The Chosen

by S. M. Stirling

  "Sir. From the destroyers."

  Grisson took the yellow flimsy.

  Am under attack by Land heavier-than-air twin engine models stop more than a dozen stop smoke plumes detected to northeast eight ships minimum approaching fast stop.

  For a moment Grisson's mind gibbered at him. The distance to shore was more than twice the maximum range of any Land-made airplane. Stop that, he told himself. It's happening. Deal with it.

  "Signal: Wait for me stop am proceeding your position best speed stop."

  The key of the wireless clicked as the operator rattled it off. Eyes were fixed on him from all over the bridge; he could taste salt sweat on his upper lip. He'd known this moment had to come all his professional life—ever since he was a snot-nosed teenage ensign on this very ship, when Maurice Farr faced down the Chosen at Salini and saved fifty thousand lives. I expected this, but not so soon.

  "Signal to the fleet. Maximum speed." All of ten knots, if they were to keep together. "Add: We are at war. Expect hostile aircraft before we engage enemy surface forces. Plan alpha. Acknowledge. Stop. Repeat signal until all units have acknowledged receipt."

  Some of the reservists would probably be a little slow on signals, and he didn't want anyone haring off on his own.

  There was a collective sigh, half of relief. "Yeoman," he went on to the wireless operator, "do you have contact with Karlton?"

  "Yessir."

  "Then send: Commodore Grisson to Naval HQ. Southern Fleet in contact with Land and Libertist-Unionaise naval forces. Have received unprovoked attack in international waters. Am engaging enemy. Enemy twin engine heavier-than-air attack aircraft sighted at distances exceeding two hundred nautical miles from shore. Long live the Republic. Grisson, Commander, Southern Fleet. Stop. Repeat until you have acknowledgment."

  "Yessir."

  The rhythm of the engines hammered more swiftly under his feet. The black gang would probably be cursing his name. Insubordinate bastards, Grisson thought, the irrelevancy breaking through the tension that gripped his gut. It'd be a relief when the fleet all finally converted to oil-firing and turbine engines. A few score stokers could contribute more disciplinary offenses and Captain's Mast hearings than the entire crew of a battlewagon.

  Neither side was going to have heavy ships here . . . at least, that was what the reports said. The Chosen had a complete squadron of modern protected cruisers in Bassin du Sud: six ships, von Spee-class, the name ship and five consorts. Seventy-five hundred tons, turbine engines—coal-fired though, the Land was short of petroleum—four eight-inch guns in twin turrets fore and aft, each with a triple six-inch turret behind it superimposed on a pedestal mount. They carried pom-poms and quick-firers as well, of course. There would be a squadron of twelve torpedo-boat destroyers as well, and the cruisers carried torpedo tubes, too. Land torpedoes were excellent.

  "Captain," he said. "All right; we're going to be at a disadvantage in weight of gun metal and torpedoes both, but less so in gunpower. We'll try to maintain optimum firing distance with the heavier ships and slug it out, while the lighter craft with torpedo capacity close in. Gunboats and others are to engage their destroyers."

  "What about our destroyers, sir?"

  "I'm going to send them in at the cruisers. They're outnumbered by their equivalents; we'll just have to hope one of them gets lucky. A couple of hits could decide the action, one way or another."

  And thank God the practice ammunition allowance was raised last year. Somebody at Navy HQ had insisted on not putting all the increased appropriation into new building.

  The McCormick City began to pitch more heavily as the northward turn put the sea on her beam. In less than fifteen minutes he could see the smoke from his quartet of three-stacker destroyers, and beyond them a gray-black smudge that must be the enemy. Black dots were circling in the sky over the destroyers, stooping and diving in turn. The little scout ships were curving and twisting to avoid them, their wakes drawing circles of white froth against the dark blue of the ocean. Their pompoms and high-elevation quick-firers were probing skyward, scattering puffs of black smoke against the cerulean blue of the sky.

  "Signal to the destroyers," Grisson said. "Ignore those planes and go for the cruisers."

