"Christ, how do I git myself inta these things?" one of the Marines behind him in the longboat muttered.
John smiled in the darkness. That was Barrjen. The stocky Marine had managed to volunteer – unofficially, the whole mission' was highly off the record – despite his loud relief at making it home last time. In fact, the ones who'd been with him from Ciano to Salini had all volunteered, even Smith with his gimp foot. Some of them had been pretty shamefaced about it, as if they were mentally kicking themselves, but they'd all done it.
It was a moonless night and overcast, typical weather for winter in the Gut. The whaleboat glided silently over the dark water; they might as well have been rowing in a closet, for all that he could see. Water purled under the muffled oars, breath smoked. Only the radium dial of his compass guided them, that and…
"Down!" he hissed quietly.
The dozen men in the boat shipped oars and turned their cork-blackened faces downward in the same motion. A few seconds later the quiet thumping of a marine steam engine came over the water. A searchlight stabbed out into the darkness, blinding bright, the arc light flicking over the waves. Behind it was a gaggle of other boats. Fishing boats; the Chosen couldn't shut down the Gut fishery, it was too important to the economy, and too many of the important pelagic species were best caught in darkness. They did send out a gunboat to make sure nobody tried to make a break for the Santander or Union shores, and probably kept the families of the fishermen hostage, too.
The light flicked past them. Weaker lights were breaking out among the fishing boats, lure lanterns strung out over bows and sides. John waited tensely until they were surrounded by the other boats, several dozen of them spread out widely.
"Wait for it…"
A thrashing of whitewater as something big broached and snapped for the dangling lantern of a boat, something with a long head full of white teeth. Yells drifted over the water, and he could see a man poised with a harpoon, backiit against the oil lamp. He struck, and a monstrous three-lobed tail came up out of the water. Other boats were closing in, to help with the first catch and wait for the others that would be drawn by the commotion and the blood in the waters.
"Now! Stroke, stroke!"
The Land gunboat was out further in the Gut, hooting its steam whistle and scanning with the searchlight… but it was guarding against attempts to get away, not looking for boats making for the ex-Imperial shore. John kept his right hand on die whaleboat's tiller, flicking an occasional glance down at the compass in his left. That was mostly for show; Center kept a ghostly vector arrow floating before his gaze. there are now echoes from cliffs of the configuration indicated, the machine said, distance one thousand meters and closing.
Thump. John's head whipped around. That was the gunboat's cannon… ah. "Just a big "un," he whispered to the crew.
You got an occasional one of those, even in the shallow waters of the Gut. Nothing like the monsters that made sailing the outer seas hazardous, but too much for a harpooner to handle. There had been very little life on land when humans arrived on Visager, but the oceans more than made up for it. The Chosen officer on the gunboat probably thought of it as sport, something to break the dull routine of night escort work. And very good cover for John.
"We'll be coming up on the cliffs soon," he said quietly. "Half-stroke… half-stroke…"
The oars shortened their pace, scarcely dipping into the water. He could hear the slow boom of surf now, thudding and hissing on rock. John held up his signal lantern and carefully pressed the shutter: two long, two short, one long.
A flicker answered him, two shorts, repeated-all that they dared use, with the light pointing out to the Gut.
"Yarely now," the lead Marine in the head of the boat said. There was a quiet plop as he swung the lead. "By the mark, six. Six. Five. Six. Four. Four."
Rock loomed up on either hand, just visible as the waves broke and snake-hissed over it. A river broke the cliff near here, cutting a pathway that men or goats could use.
"By the mark, seven. Ten. No bottom at ten."
The pitching of the boat changed, calmer as they moved into die sheltered waters. John felt sweat matting his hair under the black knit stocking cap. The guerrillas would be waiting; the guerrillas, or a Fourth Bureau reaction squad.
"Rest oars," he said.
The poles came in, noiseless. The boat coasted, slowing… and the keel crunched on shingle. Four men leapt overboard into thigh-deep water, fanning out with their weapons ready. The rest followed them a second later, putting their shoulders to the whaleboat's sides and running it forward. John drew the revolver from his shoulder rig and ran forward to leap off the bow. there, Center said, reading input from his ears too faint for his conscious mind to follow.
He walked forward, sliding his feet to avoid tripping on the uneven surface. A match glowed, cupped in a hand, just long enough for him to recognize the face.
Arturo Bianci, the cotadini he'd shipped the arms to, back when the war began. Two years looked to have aged the man ten, which wasn't all that surprising.
A hand gripped his. "No lights," John warned.
Bianci made a sound that was half chuckle. "We have learned, signore. Those of us who live, have learned much."
They had; there were ropes strung from sticks to guide up the steep rocky path. Guerrillas joined the Marines in unloading the crates and lashing them to their shoulders with rope slings. John swung crates down from the boat, pleased with the silence and speed… and waiting for the moment when lights would spear down from the clifftop and voices sound in Laudisch. At last the boat road high and empty, rocking against the shingle.
'This way," John said.
Harry Smith nodded, and together they pushed it upstream, under an overhang of wild olive and trailing vines. Smith reached in, rocking it to one side with his weight, and pulled the stopper. Water gurgled into the whaleboat, and it sank rapidly in the chest-deep stream.
"I'll put a few rocks in her," Smith said. "She'll be here when y'all get back. So'll I be. Good luck, sir." He racked a shell into the breech of his pump shotgun.
Thanks. To you, too-we're all going to need it."
Heinrich Hosten looked at the thing that twitched and mewled on the table. The Fourth Bureau specialist smiled and patted it on what was left of its scalp.
"Yes, I'd say they're definitely planning on something to do with the train," she said. "Can't tell you exactly where, though-the subject didn't know, that's for certain."
Heinrich nodded thanks as he left. Outside he stood thoughtfully beside his horse for a while, looking around at the buildings of the little town, then pulling a map from the case at his side and tilting it so that the lantern outside the Fourth Bureau regional HQ shone on the paper. When he mounted, he turned towards the barracks, his escort of riflemen clattering behind him through the chill night.
"No, don't wake Major van Pelt," he said to the sentry outside the main door. It had been a monastery before the conquest, perfect for its new use; a series of courtyards with small rooms leading off, and large common kitchens, refectories for mess halls. "Who's the officer of the day?"
That turned out to be a very young captain. Heinrich returned her salute, then smiled as he stuffed tobacco into his big curved pipe.
"Hauptman Neumann, what's a junior officer's worst nightmare?"
"Ah…" Captain Neumann knotted her brow in thought. "Surprise attack by overwhelming numbers?" she said hopefully.
"Tsk, tsk. That would be an opportunity for an able young officer," Heinrich said genially. "No, a nightmare is what.you are about to undergo; an operation conducted with a senior officer along to look over your shoulder and jog your elbow. What forces are stationed here in Campo Fiero?"
"One battalion of the Third Prote'ge' Infantry, currently at ninety-eight percent of full strength, and a squadron of armored cars-five currently ready, three undergoing serious maintenance. That is not counting," she added with an unconscious sniff, "police troops. Plus the usual support elements." 'Troops so-called," Heinrich said, nodding agreement. He turned to the map table that filled one corner of the ready room. "Ah, yes. Now, find me a train schedule. While you're at it-I presume your company is on reaction status? Good. While you're at it, get your troops ready to move, full field kit, but no noise. Nobody to enter or leave the barracks area."
He stared at the map, puffing with the pewter lid of the pipe turned back. Now, he thought happily, if I were a rebellious animal, where would 1 be?
"Good choice," John said.
Bianci grunted beside him. "The bridge would have been better, but there are blockhouses there now-a section of infantry and a couple of their accursed machine guns at each end. With signal rockets always at the ready."
John nodded. Oto was up; the smallest of Visager's three moons also moved the fastest, and although it was little more than a bright spark apross the sky, it did give some light. Enough to see how the railway track curved around a steep rocky hill here, falling away to a stretch of marsh and then a small creek on the other side. The guerrillas numbered about sixty; Bianci hadn't offered to introduce anyone else, which was exactly as it should be.
"We got quite a few trains at first," Bianci said. "But then the tedeschi began making villagers from along the lines ride in carriages at front."
"You can't allow that to stop you," John said.
Bianci glanced his way, a shadowed gleam of eyeball in the faint moonlight, the smell of garlic and sweat.
"We didn't," he said. "But the villagers began to patrol the rail line themselves… to protect their families, you understand. So now we pick locations far from any habitation. Like this."
"Good ground, too," John said.
One of the Marines came up the hill, trailing a spool of thin wire. Another squatted next to John, placing a box next to him. It had a plunger with an handbar coming out of the top, and a crank on the side. Bianci leaned close to watch as the Marine cut the wire and split it into two strands, stripping the insulation with his belt knife. The raw copper of the wire matched the hairs on the backs of his huge freckled hands, incongruously delicate as they handled the difficult task in near-darkness.
"Ahh, beUissimo," the Imperial said. "We've been using black powder with friction primers-and since they started putting a car in front of the locomotive, that doesn't work so well."
"We can get detonator sets to you," John said. "But you'll have to come up with the wire-telegraph wire will do well enough."
Bianci nodded again. "That we can do." He looked down at the track hungrily. "Every slave in the rail yards tells us what goes on the cars. This one has military stores, arms and ammunition, medical supplies, and machine parts for a new repair depot north of Salini; the tedeschi have been talking of double-tracking the line from the Pada to the coast… why, do you think?"
They'll be reopening the trade with the Republic and the other countries on the Gut, soon," John replied. "And to be able to move supplies and troops faster. They have-"
Far away to the northwest, the mournful hoot of a locomotives steam whistle echoed off the hills. Bianci laughed, an unpleasant sound. "Right on time. The trains run on time, since the tedeschi came.., except when we arrange some delays."
John burrowed a little deeper behind a scree of rock. / have to be here, dammit, he thought. The guerrillas had to see that they were getting some support, however minimal. The problem was that the Santander government wasn't ready to really give that support, not yet. It was surprising what you could do with some contacts and a great deal of money, though.
Silence stretched. Bianci raised himself on an elbow. "Odd," he said. "They should be on the flat before this stretch of hills by now."
"Glad you stopped," Heinrich said, shining his new electric torch up at the escort car. "Yessir." The vehicle was a standard armored car, fitted with outriggers so that it could ride the rails, and a belt-drive from the wheels to propel it. Doctrine said that fighting vehicles had to have a Chosen in command; in this case, a nervous young private, showing it by bracing to attention in the turret and staring straight ahead, rigid as the twin machine guns prodding the air ahead of him.
"At ease," the Chosen brigadier said. "Now, we want to do this quickly," he added to Captain Neumann. "Unload boxcars four through six."
Greatly daring, the commander of the armored car spoke: "Sir, those are-"
"Military supplies. I'm aware of that, Private." The rigid brace became even tighter. He turned back to Neumann. "Then get the I-beams rigged and we'll load the cars."
Luck had been with him; there had been a stack of steel forms, the type used to frame the concrete of coast-artillery bunkers, in Campo Fiero. Used as ramps, they could get an armored car onto the train… with ropes, pulleys, winches, and a lot of pushing. Getting down would be easier, he hoped.
Orders barked sotto voce had the hundred-odd troopers of Neumann's company slinging crates out of boxcars, the Chosen officers pitching in beside their subordinates. Others were unstrapping the steel planks from the armored cars waiting where the little dirt road crossed the rail line. Heinrich moved forward as the crew of sweating Prote'ge' infantry staggered; they were still panting from the five-mile forced march to intercept the train.
But nobody saw its get on, the Chosen officer thought a little smugly, catching the corner of the heavy metal shape. Muscle bulged in his arms and neck as he braced himself and heaved it around, teeth clenched around the stem of his pipe.
"Dominate that piece of equipment!" he baited as the Proteges took up the strain.
They obeyed, looking at him out of the corners of their eyes. A slightly awed look; he'd taken two strong men's load for half a minute. The steel clanged down on the side of the flatcar, and the armored vehicle's driver started to back and fill, aligning his wheels with the ramp.
Heinrich stepped back, dusting his palms. Somewhere south of here waited a pack of animals with delusions of grandeur. Somehow that reminded him of Jeffrey Fan, Johan's faster-brother. A good man: sound soldier, a bit soft, but sound. A great pity they'd probably have to loll him someday.
"And I was right," he muttered to himself. There is going to be good sport here for years."
"The sun sets, but it also rises," Bianci whispered, putting his hand to die pushbar of the detonator set.
"Hmmm?" John said, startled out of reverie.
"An old saying, signore."
The train whistle hooted again, louder. Always a melancholy sound, John thought, taking a swig from his canteen. Oto was nearly down, but Adele was up, brighter and slower as it rose over the horizon. An armored car running on the rails came first, buzzing along with the belt from its rear wheels slapping and snarling. The turret moved restlessly, probing the darkness. A light fixed above the machine guns swept across the slope. John tensed.
Nothing, he thought, breathing in the scent of the dew-damp thyme crushed beneath his body. Good fire discipline. Not one of the men on the slope had been detected, and not one moved.
"Now," Arturo breathed, spinning the crank on the side of the detonator. Then he pushed down on the plunger.
