Coalition's End

by Karen Traviss

  “They seem pretty united. No whiny assholes.”

  “Ah, they have, but not in public,” Baird said. “Trescu smacks the guys upside the head and tells them da Gorasnayan people do not whine like cheeldren.” He did a pretty good Gorasni accent, except he sounded more like Yanik than Trescu. “He hates them looking unruly. Lacks deeseepleen.”

  Dom marveled, not only because Baird seemed to be chummy with a bunch of despised Indies, but that he’d made new friends at all outside the squad. Dom thought the only person that Baird could relate to on a daily basis was Cole. But then Cole was the most tolerant guy in the world. Even the endlessly patient Bernie had punched Baird out.

  Every time Dom started liking the Gorasni a little bit, he reminded himself that they shot unarmed Stranded prisoners. They dumped the bodies of Stranded they’d shot in the widows’ laps, even nice happy Yanik, a real charmer with a great sense of humor. It was an ongoing feud that had started when Stranded gangs committed their own atrocities in Gorasni villages. Gorasni didn’t forget any more than the Tollen vets did.

  The sane bit of him said that the Gorasni were just guys who’d seen their families and neighbors slaughtered by Stranded gangs and were settling scores, just as he was sure he would have done. The less logical bit of him said they were Indies, and Indies were all the same, and that Carlos would have been alive today if the UIR hadn’t started the Pendulum Wars. He was pretty sure they had.

  “You do make some weird friends,” he said.

  “It’s not about who smiles at you,” Baird said. “It’s about who gets you out of the shit every time.”

  “You’re not really used to this whole concept of friendship, are you?”

  “I know who I give a shit about.”

  “How the hell did you ever get pally with a nice guy like Cole?”

  Baird smirked to himself and started tinkering with Thrift’s winch mechanism.

  “He pulled me out of some shit,” he said.

  CHAPTER 11

  Where are we going to put all these people when we don’t know where the next attack will be? How are we going to house, feed and clothe them when we’re losing whole cities and the infrastructure around them? We’re already splitting into two societies—those who’ve lost everything, and those desperate not to become like them.

  (Natalya Vreland, Minister for Social Welfare, Coalition of Ordered Governments, shortly after E-Day)

  KOSOLY BARRACKS, 4TH EPHYRA LIGHT INFANTRY, CENTRAL TYRUS: ONE MONTH AFTER E-DAY, FIFTEEN YEARS EARLIER.

  Cole knew the sound of a private fight when he heard one, and he could hear one now.

  It was the lack of yelling and cussing that gave it away. Someone was getting the hell beaten out of them in one of the washrooms. All he could hear was the occasional metallic sound of a lightweight door being slammed against a wall a few times and some muffled grunts and thwacks, so someone was settling a grievance and didn’t want an audience.

  Most folks would have walked by, but Cole wasn’t most people. He stopped and opened the door.

  Yeah, it was a fight, all right. He couldn’t see it at first, not until he walked to the end of the partition wall inside the locker room and peered around it.

  A guy in fatigues was waiting outside a lavatory stall, catching his breath, and Cole caught a glimpse of another Gear in the open doorway, just a boot stepping back like the man was leaning over something. There had to be a third guy in there getting the worst of it.

  There was. He burst out of the stall—blond scrubby hair, soaking wet—and head-butted his attacker.

  He looked a hell of a lot more battered than the other two, but he didn’t seem to know he was outnumbered. As he fell against a locker and his opponent started kicking him, he grabbed the guy’s ankle—Cole gave him points for that— and brought his other fist up hard between the man’s legs. The guy fell. They were both tangled on the floor now, gouging and punching. It was time to do something before the third guy joined in again.

  Hell, it wasn’t Cole’s fight, but those odds weren’t sporting.

  “Yo, gentlemen!” Cole positioned himself squarely in the entrance, completely blocking it. That always worked. It demonstrated just how damn big he was and that there was no way past him. And he never had to prove he was as strong as he looked. “You wanna reconvene outside? I gotta take a dump, and I like my peace and quiet.”

