The Chosen

The door to the compartment opened again: the steward, immaculate in white jacket and gloves, with a tray of iced lemonade. Behind him were the worried faces of Smith and Barrjen.

'You all right, sir?'

'I would be if people stopped bothering me!' John snapped, then waved a hand. 'Sorry. I'm recovering, but I need rest. Thank you for asking.'

The two men withdrew with mumbled apologies as the steward unlatched the folding table between the seats and put the tray on it. John took a glass of the lemonade and drank thirstily, then put the cold tumbler to his forehead.

'Shall I put down the bunk, sir?'

John shook his head. 'In a little while. Come back in an hour.'

'Will you be using the dining car, sir?'

His stomach heaved slightly at the thought. 'No. A bowl of broth and a little dry toast in here, if you would.' He slipped across a Santander banknote. 'In a while.'

The steward smiled. 'Glad to be of assistance, Your Excellency.'

John closed his eyes. When he opened them again with a jerk it was full night outside, with only an occasional lantern-light to compete with the frosted arch of stars and the moons. The collar of his shirt and jacket were soaked with sweat, but he felt much better. . and very thirsty. He drank more of the lemonade, and pushed the bell for the steward to bring his soup.

I must be reaching second childhood, and I'm not even thirty-five, he thought. Making all this fuss over a superficial wound and a little fever.

Nothing little about a wound turning nasty, Raj said in his mind. I've seen too much of that.

There was a brief flash of hands holding a man down to blood-stained boards. He thrashed and screamed as the bone-saw grated through his thigh, and there was a tub full of severed limbs at the end of the makeshift operating table. Unlike Center's scenarios, Raj's memories carried smell as well; the sickly-sweet oily rot of gas gangrene, this time.

You even had Center worried for a while.

calculations indicate a 23 % reduction in the probability of a favorable outcome if John hosten is removed from the equation at this point, Center said. such analysis does not constitute 'worry.'

How's Jeff doing? he asked.

observe:

— and he was looking through his foster-brothers eyes.

Evidently Jeffrey was out making a hands-on inspection, riding a horse along behind the Loyalist lines. Scattered clumps might be a better way to put it than 'lines' John thought.

Oh, hi, Jeffrey replied. How's it going?

He pulled up the horse behind a large bonfire. Militiamen and some women were lying around it; a few hardy souls were asleep, others toasting bits of pungent sausage on sticks over the fire, eating stale bread, drinking from clay bottles of wine and water, or just engaging in the universal Unionaise sport of argument. The rifle pits they'd dug were a little further south, and their weapons were scattered about. Perhaps three-quarters were armed, with everything from modern Union-made copies of Santander magazine rifles to black-powder muzzle loaders like something from the Civil War three generations back. One anarchist chieftain had a bandanna around his head, two bandoliers of ammunition across the heavy gut that strained his horizontally striped shirt, three knives, a rifle, and two pistols in his sash.

There was even a machine gun, well dug in behind a loopholed breastwork of sandbags.

Well, somebody knows what they're doing, John observed.

Jeffrey nodded. The Union had compulsory military service; in theory the unlucky men were selected by lot, but you could buy your way out. Any odd collection of working-class individuals like this would have some men with regular army training.

He looked up at the stars; John opened his own eyes, and there was an odd moment of double sight-the same constellations stationary here, and through the window of the moving train four hundred miles northwest. That put Jeffrey in a perfect position to see the starshell go off.

Pop. The actinic blue-white light froze everything in place for an instant, just long enough to hear the whistle of shells turn to a descending ripping-canvas roar.

Jeffrey reacted, diving off the horse into the empty pit behind the machine gun. The guns were light, from the sound of the crumping explosions of the shells, but that wouldn't matter at all if he was in the path of a piece of high-velocity casing.

Somebody else slid in with him, in the same hug-the-bottom-of-the hole posture. They waited through seconds that seemed much longer, then lifted their head in the muffled silence of stunned ears. More starshells burst overhead. .

'Five-round stonk,' Jeffrey said. A short burst at the maximum rate of fire the gunners could manage. Which meant. .

An instant later he collided with the other occupant of the hole as they both leapt for the spade grips of the machine gun. 'Feed me!' Jeffrey snarled, using his weight and height to lever the Unionaise soldier-it must be the veteran, the one who'd dug the weapon in-aside.

There was light enough to see, thanks to the rebel starshell. The nameless Unionaise ripped open the lid of a stamped-metal rectangular box. Inside were folds of canvas belt with loops holding shiny brass cartridges; he plucked out the end of the belt with its metal tab. Jeffrey had the cover of the feed-guide open and their hands cooperated to guide the belt through as if they had practiced for years. The Unionaise yanked his hand aside as Jeffrey slapped the cover down and jerked the cocking lever back twice, until the shiny tab of the belt hung down on the right side of the weapon.

'Feed me!' he snapped again-it was important for the loader to keep the belt moving evenly, or the gun might jam.

The whole process had taken perhaps twenty seconds. When he looked up to acquire a target, figures in stripped kaftans were sprinting forward all across his front, horribly close. Close enough to see the white snarl of teeth in swarthy, bearded faces and hear individual voices in their shrieking falsetto war cry.

Must've crawled up, his mind gibbered as his thumbs clamped down on the butterfly trigger.

The thick water jacket of the gun swept back and forth, firing a spearhead of flame into the darkness; the starshells were falling to earth under their parachutes, none replacing them. Errife mercenaries fell, some scythed down by the hose of glowing green tracer, some going to ground and returning fire. Muzzle flashes spat at him, and he heard the flat crack of rounds going overhead. Other rifles were firing, too, where militiamen had made it back to their foxholes or started firing from wherever they lay. One jumped up out of the blankets he'd been sleeping in and ran out into the beaten ground, making it a hundred yards southward before his blind panic met a bullet.

'Jesus, there are too many of them!' Jeffrey said, swinging the barrel to try and break up concentrations. The Errife came forward like water through a dam built of branches, flowing around anything hard, probing for empty spots. He fired again and again, clamping down the trigger for short three-second bursts, spent brass tinkling down to roll underfoot and be trodden into the dirt.

A dim figure tumbled into the slit trench with them. The Unionaise soldier dropped the ammunition belt and snatched up an entrenching tool stuck into the soft earth of the trench side and began a chopping stroke that would have buried it in the newcomer's head.

'It's me! Francois!'

With a grunt of effort the first man turned the shovel aside, burying it again in the earth.

'You're late,' he panted, turning back to the box. 'Get your rifle and make yourself useful.'

There was nothing but moonlight and starlight to shoot by now. Just enough to see the stirring of movement to his front.

'What's your name?' Jeffrey said, between bursts.

'Henri,' the loader said. 'Henri Trudeau.' Then: 'Watch it!'

Something whirred through the air. They both ducked; behind them Francois stood for a few fatal seconds,