The Chosen

I wouldn't have minded having this fellow working for me, Raj thought.

chosen staff training ensures uniformity of method, Center noted. this reduces the need for communications.

'Twenty-two hundred,' the officer at the optical said. 'Picking up the pace.'

'Still, twelve thousand to two. .' Jeffrey said.

Heinrich grinned disarmingly. 'We're holding the neck of the bag. All we have to do is delay them long enough for the rest of the corps to come up, and they've lost better than two hundred thousand men. Worth a risk.'

Jeffrey nodded. Down below the riflemen finished digging and were snuggling the stocks of their weapons into their shoulders; a few pessimists were setting out grenades close to hand. The machine gunners sat behind their weapons, elbows on knees, bending to look through the sights: all Chosen, he noticed-one Chosen NCO as gunner, five Protege privates to fetch and carry and keep the weapon supplied with ammunition and water.

The Imperial field gunners halted their teams, wheeling the guns and running them off the limbers. The clang of the breechblocks was lost under the growing, drumming thunder of thousands of hooves. Elevating wheels spun. The Imperial guns were simple black-powder models with no recoil gear; they'd have to be pushed back into battery after every shot, but there were a lot of them.

Behind Jeffrey, hands poised mortar bombs over the muzzles. The Chosen officer at the optical raised her hand, then chopped it downward.

Schoonk. Schoonk. Schoonk. Twelve times repeated.

The mortar shells began dropping. Each threw up a minor shower of dirt, like a gigantic raindrop hitting silt. The first rounds dropped all across the axis of the Imperial advance, some ahead of it, some behind; four or five plowed into the mass of cantering horsemen, sending animals and men to the ground. The ranks expanded around the casualties, then closed up again with a long ripple.

The observers called corrections. Schoonk. Schoonk. . This bracket landed much closer to the Imperial field guns. One landed on a limber, which went up in a giant globe of orange fire, shells whistling across the sky like fireworks. The noise was loud even at this distance. Another went up a second later.

'Tsk, tsk,' Heinrich said. 'Sympathetic detonation-too close together. Careless.'

In Landisch, saying someone was sloppy was a serious moral criticism, worse than theft, although not quite as bad as eating your children. The Chosen assumed courage; what they really respected was an infinite capacity for taking pains.

An Imperial gun cut loose in an enormous puff of off-white smoke. Something went overhead in a tearing rising-pitch whistle and exploded behind them, sending a poplar tree shape of dirt into the air. The next shell hammered short, just beyond the Land infantry line. One over, one under, which meant. .

Heinrich made a small gesture with one hand; everyone whose job permitted it went to ground, including Jeffrey Farr. He wished he had one of the Land helmets; even a thin layer of stamped manganese-nickel steel was a comforting thing to have between you and an airburst.

Crack. The next shell was an airburst, a little off-center and a bit high up. Imperial fuses weren't very modern, either, so that was good shooting with what they had available. Somebody screamed nearby, and a call went up for stretcher-bearers. Guns were firing all along the Imperial line now, but the hooves were louder.

Much louder. The cavalry were swinging into a gallop, and as he watched the sabers came out, a thousandfold twinkling in the hot sunlight, like slivers of mirrored glass. The troopers swung the swords down, holding them forward along the horses' necks with the blades parallel to the ground. On his belly, Jeffrey could feel the thunder of thousands of tons of horseflesh thudding into the ground on metal-shod hooves.

'Steady now, steady,' Heinrich murmured to himself, glancing left and right at his regiment.

Jeffrey stared at the approaching Imperials with a complex mixture of emotions. If they overran this position, he'd probably die. . and he'd like nothing better than to see the Chosen stamped into the earth by the hooves, cut apart by those sabers, pistoled, annihilated. But he didn't want to share the experience, if possible.

Beneath that his mind was calculating, measuring distances by the old trick of how much you could see-so many yards when a man was a dot, so many when you could make out his arms, his legs, the belts of his equipment. The Land soldiers were doing the same. Behind them the mortars kept up a steady schoonk. . schoonk. . stopping now and then to adjust their aim.

The machine gun cut loose with a stuttering rattle, faster and more rhythmic than the gatlings he was familiar with. Every fourth round was tracer, and they arched out pale in the bright sunlight. More of the automatics opened up along the regiment's line. The closest gunner traversed smoothly, tapping off four-second bursts, smiling broadly to herself.

Jam, Jeffrey prayed. Jam, damn you, jam tight!

But they didn't jam. The cavalry charge disintegrated instead, hundreds of horses and men falling in a few seconds. At the gallop there was no time to halt, no chance to pull aside. The first rank went down as if a giant scythe had cut their legs from beneath them, and the succeeding ones piled into them in a kicking, rolling, tumbling wave of thousand-pound bodies that reached three layers high in places. He could see men thrown twenty feet and more as their mounts ran into that long hillock of living flesh, saw them crushed under tons of thrashing horse. The sound was indescribable, the shrill womanish shrieking of the horses and the desperate wailing of men.

Tacktacktacktacktacktacktack-

A shell landed near one of the machine guns, probably by sheer chance, leaving a tangle of flesh and twisted metal. The others continued, concentrating on the main mass of stalled horsemen; individual riders came forward, and dismounted men-horses were bigger targets than humans. Some of them were firing their carbines as they came. Far beyond their range, but not that of the Landisch magazine-rifles, with high-velocity jacketed slugs and smokeless powder. Land riflemen opened up, the slower crack. . crack . . of their weapons contrasting with the rapid chatter of the machine guns.

Imperials fell; the Land infantry could fire ten or twelve aimed rounds a minute, and they were all good shots. More green-uniformed soldiers crowded forward, some crawling, others running in short dashes. There were infantry in peaked caps among them now, as well as the dismounted cavalry. One of the big soft-lead slugs whipcracked by Jeffrey, uncomfortably close; he hugged the dirt tighter. Not far away a Land soldier sprawled backwards kicking and blowing a froth of air and blood through his smashed jaw. Others crawled forward to drag the wounded back to where the stretcher-bearers could get at them, then crawled back to their firing positions.

'Hot work,' Heinrich said, propping himself up on his elbows. 'Ah, I expected that.'

More and more Imperials were filtering up, taking cover behind the piles of dead horses and men, working around the edges of the Land regiment. Steam hissed from the safety cap on the top of the jacket of the machine gun in front of the knoll; a Protege soldier rose to fetch more water and pitched back with a grunt like a man belly- punched, curling around the wound in his stomach. He sprawled open-eyed after a second's heel-drumming spasm, and another rose to take his place. The Chosen gunner wrapped her hand in a cloth and unscrewed the cap. Boiling water heaved upward and pattered down on the thirsty soil, disappearing instantly and leaving only a stain that looked exactly like that left by the soldiers blood. Soldiers poured their canteens into the weapon's thirsty maw, and the gunner took the opportunity to switch barrels.

'Sir! Hauptman Fedrof reports enemy moving to our left in force-several thousand of them. Infantry, with guns in support.'

Jeffrey saw Heinrich frown, then unconsciously look behind to where the supports would be coming from. . if they came.

'Move one company of the reserve to the left. Refuse the flank, pull back a little to that irrigation ditch and laneway. Tell the mortars to fire in support on request. And Fahnrich Klinghoffer, get me a report on our ammunition reserves.'

'Hot work,' Jeffrey said.

* * *

'Watch it!' John barked involuntarily as the left wheels of his car nearly went into the ditch.

The refugees were swarming on both sides of the road, trampling through the maize fields on both sides and gardens. Every once and a while they surged uncontrollably back onto the roadway, blocking the westbound troops