Coalition's End

  “Daddy, it’s coming! Listen!”

  There was definitely a vehicle rolling down the road, probably an APC, judging by that distinctive whine. Engine sounds still spoke to him after all these years. This was his one chance. He stepped out into the middle of the road with Maralin in his arms, and planted his boots square across the center line.

  “Teresa, wave the flashlight, sweetie. Stand at the side there and keep waving it. He’s gotta see us.”

  A brilliant white headlamp wobbled in the gloom ahead. It was hard to stand in the path of an oncoming APC, but Dizzy had to. It sounded its horn.

  He couldn’t step aside now.

  Okay, so they’ve seen me. They gotta stop or they gotta run me down, and my little girl with me.

  The APC ground to a halt. It surprised him that the Gears stopped, but maybe a crazy man standing in the road with a little girl in his arms and another now clinging to his coat wasn’t something they could pass by. The nose hatch opened and a Gear got out. He wasn’t wearing a helmet like most of them did. Dizzy could look him in the eye.

  “Whoa, fella, I nearly didn’t see you there.” He was about thirty or so, a regular-looking guy but very big. “What’s wrong with the little girl? Has she had an accident?”

  “She’s sick,” Dizzy said. “My Maralin’s sick and I can’t lose her, I just can’t. Help me, buddy, will ya?”

  Here he was, a Stranded bum asking a vehicle full of Gears to let him and his sick kid—maybe his infectious kid—sit among them. Dizzy braced himself for a brush-off and wondered what he’d do next. He didn’t even know if it was already too late.

  “Okay, get in,” said the Gear. He had a corporal’s stripes on his chest plate. “I don’t know how I’m going to get the medic to see you, but I’ll try.”

  So there were decent human beings still left in this world. Dizzy found himself sobbing. He squeezed into the crew compartment with Maralin on his lap and Teresa huddled wide-eyed and scared beside him, surrounded by six of the biggest guys he’d ever seen.

  “Son,” he said to the corporal, “you get my Maralin to the doctor and I’ll do any damn thing you want. I’ll sign up. I’ll join your damn Lifeboat. Anything as long as my girls live.”

  The corporal closed the nose hatch and the APC did a U-turn on the highway. “Hey, it’s a good life being a Gear. It’s a family. You won’t regret it. So what can you do?”

  “I can fix big engines,” Dizzy said. “And I can drive.”

  The corporal winked at one of the other Gears. “I think we got us a derrick driver, Vincenzo. Now let’s get this little girl to a doctor.”

  TEMPORARY BARRACKS, WRIGHTMAN HOSPITAL, JACINTO: SUMMER, 9 A.E.

  “Wow, things must be getting bad,” Baird said, looking out the Packhorse’s side window. “The rats are joining the sinking ship.”

  Another open truck full of Stranded recruits crawled past them into the barracks as Cole waited to drive out. They all had that same miserable look, more like prisoners of war than volunteers. Maybe that was how they saw themselves. Cole could understand that.

  “They must be real hungry,” he said.

  Alonzo craned his neck to watch until the truck was out of sight. “You think we can we trust them?”

  “Well, we’ve got their wives and kids in government shelters, all fed and cared for,” Baird said. “They can do the math.”

  Dickson fidgeted in the back. “Better to have them inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in, that’s what I say.”

  “Ah, you did your business postgrad at La Croix University, I can tell,” Baird said. “How was the module on managing the talent pipeline?”

  Cole shut him up. “What, you think they’re gonna sabotage us? Why would they do that? They’re gettin’ killed out there too.”

  “Wouldn’t you want some payback if you were them?” Alonzo asked.

  “Not if I was up to my ass in grubs, baby. I’d save it for later.”

  “But you would save it.”

  Cole wasn’t sure. He didn’t bear grudges against people, just grubs. That was so easy that he couldn’t imagine it being any other way. Grubs hadn’t stood up and said what their problem was with humans, there didn’t seem to be any damn point to them except killing, and until they came up with a real good excuse for slaughtering everybody, Cole wasn’t inclined to wonder if there were two sides to the argument.

  “Depends,” he said.

