The Chosen

The chink of picks, knives, and sticks digging improvised rifle pits and sangars resumed; everyone still alive had acquired a healthy knowledge of how important it was to dig in. John still had an actual shovel. He worked the edge under a rock and strained it free, lifting the rough limestone to the edge of his hole.

'Sir,' one of his ex-Marines said. 'They're coming.'

He tossed the shovel to another man and crawled forward, sheltering behind a knotted, twisted tree trunk, blushing pink since the cork had been stripped off, and trained his binoculars. Downslope were rocky fields of yellow stubble, with an occasional carob tree. In the middle distance was a farmstead, probably a landlord's from the size and blank whitewashed outer walls. A defiant black anarchist flag showed that the present occupants had different ideas, and mortar shells were falling on it. Beyond it, Errife infantry were advancing, small groups dashing forward while their comrades fired in support, then repeating the process. John shaped a silent whistle of reluctant admiration at their bounding agility, and the way they disappeared from his sight as soon as they went to earth, the brown-on-brown stripes of their kaftans vanishing against the stony earth.

Good fieldcraft, Raj said. Damned good. You'd better get this bunch of amateurs out of their way, son.

'Easier said than done,' John muttered to himself.

'Ah, sir?' Barrjen said, lowering his voice. 'You know, it might be a good idea to sort of move north?'

There were about three hundred people in the stretch of woodland, mostly men, all armed. There had been a couple of thousand yesterday, when he began back-pedaling from the ruins of Bassin du Sud. He was still alive, and so were most of the Santander citizens he'd brought with him, the crew of the Merchant Venture, and all the ex-Marines from the Ciano embassy guard. Not so surprising, they're the ones who know what the hell they're doing, he thought. He doubted he'd be alive without them.

'All right, we've got to break contact with them,' he said aloud. 'The only way to do that is to move out quickly while they're occupied with that hamlet.'

Most of the Unionaise stood. About a third continued to dig themselves in. One of them looked up at John:

'Va. We will hold them.'

'You'll die.'

The man shrugged. 'My family is dead, my friends are dead-I think some of those merdechiennes should follow them.'

John closed his mouth. Nothing to say to that, he thought. 'Leave all your spare ammunition,' he said to the others. Men began rummaging in pockets, knapsacks and improvised bandoliers. 'Come on. Let's make it worthwhile.'

* * *

'Damn, but I'm glad to see you.'

Jeffrey was a little shocked at how John looked; almost as bad has he had when he got back from the Empire. Thinner, limping-limping more badly than Smith beside him-and with a look around the eyes that Jeffrey recognized. He'd seen it in a mirror lately. There was a bandage on his arm soaked in old dried blood, too, and a feverish glitter in his eyes.

'You, too, brother,' Jeffrey said.

He glanced around. The commandeered farmhouse was full of recently appointed, elected, or self-selected officers (or coordinateurs, to use their own slang) of the anarchist militia down from Unionvil and the industrial towns around it. Most of them were grouped around the map tables; thanks to John and Center, the counters marking the enemy forces were quite accurate. He was much less certain of his own. It wasn't only lack of cooperation; although there was enough of that, despite the ever-present threat of the Committee of Public Safety. Most of the coordinateurs didn't have much idea of the size or location of their forces either.

'C'mon over here,' he said, putting a hand under John's arm. 'Things as bad as you've been saying?'

'Worse. Those aeroplanes they've got, they caught us crossing open country yesterday.'

observe, Center said.

— and John's eyes showed uprushing ground as he clawed himself into the dirt. It was thin pastureland scattered with sheep dung and showing limestone rock here and there.

'Sod this for a game of soldiers,' someone muttered not far away.

A buzzing drone grew louder. John rolled on his back; being facedown would be only psychological comfort. Two of the Land aircraft were slanting down towards the Bassin du Sud refugees and the Santander party. They swelled as he watched, the translucent circle of the propeller before the angular circle of pistons, and wings like some great flying predator. Then the machine gun over the upper wing began to wink, and the tat-tat- tat-tat of a Koegelman punctuated the engine roar. A line of dust-spurting craters flicked towards him. . and then past, leaving him shaking and sweating. A dot fell from one of the planes, exploding with a sharp crack fifty feet up.

Grenade, he realized. Not a very efficient way of dropping explosives, but they'd do better soon. Voices were screaming; in panic, or in pain. A few of the refugees stood and shot at the vanishing aircraft with their rifles, also a form of psychological comfort, not to feel totally helpless like a bug under a boot. The aircraft banked to the north and came back for another run. Most of the riflemen dove for cover. Barrjen stood, firing slowly and carefully, as the lines of machine-gun bullets traversed the refugees' position. Both swerved towards him, moving in a scissors that would meet in his body.

'Get down, you fool!' John shouted. Dammit, I need you! Loyal men of his ability weren't that common.

Then one of the machines wavered in the air, heeled, banked towards the earth. John started to cheer, then felt it trail off as the airplane steadied and began to climb. He was still grinning broadly as he rose and slapped Barrjen on the shoulder; both the Land planes were heading south, one wavering in the air, the other anxiously flying beside it like a mother goose beside a chick.

'Good shooting,' he said.

Barrjen pulled the bolt of his rifle back and carefully thumbed in three loose rounds. 'Just have t'estimate the speed, sir,' he said.

Smith used his rifle to lever himself erect. 'Here,' he said, tossing over three stripper clips of ammunition. 'You'll use 'em better than me.'

— and John shook his head. 'There I was, thinking how fucking ironic it would be if I got killed by something designed to plans I'd shipped to the Chosen,' he said.

Jeffrey closed his eyes for an instant to look at a still close-up of Centers record of the attack. 'Nope, they've made some improvements. That was moving faster than anything we've got so far.'

correct, Center said to them both. a somewhat more powerful engine, and improvements in the chord of the wing.

'I still sent them the basics,' John said.

'Considering that your companies have been doing the work on 'em, and they know they have, it would look damned odd if their prize double agent didn't send them the specs, wouldn't it?' Jeffrey said. 'You know how it is. If disinformation is going to be credible, you have to send a lot of good stuff along with it.'

John nodded reluctantly. 'I'm getting sick of disastrous retreats,' he said.

Jeffrey smiled crookedly. 'Well, this isn't as bad as the Imperial War,' he said. 'We're not fighting the Land directly, for one thing.'

He looked over his shoulder and called names. 'Come on, you need a doctor and some food and sleep. The food's pretty bad, but we've got some decent doctors. Barrjen, Smith, take care of him.'

'Do our best, sir,' Smith said. 'But you might tell him not to get shot at so often.'

The two Santanders helped John away. Jeffrey turned back to the map, looking down at the narrow line of hilly lowland that snaked through the mountains.

'We'll continue to dig in along this line,' he said, tracing it with his finger.

'Why here? Why not further south? Why do we have to give up ground to Libert and his hired killers?' De Villers wasn't even trying to hide his hostility anymore.

Jeffrey hid his sigh. 'Because this is right behind a dogleg and the narrowest point around,' he said. 'That