Coalition's End

by Karen Traviss

  The RIB zipped around again, but closer. It was Yanik and Teodor. “What are you waiting for, COG?” Yanik yelled. “Do it!”

  “Delicate job,” Marcus muttered, unfazed. He lobbed the grenade into the leviathan’s wide-open maw. The mouth snapped shut. It knew it had swallowed something. “Now run.”

  “Did you set the delay?”

  “Thirty seconds.”

  The leviathan started panicking. It slapped down onto the water like a breaching whale. It might have been flailing randomly or it might have decided Yanik and Teodor were responsible for its pain, but either way it went after them and they shot off ahead of it at full throttle.

  Then it dived again. The RIB looped back into the harbour. By now, other Gears had come running from across the docks to see if there was anything left to shoot.

  “Fuck.” Dom watched the water, helpless. Seconds passed. The frag should have blown by now. “Shit, if it’s come in under the jetty again, we’re screwed.”

  Whoomp.

  The explosion was nearly a hundred meters away but it lifted the RIB clear of the water. Dom lost sight of the boat for a second or two as the sea rained down on the dock and drenched him. When everything settled, Dom could see Yanik and Teodor in the RIB, equally soaked and bailing out with a scoop. Bits of leviathan started floating to the surface along with a spreading carpet of stunned fish.

  Marcus shook his head, getting his breath again. “There’s risk taking,” he said. “And then there’s clinically insane.”

  “Like you wouldn’t have done that.”

  “Depth charges.” The idea seemed to fascinate Marcus. He stared at the bobbing raft of fish around the RIB with a distracted frown. “Ought to be easy to make some of those. They obviously can.”

  Yanik stood up unsteadily in the boat, looking like a drowned but optimistic rat. Teodor was now trying to rake in some of the fish floating helplessly on the surface. Well, food was food. Nobody forgot that starvation was a real possibility now.

  “Bah, you are all girls! Whole army of you equals two poor Gorasni peasants!” Yanik taunted the watching Gears but it was all delivered with a big grin. “That was a nice dropball goal with the frag, Fenix. Is girls’ game, yes?”

  “Yeah,” Marcus said. “I was the ladies’ champion.”

  Bernie and Sam jogged up to take a look. Everyone was suddenly at that giggly relief stage that followed intense and bowel-loosening terror. Yanik and Teodor were serious about not letting the stunned fish go to waste, though. Teodor had found a net and was filling the RIB to the gunwales as if nothing had happened.

  “Looks dead to me,” Sam said. “Nice job, Marcus.”

  “With a little help from the psychiatric ward.”

  “This is just how Gorasni go fishing, duchaska,” Yanik said, leering at her from the boat. “But the leviathan got in the way.”

  “You great big jessie.” Sam had thawed a bit toward Yanik. He shot Stranded on sight and Dom didn’t even want to know how he acquired his nickname, but it took some effort to dislike him. “Look at the state of you. You pissed your pants.”

  “Ah, this is just uncontrollable excitement at seeing you, my vision of loveliness!”

  “Wanker.”

  Yanik laughed his head off, a bit too happy. Maybe he wasn’t that relaxed about nearly getting spattered around the dock after all. A chunk of leviathan with a couple of tentacles still attached drifted like a raft toward the jetty on the current with a few polyps huddled on it, survivors from a shipwreck.

  Bernie aimed her Longshot. She wasn’t laughing now. “And you lot can fuck right off.”

  Her first shot hit one square in the mouth and detonated it. The watching Gorasni applauded. But it couldn’t have had much juice in it because it didn’t take the others with it, and just blew off one of the tentacles before sinking.

  “Ah, sod it.” Bernie reloaded the single cartridge and sighted up. “Okay… I’m channeling Blondie now…”

  Bang.

  The polyps blew up with the usual fountain of spray. Gears cheered. For a moment, everyone was hysterically happy just to have all their limbs and not find themselves staring at a fireball engulfing the docks. Dom found he came down to earth faster these days. When he reassured himself he wasn’t dead, he remembered who already was and who might be this time tomorrow.

