The Chosen

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

"Fourteen," Maurice Farr said, from the bridge of the Great Republic.

The flaming dirigible exploded suddenly, turning the early morning darkness into artificial dawn for a moment. Spread across the wine-purple sea were ships beyond counting, the long line of battleships, twenty-one of them, butting their way through the sea, their massive armored bulks plunging like mastiffs loosed in a dogfight. Thirty modern armored cruisers flanked them, spread out in double line abreast forward of the battlewagons; destroyers coursed along either side, sometimes cutting through the formations with reckless speed, and they were only a fraction of the number that were hull-down over the northern horizon. At the center of the whole formation were the big but thin-skinned shapes of the flattops, the ships whose aircraft had swept the Land's scout dirigibles from the sky.

Colliers, hospital ships, underway replenishment vessels made a looser clot behind the battle fleet; off to the southeast were the transports and the elderly protected cruisers that were their immediate escorts. The smell of coal smoke and burning petroleum filled the air, the rumble and whine of engines; signal searchlights snapped and flickered in the web that kept the scores of ships and scores of thousands of men moving like a single organism, obedient to a single will.

Admiral Maurice Farr lowered his binoculars. "Well, I told you you'd see some action before this war was over, Artie," he said to the blond, balding man beside him.

Admiral Arthur Cunningham, commander of BatDivOne, the heavy gun ships, smiled grimly. "All on one throw, eh, Maurice? I nearly choked on a fishbone when you told me. A lot more like something I'd come up with."

Maurice Farr shook his head. "No, it's actually subtle," he replied seriously. "Not just putting our heads down and charging at them."

"Well, they don't call me 'Bull' for nothing," he said, scratching at the painful skin rash that splotched his hands. "There's usually something to be said for the meat-ax approach, in wartime. I've got to admit, those carriers are earning their corn."

The flaming remains of the dirigible were sinking towards the surface, and the darkness returned save for the running lights of the fleet and the landing lights that ran along the flight decks of the carriers.

"We're going to have more problems with their lighter-than-air once the sun's up and they can refuel from tanker airships out of our range," Admiral Farr said. "We can shoot down their airships, but we can't hide the fact that we're shooting them down-they can always get off a message before they burn. The enemy will know we're up to something."

"But not exactly what," Cunningham said cheerfully. "The planes can take off easier in daylight, too. I say two days."

"Three," Farr said.

An aide saluted. "General Farr to see you, sir."

Jeffrey Farr climbed up the companionway to the bridge of the flagship. It was big; the Great Republic had been built with the space and communications facilities to run the whole of the Northern Fleet at sea. Even so, he had to thread his way past until he could stand before his father, the brown of his field dress and helmet cover contrasting with the sea-blue of the naval officers.

"Sir. It's time I rejoined my command."

Maurice Farr nodded. "Good luck, General," he said. "The Navy will be where you need it."

He stepped closer and took his son's hand. "And good luck, son."

Jeffrey Farr nodded. "Dad."

* * *

"Pile the ties together," the guerilla leader said.

More than half the band were unarmed peasants, men and women who'd slipped away from plantations or the few sharecropped tenancies the Chosen hadn't yet gotten around to consolidating. They'd brought their working tools with them, though; spades and pickaxes and mattocks thudded at the gravel of the railway roadbed. There was a peculiar pleasure to demolishing the trunk line from Salini westward along the Gut. Thirty thousand Imperial forced laborers had worked for ten years to build it, and it carried half the supplies for the Land armies in the Sierra and the Union.

"Pile them up," he said. A growing heap of creosote-soaked timbers rose higher than his head. "The rails go across the timber; then we light them. It will be a long time before those rails carry trains again."

A very long time. There were only two rolling mills in the whole of the Empire, in Ciano and Corona. Most of the work would have to be done in the Land itself, and to carry the wrecked lengths of steel to the plants there, reheat and reroll them, and bring them back. .

He smiled unpleasantly.

One of his subordinates spoke, unease in his voice: "Will we have time? Their quick reaction force-"

The smile grew into a grin. The guerilla commander pointed eastward, where the railway wound through the low hills of the Gut's coastal plain. Pillars of smoke were rising, dozens of them.

