The Chosen

still fumbling with the bolt of his rifle. The grenade thumped not far above the lip of the machine gun nest. There was a wet sound from behind them, and Francois' body slumped down. Jeffrey didn't bother to look; he knew what the spray of moisture across the back of his neck came from. Instead, he pushed himself back up while the dust was still stinging his eyes, drawing the automatic pistol at his waist.

An Errife was pointing his rifle at Jeffrey's head from no more than three feet away. He froze for an instant, so close to the enemy trooper that he could hear the tiny click of the firing pin. The rifle did not fire. Bad primer, Jeffrey thought, while his hand brought up the pistol. Crack. The barbarian flopped backwards. Crack. A miss, and the next one was on him, long curved knife flashing upward at his belly. Jeffrey yelled and twisted aside, clubbing at the Errife's head with his automatic. It thumped on bone, muffled by the headcloth twisted around the mercenary's skull. Jeffrey grabbed for his knife wrist and struck twice more with frantic strength, until the robed man slumped back against the rear wall of the trench and Jeffrey jammed the muzzle of his pistol into his stomach and pulled the trigger twice.

Out of the corner of his eye, Jeffrey saw Henri's entrenching tool flashing again and again, used like an ax. The impacts were soft blubbery sounds, underlain by crunching.

'Cochon,' the Unionaise wheezed. 'Morri, batard-'

'He is dead,' Jeffrey said. Henri wheeled, shovel raised, then let it fall. 'Now let's get out of here.'

The volume of fire was slackening, but the ululating screech of the Errife rose over it-and other voices, screaming in simple agony. The islanders liked to collect souvenirs.

'You go get things in order,' Henri said. Til man this gun. You do your job and I'll do-'

'Jesus Christ in a starship couldn't get any order here,' Jeffrey said. 'Let's get moving. This isn't going to be the last battle.'

Henri stared at him for an instant, his face unreadable in the dark. 'Bon,' he said at last. 'Voyons.'

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

'Nothing to report, nothing to report, nothing to fucking report-you had me stuck there for three damned months.'

Gerta knocked back a shot of banana gin and followed it with a draught of beer, savoring the hot-cold wham contrast of flavors. The place had been a nobleman's townhouse before the Chosen took Ciano and the Empire with it, and an officer's transit station-cum-club since. Gerta and her husband were sitting on the outdoor terrace, separated from the street by a stretch of clipped grass and a low wall of whitewashed brick. It was hot with late summer, but nothing beside the sticky humidity of this time of year in the Land, and there was an awning overhead. She reached moodily for another chicken, lettuce, and tomato sandwich. At least it wasn't rotten horsemeat, and she'd gotten rid of the body lice.

'And there wouldn't have been anything but a bloody hole in the ground to report at Libert's precious Academy, if I hadn't been there,' she said. 'The froggie imbecile supposedly in command didn't even remember elementary tricks like putting out plates of water in the basement to detect the vibrations of sappers trying to dig under the walls. And I had to practically stick a knife in his buttocks to get him to listen.'

'Still, I hear that got exciting,' Heinrich said. 'The countermining.'

'Too exciting,' Gerta said dryly, remembering.

— cold wet darkness, water seeping through the belly of her uniform. Squirming down like birth in reverse, and then the dirt crumbling away ahead of her, falling through into the enemy tunnel, slamming against a timber prop, the man's mouth making an O in the dim light of the lanterns as she brought her automatic up. .

'What took you so long?' she asked again.

'Well, you were the one who thought there was something to Libert's 'methodical' approach,' Heinrich said reasonably. He lit his pipe and blew a smoke ring skyward, watching as the shapes of dirigibles heading for the landing field passed across it. 'We took so long because every time we took a village we'd stop to shoot everyone suspicious, then everyone Libert's police could winkle out, then waited while Libert appointed everyone from the mayor down to the sewer inspector and checked that things were working smoothly.'

'Got stopped butt-cold outside Unionvil, too,' Gerta said. 'By Imperials, of all things.'

'By the Freedom Brigades,' Heinrich corrected. He closed the worked pewter lid of his S-shaped pipe and reached for a sandwich. 'Imperial refugees, Santies, some Sierrans, Santy officers, damned good equipment and so-so training. But plenty of enthusiasm.'

'Well, what are we going to do about it?' Gerta demanded. 'I've been working internal-security liaison since I got back.'

'Two can play at that game,' Heinrich said with satisfaction. 'That's why I'm back here. We're going to 'Volunteer'-'

Pop.

The small spiteful crack on the sidewalk outside was almost inaudible under the traffic noise. Gerta was out of her chair and halfway across the lawn with a single raking stride; Heinrich was too big a man to be quite as graceful, but he was less than two paces behind her at the start and they vaulted the wall in tandem, landing facing each way with their automatics out.

A woman ran into Gerta, looking back over her shoulder. She bounced off the Chosen as if she had run into a wall; Gerta grabbed and struck twice, punching with clinical precision. Something tinkled metallically, and the Imperial Protege collapsed to the brick sidewalk, her face turning scarlet as she struggled to suck breath through a paralyzed diaphragm. Behind her the dense crowd had scattered like mercury on dry ice, leaving a Chosen officer lying facedown. He was doggedly trying to crawl forward when Heinrich stooped over him.

'Lie still,' he said. The bark of command penetrated the fog of pain; Heinrich cut cloth and wadded it into a pressure bandage. 'Bullet wound, left of the spine, just south of the ribs. Looks nasty.'

Gerta came up, nostrils flaring slightly at the iron scent of blood. There was no fecal smell, so the intestine hadn't been perforated, but there were too many essential organs and big blood vessels in that part of the body for comfort. She was dragging the Protege woman by one ankle, and holding something in the other.

Heinrich looked at it and almost laughed. It was like a child's sketch of a pistol; a short tube, a wire outline for a grip and another piece of wire to act as a spring and drive a striker home on the single cartridge within.

'What sort of weapon is that?' he asked.

'It's not a weapon, it's an assassination tool. One shot and you throw it away; just the thing for killing a straw boss, or one of us on a crowded street.'

Heinrich's features clamped down to a mask. After a moment he said: 'Wouldn't have thought the Santies would come up with that.'

'They're nasty when they get going,' Gerta said. 'We've been finding more and more of these. The problem is tracing back the chain of contacts. This animal will tell us something, perhaps.'

'Indeed.'

They looked up; a medic had arrived, with two Land-born Protege assistants, and a man in civilian clothes. The long leather coat might as well have been a uniform: Fourth Bureau.

'That was quick,' Gerta said neutrally. Not the time for another intercouncil pissing match, she told herself. This was their turf.

'Not quick enough. We had some information, but clearly it was insufficient.'

The woman had recovered enough breath to recognize what was standing over her. She tried to crawl away, then screamed when he stamped on her hand.

It died away to a whimper when he knelt beside her and held up something: a jointed metal like a gynecologist's speculum, but with a toothed clamp on the end. Gerta recognized it, an interrogation instrument designed to be inserted in the subject's vagina, clamped on the uterus and tear it out with one strong pull.

'Now, my dear, I would like to ask you some questions,' the secret policeman said. 'And you would like to