The Chosen

mounted on a scarf ring in the center of the fuselage, where the upper wing merged with it. Bearing the planes weight were two long floats, like decked-over canoes.

'Fueled and ready to go,' John said. 'Prototype-the navy's ordering a dozen. Jeff! Get some hands on the props!'

Bright sunlight made him blink as the big sliding doors were thrown back. The body of the airplane began to quiver as men spun the props and the engines coughed into life in puffs of blue smoke. He looked back into the body of the aircraft; Jeff's Unionaise bodyguard was stepping up into the firing rest beneath the machine guns. His foster-brother slid into the other seat in front of the controls, while Smith showed frightened embassy staff how to snap their seatbelts shut as they took their places along either side of the big biplane.

'Good thinking,' Jeffrey said.

'I like gadgets,' John said. He looked ahead. 'I didn't think the Chosen could get aircraft here to support a landing, though.'

'Neither did I.' He ran his hands over the controls. 'Shall I?'

'You're the expert, Jeff.'

Jeffrey Farr had run up quite a score in the aerial fighting over the Union. It was partly innate talent, but also because Center could put an absolutely accurate gunsight in front of his eyes, one that effortlessly calculated the complex ballistics of firing from one fast-moving plane and hitting an equally elusive target.

The engines bellowed, and the biplane wallowed out onto the surface of Barclon's harbor. The sun was behind them, still low in the east, but the wind was coming directly down the Gut; the corsairs' wind, they'd called it in the old days. Right now it meant charging straight into the line of muzzle flashes from the heavy guns of the Land fleet. One landed not three hundred yards away; the undershot produced a momentary tower of white water and black mud, and a wave that rocked the seaplane on its floats.

'Time's a-wasting,' Jeffrey said, and opened the throttles.

The line of gray-painted warships grew with terrifying speed, closer and closer. Nice spacing, Jeffrey thought absently. Dad would approve. It wasn't easy to get warships moving so precisely and keeping such good station in the midst of action. He supposed this was action, although he couldn't see much in the way of shooting back-just an occasional burst from a field-gun shell, militia firing from the harbor mouth streets.

The floatplane skipped across the slight harbor swell, throwing roostertails of spray from the prows of the floats. It was odd and a little unsettling to taxi in a plane that was horizontal and not down at the rear where the tail wheel rested. The craft felt a little sluggish; probably loaded to capacity with all these people, and the fuel tanks were full, too. But it was feeling lighter, the salt spray on his lips less as the floats began to flick across the surface of the waves rather than resting fully in the water. The controls bucked a little in his hands, and he drew back on the yoke.

Bounce. Bounce. Bounce, and up. He climbed slowly, not trying to avoid the Chosen ships. Let 'em think we're one of theirs. There certainly weren't any Sierran aircraft in the air today. For that matter there hadn't been more than a couple of dozen of them to begin with, and he'd bet the Chosen had taken them all out in the first few minutes of the strike, somehow. Infiltrated a strike commando days ago and activated them at a predetermined time, at a guess.

correct. probability 87 %, ±5.

The sheer numbers of ships behind the gunline was stunning, and their upperworks were all gray-black with troops.

'Must be a hundred thousand of them,' he said. 'That's a big gamble; over fifteen percent of their total strength.'

John had worries more immediate than strategy. 'Fighter coming down to look us over,' he shouted back over the thundering roar of the airsteam.

The biplane swooping towards them had the rounded cowling of a von Nelsing, but the wings looked a little different, plywood covered and with teardrop-section struts instead of the old bracing wires and angle-iron.

'How fast is this thing?' he asked.

one hundred fourteen miles an hour in level flight at three thousand feet, Center said. the latest mark of von nelsing pursuit plane has a maximum speed of one hundred forty miles an hour.

'Thank you so much,' Jeffrey said.

No chance of outrunning it. He looked down; they were over the tail end of the Chosen fleet, the last straggle of commandeered trawlers rigged for minesweeping or laying, and a screen of four-stacker destroyers. Ahead he could just make out a line of dirigibles, keeping watch up the Gut. Another thirty miles or so and he'd be in sight of the Isle of Trois, the big island that filled most of the eastern end of the narrow sea.

'How long do you think it'll take-'

'For the pilot to twig that we aren't Land Air Service?' John said. 'About three minutes.'

Land pilots were all Chosen, trained to use their initiative. Not much doubt about what this one would chose to do.

'You tell Henri,' Jeffrey said. 'We'd better be quick about this.'

He pushed the stick forward, putting the big plane on a downward slope. Its weight made it faster thus, and reducing the dimensions the nimble enemy fighter could use also improved the situation. The higher buzz of the von Nelsing's engine grew stronger. He could almost hear the chick-chack sound as the pilot armed the twin machine guns in the nose.

The water came closer, until he could see the thick white lines along the tops of the waves, running west to east as they almost always did in the Gut this time of year. The wind was more variable here, gusting and falling away. His hands were busy on stick and rudder pedals, keeping the big aircraft level. In the rearview mirror the machine-gun position was empty, with the guns pointing backward as if locked in their rest positions.

John came back. 'He's ready,' he said. Reaching down the side of the cockpit, he came up with a pump-action shotgun and held it across his lap. 'Whenever you signal.'

Jeffrey wished he could spit to clear the gummy texture out of his mouth. This was like trying to fight while stuck neck-deep down a whale's blowhole. The fighter crept up from behind them, a hundred feet or so above. He could see the goggled face craning and bending to get a glimpse of them, and waved cheerfully up at him. Or her. Who knew, that might even be Gerta Hosten. .

probability 3 %, ±1, Center said.

Shut up.

The aircraft grew closer. The Chosen pilot waggled his wings and pointed backward with an exaggerated gesture; he was getting impatient. So-

'Now!'

He banked the plane sideways, towards the enemy. The Chosen pilot acted the way pilots did, on instinct, pulling up sharply for height. Henri erupted out of the open gun mount, slamming the guns up to their maximum ninety degrees. For a moment the bigger biplane seemed joined to the fighter above it by twin bars of tracer, then the von Nelsing staggered in the air and peeled away trailing smoke. John stood in the open cockpit, shielding his eyes with one hand and grabbing at the edge of the cowling to brace the blocky strength of his upper torso against the savage pull of the slipstream.

'Pilot's dead or unconscious,' he said aloud as he dropped back. Seconds later the fighter plowed into the surface of the water at full diving speed and a seventy-degree angle. It disintegrated, the engine continuing its plunge towards the shallow bottom of the Gut and the fuselage and wings scattering in fragments of wood, some burning.

Henri shouted in triumph, and the passengers cheered. John continued to crane his head backward and around. 'Hope nobody saw that,' he said.

Jeffrey nodded. 'By the way, brother of mine, where the hell are we headed?'

'I've got a couple of trawlers spotted up the Gut with fuel under the hatches,' John said. 'All just in case. If they're not there, there's an inflatable dinghy in the baggage compartment.'

'And if that doesn't work, we'll swim,' Jeffrey said, flying one-handed while he felt in the pockets of his tunic for his cigarettes.

'No, actually, I've got a motor launch hidden in a cove on the east coast of Trois,' John said seriously.

Jeffrey laughed. 'And a slingshot in your underwear,' he said. More soberly: 'I hate like hell being cut off like