert. Kaliso kept glancing at him as the APC bounced over debris, as if he was testing him to see if hitting a really big pothole could make him scream. Maybe it was time for a shot of painkiller after all.

I’m an idiot. If I’d been killed, guess who would take over? Reid or McLintock. Kiss humanity good-bye. Assholes, both of them.

Hoffman didn’t want to go down in history as the guy on whose watch the human species ceased to exist. The fact that there’d be no history to judge him by if that happened didn’t lighten the load one bit. But he wasn’t going to live forever, and the officer gene pool was looking more shallow with every passing day. Succession was starting to preoccupy him: he had to find some bright kid to polish for the future. Fenix would have been a candidate if he hadn’t been such an impulsive and surly bastard.

Yeah, I see the irony in that, thanks. Maybe I don’t trust him because I don’t trust myself.

He realized he didn’t automatically think traitor now, though.

Why did I do it?

Hoffman had never shirked a dirty job in his life, and he’d had to do plenty. It appalled him now to think that he’d simply left Marcus Fenix in a deserted prison and didn’t even do him the basic courtesy he’d have granted a sick dog, of putting a round through his head and getting it over with. In the last few nights he’d found himself thinking through the small details of the kind of death that he already knew too well from another war; that eventually the water and food would have run out—food immediately, water maybe a few weeks later—or the Locust would have broken into the cell. Did any man deserve that? Hadn’t Fenix earned a little mercy with his war record? Didn’t Hoffman himself have higher standards than that?

It was just a split second’s decision. Open the doors, let the bastards out. Including Fenix, sir? No, screw him, he can rot for all I care. Just a snarl as he reached for his sidearm and went off to deal with another crisis.

Pressure wasn’t a reason, because Hoffman made split-second decisions every day of his life. It plagued him now that he didn’t know why he’d done it, and he didn’t know the man who’d done it, because it wasn’t the Victor Hoffman he thought he was. Hoffman realized that when he saw Fenix get out of the Raven, rescued from his cell by a buddy who defied orders and was willing to die for him, and he had to look Fenix—and Dom—in the eye.

And Fenix was still willing to fight. Even after all that shit. Even after I abandoned him. He still pulled out all the stops.

Hoffman wondered if it was Dom Santiago’s opinion that troubled him most.

You did it. Live with it. Learn from it.

The road ahead was dead straight; no bends or underpasses, no blind spots, good visibility even in the patchy street lighting.

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