Riding the Red Horse (11 page)

Barton grunted. “And the U.S. Army doesn't want any commie-coddling officers who'd take the CD over their own country.”

“That's about it.”

“Hadn't thought it was that bad yet. Sounds like things are coming apart back home.”

Peter nodded to himself. “I think the U.S. will pull out of the CoDominium pretty soon.”

The toothpick stopped its movement while Barton thought about that. “So meanwhile they're doing their best to gut the Fleet, eh? What do the damned fools think will happen to the colonies when there's no CD forces to keep order?”

Peter shrugged. They drove on in silence, with Barton humming something under his breath, a tune that Peter thought he would recognize if only Barton would make it loud enough to hear. Then he caught a murmured refrain. “Let's hope he brings our godson up, to don the Armay blue...”

Barton looked around at his passenger and grinned. “How many lights in Cullem Hall, Mister Dumbjohn?”

“Three hundred and forty lights, sir,” Peter answered automatically. He looked for the ring, but Barton wore none. “What was your class, sir?”

“Seventy-two. Okay, the U.S. didn't want you, and the CD's disbanding regiments. There's other outfits. Falkenberg is recruiting.”

“I'm not a mercenary for hire.” Peter's voice was stiffly formal.

“Oh, Lord. So you're here to help the downtrodden masses throw off the yoke of oppression. I might have known.”

“But of course I'm here to fight slavery!” Peter protested. “Everyone knows about Santiago.”

“Everybody knows about other places, too.” The toothpick danced again. “Okay, you're a liberator of suffering humanity if that makes you feel better. God knows, anything makes a man feel better out here is okay. But to help me feel better, remember that you're a professional officer.”

“I won't forget.” They drove over another ridge. The valley beyond was no different from the one behind them, and there was another ridge at its end.

“What do you think those people out there want?” Barton said. He waved expressively.

“Freedom.”

“Maybe to be left alone. Maybe they'd be happy if the lot of us went away.”

“They'd be slaves. Somebody's got to help them—” Peter caught himself. There was no point to this, and he thought Barton was laughing at him.

Instead, the older man wore a curious expression. He kept the sardonic grin, but it was softened almost into a smile. “Nothing to be ashamed of, Pete. Most of us read those books about knighthood and all that. We wouldn't be in the services if we didn't have that streak in us. Just remember this, if you don't get over most of that, you won't last.”

“Without something like that, I wouldn't want to last.”

“Just don't let it break your heart when you find out different.”

What is he talking about? Peter wondered. “If you feel that way about everything, why are you here? Why aren't you in one of the mercenary outfits?”

“Commissars ask that kind of question,” Barton said. He gunned the motor viciously and the Cadillac screamed in protest.

It was late afternoon when they got to Tarazona. The town was an architectural melange, as if a dozen amateurs had designed it. The church, now a hospital; was Elizabeth HI modern, the post office was American Gothic, and most of the houses were white stucco. The volunteers were unloaded at a plastisteel barracks that looked like a bad copy of the quad at West Point. It had sally ports, phony portcullis and all, and there were plastic medieval shields pressed into the cornices.

Inside there was trash in the corridors and blood on the floors. Peter set the men to cleaning up.

“About that blood,” Captain Barton said. “Your men seem interested.”

“First blood some of 'em have seen,” Peter told him. Barton was still watching him closely. “All right. For me too.”

Barton nodded. “Two stories about that blood. The Dons had a garrison here, made a stand when the Revolutionaries took the town. Some say the Dons slaughtered their prisoners here. Others say when the Republic took the barracks, our troops slaughtered the garrison.”

Peter looked across the dusty courtyard and beyond the hills where the fighting was. It seemed a long way off. There was no sound, and the afternoon sun seemed unbearably hot. “Which do you think is true?”

“Both.” Barton turned away toward the town. Then he stopped for a moment. “I'll be in the bistro after dinner. Join me if you get a chance.” He walked on, his feet kicking up little clods of dust that blew across the road.

