Coalition's End

by Karen Traviss

  Hoffman could imagine Adam Fenix fretting about that too.

  “The Stranded can’t all be illiterate assholes.” Hoffman went on scanning each folder, flicking through the papers, and wondering just how many engineering reports a naval base needed to file. “Someone’s stashed a library away somewhere.”

  Eventually Hoffman lost track of the time. He didn’t check his watch until he heard footsteps and glanced up at Marcus. Well, they didn’t have to make excuses to anyone for being down here. If people weren’t wondering if the base’s shady history had anything to do with what was happening outside, then they didn’t have much imagination.

  Prescott? Yeah, walk right in. Let’s have a chat.

  Hoffman stared at the doors. They opened slowly. But it was only Anya.

  She looked embarrassed. “Doing your own filing now, sir?”

  “Desperation, Lieutenant.” He wondered if Marcus had even hinted about the existence of the disc in his quiet moments with her. Even if he had, it was still time for Hoffman to come clean and tell her himself. “Is there a problem?”

  “No, I just wanted to give you a sitrep on the evacuation. We’ve moved everyone. There’s just livestock and food stores left to relocate. Oh, and Seb Edlar’s still missing his prize bull and a few cows. Mataki’s volunteered to retrieve them.”

  “Good work, Anya.” Now he had to tell her. “Look, we’re down here for a reason. Do you want to be burdened with information that might make it hard to look the Chairman in the eye, or remain in happy ignorance?”

  He watched Anya shoot Marcus a cautious glance as if for a nod, but he couldn’t tell if Marcus responded. She fixed Hoffman with that look of complete trust that was somehow harder to take than steely disapproval. She was utterly loyal to him. She deserved better.

  “I function better when I’ve got all the facts, sir,” she said.

  “Okay… I stole an encrypted data disk from Prescott’s desk a few weeks ago, and he knows I did it. But until he deigns to tell me what the hell’s on it, I’m just playing guessing games.” Hoffman took a breath and waited for her to look hurt. There was nothing he hadn’t confided in that poor girl over the years—except this. “I’m sorry, Anya.”

  But she just picked up a folder and fanned through it. Maybe Marcus had told her after all. “So what are you looking for?”

  “No damn idea. Maybe something that ties the stalks in with the research that used to go on here.”

  “Oh… God. Really?” She took that very well, all things considered. “I better help you, then.”

  It was another of those out-of-body moments when Hoffman saw how he might look and sound, and shuddered. I’m off my damn head. And now he’d have to tell Sam. Where would it end? Did it even matter now? Did it matter if every asshole on Vectes knew?

  A voice in his earpiece distracted him from a promising-looking report on the installation of the base’s computer system. “Control to Hoffman.”

  “Go ahead, Mathieson.”

  “Sir, message from Corporal Mitchell. He’s finished the image analysis. He says all the CZs except the latest one south of Pelruan have shown no expansion for two days, and he felt you’d want to know right away.”

  “Good timing, Mathieson.” Please, please, please let it all be over. Or at least let it be doing what we expect it to. “I needed some good news. Tell him I’ll stand him a beer.”

  “Sir, one more thing—if you’re passing CIC, I’d like a word.”

  Hoffman could guess what that meant. “On my way.”

  Marcus and Anya both stopped and looked up. “What good news, sir?”

  “The CZs look like they’ve stopped spreading. Well, the oldest ones, anyway. I’ve got to go to CIC for a while. Don’t feel obliged to finish this tonight.”

  Anya smiled. There was enough paperwork to keep them busy for weeks. Maybe she thought he was being gracious and leaving to give her some private time with Marcus after she’d been stuck at Pelruan for so long.

  And he never told her about the disc? He never told his girlfriend? Dear God. Just like his dad never told him anything about the Hammer. What a family.

  Hoffman climbed the last flight of stairs to ground level and found the naval base heaving with civilians who still hadn’t worked out where they were supposed to be. It was early evening, an unexpectedly vivid sunset emerging from beneath the day’s heavy cloud. Trescu stood outside the main doors of Admiralty House with Michaelson. They were chatting like old chums.

  “Getting cozy,” Hoffman said. “The extra bodies, I mean.”

