The Chosen

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

"What news from the academy?"

Libert's aide smiled. "The report from Commandant Soubirous is nothing to report, my general."

The pudgy little man nodded seriously and tapped his map. There was enough sunlight through the western entrance of the tent to show clearly what he meant; the Union Military Academy was located at Foret du Loup, out on the rolling plateau country, between the mountains and Unionvil.

"When we have cleared the passes through the Monts du Diable, we must send a column-a strong column-to the relief of the academy. The Reds must not be allowed to crush Commandant Soubirous and the gallant cadets."

Heinrich Hosten coughed discreetly. "My general," he said, in fluent but accented Fransay. "Surely we should be careful not to disperse our forces away from the main schwerepunkt? Ah, the point of primary effort, that is."

"I am familiar with the concept," Libert said.

He looked at the Chosen officer; the foreigner was discreetly dressed in the uniform of a Union Legion officer, without rank tabs but with a tiny gold-on-black sunburst pin on the collar of his tunic.

"Yes, my general," Heinrich said.

"However, this will probably be a long war-and it is perhaps better that way," Libert said. The Chosen in the room reacted with a uniform calm that hid identical surprise. The Unionaise commander smiled thinly.

"This is a political as well as a military struggle. A swift victory would leave us with all the elements that brought on the crisis intact. A steady, methodical advance means that we do not simply defeat but annihilate all the un-Unionist elements. And it gives us time and opportunity to thoroughly cleanse the zones behind our lines, in wartime conditions."

"As you say, sir," Heinrich said. "That presupposes, however, that we succeed in getting out of this damned valley to begin with."

"I have confidence in the plan you and my staff have worked out," Libert said, turning back to the map.

Heinrich ducked his head and left the tent. "Damned odd way of looking at it," he said to Gerta.

"Sensible, actually," Gerta said, smiling and shaking her head, "when you look at it from his point of view. We could stand being a little more methodical ourselves; this whole operation here has the flavor of an improvisation, to me."

They stopped for a moment to watch Protege workmen and Chosen engineers assembling armored cars from crated parts sent up by rail.

"It's an opportunity," Heinrich said after a while.

"Its a temptation," Gerta said. "We've had less than a decade to consolidate our hold on the Empire-"

"Nine years, six months, two days, counting from the attack on Corona," Heinrich said with a smile of fond reminiscence.

"Quibbler." She punched him lightly on his shoulder. "We should wait for a generation at least before taking on Santander. And this is probably going to mean war with the Republic eventually, if our little friend"-she jerked her head back at the tent-"wins."

"They're getting stronger, too," Heinrich pointed out. "You know the production problems we're having with labor from the New Territories."

"Yes, but we've got the staying power. We don't have an underlying need to believe the world is a warm, fuzzy-pink playground where everyone's nice down deep except for a few villains who'll be defeated at the end of the story. We can get the animals working well enough, given enough time-and the Santies will go to sleep and let down their guard if we don't make obvious threats."

"We're not threatening them, strictly speaking."

"Land forces on their border? Even a Santy can't convince himself that's not a threat. We're waking a sleeping giant, and stiffening his backbone."

Heinrich shrugged. "But if we beat the Santies, everything else is mopping up. Anyway, it's a matter for the Council, nein?"

"Jawohl. Orders are orders. Let's get this battle done."

Heinrich smiled more broadly. "Actually, you've got a different job."

"Oh?"

"Libert's pretty taken with this academy thing. He'd probably spend six months avenging the place and the gallant cadets if it fell, which would be an even worse diversion of effort than marching to relieve it. So we'd better make sure it doesn't fall. . "

"Shays."

* * *

"And how are you, sir?" the train steward asked. "Not so great," John mumbled. "Drink, please-water, something like that."

"Sir."

The steward bowed silently as he left the compartment. The revolution hadn't reached this part of the Union yet, evidently. Or perhaps it was just that this was a Santander-owned railway, and close to the border, and John was evidently rich enough to command a whole first-class compartment for himself, and another for half a dozen tough-looking armed men.

The view out the window was much like the eastern provinces of the Republic outside the cities. An upland basin surrounded by mountains with snow gleaming at their tops, the peaks to the west turning crimson with sunset. Grass, tawny with summer, speckled with walking cactus and an occasional clubroot, smelling warm and dusty but fresher than the lowlands to the east. Herds of red-coated cattle and shaggy buffalo and sheep, with herdsmen mounted and armed guarding them. Occasionally a ranch house, with its outbuildings and whitewashed adobe walls; more rarely a stretch of orchards and cultivated fields around a stream channeled for irrigation, very rarely a village or mine with its cottages and church spire.