  Aircraft couldn't carry enough bombs to be really dangerous, and their chance of hitting a moving target wasn't big enough to be worth worrying about.

  The Land cruisers were hull-up now, their own screen of turtleback destroyers lunging ahead. The smaller Santander craft swarmed forward, disorderly but as willing as a terrier facing a mastiff.

  "The signal," Grisson said quietly, "is fire as you bear."

  * * *

  If you only knew how I begged and pleaded to save your sorry ass, Gerta thought, smiling at the dictator of the Union.

  At least General Libert had learned to ignore her gender—she suspected he thought of Chosen as belonging to a different species, in any event. He was being polite, today, here in Unionvil. No reason not to; he'd achieved his objectives.

  "In short, the Council of the Land expects me to declare war on Santander," he said dryly. "What incentives do you offer?"

  Not shooting you and taking this place over directly, Gerta thought. I used every debt and favor owed me to help convince the General Staff that it wasn't cost-effective. Don't prove me wrong.

  "General Libert, if you don't, and we lose this war, the Santies have a certain General Gerard waiting in the wings to replace you. With his army, now deployed along the Santander-Union frontier. I very much doubt that the Republic is going to distinguish you from us in its formal declaration of war, which should get through the House of Assembly any hour now."

  Libert nodded. He looked an insignificant little lump against the splendors of carved and gilded wood in the presidential palace, beneath the high ceilings painted in allegorical frescos. The place had the air of a church, the more so since Libert had had endless processions of thanksgiving going through with incense and swarming priests; most of his popular support came from the more devout areas of the Union.

  His eyes were cold and infinitely shrewd. "And if you win, Brigadier, what bargaining power or leverage do I retain?"

  "You have your army," Gerta pointed out. "Expensively equipped and armed by us."

  Libert stayed silent.

  "And you'll have additional territory. I am authorized to offer you the entire area formerly known as the Sierra Democratica y Populara. Provided you assist to the limit of your powers in its pacification, and subject to rights of military transit, mining concessions, investment, and naval bases during and after the war. We get Santander. It's a fair exchange, considering the relative degrees of military effort."

  Libert's eyebrows rose. "You offer to turn over a territory you will have conquered yourselves? Generous."

  "Quid pro quo," Gerta said. Now, the question is, does Libert realize that we'd turn on him as soon as the Santies are disposed of? He was more than realistic enough, but he might not understand the absoluteness of Chosen ambition.

  Libert sipped from the glass of water before him. "The Sierrans have a reputation for . . . stubbornness," he said. "I have studied the histories of the old Union-Sierran wars. This may be comparable to the gift of a honeycomb, without first removing the bees and their stings."

  "We intend to smoke out the bees," Gerta said. "Or to put it less poetically, we intend to depopulate the Sierra, with your assistance. Your people aren't fond of the Sierrans"—that was an understatement, if she'd ever made one—"and after the war, you can colonize with your own subjects. There will be land grants for your soldiers, estates for your officers, a virgin field for your business supporters—including intact factories, mines and buildings. We'll leave enough Sierrans for the labor camps."

  "Ah." Libert's face was expressionless. "But in the meantime, the Union would need considerable support in order to undertake a foreign war so soon after our civil conflict."

  "Could you be more specific?" Gerta said wearily.<
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  "As a matter of fact, Brigadier . . ."

  He slid a folder across the table to her, frictionless on the polished mahogany. She opened it and fought not to choke. Oil, wheat, beef, steel, chemicals, machine tools, trucks, weapons—including tanks and aircraft.

  "I'm . . ." Gerta ground her teeth and fought to keep her voice normal. "I'm sure something can be arranged. But as you must appreciate, General, we need to strike now."

  "That would indeed be the optimum military course," Libert said. And so you must give me what I ask, or risk unacceptable delay, followed unspoken.

  "I will consult with my superiors," she said. "We must, however, have a definite answer by dawn."

  Or we'll kill you and take this place over ourselves, equally unspoken and equally well understood.

  Gerta rose, saluted, and walked out.

