Riding the Red Horse

by Christopher Nuttall

  Thurstone was colonized early in the CoDominium period but it was too poor to attract wealthy corporations. The third Thurstone expedition was financed by the Carlist branch of the Spanish monarchy, and eventually Carlos XII brought a group of supporters to found Santiago. They were all of them malcontents.

  This was hardly unusual. Space is colonized with malcontents or convicts; no one else wants to leave Earth. The Santiago colonists were protesting the Bourbon restoration in Spain, or John XXVI's reunification of Christendom, or the cruel fates, or, perhaps, unhappy love affairs. They got the smallest and poorest of Thurstone's three continents, but they did well with what little they received.

  For thirty years Santiago received no one who was not a voluntary immigrant from Spanish Catholic cultures. The Carlists were careful of those they let in, and there was plenty of good land for everyone. The Kingdom of St. James had little modern technology, and no one was very rich, but there were few who were very poor either.

  Eventually the Population Control Commission designated Thurstone as a recipient planet, and the Bureau of Relocation began moving people there. All three governments on Thurstone protested, but unlike Xanadu or Danube, Thurstone had never developed a navy; a single frigate from the CoDominium Fleet convinced them they had no choice.

  Two million involuntary colonists came in BuRelock ships to Thurstone. Convicts, welfare frauds, criminals, revolutionaries, rioters, street gangsters, men who'd offended a BuRelock clerk, men with the wrong color eyes, and some who were just plain unlucky; all of them bundled into unsanitary transport ships and hustled away from Earth. The other nations on Thurstone had friends in BuRelock and money to pay for favors; Santiago got the bulk of the new immigrants.

  The Carlists tried. They provided transportation to unclaimed lands for all who wanted it and most who did not. The original Santiago settlers had fled from industry and had built very little; and now, suddenly, they were swamped with citydwellers of a different culture who had no thought of the land and less love for it. Suddenly, they had large cities.

  In less than a decade the capital grew from a sleepy town to a sprawling heap of tenement shacks. The Carlists abolished part of the city; the shacks appeared on the other side of town. New cities grew from small towns. There was a desperate need for industry.

  When the industries were built, the original settlers revolted. They had fled from industrialized life, and wanted no more of it. A king was deposed and an infant prince placed on his father's throne. The Cortez took government into its own hands. They enslaved everyone who did not pay his own way.

  It was not called slavery, but “indebtedness for welfare service”; but debts were inheritable and transferable. Debts could be bought and sold on speculation, and everyone had to work off his debts.

  In a generation half the population was in debt. In another the slaves outnumbered the free men. Finally the slaves revolted, and Santiago became a cause overnight: at least to those who'd ever heard of the place.

  In the CoDominium Grand Senate, the U.S., listening to the other governments on Thurstone and the corporations who brought agricultural products from Santiago, supported the Carlists, but not strongly. The Soviet senators supported the Republic, but not strongly. The CD Navy was ordered to quarantine the war area.

  The fleet had few ships for such a task. The Navy grounded all military aircraft in Santiago, and prohibited importation of any kind of heavy weapon. Otherwise they left the place alone to undergo years of indecisive warfare.

  It was never difficult for the Humanity League to send volunteers to Santiago as long as they brought no weapons. As the men were not experienced in war, the League also sought trained officers to send with them.

  They rejected mercenaries, of course. Volunteers must have the proper spirit to fight for freedom in Santiago.

  Peter Owensford sat in the pleasant cool of the evening at a scarred table that might have been oak, but wasn't. Captain Anselm “Ace” Barton sat across from him, and a pitcher of dark red wine stood on the table.

  “I thought they'd put me in the technical corps,” Peter said.

  “Speak Mandarin?” When Peter looked up in surprise, Barton continued, “Republic hired Xanadu techs. They don't have much equipment, what with the quarantine. Plenty of techs for what they do have.”

  “I see. So I'm infantry?”

  Barton shrugged. “You fight, Pete. Just like me. They'll give you a company. The ones you brought, and maybe another hundred recruits. All yours. I guess you'll get that Stromand for political officer, too.”