WHUMP. WHUMP WHUMP
Three globes of magenta fire blossomed along the curving stretch of rail. One before the escort car; it braked desperately, throwing roostertails of sparks from its outrigger wheels. Not quite fast enough. The front wheels tumbled into the mass of churned earth and twisted iron that the dynamite had left, and the hull toppled slowly sideways, accelerating to fall on its side and skid down the gravel and earth of the embankment. The locomotive was a little more successful, braking in a squeal of steel on steel that sent fingers of pain into John's ears even half a thousand yards away. The front bogie dropped into the crater the explosive mine left, tipping the nose of the locomotive down. That jacknifed the coal car and first boxcar upward off the tracks, leaving them dangling by the couplings that held them to the engjne. The rest of the boxcars jolted to a crashing halt. Most of them partially derailed, lunging to the right or left until brought up by the inertia of the car ahead, leaving the whole train of two dozen cars lying in a zigzag. But none were thrown on their sides…
"Going too slow," Arturo said, puzzled.
Realization crystallized, like a lump in John's gut. "Trap!" he shouted. "Get-"
Schoonk. A mortar threw a starshell high into the sky above them. Blue-white light washed over the stretch of hill and swamp, acintic and harsh to their dark-adapted eyes. Schoonk. Schoonk'.
A rippling crackle of small-arms fire broke out across the hillside and from guerillas concealed in the swamp across the embankment; they'd learned that an ambush worked best with two sides. A captured machine gun was in place there, too, its brighter muzzle flashes contrasting with the duller, redder light of the ex-Imperial black-powder rifles most of the partisans carried.
"Pull back!" John shouted into Arturos ear. "Get out, leave a rearguard and get out now."
The guerilla leader hesitated With a sound like a giant ripping canvas across the sky, more than a dozen belt-fed Haagen machine guns cut lose from the train. The guerillas' rifle fire was punching through the thin pine boards of the boxcars, but John could see it sparking and ricochetting from steel within. Gunshields; tlie machine guns were fortress models, with an angled steel plate to protect die gunner. Their fire beat across die hillside like flails of green tracer, intersecting hoses of arched light dirough die night. Sparks scattered as die high-velocity jacketed bullets spanged off stone; little red glows showed where rounds had cut reeds in the swamp, Wee the mark of a cigarette touched to thin paper. Scores of Prote"ge" infantry were tumbling out of die cars, too, some falling, more going to ground along die train and returning fire.
And the doors of the rear boxcars were thrown open from within. Steel planks clanged down, and die dark lurching shape of armored cars showed within. The first skidded down die ramp, landing three-quarters on, almost going over, then steadying. Its engine chuffed loudly as die wheels spun and spattered gravel against the side of the train, and then die turret traversed to send more machine-gun fire against die hillside. Squads of infantry rose and scurried into its shelter, advancing behind it as the car nosed towards the lower slopes of the hill. A grenade crunched with a malignant snap of light Three more of die war-cars thudded to the ground, crunching dirough die trackside gravel.
John grabbed Arturos shoulder. "Get thefitck out of here!" he screamed in the partisan's ear. Then to Barrjen: "Collect die rest. Time to bug out."
"Yes sir."
With a long dragon hiss, a rocket rose from the wrecked train. It kept rising, a thousand yards or more, then burst in a shower of gold-die colors of the Chosen flag, yellow on black.
"Sound die halt in place" Heinrich Hosten said, standing with his hands on his hips. "And remember, live prisoners."
Troopers were moving down die hillside under the glare of the arc light, prodding at bundles of rags with their bayonets. Occasionally that would bring a response, and the soldiers would pick up the wounded guerilla; cautiously, after the first one who'd stuffed a live grenade under his body was found.
The trumpet sounded, four urgent rising notes. A slow crackle of skirmish fire in the hill country to the west died down. In die comparative silence that followed he could hear the relief train that the signal rocket was intended for, with the rest of the battalion and its equipment. Plus the equipment and workers to repair the track, of course. It was surprisingly difficult to do lasting damage to a railway track without time or plenty of equipment.
"Shall we pursue when the rest of the battalion comes up, Brigadier?" Captain Neumann said.
"Newt," he said. Too much chance of ambushes in the dark." He got out his map case. "But it would be advisable to push blocking forces here and here. Then in a few hours, we can sweep and see how many of these little birds we can bag."
Captain Neumann looked at the emergency aid station where her wounded were being looked after. There were four bodies with their grounosheets drawn over then-faces.
"We only killed twenty or so of them," she said. "This is a bad exchange rate."
"The operation is not over," Heinrich said. "And we have taught them a little lesson, I think."
"That is the problem-when we teach them a lesson, they learn" Neumann said unexpectedly.
Heinrich shrugged. "We must see that we learn more than they," ne added, knocking the dottle out of his pipe.
The cave smelled bad: damp rock, and die wastes of the survivors, since they hadn't dared go outside for the last three days. Weak daylight was leaking through, enough penetrating this far into the cave to turn the absolute blackness into a gray wash of light.
"We failed," Arturo said bitterly.
"We survived," John replied. "Enough of us. Next time we'll do better."
"So will they!" the guerilla said.
"We'll just have to learn faster," John said. "Besides, there are more of us than of them."
He looked toward the light. "Now we'd better check if their patrols are still looking," he said. "It's a fair hike back to the cove."
John Hosten's wasn't the biggest steam yacht under Santander registry, by a considerable margin; they were a common status symbol among the rising industrial magnates of the Republic. The Windstrider was only about twelve hundred tons displacement. It was the most modern, with some refinements that Center had suggested and John had made in the engineering works he owned. One of them was a wet-well entrance on the side that could be flooded or pumped dry in less than a minute, as well as turbine engines, something no vessel in the Republic's Navy had yet. The little ship lay long and sleek against the morning sun, a black silhouette outlined in crimson.
"Row! Bend yer backs to it, y'scuts!"
Smith's voice had a hard edge from the bows. John knew why; he could hear it without turning from his position at the tiller. A deep chuffing, the hollow sound steam made when exhausted into the stack of a light ship, and the soft continual surf noise of a bow wave curving away from the prow, just on the edge of hearing. The gunboat had picked them up twenty minutes ago, and it had grown from a dot on die horizon to a tiny model boat that grew as he watched, shedding a long plume of black coal smoke behind from its single cylindrical funnel.
"Stroke!" he barked, willing strength to flow from his voice through the crew to the oars. "Stroke! Almost home! Stroke!"
Sweat glistened on their faces, mouths gasping for air. A new sound came through the air, a muffled droning.
"Smith!"
One-handed, John tossed the binoculars to the ex-Marine. He took them and looked upward. "Oh, shit, sir. One of them gasbag things. Just comin' into sight, like."
"How many engine pods?"
"Four. No, four at the sides an' one sort of at the back."
"Skytiger. Patrol class," John said. Center helpfully offered schematics and performance specifications. "They've got a squadron of them operating out of Salini now."
The Windstrider was very close. John felt himself leaning forward in a static wave of tension, and grinned tautly at himself. If things went badly, the yacht was no protection at all, merely a way to get a lot of other people killed with him. And his subconscious stiU felt as if he was racing for absolute safety. A ghost-memory plucked at him, something not his own. Raj Whitehall spurring his riding dog for a barge, with enemies at his heels…
Damn, he thought. You seem to have had a much more picturesque life than me.
Adventure is somebody else in deep shit., far, far away, Raj said. And I think you're about to be that somebody. Focus, lad, focus.
The long hull loomed up. John threw his weight on the tiller and the whaleboat heeled sharply, turning in its own length to curve around the bow and come down the side away from the Land gunboat. The narrow black slit of the loading door came up fast, perhaps too fast.
"Ship oars!" he called.
The long ashwood shafts came inboard with a toss; Marines were well-trained in small-boat operations. One caught the edge of the steel slit nonetheless, snapping off and punching a rower in the ribs with enough force to bring an agonized grunt. The whaleboat shot into the gloom of the inner well; the overhead arc light seemed to grow brighter as the metal door slid shut. The air was humid, hot, with a smell of machine oil and sweat.
The crew collapsed over their oars, wheezing, faces red and dripping. John vaulted onto the sisal mats that covered the decking-an irony there, since the fiber had probably been imported from the Land-nodded in return to the crew's salutes, and took the staircase three rungs at a time. The hatchway to the boat chamber clanged shut below him; someone dogged it shut below, and a crewman threw matting over the hatch, leaving it looking identical to the rest of the corridor. He stepped through a doorway, and suddenly he was in the passenger section of the yacht. Soft colorful Sierran carpets underfoot, walnut panelling… by the time he reached his cabin, his valet was already towelling down his torso. He changed with rapid, precise movements, stuck a cigarette into a sea-ivory holder, and strolled out on deck.
"About bloody time," Jeffrey observed, making a show of looking at the approaching Chosen gunboat with his binoculars. "How'd it go?"
"You saw it-a damned ratfu- er, walking disaster."
Pia came up and took John's arm. "Tedeschi pigs," she muttered under her breath. Her eyes were fixed on the Chosen vessel, as well.
Good thing she's not on the guns, John thought.
There were four guns on die yacht, port and starboard forward and aft of the mid-hull superstructure. Nothing too remarkable about that; any vessel on Visagers seas had to have some armament, given the size and disposition of the marine life. The two-and-a-half-inch naval quick-firers on pedestal mounts were not entirely typical, however-nor was the fact that they could elevate to ninety degrees. Two were, their muzzles tracking the leisurely approach of the Chosen dirigible; the other two followed the gunboat. That had a three-inch gun behind a shield on the forecastle, another at tiie stern, and pom-poms-scaled-up machine guns firing a one-pound shell-bristling from either flank. The Chosen captain wouldn't be worried about the purely physical aspects of any confrontation, even without the airship. Although that confidence was possibly overstated, since the yacht had an underwater torpedo tube on either side.
Try to look like a man on his honeymoon," John told his stepbrother.
"I'm trying," Jeffrey replied through clenched teeth. "He's signaling…" A bright light flickered from the Chosen gunboat. "Heave to and prepare to be boarded" he read. "Arrogant bastards, aren't they?"
"Jeffrey?" Lola Farr, nee Chiavri, came up the companionway to the bridge, holding on to her hat. "Is there-" She caught sight of the Chosen vessels. "Oh!"
"Don't worry," Jeffrey said. He nodded his head upward towards the pole mast in front of the yacht's runnel. The flag of the Republic of the Santander snapped in the breeze. "They're not going to start a war."
Although they.might be quite tvuling to endure an embarassing diplomatic accident, John thought morbidly. He wished Pia and Lola weren't along, but then, it would look odd if they weren't, given the cover story. And Pia wouldn't stay if I nailed her feet to the kitchen floor.
"Captain," John said quietly to the grizzle-bearded man who stood beside the wheel with his hands clasped behind his back. "Signal Santander ship, International Waters, and sheer off."
"Sir." He passed along the orders. "Shall I make speed?"
"No, just maintain your course," John said. The Windstrider could probably outrun the Chosen gunboat, but not the airship-or a cannon shell, for that matter. "Act naturally, everyone."
Jeffrey grinned. "Natural, under the circumstances, would be scared s- spitless."
"Act arrogant, then; the Chosen understand that."
John looked around at the bridge of the yacht. It was horseshoe-shaped, with another horseshoe within it; the inner one was enclosed, a curved waist-high wall of white-painted steel with windows above that, meeting the roof above. That held the wheel, binnacle, engine-room telegraph, and chart table. The outer semicircle was open save for a railing of teak and brass and empty save for the two couples and a few stewards. They were in cream-colored livery; Jeffrey wore a summer-weight brown colonel's uniform, and John white ducks, the sort of outfit a wealthy man might wear for playing tennis… or yachting. Pia and Lola were in gauzy warm-weather dresses of peach and lavender, looking expensive and haughty.
Perfect, John thought.
The gunboat was running on a converging course, white water foaming back from its bow. As he watched, it swung parallel to the yacht, almost alongside, and slowed to match speed. John smiled tightly and touched Pia's hand where it rested in the crook of his arm. She gave his arm a squeeze and released it. He took a drag on the cigarette, supressing a cough, and strolled in a jaunty fashion to the starboard wing of the open space. His hand rested on the railing, casually touching a certain bronze fitting.
The vessels were less than a dozen yards apart- showing good handling on the part of both crews. That meant that the gunboat was less than a dozen yards from the sixteen-inch midships torpedo tube, armed and flooded. The fitting under his hand was connected to a simple bell-telegraph and light; if he pressed it twice, the men crouched behind the little circular door would pull levers… and a slug of high-pressure compressed air would shove the tin fish out of the tube. A few seconds and the Chosen gunboat would be a broken-backed hulk sliding under the waters.
Of course, that would ruin his cover; the airship would report back, or someone in the yacht s crew would talk even if they got lucky…
"Ahoy there!" a voice bellowed through a speaking trumpet from the low bridge of the gunboat. Its Santander English was accented but fluent. "' Tis iz Levtnant der See Anrtika Tlrnwitz. Prepare to be boarded."
Cannon and pom-poms and machine guns were trained with unnerving steadiness on him, ready to rake the Windstrider into burning wreckage in seconds- about as many seconds as the torpedo would take to do its work The gray-uniformed crew waited in motionless tension, all except for a dozen who were shouldering rifles and making ready to swing a launch from its davits. John pitched his voice to carry.