  Michaelson did his diplomat act. “All trawlers present and correct, Victor. Life goes on, and I’ve taken delivery of a rather fine batch of smoked snakefish if you’re interested…”

  “We’re moving the smoking sheds down here, I hope.”

  “It’s a priority.”

  Trescu was sporting a cut on the bridge of his nose and a hint of a black eye on the left side. He was a fastidious man and Hoffman had expected him to seem uncomfortable with his wounds, but it only made him look harder and less open to reason.

  “Anything you want to share with me, Colonel?” he asked.

  Hoffman wasn’t sure if Michaelson had said anything, but he couldn’t see any harm in leveling with Trescu. If he hadn’t been asking himself the same questions, he would pick up the buzz sooner or later. “I’m reduced to playing long shots,” he said. “Seeing as this place used to be BCD, I’m going through the archive store to see if Lambency might be one of our own little errors.”

  Trescu did his oh-really tilt of the head. “Even if it is, there’s apparently nothing the Chairman can do to stop it, judging by his behavior.”

  “I’d still feel better knowing.” Hoffman could have told him about the disc now. He really could have. For the first time, he felt that this wasn’t just a former enemy that he had a grudging respect for, but an ally—or as much an ally as a man could be after nearly two million of his people had been incinerated by the COG’s weapons of mass destruction. “I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

  Hoffman went into the building and stopped off at CIC. Mathieson gave him an anxious look and held out a sheet of paper. There was a battered jar of pickles of some kind on Mathieson’s desk, lots of unidentifiable layers swimming in a dark liquid. It might have been cabbage. Hoffman suspected it was another kindness from Yanik. The Gorasnayan had really taken a shine to the young lieutenant.

  “Our databurst friend’s been busy overnight,” Mathieson said. The paper was a meticulously written list of times, signal strength, and duration. “Different times, but the activity’s definitely picking up. Oh, and Sergeant Mataki dropped by looking for you. I think you’re in the doghouse, but not in the pat-on-the-head way that Mac is.”

  “Yeah, it’s hard to compete with someone who drools and rolls on his back every time he sees her.” He wondered if a tidbit for the dog and some of Michaelson’s rum reserve for Bernie might save his ass, whatever it was he’d done or failed to do. “Okay, Lieutenant, I’d better do some penance later. Thanks for the radio records.”

  Hoffman checked his watch. The idea that there might be more Gorasni forces lurking out there didn’t bother him half as much as he thought it would. It almost comforted him. Being the small, tattered remnant of a global civilization was a lonely and depressing thing.

  And if the plague that was finally killing both the COG and the grubs was of their own stupid making, he didn’t feel quite as bad about that as he did about a random piece of fatally bad luck. It was a perverse reaction, he knew.

  He’d just had enough of mysteries and secrets.

  BARRACKS, VECTES NAVAL BASE: 0600 NEXT MORNING.

  The screaming worked its way slowly through to Dom’s brain. He was vaguely aware of it for what might have been a second or an hour, then it became insistent and started shaking him furiously. Consciousness crashed down on him like a collapsing wall and he struggled to sit up.

  It was the emergency sire
n.

  “Dom, you in a coma or something? Come on, get up.” Marcus was still shaking his shoulder, a looming dark shape. Boots clattered down the hall outside. “We’ve got a leviathan.”

  “Where?”

  “Just outside the five-klick limit. Come on.”

  Dom scrambled for his clothes and armor. Shit, how could he sleep through that damn siren? It was a terrible wailing noise, up and down the scale, probably picked by psychologists as the sound most likely to make humans crap their pants and run for cover. Marcus waited impatiently as Dom struggled into his boots.

  “Lambent or regular ones?” Dom mumbled.

  “Can’t tell yet.” Marcus grabbed Dom’s ammo belt and shoved it at him. “Let’s bet on the worst.”

  They headed for their stand-to position on top of the naval base walls. Cole was already there with a rocket launcher, patting it like a much-loved pet.

  “No Baird?” Dom asked.

  “He’s been drafted for Hammer duties.” Cole chuckled to himself. “Hang on to your valuables, baby. You know he can’t even piss straight.”

  “Yeah, everyone’s fed up redrawing maps each time he blows up a chunk of coastline.”

