The Chosen

by S. M. Stirling

  "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 little at Jeffrey's smile. "I'm fully aware of that, Brigadier Gerard. My strategy is intended to improve the government's 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 forward 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 Protégé crewmen gripped the propeller. She checked the simple control panel, fighting down an un-Chosen gleeful grin, and worked the pedals and stick to give a final visual on the ailerons and rudder. I 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 Protégés 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 the 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 blocks before its wheels and the hands of the crew hanging on to tail and wing.

  Now. She chopped the hand forward. The airplane bounced forward as the crew's grip released, then bounced again as the hard unsprung wheels met the uneven surface of the 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 the slipstream, and the wind sang through the wires and stays, counterpoint to the steady drone of the engines.

  Bassin du Sud opened beneath her; scattered houses 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 the city 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, merchantmen with the golden sunburst on their funnels, unloading into lighters. Gangs of laborers were transferring the cargo from the lighters to the docks, or working on clearing the obstacles and wreckage that prevented full-sized ships from coming up to the quays; she was low enough to see a guard smash his rifle butt into the head of one who worked too slowly, and then boot the body into the 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, and the huge crowd of prisoners squatting around it. 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 in wasting time; anyone with a bruise on their shoulder from a rifle butt went straight to the stadium, plus anyone on their list of suspects, or who had a trade union membership card in his wallet. Anyone who still has one of those is too stupid to live, Gerta thought cheerfully, banking the plane north.

  There were more columns of smoke from the rolling coastal plain, places where the 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 marched 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 looming 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 still 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 in a few seconds, almost invisible against the 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 pilo
t turning 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 improvised 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 forward, sheltering behind a knotted, twisted tree trunk, blushing pink since the cork had been stripped off, and trained his binoculars. Downslope were rocky fields of yellow stubble, with an occasional carob tree. In the middle distance was a farmstead, probably a landlord's from the size and blank whitewashed outer walls. A defiant black anarchist flag showed that the present occupants had different ideas, and mortar shells were falling on it. Beyond it, Errife infantry were advancing, small groups dashing forward while their comrades fired in support, then repeating the process. John shaped a silent whistle of reluctant admiration at their bounding agility, 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 fieldcraft, Raj said. Damned good. You'd better get this bunch of amateurs out of their way, son.

  "Easier said than done," John muttered to himself.

  "Ah, sir?" Barrjen said, lowering his voice. "You know, it might be a good idea to sort of move north?"

  There were about three hundred people in the stretch of woodland, mostly men, all armed. There had been a couple of thousand yesterday, when he began back-pedaling from the ruins of Bassin du Sud. He was still alive, and so were most of the Santander citizens he'd brought with him, the crew of the Merchant Venture, and all the ex-Marines from the Ciano embassy guard. Not so surprising, they're the ones who know what the hell they're doing, he thought. He doubted he'd be alive without them.

  "All right, we've got to break contact with them," he said aloud. "The only way to do that is to move out quickly while they're occupied with that hamlet."

  Most of the Unionaise stood. About a third continued to dig themselves in. One of them looked up at John:

  "Va. We will hold them."

  "You'll die."

  The man shrugged. "My family is dead, my friends are dead—I think some of those merdechiennes should follow them."

  John closed his mouth. Nothing to say to that, he thought. "Leave all your spare ammunition," he said to the others. Men began rummaging in pockets, knapsacks and improvised bandoliers. "Come on. Let's make it worthwhile."

  * * *

  "Damn, but I'm glad to see you."

  Jeffrey was a little shocked at how John looked; almost as bad has he had when he got back from the Empire. Thinner, limping—limping more badly than Smith beside him—and with a look around the eyes that Jeffrey recognized. He'd seen it in a mirror lately. There was a bandage on his arm soaked in old dried blood, too, and a feverish glitter in his eyes.

  "You, too, brother," Jeffrey said.

  He glanced around. The commandeered farmhouse was full of recently appointed, elected, or self-selected officers (or coordinateurs, to use their own slang) of the anarchist militia down from Unionvil and the industrial towns around it. Most of them were grouped around the map tables; thanks to John and Center, the counters marking the enemy forces were quite accurate. He was much less certain of his own. It wasn't only lack of cooperation; although there was enough of that, despite the ever-present threat of the Committee of Public Safety. Most of the coordinateurs didn't have much idea of the size or location of their forces either.

  "C'mon over here," he said, putting a hand under John's arm. "Things as bad as you've been saying?"

  "Worse. Those aeroplanes they've got, they caught us crossing open country yesterday."

  observe, Center said.

  —and John's eyes showed uprushing ground as he clawed himself into the dirt. It was thin pastureland scattered with sheep dung and showing limestone rock here and there.

