Coalition's End

by Karen Traviss

  Bulls chased things. Baird knew that much. Stefan and the other rig workers started backing away and Baird saw some of them pick up buckets and firefighting equipment. He had to get this thing away from the imulsion before he shot it.

  “Okay,” Cole said. “I reckon I might be able to outrun him.”

  “You’re insane. It’s a bull.”

  “Somebody’s gotta move him.” Cole stepped in front of the bull and got his attention. Baird watched the animal’s eyes follow Cole, white-rimmed and panicky. “C’mon, fella. Come and see what the Cole Train got for ya.” Cole walked right across the bull’s eyeline. “See, he ain’t charging or anything. Polyps want to kill you as soon as they see you.”

  “Great,” Baird said. “He’s a big friendly thousand-kilo bomb.”

  The bull looked pretty sick, head down and panting, but as Cole walked into the trees and away from the clearing, he followed. Cole broke into a jog. The bull started to trot. Then Cole picked up speed. Yeah, bulls chased things. That much Baird knew.

  “Whoo! Come on, let’s play chase!” Cole waved his arms. “Baird, you better be right behind ready to shoot this asshole…”

  If it had been an open field, Cole wouldn’t have stood a chance. But he could zigzag between trunks and the huge bull wasn’t so good at that. Baird sprinted after them, trying to pick the moment when they were both far enough from the imulsion—and Cole had opened up enough of a gap— for him to open fire.

  “Somebody follow me with a bucket,” Baird yelled. “Because there’ll be a fire to put out.”

  Baird couldn’t keep an eye on everything. He was too busy looking for his shot, the one chance he might get to kill that thing before it got Cole. He heard people running behind him and the metallic clank of buckets. The crazy bull hunt was more than two hundred meters into the trees now, maybe a safe distance to drop the animal without the blast igniting the imulsion. He raised his Lancer.

  Shit, either I stop and aim, or I spray the thing.

  Cole was whooping but sounding less confident each time.

  “Baird, you ready?”

  “Ready.”

  “I mean seriously ready?”

  Baird had to fire now. He almost put a burst through the animal, but the bull suddenly changed direction and Cole was in Baird’s line of fire. He couldn’t do a damn thing.

  “Do it, Baird!”

  “Not yet—”

  Then the bull wheeled right. Baird didn’t know what had distracted it, but it might have been the noise of the buckets. Eugen was running along with a couple of tin pails. Baird saw him hesitate and stumble a couple of paces over the tree roots. The bull stopped, swung around, and started trotting toward him.

  “Shit, Eugen—get away!” Baird raised his rifle. “Just drop the buckets.”

  Baird didn’t think an animal that big could accelerate so fast. It shaved past him and charged Eugen. Before Baird could open fire, the bull rammed into the Gorasni, head down, and caught him full in the chest.

  The explosion wasn’t the Brumak-sized detonation Baird had expected but it blew Eugen meters into the air like a land mine. Cole and Baird ran forward into a rain of debris. It was already too late but Baird’s legs kept moving anyway. It was the dumbest thing; he could see the guy was fragged, completely fragged, but he still sprinted over to him and dropped onto his knees to try to stop the bleeding. Cole did, too. It took a couple of silent seconds before they looked at one another and the reality hit them. There was nowhere to even begin. Baird stared, trying to recognize what he was looking at. He’d seen this kind of shit a hundred times but now it felt like the first.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  “Oh, man…” Cole said.

  Suddenly Stefan was a few meters away and Baird got to his feet. He tried to stop Stefan going to Eugen’s body but the man shoved him aside. Fire licked up one of the tree trunks.

  “Oh God I’m sorry.” Baird couldn’t put this right. It upended him. “I’m sorry.”

  “Somebody get a tarpaulin,” Stefan said. “Do it.”

  They put out the fire with buckets of soil and then recovered Eugen. Baird’s lasting memory of that day would be that they did it in total silence; no yelling, no crying, nothing. They just carried him away, stony-faced, and set him down in the clearing. Baird looked at Cole.

  “Goddamn,” Cole said. “Goddamn, that just ain’t fair.”

