Coalition's End

  She paused to check the contents stenciled on the sides: fermented cabbage, salt pork, dried beef, pemmican, dried fruit and vegetables, pickles, and hard tack. The COG’s menu had suddenly rolled back centuries to what Michaelson liked to call “the wooden navy.”

  And Captain Charisma just loves this seat-of-the-pants stuff. It’s the end of the world, and he’s up on the foredeck or whatever the fuck they call it, laughing in the face of the gale and telling the glowies to bring it on.

  No wonder Michaelson’s crews would follow him anywhere. He had a bit of Major Stroud in him, that visible, luminous certainty of victory however bad the odds. Bernie wished some of it would rub off on Hoffman.

  “Boomer Lady,” said a voice from the end of the passage of crates. “You know I ain’t the complainin’ kind, but you wanna tell me what the hell I’m supposed to do with this?”

  Cole, silhouetted by a bulkhead light, held up some rectangular objects about the size of a deck of cards.

  “It’s a ship’s biscuit,” Bernie said. “Hardtack. Lasts forever.”

  “Am I supposed to eat it or repair the goddamn hull with it?”

  “Soak it in water and make a porridge out of it. Crumble it in a stew to thicken it. Beat vermin to death with it. Dead handy stuff. If you’re lucky, you’ll get some weevils in it eventually.”

  Cole handed it to her. The civilians had been working around the clock to make thousands of them. The whole base had been turned into a massive food processing plant, and some wag had pressed the words FUCK YOU PRESCOTT onto this particular batch.

  “Yeah, I think I’ll wait for them weevils to break it up a bit first,” Cole said. He didn’t look his usual chirpy self. “Or get Dizzy to drive Betty over it.”

  “You okay?”

  “No. To tell you the truth, I ain’t.”

  “Want to tell your old mum why?”

  “I heard about Anvil Gate. All the Pelruan folk sayin’ how much better they feel knowin’ Hoffman’s gonna be lookin’ after ’em up there.”

  Bernie kidded herself that she hadn’t made up her mind to go and so she didn’t have to tell anyone in Delta yet, but she knew it was a bad case of denial. Of course she was going with Hoffman. How could she not?

  It still broke her heart. She wondered whether to tell Cole that she’d had the chance to veto it, but it was all too complicated, too close to making her change her mind.

  “He could cope without me,” she said. “But I want him to have a better existence than just coping.”

  “We’re gonna miss you.” Cole draped his arm around her shoulder and walked her up the deck. “Yeah, that’s kinda obvious, ain’t it? You’re just gonna have to call us on the radio and make sure we’ve washed behind our ears.”

  “I will.”

  Lady, you got a handshake like a Boomer. I like that in a woman. It was the first thing Cole had said to her when they met. The Boomer Lady nickname had stuck. She could leave Delta, but that small stuff would be embedded in her forever. In hindsight, it had been a lot easier to leave Galangi.

  “Come on,” she said. “I’ve got to get up to the farm now. I’m not looking forward to this.”

  “Baird and me, we thought we oughta give you a hand.”

  “It’ll be pretty grim up there, Cole.”

  “That’s why we gotta be there.”

  They climbed the ladder to the next deck. Baird was waiting on the brow, a small glass jar clutched in one hand while Mac sat at his feet and stared up at him as if he was the most fascinating person in the world.

  “Yeah, you’d eat this, wouldn’t you?” Baird was telling him. “But you lick your own ass, so what do you know?”

  “Are you tormenting my child?” Bernie asked.

  Baird shoved the jar under her nose. “This is your recipe, right?”

  “Pemmican. It’s just dried meat preserved in fat.”

  “Granny, I’ve flushed things down the crapper that had more taste appeal than this.”

  “Look, I’ll show you how to use it,” she said. “When you’re starving to death somewhere, you’ll thank me.”

  “Not if he’s gotta spread it on that ship’s biscuit, he won’t,” Cole said.

  Baird scraped a chunk out of the jar with his knife and plopped it on the deck at Mac’s feet. The dog pounced on it and looked up expectantly for more. It wasn’t like Baird to make a fuss of Mac, so Bernie braced for a bad reaction to the news that she was going to Anvil Gate instead of staying with the main rapid reaction force in Sovereign. It would come, one way or another.

