The Chosen

by S. M. Stirling

  An embassy staffer ran down the stairs. Her face was paler than the plaster dust that spattered her face and dress, and she waved a notepad.

  "They're dropping troops on Nueva Madrid," she said, her voice rising a little. "And they're attacking from north and south over the mountains, too. Sanlucar has fallen—the last message said shells were bursting inside the fortress."

  John's eyebrows went up. That was the main fortress-city guarding the passes from the old Empire south into the Sierra.

  The staffer went on: "And the Chosen Council has issued a statement, demanding that we declare ourselves strictly neutral in the Sierran-Land war, and 'cease all hostile and unfriendly actions.'"

  Ambassador Beemer nodded, checking the old-fashioned revolver in the shoulder holster beneath his formal morning coat.

  "Not a chance," he said. He looked up at John and Jeffrey. "Admiral Farr is never going to forgive me. I should have sent you home yesterday."

  "We both thought the Chosen would wait until the Sierrans voted," John said.

  "Why? It was obvious which way it was going to go." He hesitated. "They'll be landing troops here?"

  "Sure as they grow corn in Pokips," Jeffrey said. "Coordination is a strong point of theirs. In fact, I'd give you odds they're landing on both sides of the city right now."

  Nobody was going to fall for the "merchantmen" full of soldiers, not after the attack on Corona. There wasn't any way to prevent ships loitering offshore, though.

  "Then I suppose . . . well, according to diplomatic practice, the Chosen should intern us and exchange us for their own embassy personnel in Santander City."

  Beemer didn't sound very confident. John nodded. "Sir, I'd recommend suicide before falling into Chosen hands—and that's assuming you get past the kill-crazy Protégés in the first wave. If the Chosen win, international law won't exist anymore, because there will be only one nation. And if they lose, they don't expect to be around to take the blame."

  Beemer's head turned, as if calculating their chances. North and south the armies of the Land were pouring over the mountain passes into the Sierra. West was the Chosen . . .

  "Sir, I made arrangements, just in case. If we can get to the docks . . ."

  Beemer started to object, then nodded. "You're a resourceful young man," he said mildly. "I'll get our people together."

  Luckily there were only about half a dozen Santander citizen staff on hand; most of them had been sent home last week, when the crisis began. None of the Sierran employees were here; they'd all headed for their militia stations and the fighting half an hour ago. Two of the embassy limousines could hold them all, with a little crowding. John took his seat beside Harry Smith, sitting up on one knee with the rifle ready.

  "Just like old times, eh?" he said.

  Smith grinned tautly. "Barrjen is going to be mad as hell," he said. "I talked him into staying home for this one."

  Another salvo of heavy shells went by overhead just as the limousines cleared the gates of the embassy compound. They struck upslope, and blast and debris rattled off the thin metal of the cars' roofs. John had a panoramic view of Barclon burning, pillars of familiar greasy black smoke rising into the air. He could also see the Land naval gunline out in the harbor, cruising slowly along the riverside town. There weren't any battleships, but there were a couple of extremely odd-looking ships, more like huge armored barges than conventional warships. Each had a barbette with a raised edge in the center and the stubby muzzle of a heavy fortress howitzer protruding from it.

  Well, I guess that explains what happened to the harbor forts, John thought. Coastal forts were designed to shoot it out with high-velocity naval rifles, weapons with flat trajectories. They'd be extremely vulnerable to plunging fire. We'd better move fast.

  estimated time to chosen landing in barclon itself is less than thirty minutes, Center said.

  Land aircraft were circling the city, spotting for the naval guns. John looked up at them with a silent snarl of hatred.

  I'd have sworn that dirigible aircraft carrier idea was completely worthless, he thought.

  It was, lad, Raj said quietly. At a guess, I'd say they retreated to something less ambitious—using the dirigibles to carry fuel and arranging some sort of midair hookup.

  correct. probability approaches unity.

  The streets were surprisingly free of crowds; what there were seemed to be moving to some purpose: armed men heading for the docks or the suburbs to the south, women with first-aid armbands or the civil-defense blue dot. Smith kept his foot on the throttle and made good use of the air horn. More barges were appearing from behind the Land fleet, coastal craft hastily converted to military use. They were black with men. Behind them lighter ships, gunboats and destroyers, moved in to give point-blank support to the landing parties with their quick-firers and pom-poms.

