The Chosen

citizens and their dependents from Salini. Farr was sleeping in the captain's sea cabin off the bridge, forcing Dundonald to set up a cot in the officers' library on the deck below.

'Commodore Farr,' said Cooley, spokesman for the captains of the five Santander freighters anchored in the jaws of the shallow bay that served Salini for a harbor, 'I want you to know that if you don't help us citizens like your orders say to, you'll answer to some damned important people! Senator Beemody is a partner in Morgan Trading, and there's other folk involved who talk just as loud, though they may do it in private.'

Three of the other civilian captains nodded meaningfully, though grizzled old Fitzwilliams had the decency to look embarrassed. Fitz had left the navy after twelve years as a lieutenant who knew he'd never rise higher in peacetime. That was a long time ago, but listening to a civilian threaten a naval officer with political consequences still affected Fitzwilliams in much the way it did Farr himself.

'Thank you, Captain Cooley,' Farr said. 'I'll give your warning all the consideration it deserves. As for the specifics of your request. .'

He turned to face the shore, drawing the civilians' attention to the obvious. The Salini waterfront crawled with ragged, desperate people for as far as the eye could see. The McCormick City and two civilian ferries hired by the Santander government were tied up at the West Pier. A hundred Santander Marines and armed sailors guarded the pierhead with fixed bayonets.

Behind them, the six staff members of the Santander consulate in Salini sat at tables made from boards laid on trestles. The vice-consuls poured over huge ledgers, trying to match the names of applicants to the register of Santander citizens within the Empire.

The job was next to hopeless. No more than half the citizens visiting the Union had bothered to register. The consulate staff was reduced to making decisions on the basis of gut instinct and how swarthy the applicant looked.

Every human being in Salini-and there must have been thirty thousand of them as refugees poured south as the Shockwave ahead of unstoppable Chosen columns-wanted to board those two ferries. Farr's guard detachment had used its bayonets already to keep back the crowd. Very soon they would have to fire over the heads of a mob, and even that wouldn't restrain desperation for long.

'Gentlemen,' Farr said, 'the warehouses on Pier Street might as well be on Old Earth for all the chance you'd have of retrieving their contents for your employers. If I landed every man in my squadron, I still couldn't clear the waterfront for you. And even then what would you do? Wish the merchandise into your holds? There aren't any stevedores in Salini now. There's nothing but panic.'

Farr's guard detachment daubed the forelocks of applicants with paint as they were admitted to the pier. It was the only way in the confusion to prevent refugees from coming through the line again and again, clogging still further an already cumbersome process.

A middle-aged woman with a forehead of superstructure gray leaped atop a table with unexpected agility, then jumped down on the other side despite the attempt of a weary vice-consul to grab her. She sprinted along the pier. Two sailors at the gangway of the nearer ferry stepped out to block her.

With an inarticulate cry, the woman flung herself into the harbor. Oily water spurted. One of the Santander cutters patrolling to intercept swimmers stroked to the spot, but Farr didn't see her come up again.

'There's a cool two hundred thousand in tobacco aging in the Pax and Morgan Warehouse,' Cooley said. 'Christ knows what all else. Senator Beemody ain't going to be pleased to hear he waited too long to fetch it over.'

This time he was making an observation, not offering a threat.

Salini's Long Pier was empty. The two vessels along the East Pier, itself staggeringly rotten, had sunk at their moorings a decade ago.

The wooden-hulled cruiser Imperatora Giulia Moro still floated beside the Navy Pier across the harbor, but she was noticeably down by the stern. The Moro had put out a week before along with the rest of the Imperial Second Fleet under orders from the Ministry in Ciano. The Second Fleet was a motley assortment. Besides poor maintenance and inadequate crewing levels, all the vessels had in common was their relatively shallow draft. That made operation in the Gut less of a risk than it would have been for heavier ships, since the Imperial Navy's standard of navigation was no higher than that of its gunnery.

The Moro had limped back to her dock six hours later. She hadn't been out of sight of the harbor before her stern seams had worked so badly that she was in imminent danger of sinking. Now her decks were packed with refugees to whom the illusion of being on shipboard was preferable to waiting on land for Chosen bayonets.

The Mora's crew had vanished in the ship's boats, headed across the Gut to Dubuk in Santander. Farr couldn't really blame them. Those men were likely to be the fleet's only survivors-unless the other vessels had cut and run also.

A steam launch chuffed toward the McCormick City's port quarter, opposite the pier. A Sierra flag hung from the jackstaff. Diplomats? At any rate, another complication on a day that had its share already. For the moment, Captain Dundonald's crew could deal with the matter.

The remaining civilian present on the bridge was the one Farr had sent armed guards to summon: Henry Cargill, Santander's consul in Salmi and the official whose operations Farr was tasked to support. Turning from the bridge railing-brass at a high polish, warmly comforting in the midst of such chaos-Farr fixed his glare on the haggard-looking consul.

'Mr. Cargill,' Farr said, 'if we don't evacuate this port shortly there will be a riot followed by a massacre. I have no desire to shoot unfortunate Imperial citizens, and I have even less desire to watch those citizens trample naval personnel. When can we be out of here?'

'I don't know,' the consul said. He shook his head, then repeated angrily, 'I'm damned if I know, Commodore, but I know it'll be sooner if you let me get back to the tables. I'm supposed to be spelling Hoxley now-for an hour. Which is all the sleep he'll get till midnight tomorrow!'

Cargill waved at the waterfront. The refugees stood as dynamically motionless as water behind a dam-and as ready to roar through if a crack appeared in the line of Santander personnel.

'They're coming from the north faster than we can process the ones already here,' he continued. 'Formally, I have orders to aid the return of Santander citizens to the Republic. Off the record, I have an expression of the governments deep concern lest large numbers of penniless refugees flood Santander.'

A party of armed men had pushed their way through the crowd to the pierhead. Farr tensed for a confrontation, then relaxed as the guard detachment passed the new arrivals without even painting their foreheads. There were women among them, and unless the distance was tricking Farr's eyes, some of the men wore portions of Santander Marine dress uniforms.

Cargill bitterly quoted, 'The Ministry trusts you will use your judgment to prevent a situation that might tend to embarrass the government and draw the Republic into quarrels that are none of our proper affair.' The courier who brought that destroyed the note in front of me after I'd read it, but I'm sure the minister remembers what he wrote. And the president does, too, I shouldn't wonder!'

Farr looked at the consul with a flush of sympathy he hadn't expected to feel for the man who was delaying the squadron's departure. Consular officials weren't the only people who were expected to carry the can for their superiors in event an action had negative political repercussions. 'I see,' he said. 'I appreciate your candor, sir. I'll leave you to get back to your-'

Ensign Tillingast, the McCormick City's deck officer, stepped onto the bridge with a look of agitation. Behind him were a pair of armed marines and a bareheaded civilian wearing an oilskin slicker.

Tillingast looked from Farr to Captain Dundonald, who curtly nodded him back to the commodore. Farr commanded the squadron, but he didn't directly control the crew of the flagship. He tried to be scrupulous in going through Dundonald when he gave orders, but the natural instinct of the men themselves was to deal directly with the highest authority present in a crisis.

'Sir, he came on the launch,' Tillingast said, 'I thought I should bring him right up.'

The stranger took off his slicker and folded it neatly over his left forearm. Under it he wore the black-and- silver dress uniform of a lieutenant in the Land military service, with the navy's dark blue collar flashes and fourragere dangling from his right epaulet. To complete his transformation he donned the saucer hat he'd carried beneath the raingear.