Coalition's End

  “Fort Andius to KR-Two-Three-Nine.”

  “Two-Three-Nine receiving, Commander,” Sorotki said.

  “KR-Eight-Zero has a message for Hoffman.”

  Hoffman perked up. “Go ahead.”

  “Major Gettner says you’re not to blow a gasket, but she pushed her reserve tank and made it to Anvegad. She’s on her way back with the recon images. She managed to land Rossi inside Anvil Gate.”

  Hoffman shut his eyes for a second. “And?”

  “Deserted, sir, and in one piece. And he says the river’s still flowing into the cisterns.”

  Trescu knew little detail about Anvegad except that it had an underground river that provided its power and water. Even when the river had been dammed by the UIR during the siege, the garrison at the heavily armed mountain fort had still been able to hold out for months. But he knew far more about the COG lieutenant who’d not only held it but had ambushed a UIR regiment that had come to take his surrender. He watched Hoffman’s face carefully.

  “Well, damn,” Hoffman said, as if someone had told him they’d met an old friend who’d asked after him. “We could use a place like that.”

  CNV SOVEREIGN, VECTES NAVAL BASE: ONE WEEK LATER.

  “Peas,” Sam said. She had a bag of them stashed in her belt and kept sneaking out a pod to pop it and devour the contents. “I never thought I’d crave peas. You know when you just have to eat something sweet? Well, peas. Hits the spot.”

  “Do you remember chocolate?” Dom found himself thinking of luxuries he’d never been fond of when he could buy them. “I mean really remember what it used to taste like.”

  “Like coffee. That barley stuff is okay, but I know if I tasted the real thing again I’d get a shock.”

  They were building bunks in one of the weapon sections on board Sovereign, hammering nails into wooden frames. The old Raven’s Nest carrier was becoming more of an ark than flagship. Michaelson seemed pretty relaxed about seeing his warship turned into a cruise liner, but Dom suspected it couldn’t have been easy for him.

  No missiles left. Not even a full squadron of Ravens. What else are we going to use all this space for?

  “There.” Dom stood back to admire the precision of their carpentry. Actually, it was pretty rough, but it wouldn’t collapse, and that was all that mattered. “It’s amazing what a Gear can do. Look how many skills we’ve had to learn.”

  “Well, the next one to learn is making wooden joints instead of using nails,” Sam said. “Because we’re going to be running out of those, too.”

  “They’re rehearsing us.”

  “What?”

  “How many people sleep ashore now? You tell me. They’re getting us used to the idea of moving out.”

  Sam picked up the tool bag and gave him a look. “They? You’re talking about Hoffman and Michaelson, Dom. Not some dickhead politician. They’re our own. They’ve always been straight with us.”

  “Sorry. I just—ah, I’m finding it hard to think about how we’ll have to live if we leave here.”

  “Oh God, not the Stranded thing again. Please.”

  “It’s not about being like the Stranded, Sam. It’s about why we bothered to fight for so long when we could have just called it a day fifteen years ago.”

  Sam slung the bag over one shoulder and her Lancer over the other. Even below decks, every Gear kept their rifle with them. She took hold of the handrails on the ladder and looked back at him.

  “You’ve heard the saying about throwing good money after bad, haven’t you? Well, fighting’s like that too.”

  “Yeah. I know.”

  “You know what worries me?”

  “What?”

  “If we go, we have to split up into smaller groups one way or another. Groups of a few thousand, at most. There’ll be people we won’t be seeing again. The Gorasni, for a start. The Pelruan people. The Gears who end up as shore garrisons.”

  Dom knew that, but he also took it for granted that in Michaelson’s emergency plan, he’d still be with the people he’d always lived alongside—Marcus, Anya, Cole, Baird, Hoffman, Bernie, Rossi, and Jace. It was the old gang. That was all he cared about.

  Am I being selfish? It’s going to hit the Jacinto civvies really hard.

  “We’ll be okay,” he said. “We’ve still got a lot of Gears. Hell, there are Gears here I hardly know, even after a lifetime in the army. People stick to the little tribes they’ve always been part of. That’s what people do, COG or Indie.”

