Authors: S.M. Stirling,David Drake
Good fieldcraft, Raj said. Damned good. You’d better get this bunch of amateurs out of their way, son.
“Easier said than done,” John muttered to himself.
“Ah, sir?” Barrjen said, lowering his voice. “You know, it might be a good idea to sort of move north?”
There were about three hundred people in the stretch of woodland, mostly men, all armed. There had been a couple of thousand yesterday, when he began back-pedaling from the ruins of Bassin du Sud. He was still alive, and so were most of the Santander citizens he’d brought with him, the crew of the
Merchant Venture,
and all the ex-Marines from the Ciano embassy guard.
Not so surprising, they’re the ones who know what the hell they’re doing,
he thought. He doubted he’d be alive without them.
“All right, we’ve got to break contact with them,” he said aloud. “The only way to do that is to move out quickly while they’re occupied with that hamlet.”
Most of the Unionaise stood. About a third continued to dig themselves in. One of them looked up at John:
“
Va.
We will hold them.”
“You’ll die.”
The man shrugged. “My family is dead, my friends are dead—I think some of those
merdechiennes
should follow them.”
John closed his mouth.
Nothing to say to that,
he thought. “Leave all your spare ammunition,” he said to the others. Men began rummaging in pockets, knapsacks and improvised bandoliers. “Come on. Let’s make it worthwhile.”
“Damn, but I’m glad to see you.”
Jeffrey was a little shocked at how John looked; almost as bad has he had when he got back from the Empire. Thinner, limping—limping more badly than Smith beside him—and with a look around the eyes that Jeffrey recognized. He’d seen it in a mirror lately. There was a bandage on his arm soaked in old dried blood, too, and a feverish glitter in his eyes.
“You, too, brother,” Jeffrey said.
He glanced around. The commandeered farmhouse was full of recently appointed, elected, or self-selected officers (or
coordinateurs
, to use their own slang) of the anarchist militia down from Unionvil and the industrial towns around it. Most of them were grouped around the map tables; thanks to John and Center, the counters marking the enemy forces were quite accurate. He was much less certain of his own. It wasn’t only lack of cooperation; although there was enough of that, despite the ever-present threat of the Committee of Public Safety. Most of the
coordinateurs
didn’t have much idea of the size or location of their forces either.
“C’mon over here,” he said, putting a hand under John’s arm. “Things as bad as you’ve been saying?”
“Worse. Those aeroplanes they’ve got, they caught us crossing open country yesterday.”
observe,
Center said.
—and John’s eyes showed uprushing ground as he clawed himself into the dirt. It was thin pastureland scattered with sheep dung and showing limestone rock here and there.
“Sod this for a game of soldiers,” someone muttered not far away.
A buzzing drone grew louder. John rolled on his back; being facedown would be only psychological comfort. Two of the Land aircraft were slanting down towards the Bassin du Sud refugees and the Santander party. They swelled as he watched, the translucent circle of the propeller before the angular circle of pistons, and wings like some great flying predator. Then the machine gun over the upper wing began to wink, and the
tat-tat-tat-tat
of a Koegelman punctuated the engine roar. A line of dust-spurting craters flicked towards him . . . and then past, leaving him shaking and sweating. A dot fell from one of the planes, exploding with a sharp
crack
fifty feet up.
Grenade,
he realized. Not a very efficient way of dropping explosives, but they’d do better soon. Voices were screaming; in panic, or in pain. A few of the refugees stood and shot at the vanishing aircraft with their rifles, also a form of psychological comfort, not to feel totally helpless like a bug under a boot. The aircraft banked to the north and came back for another run. Most of the riflemen dove for cover. Barrjen stood, firing slowly and carefully, as the lines of machine-gun bullets traversed the refugees’ position. Both swerved towards him, moving in a scissors that would meet in his body.
“Get down, you fool!” John shouted.
Dammit, I need you!
Loyal men of his ability weren’t that common.
Then one of the machines wavered in the air, heeled, banked towards the earth. John started to cheer, then felt it trail off as the airplane steadied and began to climb. He was still grinning broadly as he rose and slapped Barrjen on the shoulder; both the Land planes were heading south, one wavering in the air, the other anxiously flying beside it like a mother goose beside a chick.
“Good shooting,” he said.
Barrjen pulled the bolt of his rifle back and carefully thumbed in three loose rounds. “Just have t’estimate the speed, sir,” he said.
Smith used his rifle to lever himself erect. “Here,” he said, tossing over three stripper clips of ammunition. “You’ll use ’em better than me.”
—and John shook his head. “There I was, thinking how fucking ironic it would be if I got killed by something designed to plans I’d shipped to the Chosen,” he said.
Jeffrey closed his eyes for an instant to look at a still close-up of Centers record of the attack. “Nope, they’ve made some improvements. That was moving faster than anything we’ve got so far.”
correct,
Center said to them both.
a somewhat more powerful engine, and improvements in the chord of the wing.
“I still sent them the basics,” John said.
“Considering that your companies have been doing the work on ’em, and they know they have, it would look damned odd if their prize double agent
didn’t
send them the specs, wouldn’t it?” Jeffrey said. “You know how it is. If disinformation is going to be credible, you have to send a lot of good stuff along with it.”
John nodded reluctantly. “I’m getting sick of disastrous retreats,” he said.
Jeffrey smiled crookedly. “Well, this
isn’t
as bad as the Imperial War,” he said. “We’re not fighting the Land directly, for one thing.”
He looked over his shoulder and called names. “Come on, you need a doctor and some food and sleep. The food’s pretty bad, but we’ve got some decent doctors. Barrjen, Smith, take care of him.”
“Do our best, sir,” Smith said. “But you might tell him not to get shot at so often.”
The two Santanders helped John away. Jeffrey turned back to the map, looking down at the narrow line of hilly lowland that snaked through the mountains.
“We’ll continue to dig in along this line,” he said, tracing it with his finger.
“Why here? Why not further south? Why do we have to give up ground to Libert and his hired killers?” De Villers wasn’t even trying to hide his hostility anymore.
Jeffrey hid his sigh. “Because this is right behind a dogleg and the narrowest point around,” he said. “That means he can’t use his artillery as well—we have virtually none, you’ll have noticed, gentle . . . ah, Citizen Comrades. And the mountains make it difficult for him to flank us. Hopefully, he’ll break his teeth advancing straight into our positions.”
“We should attack. The enemy’s mercenaries have no reason to fight, and our troops’ political consciousness is high. The Legionnaires will run away, and the Errife will turn on their officers and join us to restore their independence.”
A few of the others around the table were nodding.
“Citizen Comrades,” Jeffrey said gently. “Have any of you seen the refugees coming through? Or listened to them?”
That stopped the chorus of agreement. “Well, do you get the impression that the Legion or the Errife refused to fight in Bassin du Sud? Is there any reason to believe that they’ll be any weaker here? No? Good.”
He traced lines on the map. “Their lead elements will be in contact by sunset, and I expect them to be able to put in a full attack by tomorrow. We need maximum alertness.”
He went on, outlining his plan. In theory it ought to be effective enough; he had fewer men than Libert in total, but the terrain favored him, and holding a secure defensive position with no flanks was the easiest thing for green troops to do.
The problem was that Libert knew that too, and so did his Chosen advisors.
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 Protégé 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!”