Into the Maelstrom

by David Drake

  The Cornuvian commander came back on, jolting Allenson out of his daydream.

  “Except that I intend to destroy our communication equipment with army encryption codes. I cannot permit you to obtain those.”

  “Agreed,” Allenson replied.

  The Brasilians would change the codes anyway. He could easily allow the Brasilian commander this sop to his professional pride.

  He would let Colonel Flament take the surrender. First Brigade deserved the honor as they had borne the brunt of the fighting. He jumped down from the low roof and stumbled. He suddenly felt drained. He would have fallen if Shevent hadn’t caught him.

  Conditions in the Continuum were still bad the next day. Allenson decided to march the prisoners back to the landing zone under the guard of First Brigade while the Second and Third combed the town for wounded and for useful military equipment. Allenson promised draconian punishment to any soldier stealing from civilians.

  As it turned out civilian casualties were light because most of them had already fled Teneyk to outlying farms and civilian properties. The empty town had already been comprehensively looted of anything of value by the Cornuvians.

  A message drew Allenson to a warehouse on the side of the town from where they had made their initial assault. There he found Hawthorn waiting.

  “I thought you might be interested in seeing this particular batch of booty yourself,” Hawthorn said, beckoning him inside.

  Combat frames were lined up in rows, twenty or more of them, being poked over by Streamers.

  “There’s another warehouse full next door,” Hawthorn said. “You always were a lucky bastard, Allenson. Imagine if we hadn’t overrun this sector in the first few minutes and they got them into the air. But I suppose you create your own luck.”

  “I gambled and it came off,” Allenson replied, but he realized how close to disaster they had come.

  He examined the nearest frame, which was a five-seater in a 2+2+1 configuration. Two gunners sat at the front, the primary pedalers behind and the driver in the back. Each gun position had a heavy single-barreled auto-fire laser mounted on gimbals. They were designed perfectly for colonial warfare.

  “The batteries are all charged ready to go,” Hawthorn said. “Apparently they’re a traditional Cornuvian frame called a coracle for some reason.”

  “Lieutenant Shevent,” Allenson yelled.

  “Sir?” Shevent said, raising his head from behind a packing case.

  “There you are. Call in our barges to pick up captured equipment and we’ll escort them back using these—coracles,” he said, stumbling over the unfamiliar word.

  “Yes, sir, ah, there’s something happening,” Shevent said.

  “Indeed.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ve been monitoring Brasilian army channels and there’s a mass of communications. Cornuvian units are pulling out all over Brunswick and falling back on the main base at Palisade.”

  “How do you know? Don’t tell me we got the encryption codes after all?” Allenson asked.

  “Ah, no sir, they’re broadcasting in clear.”

  “The Brasilian HQ is sending out orders unencrypted?” Allenson asked, suspecting some complicated trap.

  “Not exactly, sir, I don’t know what the HQ is instructing. That is still coded. The Cornuvian outlying garrisons are talking to each other in clear. They have unilaterally decided to pull back rather than be overwhelmed one at a time by our supposedly superior forces.”

  Hawthorn snorted, “The enemy is always three meters tall.”

  Allenson listened in to the Cornuvian signals himself. They sounded genuine, but he decided to stick to the plan to retreat out of Teneyk that afternoon before the enemy could mount a counterattack, even if it mean leaving some of the spoils behind. He had pushed Lady Luck hard enough already. She had a habit of turning nasty on people who took her for granted.

  They got back to the landing zone without incident. But once there a civilian carriage rotated around the circuit the wrong way and wandered into the flow of clumsy overloaded barges. Allenson noticed other civilian frames and ground vehicles in the camp as his barge came in to land.

  He barely climbed out when an overweight man in a voluminous purple silk suit with bilious green ribbons waddled over and shook his hand.

  “You must be Allenson. Jolly good show, sar, couldn’t have done better myself.”

  “And you are?” Allenson asked, trying to retrieve his hand.

  “Filmby.”

  “Have we met?” Allenson asked, hand still going up and down.

  “I have the honor to be chief actuary of the Teneyk Chamber of Commerce,” Filmby said grandly, as if that explained matters. “I have some ideas about what you should do next.”

  “The general is very busy,” Hawthorn said, jumping out of the barge.

  “I do not believe I know you, sar,” Filmby said, drawing himself up to his full unimpressive height.

  “Colonel Hawthorn, Security,” he turned. “Trooper, escort this civilian back to his carriage before he gets hurt.”

  “Let’s be having you, squire.”