  “And what if those people have jobs that mean they have to go somewhere else? Every settlement needs a medic, and an engineer, and so on. You can’t do that without splitting people up.”

  It was too much for Dom to think about. People would be upset, but that was life. It beat being dead—well, generally.

  “Radio,” he said. “We’ll talk on the radio. Seriously. It’s not like we’re going to be cut off from everyone forever.”

  Sam gave him that sad, exasperated look. She was probably asking in a roundabout way whether he wanted to be with her, not whether he cared about the trauma of separation for civvies he didn’t have much contact with anyway. Dom was on the brink of answering the unasked question at last when he hit that glass barrier again. Damn, damn, damn. It wasn’t as if she was some woman he didn’t care about who was sweet on him. That would have been easy. He just couldn’t move on, even though he knew it was a really great idea.

  So I can’t ever nag Marcus again about Anya. At least they’ve got a relationship, however distant it looks. They’re an item. Even Baird’s got more of a life than I have these days, God help me. Frigging Baird’s turning into a social animal.

  “Come on,” Dom said. “The planks won’t walk themselves down here.”

  Up on the flight deck, Sovereign looked like any warship undergoing a refit. There were huts and tents everywhere, and seamen working with civvies.

  But these weren’t temporary workshops. They were here to stay—they were greenhouses, storage tanks, and sheds. There were even raised vegetable beds being built.

  “The Aleksander Reid Tomato Sanctuary,” Dom said, desperately trying to lift the mood. “I’m going to name a variety after him.”

  “Cometh the hour, cometh the man.” Sam rubbed a leaf between her fingers, releasing the pungent green scent of tomato. “Yeah, you were right. If he hadn’t kept on about it, we’d be in trouble now.”

  “Simple plan. Grow everything in containers. Even trees. Always stay one step ahead of the stalks.”

  The timber was stacked on the jetty but there was no such thing as a stevedore these days. They had to shift their own materials. Sam selected some lengths of two-by-four and began tying them at both ends. There wasn’t much room to maneuver with all the activity going on around them.

  “We could be here for years,” Dom said. “Or we might just move up the coast. Yeah, Hoff and Captain Charisma are right. Stay flexible.”

  “And Trescu,” Sam said, but she was cut short by the rising note of the warning siren. Everyone froze. “Oh shit, what’s that?”

  Everyone who had a personal radio seemed to press receive at once. Most civvies didn’t have one. They stood watching anyone in uniform for a clue. Out here in the docks, they couldn’t tell what was going on inside the base itself or in the camp.

  Dom listened to his radio, staring at Sam. It was like looking in a mirror. She had her finger to her ear too, and probably the same expression of dread that he knew was on his face as well.

  “Control to all callsigns,” Mathieson said. “Tremors detected close to the north perimeter. Stand to.”

  Sam dumped the tool bag on the timber to lay claim to it and ran after Dom. It was a well-practiced routine, but not because of drills. They did it for real too often. Every Gear dropped what he or she was doing and ran for the positions they would defend in an attack, leaving the civilians to report to muster points and get to shelters.

  That was the plan, anyway. Dom knew—as everyone did—that
there was no way of predicting where the stalks would come up, and so nowhere was a safe shelter, and nowhere was the right place to be to deal with an attack. The plan had to be there. It just wasn’t meant to be followed that closely.

  “That’s got to be a record,” Sam said, pointing up.

  There was a Raven in the air already, hovering over the south wall. They’d got off the ground inside two minutes. It had to be Gettner.

  “She’s obsessed,” Dom said. Sam would know who he meant. “She must just sit in the cockpit all day, waiting.”

  “She does. I’ve seen her.”

  “What about poor old Barber?”

  “Him too.” Sam peeled off to go to her stand-to point on the gun battery. The caged chickens placed around the base were squawking and flapping. “That’s why you can’t beat them at cards.”

  Marcus was already at the gate with a flatbed Packhorse idling and its machine gun loaded. Dom could feel the tremors under his boots now.

  “So much for the early warning chickens,” Dom said. “They’re all going nuts. It would help if they were a bit more specific.”

