Coalition's End

by Karen Traviss

  It was like drilling through the Ephyran bedrock to break into the grub tunnels under Landown. Poor old Tai. Damn, we lost a lot of good Gears that day. Sometimes the past interrupted the present so often that Dizzy wondered if he was getting those traumatic flashbacks that Doc Hayman kept talking about.

  The drill bit flung out gobs of turf, mud, and stalk, then slowed as it went deep and started hitting denser rock. Betty shuddered. All Dizzy could do was watch the depth indicator and wait.

  Twenty meters… come on, girl.

  Betty twitched a couple of times. Now the drill note changed. Whatever was beneath the stalks wasn’t solid and the bit was finding voids.

  Dizzy powered down, hoisted the drill clear, and reversed Betty clear of the shaft.

  When he clambered down from the cab again, he made sure he brought his rifle with him this time. Parry and Marcus were kneeling to peer down the hole. Betty had sunk a shaft clean through the stalk and the ground next to it, giving Parry a good cross section to examine.

  “Spot on, Diz,” Parry said. “Now let’s take a shufti at what’s down there.”

  Dizzy checked the hole and marveled that he could still be that accurate with a few drinks inside him. He wasn’t sure he could have done it sober. Parry plugged the cable into the monitor and lowered into the hole, but Baird did a double take at what was on the business end of the cable.

  “Hey, that’s a bot camera!” he said, none too happy. “Have you been stealing my spares? Aww, come on!”

  “Keep your wig on.” Parry winked at him. “We’ve got fifteen bot cams and one damn bot. How many does that teddy-bear substitute of yours need?”

  “I’ve got to keep Jack operational.”

  “And I’ve got to look down holes. But I can drop you down there for a personal inspection if you prefer.”

  Baird humphed and sulked. Dizzy edged around so he could see the portable monitor.

  “Yeah, it’s a fissure. That fits the survey map.” Parry knelt back on his heels. “Stalks follow the path of least resistance. Like everyone does.”

  Dizzy kept looking. Bernie’s dog suddenly lunged for the hole and she had to hang on to his lead to hold him back.

  “I’m going to defer to Mac’s risk assessment skills,” she said, sliding her rifle off her shoulder one-handed. “He can hear something. Be careful, Diz.”

  Stones and loose soil trickled down the borehole. Dizzy heard them tinkle on something hard so he stuck his head in the hole just to check if he could see the bottom of the shaft.

  It looked real weird. “I can see water down there.” There was a faint shimmer deep down as it caught the light. “Goddamn, I sunk a well! Shame I don’t drink that stuff…”

  Parry peered in and frowned. Then he lowered the bot cam again and paid out the cable to near its maximum. Dizzy looked back at the monitor.

  Shit, that really didn’t look good. Now he could see something glittering, and knowing his luck it sure as shit wasn’t diamonds.

  “Len, I don’t reckon that’s water.” Dizzy had to carry a Lancer like an infantry Gear, but reaching for it wasn’t second nature. This time he found himself clutching it like a lifebelt. “Len, we got lights. And it ain’t miners down there.”

  Everyone reacted at once. The goddamn dog went crazy and nearly knocked Dizzy into the hole. Marcus pitched in and hauled Parry back by his shoulder. Dizzy scrambled upright and took a few steps back just so he could aim down into the shaft, and then polyps boiled out of the hole like cockroaches out of a drain. Everyone was firing. Some of the damn things escaped and went racing across the grass with Mac in hot pursuit.

  “Dom—with me!” Marcus yelled, pulling a grenade from his belt. “Everyone else—give us some room!”

  “Marcus—”

  “Get clear, Diz! Grenade—out!”

  Marcus slipped the pin and dropped the frag down the hole. The explosion threw a shower of polyps and gravel high into the air, then it all rained back down again. Dom moved in and emptied a couple of clips down into the smoke.

  Everywhere fell silent except for cawing birds disturbed by the racket. Bernie jogged after Mac but there was a loud echoing crack like a grenade going off and she started running. Hoffman looked like he was getting ready to haul her back, but he caught Marcus giving him a look—that don’t-do-it look—and turned his back on her.