  The black clad soldier gripped Filmby by a pudgy purple arm and marched him off. Special Project troopers surrounded Allenson. They cleared a path through the cheering civilians who converged from all points of the compass. For once he didn’t object to the troopers’ presence.

  “You can let him through,” Hawthorn said to a trooper who was blocking Todd.

  “Uncle, you’d better come quickly. A situation is developing with the prisoners.”

  Allenson followed Todd at the run, security troopers in tow. He feared the worst when he saw the flash of laser weapons lighting up the dusk sky.

  He hadn’t envisioned capturing so many enemy soldiers, so had failed to bring anything to pen them in. The Cornuvians sat on the ground guarded by a platoon from First Brigade. At least that must have been the idea but the Streamer soldiers had their backs to the prisoners. They faced down a mob of angry Brunswickian civilians.

  “You Home Worlder bastards aren’t so high and might now, are you,” screamed a woman’s voice.

  A hail of stones and clods of earth soared into the prisoners. Something hard hit a Cornuvian in the face and drew blood.

  “What the hell’s going on here,” Allenson asked, dashing up to the noncom in charge of the Streamer platoon.

  “Some of the locals are feeling their oats now that the Cornuvians are helpless. They intend to get their own back,” the noncom said.

  “String the buggers from the trees,” cried a voice from the crowd.

  “Who fired?” Allenson asked.

  “I did, sir, over the heads of that lot,” the noncom said, gesturing at the crowd of civilians.

  He raised his head defiantly as if he expected disciplining.

  A civilian dressed in rough farm laborers’ clothes ran up to Allenson, waving a fence post.

  “Those boogers have got it coming,” he said. “Out of the way soldier boy or I’ll crack your skull while I’m on.”

  Allenson wasn’t about to bandy words with an oaf. He just picked him up by the lapels and hurled him back into the crown. The action released a howl of anger and protest.

  “Colonel Hawthorn,” Allenson raising his voice loud enough to be heard over the mob. “These Brasilians are my prisoners and I have personally guaranteed their safety. I’ll be damned if I’ll let a bunch of louts impugn my honor by making a liar out of me.”

  “Quite right,” Hawthorn replied, observing the mob with distaste.

  Allenson continued.

  “This landing zone is under military law and this is an illegal assembly. It will disperse. Your men will arrest any unauthorized person still within one hundred meters of the camp in five minutes. Furthermore you have my permission to shoot the next man or woman who threatens violence against the prisoners or our men.”

  “Very good, sir,” Hawthorn said in response. His troopers spread out.

  The mob went ve
ry quiet but held their ground. A young man with a bright blue neck scarf pushed to the front and half turned to address the crowd. He held a bottle in his left hand half raised as if preparing to throw.

  “They wouldn’t dare. They’re bluffing! I say we—”

  The youth stopped speaking when an orange spot appeared in the center of his chest.

  Hawthorn held his hunting rifle casually at waist height. The orange sighting spot was rock steady on the young man.

  “Bluffing! You really think so?” Hawthorn asked with genuine amusement. He smiled at the man in the blue scarf, who froze. “There’s an easy way to put it to the test.”

  The youth lowered his arm and backed up, but the orange spot tracked him all the way. Eventually, he dropped the bottle and ran.

  “Pity, now I suppose I’ll have to make an example of someone else,” Hawthorn said waving the barrel of his gun.

  The mob dispersed.

  “Or perhaps not.”

  Hawthorn waved his men forward and they ran behind the crowd, slamming gun butts into the backs of the tardy.

  “Good work,” Allenson said to the noncom in charge of the prisoner guard detail. “I’m pleased that you acted to protect our prisoners.”

  He had half expected his troops to side with the mob against the Cornuvians.

  The noncom spat on the ground.

  “Wasn’t going to let no bunch of worthless drunks rough up the Brasys now they’re helpless. Reckon that lot weren’t so ginger when the Brasys had guns. We took ’em fair and square and a damn hard fight they gave us.”

  He turned to look at the prisoners who watched Allenson intently.

  “They’ve given us no trouble, sir. Not a bad lot really, just a bunch of poor bloody infantry like ourselves, begging your pardon, sir. I prefer their company to a bunch of bloody civvies.”

  Allenson nodded agreement.

  “Don’t let yourself be overrun. Shoot if anyone tries to disarm you.”

  “Not a problem, sir.”

  Allenson walked away with Todd while Hawthorn and his men cleared the landing zone.

  “I’ve been speaking to the prisoners, Uncle,” Todd said. “You know most of them only joined up under duress because their families are in debt. They personally are getting damn all out of this.”

  “My information is that the Brasilians are paying handsomely for their services,” Allenson said. “I wonder where the money’s going?”