  “Okay, either it’s close, or it’s a lot of them,” Marcus said. “What do you want to do, drive or shoot?”

  “Shoot,” Dom said.

  He climbed on the back of the Packhorse and checked the ammo belt. Now it was just the awful waiting for things to come up or for Gettner to call it. He could still feel the tremors.

  The Raven circled, and then a second bird joined it.

  Come on… come on…

  “Switch that damn siren off,” Marcus muttered. “We heard it already.”

  Come on…

  “Two-Three-Nine to all callsigns, it’s in the camp—it’s coming up inside the wire.” Sorotki had spotted it. “Block H for Hotel. Inside the wire. Two stalks—no, three.”

  “Hang on tight, Dom.” Marcus hit the gas and the Packhorse shot off through the gates and down the main track through the camp.

  Civilians were standing around, panicked and confused. They knew the drill. When they heard the siren, they turned on their broadcast radios, if they had them. The rest was word of mouth. In a fast-moving incident there was no way of making sure everyone had the right information anyway. Chaos unfolded despite Sharle’s meticulous planning.

  Dom could only yell at them. “It’s in the camp—get inside!” Inside where? There was nowhere safe to send anybody. At least he could tell them where not to go. “It’s in block H. Get off the roads.”

  The crowded camp seemed a lot bigger when he needed to get somewhere fast. He hung on to the rail one-handed as Marcus careered down the narrow tracks and took a sharp right, nearly throwing him out. But now he could see the stalks above the single-story homes, three twisted gray things with pulsing blisters on them. More pushed up out of nowhere while he watched, another six in a matter of seconds. This was going to be bad.

  “Eight-Zero here, we’ve got polyps—lots of polyps. I can’t engage. Too many civvies. Ah, shit—” Gettner went off-mike. The next thing Dom heard was the bullhorn on the Raven echoing over the roofs. “Go right! Get to the main track! Go right! Run!”

  Gettner was doing her best to herd the people out of the way. “Get me in there, Marcus,” Dom said. “Come on.” He could hear the screams and the grenade-like explosions. “It’s all kicked off.”

  Marcus slammed on the brakes at the end of one of the tracks. Dom could hear other Packhorses heading their way and the sound of boots running everywhere, but once he saw the view down that path he couldn’t focus on anything else.

  All he could see was a tidal wave of people running toward him in blind panic, some carrying kids or trying to drag old folks, others stumbling and unable to keep up. He could only guess what was happening behind them. It looked like a rank of machine guns was mowing people down from behind. A mass of polyps was racing after them.

  Marcus was out of the Packhorse and charging through the center of the crowd by the time Dom pulled the machine gun off its mount and ran after him. Civvies parted around him like a river hitting a rock midstream. A matter of meters above the buildings, a Raven hovered with its door gunner loosing off short bursts straight down at the ground behind the civvies.

  “Come on, come on, get out!” Marcus was pushing people past him with one arm, Lancer held clear of the stampede with the other. “Just run! Run!”

  The explosions behind the crowd got louder. “Eight-Zero here—there’s hundreds of them, Marcus.” That was Barber, manning the Raven’s door gun. “They’ve scattered everywhere. It’s not all polyps. We’ve got fuck knows what coming out of the pods, too.”

  “We’ve got it, Barber,” Marcus yelled. “Move on. Stop the rest.”

  The Raven banked away. Dom was right behind Marcus as they pressed through to the rear of the crowd and suddenly the civvies were gone. Dom felt like he was falling off a cliff. For a second he was staring at a scuttling mass of gray legs and things with fangs that reminded him of grotesquely deformed cats, trampling over a carpet of bodies that he couldn’t bear to look at. Marcus ran on and opened fire. Dom had to run over them too. They charged into the mass of glowies and hosed everything that moved. Dom dropped the machine gun when he ran out of ammo and switched to his Lancer.