  Peter grimaced. “What use is that?”

  Barton looked around in an exaggerated manner. “Careful,” he said. He wore a grin but his voice was serious. “Political officers are a lot more popular with the high command than we are. Don't forget that.”

  “From what I've seen the high command isn't very competent....”

  “Jesus,” Barton said. “Look, Pete, they can have you shot for talking like that. This isn't any mercenary outfit with its own codes, you know. This is a patriotic war, and you'd better not forget it.”

  Peter stared at the packed clay floor of the patio, his lips set in a tight, thin line. He'd sat in this bistro, at this table, every night for a week now, and he was beginning to understand Barton's cynicism; but why was the man here at all? “There's not enough body armor for my men. The ones I've got. You say they'll give me more?”

  “New group coming in tomorrow. No officer with them. Sure, they'll put 'em with you. Where else? Troops have to be trained.”

  “Trained!” Peter snorted in disgust. “We have enough Nemourlon to make armor for about half the troops, only I'm the only one in the company who knows how to do it. We've got no weapons, no optics, no communications—”

  “Yeah, things are tough all over.” Barton poured another glass of wine. “What'd you expect in a nonindustrial society quarantined by the CD?”

  Peter slumped back into the hard wooden chair. “Yeah, I know. But—I can't even train them with what I have. Whenever I get the men assembled, Stromand interrupts to make speeches.”

  Barton smiled. “Colonel Cermak, our esteemed International Brigade Commander, thinks the American troops have poor morale. Obviously, the way to deal with that is to make speeches.”

  “They've got poor morale because they don't know how to fight.”

  “Another of Cermak's solutions to poor morale is to shoot people for defeatism,” Barton said softly. “I've warned you, kid. I won't again.”

  “The only damn thing my men have learned in the last week is how to sing and which red-light houses are safe.”

  “More'n some do. Have another drink.”

  Peter nodded in dejection. “That's not bad wine.”

  “Right. Pretty good, but not good enough to export,” Barton said. “Whole goddam country's that way, you know. Pretty good, but not quite good enough.”

  The next day they gave Peter Owensford 107 new men fresh from the U.S. and Earth. There was talk of adding another political officer to the company, but there wasn't one Cermak trusted.

  Each night Ace Barton sat at the table in the bistro, but he didn't see Owensford all week. Then, as he was having his third glass of wine, Peter came in and sat across from him. The proprietor brought a glass, and Barton poured from the pitcher. “You look like you need that. Thought you were ordered to stay on, nights, to train the troops.”

  Peter drank. “Same story, Ace. Speeches. More speeches. I walked out. It was obvious I wasn't going to have anything to do.”

  “Risky,” Barton said. They sat in silence as the older man seemed to decide something. “Ever think you're not needed, Pete?”

  “They act that way, but I'm still the only man with any military training at all in the company....”

  “So what? The Republic doesn't need your troops. Not the way you think, anyway. Main purpose of the volunteers is to see the right party stays in control here.”

  Peter sat stiffly silen
t. He'd promised himself that he wouldn't react quickly to anything Barton said. There was no one else Peter felt comfortable with, despite the cynicism that Peter detested. “I can't believe that,” he said finally. “The volunteers come from everywhere. They're not fighting to help any political party, they're here to set people free.”

  Barton said nothing. A red toothpick danced across his face, twirling up and about, and a sly grin broke across the square features.

  “See, you don't even believe it yourself,” Peter said.

  “Could be. Pete, you ever think how much money they raise back in the States? Money from people who feel guilty about not volunteerin' ?”

  “No. There's no money here. You've seen that.”

  “There's money, but it goes to the techs,” Barton said. “That, at least, makes sense. Xanadu isn't sending their sharp boys for nothing, and without them, what's the use of mudcrawlers like us?”

  Peter leaned back in his chair. It made sense. “Then we've got pretty good technical support...”