  The two guys dishing it out whipped around. The blond guy taking the pounding seized the lull to lash out and punch one of them in the mouth. Cole stepped forward to haul the other one away by his collar in a single pull, and almost got a smack in the eye for his trouble until the guy looked him in the face.

  Yeah, they recognized him. Being the Cole Train had some shock value.

  Cole still had hold of the guy’s collar. “Mind if I do my business now, baby?”

  Whether they’d run out of steam or just didn’t like the odds, they all stopped. The one who’d been doing the kicking dusted himself down and jabbed a warning finger in the blond guy’s direction.

  “Don’t think it’s the last of this, you prick,” he said. “I’ll see you again later.”

  The blond guy sneered. Damn, he just didn’t know when to give in and shut up. “Yeah, asshole, that’s what your mother always says to me after I pay her.”

  “Whoa, gentlemen—enough, okay?” Cole did his best to loom menacingly, arms at his side and fists not quite balled. “Ain’t you all got some urgent embroidery to do?”

  The two guys shot him a glance and walked off. Cole didn’t know who they were, not with so many new Gears showing up at boot camp every day, and he hadn’t looked at their name tabs. But he could read the name on the blond guy’s fatigues: BAIRD D. S.

  Baird braced his hands on one of the basins and leaned over to spit out some blood. His hair was soaking wet. Cole could see some white bits in it that looked a lot like bathroom tissue.

  “You okay?” Cole asked. “Damn, did they shove your head down the toilet?”

  “No, I always wash my frigging hair that way,” Baird mumbled. He spat again. “Haven’t you got a crap to take?”

  Maybe it was too much to expect a thank-you. Boy, Baird looked a mess. They could at least have flushed the john first. “So what started all that?”

  “My dad. Seems he handed out a sentence they didn’t like. Well, that, and maybe something I said…”

  “Your dad’s a judge?”

  “A magistrate. Was. He’s dead.” Baird looked up at the mirror over the basin and his shoulders sagged. He didn’t seem cut up about his dad at all, so maybe it wasn’t recent. “Shit. I’m going to be on a charge again when old Iron Balls sees this.”

  “You got a real way with charmin’ people, then.”

  “Hey, is it my fault I’m an asshole magnet?” Baird paused as if he realized that wasn’t the smartest thing to say. “You’re Augustus Cole, aren’t you?”

  Cole tapped his name tab. “That’s what it says on the can, baby.”

  “I’m a Sharks fan myself.”

  “Well, I’ll consider this missionary work, then, ’cause you ignorant heathens don’t know no better.” Cole decided he’d done his good deed for the day. “You take care of yourself, Baird.”

  “Yeah.” Baird turned on a faucet. “I intend to.”

  Cole went on his way. Folks were pretty strung out and guys got into scraps for a lot less reason than someone’s dad pissing them off, so the incident was overtaken by harsh reality. He’d had a month’s basic training—just a month— and he was deploying for real in two days. Part of him couldn’t wait to get out and start killing grubs, but part of him had never taken a life before—any kind of life—and he wasn’t sure how he’d feel about it.

  I’m gonna be able to pull the trigger, ain’t I? They’re grubs. They asked for it. It oughta be easy.

  As he passed the row of phone booths by the mess hall, he had an urge to call home. Everyone else seemed to be doing just that. There were long lines at e
ach phone, with Gears checking their watches and looking pissed off with whoever was making the call at the time.

  Goddamn… there ain’t no home to call now.

  Cole just kept on doing it. It was like he kept forgetting what had happened and had to go through the bad news all over again. Sometimes he really felt that if he picked up that phone and dialed, his momma would answer.

  He wanted it to stop. His folks were gone. He knew that, but he didn’t feel it yet, and maybe he never would. Now he understood why some people said it was a good idea to see the open casket and get the idea straight in your head. But he hadn’t been able to do that. Grubs didn’t leave much to look at.

  So I won’t have any trouble pulling that trigger. Will I?

  He didn’t see Baird around again until a few days later when his company deployed to Kinnerlake for real. The guy was standing on the far side of the airfield, and the only reason Cole spotted him was that damn blond hair. He was swinging his helmet idly in one hand by its chinstrap like it was a grocery basket, looking unimpressed with the world, while the rest of the Gears waiting for transport—all identical and anonymous in their helmets—stood huddled in groups.

