The Chosen

by S. M. Stirling

  "And fuck you very much!" Gerta shouted, banking sharply to the right and heading groundward.

  The Brigader had interrupted her mission. There was the road, still crowded with troops and transport. The men were running out into the fields on either side, or taking cover in the ditches, but the vehicles were less mobile. She lined up carefully, coming down to less than two hundred feet, ignoring the rifles and machine guns spitting at her. You'd have to be dead lucky to hit a target like this from the ground, plus being a very good shot, and the engines were protected.

  Now. She yanked at the bomb release and fought to hold the plane steady as the fifty pounders dropped from beneath each wing. The explosions in her wake were heavier than shells of the same weight; less had to go into a strong casing, leaving more room for explosives. They straddled the roadway, raising poplar shapes of dirt and rock, also wood and metal and flesh. The guns in the nose of her airplane stammered, drawing a cone of fire up the center of the road.

  * * *

  Jeffrey dove for the floor of the car, pulling Gerard after him. Hot brass from the twin mounting fountained over them both. Bullets cracked by and pinged from the metal of the car. There was a fountain of sparks from the wireless and the operator gave a choked cry and slumped down on them with a boneless finality that Jeffrey recognized all too well, even before the blood confirmed it. It was amazing how much blood even a small human body contained. A second later there was another explosion, huge but somehow soft and followed by a pillow of hot air; a wagon of galvanized iron gasoline cans had gone up.

  The two men heaved themselves erect; Gerard paused for an instant to close the staring eyes of the wireless operator. Henri was still swinging the twin-barrel mount, hoping for another target. The driver slumped in the front seat, lying backward with the top clipped off his head and his brains spattered back through the compartment. Other vehicles were burning up and down the road, and some of the roadside trees as well. A riderless horse ran by, its eyes staring in terror. Other animals were screaming in uncomprehending pain. The officers who'd gathered around Gerard were bandaging their wounded and counting their dead.

  "You all right?" Jeffrey asked.

  Gerard daubed at his spattered uniform tunic and then abandoned the effort. "Bien, suffisient. Yourself?"

  "None of it's mine."

  "Then let us see what we can do to remedy this—what is it, your expression?"

  "Ratfuck."

  "This ratfuck, then."

  * * *

  "Damn, they actually got them to work," Jeffrey said, scratching. Damn. Lice again. I may be a lousy general, but I'd rather it wasn't literal.

  Two weeks into the latest offensive, and the Loyalists were already back nearly a hundred miles from their start-lines. One of the reasons was parked in the valley below them. It was a rhomboid shape more than forty feet long and twenty wide, thick plates of cast steel massively bolted together. The top held a boxy turret with a naval four-inch gun mounted in it, and each corner of the machine had a smaller turret with two machine guns; a field mortar's stubby barrel showed from the top as well, to deal with targets out of direct line of sight. There were drive sprockets in four places along the top of each tread, and steam leaked from half a dozen apertures. The long shadows of evening made it look even larger than it was, gave a hulking, prehistoric menace to the outline.

  A Loyalist field-gun lay tilted on one wheel in front of the Land tank, its horses and men dead around it. Three lighter tanks had clanked on by up the valley towards the tableland, and only a few infantry and crew stood around the monster, the crew pulling maintenance through open panels, inspecting the tracks, or just enjoying spring air that must be like wine from heaven after the black, dank heat of the interior. A thick hose extended from its rear deck to the village well, jerking and bulging occasionally as the pump filled its tanks with water.

  "That thing must weight fifty tons." And we gave them the idea. Some disinformation. You had to hand it to the Chosen engineers; they were perennially overoptimistic, but their hubris brought some amazing tour-de-force technical feats at times.

  the vehicle weighs sixty one point four three tons, Center said. maximum armor thickness is four inches at thirty degrees slope. estimated range eighty miles under optimum conditions. mechanical reliability and ergonomics are poor. cost effectiveness is low.

