Coalition's End

by Karen Traviss

“Better show my face,” Hoffman said. Anya’s honest efficiency just added to his guilt about not telling her about the disc. “It’ll be good to have you back at VNB, anyway, Lieutenant. Might even cheer Fenix up a bit.”

  Anya looked down for a moment, charmingly embarrassed. “I missed the place. And the company.”

  Hoffman had to weave between obstacles—crates, dogs, kids, tractors—on the road down to the harbor. He could see the cluster of Gears on the slipway with the mayor, Lewis Gavriel, and Will Berenz, his deputy. There was some animated conversation going on with the trawler crews, some still on board their boats with their arms folded. As he parked the vehicle, Hoffman caught a glimpse of Baird’s blond scrubby hair on deck of Trilliant as he tinkered with one of the trawler winches, clearly not taking part in the social stuff.

  “How are we doing, gentlemen?” Hoffman asked, strolling up to the edge of the quay wall. It was a two-meter drop to the boats on this tide. “I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this.”

  The trawlermen were regulars at the naval base. They were used to having warship escorts and Gears on board for protection, and they knew better than anybody what the Lambent could do—fishing boats had been sunk and crews killed. But there was a kid in his twenties standing outside the wheelhouse of a beam trawler. Hoffman caught the tail end of the conversation.

  “It’s my boat,” the kid said. “My dad left it to me. I can do what the hell I like with it.”

  Marcus sounded calm but the set of his shoulders said otherwise. “Yeah, but how far are you going to get?”

  “It’s better than waiting here for those things to come and kill us.”

  “Come on, Simon,” Gavriel said. “You won’t even reach the nearest island. You owe the community. You can’t take the boat when we need it so badly.”

  Simon stabbed his forefinger at Gavriel. “This isn’t goddamn Emgazi—what’s mine is mine, not the state’s. Don’t give me any of that Collectivist bullshit. I’m going. I’ll take my chances.”

  Hoffman moved in almost without thinking. Losing a fishing boat took food out of everyone’s mouth, but letting Simon leave meant others might follow. Fish was going to be key to their survival if the land was poisoned.

  I’ve been here before. I know how far I’ll go.

  He strode up to the harbor wall and took his Lancer off his shoulder.

  “I respect your ownership, son.” He didn’t take aim, but just unslinging his weapon made the threat for him. “But right now we can’t afford to lose an asset like that. And you won’t survive out there.”

  Simon looked up at him as if he was just some old bastard making idle threats. He obviously hadn’t heard any of the gossip. “You reckon? The Stranded seem to manage okay.”

  For a moment, Hoffman thought it was just a protest, a natural reaction to fear and upheaval and the sheer damn unfairness of it all. The lad would calm down, take a few passengers and supplies on board, and head south to the naval base. But then Simon ducked into the wheelhouse and started the motor. The trawler puffed exhaust out of its stack and Simon came back onto the deck to reach for the line.

  Marcus just stood with his arms folded and gave Hoffman a wary glance. “You don’t want to do that, Simon.”

  “You stay and die if you want to, Sergeant.”

  Hoffman was aware of the rest of the trawlermen watching, and knew he had a few seconds to make his point or let the whole damn thing fall apart. It was a moment of absolute clarity. His authority here was just an afterthought. He aimed.

  Simon looked back over his shoulder at Hoffman as he slipped the line and coiled the rope down onto the deck. “Go ahead,” he said.

  So Hoffman fired.

  He put a single shot through the boat’s radar housing as all the civvies ducked. Simon took a few steps back and almost went over the side. Hoffman could see everything around him in sharp focus, including Marcus moving toward him fast, and this time he aimed squarely at the kid.

  “Simon, if I’ve got to shoot one guy to save a few extra lives, I’ll do it,” Hoffman said. Is that me? Is that me talking? Goddamn it, so it is. “You’re not going anywhere. Dom? Get on that trawler and make sure it ends up in the naval base. Now.”

  “You can lower your weapon, Colonel,” Marcus said. He looked as if he was going to step in the way. “He gets the idea.”