  "Here!" John shouted.

  The limousines lurched to a stop and the Santander citizens tumbled out, white-faced but moving quickly. Jeffrey and Henri brought up the rear; John stopped to drop grenades down the fuel tanks of both. Their pins were pulled, but the spoons were wrapped in tape. John hoped some Land patrol was using the cars by the time the gasoline dissolved the adhesive tape.

  They had stopped in front of a boathouse in the fishing section of the port, a typical long shed with doors opening onto the water where a boat could be hauled out on rollers. This one was more substantial than most but just as rundown.

  "Do you think a boat can make it out past the Land Navy?" Beemer asked dubiously.

  John unlocked the doors. "No, I don't, sir," he said. "Therefore—"

  Even with the sound of the bombardment in their ears, a few of the embassy staff paused to gawk. Within the dim barnlike space of the shed was a large biplane; each lower wing bore two engines back to back, with props at the leading and trailing edge. The body of the craft was a smooth oval of stressed plywood, broken by circular windows; the cockpit was separate, with only a windscreen ahead of it. Two air-cooled machine guns were mounted on a scarf ring in the center of the fuselage, where the upper wing merged with it. Bearing the planes weight were two long floats, like decked-over canoes.

  "Fueled and ready to go," John said. "Prototype—the navy's ordering a dozen. Jeff! Get some hands on the props!"

  Bright sunlight made him blink as the big sliding doors were thrown back. The body of the airplane began to quiver as men spun the props and the engines coughed into life in puffs of blue smoke. He looked back into the body of the aircraft; Jeff's Unionaise bodyguard was stepping up into the firing rest beneath the machine guns. His foster-brother slid into the other seat in front of the controls, while Smith showed frightened embassy staff how to snap their seatbelts shut as they took their places along either side of the big biplane.

  "Good thinking," Jeffrey said.

  "I like gadgets," John said. He looked ahead. "I didn't think the Chosen could get aircraft here to support a landing, though."

  "Neither did I." He ran his hands over the controls. "Shall I?"

  "You're the expert, Jeff."

  Jeffrey Farr had run up quite a score in the aerial fighting over the Union. It was partly innate talent, but also because Center could put an absolutely accurate gunsight in front of his eyes, one that effortlessly calculated the complex ballistics of firing from one fast-moving plane and hitting an equally elusive target.

  The engines bellowed, and the biplane wallowed out onto the surface of Barclon's harbor. The sun was behind them, still low in the east, but the wind was coming directly down the Gut; the corsairs' wind, they'd called it in the old days. Right now it meant charging straight into the line of muzzle flashes from the heavy guns of the Land fleet. One landed not three hundred yards away; the undershot produced a momentary tower of white water and black mud, and a wave that rocked the seaplane on its floats.

  "Time's a-wasting," Jeffrey said, and opened the throttles.

  The line of gray-painted warships grew with terrifying speed, closer a
nd closer. Nice spacing, Jeffrey thought absently. Dad would approve. It wasn't easy to get warships moving so precisely and keeping such good station in the midst of action. He supposed this was action, although he couldn't see much in the way of shooting back—just an occasional burst from a field-gun shell, militia firing from the harbor mouth streets.

  The floatplane skipped across the slight harbor swell, throwing roostertails of spray from the prows of the floats. It was odd and a little unsettling to taxi in a plane that was horizontal and not down at the rear where the tail wheel rested. The craft felt a little sluggish; probably loaded to capacity with all these people, and the fuel tanks were full, too. But it was feeling lighter, the salt spray on his lips less as the floats began to flick across the surface of the waves rather than resting fully in the water. The controls bucked a little in his hands, and he drew back on the yoke.

  Bounce. Bounce. Bounce, and up. He climbed slowly, not trying to avoid the Chosen ships. Let 'em think we're one of theirs. There certainly weren't any Sierran aircraft in the air today. For that matter there hadn't been more than a couple of dozen of them to begin with, and he'd bet the Chosen had taken them all out in the first few minutes of the strike, somehow. Infiltrated a strike commando days ago and activated them at a predetermined time, at a guess.

  correct. probability 87%, ±5.