  Beside him on the ridge Henri was staring at the Land tank, his mouth making small chewing motions. Jeffrey had a hundred-odd men with him, Brigade troops and Loyalists, whatever had been left when the front broke. Many of them were taking a look and beginning to sidle backwards. There was a phrase for it now: "tank panic." The ordinary ones were bad enough, but these new monsters were worse.

  "No movement," he snapped.

  Discipline held enough to keep his makeshift battle group from dissolving right there. Then again, the ones who'd felt like quitting had mostly gone in the days since the rebel counterattack and its Land spearheads had broken through the Loyalist front. These were the ones with some stick to them.

  "Gather around, everyone but the scouts." He waited while the quiet movement went on; the men had good "fieldcraft, at least. "All right, there's a heavy tank down there. They're dangerous, but they're also slow and clumsy, and the enemy doesn't have very many of them. We're behind their lines now, and they feel fairly safe. As soon as it's dark, I'm leading a forlorn hope down there to take it out with explosives. I need some volunteers. The rest will cover our retreat, and we'll break out to our own front. Who's with me?"

  He waited a moment, then blinked in surprise as more than half lifted their hands. A nod of thanks; there was nothing much to say at a time like this.

  "Ten men, no more. Henri, Duquesne, Smith, Woolstone, McAndrews—"

  Night fell swiftly, and the highland air chilled. The commandos spent the time checking over their weapons, and making up grenade bundles—taking one stick grenade and tying the heads of a dozen more around it. Those who thought several days' stubble and grime insufficient blacked their faces and hands with mud; a few prayed.

  "How does a general keep getting himself into this merde, sir?" Henri asked, grinning.

  "Going up to the front to see what's going on," Jeffrey said. "It's a fault, but then so are women and wine."

  He looked up; it was full dark, and still early enough in spring to be overcast.

  Rain? he asked.

  chance of precipitation is 53%, ±5, Center replied.

  "We'll go with it," he said aloud. "Spread out. Avoid the sentries if you can; if you can't, keep it quiet."

  The commandos moved down from the ridge, through the aromatic scrub and into the stubblefields of the valley bottom. There was little noise; the men with him had all been at the front for long enough to learn night-patrol work. I'd have had more posts and a roving patrol here, he thought.

  Whoever was in charge wanted to keep pursuing as fast as he could, Raj said. He left the minimum possible with the tank when it broke down. Sound thinking. The chances of a Loyalist band big enough to cause trouble being bypassed are low. But even low probabilities happen sometimes.

  There was a low choked cry from off to the left in the darkness, and a wet thudding sound. We're going to—

  A rifle cracked, the muzzle flash bright in the darkness. Jeffrey could see the crew around the tank scrambling up out of their blankets and heading for their machine; half or better of them would be Chosen and deadly dangerous even surprised in their sleep. He tossed his pistol into his left hand and drew the bundle of grenades out of the cloth satchel at his side, running forward, stumbling and cursing as clods and brush caught at his feet. Abruptly the landscape went brighter, to something like twilight level. Thanks, he thought; Center was reprocessing the input of his eyes and feeding it back to his visual cortex. It no longer felt eerie after more than twenty-five years with Center in his brain.

  A red aiming dot settled on a panicked Protégé soldier staring wildly about him in the near-complete darkness
. Jeffrey fired, then dove and rolled to avoid the bullets that cracked out at the muzzle flash of his weapon. He didn't need to check on the enemy soldier. The dot had been resting right above one ear. A series of vicious blindsided firefights was crackling around the rebel encampment, men firing at sounds and movement glimpsed in split seconds. Or firing at what they thought was sound or movement.

  Chooonk. The mortar in the turret of the Land heavy tank fired. Jeffrey dove to the ground again, squeezing his eyes shut. Reflected light from the ground still dazzled him for an instant as the starshell went off.

  What was really frightening was a high-pitched chuff and squeal of steel on steel. The tank was live; they must have kept the flash-boilers warm for quick readiness. He'd counted on the half hour it took to bring the huge machine on-line.

  One of the corner turrets cut loose, beating the ground with a twin flail of lead and green tracer. Then the four-inch gun in the main turret fired. That must be more for intimidation than anything else, since they didn't have a target worth a heavy shell. It was intimidating, a huge leaf-shaped blade of flame, the ripping crash and the crump of high explosive from the hillside where the load struck.