  Dom scrambled down the ladder from the harbor wall and dropped onto the trawler’s deck. The clarity of the moment suddenly evaporated and Hoffman realized Gavriel and Berenz were staring at him as if he was a stranger. But he didn’t back off until he could see Dom in the wheelhouse with his hand on the controls. Simon leaned on the rails and found his voice again, but it was breathless and indignant now.

  “You were going to shoot me, you bastard!” he yelled. “You were, weren’t you?”

  “Only as a last resort.” Hoffman slung his rifle, realizing that he hadn’t changed at all, and that he still defaulted to black-and-white unemotional necessity in a crisis. He kept going, even though he wanted to apologize to Gavriel and especially to Marcus, who was looking at him as if he’d made a big mistake in ever forgiving him. “Baird, take a look at the radar and make sure I didn’t hit anything critical.”

  It wasn’t a good time to explain himself to Gavriel so he walked away. Marcus followed him for a few paces.

  “Colonel, you want to leave this to us?”

  “Don’t worry, Fenix,” Hoffman said. “I only needed to do that once. Everyone’s going to behave from now on.”

  “Fishermen have got to put to sea. What are we going to do if they decide not to come back, send a gunboat after them?”

  “We’ll have Gears embarked with them again,” Hoffman said. “We’re still under martial law. Those trawlers will return to port for as long as we have people to feed, at gunpoint if need be.”

  He kept walking and didn’t turn around, to avoid having to decide if that look on Marcus’s face was disappointment. He’d made his peace with the man and the only thing he regretted was that the painfully repaired relationship might now be damaged again.

  At least I didn’t lecture him on his duty.

  But sometimes you’ve got to do some shitty things to save people from themselves. Or stop them from fucking things up for everyone else.

  He climbed into the Packhorse and headed back down the road, feeling sick and shaky. Dr. Hayman was waiting for him outside the town hall, looking irritated with life. He got out to help her into the passenger seat.

  “Did I hear a shot?” she asked. Pelruan was very quiet. Sound carried a long way. “What happened?”

  “History repeated itself,” Hoffman said. “It does that a lot.”

  He wondered how he’d ever coped when he didn’t have Bernie to unburden himself to. He didn’t like himself much right then, even if he wouldn’t have done things any differently. Maybe that was how Prescott saw himself; not a good guy, but a necessary evil.

  “So who’s going to ask Prescott if we created the Lambent problem ourselves?” Hayman asked.

  Hoffman couldn’t get Marcus’s expression out of his mind.

  “That’d be me,” he said.

  BEAM TRAWLER THRIFT, EN ROUTE FOR VECTES NAVAL BASE.

  Dom rested his hand on the trawler’s wheel, keeping a wary eye on the coastline off the port side.

  It wasn’t the prospect of stalks or leviathans that worried him most. It was running aground.

  “You sort of look as if you know what you’re doing,” Simon said. “But then again, you don’t.”

  “I’m trained on rigid inflatables.” Dom almost turned the wheel over to him, but wasn’t sure he wouldn’t veer off into deeper waters to make his point. “Commando.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yeah.” I’ve docked a RIB in the cargo bay of a Sea Raven, at full throttle and under fire. I can handle this rust bucket. “And if I prang this, Chief Stoker Baird here can repair it with a piece of chewing gum.”

  “Haven’t seen gum f
or years,” Baird said wistfully, leaning against the door frame. He was picking the innards out of something electronic that Dom couldn’t identify. “I’ll just apply a thick layer of my awesomeness.”

  Simon had a look on his face that said no amount of humor and chumminess was going to smooth things over. Dom considered the prospect of armed enforcers embarked in every trawler and didn’t like it much.

  “That old sod wouldn’t really have shot me, would he?” Simon asked, still sounding worried.

  Baird nodded. “Sure he would. He’s done it before.”

  “You’re just winding me up.”

  “Seriously,” Dom said. He decided not to use the Hammer of Dawn as an example. He wasn’t sure if everyone in Pelruan realized Hoffman was partly responsible for that or not. “He’s the guy who held Anvil Gate. He shot civvies for stealing food. You think he’s going to just speak harshly if you guys decide to piss around?” For a moment Dom wasn’t sure if he was making a point or wondering aloud how far his boss would actually go. He now knew how far he would go himself, and that had changed everything. “But he’s not a psycho. You just don’t realize how bad things are.”