  Baird did his know-all head shake. “Don’t be surprised if we find bulldozers going missing. Shit, we’re giving them the keys to valuable assets. We should have locked them in the kitchens, not made them combat engineers.”

  “Yeah, well we ain’t got much choice, seein’ as we’re sufferin’ from overstretch.”

  “Herniated, more like.”

  “Someone’s got to get out there and move the rubble.”

  Trouble was, the grubs came at you two ways: underground or on the surface. Ephyra was built on a plateau that was mostly granite. The grubs couldn’t tunnel under the Jacinto district at all, but they could dig through most of Ephyra just fine. That was where most folks still lived and where the government buildings were. That was the real front of this war, right inside the city. Sometimes you held a street, sometimes you lost it, and sometimes you took it back again. Cole was surprised that more folks didn’t just cut and run, but they didn’t have much choice. There was nowhere else left to hide.

  Smart folks—well, smart folks with money and buddies in high places, anyway—were trying to move back into Jacinto. Every other civilian had to take their chances.

  Yeah, you Stranded ain’t the only ones caught on the outside. There’s always a safer place you can’t get to. Just a matter of degree, baby.

  Cole drove through the business district, noting that one of the bank buildings now had a lot of communications aerials, a COG Defense Department banner, and Gears guarding the doors. A Centaur tank was parked on the plaza in front.

  “Damn, must be my investment account in there,” Cole said.

  “That’s the divisional comms center now.” Baird knew all this shit. He actually read the memos. “They’re talking about taking over the Treasury, too. Lots of handy connecting tunnels and steel-lined vaults.”

  “Yeah, how long is that gonna stop the grubs?”

  “Well, we’re still here.” That was a rare bit of sunny optimism, coming from Baird. “So we must be doing something right. Or else the grubs are busy trashing somewhere else.”

  The wire, the defensive cordon of razor wire, concrete barriers, and tank traps, looked pretty battered when Cole drove through the checkpoint each day. They couldn’t stop the grubs digging e-holes inside the cordon, but they could try to stop the assholes moving across open ground, like forcing water through a narrower pipe to reduce the flow. Today they were looking for things the grubs had built overnight— bridges, rail tracks, anything that made it easier for them to move up stuff to dig in for a big assault on Ephyra.

  And we know it’s comin’, baby. Sooner or later. The big one.

  “You think they’re trying to get a suntan?” Dickson asked. “They seem to be on the surface a lot more now.”

  “Maybe they’ve run out of air freshener down below. Man, those tunnels must stink.”

  The Packhorse moved out into no-man’s-land, the outskirts where grubs came and went but where Stranded took their chances too. Cole passed a huddle of barricaded sheds with roofs made out of truck panels. A wisp of smoke curled up from behind the barricade, and a guy with a rifle was leaning on top of it. When he saw the Packhorse he just held up one hand, middle finger extended, and stared at them in total silence. It was creepier than getting pelted with stones or spat at.

  “Yeah, thank you, citizen,” Baird muttered. “I hope you get a Boomer up your ass.”

  Now that Cole was looking harder, he could see more wisps of smoke out there. Goddamn, the Stranded were all holed up in the ruins like gophers. He almost didn’t see them.
r />   “You ever been back to your old house, Baird?” Alonzo asked. “You were rich, right? Your folks were from one of the founding families or something.”

  “What, so I can watch a bunch of Stranded pissing in our swimming pool? No thanks.” Baird tapped his chest. “My swimming pool. My inheritance. See, I wanted to be an engineer, but no, my bitch of a mother insisted—”

  “Yeah, yeah, we heard that one,” Dickson said wearily. “But you would have been drafted as an engineer anyway, and now you’d be working with the Operation Lifeboat bums.”

  “I feel so much better now. Thanks.”

  Cole spotted a likely structure in the distance. There was a rickety bridge across the river to the old power station, and it hadn’t been there a couple of days ago.

  “Heads up, people.” He looked for a path through the rubble and swung east. “Anyone wanna knock down a bridge?”

  “Every little helps,” Dickson said. “But it’ll be back in a couple of days.”