  "Sod this for a game of soldiers," someone muttered not far away.

  A buzzing drone grew louder. John rolled on his back; being facedown would be only psychological comfort. Two of the Land aircraft were slanting down towards the Bassin du Sud refugees and the Santander party. They swelled as he watched, the translucent circle of the propeller before the angular circle of pistons, and wings like some great flying predator. Then the machine gun over the upper wing began to wink, and the tat-tat-tat-tat of a Koegelman punctuated the engine roar. A line of dust-spurting craters flicked towards him . . . and then past, leaving him shaking and sweating. A dot fell from one of the planes, exploding with a sharp crack fifty feet up.

  Grenade, he realized. Not a very efficient way of dropping explosives, but they'd do better soon. Voices were screaming; in panic, or in pain. A few of the refugees stood and shot at the vanishing aircraft with their rifles, also a form of psychological comfort, not to feel totally helpless like a bug under a boot. The aircraft banked to the north and came back for another run. Most of the riflemen dove for cover. Barrjen stood, firing slowly and carefully, as the lines of machine-gun bullets traversed the refugees' position. Both swerved towards him, moving in a scissors that would meet in his body.

  "Get down, you fool!" John shouted. Dammit, I need you! Loyal men of his ability weren't that common.

  Then one of the machines wavered in the air, heeled, banked towards the earth. John started to cheer, then felt it trail off as the airplane steadied and began to climb. He was still grinning broadly as he rose and slapped Barrjen on the shoulder; both the Land planes were heading south, one wavering in the air, the other anxiously flying beside it like a mother goose beside a chick.

  "Good shooting," he said.

  Barrjen pulled the bolt of his rifle back and carefully thumbed in three loose rounds. "Just have t'estimate the speed, sir," he said.

  Smith used his rifle to lever himself erect. "Here," he said, tossing over three stripper clips of ammunition. "You'll use 'em better than me."

  —and John shook his head. "There I was, thinking how fucking ironic it would be if I got killed by something designed to plans I'd shipped to the Chosen," he said.

  Jeffrey closed his eyes for an instant to look at a still close-up of Centers record of the attack. "Nope, they've made some improvements. That was moving faster than anything we've got so far."

  correct, Center said to them both. a somewhat more powerful engine, and improvements in the chord of the wing.

  "I still sent them the basics," John said.

  "Considering that your companies have been doing the work on 'em, and they know they have, it would look damned odd if their prize double agent didn't send them the specs, wouldn't it?" Jeffrey said. "You know how it is. If disinformation is going to be credible, you have to send a lot of good stuff along with it."

  John nodded reluctantly. "I'm getting sick of disastrous retreats," he said.

  Jeffrey smiled crookedly. "Well, this isn't as bad as the Imperial War," he said. "We're not fighting the Land directly, for one thing."

  He looked over his shoulder and called names. "Come on, you need a doctor and some food and sleep. The food's pretty bad, but we've got some decent doctors. Barrjen, Smith, take care of him."

  "Do our best, sir," Smith said. "But you might tell him not to get shot at so often."

  The two Santanders helped John away. Jeffrey turned back to the map, looking down at the narrow line of hilly lowland that snaked through the mountains.

  "We'll continue to dig in along this line," he said, tracing it with his finger.

  "Why here? Why not further south? Why d
o we have to give up ground to Libert and his hired killers?" De Villers wasn't even trying to hide his hostility anymore.

  Jeffrey hid his sigh. "Because this is right behind a dogleg and the narrowest point around," he said. "That means he can't use his artillery as well—we have virtually none, you'll have noticed, gentle . . . ah, Citizen Comrades. And the mountains make it difficult for him to flank us. Hopefully, he'll break his teeth advancing straight into our positions."

  "We should attack. The enemy's mercenaries have no reason to fight, and our troops' political consciousness is high. The Legionnaires will run away, and the Errife will turn on their officers and join us to restore their independence."

  A few of the others around the table were nodding.

  "Citizen Comrades," Jeffrey said gently. "Have any of you seen the refugees coming through? Or listened to them?"

  That stopped the chorus of agreement. "Well, do you get the impression that the Legion or the Errife refused to fight in Bassin du Sud? Is there any reason to believe that they'll be any weaker here? No? Good."

  He traced lines on the map. "Their lead elements will be in contact by sunset, and I expect them to be able to put in a full attack by tomorrow. We need maximum alertness."

  He went on, outlining his plan. In theory it ought to be effective enough; he had fewer men than Libert in total, but the terrain favored him, and holding a secure defensive position with no flanks was the easiest thing for green troops to do.

  The problem was that Libert knew that too, and so did his Chosen advisors.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  "What news from the academy?"

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

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