  Well, I asked for it. Can’t build a bond with people and then just walk away and expect them not to feel let down.

  Maybe Rossi could cope with command of Anvegad. Maybe…

  It was all too seductive. And she was still thinking in terms of command structures and governance, when she knew damn well that the COG was done and dusted the moment they left Vectes. It had to be. Settlements needed to realize they were on their own in a loose alliance of mutual aid, just like the rest of the Stranded out there.

  She hadn’t escaped her worst nightmare in the end. The thing she despised most, the thing she dreaded, was becoming Stranded—uncivilized, undisciplined, savage. But COG or no COG, she was going to carry on at Anvil Gate as if everything was still in place

  “Come on,” Baird said. “Haven’t we got some cows to practice head shots on?”

  Cole sighed and cuffed him playfully across the back of the head as they walked down the brow and onto the jetty. Yes, that was exactly what they had to do. Bernie saw no point in sugarcoating it. The cull had been going on for a couple of weeks and it was getting to her. She couldn’t leave it to the poor bloody farmers. There was nothing worse than having to kill your own healthy stock.

  She comforted herself with the excuse that if they just abandoned the animals they couldn’t take with them, then they’d end up turning Lambent or blown to pieces by polyps. Or they’d starve to death when all the grazing was finally killed off by whatever the stalks were spreading. She was just saving them from a slow death.

  And us. We’re not going to die. Not now.

  Before she reached the main gate, another open truck rumbled slowly past, laden with cow and sheep carcasses and even a couple of deer. It reminded her of TV news footage that had worried her father when she was a small kid, black-and-white images of Kaia’s mass culls when a livestock epidemic swept through the island. The sight of dead animals piled high and pathetic legs sticking out at angles took her back to a time when she’d felt scared for reasons she didn’t understand. All she’d known was that the grown-ups were afraid because they couldn’t make it go away, so she was afraid too, because grown-ups were supposed to be able to make everything all right.

  Yeah. And they still can’t. I’m a sixty-year-old scared kid now, that’s all.

  Vectes had a lot more livestock than its population needed. It was good news when Jacinto’s refugees had arrived, but now it was a problem that had to be solved the hard way.

  “What about the pigs?” Baird asked, climbing into the Packhorse and starting the engine. Mac got in the back seat with Cole and rested his chin on Baird’s shoulder, devoted to his new best mate.

  “Pigs earn their keep better,” Bernie said. “You can pet them if you like. They’re really intelligent.”

  “They’re breakfast.”

  “Ah, that’s the callous Blondie I know and love.”

  “Hey, Clayton Carmine stands there murmuring ‘bacon’ at them. Go lecture him about callous.” Baird’s mouth was set on maximum crassness today, a sure sign that he was upset. “Okay, how hard can this be? What do we do, sit on the fence and just pick them off?”

  “They’ll panic, Blondie. So we walk them into a barn one at a time, put some food down to distract them, then pop them about here at point-blank range.” She indicated the point on her own forehead. “If I had horns, it’d be on the diagonal with my eyes.”

  “If you had eyes at the sid
e of your head.”

  “Yeah. You get the idea.”

  Baird went quiet for a while. Cole was talking to Mac about a racing career and seemed to be achieving some level of conversation. They were heading for Merris Farm—Jonty’s farm—where most of the stock that hadn’t been selected for live transport was being brought. At least poor old Jonty had been spared the sight of his herd being put down. The Packhorse was a kilometer away and she could already hear sporadic single gunshots.

  “So,” Baird said, not looking at her. “You’ll be able to blow the brains out of all kinds of unsuspecting wildlife up in the Kashkuri mountains, won’t you? You still got that sniper hat I found for you in Port Farrall?”

  “Of course. And the grub cleaver.” That was the real Baird she’d come to know, the basically decent human being who gave friends things they really needed. “I’d never part with them. It means a lot to me.”

  It was probably the wrong thing to say to him, too open and too emotional.