  There were stalks slowly encroaching on the island and killing the crops. And there’d be other leviathans, and many, many more polyps. The number of attacks was increasing.

  Sam caught his arm gently, cupping his elbow. “Come and have breakfast in the mess,” she whispered in his ear, way too close for comfort. “You’ve got to see the tattoo I did for Rossi.”

  Dom turned and found Bernie looking his way. She was watching with that all-seeing, all-knowing expression that sergeants always had.

  “Weird buggers, aren’t they?” Bernie said. Ah, she wasn’t thinking about Sam at all. “There’s nobody I’d rather rely on than a Gorasni, except a Pesanga. They’ll put their lives on the line for you and laugh their arses off about it. But then I think about what they did to our boys in the war, and I just can’t square it.”

  Bernie shrugged and walked off, suddenly distracted by Teodor yelling something to her about salting the fish. Dom submitted to Sam and let her shepherd him toward the mess.

  “I made sure I can make it more respectable later,” she said, giggling. “ Rossi’s tattoo, I mean. He had too much of Dizzy’s potato hooch.”

  Bernie was right. There were people you liked a hell of a lot and for all the right reasons, but something inside said that it was all wrong somehow. It didn’t mean you could make yourself stop liking them. But you couldn’t forget what the barriers were, either.

  “Yeah, we all need something to numb the pain,” Dom said. Wrong world, wrong time. And wrong me. “At least for a while.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Everybody says they want answers. No, they don’t. Most people just want reassurance that the world is the way they already think it is. Genuine revelation—the knowledge that changes minds—upsets them. And they’ll hate you for doing it.

  (COG Chairman Richard Prescott, in a rare conversation with Commander Miran Trescu)

  GORASNI CAMP, NEW JACINTO.

  “No, that won’t lock out when he puts his weight on it,” Baird said, peering at the lathe. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

  Sandru went on grinding the metal pin and didn’t say a word. The workshop was full of fascinating things, scented with unfamiliar lube oils and chemicals that the COG had probably banned on toxicity grounds years ago.

  Yanik laughed. “Blondie-Baird, how many Gorasni do you see on crutches or in wheelchairs?”

  “None, but that’s probably because you kill and eat your wounded, right?”

  That just made Yanik laugh louder. Even Sandru managed a grin, the surly asshole. Baird wasn’t used to getting laughs for his best lines and he rather liked it.

  “This will work,” Sandru said slowly, handing him the joint. “I did this in hospitals. I made legs. Your friend will need sticks maybe, but he will stand up again. Only one knee joint missing. Much easier than both knees missing. I show you why if you piss me off again…”

  Baird found himself about to point out that Mathieson wasn’t actually his friend, but it sounded pathetically needy. He examined the finished joint. It wasn’t a state-of-the-art modern prosthetic unit with electronics, but it was beautifully made and it wouldn’t need a team of experts to maintain it.

  “Okay, he’ll think it’s awesome.” Now, what was the magic word? “Thanks, Sandru.”

  “Hah, we like to show Cogs our technical superiority. Now we have to make casts. This is a slow job, Corporal.”

  Yanik wandered over to the doorway and seemed to be watching something outside. Baird kept an eye on him. Yanik was part of Trescu’s personal entourage and that meant he wasn’t to be trifled with. In a community where everyone seemed to be a psychopath, tha
t was some reputation. These guys didn’t pull their punches.

  “Ah, some excitement out there,” Yanik said, ambling outside. “Let’s see what’s happening.”

  Baird craned his neck to see where he was heading. The dirt roads between the tents were dead straight, so Baird had a clear view all the way to one of the communal areas that housed the latrines and water pumps, the equivalent of a town square in a place like this. There were an awful lot of people gathering out there. Yanik started walking faster. Then he broke into a jog.

  Shit. I better call in.

  Baird switched his radio on as discreetly as he could. He usually kept the channel open even when he was off-duty, but he didn’t fancy receiving a sensitive message on the subject of discs and data when he was surrounded by Gorasni. He liked them, but he wasn’t stupid.

