The Chosen

The Chosen officer restrained himself; cuffing the technician across the face wouldn't alter the cowlike stupidity in her eyes. You didn't need much in the way of brains to be a telephone exchange operator. Besides that, policy had always been to recruit the bottom third of the IQ pool for military service. Smart Proteges were dangerous Proteges.

'What about the return signal?'

The technician's face cleared from its anxious, willing frown. 'Oh, yes, sir. I tried that, sir. The circuits are dead.'

This time the Chosen officer snarled audibly. That meant that at least three major trunk lines were dead.

'Get back to your post,' he said. I'll use the wireless. That would put him back in touch with HQ, at least. It was a pity few Land mobile units used them.

* * *

'You recommend what?'

Gerta Hosten closed her eyes for a second in desperation. 'Sir, I recommend that no further personnel be transferred from the Land proper to the New Territories, that personnel seconded from naval and garrison units in the New Territories to the Sierra and Union be immediately returned to their units, and that we move General Hosten's field force'-the mobile army they'd been scraping together from LOC units and divisions pulled out of the Confrontation zone after the retreat to the Gothic Lane fortifications-'back into the Ciano area at the very least.'

Karl Hosten looked slightly stunned, as if an aged and very fierce hawk had been unexpectedly struck between the eyes. Most of the other faces around the table looked uncomprehendingly hostile.

'That would mean the effective abandonment of everything south of the old Imperial border!' the chief of the General Staff said.

'Not if the Santies can't break the Gothic Line, sir,' Gerta said. 'And we know that Agent A'-John Hosten-'either was disinformed himself or is attempting to disinform us. The Santie strategic reserve is not headed for the Rio Arena estuary and neither is their Northern Fleet. It's heading north up the coast of the New Territories, and it could strike anywhere from Napoli to Artheusa. Our reports indicate some sort of general uprising in the occupied territories, and among what's left of the Sierrans. Our only large uncommitted force is nearly a thousand miles away in the middle of the Sierra, and the railroad net is well and truly fucked. Consider, please, how long it'll take to get those troops back near where we need them. The New Territories have been stripped bare of troops.'

Something of her own bleak, controlled panic was spreading to a few of the other Council members.

'Perhaps part-'

'Sir, half measures?'

Karl Hosten drew himself together. 'What else does Military Intelligence recommend?'

'A Category III mobilization, sir.'

This time there were a few gasps, despite Chosen discipline. That meant shutting everything down, confining all unreliable elements behind wire, and calling out the Probationers and Probationer-Emeritus reserves. The teenage children of the ruling race, and the failed candidates who made up what the Land had of a middle class.

'But production-' a minister began.

'Sirs, with respect, we have to survive the next couple of weeks. If we can do that at all, it has to be done with what we have on hand.'

Gerta stood, willing despair to stand at bay, as the debate began.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

A landing craft lay canted over and sinking on the sloping rocky beach. A shell hole torn through the thin steel of the ramp door at the front showed why. Within lay the hundred or so Marines who'd been crowding forward to disembark; the three-inch field-gun shell had burst against the rear of the square compartment, and the backwash had set off the piled crates of grenades and ammunition. Bodies bobbed in the shallow water around it, floating facedown. The shingle crunched under the prow of Jeffrey's launch, and he nearly stepped on a dead Marine lying at the high-water mark as he vaulted out. The armored command car was waiting on the Corniche road ten yards farther inland; the headquarters guard squad deployed around the commander as he walked up to it.

'Report,' he said, swinging into the open body of the car. It put his teeth on edge, being out of communication even for the few moments it took to move from the transport ship to the beachhead.

'Sir, the Pride of Bosson sank successfully.'

He looked over to the harbor mouth. That sounded a little odd, until you realized that much of the inner harbor defense was fixed land-based torpedo batteries. Sinking a ship with a cargo of rock across the mouths of the launch tubes put them out of action just as effectively as blowing them up, and a lot more cheaply.

Except to the crews of the blockships, he thought grimly, putting up his binoculars; skeleton crews, but there still had to be someone to man helm and engines. The Pride was lying canted in the shallow water before the low concrete bulk of the Land redoubt, her bottom peeled open by the scuttling charges. Pompoms and machine guns from the shore were raking her upper works into smoking scrap.

'Get some naval supporting fire for them,' he snapped.

Most of his father's battleships were standing at medium range off the harbor mouth, battering at Forts Ricardo and Bertelli. . or whatever the Chosen had renamed them in the years since the conquest. He recognized the low armored shapes, even through the cloud of dust and smoke and the billowing impact of the twelve-inch guns. Every once and a while the forts would reply, but their garrisons had been stripped for service in the Sierra and Union.

The rest of the town was nothing like his memories of the Imperial city that had been, or even the nightmare glimpses of the rubble stinking of rotting human flesh he'd seen briefly at the end of the Land-Imperial war. The city that burned afresh now was rebuilt in a remorselessly uniform grid of wide straight streets, lined with near-identical clocks of buildings in foursquare granite and ferroconcrete. Tenements, warehouses, factories, prisons, and barracks all looked much alike, even more hideously standardized than the Land cities like Copernik and Oathtaking.

He looked up. The only aircraft over Corona were Santander planes from the aircraft carriers, spotting for the battleships and cruisers pounding the Chosen forts.

Then the armored car lurched. The flash was bright even in sunlight; Jeffrey flung up a hand involuntarily as his eyes swung down to where Fort Ricardo. . had been. There was nothing there but a rising pillar of smoke, now. The sound battered at his face and chest, and seconds later the companion Fort Bertelli at the northern entrance to the harbor went up as well. He shook his head against the ringing in his ears.

We hit the magazines? he wondered.

I doubt it, Jeff, Raj said. From John's reports, the garrisons were mostly Imperials-not even Land Proteges. At a guess, they mutinied and tried to surrender. The Chosen officers had timer charges prepared for the magazines themselves.

correct, Center said, probability 78 %, ±8.

Jeffrey shuddered slightly. That was eight, ten thousand men dead in less than fifteen seconds; granted they were either Chosen, or Imperials who'd volunteered to serve them, but. .

He looked back at the landing craft. But on the other hand, I'm not going to grieve much.

The dust parted a little under the stiff sea breeze. Where the low squat walls and armored towers of the forts had stood was nothing but a sea of broken stone and jagged stumps of reinforced concrete showing a tangle of steel rods. Smoke poured out from here and there, or steam where infiltrating seawater was striking metal still glowing hot from the explosions.

Jeffrey blinked. 'All right, what does Brigadier Townshend report?'

'Airship haven and airfields secured, sir. Some Chosen personnel still holed up in buildings. Airships still