  “I do. That’s why I don’t want to sit here like bait.”

  Simon went outside and leaned on the port-side rail, staring down into the water. Baird moved into the space he’d vacated and fired up the radar screen again.

  “We should get them to train Gears to operate trawlers,” he said. “Just in case we have to ground them all.”

  “Shut up, Baird.”

  “Just saying. Ooh, look. The radar’s all better. Baird does it again. You can thank me later. Look, can you actually park this thing when we get into harbor?”

  “Yes.” He leaned over to tap the commando knife strapped to his calf. He’d been so proud of that when he passed his course. He’d shown it to Maria. “You know what this means, Baird? It means that despite not being a fucking rocket scientist like you, I can manage to stumble along and do quite difficult stuff.”

  Baird was about to retaliate but something interrupted him. Dom saw him shove his finger in his ear to receive a radio message.

  So… it’s private.

  Baird made a noncommittal noise in his throat. “Well, if it’s home brew, then let me ask my respected colleague here for his input.” He turned to Dom. “Hey, Dom, you and Marcus rummaged through the vaults, didn’t you?”

  “You mean the underground storage?”

  “The archives.”

  “Yeah. When we were gathering flammable stuff to burn in the polyp traps.”

  “Tell me you didn’t burn any records.”

  “No, we didn’t get around to it.”

  Baird pressed his earpiece again. “Might be worth a look, Colonel.”

  Dom gave him a look as he signed off. “What will?”

  Baird tapped his chest plate and winked. He meant the data disc.

  “What’s that got to do with the archive store?”

  “Doc Hayman thinks the glowies might be one of our bright ideas from the days when this was Toxin Town,” Baird whispered.

  Dom had heard that before. He didn’t buy it. “Well, if it is, they wouldn’t have left the formula in the files, would they? And, if it was the antidote, he’d use it, wouldn’t he?”

  “No, but the more we know, the more we have to shake down Prescott with.”

  “This is the Chairman we’re talking about. He could look you in the eye and tell you your name wasn’t Baird and you’d believe him. And who’s we? The only one who’s going to have the balls to shake Prescott down is Hoffman.”

  “Nyah nyah nyah.” Baird mimicked Dom in a whiny voice. “Okay, if you’ve got a better idea, I’m all ears.”

  The trawler was coming up on the south-west headland now. Dom steered extra-wide because the coastline had changed from the old chart he was relying on. It had taken a Hammer strike to stop the last Lambent leviathan attack and the detonation had caused a massive landslide. Whatever had collapsed into the sea was sitting there waiting to put a hole in the hull.

  Simon stuck his head through the door. “You want to hand over to a competent seaman, buddy? Someone who can use the fishing sonar?”

  “Yeah, go ahead,” Dom said, conceding defeat. The guy wasn’t going to make a run for it now. When Thrift puttered into the naval base and came alongside in the small ships’ basin, he actually seemed to relax. Dom suspected it was the big, solid walls and the reassuring shadow of the old gun emplacements that made it clear the place was heavily defended. Pelruan was just wooden cottages that a few polyps could burn down all on their own. The massive stone column with its cog and anchor naval emblem loomed over the base and reminded everyone that the COG was still in business and capable of looking after itself.

  Or at least it felt that way. Dom tried not to think about the reality because it wouldn’t help him get through the day.

  “You still got people living on the ships?” Simon asked.

  Dom turned to see what he was looking at. A bunch of civilians was leaning on the rails of a freighter, one of the ragtag fleet of NCOG and civilian vessels that had fled from the mainland. Laundry fluttered from cables strung along the upperworks.

  “Yeah,” Dom said. “We’ve got some way to go before we’ve built homes for everyone. The polyps burned down a whole section of tents last time they got ashore, too.”

  “I’ll live on Thrift, then.” Simon gave Dom a look. “You can disable her engines if you don’t trust me. But I’m buggered if I’m going to sleep ten strangers to a room in some dorm.”

  “Yeah, but it’s still safer here,” Dom said. “If we thought we stood a better chance somewhere else, we’d go.”

