Coalition's End

by Karen Traviss

  And he was at sea now with a couple of infantry men. Trescu was a submarine officer. He was operating in his natural environment for a change, and he had the edge.

  “Anything else?” Trescu asked. “Is there anything else out there?”

  Teo shook his head. “All quiet. Everyone’s betting that he’ll rendezvous with Ollivar’s fleet, because there’s only leviathans, whales, and the occasional fishing boat for the next few thousand kilometers.”

  “What could the Stranded garayaz possibly have that Prescott wants?”

  “Beats me, sir.”

  Trescu prided himself on understanding what drove people, especially his enemies. Whether it was tactical or emotional, he could read people’s behavior. Not being able to guess what Prescott was up to worried him. It felt like losing one of his senses, like going deaf.

  So what is he not up to? He’s not fleeing for his life, or else he would have run away years ago. He’s not able to control whatever this is, or else he wouldn’t be so driven by time—and he is. This is a man with deadlines not of his own making.

  And then there was the disc. A diversion to keep Hoffman busy, or sensitive data? Trescu had to hand it to Prescott. He was good.

  Teo sat back. “Commander, the boat’s stopped.” He listened with his hands cupped over his headset. “If he’s hooked up with anybody, I can’t hear it. Do you want to risk active sonar? He has to know that Hoffman wouldn’t just lose interest in where he was going. So it probably doesn’t matter if we give away our position.”

  “Let’s take a look first.” Trescu turned to the helmsman. “Periscope depth.”

  Trescu fully expected the scope to break the surface and see a fishing vessel or Ollivar’s powerboat. It took him a few moments to pick out the workboat at this range in the sea conditions, but when he did, it was on its own.

  “So he’s waiting,” Teo said.

  “We can wait awhile too. Let’s get a little closer.”

  The helmsman brought Zephyr within five hundred meters of the workboat and Trescu took another look through the scope. There was still nothing happening. She wasn’t under way, just riding on the swell.

  “Might not be waiting for a surface vessel, sir,” Teo said. “We managed to hide from the COG for years, after all.”

  Trescu kept the boat in his scope, occasionally looking away for a few moments to rest his eyes. The rest of the small crew sat in practiced silence. It was a damned long hour before Trescu decided to edge in a little closer.

  The workboat was a small vessel with the kind of wheelhouse it was easy to look through at the right angle.

  “There’s nobody at the helm,” Teo said.

  That didn’t necessarily mean anything. There was a small engine space below decks, even if it was a very tight fit for three tall men, and there was nothing out here the boat might collide with. But the sea was rough. Someone should have been on watch, if only to keep a lookout for whoever might be meeting them. Someone should have been at the wheel to stop them drifting from their rendezvous point.

  “Let’s have a look,” Trescu said. “Take us in.”

  Zephyr crept in closer. If anyone popped up on the deck now and spotted her scope and radio mast, it was just too bad. She was so close now that she risked a collision.

  Trescu could see an orange polypropylene line trailing from the starboard rail into the water. It was just a rope hanging loose, but loose ropes fouled propellers, and nobody could ignore it on that tiny boat—not even men who weren’t sailors.

  There’s nobody on board.

  Damn it, there’s nobody there.

  How the hell did they manage that? Where did they go?

  “The bastard’s gone.” Trescu was more humiliated than angry. His mind raced through all the possibilities, all of them insane. “Take us up, helm.”

  “That’s just not possible, sir,” Teo said. “Seriously. We’d have heard another ship. Even a submarine.”

  It was a difficult maneuver to hold Zephyr alongside the workboat. For a few awful moments, Trescu wondered if he was wrong and that he’d now come face-to-face with Prescott. But that was fine. If he did, Prescott had only two Gears with him and Trescu had a crew of Gorasni seamen and much more liberal rules of engagement than the COG. He’d get answers out of him far more efficiently than Hoffman and Michaelson ever could.

  But there was no Prescott, nor any sign of his Gears. Trescu stood on the casing of the submarine with Teo, not a reassuring place to be with waves slapping over it, while a couple of the crew got a line on the workboat. Even with safety harnesses and life jackets, boarding the boat was dangerous.