  “It’s the Hammer. It’s fucked. Gotta believe him.”

  Marcus grunted and sighted up. It was a shut-up-and-focus gesture. A Lancer couldn’t hit anything at five kilometers. “If anyone’s still interested in the leviathan, Clement picked it up on the hydrophones.”

  “Maybe it’s coming to look for its buddies.” Dom took the hint and looked up at the Ravens circling over the water. He hoped it wasn’t Eight-Zero and Two-Three-Nine. Those two birds spent way too many hours in the air. “Some animals have long memories.”

  “Then it’ll remember that we’ve killed three of the assholes. We can make that four if it needs a reminder.”

  Clement was out of torpedoes and limping along with temporary repairs after her last run-in with a leviathan. But in the dockyard below, every warship with a gun—big guns, deck-mounted machine guns, even the explosive harpoon that Michaelson had scammed off a pirate for a few cans of processed meat—had its weapons facing seaward. The old defensive cannons set on the fortlike walls of the base were trained southeast now.

  But none of that stopped the leviathan last time. Did it?

  Gears were spread out along the walls and in every defensive position on the docks and jetties. Dom couldn’t see the leviathan until a sudden plume of white foam caught his eye and a tentacle crashed down into the water. It was hard to tell how big the thing was, but any leviathan was bad news. A relatively small one had crippled Fenmont and let hundreds of polyps loose ashore. They had to be kept far out to sea, preferably by blowing the shit out of them.

  Anya came jogging along the wall. “We’re going to try using the Hammer before it gets any closer,” she said. “But there could be more than one out there, so everybody stay sharp.”

  “Has Garcia pinged another one?” Marcus asked.

  “Maybe. There’s something else out there, but it might just be a regular whale.”

  “Or another submarine.”

  “No, Zephyr’s close inshore, and Garcia knows her position.” Anya looked along the walls in both directions, then headed for the steps. “I’m going to give Baird a hand. If the Hammer fails, then it’s back to old-fashioned ballistics.”

  “Why don’t the glowies go pick on the mainland?” Cole asked. “What are we doin’ that’s pissin’ ’em off so much?”

  Maybe the leviathan wasn’t picking on them at all, just wandering by. But nobody in their right mind could pass up a chance to kill it. Dom watched a Marlin, one of the old rigid inflatables from his commando days, zip away from the docks and head out southeast trailing a wake of foam. He trained his binoculars.

  “Place your bets,” Marcus said. “Gorasni.”

  “Man, I ain’t afraid of a healthy risk, but those guys got a death wish.” Cole shook his head. “It’s like they’re always tryin’ to prove they’re crazier and tougher than us.”

  “It’s not Gorasni,” Dom said. He could see the crew now—CPO Muller and Commander Fyne. “It’s the navy. Alisder Fyne and Franck Muller.”

  He’d forgotten all about Commander Fyne. Everybody seemed to. The poor asshole had kept what little was left of NCOG running for years until Michaelson was recalled, and then he just vanished back into the invisible task of keeping ships supplied and fueled. It wasn’t much of a reward.

  “They don’t need that close a look at the thing, do they?” Dom asked.

  Marcus didn’t look happy. “Maybe they’re going to use a hand laser for targeting. They should’ve asked us.”

  Dom was horrified to see the Marlin swing wide and circle the leviathan, coming dangerously close to getting slapped by a tentacle before heading back to the dockside. It was hard to get the scale of the animal, but Dom had seen enough of them by now to work it out. It was too easy to see the tentacles—five, ten meters long—and think that was the head end, and that it was all arms and almost no body, like a squid. But it wasn’t. It had a long, scaly, snakelike body several times longer than the tentacles. The vast fanged maw could crunch through steel plate.

  And if it was Lambent as well—then it wasn’t just a big, dangerous bastard. It was a big, dangerous, highly explosive bastard as well, capable of generating enough energy to collapse cliffs and blow holes in bedrock. The infestation of polyps those things usually carried seemed to pale into insignificance.