  “Okay, then we’ll knock it down again.”

  Baird had the map on his lap, checking where they actually were. Maps usually didn’t help much because the streets and landmarks were just rubble now. “Yeah, careful where you park, Cole. It’s marshy down there. I don’t want to have to dig the Pack out of the swamp, y’know?”

  Cole reached the end of what had once been a road down to the waterfront. He could see the paving as he drove so he knew he was still on solid ground. The river wasn’t quite in the same place shown on the map.

  “I think some sluice gates failed somewhere,” Baird said. “It’s overflowed a bit.”

  Cole reached the end of the paved road by the shell of a building and put on the handbrake. It was about seventy-five meters to the bridge.

  “Yeah, let’s be sensible and park here.” There was enough cover from the building if they ran into any trouble, and a lot of low walls and other obstructions they could use to move into position. “Okay, let’s have some fireworks. I like fireworks.”

  They loaded up with charges from the back of the Packhorse and worked their way down to the water, moving from cover to cover. Baird was right about the marsh. By the time they reached the bridge, Cole’s boots were soaked. It was only a shallow river, but a regular vehicle would have been bogged down here fast.

  “Damn, my granny could build a better bridge than that,” Alonzo said. It was a raft of wooden planks suspended from metal posts on the banks, not so much over the river as sitting on it. “Okay, who’s going across to lay the charges on the other side?”

  They all looked at Baird.

  “Is this because I’ve got opposable thumbs?” he asked. “Because if not, I feel kind of victimized.”

  “You’re lighter than us,” Dickson said. “It’s all the hot air.”

  “Fuck you,” Baird huffed. “Okay. Watch and learn.”

  “Look, I’ll go,” Cole said.

  “No, Private Dickson is right. I’m not a lard-ass like him so I won’t sink this pile of cocktail sticks.” Baird grabbed the charges and dets, looking up and down the river. The nearest cover on the other side was the power station. “And you better watch my back, because I’m not swimming across. That water’s like the sewage outflow from a dysentery ward.”

  However much bitching and arguing Baird did, Cole knew he would always do the job. It was just noise to give himself a bit of courage. Baird tested the bridge with his boot and walked across, arms out for balance. The thing was vibrating with every step. When he got to the other bank he did a theatrical bow and started laying charges around the metal supports.

  Cole began wiring up the supports on the nearside bank while Alonzo and Dickson kept watch around the waterfront. If the grubs were anywhere, they’d be holed up in the power station or further along the river.

  “How you doin’, Baird?” Cole was getting anxious. It was taking a bit longer than he’d hoped. “How many you got left?”

  “Nearly done.”

  Cole looked up. Baird began edging his way back across the bridge, then stopped about five meters out from the bank and knelt down to peer underneath the structure.

  “I missed some.” Baird started unraveling wire. “They’ve sunk posts into the riverbed. Wow, they work fast. Maybe they’d like a job with the Ephyran Engineers.”

  “Come on, Baird. You’re kind of exposed out there.”

  “You want this thing put out of action or not?”

  “Just get a move on.”

  Cole watched Baird nervously. He laid a few more charges and was now about halfway across the bridge, lying flat with his head and arms over the side.

  “Next time, why don’t we just call in a Centaur and blow the bastard up?” he grumbled.

  “That’s probably gonna put it into orbit. Come on, get out of there, Baird.”

  “Just a few more.”

  “Baird.”

  “Look, I’m—”

  Cole didn’t hear the rest of the sentence. The explosion felt like a nail being hammered through both eardrums. He found himself instinctively dropping flat as mud, twisted metal, and big wooden splinters the size of staves flew everywhere.

  One of the charges had detonated prematurely. “Baird? Baird!” Cole scrambled to his feet. “Speak to me, baby!”

  Oh shit. Oh shit. He’s dead. Baird’s dead. “Well… fuck.” Alonzo already had his medical kit in his hand. “I can’t see him.”

  The bridge was drifting loose from the posts on the far bank, or what was left of them. The planks were shredded like a shark had bitten a chunk out of it and a section had broken off and was floating away. Cole could see a pile of muddy armor.