  The sheer numbers of ships behind the gunline was stunning, and their upperworks were all gray-black with troops.

  "Must be a hundred thousand of them," he said. "That's a big gamble; over fifteen percent of their total strength."

  John had worries more immediate than strategy. "Fighter coming down to look us over," he shouted back over the thundering roar of the airsteam.

  The biplane swooping towards them had the rounded cowling of a von Nelsing, but the wings looked a little different, plywood covered and with teardrop-section struts instead of the old bracing wires and angle-iron.

  "How fast is this thing?" he asked.

  one hundred fourteen miles an hour in level flight at three thousand feet, Center said. the latest mark of von nelsing pursuit plane has a maximum speed of one hundred forty miles an hour.

  "Thank you so much," Jeffrey said.

  No chance of outrunning it. He looked down; they were over the tail end of the Chosen fleet, the last straggle of commandeered trawlers rigged for minesweeping or laying, and a screen of four-stacker destroyers. Ahead he could just make out a line of dirigibles, keeping watch up the Gut. Another thirty miles or so and he'd be in sight of the Isle of Trois, the big island that filled most of the eastern end of the narrow sea.

  "How long do you think it'll take—"

  "For the pilot to twig that we aren't Land Air Service?" John said. "About three minutes."

  Land pilots were all Chosen, trained to use their initiative. Not much doubt about what this one would chose to do.

  "You tell Henri," Jeffrey said. "We'd better be quick about this."

  He pushed the stick forward, putting the big plane on a downward slope. Its weight made it faster thus, and reducing the dimensions the nimble enemy fighter could use also improved the situation. The higher buzz of the von Nelsing's engine grew stronger. He could almost hear the chick-chack sound as the pilot armed the twin machine guns in the nose.

  The water came closer, until he could see the thick white lines along the tops of the waves, running west to east as they almost always did in the Gut this time of year. The wind was more variable here, gusting and falling away. His hands were busy on stick and rudder pedals, keeping the big aircraft level. In the rearview mirror the machine-gun position was empty, with the guns pointing backward as if locked in their rest positions.

  John came back. "He's ready," he said. Reaching down the side of the cockpit, he came up with a pump-action shotgun and held it across his lap. "Whenever you signal."

  Jeffrey wished he could spit to clear the gummy texture out of his mouth. This was like trying to fight while stuck neck-deep down a whale's blowhole. The fighter crept up from behind them, a hundred feet or so above. He could see the goggled face craning and bending to get a glimpse of them, and waved cheerfully up at him. Or her. Who knew, that might even be Gerta Hosten. . . .

  probability 3%, ±1, Center said.

  Shut up.

  The aircraft grew closer. The Chosen pilot waggled his wings and pointed backward with an exaggerated gesture; he was getting impatient. So—

  "Now!"

  He banked the plane sideways, towards the enemy. The Chosen pilot acted the way pilots did, on instinct, pulling up sharply for height. Henri erupted out of the open gun mount, slamming the guns up to their maximum ninety degrees. For a moment the bigger biplane seemed joined to the fighter above it by twin bars of tracer, then the von Nelsing staggered in the air and peeled away trailing smoke. John stood in the open cockpit, shielding his eyes with one hand and grabbing at the edge of the cowling to brace the blocky strength of his upper torso against the savage pull of the slipstream.

  "Pilot's dead or unconscious," he said aloud as he dropped back. Seconds later the fighter plowed into the surface of the water at full diving speed and a seventy-degree angle. It disintegrated, the engine continuing its plunge towards the shallow bottom of the Gut and the fuselage and wings scattering in fragments of wood, some burning.

  Henri shouted in triumph, and the passengers cheered. John continued to crane his head backward and around. "Hope nobody saw that," he said.

  Jeffrey nodded. "By the way, brother of mine, where the hell are we headed?"

  "I've got a couple of trawlers spotted up the Gut with fuel under the hatches," John said. "All just in case. If they're not there, there's an inflatable dinghy in the baggage compartment."