  Baird was conspicuously on his own. Cole guessed from the way he was standing that he didn’t actually want to be but drew the line at walking over to join anyone.

  Sergeant Iredell—Iron Balls to most Gears, at least when his back was turned—strode past Baird, said something short and sharp, and Baird put his helmet on like a sulky schoolboy. As soon as the sergeant was out of sight, Baird took it off again and replaced it with his goggles.

  Damn, poor old Baird. Wants to have a war with every asshole he meets. Life don’t need to be that hard.

  It was easy being the Cole Train. Cole never needed to think twice about anything; he just opened up the throttle and did everything at full speed. Thrashball was easy, making friends with folks was easy, and living each day as it came was easy. When he ambled up to the rest of his company, they all stopped whatever they were doing.

  “Hey, Cole Train!”

  “You ready for the big day?”

  “Cole! Where’s your limo?”

  Cole spread his arms. “I ain’t lookin’ forward to the helicopter ride, baby. Who’s got my designer sick-bag?”

  Everybody knew he got airsick now. Nobody jeered at him for it. If anything, they seemed to find it endearing. He glanced over his shoulder at Baird, still standing at a distance and looking sorry for himself.

  Someone had to make the first move. “Hey, Baird?” Cole called. “You waitin’ for your company or something?”

  Alonzo, one of the combat medics, nudged Cole. “You know that asshole?”

  “Yeah. Kinda.”

  “He’s just been dumped on us from Bravo Company. Real obnoxious little shit.”

  “Oh, he’s okay.” Asshole or not, Baird was about to face grubs for the first time, and if nobody was looking out for him then he wouldn’t be around tomorrow to do it again. He deserved a chance. “Baird, we gonna have the pleasure of your company for this day trip or not?”

  Baird rolled his head a little and came over to join Cole, doing his best to look reluctant. “Well, that doubles the IQ of this squad, I suppose…”

  Cole didn’t take the bait. That was the secret, he reckoned—to let Baird cuss himself out and then see if there was anything real he had to say for himself. The regiment’s Ravens were configured to take six Gears and two door gunners. It was just a matter of standing next to Baird and making sure the loadmaster didn’t mind a change in her list.

  “You’re messing up my tidy chalk, Cole Train,” she said, checking him off on her clipboard. “But because it’s you… and put your bucket on, okay?”

  Cole put his helmet on and tightened the chinstrap. “Thank you, ma’am.”

  Baird buckled in next to him and stared out of the open door, still helmetless, and the Raven lifted. It turned toward Kinnerlake with a stomach-churning roll. Cole lasted another five minutes before he had to take his helmet off and grab the safety line to puke.

  Alonzo leaned across and tapped his knee. “You ought to take meds for that.”

  “Makes me drowsy,” Cole said. “Better out than in, man.”

  This was the first time that Cole had flown over a live combat area. Nothing on the TV news or in training had really prepared him for what he could see through breaks in the smoke as the squadron of Ravens approached Kinnerlake. It looked like the news footage, but that was just movies; this was real, now, happening. There were huge smoking craters in the ground below and whole blocks of houses ground to rubble. A fractured gas pipe was shooting flames into the air. He could smell burning, and somehow that changed everything.

  If I get this wrong… I ain’t just gonna lose a game. I’m gonna die.

  The rush of adrenaline that had been a thrill before a thrashball match had turned into something that almost paralyzed him. His heartbeat felt out of control. He was staring down a narrow tunnel. The weirdest thing was that the blood in his legs felt like it had frozen solid.

  I’m scared. I’m really scared.

  Cole had never been physically terrified before, not even as a kid. He had to get a grip. He took deep breaths and pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes for a few seconds. Way back, some coach had told him it did some shit to the nerves and calmed a guy down. The coach also swore blind that a winning streak was down to his goddamn lucky socks, so it might have been some psych-up bullshit, but Cole suddenly felt a whole lot better.

