Coalition's End

by Karen Traviss

  God. What’s going to be left of us?

  Anya tapped the back of her hand discreetly as it rested on the gear lever. “Are you okay, Bernie?”

  “Just getting old, ma’am.”

  “Not you. You’re indestructible. Mom always said so.”

  So was the COG. It had always felt permanent, embedded in history, the invincible world power. There’d been tough times, but the COG went on regardless and even a global war spanning generations couldn’t bring it to its knees. Now it was cowering on a remote island, clinging to an old enemy for comfort. How long had it actually existed? A century, that was all. It was just a blink in the history of Sera.

  Everything had its time.

  “Yeah, I’m good at survival,” Bernie said. “I’ve even got a badge to say so.”

  Every person on this island was a survivor. Everyone here was alive despite the grubs or the Hammer strike or both. Bernie tried not to think about the vast majority of people across Sera, the billions who had simply done the ordinary, inevitable thing and died.

  CHAPTER 14

  Either we save who we can, what we can, and preserve humankind, or we do the equitable thing and let everyone share extinction. It’s my call.

  (Chairman Richard Prescott, informing Dr. Adam Fenix of his intention to deploy the Hammer of Dawn on Sera’s cities, one year after E-Day)

  BRABAIO, SOUTHWEST INGAREZ: 30TH DAY OF BLOOM, JUST OVER A YEAR AFTER E-DAY, FOURTEEN YEARS EARLIER.

  “I don’t wanna beg,” Dizzy said. “I wanna work. I’m a marine engineer. I fix ships. Goddamn it, I got my certification.”

  The guy on the dock gates had the kind of clean shirt and neat haircut that only someone with a proper home could have. Dizzy had lived out of his kit bag for the last year, moving and being moved from one refugee center to the next. He knew he didn’t look much like a skilled man with a trade.

  “Look, nobody’s hiring.” The guy seemed embarrassed. “Half the merchant fleet’s gone. The government’s running what’s left. I’m really sorry.”

  “Hell, I’ll clean lavatories, then. Whatever you got.” Dizzy tried hard not to sound like a bum. “I got a pregnant wife to take care of.”

  Wife. Well, they weren’t married, not all formal like, but Rosalyn was expecting, and whether Dizzy had planned that or not he had the same responsibilities as any father-to-be.

  He owed Rosalyn. She’d stopped him feeling that sick dread when he woke up every morning and wished he hadn’t because he had nothing left. He’d found a purpose again. She’d given it to him.

  The guy rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a crumpled fifty. “I get a hundred people a day asking the same thing. Here, get yourself something to eat.” He looked down at his shoes. “It’s not charity, okay? Don’t be offended.”

  Dizzy was pretty sure it was charity, but he took the bill anyway and mumbled his thanks before walking away. He wouldn’t tell Rosalyn he’d scrounged it. A woman had to believe her man had some dignity left, even in a world where most every street or city was a wasteland.

  I’m a COG citizen. We’re Tyrans. We’re not foreigners looking for handouts. What did I do wrong?

  It was nobody’s fault. The grubs had caused it. But that didn’t make it any easier to bear.

  Dizzy decided to leave it a while before going back to the squat and telling Rosalyn he hadn’t found work yet. That was another taken-for-granted thing that he missed—knowing he had somewhere that he needed to be. He’d go to work, or come home, or wake up for his watch on board ship, but all of those things had vanished overnight. He was only one of millions of displaced people being shunted from one shelter to another. That was the government’s word for it, displaced: now he understood how right that word was. There was no place for refugees, not just because nobody wanted them for neighbors— although the assholes didn’t, he knew—but also because they didn’t want to end up like them. Losing everything looked contagious.

  He glanced across the road at a well-dressed man and a small boy who didn’t look like they had anywhere special to go either. The man had a tight hold on the boy’s hand, like he’d already lost someone he loved and was making damned sure he didn’t lose his son. Dizzy could tell the locals from the displaced who’d been dumped on their doorstep, no matter how well-off they seemed. They all had that same look: guilt, awkwardness, and confusion.