  “Okay, now we know where these things are going to come up, we can avoid them,” Hoffman said. “That’s something. Len, I want a full plot of the island showing where the fissures are, and we make those no-go areas. It’ll mean moving anyone living near them. We’ll monitor a corridor either side of the fissures daily for stalks.”

  Dizzy kept an eye on Bernie. She was on her way back with Mac on the leash, but he didn’t look too good. He was limping this time. He really had a thing about polyps. Dizzy expected him to be scared of them by now, but he just seemed to chase them like they were rabbits with extra legs.

  “Silly little sod,” Bernie said, rubbing the dog’s ears. Mac started licking a singed patch on his leg. “I’d better get Hayman to take a look at him. He’s been through a lot these last few days.”

  “Yeah, and you have, too, so stop chasing after him, Sergeant,” Hoffman snapped. Marcus looked embarrassed by the old married spat the two of them were having and took a sudden interest in the dead grass. “I need you fighting Lambent, not nursemaiding that goddamn poodle. If he ends up as ground chuck, it’s too frigging bad.”

  Bernie suddenly got a real cold, mean look on her face. Marcus interrupted just at the right time. “Anyone want to take a look at the dead area?”

  He tapped his boot against one of the wooden stakes he’d stuck in the ground. They weren’t on the edge of the brown patch anymore.

  Hoffman let out a long breath. “Goddamn it…”

  “It’s still spreading.”

  “We better start measuring this shit properly.”

  Baird sneaked up behind Parry and tried to take the bot cam, but Parry snatched it clear. “And then what do we do about it?” Baird asked.

  “No idea,” Hoffman said.

  The Gears could shoot polyps until Hell built a ski resort, but this creeping shit wasn’t going to be that simple to stop.

  Dizzy decided that he was long overdue for that drink.

  DISUSED LAVATORY BLOCK, VECTES NAVAL BASE, NEW JACINTO: LATER THAT DAY.

  Baird wished he’d reminded Hoffman that engineering was his forte, not software.

  The data disc definitely wasn’t Prescott’s shopping list or vacation snaps. It wasn’t going to give up its secrets without a fight. But he couldn’t resist a challenge, Hoffman was counting on him, and—ah, screw false modesty—he was probably the most technically able guy the COG had left.

  Sometimes he wondered what had happened to all the real scientists and engineers over the years. He supposed it was inevitable that academics weren’t built for survival, but even so, one of the assholes could at least have had the decency to stick around and answer a few questions.

  So it’s down to the likes of me, Parry, and Doc Hayman to fly the flag for rational analysis. Wow, we are so screwed.

  At least the lavatory now had a makeshift door. Royston Sharle would never miss that wooden pallet. Baird kept one eye on it as he ran the decryption program just in case some jerk decided to drop in uninvited, and there was a high chance it was going to be Prescott judging by the way the guy had been looking at him today. Prescott wasn’t stupid. Who else was Hoffman going to ask to crack the security on the stolen disc? Prescott knew he had it and was just jerking them around by smiling sweetly and letting them sweat.

  Of course, Prescott—being a devious shit like all politicians—might have lured Hoffman into breaking open his desk drawer and then done the outrage act just to make sure that Hoffman didn’t go looking for something else that was much more interesting. Yeah, that was the Chairman all over. He was the sole survivor of a brutal jungle of twenty-four carat back-stabbing bas
tards. Poor old Hoffman was just an honest Gear with a bit of gold braid, a colonel trying to do a general’s job.

  No contest. He’ll tear you up for ass-paper, Colonel.

  But why would he want to put you off the scent unless you were getting too close to something dodgy anyway?

  While the program was running, Baird rested his boots on his ammo crate desk and tried to imagine what secrets Prescott could possibly think were worth hanging on to at this late stage of the game.

  The COG was deeper in the shit than it had ever been. They’d sunk Jacinto. Okay, they’d drowned the grub army and their snotty bitch of a queen too, but now they were stuck on an island in the middle of nowhere. The Gorasni imulsion rig was a pile of rusting steel somewhere on the seabed and they were running out of fuel fast. The Lambent freak show had taken over from the grubs as resident pain in the ass. Now if that didn’t mean it was time to fess up and tell everyone the truth, Baird didn’t know what was. And anyway—who the hell was left to keep secrets from? What would Prescott think was worth keeping to himself?