Peter stood a long time in the courtyard, staring across fields stretching fifty kilometers to the hills. The soil was red, and a hot wind blew dust into every crevice and hollow. The country seemed far too barren to be a focal point of the struggle for freedom in the known galaxy.

Thurstone was colonized early in the CoDominium period but it was too poor to attract wealthy corporations. The third Thurstone expedition was financed by the Carlist branch of the Spanish monarchy, and eventually Carlos XII brought a group of supporters to found Santiago. They were all of them malcontents.

This was hardly unusual. Space is colonized with malcontents or convicts; no one else wants to leave Earth. The Santiago colonists were protesting the Bourbon restoration in Spain, or John XXVI's reunification of Christendom, or the cruel fates, or, perhaps, unhappy love affairs. They got the smallest and poorest of Thurstone's three continents, but they did well with what little they received.

For thirty years Santiago received no one who was not a voluntary immigrant from Spanish Catholic cultures. The Carlists were careful of those they let in, and there was plenty of good land for everyone. The Kingdom of St. James had little modern technology, and no one was very rich, but there were few who were very poor either.

Eventually the Population Control Commission designated Thurstone as a recipient planet, and the Bureau of Relocation began moving people there. All three governments on Thurstone protested, but unlike Xanadu or Danube, Thurstone had never developed a navy; a single frigate from the CoDominium Fleet convinced them they had no choice.

Two million involuntary colonists came in BuRelock ships to Thurstone. Convicts, welfare frauds, criminals, revolutionaries, rioters, street gangsters, men who'd offended a BuRelock clerk, men with the wrong color eyes, and some who were just plain unlucky; all of them bundled into unsanitary transport ships and hustled away from Earth. The other nations on Thurstone had friends in BuRelock and money to pay for favors; Santiago got the bulk of the new immigrants.

The Carlists tried. They provided transportation to unclaimed lands for all who wanted it and most who did not. The original Santiago settlers had fled from industry and had built very little; and now, suddenly, they were swamped with citydwellers of a different culture who had no thought of the land and less love for it. Suddenly, they had large cities.

In less than a decade the capital grew from a sleepy town to a sprawling heap of tenement shacks. The Carlists abolished part of the city; the shacks appeared on the other side of town. New cities grew from small towns. There was a desperate need for industry.

When the industries were built, the original settlers revolted. They had fled from industrialized life, and wanted no more of it. A king was deposed and an infant prince placed on his father's throne. The Cortez took government into its own hands. They enslaved everyone who did not pay his own way.

It was not called slavery, but “indebtedness for welfare service”; but debts were inheritable and transferable. Debts could be bought and sold on speculation, and everyone had to work off his debts.

In a generation half the population was in debt. In another the slaves outnumbered the free men. Finally the slaves revolted, and Santiago became a cause overnight: at least to those who'd ever heard of the place.

In the CoDominium Grand Senate, the U.S., listening to the other governments on Thurstone and the corporations who brought agricultural products from Santiago, supported the Carlists, but not strongly. The Soviet senators supported the Republic, but not strongly. The CD Navy was ordered to quarantine the war area.

The fleet had few ships for such a task. The Navy grounded all military aircraft in Santiago, and prohibited importation of any kind of heavy weapon. Otherwise they left the place alone to undergo years of indecisive warfare.

It was never difficult for the Humanity League to send volunteers to Santiago as long as they brought no weapons. As the men were not experienced in war, the League also sought trained officers to send with them.

They rejected mercenaries, of course. Volunteers must have the proper spirit to fight for freedom in Santiago.

Peter Owensford sat in the pleasant cool of the evening at a scarred table that might have been oak, but wasn't. Captain Anselm “Ace” Barton sat across from him, and a pitcher of dark red wine stood on the table.

“I thought they'd put me in the technical corps,” Peter said.

“Speak Mandarin?” When Peter looked up in surprise, Barton continued, “Republic hired Xanadu techs. They don't have much equipment, what with the quarantine. Plenty of techs for what they do have.”

“I see. So I'm infantry?”

Barton shrugged. “You fight, Pete. Just like me. They'll give you a company. The ones you brought, and maybe another hundred recruits. All yours. I guess you'll get that Stromand for political officer, too.”

