The Chosen

backwards.

That put them hull-down. 'That was a tank gun, or I'm a snail-eater,' the driver muttered.

Several Santander armored vehicles were advancing to either side of the road Jeffrey had been using. Four tanks, Whippet mediums with a 2.5-inch gun in their turrets; three troop carriers, Whippets with the turrets removed; a pom-pom Whippet, freed from its original tasking of antiaircraft work by the virtual absence of Land aircraft and doing fire support, instead. The Republic's armor clattered forward, halting with only the tank turrets showing over the hill and their guns at maximum depression. One fired, and a few seconds later there was a gout of smoke and fire in the middle distance, visible even over the ridge.

All across the rolling cropland to the west the Expeditionary Corps was advancing, infantry spread out in preparation for the engagement that seemed inevitable. A brace of ground-attack fighters flew by, their wheels less than fifty feet overhead, heading east for targets of opportunity.

'General,' the breathless staff officer in the car said.

Jeffrey leaned down again. He grinned as he read the dispatches.

'Sir?' Henri said, his hands on the grips of the vehicle's machine gun. He didn't believe in taking unnecessary chances, and there still might be a few Chosen aircraft around. A couple of obvious command vehicles bunched right behind the front made a very tempting target.

'Message from Dad. Admiral Farr. We have met the enemy and they are ours.'

The Unionaise gave a soft whistle. 'We hold the Passage, then?'

Jeffrey nodded. As long as the Expeditionary Force didn't get thrown back into the sea. . which was looking increasingly unlikely.

He flipped to the other message and prevented his mouth falling open with an effort.

'Son of a bitch.'

Henri looked at him; that hadn't really been a curse.

'Libert. Libert has offered all the Chosen and Proteges remaining on Union or Sierran territory asylum. Union citizenship, land grants. . the bastard's trying to get himself enough of an army so we won't feel like getting rid of him when this is all over.'

Henri's face went white with rage around the nostrils and mouth. The Santander public hated Libert and his collaborationist regime almost as much as the Loyalist refugees did. The question of whether they hated him enough to fight another war was an entirely different one.

'Cheer up,' Jeffrey said. 'I haven't seen many of the Chosen surrendering yet.'

He looked down at the map table. 'All we have to do is hold them. They're out of supplies, out of fuel, out of hope.'

The remnants of the force that had marched north out of the Sierra to meet him was strung out along the upper Pada River east of Ciano, fighting its way through swarms of guerillas. The few Chosen left alive in the Empire were laagered in the forts and towns that hadn't been overrun at the beginning of the uprising. There was nothing behind the last army of the Land but death.

'General message,' he said to the signals technician. 'All we have to do is hold their first attack. Hold them. The Proteges have already started to turn on their masters. If we can hold this attack, they'll disintegrate.'

* * *

Heinrich Hosten looked around the position. There were six of them left, all of his remaining staff. Probably thousands left alive elsewhere, scattered pockets isolated where the fury of their attack had left them deep in the Santander positions. He checked the magazine of his automatic.

The Santies were ahead, in among the trees that lined the road. Probably a platoon of them, and certainly an armored car.

Heinrich estimated distances. At least I don't have to make any more decisions, he thought. He laughed, feeling the weight on his shoulders lighten. Nothing good had come of that. Just one more. He laughed again, feeling young. Young as he had been at the beginning of the war, young and confident and happy.

'Sturm!' he shouted. 'Charge!'

Knife in one hand, pistol in the other, he went forward at a pounding run with the others at his heels. Muzzle flashes winked through the twilight at him, rifles from among the trees. Then a continuous blinking flicker from the half-seen shape of the armored car.

Something hit him, spinning him around. He staggered and came on, squeezing off the last three rounds in the pistol. Had he hit someone? No way of telling. On. Another impact, somewhere in a body that felt far away. He fell, crawled forward, digging his free hand into the dirt and holding the knife tighter as his fingers went numb. Boots ahead of him, and the tip of a bayonet. Heinrich scrabbled half-erect, lunging forward, swinging the long curved knife where he knew a body must be. Something struck him between the shoulderblades, and he was floating.

Gerta. Wetness spilled out of his mouth. Nothing.

* * *

'Jesus,' the Santander soldier said, looking down at the knife that had missed his crotch by inches. 'Jesus. This bastid must've ten holes in him and he wouldn't fuckin' stop. I put a whole clip into him. Jesus.'

Jeffrey Farr looked down at Heinrich's face. The lips were still twisted in a snarl, or perhaps a smile; it was difficult to tell, with the blood. He reached down and closed the staring blue eyes.

* * *

'Sir, this is fuckin' stupid.'

John Hosten nodded. 'Yes, it is, Barrjen,' he said. 'Smith, all of you, you've been with me a long time, but this is personal. He's my father, not yours.'

Oathtaking was burning. The Santander gunboat had come in unopposed, unless the wild random fire of looters counted. The harbor was empty, but the great naval dockyards in the center of the drowned caldera were the scene of a battle-who against who was hard to tell, but the volume of fire was considerable. What was going on in the streets wasn't a battle; it was halfway between orgy and massacre, as the slave laborers and Protege rebels hunted down stray Chosen and anyone associated with them.

'I'm going,' John said, hefting his machine pistol. 'I can't stop you from coming too, but I wish you wouldn't.'

They looked at him in silence; he smiled wryly and headed down the street. Stray bands of looters parted before their guns and obvious discipline; the smoke was thick enough to keep visibility down to twenty yards or less, and thick enough to make each breath painful. Fires were burning on both sides, licking tongues of flame out of the windows of the buildings.

'That's a barricade, sir. Careful,' Smith said.

John shook his head. 'I don't think anyone's alive behind it,' he said.

There were plenty of dead before it, in the striped uniforms of the labor camps or drab Protege issue clothing. First a thick scattering, then piles two and three deep. Gray Land uniforms and weapons showed here and there among them, soldiers or police turned against their masters. Before the line of furniture and upturned handcarts the dead lay in layers waist-high, the granite pavement running with viscous red; the Santander party had to climb over them, breathing through their mouths. Where the barrels of the machine guns had been covered by the curtain of falling dead, the smell was of cooked meat. Broiled by the red-hot metal, boiled by the steam escaping from the ruptured water jackets. Most of the dead behind the barricade were Chosen; mostly children, in the plain gray school uniforms of Probationers. The adults among them were white-haired, probably teachers. Most of the dead children looked to have died quickly, the mutilations done afterwards. Most.

'You bastard,' Barrjen breathed at the bald man whose age-spotted hands were still locked around a dead Protege's throat. The knife in the Protege's hand was buried in the schoolmaster's gut. 'You bastard.'

'Keep moving,' John said sharply.

The fires got worse as they moved through Old Town. A housemaid fled screaming past them, her naked body streaked with blood. Half a dozen Protege soldiers chased her at an easy lope, the insignia torn from their uniforms, bottles in their hands. One or two of them halted to stare at the Santander party; were was no mind in the shaven heads, but enough animal caution to send them reeling on again.