  “About as good as the Dons have. Which means neither side has a goddam thing. Either group gets a real edge that way, the war's over, right? But for the moment nobody's got a way past the CD quarantine, so the best way the Dons and the Republicans have to kill each other is with rifles and knives and grenades. Not very damn many of the latter, either.”

  “We don't even have the rifles.”

  “You'll get those. Meantime, relax. You've told Brigade your men aren't ready to fight. You've asked for weapons and more Nemourlon. You've complained about Stromand. You've done it all, now shut up before you get yourself shot as a defeatist. That's an order, Pete.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You'll get your war soon enough.”

  The trucks came back to Tarazona a week later. They carried coffin-shaped boxes full of rifles and bayonets from New Aberdeen, Thurstone's largest city. The rifles were covered with grease, and there wasn't any solvent to clean them with. Most were copies of Remington 2045 model automatic, but there were some Krupps and Skodas. Most of the men didn't know which ammunition fit their rifles.

  “Not bad gear,” Barton remarked. He turned one of the rifles over and over in his hands. “We've had worse.”

  “But I don't have much training in rifle tactics,” Peter said.

  Barton shrugged. “No power supplies, no maintenance ships, no base to support anything more complicated than chemical slug-throwers, Peter. Forget the rest of the crap you learned and remember that.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Whistles blew, and someone shouted from the trucks. “Get your gear and get aboard!”

  “But—” Owensford turned helplessly to Barton. “Get aboard for where?”

  Barton shrugged. “I'd better get back to my area. Maybe they're moving the whole battalion up while we've got the trucks.”

  They were. The men who had armor put it on, and everyone dressed in combat synthileather. Most had helmets, ugly hemispheric models with a stiff spine over the most vulnerable areas. A few men had lost theirs, and they boarded the trucks without them.

  The convoy rolled across the plains and into a greener farm area; then it got dark, and the night air chilled fast under clear, cloudless skies. The drivers pushed on, too fast without lights, and Peter sat in the back of the lead truck, his knees clamped tightly together, his teeth unconsciously beating out a rhythm he'd learned years before. No one talked.

  At dawn they were in another valley. Trampled crops lay all around them, drying dead plants with green stalks.

  “Good land,” Private Lunster said. He lifted a clod and crumbled it between his fingers. “Very good land.”

  Somehow that made Peter feel better. He formed the men into ranks and made sure each knew how to load his weapon. Then he had each fire at a crumbling adobe wall, choosing a large target so that they wouldn't fail to hit it. More trucks pulled in and unloaded heavy generators and antitank lasers. When Owensford's men tried to get close to the heavy weapons the gunners shouted them away. It seemed to Peter that the gunners were familiar with the gear, and that was encouraging.

  Everyone spoke softly, and when anyone raised his voice it was like a shout. Stromand tried to get the men to sing, but they wouldn't.

  “Not long now, eh?” Sergeant Roach asked.

  “I expect you're right,” Peter told him, but he didn't know, and went oft to find the commissary truck. He wanted to be sure the men got a good meal that evening.

  They moved them up during the night. A guide came to Peter and whispered to follow him, and they moved out across the unfamiliar land. Somewhere out there were the Dons with their army of peasant conscripts and mercenaries and family retainers. When they had gone fifty meters, they passed an old tree and someone whispered to them.

  “Everything will be fine,” Stromand's voice said from the shadows under the tree. “All of the enemy are politically immature. Their vacqueros will run away, and their peasant conscripts will throw away their weapons. They have no reason to be loyal.”

  “Why the hell has the war gone on three years?” someone whispered behind Peter.

  He waited until they were long past the tree. “Roach, that wasn't smart. Stromand will have you shot for defeatism.”

  “He'll play hell doing it, Lieutenant. You, man, pick up your feet. Want to fall down that gully?”

  “Quiet,” the guide whispered urgently. They went on through the dark night, down a slope, then up another, past men dug into the hillside. They didn't speak to them.

  Peter found himself walking along the remains of a railroad, with the ties partly gone and all the rails removed. Eventually the guide halted. “Dig in here,” he whispered. “Long live freedom.”