  Teo managed to get on board. He didn’t take long to go below and then come back up on deck.

  “Yeah, the bastards are gone, sir,” he said. “Nothing here. No men, no boxes, not even ash from a smoke. The helm’s set on auto and the tanks are empty. It just ran out of fuel.”

  Trescu was stunned. He was the naval tactician, not that mollycoddled bureaucrat Prescott. “Where the hell could three men disembark without us knowing?”

  Teo scrambled back to the submarine and nearly fell between the two hulls. Trescu grabbed his arm.

  “I don’t think it’s some suicide pact,” Teo said. “While we were dived, Prescott and his bodyguards were taken off that boat—somehow. Whatever it was didn’t make enough noise for us to pick them up.”

  “A yacht?” Trescu could feel the wind biting at his face. It was Gale, always a stormy month, and the prevailing winds would have driven a yacht back to Vectes anyway. “No. Before we give up and look like pathetic schoolboys, let’s do an active sweep.” Trescu dogged the fin door shut behind him. “Even if that gets the attention of a leviathan.”

  If Prescott was relying on a small, silent yacht to escape, they’d pick him up now. Teo settled down to listen to the sonar returns while Trescu radioed Vectes. Ianu, one of the marine engineers, gave him a sympathetic look.

  “I bet the databursts will stop now,” he said. “Prescott’s taxi arrived after all.”

  “You think that was what it was?”

  “Damn sure, sir.”

  Eventually Teo took off his headset and spread his hands in defeat. “Nothing out there, sir. Nothing at all.”

  Trescu debated whether to tow the workboat back, because every hull would count one day soon. It meant returning on the surface. And now he had to tell Hoffman and Michaelson that he’d lost Prescott. He’d lost the bastard despite a vast advantage. There was something that he was missing, something he hadn’t factored in.

  It was one of those situations that needed a diagram of who knew what and when. Trescu shut his eyes to concentrate and radioed Hoffman.

  “I lost him, Colonel,” he said. It paid to get it over with. “We followed an empty boat on autohelm. We found the workboat, but Prescott and his men have gone.”

  Hoffman sounded as if he’d taken a deep breath. “Goddamn it… how?”

  “There are very few ways to leave a vessel at sea. You transfer to another vessel. You get winched off. Or you fall overboard. We detected nothing.”

  “I’ve ceased to believe in the omniscience of submarines, Commander. What can we rule out?”

  “Nothing. But who else has submarines, or helicopters? Only you and I. Not easy assets to hide.”

  “You managed it…”

  “We probably wouldn’t have detected a sailing vessel on passive sonar. Not ideal for fast getaways, though.”

  “Well, I hope the asshole’s enjoying a cocktail on Ollivar’s goddamn luxury yacht. Maybe he’ll choke on a lemon slice. Forget him. We’ve got Lambent to deal with.”

  “We’ll tow the workboat back. It’s out of fuel. I know Mathieson will monitor for databursts, but I suspect we’ve heard the last of those.”

  “One mystery down, maybe. An unknown number to go.” Hoffman finally let out that deep breath. He sounded unusually resigned for a permanently angry man. “And nobody to kick it upstairs to now.”

>   Trescu resisted tying himself in knots by peeling back the layers of the disappearance. That would be playing Prescott’s game. The man was no longer in command.

  “You and I have been in this lonely place before, Colonel,” he said. “And we beat the odds. We will beat them again.”

  He meant it. Gorasnaya would not die, not on his watch, and its future was now tangled inextricably with the COG’s. Therefore the COG would have to survive—despite its best efforts to self-destruct.

  He’d make sure it did.

  HOFFMAN’S QUARTERS: A FEW HOURS LATER.

  “I keep coming up with a different answer every time,” Hoffman said. He stared out of the small window onto the docks, worried that part of him was hoping to see Prescott’s boat heading back in the gloom of a wet late afternoon, and that it was all part of an elaborate ruse that a simple grunt like him couldn’t begin to untangle. “All I know is that he played me. Whatever he did, it was so he could go wherever the hell he’s gone. Was he even serious about evacuating? Or did he just pick that position because he knew the civvies would want to stay and he could treat it like a vote of no confidence?”