"This is sovereign territory of the Republic of the Santander. You have no authority here and any act of aggression will be resisted."
"That iz un private vessel! You do not diplomatic immunity haff!"
John pointed up to the flag. "Leutnant, you may come aboard with no more than one other member of your crew. Otherwise, I must ask you to get out of my way."
Half-heard orders carried from the gunboat to the yacht. Most of the boarding party who'd been preparing the launch grounded arms and stood easy; the little boat 'slid down into the water, and several figures in Land uniform slid down ropes from the gunboat's deck to man it. Smuts of black smoke broke from the slender funnel at its stern, a small steam engine chugged, and the launch angled in towards the Santander ship.
"Captain," John called over his shoulder. "Party to greet the Leutnant. And a rope ladder, if you please."
Whistles fluted as the Chosen officer came over the side. The escort for her and the Prote'gg seaman who followed behind were distantly polite; the rest of the crew glared. Everyone was wearing a cutlass and revolver, and carbines stood ready to hand.
Aren't you laying it on a bit thick? Jeffrey thought, the familiar mental voice relayed by Center. You're supposed to be secretly on their side, after all.
That's exactly it, John replied. A good double agent plays his part welL-and my part is a wealthy playboy who dabbles in diplomacy, but who is secretly a Foreign Office spook and violently anti-Chosen.
The irony of it was that the best way to convince his Chosen handlers that he was a competent double agent was to act the way he would if he wasn't a double agent, except for his reports to them-he was an information conduit, not an agent of influence. Which meant, of course, that they could never be sure he wasn't a triple agent, but that was par for the course.
Espionage could make your head hurt.
Annika Tlrnwitz was a tall lanky woman of about thirty, with a brush of close-cropped brown hair and a face tanned and weatherbeaten to the color of oiled wood. Her blue eyes were like gunsights, tracking methodically across the yacht, missing nothing. John thought he saw a little surprise at the quality of the crew and the arms, but… correct, Center thought, subject tirnwitz is surprised. A holograph appeared over her face, showing temperature patterns and pupil dilation. A sidebar showed pulse rate and blood pressure, subject is also experiencing well-controlled apprehension.
"Leutnant der See Annika Tirnwitz," the Chosen said, with a slight stiff nod. "Who is in command here?"
John replied in kind. In accendess Landisch he replied: "Johan Hosten, owner-aboard. What can I do for you, Leutnant?" subject's apprehension level has increased markedly.
Nice to know that he wasn't the only one feeling nervous here, and even nicer that he had Center to reveal what was behind that poker face. Of course, only a fool wouldn't be a little fearful of the possible consequences of a fight here. Not the physical ones -
cowards didn't make it through the Test of Life-but the political repercussions. Relations between the Land and Santander had never been all that good, and since the fall of the Empire they'd gone straight down the toilet. The press back home was having a field day with the atrocity stories the refugees were bringing in; the Chosen were too insular to even try countermeasures, they didn't understand the impact that sort of thing had on public opinion in the Republic. John's own papers were leading the charge… and the stories were mostly true, at that.
The Chosen did understand status and territory and pissing matches, though. Sinking the yacht of a wealthy, powerful man related to a Santander Navy admiral…
"Heir Hosten?" Tirnwitz said. She cleared her throat. "My vessel was pursuing a small boat. Carrying subversive terrorist elements."
John made a sweeping wave of his hand. "As you can see, Leutnant, there's no boat here except our ship's lifeboats, all of which are secured and lashed down… and dry."
His eyes lifted slightly to the dirigible. It was much closer now, but when he'd come aboard it had been too far to the north to see what actually happened.
Tirnwitz's Ups thinned in frustration. The Windstriders boats were lashed down and tight in their davits; nobody could have hoisted one aboard in the time they'd had. Nor could a whaleboat have made it over the horizon in the yachts shelter… although possibly the men on one could have scrambled aboard and pulled the plug on their boat.
He could see that thought going through Tirnwitz's head "I must make inspection and question your crew," she said after a moment.
Impossible," John replied.
Jeffrey moved up to his side. "And to paraphrase what my father said in Salini last year, if you want to start a war, this is as good a place as any."
Pia waved a steward forward with a tray; it looked rather incogruous when combined with the cutlass and revolver at his waist, and the short rifle slung over his shoulder.
"Perhaps the Leutnant would like some refreshments?" she said with silky malice. "Before she returns to her ship."
The sailor behind the Chosen captain growled and half moved, then sank back quivering with rage at a finger-motion from her. She stared at Pia for a moment.
"An Imperial. The animals are less insolent in the New Territories these days," she said. "Teaching them manners can be diverting." She nodded to John. "Someday we may serve Santander refreshments, a drink you'll find unpleasant. Guten tag."
The blast furnace shrieked like a woman in childbirth, magnified ten thousand times. A long tongue of flame reached upward into the night, throwing reddish-orange light across the new steelworks. John nodded thoughtfully as the bell-cap was lowered down onto the great cylinder, like a cork into a bottle taller than a six-story building. The flames died down as the cap intercepted the uprush of superheated gases from the throat of the furnace, channeling them through pipes where they were cleaned and distributed to heat ovens and boilers. A stink of cinders and sulfur filled the air, and the acrid nose-crackling smell of heated metal. Gravel crunched under his feet as he turned away, the small party of engineers and managers trailing at his heels.
A train of railcarts rumbled by, full of reddish iron ore, limestone, and black-brown coke in careful proportions. The carts slowed, then jerked and picked up a little speed as the hooks beneath them caught the endless chain belt that would haul them up the steep slope to the Up of the furnace.
"Nice counterweight system you've installed, sir," the chief engineer said. "Saves time on feeding the furnace."
John nodded. Courtesy of Center, he thought.
"Saves labor, too," the engineer said. "God knows we're short."
"How are those refugees shaping up?" John said.
"Better'n I'd have thought, sir, for Wop hayseeds. They're not afraid of shedding some sweat, that's for sure.
"Pay's better than stoop work in the fields," John said.
A lot of the Imperial refugees who'd left the camps outside the cities on the south shore of the Gut ended up as migrant workers following the crops across Santander. They'd jumped at the chance of mill work. A couple of them snatched off their hats and bowed as he passed, teeth gleaming white against their soot-darkened olive skins. John touched the gold head of his cane to his own silk topper; luckily white spats were out of fashion, or Pia would be even more upset than she was likely to be with him anyway.
"No damned strikes, either," the plant's manager said.
"Shouldn't be, with the wages we pay," John said.
Off to the left a huge cradle of molten iron was moving, slung under a trackway that ran down die center of the shed. It dropped fat white sparks, bright even against the arc lights, then halted and tipped a stream of white-hot incandescence into the waiting maw of the open-hearth furnace. Further back, bevond the soaking pits for the ingots, the machinery of the rolling mill slammed and hummed, long shafts of hot steel stretching and forming.
The engineer nodded towards them. "We're fully up to speed on the rail mill," he said. "If you can keep the orders coming in, we can keep the steel going out."
John nodded. "Don't worry about the orders," he said. "Plenty of new lines going in, what with the double-tracking program. And the Chosen are buying for then-new lines in the Empire."
That brought the conversation behind him to a halt. He looked back at the expressions of clenched disapproval and grinned; it was not a pleasant thing to see.
"You're selling to the Chosen?" the engineer said.
"I prefer to think of it as getting the Chosen to finance our expansion program," John replied.
What's more, it's good cover. Several times over. It gave him a good excuse for traveling to the Land, which helped with his ostensible work as a double agent in the employ of the Chosen. The shipments were also splendid cover for agents and arms to the underground resistance.
"And besides the sheet-steel rolls, you'll be getting heavy boring and turning lathes soon. From the Armory Mills in Santander City."
That rocked the man back on his heels. "Ordnance?" he said. "That'll cost, sir. We'll have to learn by doing, and it's specialist work."
John nodded. "Don't worry about the orders," he said again. "Let's say a voice whispered in my ear that demand is going to increase."
He touched the cane to his hat brim again and shook hands all around. His senior employees had learned to respect John Hosten's "hunches," even if they didn't understand them. Then walked across the vacant yard to where his car was waiting by the plant gate under a floodlight.
"Back home, sir?" Harry Smith said, looking up from polishing the headlamps with a chamois cloth.
"Home," he said. "For a few days."
"Ah," the ex-Marine in the chauffeur's uniform said. "We're going somewhere, then, sir?"
John nodded and stepped into the passenger compartment of the car as Smith opened it for him, tossing hat and cane to one of the seats. There were six, facing each other at front and rear. One held Maurice Hosten, sleeping with his head in Maurice Fair's lap; the older man looked down at his five-year-old namesake fondly, stroking the silky black hair that spilled across the dark blue of his uniform coat. Pia glanced up, with a welcoming smile that held a bit of a frown.
"Even on your son's birthday, you cannot keep from business?" she said.
"Only a little bit of business, darling," he said, settling back against the padded leather of the seat; it sighed for him. "Quietly, or you'll wake him."
Maurice Farr chuckled "After the amount of cake this young man put away, not to mention the lemonade, the spun candy, the pony rides, the carousel, and the Ferris wheel, a guncotton charge couldn't wake him-you should know that by now."
"He does; he's just using that as an excuse." Pia's hand took John's and squeezed away the sting of the words. "This one, you wave the word 'duty' in front of him, and he reacts like a fish leaping for a worm."
"And the hook's barbed," John said ruefully, nodding to Smith through the window that joined the passenger compartment and the driver's position up ahead. The car moved forward with a hiss of vented steam.
Tour ladys been running an interesting notion past me," Admiral Farr said.
"This Ladies'-"
"Women's," Pia corrected.
"Women's Auxiliary?" John finished.
"Yes. If we get into an all-out war with the Land, we could use it. Though I'm not sure how the public would react; there was a Tot of bad feeling during the agitation over the franchise, a decade or so ago. People claiming it was the first step to Chosen corruption and so forth."
"I don't think that'll be much of a problem," John said thoughtfully. Center provided the probable breakdown of public sentiment in various combinations of circumstance. "After all, Pia's idea is to have women take jobs that release men to fight. There are already plenty of women in the nursing corps-have been since the last war with the Union, you know, whatshername with the lantern and all that."
"And if the big war happens, we'll need every fighting man we can get," the admiral said thoughtfully. "We'll not win that one without a damned big army, and the fleet'll have to expand, too. We won't be able to spare men for typing and filing and whatnot."
"And factory work," Pia said. "First, we must have a committee-women of consequence, to be respectable, but also of… energy."
"If it's energy you want, what about your sisters-in-law?" Maurice said. "If it's one tiling my daughters have, it's energy… oh."
Pia nodded. "Them I talk to first," she said. "They are young, but there is time."
"It'll be a while," John said. Pia nodded; his foster-father looked at him a little strangely, struck by the certainty of the tone. "But its not too early to get started laying the groundwork."
"Son, for a man of thirty, sometimes you sound pretty damned old," Maurice said. He touched his graying temples. "Maybe I'd better retire, and leave the field to you younger bucks."
"I don't think you can be spared, Father," John said. "And… it isn't all that long until the balloon goes up."
"Is it indeed?" Maurice Farr said.
"The situation in the Unions getting pretty tense," John said. "The People's Front may win the next election there."
"The Chosen certainly won't like that," Maurice said. "I'm not too certain I do either. The Union's not going to solve its problems by an attack on property… although the way the wealthy act there is a standing invitation to that sort of thing."
John nodded. "The Chosen have a lot of influence in certain circles there," he said. "And I don't think those circles are going to lie down and die just because they lose an election. It'll take a couple of years for things to boil over, but the Land is certainly heating up the pot."
Maurice Farr blinked slowly, his face slowly losing the shape of a grandfather's and becoming an admiral's. They can't get supplies into the Union except by sea," he said thoughtfully.
John shook his head. "We can't fight them over aiding one faction in the Union," he said. "Western provinces wouldn't go for jt."
"All that good soil softens the brain, I think," Farr said.
"Amazing what being a couple of hundred miles from the action will do. And they've always resisted the easterners' attempts to get die Republic as a whole involved in Union affairs; it'll take a while for them to realize this is different."
Pia looked up at him. This is why you must travel to the Union, my love?" she said.
John sighed unhappily. "Jeffrey and I will be in and out of there for years now," he said. "Until the crisis comes. But don't worry, it shouldn't be particularly risky. We're only advising and playing politics, after all."
Jeffrey Farr had never liked the Union del Est very much. For one thing, the waiters, innkeepers, clerks, and such made it a point of pride to be surly, and he'd never liked seeing a job done badly. For another, the women didn't wash or change their underclothes often enough to suit him; he supposed that that was an academic point how that he was a married man with a nine-year-old daughter and another child on the way, but the memory rankled… and she looked so good, before and after she took off her drawers. But phewl The men didn't wash much, either, but that was less personal.
