Coalition's End

by Karen Traviss

  Maybe I could have stayed on in a support job. Maybe I still could…

  Neal was on the roof messing around with the TV aerial when she got back. She wondered if he’d seen her. She made a point never to startle anyone balanced precariously on a chimney stack, so she waited for him to finish and notice her.

  Eventually he looked down. “Bloody telly’s gone on the blink,” he said. “Can’t get any channels at all.”

  “What is it?”

  “I dunno. The aerial looks okay. I’ll have to phone some overpriced tosser from Noroa to fix it. That’s going to take a week.”

  “Well, we’ll just have to stare balefully at each other across the table instead.” That was the problem with living on a small island. If you wanted anything more than the basics, it meant a ferry trip to Noroa. “Or we can listen to the radio.”

  “You finished, then?”

  Bernie peeled off her gloves. “Yeah. How do you feel about sheep?”

  “I think I’ll stick with you, love. Sheep can’t cook.”

  “Seriously. I think we should cut back on beef and run more sheep. Better price. Easier to manage, too.”

  Neal climbed down the ladder and frowned at his skinned knuckles. He sucked them briefly to stop the bleeding. “It’s your farm, Bern,” he said. “I’m easy.”

  Yes, it was Bernie’s farm. It was also her curse. There were days when she hated it, not just because hill farming was tough work for two people with only occasional hired labor, but because the place was 500 hectares of resentment, anger, and guilt. She’d fallen out with her brother over it. She’d also never been sure whether Neal had married her to get a share of it.

  Well, he’d kept the place from going to ruin while she was deployed, so if he wanted it, he was welcome to it. Right then she’d have traded it all for transport to Ephyra, half a world away, and a few more years with the regiment.

  Come on, the war’s over. Really over. Not just over for me—over for everybody. I’ve got to deal with it sooner or later.

  “You want to go to Noroa?” Neal asked. “Change of scenery. Do some shopping. Cheer you up a bit.”

  “That’d take a lobotomy,” she said, and went into the house.

  Neal called after her. “I picked up the mail while I was off-camp. There’s a letter with a Lake Station postmark.”

  Bernie stood in the narrow flagstone passage, looking into the bright yellow kitchen. She’d been born in this house. This was her childhood home, her family’s farm and land. But even after eighteen months back in civvie street, she couldn’t get used to it again, neither its old familiarity nor its unmilitary scruffiness. Neal, poor sod, had never learned to put anything away. He thought harnesses were okay hanging on coat hooks and that boots didn’t have to be wiped on doormats.

  He’s a farmer. Like Dad.

  Bernie was used to spit-and-polish and Sovereign’s Regs. The 26th Royal Tyran Infantry had been her life since she was eighteen—nearly twenty-seven years’ service, twenty of them frontline—and she wasn’t going to turn back into a civilian that easily.

  Unless I want to. But I don’t. I really don’t. I want to feel the way I used to. I want to belong. I want to matter. I want that comradeship again.

  She hung her oilcloth coat on the hook and ran a finger across the old writing bureau that doubled as a hall table. Dust: not thick enough to write her name in, but enough to make the sergeant in her order that the whole damn hall be scrubbed down, preferably with a toothbrush. She’d have to clean the place or it would nag at her. Neal was okay with dust and washing-up left overnight in the bowl, but she wasn’t.

  She sorted through the mail—feed bills, the vet’s invoice, her monthly war disability pension—and found the envelope with the Lake Station postmark.

  “So you’ve remembered I’m still alive, eh, Mick?” Bernie debated whether to open it or not. Blood wasn’t thicker than water when it came to money, not by a long chalk. Her brother never lost a chance to remind her he’d been robbed of his inheritance when their father died. “You want the fucking farm? Have it, mate. And the dust.”

  “What does that bloody waster want now?” Neal asked, walking up behind her. “Tell him to piss off. I’m fed up busting my gut so that he can cadge money off you.” He paused for breath. “Come on. It’s time for dinner.”