  “Vic. Vic.” Bernie held a tin cup of Dizzy’s finest under his nose. Mac muscled in between them and sniffed it warily. “You need a drink. Prescott’s gone. It doesn’t even matter why. What does matter is what happens here from now on in.”

  “I’ll have it later,” he said. “I’ve got to do the briefing. I’ll make a statement to the civvies later. The sooner they hear it, the less uncertainty gets a chance to breed.”

  “I think it’ll hit the public harder than us.” Bernie took the mug away and started drinking it herself. “Hard to tell if they’ll turn on him, or cry for him like their long-lost mum. But either way—the next stalk or polyp attack, and they’ll forget all about it.”

  “I wish.”

  “And you’re not shouldering this alone. Make Michaelson and Trescu pull their weight.”

  “Okay.” Hoffman couldn’t put it off any longer. “Look, I’ve got all the department heads and NCOs waiting in the gymnasium. Let’s go.”

  “You’ll do fine, Vic.”

  “What would you have done?”

  “About what?”

  “Gone with Prescott, no questions asked.”

  Bernie stared into the mug. “I’d go with you, no questions asked … probably. But him? Not if he wouldn’t tell me what was on that disc.”

  Hoffman had forgotten about that for a few hours. Maybe it didn’t matter now, but it would always eat at him. Then his radio went off.

  “Control here, sir.”

  “Okay, on my way, Mathieson.”

  “Just letting you know I haven’t picked up any databursts since yesterday.”

  “There’s a surprise. Thanks, Lieutenant. I’ll drop by later.”

  Hoffman got up and checked himself in the bathroom mirror again. He was sure he could see the fear on his face. Bernie patted his back.

  “Look, you got the Embry Star,” she said. “And it wasn’t for your dressmaking skills. You’re not in this job by accident, either. Even Prescott told you so.”

  The mention of the medal made him think of Bai Tak. Like all the dead Hoffman missed, the man would be impossible to get out of his mind for a while, and then vanish again. Bai would have cut the problem down to size in that clear-sighted, pragmatic Pesang way. But Bai was long gone, and maybe all his family too. Hoffman leaned on the basin and felt himself drowning in regret.

  “What’s wrong, love?” Bernie asked.

  “Just thinking of Bai Tak.” He couldn’t remember how much he’d told her about his Pesang troops. “The one who died saving Dom at Aspho.”

  “I get the names mixed up.” Bernie rubbed his scalp as if she was giving it a final polish. “You never even wear the ribbon. Does anybody even admit to having an Embry these days?”

  “I sent mine to Bai’s widow,” Hoffman said. “He deserved it. I lost touch with her after E-Day.”

  He couldn’t bear to think that all the Pesangas were gone, like most of the population of Sera. It hit him harder than ever at that moment. He gripped the edge of the basin, eyes shut, and when he looked up again Bernie was staring at him with tears in her eyes.

  “That,” she said, “is why I’d go with you, no questions asked.”

  Her respect embarrassed him. “It was shame that made me do it as much as anything. Pesangas didn’t qualify for the same awards because they weren’t technically COG citizens. I wonder how the Indies would have played it.” He felt a terrible need to change the subject and take refuge in a new crisis. “Come on. Let’s do it. You too, Mac.”

  When they reached the gymnasium, the assembled Gears just stared at him. Michaelson was having a quiet chat with Major Reid, who looked crestfallen. So they knew. Well, that saved a few difficult lines.

  “We heard, sir,” Alex Brand said, studiously under-whelmed by the news. “Corporal Baird here wants to know if he can have his office.”

  “I could do with a workshop that doesn’t flush,” Baird said. “Just saying.”

  It was impossible to keep things quiet for long. The place was too small and there was, as Michaelson always reminded him, no such thing as a monopoly of information. It was hard for the senior commanders to have a bust-up with the Chairman on a public jetty and not get noticed.

  “I hope we’re not having a whip-round to buy him a going-away present, sir,” Rossi said, heaving himself up to sit on an old vaulting horse with stuffing poking through a seam on its saddle. “I didn’t even get to sign his card.”

  “He asked me to join his staff, you know,” Baird said.