  He could see a bar now. Yeah, he knew there’d be one down here. He paused at the door for a couple of seconds before he went in, putting different thoughts in his head so he didn’t automatically look like a reminder that the world was losing the war. The place was crowded. Bars always were lately. Folks clung together for comfort. Dizzy glanced at the big TV on the wall as he paid for a beer and a chaser with his small change—hell, not the fifty, that was for Rosalyn— and decided he didn’t need to watch the news anymore. What was it going to tell him that he didn’t already know? The COG wasn’t winning. Nobody was. It was just a matter of which city had been hit today and how many more were dead.

  A couple of drinkers glanced at him but looked away again, more interested in the bulletin. He found a quiet corner and started on his beer. There was an art to spinning it out so that the numbness settled on him gradually.

  Yeah, he was getting pretty good at this. He let the sound of the TV and the burble of conversation wash over him for an hour until he reached the point of nodding off.

  “Everybody, shut up!” The barman’s voice shook him. “Listen! It’s the Chairman! This is important!”

  The bar went quieter than a funeral parlor. Dizzy half-listened, not that he was expecting any news that was going to matter a damn to him and Rosalyn. The last time he’d seen a bar hang on every word like this was when the TV showed the Grayson Cup final, Cougars versus Sharks, except people were excited about that. They sure weren’t excited now. Dizzy wondered if the drink was messing with his ears.

  “To ensure your safety and cooperation, we are reinstating the Fortification Act. All of Sera will be under martial law. No one is exempt. Survivors should immediately start evacuating to Ephyra—”

  “What the fuck?” someone said.

  “Shush! Quiet!” The barman turned the volume up full. “Just listen!”

  Prescott was standing on some platform, all nice and neat in his suit with microphones lined up in front of him thicker than a fence. He’d only been doing the job for a couple of months since Dalyell died. Dizzy hoped he knew what he was doing.

  “—therefore, in Jacinto, we are safe—for now. We won’t let this rampage go further or surrender power. The Coalition will employ Sera’s entire arsenal of orbital beam weapons to scorch all Locust-infested areas. For those citizens who cannot make it to Jacinto, the Coalition appreciates your sacrifice—”

  Dizzy didn’t hear the next bit. The bar erupted.

  “What did he say? What did he say?”

  “Bastards!”

  “Is he fucking serious? He’s going fry COG cities? Us?”

  “No, they can’t do that to us!”

  People were yelling and swearing, the barman was trying to tune to another channel, and a couple of people just left their drinks and ran for the door. Two men got into an argument about who had gotten to the public phone first. Dizzy sat bewildered, wishing he hadn’t had that drink and thinking he’d heard all wrong. He got up and grabbed the arm of the nearest person to him, a young woman in a neat business suit.

  “Ma’am, what was that? What did he say?”

  She was shaking her head like she was about to have some kind of fit. She looked straight through Dizzy, but she did answer him.

  “They’re going to burn the cities,” she said. “They’re going to burn us all. We’ve got three days to get to Jacinto. How the hell are we all going to fit into Jacinto? How the hell are we even going to get there in time?”

  Dizzy found himself sober in a heartbeat, rushing from the bar and running hell for leather up the road back to the squat. All he could think about wa
s grabbing Rosalyn and getting out. Jacinto? Three days? The government would lay on transport. They had to. The COG wouldn’t do that to its own people, would it? Not after what the grubs had done to everyone. It couldn’t.

  For those citizens who cannot make it to Jacinto, the Coalition appreciates your sacrifice.

  No, he was wrong. His own government was going to kill him, and Rosalyn, and everyone else outside Jacinto.

  His lungs were screaming for air. But he couldn’t stop. There was a terrible uh-hah-uh-hah noise following him like a dog, and then he realized it was coming from him, his own gasping breaths. There were people everywhere, but they blurred into a streak of color and sound that didn’t matter anymore. He heard a car horn blare in his ear—hell, had he just run right across a road?—and reached the doors of the abandoned car dealership.

  The refugees shouldn’t have been in there, but nobody cared. Brabaio’s refugee shelters were full. If people found their own place to sleep, that was fine by city hall. Dizzy’s legs felt like rubber as he ran up the stairs at the back of the showroom and almost fell over the bedding left by two other families who’d camped on the floor. The whole place was weirdly silent. The high office windows were soundproofed. None of the noise from the panicking city got through.