  “I fucked up. It’s my fault.”

  “Baird, I didn’t manage to get a shot in either. Nobody did.”

  Baird went over to Stefan. The derricks were still pumping but nobody was keeping an eye on them. The dozen or so Gorasni stared at Eugen, now covered by someone’s coat, and still said nothing.

  “We better shut down the pumps,” Baird said. He could hear Cole on the radio to Control. “Let’s move out.”

  Stefan finally looked away from his friend’s body, tears streaming down his face. “I’ll take him back to his wife. But we carry on, or else it’s all for nothing.”

  “You can’t. It’s getting too dangerous.”

  “We will carry on.” Stefan grabbed Baird’s shoulder and almost shook him. “We carry on pumping imulsion because without it we will all die here.”

  Cole walked up and gave Stefan a crushing hug, because Cole could do that kind of thing as easily as breathing. But Baird had no idea what to say. He longed for that same effortless way with people in trouble. No, he wasn’t a people person; he made damn sure he kept his distance from almost everyone. But he felt terrible about Eugen, and even worse watching the man’s buddies go back to the derricks in tears to carry on working because a bunch of strangers—a bunch of old enemies—needed them to.

  As he waited for the Raven, he tried to remember when he’d last used the word Indies. Whenever it was, he knew he’d never use it again.

  FIVE KILOMETERS SOUTH OF EDLAR FARM, NORTHERN VECTES.

  Alex Brand sat down on a stile and watched Mac sniffing around in the grass, evidently unimpressed by his detective skills.

  “Does he know what he’s looking for?” she asked.

  Bernie stopped to inhale. On the other side of the pasture, Sam and Anya were kicking around in the grass, eyes down. At least those two seemed to be getting on well.

  “Yeah,” Bernie said. “Shit. Fresh shit.”

  “I hope he doesn’t roll in it, not if he’s coming back in the Packhorse.” Alex got up and ambled over to a cowpat. “This is the wrong vintage, is it?”

  “It’s an old one.”

  “So you had a ranch.” Alex took the remains of her cigar out of her sleeve and rummaged for her lighter. “Must have been nice. Can’t have been easy leaving that.”

  “Easier than you think.” Bernie walked up and plucked the cigar out of Alex’s mouth before she could light it. “Sweetheart, it’s not just because I fucking hate seeing anyone smoking in uniform. It’s because I need to use my sense of smell when I’m tracking. Save it for later.”

  She handed the stub back to Alex, who looked more surprised than annoyed. Bernie had always sworn she would never exploit the authority of age, but she did, and she also exploited all the stories that she knew had circulated about her since she’d rejoined the army. It just saved a lot of time. She was tired of explaining herself to strangers.

  “Well, you learn something every day, Mataki,” Alex said, and parked the cigar in her sleeve again.

  Mac came loping back to Bernie, wagging his tail and wearing his I’ve-been-a-clever-boy face. “You found something, Mac?” she asked. “Come on. Show Mum. What is it?”

  He trotted off, pausing every few meters to make sure she was still behind him. She wondered just how docile that bull would be now that he was on the loose with his cows and probably remembering what his natural role in life was— defending his females. It’d be embarrassing if she couldn’t handle the animal when everyone expected her to work miracles with anything on four legs. The bag of cattle nuts rattled on her belt. Bribery would do the trick.


  The radio interrupted her thoughts. “Baird to Mataki— you there, Grannie?”

  “Mataki here.” Baird didn’t sound quite right. “Everything okay, my precious little ray of sunshine?”

  “You need to watch your ass. We found the bull.”

  “In fragments?”

  “Intact and psychotic. He turned Lambent.”

  It took a couple of seconds to sink in. “What do you mean, turned Lambent?”

  “What does it sound like? He looked kind of rabid, his drool was luminous, and he exploded. Meets my criteria.”

  “So we could be tracking glowie cows.” Bernie heard Alex sigh behind her. “Thanks for the heads-up. Now, what else is wrong?”

  It came out in a small voice, not the cocky Baird at all. “Eugen’s dead. It got him.”

  Baird was new to caring about people. He didn’t have anything to fall back on for strength except his indifference, and he didn’t sound as if it was working right then. She felt for him.