  "Why do we tolerate this animal's insolence?" young Johan Hosten hissed to her as their boot heels echoed in step through the rococo elegance of the palace's halls.

  "Because with Libert cooperating, we gain an additional two hundred thousand troops," she said. "Most of them are fit only for line-of-communication work, but that's still nine divisional equivalents we don't have to detach for garrison work. Plus another hundred thousand that we don't have to use to hold down the Union in our rear while we fight the Santies."

  Her aide subsided into disciplined silence—disciplined, but sullen.

  I'm going to enjoy our final reckoning with Libert myself, she thought. Aloud: "I'd rather have three teeth drilled than go through another negotiating session with him, that's true," she said.

  "Sir . . ."

  Gerta looked aside. "Speak. You can't learn if you don't ask."

  "Sir, you were against opening our war with Santander this early. Have you changed your mind?"

  "That's irrelevant," she said. "We're committed now. Conquer or die." She sighed. "At least my next job is a straightforward combat assignment."

  * * *

  Air assault was no longer a radical new idea. Most of the troops filing into the dirigibles nestled in the landing cradles of the base were ordinary Protégé infantry, moving with stolid patience in the cool predawn air. A few of the most important targets still rated a visit from the General Staff Commando, and she'd ended up on overall command. Gerta looked around at the faces of the officers; they seemed obscenely young. No younger than she'd been at Corona, mostly.

  It's déjà vu all over again, she thought to herself.

  "That concludes the briefing. Are there any questions?"

  "Sir, no sir!" they chorused.

  Confident. That was good, as long as you didn't overdo it. Most of them had more experience than she'd had, her first trip to see the elephant. Policy had been to rotate officers through the war in the Union, as many as possible without doing too much damage to unit cohesion.

  "One final thing. The Sierrans have much the same line of bluster that the animals did here, before we conquered the Empire. They have a word for it in their language . . . machismo, I think it is. There's one crucial difference between the two, though."

  She looked around, meeting their eyes. "The Sierrans actually mean it. They couldn't organize an orgy in a whorehouse, but they're not going to roll over at the first tap of the whip either. Don't fuck up because you expect them to run."

  "Sir, yes Sir!"

  As they scattered to their units she wondered briefly if they'd take the warning seriously. Probably. Most of them had enough experience not to take the legends about Chosen invincibility too literally.

  "All over again," she murmured aloud.

  "Sir?" her aide said.

  Fairly formal considering that they were alone and that Johan Hosten was her eldest son, but they were in a military situation, not a social one. And Johan was still stiffly conscious of being an adult, just past the Test of Life. She remembered that feeling, too.

  "It reminds me of the drop on Corona," she said.

  Half my lifetime ago. Why do I get this feeling that I keep doing the same things over and over again, only every time it's more difficult and the results are less? All the same, down to the smell of burnt diesel oil. The tension was worse; now she knew what they were heading into. She buckled on her helmet, slung the machine-carbine and began drawing on thin, black leather gloves as they walked through the loading zone. Wood boomed under their boots as they climbed the mobile ramp to a side-door of the gondola built into the hull beneath the great gasbags. Crew dodged around them as she walked back to the main cargo bay; Horst Raske wasn't in charge this time, he was with the new aircraft carrier working-up with the Home Fleet based out of Oathtaking.

  What a ratfuck, she thought. The Santies build aircraft carriers, and we waste six months in a pissing match over who gets to build ours. The Councils had finally decided, in truly Solomonic wisdom—she'd read the Christian Bible as part of her Intelligence training—to split the whole operation. Building the hull was to be Navy; the airplanes and the personnel, plus logistics, training and operations, were done by the Air Council. The Navy would command when the fleet was at sea. How truly good that's going to be for operational efficiency, she thought. At least she'd managed to persuade Father to appoint Raske, who didn't confuse territorial spats and service loyalties with duty to the Chosen.