"They will have much to do today."

* * *

The Chosen commandant of the town of Monte Sassino cursed and climbed out of bed, blinking against the morning sunlight. She'd had a little too much in the way of banana gin last night, and mixed it with local brandy. Rubbing her bristle-cut head, she reached for the telephone that was ringing so shrilly.

Crack.

She fell forward against the instrument, her body kicking in galvanic reflex and voiding bladder and bowels.

The girl who held the little Santander-made assassination pistol motioned to her brother. "Quickly!"

They were twins, fourteen years old except for their eyes. Neither bothered to dress as they barricaded the door to the former commandant's suite and rifled her personal locker for ammunition and weapons; there was a combination lock on it, but the brother had long ago filched that number. Within was a shotgun and a machine carbine, and more magazines for me automatic that rested on the dresser with its gunbelt. He spat on the dead woman's body as he tumbled it into the growing pile of furniture before the door.

The twins hadn't had much formal training in weapons, either, but they managed to kill three Protege troopers and wound another of the Chosen before the battering ram punched the door and its barricade aside.

By that time most of the town was in flames.

* * *

"What?"

"Sir," the Protege said, "none of the other stations answer."

The Chosen officer restrained himself; cuffing the technician across the face wouldn't alter the cowlike stupidity in her eyes. You didn't need much in the way of brains to be a telephone exchange operator. Besides that, policy had always been to recruit the bottom third of the IQ pool for military service. Smart Proteges were dangerous Proteges.

"What about the return signal?"

The technician's face cleared from its anxious, willing frown. "Oh, yes, sir. I tried that, sir. The circuits are dead."

This time the Chosen officer snarled audibly. That meant that at least three major trunk lines were dead.

"Get back to your post," he said. I'll use the wireless. That would put him back in touch with HQ, at least. It was a pity few Land mobile units used them.

* * *

"You recommend what?"

Gerta Hosten closed her eyes for a second in desperation. "Sir, I recommend that no further personnel be transferred from the Land proper to the New Territories, that personnel seconded from naval and garrison units in the New Territories to the Sierra and Union be immediately returned to their units, and that we move General Hosten's field force"-the mobile army they'd been scraping together from LOC units and divisions pulled out of the Confrontation zone after the retreat to the Gothic Lane fortifications-"back into the Ciano area at the very least."

Karl Hosten looked slightly stunned, as if an aged and very fierce hawk had been unexpectedly struck between the eyes. Most of the other faces around the table looked uncomprehendingly hostile.

"That would mean the effective abandonment of everything south of the old Imperial border!" the chief of the General Staff said.

"Not if the Santies can't break the Gothic Line, sir," Gerta said. "And we know that Agent A"-John Hosten-"either was disinformed himself or is attempting to disinform us. The Santie strategic reserve is not headed for the Rio Arena estuary and neither is their Northern Fleet. It's heading north up the coast of the New Territories, and it could strike anywhere from Napoli to Artheusa. Our reports indicate some sort of general uprising in the occupied territories, and among what's left of the Sierrans. Our only large uncommitted force is nearly a thousand miles away in the middle of the Sierra, and the railroad net is well and truly fucked. Consider, please, how long it'll take to get those troops back near where we need them. The New Territories have been stripped bare of troops."

Something of her own bleak, controlled panic was spreading to a few of the other Council members.

"Perhaps part-"

"Sir, half measures?"

Karl Hosten drew himself together. "What else does Military Intelligence recommend?"

"A Category III mobilization, sir."

This time there were a few gasps, despite Chosen discipline. That meant shutting everything down, confining all unreliable elements behind wire, and calling out the Probationers and Probationer-Emeritus reserves. The teenage children of the ruling race, and the failed candidates who made up what the Land had of a middle class.

"But production-" a minister began.

"Sirs, with respect, we have to survive the next couple of weeks. If we can do that at all, it has to be done with what we have on hand."

Gerta stood, willing despair to stand at bay, as the debate began.