  “Whoa, I’m back,” he said to himself. “Yeah…”

  Baird kept fiddling with his bayonet. “I think I’m just going to piss my pants, if that’s okay with you.”

  Now Cole could see individual Gears down there. They were formed up by a line of tanks and APCs across a plaza in the center of what had once been Kinnerlake’s main shopping mall. In a few minutes, that would be him. For real. He’d be that little dark gray toy down there on the ground.

  I ain’t gonna lose. I can’t lose.

  The radio crackled as the Raven descended behind the line of APCs. “Okay, people. We’ve still got grubs down there. Remember—they can come up anywhere.”

  “Come on, let’s get this over with,” Baird said to himself. “Hope you’re happy now, bitch.”

  Cole couldn’t work out who the bitch was and now wasn’t the time to find out. Baird sure did have some issues going on there. But Cole forgot that and also everything he’d learned the minute his boots touched the ground. He didn’t see where the rest of his company landed. He could only focus on what he could feel underneath him, the pavement shuddering beneath his boots. He’d come from Hanover: the grubs hadn’t reached the city yet. It was like nothing else he’d ever experienced.

  Grubs. That’s them down there, for real. I can feel them. Oh shit…

  “E-hole!” someone yelled. “Stand to!”

  The pavement started buckling a hundred meters ahead. The tank guns swiveled, waiting for the road surface to crack and give them a target. Then another bulge started forming in the road, and another, and another.

  “Multiples!”

  It wasn’t like thrashball at all. It wasn’t easy and it wasn’t natural. It felt weird and slow-motion. The tank nearest to Cole fired, sending smoke and chunks of debris raining down on the roadway, the line of Gears broke, and Cole didn’t have any time left to think or worry. Something took over and it wasn’t training, or at least not the training he’d had in the last month.

  As soon as he saw movement in the clearing smoke, he charged at it without thinking. A couple of grubs were clambering out of another emergence hole in the middle of the street. They had two arms and two legs, but that was about all they had in common with people. They were real big ugly assholes with gray scaly skin, weird pale eyes and mouths like a knife-slash lined with shark’s teeth.

  They ain’t human. They ain’t even animals. And they killed my folks.

  So you can die, y
ou motherfuckers.

  Cole should have been using short controlled bursts, but he just hosed them as he ran and couldn’t stop. Any worries he’d had about not being able to pull the trigger were forgotten. So was the fact that firefights were going on all around him.

  Something was driving him like a clockwork toy. He didn’t know what it was, but it sure made sense to do what it wanted and keep firing.

  The grubs fell back down the hole. He still had his finger tight on the trigger, but the rifle had stopped. Shit. Reload. Yeah, reload. As he reached for another clip, more ugly gray heads popped out of the hole and he saw the dull glint of metal.

  “Goddamn—”

  Cole managed to ram the clip home, but when he looked up to aim he found he was staring down a barrel with the ugliest bastard in the world behind it. The grub’s head exploded in a plume of blood. Then he squeezed the trigger—so how the hell had he hit the thing?—but the rounds were striking grubs where he wasn’t aiming. It was only when the things lay scattered across the road and he could hear his own ragged breathing that he realized someone was behind him. Someone else had been firing at the grubs too.

  “Move it—they’re coming up in the mall,” Baird said. He was white as a sheet and really shaky, but there was nothing wrong with his aim. So that was who opened up on the grubs while he was fumbling the reload. “Shit, Cole, are you afraid of anything? Look, those things aren’t rushing up to get your autograph. Kill the assholes at a nice safe distance, okay?”

  “Thanks, Baird,” Cole said. “Could have been a real short game for me.”

  Baird didn’t seem to know how to take gratitude. “Yeah. Whatever. I need you around for the next time someone tries to flush my head.”

  The new drive inside Cole had kicked up a notch. He still didn’t feel in control of it, but he was okay with that for the time being, and he knew that all he wanted to do right then was to carry on and kill more grubs. That was all he needed. He started jogging toward the mall, aware of other Gears around him for the first time in what seemed like forever. It was probably just minutes. Baird trotted alongside him, grumbling to himself like some cranky old lady.