  The small ships’ basin was pretty crowded and maneuvering Thrift was probably a little more than Dom’s rusty seamanship skills could handle. Simon seemed to be picky about berths. Dom would have tied up in the next available gap, but Simon took one look at the vessel alongside and grunted before moving on. It was a small Gorasni patrol boat.

  “Didn’t you like the color?” Baird asked.

  “No,” Simon said. “My granddad never came home from the POW camp at Ramascu.”

  Baird did his annoyed snort and went out onto the deck. Dom followed him.

  “Terrific,” Baird said. “Vectes is the fucking island that time forgot and the Gorasni are the least likely bunch we could ever run into, but somehow we manage to end up here with them and a bunch of locals with a grudge against them. Are we cursed or what?”

  “The Pendulum Wars went on for three generations, at least. Lots of time for the whole world to work up some serious grievances.”

  “I bet he’ll still fuel up with their imulsion.”

  “Whoa, when did you get to be an Indie lover?”

  “Your war, Dom. Not mine.” It just came out. But at least Baird had the decency to look guilty about it. “Sorry. I enlisted after the armistice. It isn’t personal for me, you know?”

  Simon rapped on the wheelhouse glass and gestured to them to move so he could see where he was steering. He’d found a berth next to an NCOG minehunter.

  Dom stuck his head around the wheelhouse door. “You happy now?”

  “Sergeant Mataki told us we wouldn’t have to mix with the Gorasni,” Simon grumbled. He came out and threw a line over a bollard on the jetty. “Seems we can’t avoid the assholes.”

  “Yeah, well, she was being optimistic.”

  “You think the glowies are the worst thing that can happen to us, do you? All I can see is the government we’ve been loyal to commandeering our property and cozying up to a bunch of war criminals who murdered our troops just so it can get its hands on their imulsion.”

  Dom tried hard to put himself in Simon’s position. He’d never even seen a grub in the flesh, and so far the glowies had been a sporadic terror that had had less impact on his town than the Stranded raiders. The bigger issue, the one that still hung over this community, was from another war.

&n
bsp; But he was right. The COG had muscled in and treated it as its right to take over Vectes, and Gorasnaya had a long history of atrocities. Maybe Simon just needed to have the shit scared out of him by more Lambent to put things in perspective.

  “Whatever,” Dom said. “Look, you better go sign in at the reception office and get your ration card sorted out, or you won’t get fed here.”

  “Very generous.” Simon secured the line and climbed ashore. “I’ll remember that when I unload my next catch.”

  He stalked off down the jetty. The rest of the trawlers were starting to arrive, but most of those used the naval base anyway and already had a designated berth. When Dom looked across the water at the parallel jetty, he realized there was a bunch of Gorasni leaning on the rail of Amirale Enka, just staring at the cabaret. Sound carried over water really well.

  Dom recognized one of them. He wasn’t a sailor. He was about Hoffman’s age, a huge guy with a lot of scars, but he wasn’t wearing the remnants of his army captain’s uniform today. He just nodded at Dom and went on staring.

  “Is that who I think it is?” Baird whispered. “One of the guys who got you and Marcus out of that Stranded ambush?”

  “You’re okay, Baird. The Gorasni love you. It’s me who had a run-in with him.”

  Dom couldn’t remember his name. It was something like Zaska or Sasku. But he did remember the guy had been held in the Learan prison camp in the last war and what the COG had done to him. Dom had made the mistake of telling him what a bunch of murdering shithouses Gorasni were before he found that out. It was getting harder to look the guy in the eye each time he saw him, but that was thankfully rare now.

  Okay, both sides did terrible things. That’s war. That’s what humans do to one another, even the ones that are nice people if you put them in a normal situation. How do I even start to explain that to the Pelruan guys? How do I make myself feel it and not just accept it’s true?

  “Why do they keep saving our asses?” Dom asked. Baird knew them better than anybody. “Do you and Yanik ever talk about it?”

  Baird shrugged. “I think they like having the moral high ground. They know we think they’re thugs. They think they’re superior because they had an empire when we were daubing our walls with horseshit for plaster. It’s all about dignity.”