  Bernie opened the letter anyway, ripping the envelope open with a callused thumb. “Lunch.”

  “Ooh, la-di-bloody-da. Lunch, then.”

  But it wasn’t what she expected. Something fell out onto the flagstones and she bent to pick it up. It was a photo of a newborn baby trussed up tightly in a pink blanket, looking none too happy about it, and she already knew what was going to be written on the back.

  It was Mick’s handwriting.

  Thought you’d like to know you’ve got a new great-niece. Philippa Jane, three kilos.

  There was nothing else in the envelope. Bernie studied the picture for a moment, wondering if Mum and Dad would have been angry with her for not rushing over to Noroa to see Mick and make peace. She handed the photo to Neal. He glanced at both sides and wedged it in the frame of the mirror hanging by the door.

  “A grandfather at his age, and all. Well, at least that’s something he’s good at. Breeding.” He disappeared into the kitchen and she caught a delicious whiff of roast poultry as the door swung open. “Chicken. Should be done to a turn by now. Come on, you lay the table and I’ll carve.”

  Lunch was one of their own chickens with homegrown vegetables. The big wooden table felt solid and comforting beneath her elbows, the food was good in the way that only fresh homegrown stuff could be, and the view from the kitchen window was a peaceful one of a wintry gray sea in the distance. For a moment, she felt that she might eventually learn to appreciate this kind of life again. Neal laid down his knife and fork on the edge of his plate and got up to switch on the radio. He didn’t like silence.

  “Ah, bugger it,” he said. “Listen to that. What’s going on today? Maybe they’ve had a transmitter failure on the mainland.”

  The radio was normally tuned to the Ephyra World Service for its weather and shipping forecasts, but all Bernie could hear now was the random crackle of static.

  “Leave it,” she said. “We can retune it later. Your food’s getting cold.”

  Neal sat down again and they went on eating. She hadn’t run out of things to say to him so much as forgotten where to begin saying them, so she said nothing. He kept fidgeting in his seat as if he was building up to something. She braced for incoming.

  “Bern,” he said at last. “I’m trying. I really am. I read all that stuff from the veterans’ association. I know it’s a big change for you, but the war’s over for everyone now.”

  “Yeah.” But they didn’t suddenly disband the army. “I know.”

  “Look, I added it all up,” he said. “I counted all the days we’ve actually spent here together as man and wife. One thousand three hundred and seventy-two. About three years in all. Out of seventeen.”

  “Okay. But I’m home now.”

  Neal slammed down his fork. “No, you’re not home. You’re not home at all. You want to go back to the bloody army.”

  “Look, I’ve gone from a busy regiment to a place where I don’t even see the neighbors for weeks at a time. It’s hard.”

  “Okay. I know I can’t really understand what it was like, but I’ve always been there for you. Just tell me how to handle a wife who wants to be on the frontline in a war that isn’t there anymore.”

  “I didn’t know it would take me this long to adjust.”

  “Bern, the world’s changed. We’ve got to make this work here. Otherwise what were you fighting for?”

  Bernie wished she knew. Sometimes she asked herself why she’d enlisted. It had to be more than some old bastard of a recruiting sergeant telling her that women made bad snipers, but it was all so long ago that she couldn’t remember the feelings that had driven her.

  I think I
wanted to get away from Galangi. I thought Mick would take over the farm. I should have let him.

  “I was fighting for my mates,” she said. She had no other words for it. “It’s hard to feel like I belong here again.”

  As soon as she said it, she realized she’d told him he wasn’t one of her mates and that he’d never understand her world.

  Shit, that’s not fair on him. “Sorry, love,” she said. “That came out all wrong.”

  Neal was a pretty mild bloke. When he lost his temper, which wasn’t often, he just slammed things around a little. Nothing got smashed and there was no yelling. He just stopped eating, got up, and scraped what was left of his meal into the compost bin. But she could see he was seething. He spun around.

  “Your mates,” he said. “Your bloody mates. Where have they been since you got discharged, eh? Do they call? Where’s that dickhead you were shagging who left you high and dry? The one who made officer and ran off with the rich lawyer? That’s your mates. I’m the one who married you and kept the bloody farm going while you were away.”