  Maybe the slimeball had just flipped. Perhaps he’d finally lost the plot after years of trying to save the unsavable. Everyone had their breaking point.

  Do I really believe that? That we’re all fucked and there’s nothing we can do about it? So why am I sitting in a lavatory like a total moron trying to decode this stuff?

  Jack the bot was propped on a crate in the corner with a dust sheet draped across his open inspection plate, the last autonomous robotic drone left in the COG. Baird was determined to keep him running even if it meant ripping out some old lady’s pacemaker for parts. Jack was special. He was a prototype with a cloaking system.

  Everyone bitched about the COG never developing cloaking for Gears, but how much use would it have been against a Berserker’s sense of smell, or a metal detector, or even this frigging glowie contamination? Sweet FA, that was how much.

  Baird still wanted it, though.

  “Okay, Jack,” he said. “If you were the most powerful leader in the world, not that that’s saying much these days, what would you hide? Top secret technology? A crate of gold bullion? A stash of chocolate and some interesting Ostrian porn?”

  Jack didn’t seem to have a view on the matter. With his arms folded back and the sheet draped over him, he looked like a forlorn armored nun at prayer. Baird went back to his decryption.

  The computer pinged and he sat up to check it. As he swiveled, something snapped under him and sent the plastic lid lurching off to one side. He grabbed the edge of the desk to stop his fall, relieved there was nobody there to see him topple off a frigging toilet, and checked underneath the porcelain rim at the back. One of the rusty bolts holding the lid had sheared off. He rummaged in his toolbox for another one and crouched down to screw it into place.

  “So this is your state-of-the-art facility,” said a voice from the doorway. “Very minimalist.”

  Baird looked up as Marcus wandered in. This was definitely not routine. Marcus wasn’t the gregarious kind and he didn’t drop by for chats. The most social thing he did was show up at the sergeants’ mess and have a drink, usually on his own and in total silence.

  Marcus tweaked Jack’s dust cloth. “So… new low-tech cloaking system?”

  “Hey, he’ll be as good as new when I’m done with him,” Baird said defensively. “What do you want fixed now?”

  “Nothing. Just seeing if you’ve had any luck with the disc.”

  It was the first time Marcus had acknowledged that it even existed. As far as Baird knew, Hoffman had told just five people that he had it: Baird, Cole, Marcus, Dom and Bernie. He wasn’t sure if the old man had even told his buddy Michaelson about it. So it didn’t get mentioned, just in case. Baird wondered how long they could keep a lid on it. The careful silence had lasted about two weeks so far.

  “Zip,” Baird said. “I tell you, Prescott’s pulled out all the stops to protect whatever’s on this. No wonder he’s so fucking relaxed about Hoffman yoinking it.”

  Baird waited uneasily to see if Marcus was going to say anything else, because the man rationed words like there was only one box of them left in the world. Baird had served with him for eighteen months yet never really had a serious private conversation with him. It was a lot more scary than he expected. He wasn’t sure why.

  “If it’s that sensitive,” Marcus said, “why wouldn’t he memorize the information instead?”

  Damn, we’re talking. We’re actually talking. “You think it’s a decoy, don’t you?”

  Marcus shrugged. “Wouldn’t put it past him.”

  “I get the feeling you don’t approve. How else are we going to get the information? Beat it out of him?”

  “He’s still the legitimate head of government. I don’t like playing games with him.”

  Baird had expected a pat on the back for being resourceful. He was slightly miffed not to get it, but then Marcus always played it straight, even when he was dealing with utter bastards.

  “You’re not,” Baird said. “It’s me and Hoffman who’ll get it in the neck if anything goes wrong. You only know about it. But I suppose that’s just as bad as far as you’re concerned.”

  Marcus turned around and leaned on the door frame, looking out into the dusk. “Yeah.”

  “It’s either complexity or volume.”

  “What is?”