Still, the coastal city of Borreaux looked well enough; the terrain was less mountainous than most of the southern shore of the Gut, a long narrow plain flanking a river between low mountains. The plain was covered with vineyards, mostly; the foothills of the mountains were gray-green with olives, and the upper slopes still heavily forested with oak and silver fir despite centuries of cutting for buildings and ship timber and barrels. The town itself sprawled along the river in a tangle of docks and basins, backed by broad, straight streets lined with trees and handsome three-story blocks of buildings in a uniform cream limestone. The slums weren't quite as bad as in most Union cities and were kept decently out of sight. The rooftop terrace of this restaurant was quite
pleasant-sun shining through the striped awnings, servers in white aprons bearing food and drink on trays… and just to spoil it, three Chosen officers in gray were at a table nearby, two men and a woman, and two local ladies. The Land aristocrats were plowing their way through a five-course meal, and punishing a couple of bottles of the local wine fairly hard. Or rather, the two men were, and laughing occasionally with their local companions, who were either extremely high-priced talent or the minor gentlewomen they appeared to be. The Chosen woman was sipping at a single glass of the wine and looking around. Medium-height, dark hair and eyes…
Christ, it's Gertal Jeffrey thought, with a jolt of alarm that turned the hunger in his stomach to sour churning. Why didn't you teU me?
Would have, lad, vfit'd been an emergency. Dont want you to lose your alertness, though. We can't always notice things for you.
He tried to keep a poker face, but Gerta must have seen some change. She raised the wineglass slightly, and an eyebrow with it The mannerism reminded him of John a little-but then, they'd been raised together. It startled him sometimes to remember that John had been born among the Chosen. If it wasn't for that clubfoot… observe:
A man's looks were more than muscle and bone; die personality within shaped them, everything from the set of his mouth to the way he walked. It took a moment for Jeffrey to realize that the tafl man in the uniform of a Land general was John. The face was the same, but full of a quiet, grim deadliness. The city behind him was familiar, too: Borreaux, but in ruins. A dirigible floated overhead, and columns of Land troops were marching up from the docks.
John hosten is in the upper 0.3% of the human ability curve, Center said, in the absence of his disability, and assuming no intervention on our part, the probability of his achieving general rank by this date in his timeline is 87%, ±4. probability of becoming chief of general staff, 73%, ±6. probability of becoming head of chosen council of state, 61%, ±8. probability of chosen conquest of visager increases by 17% ±5 in that eventuality.
Jeffrey gave a slight internal shudder. With no clubfoot-and no Center-he and John would probably have spent their lives fighting each other. correct, probabilityShut up, Raj and Jeffrey thought simultaneously.
The waiter arrived at last, and laid a bowl of the famous Borreaux fish stew before him; trivalves in their shells, chunks of lizard tail, pieces of fish, all in a broth rich with garlic, tomatoes, and spices. It smelled wonderful; it would have been even more wonderful if the waiter hadn't had a rim of grime under his thumbnail, and the thumb hadn't been dipping into the stew. Jeffrey forced himself to ignore that, and what the kitchen was probably like; he poured himself a glass of white wine and tore a chunk of bread off the end of a long narrow loaf. Say what you liked about the Unionaise, they did know how to cook.
And it was a damned unlucky chance that Chosen officers, and Gerta of all people, happened to be right here when he was expectingA small, slight man came up to Jeffrey's table and sat, taking off his beret and stubbing out a viDainous-smelBng cigarette in an ashtray. His eyes flicked sideways toward the Chosen three tables away.
"They can't hear us," Jeffrey said. "And we're facing away."
So that they couldn't lip-read. Offhand, he thought that the two male Chosen were straight-legs; Gerta certainly wasn't, though, and might well have been trained in that particular skill As to what they were doing here…
"And we have business," Jeffrey went on, spooning up some of the fish stew. "Damn, but that's good," he said mildly.
"Vincen Deshambre," the thin man said. Jeffrey took his hand for a moment. "Delegate of the Parti Uniste Travaitteur." He slid a small flat envelope out of his jacket and across the table.
"Colonel Jeffrey Farr," Jeffrey replied, reading it.
He spoke fair Fransay, and read it well; the Union del Est had been the Republic's main foreign enemy until a generation or so ago, with skirmishes even more recently. Santander military men were expected to learn die language, for interrogations and captured documents, if nothing else.
Vincen looked over again at the table with the Chosen. "Bitches," he said, his voice suddenly like something that spent most of its time curled up on warm rocks.
Jeffrey looked up, raising his eyebrow. Only one of the Chosen could possibly qualify.
"Not the foreigners," Vincen said. A light sheen broke out across his high forehead, up to the edge of the thinning hair. "They're just pirates. If we were united, we could laugh at them." / don't think so, Jeffrey thought. Alone, tile Union against the Land of the Chosen would be a match between the hammer and the egg. Not quite as easy a victim as the Empire had been, of course. For one thing die terrain was worse, for another it was farther away, and for a third the country wasn't quite so backward. S#K, I see his point. And the Land wasn't about to simply invade the Union, That would mean war widi Santander, and die Chosen weren't ready… yet.
Neitiier was Santander.
"Those whores are what's wrong, them and tiiose like them."
Jeffrey did a quick scan across the odier table, then turned and let Center freeze die picture in front of him, magnifying until they all seemed to be at arm's length,
"I don't think they're professionals," he said.
Vincen flushed more deeply; it was a little disconcerting to see a man actually sweating with hate.
"Elite," he said, using the Fransay term for the upper classes. "Merdechiennes are losing their power, so they call in foreigners to prop it up for them."
"Well, two can play at that game," Jeffrey said.
The Unionaise gave him a sharp look. Santander had taken several substantial bites out of the western border of the Union, in the old wars. Jeffrey smiled warmly,
"We're not territorially expansive… not anymore, at least."
Of course, much of the western Union was an economic satellite of the Republic these days, and the TravaiUeur-Worker-party didn't like it one little bit. Despite the fact that without that investment, its members would still be scratching out a living farming rocks as metayers, paying half the crop to a landlord.
Vincen grunted. "As you say. We have the evidence now. General Libert is definitely in correspondence with Land agents. They offer transport for his Legion troops back to the mainland."
Center called up a map for Jeffrey. The Union del Est covered a big chunk of the southern lobe of Visager's main continent, between Santander and the sort-of-republic of Sierra. South of it wasn't much but ocean right down to the south polar ice cap, but there were a series of fairly substantial islands, some independent, some held by the Republic or the Union.
"Libert's on Errif, isn't he? That's quite a ways out, seven hundred kilometers or so. Can't your navy squadron in Bassin du Sud keep him bottled up?"
The Legion were the best troops the Union had, and mostly foreigners at that. They were the ones who'd finally beaten the natives on Errif, after a war where the Union regulars nearly got thrown back into the sea. And there were large units of Errifan natives under Union officers on the islands too, now. They'd probably be about as tough fighting against the Union government as they had been in the initial war.
The navy is loyal to the government, yes," Vincen said. "But the Land, they offer air transport if there is a matching military uprising on the mainland."
Jeffrey whistled silently, remembering the air assault on Corona in the opening stages of the Imperial war. Can't fault the Chosen on audacity, he thought. Errif was a lot further from their bases. Overfly the Union, he thought, calculating distances. They could at that; the Landisch Luftanza had a concession to run a route that way. Refuel at sea, from ships brought round the continent in international waters. Yes, it's possible. Just. You had to be ready to take chances in war; otherwise it turned into a series of slugging matches. Big risks could have big payoffs… or disaster, if things went into the pot.
"Why don't you recall him and jail him?" Jeffrey asked "Before he has a chance to rebel."
Vincen clenched his fists. "Because this coalition so-called government has even less balls than it has brains!" His half-howl brought stares from the tables around them, and he lowered his voice. "Us, the damned syndicalists, the regional autonomists-everyone but the twice-damned anarchists and separatists, and name of a dog! We have to keep them sweet, too, because we need their votes in the Chambre du Delegate."
He made a disgusted sound through his teeth, hands waving. Unionaise were like Imperials that way: tie their hands and they were struck dumb as a fish.
"Last year, we could have arrested him. Arrested all the traitors in uniform. What did our so-called government do? Pensioned half of them off! Gave them pensions wrung out of the workers* sweat, so that they could plot at meir leisure."
"*Never do an enemy a small injury,'" Jeffrey quoted "Old Imperial saying." Very old, from what Center said.
Vineen's small eyes were hot with agreement. "We should have executed the lot of them," he said. "Now its too late. The government is holding off on General"- he virtually spat the word-"Libert in the hopes that if they don't provoke him, he'll do nothing."
"Stupid," Jeffrey said in agreement. "They're also probably afraid that if they send troops to arrest him, they'll go over to him instead."
Vincen nodded jerkily. "There are loyal troops-the Assault Guards, for instance-but yes, the ministry is concerned with that."
"Which brings us down to practicalities," Jeffrey said. "If there is a military uprising with Land support, what exactly do you plan to do about it?"
"We will fight!"
"Yes, but what will you fight with?"
The little Unionaise linked his fingers on the table. "We have confidence that part of the army at least will remain loyal. Beyond that, there are the regional militias."
Jeffrey nodded. He had no confidence in them; for one thing, they had even less in the way of real training than the provincial militias back home. Some of the states of the Union were run by the conservative opposition parties, and thereby pro-Chosen. Even in the ones that weren't, too many of the militias were under the influence of local magnates, almost all of whom supported the conservative opposition parties, as did the Church here. The Church here was a great landed magnate, come to that.
"And we'll hand out arms to the party militias of the coalition, and to the workers in the streets-lets see how the Regulars like being drowned in a sea of armed workers."
"It's good to see you're in earnest," Jeffrey said. It all sounded like a prescription for a bloodbath, but that was preferable to another swift Chosen triumph, he supposed. "For my part, I can assure you that my government will declare any outright intervention in internal Union affairs an unfriendly act."
That meant less than it should; semi-clandestine intervention wouldn't provoke Santander retaliation. The Republic simply wasn't ready for war, either physically or psychologically.
"And I think we can guarantee that you'll be allowed to purchase weapons. Speaking in my private capacity, you'll also find some of our banks sympathetic in the matter of loans. Provided your government is equally reasonable."
"I suppose you'll want concessions…"
They settled down to dicker; when Vincen left, the expression on his face was marginally less sour. Fortunately, the Chosen officers left a little later. The men went with their local companions; one of them stopped to say a final word with Gerta Hosten. She laughed and shook her head. The man shrugged, and the girl with him pouted. When they had left, Gerta picked up her wineglass and came over to Jeffrey's table.
"You're welcome," he said as she seated herself without asking permission.
The hard dark face showed a slight smile. "We meet again. A pleasure. It would have been an even bigger one if Heinrich had had the sense to shoot you four years ago. I told him you were a spook."
"I'm here on vacation," Jeffrey said, smiling back despite himself. "Besides, Heinrich doesn't have your suspicious mind."
"Which is why he's a straight-leg. Too damned good-natured for his own good." Gerta raised her wineglass. These Unionaise make some pretty things," she said as the cut crystal sparkled in the evening sun. "And they make good wine. But they couldn't organize sailors into a whorehouse."
"Well, that's your problem," Jeffrey said. "You're the ones with the training mission here."
"Purely as private contractors, on leave from our regular duties," Gerta said piously., "And I'm a tourist," Jeffrey said.
Unwillingly, he joined in Gerta's chuckle.
"You know the best thing about competing with you Santies?" Gerta asked. When he shook his head, she continued: "It's not that you're short of guts, because you aren't, or because you're stupid, because you aren't that, either. It's that you're never, ever ready" She finished her wine and rose.
"And we're going to win this round," she said.
"Why's that, the invincible destiny of the Chosen race?"
"Invincible muleshit," she said cheerfully, with a grin that might have come out of deep water, rolling over for the killing bite. "The reason that we're going to win this one is that we're trying to help fuck this place up- and the Unionaise are positive geniuses at that, anyway."
Everyone in Bassin du Sud was afraid. John Hosten could taste it, even without Centers quick flickering scans of the people passing by. The narrow crooked streets were less full of people than he'd seen on previous business visits, and the storekeepers stood at the ends of their long narrow shops, ready to drop the rolling metal curtain-doors. Windows were locked behind the scrolled ironwork of their balconies, and similar ironwork doors had been pulled across most of the narrow entranceways that led to interior courtyards. He could still get glimpses down them, the sight of a fountain or a statue in old green bronze, or a tine of washing above plain flagstones.
Gerta's smile haunted him, seen through Jeffrey's eyes.
Every time he'd seen her smile like that, people started dying in job lots.
There was something else about the streets, he decided. I hope jean-Claude is still there. Something very odd about die streets, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. few military personnel, Center said.
Bassin du Sud had a fair-sized Union garrison, plus a navy base. In fact, if he turned, he could see part of it downslope from the rise he was on. His stepfather would have gone into a cold rage at the knots hanging from the rigging of the three hermaphrodite cruisers at the dock, and the state of their upperworks, but…
The sound hit a huge soft pillow of air, knocking him backward. Down by the naval docks a hemisphere of fire blossomed upwards, with bits and pieces of iron and wood and crewmen from the three cruisers. A stunned silence followed the explosion, then a great screaming roar like nothing he had ever heard in his life.
A mob, Raj's mental voice said softly. That's the sound of a hunting mob.