  He couldn't fault the men he'd left behind on the ridge. They opened fire on the camp and the Chosen tank, dozens of winking fireflies showing from their rifles. Sparks danced over the heavy armor of the panzer as it shed the small-arms bullets like so many hailstones . . . but it did force the commander to stay buttoned up, vision limited to whatever showed through the narrow vision blocks that ringed the cupola on top of the tank.

  Schoonk. Another starshell. The machine-gun turrets were beating at the ridge, trying to suppress the riflemen there, and doing a good job of it. The enemy infantry were taking cover behind the tank, firing around it Then it began to move, grinding across the little valley towards the ridge. Towards him.

  Stupid, Jeffrey thought as he hugged the dusty earth, blinking it out of his eyes. The Loyalist force didn't have anything that could threaten the four-inch armor plate of the Land war machine. That's the Chosen for you. Aggressive to a fault, ready to attack whether it was necessary or not.

  Of course, if he was unlucky they'd reduce his own personal ass to a grease spot in this stubblefield.

  The earth shook as the massive weight ground slowly, slowly towards him. The machine gun bursts from the four turrets and the coaxial weapon blended together into a continuous chattering punctuated by the occasional chugging of the mortar, firing illuminating rounds or high explosive to probe the dead ground behind the ridge. Closer. Closer.

  Now it was looming over him. Good. No one had noticed him in the dark and the flickering shadows of the descending starshells as they wobbled on their parachutes. Steel screamed in protest and the earth groaned with a creaking sound as the walking fortress rolled towards him, lurching as the driver tried to keep the treads working at equal speeds. His stomach felt watery, and his testicles were trying to crawl up into it for comfort: "tank panic" felt a lot more understandable, even sensible, right now.

  Black shadow passed over him as the prow moved by. There should be more than two feet of clearance between the tank's belly and the dirt. More than enough for him, if this was one of the ones without hinged blades fitted to the bottom. He rolled on his back, despite the voice at the back of his head screaming that he should bury his face in the dirt. The pitted, rusty surface of the hull was moving only inches from his face, closer when a bolthead went by: And there were the big eyebolt rings near the rear, fitted for use with a towing line.

  He dropped his pistol on his stomach and reached out with both hands. There, He pushed the handle of the stick grenade through the bolt. His cap stuffed in beside it snugged it close enough not to move for a few seconds. He scooped up the pistol again with his right hand, and kept hold of the pull-tab at the base of the stick grenade with his left, letting the motion of the tank pull it loose, arming the weapon.

  Don't stop now, baby, please, he thought.

  It didn't. The commander must have been waiting until he was closer to use the main gun again, and the automatic weapons were reasonably effective on the move. The weight rolled from overhead, like freedom from the grave. Jeffrey began to crawl frantically, then rose and ran two dozen paces.

  The first explosion was muffled by the bulk of the tank. It seemed absurdly small beneath the huge bulk of the Land vehicle, but even on something weighing sixty tons the armor couldn't be thick everywhere. The tank came to a lurching halt, although one machine-gun turret continued to fire for fifteen seconds. Then there was a second explosion, this one inside the tank. Steam jetted from the back deck, then a few seconds later from every opening and crack in the hull, squealing into the night like so many locomotive whistles. Jeffrey could feel his skin crawl slightly at the thought of what it must have been like inside, the sudden wash of superheated vapor flaying the crew alive.

  That did not stop his pumping run. A low wall of crumbling stone and adobe showed ahead of him; he hurdled it and went to the ground with his face pressed to the dirt. Hot metal was in contact with ruptured shell casings and vaporized gasoline, and right about—

  Whump. The fuel and ammunition went off together, and the Land panzer came apart along the lines where the sheets of cast and rolled armor were riveted together. Chunks plowed into the wall a few feet from him, showering powdered dirt and small stones with painful force. He raised his head cautiously; he could see nothing moving near the twisted wreckage of the tank, although the light from the burning remnants was bright enough to read by. The turret lay on its side a few yards distant; further out still were bodies that lay still. Mostly still.