  “No pasarán!” Stromand answered loudly.

  “Please be quiet,” the guide urged. “We are within earshot of the enemy.”

  “Ah,” Stromand answered. The guide turned away and the political officer began to follow him.

  “Where are you going?” Corporal Grant asked in a loud whisper.

  “To report to Major Harris,” Stromand answered.

  “The battalion commander ought to know where we are.”

  “So should we,” a voice said.

  “Who was that?” Stromand demanded. The only answer with a juicy raspberry.

  “That bastard's got no right,” a voice said close to Peter.

  “Who's there?”

  “Rotwasser, sir.” Rotwasser was company runner. The job gave him the nominal rank of monitor but he had no maniple to command. Instead he carried complaints from the men to Owensford.

  “I can spare the PO better than anyone else,” Peter whispered. “I'll need you here, not back at battalion. Now start digging us in.”

  It was cold on the hillside, but digging kept the men warm enough. Dawn came slowly at first, a gradually brightening light without warmth. Peter took out his light-amplifying binoculars and cautiously looked out ahead. The binoculars were a present from his mother and the only good optical equipment in the company.

  The countryside was cut into small, steep-sided ridges and valley. Allan Roach lay beside Owensford and when it became light enough to see, the sergeant whistled softly. “We take that ridge in front of us, there's another just like it after that. And another. Nobody's goin' to win this war that way....”

  Owensford nodded silently. There were trees in the valley below, oranges and dates imported from Earth mixed in with native fruit trees as if a giant had spilled seeds across the ground. A whitewashed adobe peasant house stood gutted by fire, the roof gone.

  Zing! Something that might have been a hornet but wasn't buzzed angrily over Peter's head. There was a flat crack from across the valley, then more of the angry buzzes. Dust puffs sprouted from the earthworks they'd thrown up during the night.

  “Down!” Peter ordered.

  “What are they trying to do, kill us?” Allan Roach shouted. There was a chorus of laughs. “Sir, why didn't they use IR on us in the dark
? We should have stood out in this cold—”

  Peter shrugged. “Maybe they don't have any. We don't.”

  The men who'd skimped on their holes dug in deeper, throwing the dirt out onto the ramparts in front of them, laughing as they did. It was very poor technique, and Peter worried about artillery, but nothing happened. The enemy was about four hundred meters away, across the valley and stretched out along a ridge identical to the one Peter held. No infantry that ever lived could have taken a position by charging across that valley. Both sides were safe until something heavier was brought up.

  One large-caliber gun was trained on their position. It fired on anything that moved. There was also a laser, with several mirrors that could be moved about between flashes. The laser itself was safe, and the mirrors probably were also because the monarchists never fired twice from the same position.

  The men shot at the guns and at where they thought the mirror was anyway until Peter made them quit wasting ammunition. It wasn't good for morale to lie there and not fight back, though.

  “I bet I can locate that goddam gun,” Corporal Bassinger told Peter. “I got the best eyesight in the company.”

  Peter mentally called up Bassinger's records. Two ex-wives and an acknowledged child by each. Volunteered after being an insurance man in Brooklyn for years. “You can't spot that thing.”

  “Sure I can, Lieutenant. Loan me your glasses, I'll spot it sure.”

  “All right. Be careful, they're shooting at anything they can see.”

  “I'm careful.”

  “Let me see, man!” somebody shouted. Three men clustered in the trench around Bassinger. “Let us look!” “Don't be a hog, we want to see too.” “Comrade, let us look—”

  “Get away from here,” Bassinger shouted. “You heard the lieutenant, it's dangerous to look over the ramparts.”

  “What about you?”

  “I'm an observer. Besides, I'm careful.” He crawled into position and looked out through a little slot he'd cut away in the dirt in front of him. “See, it's safe enough. I think I see—”

  Bassinger was thrown back into the trench. The shattered glasses fell on top of him, and he had already ceased breathing when they heard the shot that hit him in the eye.