  “Rosalyn, grab your stuff.” He could hardly get the words out. He gulped in air. Rosalyn was sitting on a box reading a single sheet of newspaper. “Sweetie, we gotta go. We gotta get out, right now.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “They’re going to use the Hammer of Dawn,” he gasped. “We’ve got three days to get to Jacinto. We’ll be safe there. Come on. Come on.”

  He could tell she didn’t believe him. “Dizzy, that can’t be right. Have you had a drink?”

  “Damn it, sweetie, I’m not drunk. It’s true.” He grabbed the sleeping bag and began rolling it up. “They’re gonna fry the place to stop the grubs. It’s on the news. Look out the window.”

  Rosalyn grabbed the box and hauled it against the wall to step up and peer out.

  “It’s all traffic,” she said. “Oh… the police are out there stopping the cars.”

  “Yeah, because everyone’s going crazy.”

  “God. It’s true, isn’t it?”

  “Just start packing. Come on.”

  Dizzy’s pulse was pounding hard in his ears. Rosalyn kept trying to ask questions, but he grabbed her by the hand and they stumbled out into the street clutching all they owned: a merchant navy kit bag and a bright red hitchhiker’s rucksack.

  “Dizzy, stop!” She dug in her heels, nearly jerking his arm out of its socket. “How are we going to get to Tyrus, let alone Jacinto? We’re a thousand kilometers away.”

  “I’ve got money,” he said. Fifty bucks. That wasn’t going to get them to the next city by bus, let alone cover a long train journey across the border. “We’ll buy tickets.”

  “Everyone’s going to be doing the same thing, Dizzy.”

  He pulled her arm harder than he intended to. She flinched. “Sweetie, you wanna stay here and wait to die? Do you? We got a baby on the way. I lost Lena and Richie, and I ain’t gonna lose anyone else, ever.”

  It was a couple of kilometers to the nearest rail station. If they’d had a bus ticket or a car, it wouldn’t have been any use to them now. The roads were gridlocked. The only way out was on foot.

  When they got to the road to the station, there was a vehicle checkpoint in place manned by Gears and civil police. Dizzy tried to walk through—hell, he wasn’t a damn car— but one of the police officers blocked his way, arms spread.

  “Sorry, sir. You can’t come through.”

  “We just wanna buy a train ticket,” Dizzy said. He’d worry about how far fifty bucks was going to take them later. Maybe the Hammer wouldn’t hit all the cities. It couldn’t hit the whole world, could it? There’d still be somewhere safe. “My wife’s expecting.”

  The officer glanced at Rosalyn. She definitely looked pregnant now. But it wasn’t going to change a thing.

  “They’ve shut the station, sir.” The officer was a nice young man, no older than Richie, and he treated Dizzy with respect. But he still wasn’t giving way. “IngaRail’s not taking any bookings. Their switchboard’s jammed and we’ve had to shut the concourse to clear the passengers already in there. I’m really sorry.”

  “When’s it gonna be open again?”

  “I don’t know. Come back tomorrow, maybe, when everyone’s calmed down.”

  Calm down? Shit, what was he talking about? Nobody was going to calm down after news like that. Dizzy turned around and steered Rosalyn away. They’d have to find somewhere to sit down and think of another way out.

  “God, what are we going to do?” she asked, clinging to his arm. “How are we going to get to Jacinto?”

  “We’ll make it, sweetie.” Dizzy squeezed her arm tight under his. “I won’t let anything happen to you or the baby.”

  “Might be babies,” she said. “Twins run in my family.”

  “Then I got even more reason to save you, ain’t I?”

  They walked down the road. It was getting harder with every block they crossed as the news sank in, and more people came onto the streets without any idea of how millions of COG citizens were going to cross mountains, oceans, and continents and cram into a small, safe part of a distant capital city.

  A big bearded guy was sitting alone at a table in a deserted pavement cafe, ignoring the river of panic flowing around him. Dizzy decided it was a good place to stop and think.