  “Oh, buddy, no…”

  Then the mud moved. The armor unfolded into Baird. He knelt up, very shaky, blood all over his face.

  “Whoa… okay, maybe I didn’t check that… shit, Cole? Cole, what happened?”

  “You’re driftin’, baby. Hang on. We’re gonna get you.” If there were grubs around, they’d be all over the place soon. Cole didn’t have time to mess around. “Dickson, I’m gonna bring the Packhorse down here and put a rope on the winch to haul him in. That’s the only way we’re gonna reach him. Just sit tight, okay?”

  “You know he’s still sitting on charges, don’t you?”

  “I do. So we’re gonna be real careful.”

  Cole sprinted for the Packhorse, forgetting all that stuff about progress behind cover. Baird was in deep shit. But when he got to the vehicle, the hood was up, all the doors were open, and even the tires were gone. There wasn’t even a rope or a tool left in the back. For a moment, Cole forgot all his tolerance for the Stranded and their bad luck.

  “You selfish motherfuckers!” he yelled. He clenched his fists and looked around, ready to beat the shit out of them, but they were long gone. He’d never felt that way about another human being before. But damn it, this was Baird’s life on the line. “You thievin’ no-good bums! Goddamn selfish assholes! Fuck you! I got a buddy out there and he’s gonna die thanks to you!”

  How the hell was he going to get to Baird now? There was only one option. He’d have to wade in and get him. He didn’t know how badly hurt he was, but he’d be dead if the grubs were coming to see what all the noise was about. He started running back down to the river, and then the firing started.

  Dickson got on the radio. “Cole, we got ten grubs on the other bank. We’re engaging.”

  Cole could hear Dickson yelling at Baird to stay down. He had to call this in. “Foxtrot-Six to Control, we’re at the river opposite the old power station. I got a man down in the river, no transport, and we’re taking fire. We could do with some help.”

  “Roger that, Foxtrot-Six. I’ll free up a Raven when I can, but we’ll task the closest unit, okay?”

  “Control, whatever you got is fine by me, baby.”

  The fire was coming horizontally across the river. Maybe the grubs hadn’t seen Baird. Cole dived flat beside Alonzo and took aim.

  “So where’s
the Packhorse?” Alonzo asked.

  “Goddamn Stranded stripped it. Tires ’n’ all.”

  “Assholes,” Dickson said. “See, you can’t trust ’em.”

  “I called in support.” Cole could see that the section of bridge was drifting while Baird fumbled with his rifle. He was in no fit state to fire. Cole pressed his earpiece. “Baird, you hear me? They ain’t seen you. Just lie low. ’Specially with all that explosive you’re sittin’ on, okay?”

  Baird just waved back. Yeah, he’d got the message. All Cole and the others could do now was keep firing until the grubs were picked off or help arrived, and hope that Baird hadn’t bled out by the time they got to him. Grub rounds were striking the broken wall right in front of Cole, sending puffs of brick dust into his face.

  One grub fell backward in a spray of blood and Dickson whooped. Cole took out another, but the others were hunkered down behind a metal tank half sunk in the mud. Cole could hear the rounds striking it like a badly tuned gong.

  Come on, Baird. Hang on.

  Might just be concussed.

  Might be skewered with a chunk of wood, too.

  “Can you hear that noise?” Dickson asked.

  Cole paused, trying to pick out something above the rattle of grub rifles. It was an engine, all right. The slope of the riverbank meant he couldn’t see a damn thing coming.

  “It’s not a ’Dill, and it’s not a Centaur,” Alonzo said.

  Cole could hear it really close now, a low grinding noise with a sort of burbling sound underneath, and the crack and crunch of rubble being crushed under tracks. He kept looking.

  Dickson tried to look around. “What the hell is that?”

  A shadow fell over Cole like someone had just dumped a skyscraper next to him. He stared up the incline at the biggest thing he’d ever seen, the underside of a chassis made up of huge, ugly metal pieces he didn’t even have names for, but he was damned sure they did the job.

  It was a Mammoth, a bridge-laying tank. He could see a dozer blade on the front.