  "And if that doesn't work, we'll swim," Jeffrey said, flying one-handed while he felt in the pockets of his tunic for his cigarettes.

  "No, actually, I've got a motor launch hidden in a cove on the east coast of Trois," John said seriously.

  Jeffrey laughed. "And a slingshot in your underwear," he said. More soberly: "I hate like hell being cut off like this. What's going on, and who's doing what?"

  "I suspect the Chosen are doing most of the doing right now," John replied. "I just hope we're not the only ones keeping our heads while all about are losing theirs."

  "If we are, they'll blame it on us," Jeffrey said. "I'll bet Dad's doing something constructive, though."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Maurice Farr stood at the head of the table in the admiral's quarters of the Great Republic, pride of the Northern Fleet, and stared at the messenger.

  The captains and commodores along either side looked up from their turtle soup, some of them spilling drops on their ceremonial summer-white uniforms. The overhead electrics blazed on the polished silver, the gold epaulets, the snowy linen of the tablecloth, and the starched jackets of the stewards serving the dinner. It would take news of real importance to interrupt this occasion.

  "Gentlemen," Farr said, quickly scanning the message, "Land forces have attacked the Sierra. Preliminary reports are sketchy, but it looks like they caught them completely flat-footed. Hundreds of transports escorted by squadrons of cruisers and destroyers have landed troops around Barclon in the Rio Arena estuary, and up and down the coast. Air assault troops are landing in Nueva Madrid, and the mountain passes on the northern and southern borders are under simultaneous attack."

  Another messenger came in and passed a flimsy to the admiral. He opened it and read: Brothers Katzenjammer have flown the coop. Stop. Never again. Stop. Love, J&J.

  Farr's shoulders kept their habitual stiffness, but he sighed imperceptibly. One less thing to worry about personally . . . and the Republic was going to need both his sons in the time ahead.

  A babble of conversation had broken out around the table. "Gentlemen!" Silence fell. "Gentlemen, we knew we were at war yesterday."

  When the news of Grisson's disaster had come through. And the politicians will blame it on him. Two mo
dern ships and a score of relics and converted yachts against a dozen first-rate cruisers with full support. One of the Land craft had made it back to Bassin du Sud with her pumps running overtime, and several of the others had taken damage. All things considered, it was a miracle the Southern Fleet had been able to inflict that much harm before it was destroyed.

  "Now we have a large target. Silence, please."

  The tension grew thicker as Maurice Farr sat with his eyes closed, gripping the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.

  "All right, gentlemen," he said at last. One or two of the hardier had gone on eating their soup, and now paused with their spoons poised. "Here's what we'll do. I'm assuming that all of you have steam up"—you'd better went unspoken—"and we can get under way tonight."

  That raised a few brows; a night passage up the Gut would be a definite risk, even after the exercises Farr had put the Northern Fleet through after assuming command six months ago.

  "Steaming at fourteen knots, that should place us"—he turned to the map behind him—"here by dawn tomorrow. Then . . ."

  * * *

  Admiral der See Elise Eberdorf blinked at the communications technician.

  "They report what?" she said.

  "Sir, the entire Santander Navy Northern Fleet is steaming down the Gut towards us at flank speed, better than fifteen knots. Distance is less than forty miles."

  Eberdorf blinked again, staring blindly out the narrow armored windows of the Grossvolk.

  "Sixteen battleships, twenty-two fast protected cruisers, auxiliaries in proportion," the man read on. "Approaching—"

  That is the entire Northern Fleet, she thought. Less the Constitution, which was downlined with a warped main drive shaft according to the latest intelligence. They were approaching through the southern strait around Trois; they must have left their base last night and made maximum speed all night, ignoring the chance of grounding or mines. Which meant . . .

  She looked out at the chaos that covered the waters before Barclon. The Land's gold sunburst on black was flying over most of the city's higher buildings, those still standing. The fires were still burning out of control in some districts, and the forts guarding the harbor mouth were ruins full of rotting flesh. The water was speckled with half the Land's merchant fleet and about a third of its navy, many of them working shore-support and punching out enemy bunkers for the army.