  Fyne’s voice came over the radio. “Control to all callsigns, we have confirmation—it’s Lambent. Stand by for Hammer deployment in thirty seconds…”

  If it had been a regular leviathan, it was just something to be avoided instead of wasting ordnance on blowing it up. Now Anya and Baird—more Anya than Baird, Dom hoped— were going to detonate it out at sea like a stray mine. The leviathan was still on the surface, its undulating back breaking the waves as its huge fanged head lifted every few meters like someone doing the breaststroke.

  “Stick your head between your ugly legs…,” Cole said.

  “Fifteen seconds…”

  “… and kiss your ugly ass…”

  “Ten seconds…”

  “… goodbye, motherfucker.”

  “Firing.”

  A beam of brilliant white light stabbed out of the sky and hit the water. But it struck twenty meters wide. The leviathan plunged beneath the surface and vanished for a few moments before popping up again, now on a different course. Dom watched it for a few seconds before he worked out that it was heading straight for the base.

  “Control here, stand by—going again,” Mathieson said.

  Dom held his breath. “That better be you this time, Anya.”

  “Fifteen… ten… firing.”

  The beam hit the water even further off target. The leviathan picked up speed, trailing foam like a powerboat.

  “Control to all callsigns—Hammer is now offline.”

  “Oh, terrific,” Dom said. “What the hell happened?”

  Marcus braced his elbow on the wall to sight up. “We’ve lost too many targeting sats. Can’t aim the damn thing.”

  “Fine.” Cole shouldered the Longspear. “I can aim this baby. Shit, least we’re doing this in daylight for a change.”

  The ancient cannon mounted on the walls could still hit a target, too. Dom decided there was a lot to be said for old tech. One started firing its ranging shots, striking short of the leviathan and working toward it with a slow rhythmic pompom-pom noise. Everyone waited for the explosion. The arty guys didn’t have a lot of time before the leviathan moved inside their minimum range, and they didn’t have an infinite supply of ordnance.

  One shell landed close enough to send a column of water crashing onto the thing, but it kept going. It didn’t even slow down when the Ravens passed over—well out of tentacle reach—and strafed it.

  And then it dived.

  “The asshole’s getting smart,” Marcus said. “Okay, Cole
—you stay up here. Dom—with me.”

  As Dom ran after Marcus, he could hear the confusion on the radio. Nobody could follow the thing visually now, not even the Ravens, but Garcia, Clement’s CO, had sonar and was calling ranges.

  “Two thousand meters—bearing off gun emplacement, red thirty.”

  The gun battery lobbed another shell and raised a plume of water, but Garcia confirmed the worst.

  “Fifteen hundred meters—holding its course.”

  Dom and Marcus running along the edge of the dock now, trying to work out where the leviathan was going to surface. But Mathieson had already plotted its course for them.

  “Control to all callsigns, it’s going for the oiling jetty. Everyone get clear. I said get clear.”

  “Oh shit.” Dom broke into a sprint. The leviathan was going to smash into the fuel tanks. It was a giant pissed-off torpedo about to hit tens of thousands of liters of imulsion. “It’ll take out the whole jetty.”

  Marcus sprinted ahead of him. “And half the docks. We’ve got to hold that asshole off somehow.”

  “Six hundred meters,” said Garcia.

  Nobody listened to Mathieson’s sensible advice to get out of the blast area, least of all Dom and Marcus. They reached the pier opposite the jetty and aimed their Lancers across the water waiting for something to target. If the thing surfaced just once, if it got close enough to the surface for someone to see the movement and open fire to distract it, anything at all—

  A small RIB suddenly roared around the end of the jetty in a cloud of spray, bouncing along the surface. The boat did a spectacular turn about three hundred meters out and Dom waited for it to capsize, but one of the two-man crew heaved something into the water and the boat zipped clear. A few seconds later a booming explosion threw a column of spray into the air.

  The leviathan surfaced fifty meters off the pier and reared out of the water, bellowing.

  “Depth charge,” Marcus said, and opened fire. “Now it’s pissed off.”

  The leviathan was going crazy. The explosion must have burst its eardrums or something, if it had any. It thrashed around, smashing splinters out of the wooden pillars jutting from the water, mouth gaping wide. Yes, eardrums. Ouch. Dom kept firing at the thing’s head, watching the rounds do nothing more than send small puffs of spray into the air, but Marcus took a grenade off his belt and hefted it, ready to throw.