  “Yeah, I understand,” he said, all bravado. “If Hoffman’s going to go, then you’ve got to go with him. I mean, you’re not going to find another guy willing to hump you at your time of life, are you? And you’ve got him pretty well house-trained now. No point starting over.”

  “Damon baby, you’re gonna get a smacked ass…,” Cole muttered.

  Sod it, Bernie had to say what was on her mind. She wasn’t going to get many more chances. Things left unsaid were the ones that would eat at her for the rest of her life.

  “It’s okay, Cole.” It came out a lot more easily than she’d imagined. “Blondie, I’m leaving my family. I’m leaving people I love. Yeah, even you. I know I’m going to miss everyone and how much that’s going to hurt, but I know how much I’d miss Vic, too. Besides … I don’t want him not going to Anvil Gate because of me and killing himself with guilt. I just want him to understand that sometimes you have to say ‘You know what? I did my best and I gave it all I’ve got. And now I’m done.’ Maybe all this shit is someone else’s fault and maybe it’s nobody’s, but it’s not his.”

  Baird’s knuckles were clenched white on the steering wheel. “Y’know, I was fine when I didn’t care. This is what happens when you make a pet of an animal like me instead of leaving me in the barnyard. You just turn me into something that can feel hurt.”

  It was the raw core of him, sudden and unashamed. Bernie felt terrible, not just because he was right but because he’d taken the risk of dropping his total-bastard act.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. And I’m not going to be there to keep an eye on Anya, either. Sorry, Major. But she’s definitely capable of looking after herself now. “But it’ll only be for a while, until everyone gets on their feet. A year, maybe.”

  It might have been true. She had no idea. It wasn’t an unreasonable thought.

  “And we’ll be in radio contact,” Baird said, as if it had really made him feel better. “Because you’re going to need someone to bitch to about Hoffman leaving the toilet seat up.”

  “Count on it,” she said.

  Seb Edlar was standing outside one of the livestock sheds, shotgun broken under one arm while he took a breather. Bernie got out of the Packhorse. As she walked toward him, another shot rang out. It made her flinch. Even twenty-odd years on the front line hadn’t managed to make her do that.

  “We’ll take over, Seb,” she said.

  “Thanks. I could do with a break.”

  He looked at the pens of cattle on the other side of the field. Bernie could see some of his big-boned white Pelruans and someone else’s dairy herd, pretty little light brown animals with dark muzzles, and a small herd of black bullocks. It all looked so unnecessary until she took in the skyline behind them and noticed the stalks among the trees in the distance—not the far distance, either—and then the reality crashed back in on her.

  “Okay, off you go,” she said, and patted him on the back. Baird and Cole opened the shed doors a little and peered in. Bernie looked between them. There was a truck backed up to the doors on the other side, and Seb’s son Howell was hoisting a carcass onto its flatbed with Crabfat, the kid who used to crew one of the trawlers sunk by a Lambent.

  “Let me get rid of this one before we bring the next one in,” Howell said. He looked at Baird, who he’d obviously pegged as an ignorant townie. “Abattoir regulations. So they don’t get upset.”

  Baird turned to Bernie. “Shit, they know what’s going to happen to them?”

  “Of course they know,” she said irritably. Just like us. Now I know how they feel. “Species that can’t sense danger don’t survive.”

  “No wonder this is taking so long if we’ve got to do them one at a time.”

  “Look, just keep them calm and then they never know what’s hit them.”

  She checked her ammo and went to get the next animal. It’s healthy. This is a terrible waste. Her thoughts must have shown on her face, because she led it as far as the shed and Baird stopped her.

  “I can do this,” he said. “You just lead ’em in, walk away, and get the next job candidate.”

  Cole blocked the doors. “Yeah. Leadin’ ’em is the hard bit. They kick. I ain’t doin’ that.”

  “I’m not going to have hysterics,” Bernie said. “I was a bloody beef farmer, remember.”

  “Yeah,” said Baird, “which is why a city boy who doesn’t give a shit and doesn’t understand can do it without losing sleep. You’ll just be worrying about losing bloodlines and yields and all that agricultural shit.”