  “Mostly to the oligarch families who control Cornuvia,” Todd replied. “I reckon most of the prisoners would be happy to be written off as dead and become Streamer citizens. Some may even join up, soldiering being what they know.”

  “That is most interesting,” Allenson said.

  The next morning Allenson paraded the regiments due for release in front of the captured equipment. Altogether it made a tidy haul. The nifty little gunships were the stars of the display. The men cheered and whooped so enthusiastically when he climbed the makeshift rostrum that he eventually had to hold up a hand for silence.

  He turned a blind eye to the civilian overcoats that had been purloined to keep out the cold. Such acquisitions were not looting but military requisitions, to be paid for in the fullness of time should the rightful owners come forward.

  Hypocritical?

  Perhaps. One may be as precious about military law as one wants, but no army is ever going to balk at doing whatever it needs to survive. He wasn’t going to have his soldiers freeze on some legal technicality.

  “Fellow Stream citizens . . . fellow soldiers,” Allenson started, to be immediately interrupted by more cheers.

  “We did not fight for money or for glory but for liberty.”

  He paused for effect.

  “Liberty we have won.”

  More cheers.

  “We have struck our oppressors such a blow as they will never forget.”

  Frantic cheering.

  Actually he doubted whether the average Brasilian had heard of Brunswick or gave much of a toss one way or the other, but that didn’t matter.

  “Everyone here today has done their duty and may leave the army with honor. Indeed, they will leave with my thanks. I consider any man or woman who fought with me at Brunswick a brother or sister whatever their station in life. It will be enough for anyone here when challenged in times to come about what they did for their country to simply reply: I . . . fought . . . at . . . Brunswick!”

  He dragged the last words out until they were drowned in cheers.

  “As for me, I shall go on with the struggle until the last enemy soldier is driven from our worlds. That I pledge. Any person here who has the stomach for it is welcome to march with me. Colonel Kaspary will be opening a recruitment desk and inviting men and women to reenlist. It has been a privilege to serve with you and I can think of no better companions for the ordeal ahead. I thank you all for your courage.”

  With a last salute he stepped down from the rostrum before his own high-blown rhetoric caused him to throw up. War is nothing but blood, sweat and tears—but sometimes the alternative is worse.

  Allenson went to oversee the loading for the evacuation. He intended to be long gone when the Brasilians brought their ponderous military might for a counterblow. He soon realized his presence was more of a hindrance than a help. Matters would run much more smoothly if he just let his officers and noncoms get on with it.

  He sat on a tree stump chewing a remarkably taste-free slab of military ration-packed bread. Two birds squabbled on the ground. From their brightly colored yellow and red plumage he assumed they were male. Female birds were normally camouflaged for egg-sitting. The birds hopped around in a circle beak to beak. They shook their wings and chirped angrily. Every so often one would drive the other back with quick thrust. The victim would soon rally and return to the fray.

  Winter was the time of year when male birds laid claim to territory. Territory to attract a mate in the spring. Territory to provide food to feed the chicks in the summer. The winner would prosper and transmit his genes into future generations. The loser may as well not have existed. It all came down to territory in the end.

  He tried to tell himself that it was different for people. They could leave their achievements as a cultural legacy for future generations. His intrinsic honesty and self-awareness made him reject the lie. Who in the modern world remembered the achievements of the leaders of the Third Civilization, let alone the Second or the First?

  Only gene replication mattered in the long run.

  Kaspary’s arrival broke his reverie. He scared the birds so they flew off, no doubt to continue the fight somewhere else.

  “How many reenlisted?” Allenson asked.

  “A good two thirds,” Kaspary replied in momentary delight before his face fell. “Three thirds would have been better, of course, as the Stream really needs all of them and then some.”

  Allenson clapped him on the back.

  “Two thirds is excellent. You have to learn to be patient, my friend. I discovered many years ago in the Hinterlands that sometimes all you can do is continue pedaling until you find somewhere safe to land and take a breath.”

  He was not faking optimism. They had just won their first offensive victory. A war of independence, a civil war in effect, is quite different from formal battles between established states. In civil conflict momentum is everything. Most people are fairly indifferent about the political issues involved, reckoning that they can adjust tolerably well to the rule of either side. Victory goes to the faction that builds sufficient impetus to convince waverers to join the winners while the joining is good.

  One of the brightly plumed birds was back, strutting up and down and whistling a song of triumph. There was no sign of its competitor. Allenson broke off some of the bread and tossed it to the creature who pecked at it lustily.

  To the victor went the spoils.

  The End