  “And you accepted? So that’s why the poor asshole ran away.”

  Hoffman hadn’t expected his Gears to be sobbing in their handkerchiefs about Prescott’s departure, but he made a note to keep a close eye on morale. The worse Gears felt, the more disinterested they acted and the more savagely they joked. The fight with Prescott was his alone, just internal political wrangling. The man had never let the army down or ignored military advice—until now—and most respected him even if they didn’t like him.

  “Okay, Gears, listen up.” Hoffman plunged in. “I can see you’re all totally devastated by the Chairman’s departure. So it’s business as usual—daily recons to map stalk distribution, perimeter patrols, everything we’ve been doing anyway. And the contingency plan will now be implemented.”

  “Which one, sir?”

  “Readying all ships to accommodate personnel and supplies. Not because we’re planning to cut and run, but so that we have somewhere else to house people if we have a stalk incursion near or within the perimeter. So there will be no chat or unhelpful speculation that might demoralize our citizens. Understood? It’s just prudent planning.”

  Rossi raised his hand. “How’s this command thing going to work, though? Sorry to be blunt, sir. Sirs, I mean.”

  “Captain Michaelson and Commander Trescu have a vote and so do I,” Hoffman said. “And an order from them is as valid as an order from me. I am not the Chairman. Nobody is. This is an emergency arrangement, not a military dictatorship.”

  “Pity,” Trescu said, smiling without a scrap of warmth. “They are very efficient.”

  He actually got a laugh. Most Gears had softened a lot toward the Gorasni, even if the Pelruan townsfolk still wanted nothing to do with them. Hoffman had another outof-body moment and saw the COG’s three reluctant leaders— an Indie who refused to surrender, a naval officer who got a kick out of ambushing pirates, and a colonel who wanted to be an NCO again—and wondered how the hell this was ever going to work.

  Michaelson seemed to be finding it a lot easier than he did. “Major Reid and Mr. Sharle will handle Prescott’s daily civilian liaison role,” he said. “Of course, Mr. Ingram may be somewhat dismayed to see a military junta running the COG, but he’ll have lots of homework to keep him busy. Seriously—none of us wants to be doing this job forever. Any questions?”


  The catering corps sergeant raised a finger. “Sir, now that he’s buggered off and left us, can we stop putting glowie body parts in the food freezers? I mean, someone did take them away yesterday, but it’s not nice. And it’s probably not safe.”

  “Ah, the specimens were just for the Chairman’s benefit.” Michaelson stopped mid-sentence, then recovered. “But I hear Sergeant Mataki has a recipe for them.” Everyone laughed. “Yes, I’d like to know who removed them and what they did with them. We have to dispose of these things more carefully now.”

  The hell they did. There was diced polyp all over the island, not disposed of carefully at all. Hoffman looked at Michaelson, and Michaelson looked at him, and he didn’t need to be telepathic to know they were both thinking of Prescott’s fixation with keeping specimens.

  So he took them. What the hell is he going to do with them?

  “Good idea,” Hoffman said. “Any other questions? Because this is an awful short briefing otherwise.”

  “When are you going to tell the civvies, sir?” Rossi asked. “Base patrols are going to get asked a lot of questions.”

  Hoffman checked his watch. “I’ll do a radio broadcast as soon as we’re finished here. Brace for a public outpouring of grief, or at least some anxiety. Prescott was good with the civilians. He wouldn’t have lasted that long if he hadn’t been able to reassure and inspire them, but now it’s our job. So be goddamn inspirational, every last one of you, or you’ll be on a charge. Dismissed.”

  He looked at Marcus, who just tilted his head back a fraction, the slightest hint of a nod. The gym cleared, leaving only Delta Squad, Bernie, Anya, Trescu, and Michaelson. Hoffman accepted that he relied on a small inner circle, and right then he was damned glad that he had one.

  “I’m guessing that was what Rivera had in the boxes,” Hoffman said. “The specimens.”

  “Sure as shit wasn’t his picnic lunch,” Marcus said.

  “I’d prefer to think that Prescott just went quietly nuts and kept the bits like serial killers keep body parts, but that’s not likely, is it?”

  “If someone didn’t just dump it all.”