  “Baird to Fenix,” he said quietly. “Baird here, over.”

  “Go ahead, Baird.”

  “I’m in the Gorasni camp, getting Mathieson’s legs made.” Suck on that, Marcus. See, I can be a good guy too. “Is there some shit going on? I can see signs of collectively bunched panties here. I mean, it might be a coup or a lynching or some domestic Gorasni entertainment like that, but I thought I’d check in just in case.”

  “No idea, but Hoffman and Michaelson went into a huddle with Sharle a couple of hours ago and they haven’t come out yet.”

  “Leviathan aftermath? No Trescu?”

  “We’ll find out soon enough.”

  Sandru looked up at Baird over spectacles that had been repaired with very delicate wirework. “Problem?”

  “Everybody’s getting edgy about the attacks.”

  Sandru let out a long sigh. “Yes, we’re fucked,” he said placidly, and went back to the lathe. “Pity. It’s nice here.”

  Baird had to walk through the communal area to get back to the main gates. Idle curiosity made him want to find out what had sparked the gathering he could see ahead of him, but the Gorasni would be doing what any civilians did at a time like this—asking questions nobody had any answers to. Damn, he’d seen this so many times back on the mainland. It couldn’t be any worse than the panic over the Hammer strike, that was for sure. He didn’t know why he suddenly remembered that after all the shit had happened in the intervening years, but it was so vivid right then that he could smell the soot in the air and wished it would go away.

  He hovered on the edge of the crowd for a moment. It was a mixed bunch of a couple of hundred, men and women of all ages but no kids, and they were scared. That much he could work out. His entire command of the Gorasni language consisted of yes, no, shithouse, fuck off, and a few numbers. If the meeting was a debate about identity and alienation in a post-apocalyptic world, then he was screwed.

  And he could hear a familiar voice, although he couldn’t see where it was coming from until he sidled up to Yanik. Then he saw Trescu standing on the flatbed of a junker to make himself heard.

  He was laying down the law. Baird didn’t understand a word of it, but Trescu was one of those guys who looked as if he was reining in a terrible temper—twitching jaw muscles and arms held carefully at his sides as if to hint that only superior aristocratic willpower stopped him from strangling his audience barehanded. It looked a lot more scary than red-faced cursing.

  “What is it?” Baird whispered.

  “They want a ship,” Yanik said sourly. “They want to leave.”

  “I bet the boss just loves the idea.”

  “Ungrateful bastards. After all he’s done for us. We’d all be dead without him.” Yanik looked like he was working up to a contemptuous spit. “Or worse—Stranded.”

  Watching Trescu was hypnotic. The shouts and arguments in the crowd were reaching a crescendo, and then Trescu snapped and punched his fist into his palm. He repeated something over and over, hitting his palm each time, and finally Baird recognized enough of the words to understand. Numbers. Trescu was repeating a number.

  Four thousand.

  Four thousand.

  Combined with a sweeping gesture, it was suddenly obvious. He was reminding them there were just four thousand Gorasni left and that splitting up would finish them.

  “So you don’t have some secret navy out there, then,” Baird whispered.

  Yanik frowned. “What?”

  “The weird radio transmissions. That’s not you, then.”

  Yanik managed to look away from the crowd. “And it’s not you?”

  “Shit, no.” Baird wished he’d kept his big mouth shut. God, what was he thinking? Hoffman would kill him. But it was too late now. “We thought it was you.”

  Ooooh, so we really trust each other. Great.

  “Well, that’s still a frigging mystery, then.” Baird grabbed the chance to get out before he sank any deeper in the shit. “And if your guys are losing it, ours are probably descending into cannibalism right about now. I better go sweep up the debris.”

  Baird hurried off, chastened by seeing the Gorasni having internal spats. They always looked solid and unflappable, so couldn’t-give-a-shit. He was a bit disappointed to realize they were as fucked up and scared as anyone else. He checked inside his armor to make sure the data disc was still there, like he did twenty times a day, and walked through the main gates. Well, if Hoffman yelled at him for mentioning the databursts, he could always defend himself with what he’d found out.