  "I hope none of them were mine," he muttered. His voice sounded faint and faraway in his ringing ears. Louder: "Rally here! Rally here!"

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  "Those are their final orders?" Jeffrey asked.

  "Oui. Unionvil is to be held at all costs. No troops may be diverted; instead we are to commit our strategic reserve. Chairman Deschambre assures me that the political consequences of losing the capital would be 'disastrous,' quote unquote. Minister of Public Education and Security Lebars tells me that they shall not pass."

  "Quote unquote," Jeffrey supplied. "What strategic reserve, by the way?"

  "The one we pissed away with that misbegotten offensive towards the Eboreaux last year and have never been able to replace," Gerard said.

  Jeffrey nodded. His eyes felt sandy from lack of sleep, and his ears rang from too many cups of strong black coffee, the taste sour on his tongue. Outside the tent light flickered and stuttered along the horizon; it might have been thunder and heat lightning, but it wasn't. It was heavy artillery, firing all along the buckling front south and east of Unionvil. The traffic on the road outside was heavy, troops and supply wagons moving up to the front, wounded men coming back—some in ambulances, more hobbling along supporting each other, their bandages glistening in the light of the portable floods outside the HQ tents. A convoy of trucks came through, flatbeds crowded with reinforcements whose faces seemed pathetically young under their helmets. At least the mud wasn't too bad, despite spring rains heavier than usual. They'd had three years to improve the roads around here, three years with the front running through what had been the outermost satellite villages of Unionvil. That didn't look like being true much longer.

  "Baaaaaa."

  Gerard's head came up, trying to find the man who'd bleated like a sheep. It was fifty yards to the road, and dark.

  "Baa. Baaaa. Baaaa." More and more of the wounded along the sides of the road were bleating at the reinforcements, mocking the lambs going to the slaughter. Gerard walked to the door of the big tent.

  "Captain Labushange. This is to stop."

  Whistles blew and feet pounded; there was always a company of Assault Guards and another of military police attached to the regional headquarters.

  "And now I must use the Assaulteaux against wounded men for telling the truth," Gerard said. "By the w
ay, my friend, Minister Lebars also assures me that it is better to die on your feet rather than live on your knees."

  "Does the woman always talk like that?"

  "Invariably. It's not just the speeches." Gerard looked down at the map table. "Leave us," he said to the other officers.

  "So I have no choice," he went on, touching a red plaque with a fingertip. It fell on its side, lying behind an arrowhead of black markers. "And how am I different from Libert, now?"

  "Libert started it," Jeffrey said, putting a hand on the other man's shoulders. "You couldn't be like him if you tried. We'll do what's necessary."

  "I will," Gerard said. "Keep the Freedom Brigade troops in the line. This is a Union matter."

  Jeffrey nodded. "Don't hesitate," he warned.

  It was probably wise to keep the Brigade troops out of Gerard's coup, although they were just as rabid about the Committee of Public Safety as the native Union soldiers of the Loyalist army. Still, they were foreigners.

  "Hesitate? My friend, I have been hesitating for six months. Now I will act."

  He strode out of the room, calling for aides and staff officers. Jeffrey remained, looking down at the map. Unionvil was a bulge set into the rebel line, a bulge joined to the rest of the Loyalist sector by a narrow bridge of secure territory.

  "I hope you're not acting too late," he said, reaching for his greatcoat.

  Heinrich Hosten was in charge on the other side, looking at the same map. Jeffrey knew Heinrich, and he also knew exactly what he'd do in Heinrich's boots at this moment.

  Jeffrey ducked out into the chilly night.

  * * *

  "Senator McRuther?"

  The meeting was relatively informal. At least, John wasn't being grilled in front of the Foreign Affairs Committee in full, in the House of Assembly, with a dozen reporters following every word. This oak-paneled meeting room was much quieter, redolent of polish and old cigars, not even a stenographer taking notes. Most of the faces across the mahogany table were formidable enough, age and power sitting on them like invisible cloaks.