Over it came sounds he had no problem recognizing. First a series of dull soft thuds in the distance, like very large doors slamming. Then a burbling, popping sound that went on and on, rising and falling. Artillery and small arms.
"I'm late, God damn it," he said, and began to run. Perhaps too late. The rough pavement was slippery and uncertain under his boots; he kept his right hand near the front of his jacket, ready to go for a weapon.
Careful, lad. Raj cautioned. / don't think foreigners are going to be att that popular around here right note.
The narrow street widened a little, into a small cobbled plaza the shape of an irregular polygon, with a fountain in the middle spilling water into granite horse troughs around it. A bullet spanged through the air. He dove forward and rolled into the cover of the troughs, ignoring the stone gouging at his back, and came up with the automatic ready in his hand.
A man in a monk's brown robe was staggering away from the little church on the other side of the plaza. He was a thick-bodied man, with a kettle belly and a round, plump face. A few hours earlier it might have been a good-natured face, the jolly monk too fond of the table and bottle of the stories. Now it was a mask of blood from a long cut across the tonsured scalp. Dozens of men and women in the rough blue clothing of city laborers were following the monk, jeering and poking him with sticks, spitting and kicking. The cleric's heavy body jerked to the blows, but his wide fixed eyes looked out of blood-wet skin with a desperate fixed expression, as if his mind had convinced itself that the exit to the plaza represented safety.
There was no safety for him. One of the mob tired of the fun. The pried-up cobblestone he swung must have weighed ten pounds; the monk's head burst with a sound much like a watermellon falling six stories onto pavement. He collapsed, his body still twitching beneath the brown robe. John swore softly to himself and rose, letting the pistol fall down by his side. The black crackle finish of the weapon's steel probably wouldn't show much against his frock coat… and while the ten rounds in the magazine also wouldn't be much good against a charging mob, he didn't intend to die alone if it came to that.
"Hey, there's one of the Chosen dog-suckers who're in bed with the elite and the Christ-suckers!" someone bawled.
"Santander!" John shouted, in a controlled roar. It cut through the murmur of this little outlier of the mob. "I'm from Santander"-though I was born in Oathtaking and my father's a general on the Council, but there's no need to complicate matters-"on diplomatic business."
He pulled out his passport with his left hand and held it up. Half the crowd probably couldn't read, much less recognize official stamps, but his accentless Fransay and his manner made them hesitate.
"I'm on my way to the Santander consulate right now," he went on, and pointed to the northward where the sound of fighting was heaviest. "Don't you people have business up there?"
The crowd milled, people talking to their neighbors; individuals once more, rather than a beast with a single mind and will, John bolstered his weapon and trotted past them, past the church where flame was beginning to lick out die shattered stained-glass windows. A quick glance inside showed the chaos of swift incompetent looting and the body of a nun lying spread-eagled in a huge pool of blood from her gashed-open throat., What lovely allies, he thought dryly, and mentally waved aside Center's comments.I know, I know. The streets broadened as he climbed the slope above the harbor and gained the more-or-Iess level plateau that held the newer part of the city. The press of people grew too, crowds of them pouring in from the dock areas behind him and from die factory-worker suburbs. He dodged around an electric tram standing frozen in the middle of the street, past another burning church- from the columns of smoke, there were fires all over town-and past cars, lying abandoned or passing crammed past capacity. Those held armed men, in civilian clothes or green Assault Guard gendarmerie uniforms with black leather hats, or army and navy gear. All the men in them had red armbands, though, and some had miniature red or black flags flying from their long sword-bayonets. John cursed, kicked, and pushed his way through the crowds, but the press grew closer and closer; it was like being caught in heavy surf, or a strong river current.
Suddenly the crowd surged around him, an eddy this time. He barely cleared the corner onto the Avenue d'Armes when the shooting broke out ahead, louder this time. He was enough taller than the Unionaise crowd to see why. A dozen military steam cars had pulled up and blocked the road fifty yards ahead. They weren't armored vehicles, but they each had a couple of pintle-mounted machine guns. Infantry followed, rushing up and deploying on and around the cars. Their rifles came up in a bristle, and the crews of the machine guns were slapping the covers down and jacking the cocking levers. The fat water jackets of the automatic weapons jerked and quivered with their fearful haste.
John felt a cold rippling sensation over his belly and loins. Everything seemed to move very slowly, giving him plenty of time to consider. A tnan in front of him was pushing a wheelbarrow full of stones and half-bricks, ammunition for the riot which this no longer was. He squatted-there was no room to bend-gripped the man by waist and ankle, and heaved. The Unionaise pitched forward, flying over the toppling wheelbarrow and into the three men ahead of it, staggering them. They fell backward against the wood and iron in the same instant that John dove forward and down onto the bricks it spilled, into the space it had made, the only open space in the whole vast crowd.
A giant gripped a sheet of canvas in metal gauntlets and ripped. John curled himself into a ball behind the wheelbarrow and barred his teeth at the picture his mind supplied of what was happening ahead. The crowd couldn't retreat, not really, not with so many thousands behind them still pressing forward and the high blank walls on either side.
Twenty machine guns fired continuously, and several hundred magazine rifles as fast as the soldiers could work their bolts and reload. Bodies fell over the wheelbardw, over John, turning his position into a mount that kicked and twitched and bled. He heaved his back against the sliding, thrashing mass; if he let it grow he'd suffocate here, trapped beneath a half-ton of flesh. The barricade of bodies shuddered as bullets smacked home. John was blind in a hot darkness that stank with die iron-copper of blood and slimy feces and body fluids. They ran oxwn over him, matting his clothing, running into his mouth and eyes. He heaved again, feeling his frock coat rip with the strain. Bodies slid, and a draft of fresher air brought him back to conscious thought.
Can't attract attention…
Through a gap he could see die rooftops beyond the barricade of war-cars. Something moved there, and something smaller flew though the air.
Crump. The dynamite bomb landed between two cars and rolled under the front wheels of one. It backflip-ped onto the vehicle next to it with a rending crash of glass and metal; superheated steam flayed men for yards around as the flash-boiler coils in both ruptured. Some officer with strong presence of mind was redirecting fire to the rooftops on either hand, but more dynamite bombs rained down. Crump. Crump. Crump.
There hadn't been time for panic to infect the whole mob, even though hundreds-thousands-had been lolled or wounded. Not even Center could have predicted their reaction. The survivors ran forward, and John ran with them. One machine gun snarled back into action briefly, and then the forefront of the mob was scrambling over the ramp of dead and dying that stood four and five bodies deep in front of the wrecked war-cars. He dove over it headfirst, while the surviving soldiers shot down the rioters silhouetted upright on the edge. The automatic was in his hand as he knelt. A green grid of lines settled over his vision, and the aim strobed red as he swung from one target to the next. Crack. A soldier pitched backward from the spade grips of his machine gun with a round blue hole between his eyes and the back blown out of his head by the wadcutter bullet. Crack. An officer folded in the middle as if he'd been gut-punched, then slid foreward to lie limply among the other dead. Crack. Crack. The slide locked back and his hands automatically ejected the empty magazine.and replaced it with one from the clips attached to the shoulder-holster rig.
John blinked, breathing hoarsely. His hand shook slightly as he bolstered the automatic and he blinked again and again, trying to shed the glassy sensation that made him reel like an abandoned hand-puppet.
I never liked it either, Raj said. There was the momentary image of a room in a tower, with half a dozen men sprawled in death across tables and benches. It's necessary, sometimes. Brace up, lad. Work to be done, John nodded and wiped at the congealing blood on his face. Well, that didn't work. He stripped off his businessman's frock coat and used the relatively dry lining instead, cleaning away enough so that his eyes didn't stick shut and spitting to clear the taste out of his mouth. Then he bent to pick up a soldier's fallen rifle and bandolier; the weapon was Land-made or a copy. No, Oathtaking armory marks. He thumbed two stripper
clips into the magazine and slapped the bolt Home before working his way to the edge of the crowd. Not much chance his contact would be at home, but it wasn't far and he had to check.
Snipers were firing from the towers of the Bassin du Sud cathedral The Maison Municipal was directly across from it, with improvised barricades of furniture and planter boxes hill of flowers in front of the entrances and people shooting back from behind them, and from the windows above. John went down on his belly and leopard-crawled along the sidewalk from one piece of cover to the next. When he was halfway across an explosion lifted him and slammed him against die wall of die building, leaving him half-stunned as the cathedral facade slid into the square in a slow-motion collapse, falling almost vertically. Quarter-ton limestone building blocks mixed widi gargoyles and fretwork and fragments of glass avalanched across the pavement. John pressed his face into the sidewalk and hoped diat die plane trees and benches to his right would stop anything diat bounced diis far. There was a pattering of rubble, and somediing grazed his buttocks hard enough to sting; dien a cloud of choking dust swept across him, making him sneeze repeatedly. The earthquake rumble died down, and he doggedly resumed his crawl.
Willing hands pulled him over the barricade; the crowd behind it included everyone from Assault Guards to female file clerks, armed widi everydung conceivable, including fireplace pokers and Y-fork kid's catapults. Many of the people diere were standing on die piled furniture and cheering the ruin of die cathedral, despite die fact diat hostile tire was coming from other buildings around die plaza as well. John prudently rolled to one side before coming erect, grunting slighdy as his bruises twinged. An Assault Guard looked at him, unconsciously fingering the pistol at his side.
"Who are your he said. *Tm here to see Jean-Claude Deschines," John replied.
"Just like that?" The gendarme had narrow eyes and a heavy black stubble. "I asked who you are."
"And I asked to see Jean-Claude. Tell him John is here with the package he was expecting."
The other man's eyes narrowed; he nodded and trotted off. John set his back against a twisting granite column and wrestled his breath and heartbeat back under control, ignoring the sporadic shooting and cheering and trying to ignore the deadly whine of the occasional ricochet making it through the barricaded windows. Ten years ago he wouldn't have been breathing hard.. ^The entrance hall was dark because of those barricades, just enough light to see the big curving staircase at its rear, and the usual allegorical murals depicting Progress and Harmony and Industry, the sort of thing the Syndicat d'lnitative put up in any Unionaise town hall. One did catch his eye, a mosaic piece showing Bassin du Sud as it had looke.J a couple of centuries ago, with only the grim bulk of the castle on its hill, and a small walled village at its feet. That castle had been built as a base to stop Errife corsairs, back when the island pirates had virtually owned the coast, setting up bases and raiding far inland for slaves and loot.
The castle was still there. And it was die garrison HQ for the Bassin du Sud military district. The curtain walls» and moats and arrowslits weren't all that relevant anymore, but there were heavy shore-defense mortars in the courtyards, Land-made breechloaders, capable of commanding the harbor if die plotters consolidated their hold on the garrison.
A tall man with a swag belly clattered down the staircase; he had a police carbine over his shoulder and a pistol thrust dirough the sash around his waist.
"Jean!" he roared genially, and came toward John with open arms for the hug ana lass on both cheeks that was the standard friendly greeting in die Union. At the last moment he recoiled.
John looked down briefly at his shirt. "Most of it's other people's blood," he said helpfully.
'Name of a dog! You were caught in the street fighting?"
John nodded. "Nearly got massacred by some soldiers widi car-mounted machine guns, but somebody dropped dynamite on diem. There seem to be a lot of explosions going on today." He jerked his head towards tile doors leading out onto the plaza.
"My faith, yes," the mayor of Bassin du Sud said happily. "Copper miners. I… ah… arranged for a special train to bring in a few hundred of them from up in the bills. Ingenious fellows, aren't tiiey?"
John nodded. They were also anarchists almost to a man, those that weren't members of the radical wing of the TrauaiUeur party. A few years ago, when die Conservatives had been in power, they'd taken up arms in a revolt halfway between a damned violent strike and outright revolution. The government had turned General Libert's Legionnaires and Errife loose on them when the regular army couldn't put die insurrection down.
"You're going to need more dian dynamite and hunting shotguns to get die garrison out of the casde. Especially if you want to do it before Libert arrives. What've you got in the way of ships to stop him crossing?"
"Three cruisers were lost."
"I saw it. Sabotage?"
The mayor nodded. "Time bombs in the magazines, we dunk. But there's one corsair-class commerce raider, and some torpedo boats. There were nothing but mer-chantmen in Errif harbor at last report."
"That's last report. He may shuttle men over by air. Chosen ^volunteers' under 'private contract.' In fact, I Ј wouldn't put it past die Chosen to escort his troopships in with a squadron of cruisers."
"That would mean war!" The mayor's natural olive, changed to a pasty gray. "War widi the Republic."
"Not if they could claim a local government invited them in."
"Nobody could-"
"Man ami, you don't know what Santander lawyers are like. They could argue the devil into the Throne of God-or at least tie everything up on the question for a year or better. Which is why you have to get some transport down to my ship; she's stuffed to die gills with rifles, machine guns, ammunition, explosives, mortars, and field-guns."
Jean-Claude nodded decisively. "Bon" He turned and began to shout orders.
Gerta Hosten put her eye to a crack in the worn planks of the boathouse. It was crowded, with the half-dozen Chosen commandos and the fishing boat pulled up on the ways, and the stink of old fish was soaked into the oak and pine timbers. The rubber skmsuit she was wearing was hot and clammy out of the water; she shrugged back the weight of the air tank on her back and peered down the docks.