  “I’m really sorry, Blondie. He was a good bloke. Are you and Cole okay?”

  “No injuries.”

  “You come down to the sergeant’s mess when I get back,” she said. It was easier to tell him than ask him, given his social skills. “We’ll have a beer. Talk it over. Mataki out.” She changed channels. “Mataki to Stroud. Ma’am, they’ve found the bull. It was Lambent, so we better assume the cows are too. One Gorasni’s been killed already.”

  The conversation was on the open network now. Anya took a few seconds to come back to her. “Any reason why we shouldn’t go on?”

  “None, ma’am. I’d rather kill every Lambent than take the risk of it spreading.”

  “Agreed. Stroud out.”

  Alex matched pace with Bernie, looking anxious. “Who bought it this time? Tell me it’s not Cole.”

  “A Gorasni bloke,” Bernie said. “One of Baird’s mates.”

  “Goddamn. You really are chummy with the little princess, then.”

  Bernie bristled. She’d punched out Baird and said some pretty spiteful things to him in the past, but that was her privilege and they’d reached an understanding. Nobody outside the squad could say a word against him.

  “I judge him by what he does, not what he says,” Bernie said stiffly. “You leave my boy alone.”

  “No problem,” said Alex. “You’re more tolerant of dumb animals than I am.”

  There was no love lost between her and Baird, then. Fine: she didn’t have to work with him these days. Bernie caught up with Mac next to a fine crop of cow dung still busy with flies. He looked up at her as if to swear blind that he wasn’t even thinking of rolling in the stuff.

  “You’re a gentleman,” she said, slipping him more rabbit jerky before putting the leash back on him. “Okay, find ’em. Seek.”

  Anya paused to peer at the dung before moving on. “Does that mean they’re not Lambent?”

  “No idea,” Bernie said. “But Baird’s theory that it jumps the species barrier looks more plausible every time we meet a new glowie variety.”

  “I’m not taking any chances, no matter how badly we need the meat and milk.”

  “Fair enough.” Priorities had suddenly changed. It was more Lambent hunting than recovering livestock. “I still want to find out how cattle get infected. It can’t be simple contact, or else Mac would be Lambent by now.”

  “And Prescott’s going to want samples. He can’t do a damn thing with them, but it’s easier than arguing that point with him.”

  Bernie didn’t want to get sucked into the guessing games of what Prescott was up to. It was bad enough waking up in the night to find Hoffman pacing around and fretting about that bloody data disc. But it was hard not to ask more questions each day and become consumed by them.

  “Did anyone know Eugen?” Bernie asked, remembering something that actually mattered.

  “Yeah,” Sam said. “Was it him?”

  “Sorry.”

  “His poor bloody wife.”

  No, the Gorasni really weren’t the enemy now, no matter how much history said they were. They’d fallen into that broad, borderless, vague nation called Us. Mac dragged Bernie for a kilometer through lush grass and nobody spoke for a long time.

  “Over there.” Anya stopped and took out her field glasses. Bernie brought Mac to a halt. “Look.”

  A few sheep that had evaded the roundup were grazing on the short grass along the banks of a stream. But when Bernie looked harder, there was something else with them: a pure white cow. For a moment she was more worried about failing eyesight than Lambent.

  “Please God, no exploding sheep,” Alex said. “I don’t want a surreal death.”

  “I’m not planning on any kind of death.” Bernie found it revealing that Gears would happily take on grubs and glowies but were wary of farm animals. That was city kids for you. She thought again of a seventeen-year-old Dom and the look on his face when he had to kill a chicken in survival training. “Ma’am, I’ll go and check them first. You wait here in case too many strange humans spook them. We don’t want to end up chasing them all over the island.”

  “Isn’t Mac going to scare them?” Sam asked.

  “He’s a local dog. He’s used to livestock and they’re probably used to him.”

  Anya tapped her on the arm. “Bernie, any risk—any doubt at all—and you get out of there, okay?”

  “I’ve got plenty of practice at dodging cows, ma’am,” she said, slipping the Longshot off her shoulder. “And two rifles. Don’t worry.”