  That hurt. Neal knew how to do that, just as she did, with that unerring aim that long-married couples always had. She decided to keep her mouth shut because there was no point rehashing all this crap.

  It was true. But she couldn’t explain why he was also wrong, not in a way that wouldn’t escalate the recriminations. She was too tired and pissed off for that.

  And she hadn’t thought about Vic Hoffman in a long time. Not as an ex, anyway.

  “I’ll fix the radio,” she said.

  Neal did the washing-up in silence while she fiddled with the dial and tried to get a clear signal. Reception wasn’t good on Galangi at the best of times; that was why the radio was tuned to the EWS. But she couldn’t get the South Islands station, either.

  It had to be the relay. The chances of the TV and the radio both developing faults at the same time were remote. She switched the set off and shrugged.

  “We’re cut off again,” she said. “I’ll test the walkie-talkies. I might pop over and see if Dale’s having the same problems.”

  But there was no rush. There was still a fruit pie to finish. She’d just cut a slice and was transferring it to a plate when the phone rang. Neal put down the dishes and went into the hall to answer it. It struck Bernie that he was as stuck in his role of house-husband every bit as much as she was still trying to be Sergeant Mataki.

  There was a buzz of conversation but she couldn’t hear what was being said, only the tone and the long silences. Whatever it was, Neal was upset. When he came back into the kitchen, his face was chalk-white and he looked bewildered, as if he’d had very bad news and didn’t know what to do next.

  Oh shit. That’s not like him.

  “That was Dale.” His voice was shaky. “It’s started again.”

  “What has, sweetheart?”

  “The war. The bloody war.”

  “What?” Bernie’s immediate thought was that she was thousands of miles from base with no fast way back. She was already calculating when the next ferry could get her to Noroa’s military airport when her common sense kicked in and started asking questions. “How the hell can that happen? How does Dale know?”

  “They’ve attacked Ephyra. And nobody can get a line through to Noroa.”

  “Who’s they? The Indies?” Dale was just the bloke who grew cereals a few klicks south of them. He didn’t exactly have a hotline to the Chairman. “Where’s he getting this information? Come on, Neal, wars don’t just start up again.”

  “He’s on the harbormaster’s frequency. Someone got an emergency broadcast out before the TV went off the air. These things have come up out of the ground.”

  “For fuck’s sake, what things?” Bernie was getting annoyed. She hated it when people couldn’t just get to the point and spit it out. “Where?”

  Neal swallowed. He was looking right past her, shocked, confused, and running out of words.

  “Everywhere,” he said. “Every-bloody-where. Right across Sera. And these things—they’re not human. They’re really not human.”

  IMULSION TANKER BETANCOURT STAR, SOMEWHERE IN THE SOUTH-WESTERN APPROACH TO THE SERROGAR PENINSULA, ONE HOUR LATER.

  It was time for a drink. A coffee, mind you; zero-crack-sparrow-fart was way too early to take strong liquor, even for Dizzy.

  And he’d given up all that stuff. He really had this time.

  He walked along the deck, picking his way carefully around hatches and cleats in the predawn darkness. When he reached the bows, he took out his hip flask and threw it over the side as far as he could. He almost kissed the flask goodbye, but he wanted this over and done with, and you didn’t kiss an enemy.

  He didn’t see where the flask sank. He just heard the splash, and then the tanker swept past and the damn thing was gone forever.

  “That’s the last of it,” he said aloud. “I’m done with you. No more hooch.”

  It had taken him a real long time to reach that stage. But he was going home to Lena and the boy, and this time he was going home sober.

  Back in the galley, he made a couple of mugs of coffee, then climbed the ladder to the bridge, balancing the scalding liquid in one hand. It had always seemed easier when he was drunk. He found the skipper leaning on the radar screen with his arms folded, staring out over the tanker’s deck. It didn’t take a lot of men to run a modern tanker. The crew rattled around in a ship this size.