  “You’re not trying to leave?” Rosalyn asked the man.

  He smiled at her and sipped his coffee. “Crazy. They’ll never use the Hammer. It’s just to scare the grubs. Don’t you worry about it, ma’am. Don’t you worry at all.”

  EXCLUSION ZONE CHECKPOINT, NORTH OF JACINTO: TEN HOURS BEFORE THE HAMMER OF DAWN STRIKE.

  “He’s going to frigging do it.” Baird stared across the park, squinting into the sun even though he had a pair of goggles parked on the top of his head. That guy was never going to wear a helmet, no matter how many charges Iron Balls stuck him on. “I mean, he’s actually going to do it. Wow. If I ever meet the asshole, I’m going to ask him how long he’d been planning that shockeroo.”

  “Yeah, like Prescott’s gonna drop by for a chat,” Cole said. “Anyway, he’s only been in office like weeks. Two months, tops.”

  “Yeah, Dalyell would never have had the balls to go the whole way. But he would have had the plan, right? That Hammer net cost us as much as Ostri’s national debt, probably, so they didn’t shoot that into orbit just to improve TV reception. Y’know, I’ve changed my mind. I’d like to meet that Adam Fenix instead. Now there’s a clever guy. I mean, how many weapons engineers do the public actually know by name? He’s the poster boy for intelligent people everywhere.”

  “Yeah, Baird. We’ll add him to our dinner party guest list.”

  Cole liked Baird. Baird was his closest buddy now, a plain-talking guy who didn’t suck up to him because he was a thrashball star or take pops at him because he was rich and famous. He just treated Cole like a regular human being. But sometimes Cole just wished he would shut the fuck up.

  Like now. This was a dirty, nasty, rotten war, and Cole was fine with dirty and nasty as long as he was doing it to grubs. That was what he’d signed up for, to kill as many of the murdering assholes as he could. What he hadn’t signed up to do was help humans fry other humans.

  And that’s gonna happen in about ten hours or so.

  We’re gonna kill our own kind.

  Baird didn’t mean any harm, Cole knew. He was just yapping because he was scared—hell, who wasn’t?—and he couldn’t take in all this Hammer shit, not even a smart guy like him. But Cole was unwilling to do his job, the first time he could remember not wanting to do something hard since his math homework.

  It just wasn’t right to close the border while there were people still out there trying to get to Jacinto. Hell, it wasn’t even
a national border. They were in Tyrus, part of the same damn state. It was just the Plateau district limits. What did a Tyran passport mean if folks couldn’t move around in their own country?

  Kilo Squad—Cole, Baird, Dickson, and Alonzo—were patrolling the off-ramp from the southbound highway. Traffic from Port Farrall was backed up as far as Cole could see and the city engineers said they couldn’t handle any more traffic trying to join at this junction. Cole had thought this was just a traffic cops’ job until he got his boots on the ground.

  Scared, desperate people needed armed Gears to stop them doing something dumb. And Cole hated himself for being the one who had to do it.

  He stood at the barrier with his Lancer, turning back cars and trucks. He’d even turned back a motorcycle because the engineers said nothing, no more traffic, not even a kid’s push-bike. Shit, a motorcycle wasn’t going to get in anyone’s way. It could weave through the traffic jam. But if he let one through, then everyone else would want to get on the highway too, and they’d have a riot as well as a traffic jam.

  I’m telling people they gotta die ’cause we got no more room. Me. Did someone stop my folks driving down a road to escape from the grubs?

  The queue of vehicles for the on-ramp was gone now. Drivers had done U-turns and gone off to find another route into Jacinto, but there wasn’t one. Cole tried not to look them in the eye because that was real personal. He knew he was turning them back just to get stuck somewhere else when the Hammer went off.

  “Baird, this Hammer thing.” Alonzo sidled over to Baird, chewing his lip like he always did when he was getting agitated. “Is it going to zap everything? Like, how far does it affect outside a city? Okay, you’re going to be fucked sideways if you’re in the center of town, but what about the suburbs? Or the countryside?”

  Baird was staring south toward Jacinto, Lancer resting on his shoulder. “How the hell should I know? It’s classified.”