Peter grimaced. “What use is that?”

Barton looked around in an exaggerated manner. “Careful,” he said. He wore a grin but his voice was serious. “Political officers are a lot more popular with the high command than we are. Don't forget that.”

“From what I've seen the high command isn't very competent....”

“Jesus,” Barton said. “Look, Pete, they can have you shot for talking like that. This isn't any mercenary outfit with its own codes, you know. This is a patriotic war, and you'd better not forget it.”

Peter stared at the packed clay floor of the patio, his lips set in a tight, thin line. He'd sat in this bistro, at this table, every night for a week now, and he was beginning to understand Barton's cynicism; but why was the man here at all? “There's not enough body armor for my men. The ones I've got. You say they'll give me more?”

“New group coming in tomorrow. No officer with them. Sure, they'll put 'em with you. Where else? Troops have to be trained.”

“Trained!” Peter snorted in disgust. “We have enough Nemourlon to make armor for about half the troops, only I'm the only one in the company who knows how to do it. We've got no weapons, no optics, no communications—”

“Yeah, things are tough all over.” Barton poured another glass of wine. “What'd you expect in a nonindustrial society quarantined by the CD?”

Peter slumped back into the hard wooden chair. “Yeah, I know. But—I can't even train them with what I have. Whenever I get the men assembled, Stromand interrupts to make speeches.”

Barton smiled. “Colonel Cermak, our esteemed International Brigade Commander, thinks the American troops have poor morale. Obviously, the way to deal with that is to make speeches.”

“They've got poor morale because they don't know how to fight.”

“Another of Cermak's solutions to poor morale is to shoot people for defeatism,” Barton said softly. “I've warned you, kid. I won't again.”

“The only damn thing my men have learned in the last week is how to sing and which red-light houses are safe.”

“More'n some do. Have another drink.”

Peter nodded in dejection. “That's not bad wine.”

“Right. Pretty good, but not good enough to export,” Barton said. “Whole goddam country's that way, you know. Pretty good, but not quite good enough.”

The next day they gave Peter Owensford 107 new men fresh from the U.S. and Earth. There was talk of adding another political officer to the company, but there wasn't one Cermak trusted.

Each night Ace Barton sat at the table in the bistro, but he didn't see Owensford all week. Then, as he was having his third glass of wine, Peter came in and sat across from him. The proprietor brought a glass, and Barton poured from the pitcher. “You look like you need that. Thought you were ordered to stay on, nights, to train the troops.”

Peter drank. “Same story, Ace. Speeches. More speeches. I walked out. It was obvious I wasn't going to have anything to do.”

“Risky,” Barton said. They sat in silence as the older man seemed to decide something. “Ever think you're not needed, Pete?”

“They act that way, but I'm still the only man with any military training at all in the company....”

“So what? The Republic doesn't need your troops. Not the way you think, anyway. Main purpose of the volunteers is to see the right party stays in control here.”

Peter sat stiffly silent. He'd promised himself that he wouldn't react quickly to anything Barton said. There was no one else Peter felt comfortable with, despite the cynicism that Peter detested. “I can't believe that,” he said finally. “The volunteers come from everywhere. They're not fighting to help any political party, they're here to set people free.”

Barton said nothing. A red toothpick danced across his face, twirling up and about, and a sly grin broke across the square features.

“See, you don't even believe it yourself,” Peter said.

“Could be. Pete, you ever think how much money they raise back in the States? Money from people who feel guilty about not volunteerin' ?”

“No. There's no money here. You've seen that.”

“There's money, but it goes to the techs,” Barton said. “That, at least, makes sense. Xanadu isn't sending their sharp boys for nothing, and without them, what's the use of mudcrawlers like us?”

Peter leaned back in his chair. It made sense. “Then we've got pretty good technical support...”

“About as good as the Dons have. Which means neither side has a goddam thing. Either group gets a real edge that way, the war's over, right? But for the moment nobody's got a way past the CD quarantine, so the best way the Dons and the Republicans have to kill each other is with rifles and knives and grenades. Not very damn many of the latter, either.”