Free Gears of War: Anvil Gate by Karen Traviss

forgetting the news, and then remembering it again every time her attention wandered from the task at hand.
    Bastards
.
    Suddenly the ground reared up in front of her and became arocky slope. And yes, there was light ahead, getting brighter with every step she took.
    “It’ll be a frigging sheer drop,” Baird muttered. His voice didn’t even echo. “Anyone consider whether those assholes had
another
route out to the front door?”
    “Trust the dog,” Bernie panted. She could definitely hear the chattering rotors of a helicopter now. God, she was running out of steam fast. “Most recent traces—probably the strongest scent.”
    Marcus grunted. “Hey, we got comms again. Sorotki, can you hear me?”
    Mitchell answered. “Loud and clear. No visual on you, but we can see the dog.”
    “We’re still in a tunnel. Call the engineers to clear a cache of explosives in there. Can you set down anywhere?”
    “Small patch of grass at the base of the hill. I’ll aim for the pooch. Two-Three-Nine out.”
    Bernie scrambled out into bright daylight, and a dense mass of waist-high thornbushes that snagged the exposed fabric of her pants. The Stranded gang didn’t have armor, so they must have been shredded to hell escaping through here—and that meant blood, skin, and sweat traces for Mac to follow. No wonder he was excited.
    “Sorotki? The dog’s still tracking.” Marcus waded through the bushes, finger pressed to his earpiece. The Raven dropped onto long grass at the foot of the slope. “We’ll continue on foot and narrow down the search area for an aerial recon.” He looked at Bernie for a second as if he was weighing up her reaction. “Stand by to extract Mataki if necessary. She should have been casevacked hours ago.”
    Bernie grabbed Mac as he raced back to her.
If I stop now, I won’t get up again
. “What’ve you got, fella?” She put the leash on him. “
Seek!
Good boy.”
    The dog nearly wrenched her arm from its socket in his frenzy to resume the chase. It was like water-skiing on rubble. Her spine jolted with every stride. Mac followed the line of the trees, headingdeeper into the woods, where the Raven couldn’t see what was happening on the ground.
    “Can’t expect the assholes to make it easy for us.” Baird jogged alongside her without so much as panting, reminding her what it was to be young and fit. “Might be leading us into an ambush.” Maybe he was chatting to keep her going. But the more stressed he was, the yappier he tended to get. “Except they’d have made it easier to follow.”
    The Stranded had to be on foot. They couldn’t run their junkers through woodland like this. And vehicles were too noisy for covert action here—four-wheelers, at least.
    The radio clicked. “Byrne to KR-Two-Three-Nine, I’m in your grid. Want an assist, Lieutenant?”
    “Two-Three-Nine to Byrne, you got the bike?”
    “Yeah. Just direct me. I can get pretty well anywhere on this. Byrne out.”
    Rat bikes could handle dense woodland. And if Sam wanted to teach Baird a lesson, this was as good a time as any to do it. Mac dragged Bernie for another hard kilometer. She knew exactly how far it was because Marcus was keeping up a running sitrep on their position for Sorotki.
    “They’re heading for the river,” Marcus said. “I don’t think that’s going to fool the dog.”
    “Delta, I’ve lost visual on you again,” Mitchell said.
    “Two-Three-Nine, go ahead of us—north—and come back down the course of the river. If the dog’s on the right track, then they might be moving along it—
in
it.”
    “Two-Three-Nine to Byrne,” Mitchell said. “Sam, are you getting this?”
    “I’m about five klicks north of you. Moving in.”
    Bernie caught a glimpse of the Raven’s strobing rotors through the tree canopy as it crossed from right to left, then the engine noise faded into the distance. Marcus kept pace with Bernie, but that pace was getting slower by the minute. He held out his