  Baird and Cole really did care. They were good boys. Only a Gear would have understood why offering to shoot a cow for a lady was a gentlemanly and considerate act.

  “He won’t screw it up,” Cole said.

  Baird put on his I’m-a-bastard face, which had stopped convincing her a long time ago. “Well, not as long as I get that rib eye, okay?” He indicated a five-centimeter gap between thumb and forefinger. “About so thick.”

  In a way, it was worse being the traitor who led the animal into the shed and made it think it was having a nice feed. Mac lay with his head on his paws, staring accusingly at her. After the first ten, Baird’s expression had become fixed as if he’d made up his mind not to let her see any reaction, and then Cole took over for a while. It took four miserable hours. Eventually Baird came out of the shed and fumbled in his pockets. He tossed Mac a ship’s biscuit.

  “I think I’ll skip the steak for a few days, Granny,” he said. He looked a bit distant. “No wonder you made a good sniper.”

  “You’re not hungry enough,” she said. “Come on, Mac.”

  Mac had wandered a few meters away and was standing with his head down, flanks heaving. She walked over to him. “You all right, sweetie? What is it?”

  He didn’t turn around. She only saw the drool at first. Oh God, no. Not Mac. Please, not Mac. Not him as well. Her hand went to her pistol as she looked for the telltale luminescence, wondering if she could actually pull the trigger.

  “Boomer Lady, what you doin’?”

  “Oh shit,” Baird said. “Bernie, you might want to step back. Like now.”

  Then Mac’s shoulders convulsed and he hacked up a cough like a fifty-a-day smoker. A big chunk of biscuit plopped at her feet.

  “Greedy little sod,” she said, cuddling him with relief. “I nearly slotted you. Don’t bolt your food.”

  Baird grimaced. “Gross.”

  But Mac wasn’t giving up on the biscuit. He picked up the chunk again and insisted on getting into the passenger seat of the Packhorse with it, crunching noisily.

  “You better drive,” Cole said. “We’ll sit in the back. I know what’s gonna happen next.”

  They were halfway back to the naval base before Mac decided he didn’t like the hardtack after all. He spat it out again, dropping it in Bernie’s lap almost intact.

  “I love you, Mac, but you’re disgusting sometimes,” she said. “You want me to pass on your complaint to the catering manager?”

/>   The biscuit still had an imprint on it, although dog spit had softened it a lot. The civvies co-opted into making the hard tack obviously had some serious grievances if they were prepared to spend time scrawling angry protests into the dough.

  This one just read: PRESCOTT = COWARD.

  Bernie decided she would have faced the future with a bit more confidence if he had been. Instead, she wondered what the hell a courageous if totally unlovable man would abandon his desperate people to pursue.

  GRINDLIFT RIG BETTY, FIVE KILOMETERS SOUTH OF THE IMULSION SITE: ONE WEEK LATER.

  Sam hugged her Lancer and stared out of Betty’s side window. “I hear Rossi’s squad’s volunteered for Anvil Gate. All of them.”

  “Well, they got real friendly with the folks at Pelruan,” Dizzy said, winking. He didn’t plan on going into any juicy detail, not with the girls sitting in the back. “Kinda nice, if you ask me.”

  “All these people I’ve got used to. Now they’ll be gone in a few days.”

  They hadn’t been here a year yet. People made friends real fast and held on to them harder than they ever had before. “Better gone than dead, Sam.”

  “Where are we going to go, Daddy?” Maralin leaned forward from the small space behind the driver’s seat. “Everyone’s got their location. We haven’t.”

  Sam looked at Dizzy. He concentrated on the road. “Depends, sweetie,” he said. “You two keep changing your minds.”

  “How can we tell if we want to go somewhere until we get there?” Teresa asked.

  “Now ain’t that a woman’s logic.”

  Dizzy knew where he wanted to go. He still didn’t think the Pelruan folk saw him as anything but a Stranded asshole, but one thing he’d learned in those god-awful years outside the wire was how to sniff out his best chance of survival. He had the girls to think of. Since the stalks had come up inside the camp, he’d kept them with him twenty-six hours a day even when he was driving through pretty hairy country.