The Chosen

by S. M. Stirling

  "I'm here on vacation," Jeffrey said, smiling back despite himself. "Besides, Heinrich doesn't have your suspicious mind."

  "Which is why he's a straight-leg. Too damned good-natured for his own good." Gerta raised her wineglass. "These Unionaise make some pretty things," she said as the cut crystal sparkled in the evening sun. "And they make good wine. But they couldn't organize sailors into a whorehouse."

  "Well, that's your problem," Jeffrey said. "You're the ones with the training mission here."

  "Purely as private contractors, on leave from our regular duties," Gerta said piously.

  "And I'm a tourist," Jeffrey said.

  Unwillingly, he joined in Gerta's chuckle.

  "You know the best thing about competing with you Santies?" Gerta asked. When he shook his head, she continued: "It's not that you're short of guts, because you aren't, or because you're stupid, because you aren't that, either. It's that you're never, ever ready." She finished her wine and rose.

  "And we're going to win this round," she said.

  "Why's that, the invincible destiny of the Chosen race?"

  "Invincible muleshit," she said cheerfully, with a grin that might have come out of deep water, rolling over for the killing bite. "The reason that we're going to win this one is that we're trying to help fuck this place up—and the Unionaise are positive geniuses at that, anyway."

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Everyone in Bassin du Sud was afraid. John Hosten could taste it, even without Center's quick flickering scans of the people passing by. The narrow crooked streets were less full of people than he'd seen on previous business visits, and the storekeepers stood at the ends of their long narrow shops, ready to drop the rolling metal curtain-doors. Windows were locked behind the scrolled ironwork of their balconies, and similar ironwork doors had been pulled across most of the narrow entranceways that led to interior courtyards. He could still get glimpses down them, the sight of a fountain or a statue in old green bronze, or a line of washing above plain flagstones.

  Gerta's smile haunted him, seen through Jeffrey's eyes.

  Every time he'd seen her smile like that, people started dying in job lots.

  There was something else about the streets, he decided. I hope Jean-Claude is still there. Something very odd about the streets, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it.

  few military personnel, Center said.

  Bassin du Sud had a fair-sized Union garrison, plus a navy base. In fact, if he turned, he could see part of it downslope from the rise he was on. His stepfather would have gone into a cold rage at the knots hanging from the rigging of the three hermaphrodite cruisers at the dock, and the state of their upperworks, but . . .

  The sound hit a huge soft pillow of air, knocking him backward. Down by the naval docks a hemisphere of fire blossomed upwards, with bits and pieces of iron and wood and crewmen from the three cruisers. A stunned silence followed the explosion, then a great screaming roar like nothing he had ever heard in his life.

  A mob, Raj's mental voice said softly. That's the sound of a hunting mob.

  Over it came sounds he had no problem recognizing. First a series of dull soft thuds in the distance, like very large doors slamming. Then a burbling, popping sound that went on and on, rising and falling. Artillery and small arms.

  "I'm late, God damn it," he said, and began to run. Perhaps too late. The rough pavement was slippery and uncertain under his boots; he kept his right hand near the front of his jacket, ready to go for a weapon.

  Careful, lad, Raj cautioned. I don't think foreigners are going to be all that popular around here right now.

  The narrow street widened a little, into a small cobbled plaza the shape of an irregular polygon, with a fountain in the middle spilling water into granite horse troughs around it. A bullet spanged through the air. He dove forward and rolled into the cover of the troughs, ignoring the stone gouging at his back, and came up with the automatic ready in his hand.

  A man in a monk's brown robe was staggering away from the little church on the other side of the plaza. He was a thick-bodied man, with a kettle belly and a round, plump face. A few hours earlier it might have been a good-natured face, the jolly monk too fond of the table and bottle of the stories. Now it was a mask of blood from a long cut across the tonsured scalp. Dozens of men and women in the rough blue clothing of city laborers were following the monk, jeering and poking him with sticks, spitting and kicking. The cleric's heavy body jerked to the blows, but his wide fixed eyes looked out of blood-wet skin with a desperate fixed expression, as if his mind had convinced itself that the exit to the plaza represented safety.