  The things were exploding so close to him that he felt the spatter like drops of boiling water hitting his face. If there was anybody on the ground who was just wounded, they didn’t stand a chance. There was nothing he or Marcus could do to stop and check. They were knee deep in Lambent, and they had to keep firing. Once Dom got into this rhythm, it was unconscious and almost impossible to stop. He was still firing and reloading when Marcus grabbed his arm and he realized he was yelling at him.

  “I said stop, Dom!” Marcus’s face was all shock and sweat. “Come on, next road—can’t you hear it?”

  The screaming and explosions suddenly hit Dom like the sound being turned back on. He ran toward it. Rossi, Jace, and Anya were already there alongside a couple of civilians with shotguns. A ’Dill behind them was blasting away at the seething mass. Some of the huts were already on fire. It was chaos; nobody could hold a line like this when the polyps were swarming everywhere. The most anyone could do was surround them and work into the mass from the outside. But they were fast and small, and whatever the hell the cat things were could move even faster. Dom was firing on reflex.

  Suddenly it seemed like every Gear in the base was packed into these few roads, shooting anything that moved. The explosions become less of a continuous firecracker of sound and then sporadic ones and twos, and then stopped completely.

  All Dom could hear now was sobbing, shouting, and Ravens overhead. Marcus was clearing a space at an intersection of the paths for one of the birds to land. Anya grabbed Dom’s arm.

  “Come on, Dom.” She squeezed his biceps. Maybe he looked in a bad way. “We’ve got a lot of casualties. Help me do some triage.”

  One battle was over but the next one had started. As firefighting crews moved in to douse the fires, the task of getting the wounded to the infirmary began.

  Adrenaline and drill formed a powerful anesthetic. Dom switched off for the duration and found himself making terrible choices, deciding who was too badly hurt to save and who might make it, worrying about the silent ones more than those screaming, following the procedure he’d been taught and that he’d gone through so many times on the battlefield over the years. There were burns and missing limbs, and abdominal injuries so bad that he couldn’t recognize what he was looking at as a live human being.

  But he was coping. He worked through the mass of casualties on the ground with Anya and the other Gears. He was coping right up to the moment he saw a small boy; the kid’s eyes were wide and he was shaking uncontrollably in complete silence, huddled against a woman who was obviously dead. Dom was paralyzed for a moment.

  Is that how Benedicto spent his last moments? Is that what happened to my Bennie?

  Marcus stepped out of nowhere int
o Dom’s path and scooped up the kid. “It’s okay, Dom,” he said. “I’ve got him. Move on.”

  Somehow Marcus was always there when Dom reached the brink, and always knew how to pull him clear of it. Dom snapped back into the moment and carried on.

  Yeah, as long as Marcus was around, everything would be okay in the end.

  INFIRMARY, VECTES NAVAL BASE.

  Doc Hayman was the last person Hoffman wanted to cross and the first he wanted around when casualties really overwhelm them.

  He found her in one of the two tiny operating theaters, just well-lit rooms with a little more kit than the first-aid stations, standing in blood while she closed.

  He was no stranger to blood, but seeing it pooling on a hospital floor was another thing entirely. One of the orderlies moved about the room cleaning as best he could, swabbing the floor around Hayman’s shoes with a mop. After a few minutes she stepped back and handed over to Tom Mathieu, a combat medic who’d had to get very good at trauma surgery very fast.

  Hoffman had reached a watershed. He tried to work out whether he’d just lost his nerve on a bad day, or if he’d really reached a point where the decision to abandon the island was inevitable.

  All on my watch. All these people dead on my watch. What am I doing to these poor bastards?

  “I’ve been operating for six hours. Now I’m going to have a smoke, Colonel.” Hayman looked him in the eye, gloved hands held away from her makeshift apron. “If you want to talk, prepare to inhale my fumes.”

  “Can I do anything?” he asked.

  “Yes. Stop bringing me dying people.”

  Outside in the corridor, wounded civilians and Gears were still waiting for treatment. Michaelson was walking around being comforting and charming to them. They were the least badly injured—nothing minor, mostly severe burns and shrapnel wounds. Anyone with less serious injuries would have gone home and fixed themselves up somehow. Hoffman wandered over to a couple of the Gears and sat with them, unable to say much.