  There were a company of the General Staff Commando in the cargo bay, plus a light armored car on a padded cradle that rested on a specially strengthened section of hull. It was one of the new internal-combustion models, and someone had the starter's crank ready in its socket at the front, below the slotted louvers of the armored radiator. Somehow it looked out of place in the hold of an airship, a brutal block of steel in a craft at once massive and gossamer-fragile. They were tasked with taking out the Sierran central command, such as it was. Although she frankly doubted whether that would help or hinder the resistance.

  "Make safe," she said. "Lift in five minutes."

  They squatted, resting by the packsacks and gripping brackets in the walls and floor. Gerta's station was by an emergency exit; that gave her a view out a narrow slit window. Booming and popping sounds came from above, as hot air from the engine exhausts was vented into the ballonets in the gasbags. More rumbling from below as water poured out of the ballast tanks. The long teardrop shape of the airship quivered and shook, then bounced upwards as the grapnels in the loading cradles released.

  The dirigibles were out in force this time; she could see them rising in ordered flocks, one after another turning and rising into the lighter upper sky. The air was calm, giving the airship the motion of a boat on millpond-still water, no more than a slight heeling as it circled for altitude. Down below the airbase was a pattern of harsh arc lights across the flat coastal plain on the Gut's northern shore. The surface fleet with the main army wasn't in sight. They'd left port nearly a day before, to synchronize the attacks. There were biplane fighters and twin-engine support aircraft escorting the airships; as she peered through the small square window in the side of the hull she could see a flight of them dropping back to refuel from the tankers at the rear of the fleet.

  You put on a safety line and climbed out on the upper wing with the wind trying to pitch you off—sometimes you did, and had to haul yourself back on. In a single-seater, someone from the airship had to slide on a body-hoop down the flexing, whipping hose. Then you had to fasten the valves, dog them tight, and keep the tiny airplane and huge airship at precisely matching speeds, because if you didn't the hose broke, or the valve tore out of the wing by the roots. If that happened the entire aircraft was likely to be drenched in half-vaporized gasoline and turn into an exploding fireball when it hit the red-hot metal surfaces of the engine. . . .

  She raised her voice: "Listen up!

  They were over the surface fleet now; hundreds of transports from ports all along the northern shore of the Gut, escorted by squadrons of cruisers and destroyers. The ships cut white arrowheads on the green-blue water six thousand feet below.

&nbs
p; "Magnificent," Johan Hosten whispered.

  This time Gerta nodded. It was a magnificent accomplishment, throwing a hundred thousand troops and supporting arms into action, fully equipped and briefed, at such short notice.

  But we were supposed to fight Santander in another five to eight years. With our new battleship fleet ready, and another fifty divisions and a thousand tanks. Now . . . we're reacting, not initiating. The enemy should be responding to our moves, not us to theirs.

  "Thirty minutes to drop!"

  * * *

  "This is a new one," Jeffrey shouted over the explosions.

  "Too damned familiar, if you ask me," John said grimly, checking his rifle.

  It was a Sierran-made copy of the Chosen weapon. They'd managed a few improvements, mostly because everything was expensively machined. No cost-cutting use of stampings here, by God—which meant that only about half of the Sierrans had them. The rest were making do with a tube-magazine black-powder weapon, also a fine example of its type.

  "I've been caught in far too many goddamned Land invasions."

  "Yes, but it's the first time we've been in one together," Jeffrey pointed out. There was gray in his rust-colored hair, but the grin took years off him.

  "Let's go make ourselves useful."

  "Yup. No hiding in embassies this time." Jeffrey sobered. "Damned bad news about Grisson. He was a good man; Dad thought a lot of him."

  "Going to be a lot of good men die before this one's over," John said.

  "Hopefully not us. . . . Watch it!"

  The room shook from a near-miss. Dust and bits of plaster fell around them. The Santander embassy was in coastal Barclon, where most of the business was done, rather than in inland Nueva Madrid, the ceremonial capital. Right now that meant it was within range of the eight-inch guns of the offshore Land cruisers, as well as the aircraft. The Sierran antiaircraft militia was putting a lot of metal into the air; too much for dirigibles to sail calmly overhead and drop their enormous bombloads, which was something to be thankful for.