It looked intensely peaceful. A hawk stooped at a rabbit flushed by the chufchufchuf of the locomotive, and the carriage swayed with the clacking passage of the rails. John wiped sweat from his forehead and touched the arm in its sling with gingerly fingers, wincing a little. Better, definitely better-he'd thought he was going to lose it, for a while-but still bad. Thank God the doctor had believed what he said about debriding wounds, but then, a massive bribe never hurt.

Home soon, he thought.

The door to the compartment opened again: the steward, immaculate in white jacket and gloves, with a tray of iced lemonade. Behind him were the worried faces of Smith and Barrjen.

"You all right, sir?"

"I would be if people stopped bothering me!" John snapped, then waved a hand. "Sorry. I'm recovering, but I need rest. Thank you for asking."

The two men withdrew with mumbled apologies as the steward unlatched the folding table between the seats and put the tray on it. John took a glass of the lemonade and drank thirstily, then put the cold tumbler to his forehead.

"Shall I put down the bunk, sir?"

John shook his head. "In a little while. Come back in an hour."

"Will you be using the dining car, sir?"

His stomach heaved slightly at the thought. "No. A bowl of broth and a little dry toast in here, if you would." He slipped across a Santander banknote. "In a while."

The steward smiled. "Glad to be of assistance, Your Excellency."

John closed his eyes. When he opened them again with a jerk it was full night outside, with only an occasional lantern-light to compete with the frosted arch of stars and the moons. The collar of his shirt and jacket were soaked with sweat, but he felt much better. . and very thirsty. He drank more of the lemonade, and pushed the bell for the steward to bring his soup.

I must be reaching second childhood, and I'm not even thirty-five, he thought. Making all this fuss over a superficial wound and a little fever.

Nothing little about a wound turning nasty, Raj said in his mind. I've seen too much of that.

There was a brief flash of hands holding a man down to blood-stained boards. He thrashed and screamed as the bone-saw grated through his thigh, and there was a tub full of severed limbs at the end of the makeshift operating table. Unlike Center's scenarios, Raj's memories carried smell as well; the sickly-sweet oily rot of gas gangrene, this time.

You even had Center worried for a while.

calculations indicate a 23 % reduction in the probability of a favorable outcome if John hosten is removed from the equation at this point, Center said. such analysis does not constitute "worry."

How's Jeff doing? he asked.

observe:

— and he was looking through his foster-brothers eyes.

Evidently Jeffrey was out making a hands-on inspection, riding a horse along behind the Loyalist lines. Scattered clumps might be a better way to put it than "lines" John thought.

Oh, hi, Jeffrey replied. How's it going?

He pulled up the horse behind a large bonfire. Militiamen and some women were lying around it; a few hardy souls were asleep, others toasting bits of pungent sausage on sticks over the fire, eating stale bread, drinking from clay bottles of wine and water, or just engaging in the universal Unionaise sport of argument. The rifle pits they'd dug were a little further south, and their weapons were scattered about. Perhaps three-quarters were armed, with everything from modern Union-made copies of Santander magazine rifles to black-powder muzzle loaders like something from the Civil War three generations back. One anarchist chieftain had a bandanna around his head, two bandoliers of ammunition across the heavy gut that strained his horizontally striped shirt, three knives, a rifle, and two pistols in his sash.

There was even a machine gun, well dug in behind a loopholed breastwork of sandbags.

Well, somebody knows what they're doing, John observed.

Jeffrey nodded. The Union had compulsory military service; in theory the unlucky men were selected by lot, but you could buy your way out. Any odd collection of working-class individuals like this would have some men with regular army training.

He looked up at the stars; John opened his own eyes, and there was an odd moment of double sight-the same constellations stationary here, and through the window of the moving train four hundred miles northwest. That put Jeffrey in a perfect position to see the starshell go off.

Pop. The actinic blue-white light froze everything in place for an instant, just long enough to hear the whistle of shells turn to a descending ripping-canvas roar.

Jeffrey reacted, diving off the horse into the empty pit behind the machine gun. The guns were light, from the sound of the crumping explosions of the shells, but that wouldn't matter at all if he was in the path of a piece of high-velocity casing.

Somebody else slid in with him, in the same hug-the-bottom-of-the hole posture. They waited through seconds that seemed much longer, then lifted their head in the muffled silence of stunned ears. More starshells burst overhead. .

"Five-round stonk," Jeffrey said. A short burst at the maximum rate of fire the gunners could manage. Which meant. .