  “The disc. If there’s anything on it at all and he isn’t just jerking our chain, then it’ll either be too much data or it’s too complicated to keep in his head. Or both.”

  Marcus grunted. It was the longest conversation Baird had ever had with him, really with him rather than at him.

  Shit, just tell me he’s not going to spill his guts about Anya next…

  No, this was still Marcus. He probably didn’t even make small talk with her. Every word was measured and ground out for a pressing reason.

  “Okay, try another tack,” Marcus said. “Not what. Why. Why would he need to keep anything to himself now?”

  Baird wasn’t sure if Marcus wanted the question answered or if he was just thinking aloud for a change. “Because it’ll piss us off so much that we’ll shoot him,” Baird said. “Or it’ll put something at risk. It’s not personal stuff. I can’t see the guy giving a damn what we think about his bank deposit box or weird sexual kinks—if he’s got any.”

  “Yeah.” Marcus looked back over his shoulder like something had suddenly occurred to him, tilting his head to check out the toilet bowl. “Are the sewers still connected to this block?”

  “No idea. Why?”

  “You’re sitting on an ingress point,” Marcus said, and walked off.

  Baird stood thinking that over for a few moments and suddenly felt uneasy. But he finished tightening the bolts on the seat and sat down to check the screen. The program had quit again. It made him forget his worries about getting a stalk up the ass.

  “Shit,” he said. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  Now he’d reached the limits of his competence. He’d never hit that wall before and it scared him. He needed someone with better computer skills, but he couldn’t think of anyone with that expertise, let alone someone he would trust.

  Whatever it is… it’s not magic. It can be cracked. Everything can be cracked.

  Baird took his mind off the problem for a while by tinkering with Jack’s main servo, hoping a sudden idea would bubble up from his subconscious, but it didn’t work. He shut down the computer and tucked the disc inside his shirt. This time he put a padlock on the lavatory door, but that was only to keep that thieving asshole Parry away from his personal stash of spare parts. He rattled the lock and chain just to make sure, and went in search of Hoffman.

  Looking for Hoffman meant entering Admiralty House, the main admin block. It was all a bit obvious. And Prescott hung out there too.

  He knows I’ve got it. He damn well knows. He’s just biding his time working out how to make my life a total misery.

  The easiest excuse
to hang around was a visit to CIC. Sooner or later, everyone passed through it. Baird walked into the ops room and found Lieutenant Mathieson at his desk listening to the radio net, arms folded on his chest and his eyes shut. Baird thought he was taking a nap, but he gestured to Baird to wait—still with his eyes shut—and seemed to be listening to something riveting on his headset.

  Baird cringed when he saw that the windows on one side of the room were still patched up with boards and plastic sheeting. That exploding leviathan really had done a lot of damage to the base. Yeah, maybe he’d left that detonation a little too late after all.

  “Two secs,” Mathieson said, opening his eyes. “I’m trying to pin down a signal.”

  Baird pulled up a chair to get in Mathieson’s eyeline. The guy was in a wheelchair because he’d lost his legs to a mine, and Cole kept telling Baird that it was rude to loom over him. Baird couldn’t see why it was different from any man sitting on his ass in a regular seat, but there was no point pissing off a lynchpin like Mathieson. He’d taken over from Anya as the control room boss, and that meant he was a person of tactical importance when it came to asking favors and watching backs.

  “Hoffman?” Baird mouthed.

  Mathieson shook his head. So Baird waited. A couple of other Gears walked past the open door—Rivera and Lowe, Prescott’s personal protection team—and glanced at him as they disappeared down the passage.

  Eventually Mathieson slipped off his headset. “Sorry,” he said. “If you’re looking for the Colonel, he’s gone back to Pelruan to address the restless natives.”

  “Stranded?”

  “What?”

  “The signal.”

  Mathieson shook his head. “No idea. I’ve heard it a few times before.” He put the headset on again. “I just caught a blip on a weird frequency, that’s all. Like a satellite databurst.”

  “Sure it’s not another Hammer satellite on the fritz?”

  “No, it was on the old meteorology sat frequency. And it’s the wrong sound. Sats all sound different. You want me to get Hoffman for you?”