"Still burning nicely," she said, looking over to the naval dockyards. "The storehouses and wharfs are burning, too. Considerate of the enemy to use wooden hulls."
Obsolete, but this was a complete backwater in military terms. All the Union's few modem warships were up in the Gut, and it would take weeks to bring any down here. By then this action would be settled, one way or another. Her companions were too well disciplined to cheer, but a low mutter of satisfaction went through them. Then someone spoke softly:
"Native coming." They wheeled and crouched, hands reaching for weapons. "It's ours."
The Unionaise knocked at the door, three quick and then two at longer intervals. One of the commandos opened it enougji for him to sidle in; he looked around at the hard-set faces and swallowed uneasily.
"What news, Louis?" Gerta said, in his language. She spoke all four of Visager's major tongues with accent-less fluency.
"Our men are pinned in the garrison and the seafront batteries," he said. "The syndicates are slaughtering everyone they can catch-everyone wearing a gentleman's cravat, even, priests, nuns…"
The Chosen shrugged. What else would you do, when you had the upper hand in a situation like this? Louis swallowed and went on:
"And they are handing out arms to all the rabble of the city."
"Where are they getting them?" Gerta asked. According to the last reports, most of the weapons in Bassin du Sud were in the castle or the fortified gun emplacements that guarded the harbor mouth.
"There is a Santander ship in dock, one that came in a few days ago but did not unload. The cargo is weapons, all types-fine modern weapons. They are handing them out at the dock and sending wagons and trucks full of others all around the city."
"Damn," Gerta swore mildly. That would put a spanner in the gears. "Show me."
She unfolded a waterproof map of the harbor and spread it on the gunwale of the fishing boat Louis bent over it, squinting in the half darkness until she moved it to a spot where a sliver of sunlight feD through the boards.
"Here," he said, tapping a finger down. "Quay Seven, Western Dock."
"Hmmm." Gerta measured the distance between her index and little fingers and then moved them down to the scale at the bottom of the map. "About half a mile, say three-quarters, as we'll swim."
Bassin du Sud had a harbor net, but like all harbors the filth and garbage in the water attracted marine life. And on Visager, marine life meant death more often than t not. They'd already lost two members of the team.
"Nothing for it," she said. "Hans, Erika, Otto, you'll come with me. The rest of you, launch the boat and ': bring it here." She tapped a finger on the map; the pothers crowded around to memorize their positions. function check now."
Everyone went over everyone else's air tanks, regulators, and other gear. Hard hat suits with air pumped down a hose had been in use for fifty or sixty years, out this equipment was barely out of the experimental stage.
"Air pressure."
"Check."
"Regulator and hose."
"Check."
"Spear-bomb gun."
"Check.?
"Mines."
"Check and ready."
The last of the foot-thick disks went into the teardrop-shaped container, and the man in charge of it adjusted the internal weights that kept it at neutral buoyancy Gerta pulled the goggles down over her face and put the rubber-tasting mouthpiece between her lips. She checked her watch: 18:00 hours, two hours until sunset. Ideal, if nothing held them up seriously. Lifting her feet carefully to avoid tripping on her fins, she waded into the water.
The Merchant Venture had her deck-guns manned and ready when John leapt off the running board of the truck and down onto the dock at the foot of the gangway. She also had full steam up and her deck-cranes rigged to unload cargo.
"Go!" John said, trotting towards the deck.
"Is that you, sir?" Barrjen blurted.
The blood on his face must look even more ghastly now that it had a chance to dry.
"Not mine," he said again. "Get the first load down on the dock," he went on. "Get some crewmen up here and form a chain to hand rifles and bandoliers down to anyone who comes up and asks for one."
The ex-Marine blinked at that, but slung his own weapon and began barking orders. It was a relief sometimes, having someone who didn't argue with you all the time.
Stevedores were pushing rail flats onto the tracks alongside the Santander merchant ship; Jean-Claude had gotten them out of the fighting and moving fast enough. Steam chugged and a winch whirred with a smell of scorched castor oil on the deck ahead of the ship's central island bridge. The crates coming out of the hold were the heavier stuff: field-guns and mortars and their ammunition. More trucks were arriving, honking their air-bulb horns, and growing crowds of people with Assault Guards to shove them into some sort of line.
"Damndest fucking way-begging your pardon, sir- I've ever seen of unloading a ship," Adams, the vessel's first mate, said unhappily.
"No alternative at present," John said.
He lifted his eyes to the hills. Chateau du Sud was invisible from here, all but the pepperpot roof of one of the towers. That gave them direct observation for the fall of shot, though; and those 240mm Schlenfa Emma up there could drop their shells right through the deck. -When the stored ammunition and explosives went off, it would make the destruction of the Unionaise cruisers earlier in the day look like a fart in a teacup.
Long narrow crates full of rifles and short square ones full of ammunition began going down the gangways hand to hand, then out into the eager crowd. John restrained an impulse to get into the chain and swing some weight, and another to look up at die castle again. Nothing he could do now but wait. At least there was also nothing I' the rebels or their Chosen backers could do to him either, except fire those guns… and they didn't seem:to suspect what was going on. Yet.
The harbor water was murky and dark, tasting of oil id rot. Gerta felt the reach of the tentacle before she it, flicking up from the mud and scattered debris the bottom, thick as a big man's arm and coated on side with oval suckers and barbed bone hooks. The 3k of it buffeted her aside, tumbling her through the water like a stick. It wrapped itself around Hans Dieter with the snapping quickness of a frog's tongue closing around a fly. Then it jerked him downward, screaming through the muffling water. Blood and gouting air bubbles trailed behind him; so did the streamlined container of limpet mines, anchored by a stout cord to his waistbelt.
Scheisse, Gerta thought.
Her body reacted automatically, stabilizing her spin, jacknifing and plunging downward as fast as her fins could drive her. The darkness grew swiftly, but the creature was moving upward with its strike. Ten meters long, a torpedo shape with a three-lobed tail; the mouth had three flaps as well, fringed with teeth like ivory spikes around a rasping sucker tongue, with a huge reddish eye above each. The tentacles were threefold A second had closed around Bans' legs, pulling his legs loose from his torso and guiding them into the sausage-machine maw. The third lashed out at her.
She whirled, poising the speargun, and fired. A slug of compressed air sent the bulbous-headed spear flashing down and kicked her back; she could feel the schunnnk as the mechanism cycled in her hands. The spear slammed into the base of the tentacle just as the hooks slashed through her skinsuit and tore at her flesh. She shouted into me rubber of the mouthpiece, tasting water around it, and curled herself into a ball. The shock of the explosion thumped at her, sending her spinning off into the murky water.
It had been muffled by flesh. There was inky-looking blood all around her. She extended arms and legs frantically to loll the spin. That saved her life; the long shape of the killer piscoid floundered by where she would have been, flailing the water with its two intact tentacles, mouth gaping. Gerta fought to control her speargun while the creature bent itself double to attack again. There was a crater in the rubbery flesh where its third tentacle had been, gouting blood into the water but that didn't seem to be fazing it much. The mouth opened as broad as the reach of her arms, the other two tentacles trailing back in its wake and still holding bits of Hans. Some crazed corner of her mind wondered if it was coming at her or up at her or down…
No matter. One last chance… she fired.
The mouth closed in reflex as something entered it. Swallowing was equally automatic. This time she had a perfect view of the consequences. The smooth body behind the eyes was as thick as her own torso. Now it belled out like a gun barrel fired when the weapon's muzzle was stuffed with dirt. The mouth flew open the way a flower did in stop-motion photography, with bits and pieces of internal organ and of Hans Dieter shooting out at her. The predator fish drifted downward, quivering and jerking as its nervous system fired at random.
Got to get out of here, she thought. The blood and vibrations would attract scavengers from all over the harbor. And then: Where are the mines?
Otto swam up pulling the container. Gerta felt her shoulders unknot in relief, enough that she was dizzy and nauseous for an instant before control clamped down. It had been so quick… and Hans had been a good troop. She grabbed a handhold on the other side of the container and signaled to Elke with her free hand, telling her to take over the watch. It would be faster with two pulling, and they'd lost time.
The additional risk was something they'd just have to take.
"About half done," John said to himself.
He half turned to speak to Adams when the deck surged under his feet. Water spouted up between the dock and the hull, a fountain surge that drenched the whole front of the ship. Seconds later the hufl shuddered E", and another mass of water fell across her mid-: and a third, this time at the stern. Dead sea-things ed to the surface. 246 S.M. Stirling 6- David Drake John looked up reflexively. But there had been no sound of a heavy shell dropping across the sky. Torpedo? his mind gibbered. There wasn't more than a yard or two between dock and hull… a mine, Center said, attached to the hull by strong magnets, put in place by divers with artificial breathing apparatus, probability approaches unity.
Crewmen vomited out of the hatches, screaming. A second wave came a few seconds later, dripping and sodden with seawater, some of them dragging wounded crewmates. John stood staring blankly, fists squeezing at either side of his head. Then the deck began to tilt towards the quayside, scores of tons of water dragging the port rail down. His ears rang, so loudly that for a moment he couldn't hear Barrjen's shouted questions.
John shook his head like a wet dog and grabbed Adams* shoulder. "Where are the starboard stopcocks?" he said, then screamed it into the man's ear until the expression of stunned incredulity faded.
"What?"
"The stopcocks! We've got to counterflood or she'll capsize!"
"But if we flood, she'll fookin* sink."
"Iliere's only ten feet of water under her keel; we can salvage the cargo and float her later, but if we don't flood she'll capsize, man. Now!"
He could feel the force of his will penetrate the seaman's mental fog. "Right," the mate said, wiping a hand across his face. "This way."
"I'll come, sir," Barrjen said.
"Good man. Let's go."
The companionway down from the bridge was steep and slippery with oily soot from the funnels at the best of times. Now it was canted over at thirty degres, and John went down it in a controlled fall. The hatchway below flapped open, abandoned in the rush to get away from the waters pouring through the rent hull. He dropped through it into water already ankle-deep, bracing himself against the wall with one hand to keep erect on the tilting deck.
"Don't tell me," he said as Adams staggered beside him. "The stopcocks are on the other side of the ship."
"Yessir."
"No time like the present," John said grimly, and gave him a boost forward. The trip across the beam of the ship became steadily more like a climb. Adams staggered ahead, pushed from behind by John and the ex-Marine. At last they came to a complex of wheels and pipes.
"That one!" Adams shouted, pointing. Then he looked down the side of the ship. "Oh, Jesus, the barnacles are showing-Jesus Son of God, Mary Mother, she's going to go over."
"No she isn't," John said, fighting off a moment's image of drowning in die dark with air only a few unreach-able feet away through the hull. He spat on his hands. "Let's do it."
The spoked steel wheel was about a yard in diameter, locked by a chain and pin. Adams snatched it out, and John locked his hands on the wheel. It moved a quarter of an inch, stopped, moved again, halted. John braced a foot against the wall and heaved until his muscles crackled and threatened to tear loose from his pelvis.
"Jammed," Adams said. "Must've jammed-shaft torqued by the explosion."
"Then we'll unjam it."
John looked around. Resting in brackets on the side of the central island of die ship were an ax, sledgehammer, and prybar.
"Jam these through the spokes," he said briskly. "Here and here. Now both of you together, heave."
They strained; there was silence except for grunts of effort and the distant shouts on the dock. Then the ax handle snapped across with a gunshot crack. Barrjen skipped aside with a curse as the axhead whipped past him and bounced off the wall, leaving a streak of shiny metal scraped free of paint on the wall.
"Fuck this" John shouted.
He snatched the sledgehammer from Adam's hands, jammed the crowbar firmly in place, and braced himself to strike. That was difficult; the ship was well past its center of gravity now. A few more minutes, and the intakes for the flood valves would be above the surface. That would happen seconds before she went over.
Clung. The vibrating jolt shivered painfully back up his arms, into his shoulders, starting a pain in the small of his back. He took a deep breath as die sledge swung up again, focused, exhaled in a grunt of total concentration as the hammer came down. Clung. Clung, Clung.
Adams' nerve broke and he fled back up the ladder. Two strikes later Barrjen spoke, at first a breathy whisper as he stared at the wheel with sweat running down his face.
"She's moving." Then a shout: "The hoors moving!"
It was; John had to reposition himself as it turned a quarter revolution. Easier now. He flung the sledgehammer aside and pulled the crowbar free, grabbing at the wheel with his hands. Barrjen did likewise on die other side. Both men strained at the reluctant metal, faces red and gasping with the effort, bodies knotted into straining statue-shapes. The wheel jerked, moved, jerked. Then spun, faster and faster.
A new sound came from beneath their feet, a vibrating rumble.
"Either that works, or she's already too far gone," John gasped. "Let's see from the dock."
There was a crowd waiting. They cheered as John and the stocky ex-Marine jumped from the tilted deck to the wharfside, a score of hands reaching to steady them. John ignored the babbled questions. He did take a proffered flask of brandy, sipping once or twice before handing it back and never taking his eyes from the ship.
"She's not tilting any further," Barrjen said.
