The Chosen

The young Imperial lieutenant looked hopeful for a moment. Jeffrey felt slightly guilty.

'No, I'm afraid not-accident of war, but the rest of the consular staff are dead enough for all that. My government will doubtless lodge a complaint, but in the meantime, I'm a neutral.'

'Then I will not detain you, sir,' the lieutenant said.

Jeffrey hesitated for an instant. 'Lieutenant. . as one fighting man to another, are you in contact with your superiors?'

The lieutenant swallowed. 'No, sir, I am not. The city telegraph and telephone lines appear to be inoperable or under enemy control.'

'The Chosen are landing in force at the docks.' That was less than half a kilometer away. 'Lieutenant, without support, you haven't a prayer. I'd strongly advise you withdraw until you do get in contact with your chain of command.'

It would be an even better idea to ditch the uniforms and weapons and hide in a cellar, then pretend to be harmless laborers, but he didn't think the young Imperial would take that sort of advice.

'If I have no orders, I have my duty; but thank you, Captain Farr. There are better than thirty thousand Imperial military personnel in Corona. If we all do something, the situation may yet be salvaged. You'd better go, this isn't your fight.'

The hell it isn't. It wasn't his battle, though. If every Imperial officer had this one's aggression and instincts, Corona could have been saved. That was very unlikely.

He looked over his shoulder. Two of the Imperial soldiers were driving the car up to the barricade, and others were pushing aside a cart to give it room to pass.

'You understand, of course,' the lieutenant went on, 'I must commandeer your vehicle.'

Jeffrey hadn't understood anything of the sort-although it would be invaluable, particularly with the communications network down. Cars weren't common in Corona. And it didn't make much sense to object, not when the Imperial had fifty or sixty armed men at his back. Lucretzia seemed more inclined to argue; Jeffrey took her by the arm and hurried her past.

'Where can we go without the car?' she hissed.

'Where could we go with it? The main roads are blocked. I'm trying to get to a safe house. Now move.'

They walked quickly up the street. The crowds were thicker here, but milling around as if they weren't sure where to go. That included numbers in Imperial military uniforms. Columns of smoke were rising to the air from dozens of points in the city now. He looked at his watch. 11:00 hours.

BAAAAMM. A volley from the barricade a hundred meters behind them. The gatling there cut loose with a slow braaaap. . braaaap as the operators turned its crank. Jeffrey half-turned, then recognized the next sound.

'Down!' he shouted, and pancaked, carrying the woman with him.

The whistling screech ended in a sharp crack about twenty meters back. Someone fell thrashing across Jeffrey's legs. He pushed at them with his feet, but the body resisted with the boneless slackness of a sack of rice; he had to roll onto his back and push with one boot to get the twitching weight free. That gave him an excellent view of what was coming up the roadway. Even at several hundred meters it looked huge, a rhomboid shape of riveted steel armor leaking steam along its flanks, with the Land's sunburst on its bow. Endless belts of linked metal plates supported it on either side. Between the top and bottom track each flank held a sponson-mounted cannon; 50mm by the look, light naval quick-firers. On the top of the boxy hull was a round turret mounting two thick shapes that must be the new water-cooled automatic machine-guns Intelligence had been reporting.

They were. The turret swiveled and the muzzles of the automatics flashed, with a sound like endless ripping canvas. Bullets chewed into the Imperial's barricade in a continuous stream, ripping wood into splinters and silencing the ineffectual rifles. Men turned and ran; the lieutenant waved his sword in their faces, trying to rally them. Then the other side-mounted cannon in the Chosen tank cut loose. The shell landed nearly at the Imperial officer's feet, exploding in a puff of smoke with a malignant red snap at its core. One of the lieutenants boots was left, toppling over slowly. The rest of him was splashed across the paving blocks. In the silence that followed they could hear the tooth-grating squeal of steel on stone as the Chosen fighting vehicle ground up the slope towards them.

For a long moment, he was paralyzed. Instinct tugged at the small hairs along his spine. He'd seen war machines far worse in Center's scenarios, but this was here, lurching and grinding its way towards him. He didn't blame the Imperials for bugging out at all.

'Come on!' Lucretzia was tugging at his sleeve.

Good idea. Jeffrey took her hand and ran.

* * *

The basement room was hot and close, stuffy with their breath and sweat. Jeffrey put a cautious eye to the slat-covered cellar window, looking out. The firing had stopped, the slow banging of the Imperial rifles and the fast flat cracks of the Land repeaters. He could see one Imperial soldier trying to crawl away in the kitchen-garden outside, dragging his limp legs. Boots stepped up behind him, jackboots with gray uniform trousers tucked into them. A rifle with a knife-bayonet attached followed, pointed to the back of the wounded man's head. It barked, and the body slumped forward, hidden by the thigh-high corn.

Damn. It was pure bad luck, to get right to the edge of town-they were in a straggling suburb of market-gardens and villas-and then get caught up in a skirmish.

The Land soldier kneeled and went through his victim's pockets; then he paused to reload his rifle, pulling the bolt back and up, then thumbing in two stripper-clips of five rounds from the pouches on his webbing. He was a dark-tanned man of medium height, the helmet clipped to his belt revealing a shaven skull. The face below it was beetle-browed and hard; he looked to be exactly what he was, a highly-trained human pit bull. Savage, not too bright, but abundantly deadly. He smacked the bolt forward, chambering a round, and turned to shout a question over his shoulder. Someone answered in the same Protege-accented Landisch, and three more joined him. Unseen others pounded away in lockstep, a platoon column by the sound of it.

Lucretzia had her hands locked over her mouth, eyes wide. Been a hard day for her. Hell, for both of us. He sincerely hoped she wouldn't scream.

They heard a door burst open above. Things smashed, crockery, glass. There was a sudden overpowering smell of wine. Bad. The Protege soldiers must be so wrought up they weren't even stopping to loot more booze. He eased the revolver out of his holster and slowly, quietly thumbed back the hammer. It was a double-action, but saving a fraction of a second on the pull might be worthwhile. Jeffrey swallowed through a mouth gone cotton-dry. When they didn't find anything upstairs, they might just move along, probably they had a lot of territory to cover. . they might not shoot at someone in the uniform of a neutral third country. .

probability 8 %, ±2.

Thanks. Just about his own calculation of the odds on Proteges understanding what 'neutral' meant, or caring if they did.

Jackboots walked over the kitchen floor above them, making the planking creak and sending little trickles of dust down into the cellar. Slowly, the light in the basement took on a flat, silvery tone. Jeffrey set his teeth; he'd experienced what Center could do with his perceptions before, but he'd never liked it.

Neither did I, but you use what's to hand, Raj said. To the right of the door.

That stood at the top of a flight of stairs. It was thin pine boards; if there had been only one Land soldier, Jeffrey would have fired through them when the knob began to turn. But there were at least four.

The catch clicked, but the door didn't open immediately. Instead there was a slight shink sound. . exactly what the point of a bayonet would sound like, touching on dry planking. Jeffrey's hand reached out to the knob, moving with an automatic precision that seemed detached and slow. He jerked it backward, and the Land soldier stumbled through. A grid dropped down over his sight, outlining the enemy. A green dot appeared right under the angle of the man's jaw. His finger stroked the trigger, squeezing.

Crack.

The soldier's head snapped sideways as if he'd been kicked by a horse. His helmet went flying off into the dimness of the cellar, dimness that made the muzzle flash strobe like a spear of reddish fire. It hid the flow of brain and bone that followed, but blood spattered back into Jeffrey's face. He was turning, turning, the pistol coming up.