  It wasn’t the Gorasni transmitting them. He’d hold that nugget up in front of him like a riot shield.

  He caught up with Cole on the walls and they leaned on the brickwork, watching the activity on the parade ground. A few weeks ago, it had been a model of military order, an open space despite the number of civilians who still had to live inside the base while the engineers built more housing. Now it looked like a Silver Era village, complete with farm animals, machinery that should have been in a museum, and eye-wateringly bad smells. There just weren’t that many places left to put three thousand extra people, especially when everyone else had been pulled back inside the existing camp perimeters.

  “Shit, is that a goat?” Baird asked, pointing.

  Cole followed his finger. “No, that’s just a freaky sheep. Some of them have horns too. Goats are skinny and got them crazy-looking eyes.”

  “Yeah, like that redhead who dishes up in the mess. Hey, since when did you become Farmer Giles?”

  “Baby, we’re slipping back in time every time we lose a piece of machinery. A guy’s gotta know his sheep from his goats these days.”

  “This place is turning into a frigging zoo.” Baird decided he’d rely on Bernie for all this frontiersman shit. “I even found one of them scratching around near my workshop.”

  “It’s just a few chickens,” Cole said. “And some dogs. Animals are real good early-warning systems for stalks.”

  “I meant the civilians,” said Baird. “They always knew their place in Jacinto. They’re even getting pissy in the Gorasni camp.”

  “And ol’ Trescu the Terrible ain’t smacked ’em around?”

  “Not yet. There’s a bunch of them that want to take a ship and make a run for it.”

  “Gonna be plenty more where they came from…”

  “It’s move to another island, or head home. Me, I call that frying pan or fire.”

  “Some of those pirate guys live at sea.”

  “Yeah, like you’d enjoy that.”

  “Didn’t say I would. Just speculatin’.”

  Baird’s radio interrupted the discussion. “Briefing from Hoffman in his old office, fifteen minutes,” Marcus said.

  “Must be a select gathering,” Baird said. “It’s not a big room.”

  “We’re going to recon the mainland.”

  It had to be done, sooner or later. It was just the timing. Baird and Cole headed for Admiralty House, weaving between tractors. The place looked like a paramilitary county fair.

  “Well, that’s really going to stoke the rumor mill,” Baird said.

  “It’s no big deal.” Cole to
ok it placidly like he always did. “We gotta know what’s out there now.”

  When they reached the office, Hoffman was already there with Michaelson, Sharle, Marcus, Dom, and Gettner. Gettner? They must have performed surgery to get her out of that frigging cockpit, let alone lure her to an actual meeting. Everyone was crammed in, leaning against filing cabinets or standing with arms tightly folded. Hoffman wasn’t a big-office kind of guy and seemed to feel safer in small spaces. The room smelled of barley coffee and floor polish.

  “I hear there’s some trouble in the Gorasni camp,” Hoffman said. There was no sign of Prescott. “Someone else taking potshots at Trescu?”

  “No, he’s trying to hold his happy campers together.” Brazen it out. Don’t act guilty. “I don’t speak the language, but a bunch of them want to leave Vectes and he’s telling them it’ll finish the Gorasni as a nation.”

  Hoffman gave him a dubious look. “For a man who doesn’t speak the language, you pick up a lot.”

  “Well, Trescu’s body language is pretty vivid,” Baird said. He’d save the news about the databursts until Sharle was out of the way, but maybe he knew anyway. “Anyway, Yanik translated for me.”

  “We’re going to recon a coastal strip from Corren to the north,” Hoffman said. “We’ve got enough fuel now, and we might get as far as Jacinto. We’ve got to start assessing what’s out there or we can’t make informed decisions about staying here.”

  “Who’s we? Does Prescott know?”

  “Of course he does,” Michaelson said. “With the long-range fuel tanks, we’ll have space for five in the Raven. We’ve got to have Royston on board, and I think we need Trescu for diplomatic reasons as much as anything, so I’ll take a back seat. That leaves you, Victor, and two Gears for security.”

  “Volunteers?” Hoffman said. “Prescott isn’t coming.”