The Chosen

* * *

'Good God, what is that?' the HQ staffer said.

Jeffrey Farr looked up from the table. All across the eastern horizon light flickered and died, flickered and died, bright against the morning. The continuous thudding rumble was a background to everything, not so much loud as all-pervasive.

'That's the Land artillery,' he said quietly. 'Hurricane bombardment. Start sweating when it stops, because the troops will come in on the heels of it.'

He turned back to the other men around the table, most in Santander brown, and many looking uncomfortable in it.

'General Parks, your division was federalized two weeks ago. It should be here by now.'

'Sir. .' Parks had a smooth western accent. 'It's corn planting season, as I'm sure you're aware, and-'

'And the Chosen will eat the harvest if we don't stop them,' Jeffrey said. 'General Parks, get what's at the concentration points here, and do it fast. Or turn your command over to your 2-IC.' Who, unlike Parks, was a regular, one of the skeleton cadre that first-line provincial militia units had been ordered to maintain several years ago, when the Union civil war began ratcheting up tensions. 'I think that'll be all; you may return to your units, gentlemen.'

He looked down at the map, took a cup of coffee from the orderly and scalded his lips slightly, barely noticing. The markers for the units under his command were accurate as of last night. Fifty thousand veterans of the Unionaise civil war; another hundred thousand regulars from the Republic's standing army, and many of the officers and NCOs had experience in that war, too. Two hundred and fifty thousand federalized militia units; they were well equipped, but their training ranged from almost as good as the Regulars to abysmal. More arriving every hour.

Half a million Land troops were going to hit them in a couple of hours, supported by scores of heavy tanks, hundreds of light ones, thousands of aircraft.

'None of Libert's men?' Gerard said quietly, tracing the unit designators for the enemy forces.

'No. They're moving east-east and north, into the Sierra.'

'Good,' Gerard said quietly. Jeffrey looked up at him. The compact little Unionaise was smiling. 'Not pleasant, fighting one's own countrymen.'

'Pierre. .' Jeffrey said.

Gerard picked up his helmet and gloves, saluted. 'My friend, we must win this war. To this, everything else is subordinate.'

They shook hands. Gerard went on: 'Libert thinks he can ride the tiger. It is only a matter of time until he joins the other victims in the meat locker.'

'I think he's counting on us breaking the tiger's teeth,' Jeffrey said. 'God go with you.'

'How not? If there was ever anyone who fought with His blessing, it is here and now.'

'Damn,' Jeffrey said softly, watching the Unionaise walk towards his staff car. 'I hate sending men out to die.'

If you didn't, you wouldn't be the man you are, Raj said. But you'll do it, nonetheless.

Maurice Hosten stamped on the rudder pedal and wrenched the joystick sideways.

His biplane stood on one wing, nose down, and dove into a curve. The Land fighter shot past him with its machine guns stuttering, banking itself to try and follow his turn. He spiraled up into an Immelmann and his plane cartwheeled, cutting the cord of his opponent's circle. His finger clenched down on the firing stud.

'Fuck!' The deflection angle wasn't right; he could feel it even before the guns stuttered.

Spent brass spun behind him, sparkling in the sunlight, falling through thin air to the jagged mountain foothills six thousand feet below. Acrid propellant mingled with the smells of exhaust fumes and castor oil blowing back into his face. Land and cloud heeled crazily below him as he pulled the stick back into his stomach, pulled until gravity rippled his face backward on the bone and vision became edged with gray.

Got the bastard, got him-

Something warned him. It was too quick for thought; stick hard right, rudder right. . and another Land triplane lanced through the space he'd been in, diving out of the sun. His leather-helmeted head jerked back and forth, hard enough to saw his skin if it hadn't been for the silk scarf. The rest of his squadron were gone, not just his wingman-he'd seen the Land fighter bounce Tom-but all the rest as well. The sky was empty, except for his own plane and the two Chosen pilots.

Nothing for it. He pushed the throttles home and dove into cloud, thankful it was close. Careful, now. Easy to get turned around in here. Easy even to lose track of which way was up and end up flying upside down into a hillside convinced you were climbing. There was just enough visibility to see his instruments' radium glow: horizon, compass, airspeed indicator. One hundred thirty-eight; the Mark IV was a sweet bird.

When he came out of the cloudbank there was nobody in sight. He kept twisting backward to check the sun; that was the most dangerous angle, always. The ground below looked strange, but then, it usually did. Check for mountain peaks, check for rivers, roads, the spaces between them.

'That's the Skinder,' he decided, looking at the twisting river. 'Ensburg's thataway.'

Ensburg had been under siege from the Chosen for a month. So that train of wagons on the road was undoubtedly a righteous target. And he still had more than half a tank of fuel.

Maurice pushed the stick forward and put his finger back on the firing button. Every shell and box of hardtack that didn't make it to the lines outside Ensburg counted.

* * *

'Damn, that's ugly,' Jeffrey said, swinging down from his staff car.

The huge Land tank was burnt out, smelling of human fat melted into the ground and turning rancid in the summer heat. The commander still stood in the main gun turret, turned to a calcined statue of charcoal, roughly human-shaped.

'This way, sir,' the major. . Carruthers, that's his name. . said. 'And careful-there are Lander snipers on that ridge back there.'

The major was young, stubble-chinned and filthy, with a peeling sunburn on his nose. From the way he scratched, he was never alone these days. He'd probably been a small-town lawyer or banker three months ago; he was also fairly cheerful, which was a good sign.

'We caught it with a field-gun back in that farmhouse,' he said, waving over one shoulder.

Jeffrey looked back; the building was stone blocks, gutted and roofless, marked with long black streaks above the windows where the fire has risen. There was a barn nearby, reduced to charred stumps of timbers and a big stone water tank. The orchard was ragged stumps.

'Caught it in the side as it went by.' He pointed; one of the powered bogies that held the massive war machine up was shattered and twisted. 'Then we hit it with teams carrying satchel charges, while the rest of us gave covering fire.'

The ex-militia major sobered. 'Lost a lot of good men doing it, sir. But I can tell you, we were relieved. Those things are so cursed hard to stop!'

'I know,' Jeffrey said dryly, looking to his right down the eastward reach of the valley. The Santander positions had been a mile up that way, before the Chosen brought up the tank.

'This is dead ground, sir. You can straighten up.'

Jeffrey did so, watching the engineers swarming over the tank, checking for improvements and modifications. 'The good news about these monsters, major, comes in threes,' he said, tapping its flank. 'There aren't very many of them; they break down a lot; and now that the lines aren't moving much, the enemy don't get to recover and repair them very often.'

'Well, that's some consolation, sir,' Carruthers said dubiously. 'They're still a cursed serious problem out here.'

'We all have problems, Major Carruthers.'

* * *

The factory room was long, lit by grimy glass-paned skylights, open now to let in a little air; the air of Oathtaking, heavy and thick at the best of times, and laden with a sour acid smog of coal smoke and chemicals when the wind was from the sea. Right now it also smelled of the man who was hanging on an iron hook driven into