"And she's settling fast."
Four minutes and the decks were awash. Another and they heard a deep rumbling bong, a sound felt through the soles of their feet more than through the ears. Trie funnels, central island and crane-masts of the merchantman trembled through a thirty-degree arc to a position that was nearly vertical as the relatively flat bottom of the ship rolled it nearly upright on the mud of the harbor bottom.
John flexed his hands and took a deep breath. "Right," he said, when the cheers died down. "Get some small explosive charges here, we'll want to kill off any sea life." Scavengers were swarming in. "We'll need diving suits, air pumps, more ropes. Get moving!"
He looked up into the darkening evening sly, then over towards the castle. He was just in time to see the great bottle-shaped spearhead of flame show over the courtyard walls. The siege howitzers were in action at last. His shoulders tensed as he listened to the whirring, ripping sound of the shell's passage, toning lower and lower as it approached. The three-hundred-pound projectile came closer, closer.., then went by overhead. John pivoted on one heel, part of a mass-movement that turned the crowd like sunflowers following the sun across the sky. A red gout of flame billowed up from the gun batteries holding the approaches to the harbor. Seconds later the other heavy howizer in the castle tired, and the high-velocity guns in the batteries were in fixed revetments. They couldn't be turned to face the castle, and wouldn't be able to elevate that high if they did…
"I'll be damned," John said softly. "The garrison went over to the government side."
Probably after killing all their officers. The Uaionaise regular army was short-service conscript.
Barrjen pounded him on the back, "We won, eh, sir? Goddam."
John shook his head "We won some time." He looked at the celebrating crowd. "Let's see if we can get the snail-eaters to make some use of it."
There were no Land dirigibles in the air over the city of Skinrit. Commander Horst Raske felt a little uneasy without the quiver of stamped-aluminum deckplates beneath his feet. Several of the other Air Service captains around him looked as if they felt the same, and everyone in the Chosen party looked unnatural out of uniform-still more as they were in something resembling Unionaise civil dress. Raske kept his horse to a quick walk and spent the time looking around.
"Bad air currents here," he muttered.
Several of his companions nodded. Skinrit itself was nothing remarkable, a litde port about three steps up from a fishing village, smelling of stale water inside the breakwater, and strong stinks from the packing and canning plants that were its main industries-the cold currents down here below the main continent were heavy with sea life. Hundreds of trawlers crowded the quays, and battered-looking tramp steamers to take their cargoes of salted and frozen and canned fish to the north. The area around the town was hilly farmland and pasture; most of the buildings were in the whitewashed Unionaise style and quite new-built since their predecessors were burnt in the Errifean Revolt ten years ago. Around them reared real mountains, ten thousand feet and more, their peaks gleaming salt-white with year-round snow, their sides dark with forests of oak, maple, birch, and pine.
Vicious, he thought. Convection currents, erosswinds, unpredictable gusts. Oathtaking is bad, but this will be worse.
None of the crowds in the street seemed to be taking much notice of them, which was all to the good. Most were Unionaise themselves, sailors or settlers here; the remainder Errife in long robes, striped or checked or splotched in the patterns of their clans. Occasionally soldiers would come through, usually walking in pairs with their rifles slung, and always surrounded by an empty bubble of fear-inspired space. They wore die khaki battledress of the Union Legion, and its fore-and-aft peaked cap with a tassle. Raske thought that last a little silly, but there was nothing laughable about die troops themselves; quite respectable, about as tough-looking as Prote'ge' infantry, looking straight ahead as they swung through the crowd.
They moved out of the street into the main plaza of Skinrit, past die legpon HQ with its motto in black stone above the door: Vive le Mart-Long Live Death. A couple of Errife skulls were nailed to die lintel, widi scraps of weathered flesh and their long braided hair still clinging to diem. It was a reassuring sight, rather homelike, in fact…
The governor's palace was large and lumpy, in a Unionaise style long obsolete. Errif had been a Unionaise possession in dieory for some time, although diey'd held Htde of die ten thousand square miles of rock, mountain, and forest until a few decades ago. Just enough to stop the pirate raids diat had once oeen die terror of die whole southern coast of die continent; a few Errife corsairs had gotten as far north as die Land, ahhough diey'd seldom returned to die islands alive.
Servants showed them into a square room with benches, probably some sort of guard chamber.
"Masquerade's over," Raske said.
"Good!" one of his officers said.
She stripped off die Unionaise clothing with venom; back in die Land, only Protege" women wore skirts. They switched into die-plain gray uniforms in their packs and bolstered their weapons. The lack of those nad made them feel considerably more unnatural than the foreign clothing. Gerta Hosten gave him a bland smile,
"You do the talking, Horst," she said.
He nodded stiffly. It wasn't his specialty, airships were. On the other hand, a Unionaise general would probably be more comfortable talking to a man, and they needed this Libert… for the moment.
"Why on earth didn't they send an infantry officer?" he asked plaintively.
"Behfel ist Behfel, Horst. This is die transport phase. They are going to send an infantry officer, once Obert's on die ground and we start sending in our own people. "Volunteers," you know…
"Who's the lucky man?"
"Heinrich Hosten."
Horst Raske smiled blandly at the Unionaise officer. General Libert was a short, swarthy, tubby little man with a big nose. He looked slightly ridiculous in the khaki battledress of the Union Le^on, down to the scarlet sash around his ample waist under the leather belt and die little tassel on his peaked cap.
The Chosen airman reminded himself that the same tubby litde man had restored Union rule here when the Errife war-bands were burning and killing in the outskirts of Skingest itself, and then taken the war into their own mountains and pacified the whole island for the first time. The way he'd put down the miners' revolt on the mainland had been almost Chosen-like.
Libert abruptly sat behind the broad polished table, signaling to the staff officers and aides behind him. Raske saluted and took the seat opposite; Errife servants in white kaftans laid out coffee. He recognized the taste: Kotenberg blend, relatives of his owned land there.
"We agree," Libert said after a moment's silence.
Raske raised an eyebrow. "That simple?"
"You charge a higjb price, but after the fiasco at Bassin du Sud, time is pressing." He frowned "You would have done better to be more generous; the Land's interests are not served by an unfriendly government in Unionvil."
"Nor by a premature war with Santander, which is a distinct risk if we back you fully," Raske pointed out. "That requires compensation, besides your gratitude."
Libert allowed himself a small frosty smile, an echo of Raske's own. They both knew what gratitude was worth in the affairs of nations.
"Very well," Libert said. He held a hand up, and one of the aides put a pen in it. "Here." He signed the documents before him.
Raske did likewise when they'd been pushed across the mahogany to him.
"When can we begin loading?" Libert said. "And how quickly?"
"I have twenty-seven Tiger-class transports waiting," Raske said. "One fully equipped infantry battalion each; say, seven hundred infantry with their personal weapons and the organic crew-served machine guns and mortars. Ten hours to Bassin du Sud or vicinity, an hour at each end for turnaround, and an hour for fueling. Say, just under two flights a day; minus the freightage for artillery, ammunition, immediate rations, and ten percent for downtime-which there wiU be. Call it four days to land the thirty thousand troops."
Libert nodded in satisfaction. "Good. This is crucial; my Legionnaires and Errife regulars are the only reliable force we have in the southern Union. We should be able to get the first flight underway by sundown, don't you think?"
Raske blinked slightly. Beside him, Gerta Hosten was smiling. It looked as if they'd picked the right mule for this particular journey.
Jeffrey Fair closed his eyes. Everyone else in the room might think it was fatigue-he'd been working for ten›hours straight-and he was tired. What he wanted,.though, was reconnaissance.
As always, the view through his brother's eyes was a little disconcerting, even after nearly twenty years of practice. The colors were all a little off, from the difference in perceptions. And the way the view moved under someone else's control was difficult, too. Your own kept trying to linger, or to focus on something different.
At least most of the time. Right now they both had their eyes glued to the view of the dirigible through the binoculars John was holding. A few sprays of pine bough hid a little of it, but the rest was all too plain. Hundreds of soldiers in Union Legion khaki were dinging to ropes that ran to loops along its lower sides, holding it a few yards from the stretch of country road ten miles west of Bassin du Sud. It hobbled and jerked against their hold; he could see the valves on the top centerline opening and closing as it vented hydrogen. The men leaping out of the cargo doors were not in khaki. They wore the long striped and hooded kaftans of Errife warriors. Over each robe was Unionaise standard field harness and pack with canteen, entrenching tool, bayonet and cartridge pouches, but the barbarian mercenaries also tucked the sheaths of their long curved knives through the waistbelts. John swung the glasses to catch a grinning brown hawk-face as one stumbled on landing and picked himself up.
The Errife were happy; their officers had given them orders to do something they'd longed to do for generations: invade the mainland, slaughter the faranj, kill, rape, and-loot.
How many? Jeffrey asked. / think tfiey've landed at least three thousand since dawn, maybe Jive. Hard to tell, they were deploying a perimeter by the time I got here.
Jeffrey thought for a moment. What chance of getting the Unionaise in Bassin du Sud to mount a counterattack on the landing zone?
Somewhere between zip and fucking none, John thought; the overtones of bitterness came through well in the mental link, they all took two days off to party when the forts in the city surrendered. Plus having a celebratory massacre of anyone they could even imagine having supported the coup.
Don't worry, Jeffrey said. // Libert's men take the town, there'U be a slaughter to make that look like a Staff College bun fight. What chance do you have of getting the locals to hold them outside the port?
Somewhere between… no, that's not fair. We've finally gotten the ship unloaded, and there's bad terrain between here and there. Maybe we can make them break their teeth.
Slow them down, Jeffrey said. / need time, brother. Buy me time.
He opened his eyes. The space around the map table was crowded and stinging blue with the smoke of the vile tobacco Unionaise preferred. Some of the people there were Unionaise military, both the red armbands on their sleeves and the rank tabs on their collars new. Their predecessors were being tumbled into mass graves outside Unionvil's suburbs even now. The rest were politicians of various types; there were even a few women. About the only thing everyone had in common was the suspicion with which they looked at each other, and a tendency to shout and wave their fists.
"Gentlemen," he said. A bit more sharply: "Gentlemen!"
Relative silence fell, and the eyes swung to him. Christ, he thought. I'm a goddamned foreigner, j»r God's sake.
That's the point, lad. You're outside their faction*, or most of mem. Use it.
"Gentlemen, the situation is grave. We have defeated the uprising here in Unionvil, Borreaux, and Nanes."
His ringer traced from the northwestern coast to the high plateau of the central Union and the provinces to the east along the Santander border.
"But the rebels hold Islvert, Sanmere, Marsai on the southeast coast, and are landing troops from Errife near Bassin du Sud."
"Are you sure?" His little friend Vincen Deshambres had ended up as a senior member of the Emergency Committee of Public Safety, which wasn't surprising at all "Citizen Comrade Deshambres, I'm dead certain. Troops of the Legion and Errife regulars are being shuttled across from Errif by Land dirigibles. Over ten thousand are ashore now, and they'll have the equivalent of two divisions by the end of the week."
The shouting started again; this time it was Vincen who quieted it. "Go on, General Farr."
Colonel, Jeffrey thought; but then, Vincen was probably trying to impress the rest of the people around the table. He knew the politics better.
"We hold the center of the country. The enemy hold a block in the northeast and portions of the south coast They also hold an excellent port, Marsai, situated in a stretch of country that's strongly clerical and antigovern-ment, yet instead of shipping their troops from Errif to Marsai, the rebel generals are bringing them in by auto Bassin du Sud. That indicates-"
He traced a line north from Bassin du Sud. There was a railway, and what passed in the Union for a main road, up from the coastal plain and through the Monts du Diable to the central plateau.
"Name of a dog," Vincen said "An attack on the capital?"
"It's the logical move," Jeffery said. "They've got Libert, who's a competent tactician and a better man competent organizer-"
"A traitor swine!" someone burst out. The anarchist… well, not really leader, but something close. De Villers, that was his name.
Jeffrey held up a hand. "I'm describing his abilities, not his morals," he said. "As I said, they've got Libert, Land help with supplies and transport, and thirty to forty thousand first-rate, well-equipped troops in formed units. Which is more than anyone else has at the moment."
There were glum looks. The Unionaise regular army had never been large, the government's purge-by-retirement policy had deprived it of most of its senior officers, and most of the remainder had gone over to the rebels in the week since the uprising started. The army as a whole had shattered like a day crock heated too high.
"What can we do?" Vincen asked.
"Stop them." Jeffrey's finger stabbed down on the rough country north of Bassin du Sud. "Get everything we can out here and stop them. If we can keep their pockets from linking up, we buy time to organize. With time, we can win. But we have to stop Libert from linking up with the rebel pocket around Islvert."
"An excellent analysis," Vincen said. "I'm sure the Committee of Public Safety will agree."
That produced more nervous glances. The Committee was more selective than the mobs who'd been running down rebels, rebel sympathizers, and anyone else they didn't like. But not much. De Viflers glared at him, mouth working like a hound that had just had its bone snatched away.
"And I'm sure there's only one man to take charge of such a vital task."
Everyone looked at Jeffrey. Oh, shit, he thought.