  Bernie took the bag of feed nuts off her belt and shook it as she walked toward the animals. The sheep raised their heads but didn’t come rushing at her. Mac padded calmly beside her. The cow looked up and stared.

  Cows were curious animals. They were used to humans, too, and humans meant feeding and milking to them, especially when the human was carrying a bag of recognizable food. Bernie expected the cow to amble over to check her out, and that was what it did.

  “Don’t let me down, Mac,” Bernie said. “Not now I’ve told everyone what a good boy you are.”

  Bernie slowed to a stop, still shaking the bag, and waited for the cow. When the old girl got close enough and was busy with the cattle nuts, Bernie could put a rope on her. The animal definitely looked in calf.

  But where were the others? They’d stay together as a herd, so it didn’t bode well.

  And where were the dogs?

  If Mac was any guide, they’d have gone hunting polyps. They might not have been as smart or as lucky as him.

  “Never mind, Mac,” Bernie said. “Seb’s got another bull. And we’ve got other herds. Beef’s going to stay on the menu.”

  She was still watching the cow heading her way at a leisurely pace when something caught her eye. A streak of white shot behind some trees along the bank, moving faster than she expected. She dropped the bag and reached for her Longshot instinctively.

  “Bernie?” Anya’s voice in her earpiece sounded worried. “Bernie, what is it?”

  “Another cow,” she said. “Just being cautious.”

  The animal came cantering out of the tree cover. The cow that had been ambling over to Bernie suddenly bolted, the sheep scattered, and Mac started barking. Both cows were now cantering toward her. She sighted up without a conscious thought and aimed at the first animal between its shoulder and throat.

  The first shot dropped the cow on the spot. Bernie didn’t have time to reload the Longshot. She dropped it and unslung her Lancer to open fire on the second animal. The cow swung wide and stumbled for a few meters before collapsing, bellowing loudly.

  But they didn’t detonate. Neither cow had detonated. The fact struck Bernie only after she’d dropped both of them. She’d shot two normal, healthy animals.

  She ran over to the cow that was still bellowing and tried to get close enough to see how badly hurt it was. By now, Anya, Sam, and Alex had sprinted across the pasture to catch up with her. Mac kept barking. “Steady, girl. I’m sor
ry. I’m sorry.”

  “They’re not Lambent,” Anya said, breathless.

  The cow was still thrashing around, trying to stand up. “Yeah, I know that now, ma’am,” Bernie snapped. She was appalled. Her first reaction had been a soldier’s, not a farmer’s. Drill kept you alive but it also meant that it rewired you to shoot without having a debate first. “Shit. Shit.”

  A single Longshot round could stop a truck, but the Lancer needed a bit more effort. Bernie had just left the poor animal badly wounded. There was nothing she could do for it now except put it out of its misery. She rested the rifle’s muzzle on the cross point between its eyes and horns and squeezed the trigger. The loud crack took a long time to die away on the air.

  Bernie stood contemplating what she’d done. Anya put her hand on her back and said nothing.

  “Well, they were coming at you, Bernie,” Sam said. “I’d have done the same. What started them off?”

  Mac’s reaction should have clued them in. He was still barking, and Bernie finally got the message when she saw the trees a hundred meters away suddenly empty of birds.

  “Stalks!” Anya yelled. “We’ve got stalks, people!”

  “Where?” Alex swung around, rifle ready. “I can’t feel any tremors.”

  Bernie started jogging toward the trees. Mac overtook her at full pelt. He stopped just short of the stream and began pawing at the grass.

  “Mac, get away from there!” Bernie yelled. “We can see where it is. Mac! Come back here.”

  “That’s a handy trick,” Alex said. Mac raced back to Bernie’s side, still barking. “Now what are we going to do?”

  “Kill whatever comes out,” said Anya. “Spread out, people.”

  They stood back, staring at the spot Mac had picked. Bernie could feel a tremor, but nothing like as strong as the previous ones she’d experienced.

  “It’ll be a small one, Bernie,” Sam said.

  “God, we’re getting blasé about these things.”

  Anya moved further right. “Everybody ready?”