  Dizzy put the mug on the console out of elbow range and joined in the silent staring. Ahead of them, the Star’s deck stretched nearly 200 meters into unusually flat and calm water. Even the sea had caught a dose of this new peace.

  “Kinda lonely out there, Robb,” Dizzy said. The horizon was still a deep violet band speckled with the distant navigation lights of other vessels. He could see the three distinctive green lights on the mast of a minehunter a few klicks north as she swept one of the main channels into the port. “I’m gonna miss convoys.”

  Robb picked up the mug and slurped. “Yeah. It’s going to take some getting used to.”

  For the first time since he’d joined the merchant navy, Dizzy couldn’t see the familiar neat formation of other cargo vessels and the NCOG destroyer escorts around the Star. There were no UIR submarines stalking them now. The Star could sail safely on her own. It felt strange not to be under constant threat of attack. A man could get used to anything and miss it—even a war. Dizzy took a pull of coffee and wondered how long it would be before he stopped sleeping with his life jacket under his pillow.

  “I was about to say we could get back to normal,” Robb said. “But peace isn’t normal. Not for any of us. It’s goddamn ab-normal.”

  “No torpedoes. No shells.” Dizzy said it to convince himself rather than the skipper. “We can go any damn where we want, and nobody’s gonna try and sink us. Ain’t that somethin’?”

  Robb pushed himself back from the console and studied the sweep on the screen. The radar plot was dotted with vessels clustered around a fringe of coastline, the approach to Porta Ogari.

  “We’re going to be running into mines for the next fifty years, armistice or no armistice,” he said, nodding at the view from the bridge. A second mine hunter was crossing from starboard. “But yeah, no more torpedoes up the ass, at least. When’s your boy being demobbed?”

  “Already is,” Dizzy said. “His unit got back to North Sherrith last week. First thing I’m gonna do when I get home is buy him a beer. If he’s old enough to fight, he’s old enough to get a man’s drink inside him now.”

  “Not going to introduce him to your finest special reserve, then?”

  “Hell, no.” If he told Robb he’d given up the sauce, the guy would never believe him. Dizzy had said it too many times before. “His momma would strangle me with a dead snake.”

  Robb laughed his head off. “Yeah, it’s tough being a stepfather. Tell me about it.”

  “Richie’s a good boy.” Dizzy liked to think he’d been a better dad to the k
id than the deadbeat who’d fathered him. He’d tried damned hard. “Never been any trouble. But now he’s gotta find a job. They don’t always teach Gears a trade, see.”

  “Always room for a trainee engineer in the Merch, Diz. You tell him that.”

  Once the Star’s imulsion was offloaded to the refinery, Dizzy was done for this trip. He checked his watch. They’d be alongside and discharging in an hour or so, and he could hand over to the relief engineer to take the tanker back to New Temperance. Then it would take maybe another hour to get his papers checked and stamped and all that official bullshit, and he could be on the transcontinental train to Ephyra and across the Tyran border by late afternoon.

  Usually, he’d stop by his favorite bar in Ogari for a little liquid refreshment. What was the place called? Hell, all he could remember was the street. It didn’t matter. He was never going to visit the place again. I swear.

  “I’m gonna take a stroll around the deck,” he said. “Oughta be a pretty sunrise.”

  “Diz, you sound like a man making a fresh start.”

  Robb verged on being a mind reader sometimes. They knew each other too well. “Reckon I am, Robb. The whole world’s doin’ it.”

  The tanker was nearly 220 meters from bow to stern, a big rusty metal maze of a place to walk around and—when a fella was in need of some quiet time—with lots of little places to waste a few hours. Dizzy leaned on the rail to watch the sun come up.

  Goddamn, it was peaceful. There was just the background throb of the engines and the quiet rush of water past the bows. Even the gulls weren’t up and about yet. Normally, he’d see them wheeling in the gloom before the sun came up, silent white ghosts that sometimes squawked as they loomed out of the darkness and scared the shit out of him.