The Chosen

conflicts with my orders to aid the consular authorities to repatriate Santander citizens from Salini. As you've heard, I've taken measures to streamline the process. I'm afraid the loading will nonetheless continue until after nightfall.'

Weiss' eyes were filled with cold hatred. Farr suppressed a wry smile. His own feeling toward the Chosen officer were loathing, not hatred.

'Until the process is complete, I must request that Land military forces treat Salini as an extension of the Republic of the Santander,' Farr continued. With age had come the ability to sound calm when the world was very possibly coming apart. 'I regret any inconvenience this causes Commander Eberdorf or her superiors. Do you have any questions?'

'I have no questions of a man who doesn't know his duty to his country, Kommodore,' Weiss said.

'When I have questions about my duty, Lieutenant Weiss,' Farr said in a voice that trembled only in his own mind, 'it will not be a foreigner I ask for clarification.'

Weiss began to put on his oilskins methodically. His eyes were focused a thousand miles beyond the bulkhead toward which he stared.

The freighter captains had been exchanging looks and whispers. Now Captain Cooley spat over the railing and said, 'Commodore? The rest of us reckon we can figure out naval signals, too, until this business gets sorted out back home.'

He nodded toward the waterfront and added, 'Only don't count on that lot being on board by nightfall. If we're not still at the dock at daybreak, then my mother's a virgin.'

The Land officer strode for the companionway without saluting or being dismissed.

'Lieutenant Weiss?' Farr called. Weiss stopped and nodded curtly, but he didn't turn around.

'Please inform your superior that if she's dead set on having a battle,' Farr said, 'we can offer her a better one than her colleagues appear to have found at Corona.'

Weiss trembled, then stepped down the companionway.

Farr had never felt so tired before in his life. 'Commander Grisson,' he said, 'Signal the squadron, 'Clear for action.''

* * *

'This is the first time I've seen Corona, Jeffrey,' Heinrich said. 'The regiment dropped north of town and we never had occasion to work back.' He chuckled. 'Not such a tourist attraction as I'd been told.'

A tang of smoke still hung in the air ten weeks after Land forces overran the city. Work gangs had cleared the streets, using rubble from collapsed structures to fill bomb craters, but there'd been no attempt to rebuild.

There was no need for reconstruction. The port city's surviving civilian population had been removed from what was now a military reservation closed to former citizens of the Empire.

Corona was the node which connected the conquering armies to their logistics bases in the Land. Proteges from the Land performed all tasks. Labor here was too sensitive to be entrusted to slaves who hadn't been completely broken to the yoke. Convoys of vehicles were pouring up from the docks: steam trucks, Land military- issue mule wagons, and a medley of impressed Imperial civilian transport pulled by everything from oxen to commandeered race horses. There was little disorder; military police were out in force directing traffic, wands in their hands and polished metal brassards on chains around their necks. Troops marched by the side of the road, giving way to Heinrich and Jeffrey on their horses. The Chosen officer exchanged salutes with his counterparts as they passed, running a critical eye over the Protege infantry.

It wasn't the smoke that made Jeffrey Farr's nose wrinkle as he dismounted and handed the reins to the Protege groom who'd run at his stirrup from the remount corral at the edge of town. Nobody'd made an effort to find all the bodies in the wreckage either. Some of them must be liquescent by now. Well, he'd smelled plenty of other dead bodies in the past weeks. Humans weren't as bad as horses, and nothing was as bad as a ripe mule.

'So,' the Chosen colonel said with a grin, 'I hope our honored guest found his tour of our new territories to have been an interesting one?'

'Rather a change from the round of embassy parties I expected when I was posted to Ciano, that's true, Heinrich,' Jeffrey said. Part of him wanted to bolt for the gangplank of the City of Dubuk, the three-stack liner chartered by the Santander government to repatriate its citizens through Corona. There was no need to do that. Heinrich liked him.

And, God help him, he liked Heinrich. The blond colonel epitomized the virtues the Land inculcated in its Chosen citizens: courage, steadfastness, self-reliance, and self-sacrifice.

You don't have to hate them, lad, said Raj Whitehall in Jeffrey's mind. Just crush them the way you would a scorpion.

Though Jeffrey'd seen plenty to hate as well.

Jeffrey lifted the rucksacks paired to either side of his saddlehorn and threw them over his left shoulder. He'd picked up his kit on the move. Clothing, mostly; all of it Land-issue. Life with Heinrich's fire brigade was dangerous enough without being mistaken for an Imperial infiltrator. He'd replace it on board if possible. Already late arrivals boarding the Dubuk were giving him hard looks.

'Very luxurious, no doubt,' Heinrich said, eyeing the liner critically. 'Well, I don't begrudge you that. I'm looking forward to a transient officers' hostel with clean sheets tonight myself. And a few someones to warm them with me, not so?'

The City of Dubuk's whistle blew a two-note warning: a minute till the gangplank rose. Crewmen were already taking aboard lines preparatory to undocking. If Jeffrey had missed this ship, he would have had to take a freighter to the Land and there transship to Santander. At least for the present the Chosen had embargoed all regular trade between their newly conquered territories and the rest of Visager.

a pity, that, said Center. but clandestine supply routes into the area will be sufficient to support our low- intensity guerilla operations.

Jeffrey was very glad he was here to board the Dubuk. After the campaign he'd just watched, he didn't want to be around the Chosen any longer than necessary.

'Thank you for your hospitality, Heinrich,' he said. 'And your help in getting me here in time to save a long swim home.'

Heinrich laughed and leaned from his saddle to clasp Jeffrey Chosen-fashion, forearm-to-forearm with hands gripping beneath one another's elbow. 'An excuse to take my troops out of the field,' he said as he straightened. 'I'm not the only one who appreciates a little rest and recreation.'

The Dubuk's whistle blew its full three-note call. Heinrich kicked his horse forward so that its forehooves rested on the gangplank. The animal whickered nervously at the hollow sound. A sailor on the deck above shouted a curse.

'Go then, my friend,' Heinrich said. He smiled. 'And tell the person who just spoke that if his tongue wags again, I will ride aboard and add it to my other trophies.'

Jeffrey started up before someone on shipboard said the wrong thing in trying to clear the gangplank. He knew Heinrich too well to take the threat as a joke.

Nor would I count on the fact he likes you making much difference in the way Heinrich carries out his duties, lad, Raj said. Nor should it, of course.

A middle-aged civilian and the Dubuk's purser waited for Jeffrey at the head of the ramp. Their grim expressions faded to guarded question when they viewed the diplomatic passport he offered them.

Jeffrey tugged the sleeve of his Land uniform tunic. 'I was in the wrong place when the fighting broke out,' he said in a low voice. 'If you can help me find the sort of clothes human beings wear, I'd be more than grateful.'

'Jeffrey, my friend?' Heinrich called as he let his nervous horse step back. A hydraulic winch immediately began to haul the gangplank aboard. 'When you have rested, come visit me again. These animals will be providing sport for years, no matter what the Council says!'

Jeffrey waved cheerfully, then moved away from the railing. If Heinrich could no longer see him, he was less likely to shout something that would put Jeffrey even more on the wrong side of an us-and-them divide with everyone else aboard the City of Dubuk. 'Needs must when the Devil drives,' he murmured to the men beside him.