An instant later he collided with the other occupant of the hole as they both leapt for the spade grips of the machine gun. "Feed me!" Jeffrey snarled, using his weight and height to lever the Unionaise soldier-it must be the veteran, the one who'd dug the weapon in-aside.

There was light enough to see, thanks to the rebel starshell. The nameless Unionaise ripped open the lid of a stamped-metal rectangular box. Inside were folds of canvas belt with loops holding shiny brass cartridges; he plucked out the end of the belt with its metal tab. Jeffrey had the cover of the feed-guide open and their hands cooperated to guide the belt through as if they had practiced for years. The Unionaise yanked his hand aside as Jeffrey slapped the cover down and jerked the cocking lever back twice, until the shiny tab of the belt hung down on the right side of the weapon.

"Feed me!" he snapped again-it was important for the loader to keep the belt moving evenly, or the gun might jam.

The whole process had taken perhaps twenty seconds. When he looked up to acquire a target, figures in stripped kaftans were sprinting forward all across his front, horribly close. Close enough to see the white snarl of teeth in swarthy, bearded faces and hear individual voices in their shrieking falsetto war cry.

Must've crawled up, his mind gibbered as his thumbs clamped down on the butterfly trigger.

The thick water jacket of the gun swept back and forth, firing a spearhead of flame into the darkness; the starshells were falling to earth under their parachutes, none replacing them. Errife mercenaries fell, some scythed down by the hose of glowing green tracer, some going to ground and returning fire. Muzzle flashes spat at him, and he heard the flat crack of rounds going overhead. Other rifles were firing, too, where militiamen had made it back to their foxholes or started firing from wherever they lay. One jumped up out of the blankets he'd been sleeping in and ran out into the beaten ground, making it a hundred yards southward before his blind panic met a bullet.

"Jesus, there are too many of them!" Jeffrey said, swinging the barrel to try and break up concentrations. The Errife came forward like water through a dam built of branches, flowing around anything hard, probing for empty spots. He fired again and again, clamping down the trigger for short three-second bursts, spent brass tinkling down to roll underfoot and be trodden into the dirt.

A dim figure tumbled into the slit trench with them. The Unionaise soldier dropped the ammunition belt and snatched up an entrenching tool stuck into the soft earth of the trench side and began a chopping stroke that would have buried it in the newcomer's head.

"It's me! Francois!"

With a grunt of effort the first man turned the shovel aside, burying it again in the earth.

"You're late," he panted, turning back to the box. "Get your rifle and make yourself useful."

There was nothing but moonlight and starlight to shoot by now. Just enough to see the stirring of movement to his front.

"What's your name?" Jeffrey said, between bursts.

"Henri," the loader said. "Henri Trudeau." Then: "Watch it!"

Something whirred through the air. They both ducked; behind them Francois stood for a few fatal seconds, still fumbling with the bolt of his rifle. The grenade thumped not far above the lip of the machine gun nest. There was a wet sound from behind them, and Francois' body slumped down. Jeffrey didn't bother to look; he knew what the spray of moisture across the back of his neck came from. Instead, he pushed himself back up while the dust was still stinging his eyes, drawing the automatic pistol at his waist.

An Errife was pointing his rifle at Jeffrey's head from no more than three feet away. He froze for an instant, so close to the enemy trooper that he could hear the tiny click of the firing pin. The rifle did not fire. Bad primer, Jeffrey thought, while his hand brought up the pistol. Crack. The barbarian flopped backwards. Crack. A miss, and the next one was on him, long curved knife flashing upward at his belly. Jeffrey yelled and twisted aside, clubbing at the Errife's head with his automatic. It thumped on bone, muffled by the headcloth twisted around the mercenary's skull. Jeffrey grabbed for his knife wrist and struck twice more with frantic strength, until the robed man slumped back against the rear wall of the trench and Jeffrey jammed the muzzle of his pistol into his stomach and pulled the trigger twice.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jeffrey saw Henri's entrenching tool flashing again and again, used like an ax. The impacts were soft blubbery sounds, underlain by crunching.

"Cochon," the Unionaise wheezed. "Morri, batard-"

"He is dead," Jeffrey said. Henri wheeled, shovel raised, then let it fall. "Now let's get out of here."

The volume of fire was slackening, but the ululating screech of the Errife rose over it-and other voices, screaming in simple agony. The islanders liked to collect souvenirs.

"You go get things in order," Henri said. Til man this gun. You do your job and I'll do-"

"Jesus Christ in a starship couldn't get any order here," Jeffrey said. "Let's get moving. This isn't going to be the last battle."

Henri stared at him for an instant, his face unreadable in the dark. "Bon," he said at last. "Voyons."