"What now, mercenary?" De Villers asked, coming up to the staff car and climbing onto the running board.
"Volunteer," Jeffrey said, standing up in the open-topped car.
It was obvious now why the train was held up. A solid flow of men, carts, mules, and the odd motor vehicle had been moving south down the double-lane gravel road. Yow certainly couldn't call it a march, he thought. Annies moved with wheeled transport in the center and infantry marching on either verge in column. This bunch sprawled and bunched and straggled, leaving the road to squat behind a bush, to drink water out of ditches- which meant they'd have an epidemic of dysentery within a couple of days-to take a snooze under a tree, to steal chickens and pick half-ripe cherries from die orchards that covered many of the hills…
That wasn't the worst of it, nor the fact that every third village they passed was empty, meaning that the villagers had decided they liked the priest and squire better than the local travaitteur or anarchist school-teacher or cobbler-organizer. Those villages had the school burnt rather than the church, and the people were undoubtedly hiding in the hills getting ready to ambush the government supply lines, such as they were.
What was really bad was the solid column of refugees pouring north up the road and tying everything up in an inextricable femde. Only die pressure from both sides kept up as those behind tried to push through, so the whole thing was bulging the way two hoses would if you joined diem together and pumped in water from both ends. And they'd blocked die train, which held his artillery and supplies, and the men on the train were starting to get off and mingle with the shouting, milling, pushing crowd as well. A haze of reddish-yellow dust hung over the crossroads village, mingling with the stink of coal smoke, unwashed humanity, and human and animal wastes.
"We've got to get some order here," Jeffrey muttered The anarchist political officer looked at him sharply. True order emerges spontaneously from the people, not from an authoritarian hierarchy which crushes their spirit!" De Villers began heatedly.
"The only thing emerging spontaneously from this bunch is shit and noise," Jeffrey said, leaving the man staring at him open-mouthed.
Not used to being cut off in midspeech.
"Brigadier Gerard," Jeffrey went on, to the Union-aise Loyalist officer in the car. "If you would come with me for a moment?"
Gerard stepped out of the car. The anarchist made to foflow, but stopped at a look from Jeffrey. They walked a few paces into the crowd, more than enough for the ambient sound to make their voices indaudible.
"Brigadier Gerard," Jeffrey began.
"That's Citizen Comrade Brigadier Gerard," the officer said deadpan. He was a short man, broad-shouldered and muscular, with a horseman's walk-light cavalry, originally, Jeffrey remembered. About thirty-five or a little more, a few gray hairs in his neatly trimmed mustache, a wary look in his brown eyes.
"Horseshit. Look, Gerard, you should have this job. You're the senior Loyalist officer here."
"But they do not trust me," Gerard said.
"No, they don't. Better than half the professional officers went over to the rebels, I was available, and they do trust me… a little. So I'm stuck with it. The question is, are you going to help me do what we were sent to do, or not? I'm going to do my job, whether you help or not. But if you don't, it goes from being nearly impossible to completely impossible. If I get Tolled, I'd like it to be in aid of something."
Gerard stared at him impassively for a moment, then inclined his head slightly. "Bon," he said, holding out his hand. "Because appearances to the contrary, mon ami"-he indicated the milling mob around them-"this is the better side."
Jeffrey returned the handshake and took a map out of the case hanging from his webbing belt. "All right, here's what I want done," he said. "First, I'm going to leave you the Assault Guards-"
"You're putting me in command here?" Gerard said, surprised.
"You're now my chief of staff, and yes, you'll com-mand this position, for what it's worth. The Assault i- Guards are organized, at least, and they're used to keeping civilians in line. Use them to clear the roads. Offload the artillery and send the train back north for more of everything. Meanwhile, use your… well, troops, I suppose… to dig in here."
He waved to either side. The narrow valley wound through a region of tumbled low hills, mostly covered in olive orchards. On either side reached sheer fault mountains, with near-vertical sides covered in scrub at the lower altitudes, cork-oak, and then pine forest higjier up.
"Don't neglect the high ground. The Errife are half mountain goat themselves, and Libert knows how to use them."
"And what will you do, Citiz-General Fair?"
"I'm going to take… what's his name?" He jerked a thumb towards the car.
"Antoine De Villers."
"Citizen Comrade De Villers and his anarchist militia down die valley and buy you the time you need to dig in."
Gerard stared, then slowly drew himself up and saluted. "I can use all the time you can find," he said sincerely.
Jeffrey smiled bleakly. "That's usually the case," he said. "Oh, and while you're at it-start preparing fallback positions up the valley as well."
Gerard nodded. De Villers finally vaulted out of the car and strode over to them, hitching at the rifle on his shoulder, his eyes darting from one soldier to the other.
"What are you gentlemen discussing?" he said. "Gentleman" was not a compliment in the government-held zone, not anymore. In some places it was a sentence of death.
"How to stop Libert," Jeffrey said. 'The main force will entrench here. Your militia brigade, Citizen Comrade De Villers, will move forward to"-he looked at the map-"Vincennes."
De Villers' eyes narrowed. "You'll send us ahead as the sacrificial lambs?"
"No, I'll lead you ahead," Jeffrey said, meeting his gaze steadily. The Committee of Public Safety has given me the command, and I lead from the front. Any questions?"
After a moment, De Villers shook his head.
"Then go see that your men have three days rations; there's hardtack and jerked beef on the last cars of that train. Then we'll get them moving south."
When De Villers had left, Gerard leaned a little closer. "My friend, I admire your choice… but there are unlikely to be many survivors from the anarchists."
He flinched a litde at Jeffrey's smile. Tin fully aware of that, Brigadier Gerard. My strategy is intended to improve die governments chances in this war, after all."
"So."
General Libert walked around the aircraft, hands clenched behind his back. It was a biplane, a wood-framed oval fuselage covered in doped fabric, with similar wings joined by wires and struts. The Land sunburst had been hastily painted over on the wings and showed faintly through the overlay, which was the double-headed ax symbol of Libert's Nationalists. A single engine at the front drove a two-bladed wooden prop, and there was a light machine gun mounted on the upper wing over the cockpit. It smelled strongly of gasoline and the castor oil lubricant that shone on the cylinders of the little rotary engine where they protruded through the foreward body. Two more like it stood nearby, swarming with technicians as the Chosen "volunteers" gave their equipment a final going-over.
"So," Libert said again. "What is the advantage over your airships?"
Gerta Hosten paused in working on her gloves. She was sweating heavily in the summer heat, her glazed leather jacket and trousers far too warm for the sea-level summer heat. Soon she'd be out of it.
"General, it's a smaller target-and much faster, about a hundred and forty miles an hour. Also more maneuverable; one of these can skim along at treetop level. Both have their uses." **I see," Libert said thoughtfully. "Very useful for reconnaissance, if they function as specified."
"Oh, they will," Gerta said cheerfully.
The Unionaise general gave her a curt nod and strode away. She vaulted onto the lower wing and then into the cockpit, fastening the straps across her chest and checking that the goggles pushed up on her leather helmet were clean. Two Prote'ge' crewmen gripped the propeller. She checkecl the simple control paneЈ fighting down an un-Chosen gleeful grin, and worked the pedals and stick to give a final visual on the ailerons and rudder / love these things, she thought. One good mark on John's ledger; he'd delivered the plans on request. And the Technical Research Council had improved them considerably.
"Check!" she shouted.
"Check!"
"Contact!"
"Contact!"
The Proteges spun the prop. The engine coughed, sputtered, spat acrid blue smoke, then caught with a droning roar. Gerta looked up at the wind streamer on Its pole at a corner of the field and made hand signals to the ground crew. They turned the aircraft into die wind; she looked behind to check that the other two were ready. Then she swung her left hand in a circle over her head, while her right eased the throttle forward. The engine's buzz went higher, and she could feel the light fabric of the machine straining against the Hocks before its wheels and the hands of die crew hanging on to tail ancl wing.
Now. She chopped the hand forward. The airplane bounced forward as the crew's grip released, then bounced again as die hard unsprung wheels met the uneven surface of die cow pasture. The speed built, and the jouncing ride became softer, mushy. When the •. tailwheel lifted off the ground she eased back on the stick, and the biplane slid free into the sky. It nearly slid sideways as well; this model had a bad torque problem. She corrected with a foot on the rudder pedals and •• banked to gain altitude, the other two planes following • her to either side. Her scarf streamed behind her in die slipstream, and the wind sang through the wires and stays, counterpoint to the steady drone of die engines.
Bassin du Sud opened beneath her; scattered houses t here in the suburbs, clustering around the electric trolley lines; a tangle of taller stone buildings and tenements closer to the harbor. Pillars of smoke still rose from die 7 oty center and the harbor; she could hear the occasional .popping of small-arms fire. Mopping up, or execution •.squads. There were Chosen ships in the harbor, mer-/.chantmen widi die golden sunburst on their funnels,› unloading into lighters. Gangs of laborers were trans-.. fering die cargo from die lighters to the docks, or work-: ing on clearing die obstacles and wreckage diat pre-J: vented full-sized ships from coming up to die quays; she was low enough to see a guard smash his rifle butt into die head of one who worked too slowly, and dien boot die body into die water. The engines labored, and the Land aircraft gained another thousand feet of altitude. From this height she •; could see the big soccer stadium at the edge of town, 5 and die huge crowd of prisoners squatting around it.;,;j: Every few minutes another few hundred would be pushed in through the big entrance gates, and the ^machine guns would rattle. General Libert didn't believe wasting time; anyone with a bruise on tiieir shoul-from a rifle butt went straight to die stadium, plus on dieir list of suspects, or who had a trade union ibership card in his wallet. Anyone who still has one 'those is too stupid to live, Gerta diought cheerfully, ig die plane north.
.Tiiere were more columns of smoke from die roll-coastal plain, places where die wheat wasn't fully harvested and the fields had caught, or more concentrated where a farmhouse or village burned. Dust marked the main road, a long winding serpent of it from Libert s Legionnaires and Errife as they marche i north. The wheeled transport was mostly animal-drawn, horses and mules, and strings of packmules too. That would change when the harbor was functional again; the Land ships waiting to unload included a fair number of steam trucks, and even some armored cars. The infantry was marching on either side of the road in ordered columns of fours; heads turned up to watch the aircraft swoop overhead, but thankfully, nobody shot at her.
The mountains ahead grew closer, jagged shapes of Prussian-blue loommg higher than her three thousand feet. There was a godlike feeling to this soaring flight; to Gerta's way of thinking, it was utterly different from airship travel. On a dirigible you might as well be on a train running through the sky. This was more like driving a fast car, but with the added freedom of three dimensions and no road to follow; alone in the cockpit she allowed herself a chuckle of delight. You could go anywhere up here. Right now she was supposed to go where the action was. A faint pop-pop-popping came from the north. Ah, some of the enemy are sttil putting up a fight. The resistance in Bassin du Sud and on the road north had been incompetently handled, but more determined than she'd have expected.
Gerta waggled her wings. The other two airplanes closed in; she waited until they were close enough to see her signals clearly, then slowly pointed left and right, swooped her hand, and circled it again before pointing back southward. Her flankers each banked away. Funny how fast you can lose sight of things up here, she thought They dwindled to dots inra few seconds, almost invisible against jthe background of earth and sky. Then she put one wing over and dove.
Time to check things out, she thought as the falling-elevator sensation lifted her stomach into her ribs.
Somebody screamed and pointed upwards. John Hosten craned his neck to look through the narrow leaves of the cork-oak, squinting against the noon sun. The roar of the engine whined in his ears as the wings of the biplane drew a rectangle of shadow across the woods. It came low enough to almost brush the top branches of the scrubby trees, trailing a scent of burnt gasoline and hot oil strong enough to overpower the smells of hot dry earth and sunscorched vegetation. He could see the leather-helmeted head of the pilot turn-ing back and forth, insectile behind its goggles.
Everyone in the grove had frozen like rabbits under a hawk while the airplane went by, doing the best possible thing for the worst possible reason.
"It's a new type of flying machine," John said. "They build them in Santander, too; that one was from the Land, working for Libert."
The chink of picks, knives, and sticks digging impro-vised rifle pits and sangars resumed; everyone still alive had acquired a healthy knowledge of how important it was to dig in. John still had an actual shovel. He worked the edge under a rock and strained it free, lifting the rough limestone to the edge of his hole.
"Sir," one of his ex-Marines said. They're coming." He tossed the shovel to another man and crawled for-ward, sheltering behind a knotted, twisted tree trunk, since the cork had been stripped off, and his binoculars. Downslope were rocky fields of stubble, with an occasional carob tree. In die e distance was a farmstead, probably a landlords the size and blank whitewashed outer walls. A defi-black anarchist flag showed that the present occuts had different ideas, and mortar shells were fall-on it. Beyond it, Errife infantry were advancing, small ips dashing forward while their comrades nred in then repeating the process. John shaped a silent e of reluctant aoWration at their bounding agility, 266 S.M. Stirling 6- David Drake and the way they disappeared from his sight as soon as they went to earth, the brown-on-brown stripes of their kaftans vanishing against the stony earth. '
Good fieldcrafty 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-peddling from die 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 heU 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 comandeered farmhouse was fuU 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 riot 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 die 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.