  There was no safety for him. One of the mob tired of the fun. The pried-up cobblestone he swung must have weighed ten pounds; the monk's head burst with a sound much like a watermelon falling six stories onto pavement. He collapsed, his body still twitching beneath the brown robe. John swore softly to himself and rose, letting the pistol fall down by his side. The black crackle finish of the weapon's steel probably wouldn't show much against his frock coat . . . and while the ten rounds in the magazine also wouldn't be much good against a charging mob, he didn't intend to die alone if it came to that.

  "Hey, there's one of the Chosen dog-suckers who're in bed with the elite and the Christ-suckers!" someone bawled.

  "Santander!" John shouted, in a controlled roar. It cut through the murmur of this little outlier of the mob. "I'm from Santander"—though I was born in Oathtaking and my father's a general on the Council, but there's no need to complicate matters—"on diplomatic business."

  He pulled out his passport with his left hand and held it up. Half the crowd probably couldn't read, much less recognize official stamps, but his accentless Fransay and his manner made them hesitate.

  "I'm on my way to the Santander consulate right now," he went on, and pointed to the northward where the sound of fighting was heaviest. "Don't you people have business up there?"

  The crowd milled, people talking to their neighbors; individuals once more, rather than a beast with a single mind and will. John holstered his weapon and trotted past them, past the church where flame was beginning to lick out the shattered stained-glass windows. A quick glance inside showed the chaos of swift incompetent looting and the body of a nun lying spread-eagled in a huge pool of blood from her gashed-open throat.

  What lovely allies, he thought dryly, and mentally waved aside Centers comments. I know, I know.

  The streets broadened as he climbed the slope above the harbor and gained the more-or-less level plateau that held the newer part of the city. The press of people grew too, crowds of them pouring in from the dock areas behind him and from the factory-worker suburbs. He dodged around an electric tram standing frozen in the middle of the street, past another burning church—from the columns of smoke, there were fires all over town—and past cars, lying abandoned or passing crammed past capacity. Those held armed men, in civilian clothes or green Assault Guard gendarmerie uniforms with black leather hats, or army and navy gear. All the men in them had red armbands, though, and some had miniature red or black flags flying from their long sword-bayonets. John cursed, kicked, and pushed his way through the crowds, but the press grew closer and closer; it was like being caught in heavy surf, or a strong river current.

  Suddenly the crowd surged around him, an eddy this time. He barely cleared the corner onto the Avenue d'Armes when the shooting broke out ahead, louder this time. He was enough taller than the Unionaise crowd to see why. A dozen military steam cars had pulled up and blocked the road fifty yards ahead. They weren't armored vehicles, but they each had a couple of pintle-mounted machine guns. Infantry followed, rushing up and deploying on and around the cars. Their rifles came up in a bristle, and the crews of the machine guns were slapping the covers down and jacking the cocking levers. The fat water jackets of the automatic weapons jerked and quivered with their fearful haste.

  John felt a cold rippling sensation over his belly and loins. Everything seemed
to move very slowly, giving him plenty of time to consider. A man in front of him was pushing a wheelbarrow full of stones and half-bricks, ammunition for the riot which this no longer was. He squatted—there was no room to bend—gripped the man by waist and ankle, and heaved. The Unionaise pitched forward, flying over the toppling wheelbarrow and into the three men ahead of it, staggering them. They fell backward against the wood and iron in the same instant that John dove forward and down onto the bricks it spilled, into the space it had made, the only open space in the whole vast crowd.

  A giant gripped a sheet of canvas in metal gauntlets and ripped. John curled himself into a ball behind the wheelbarrow and bared his teeth at the picture his mind supplied of what was happening ahead. The crowd couldn't retreat, not really, not with so many thousands behind them still pressing forward and the high blank walls on either side.

  Twenty machine guns fired continuously, and several hundred magazine rifles as fast as the soldiers could work their bolts and reload. Bodies fell over the wheelbarow, over John, turning his position into a mount that kicked and twitched and bled. He heaved his back against the sliding, thrashing mass; if he let it grow he'd suffocate here, trapped beneath a half-ton of flesh. The barricade of bodies shuddered as bullets smacked home. John was blind in a hot darkness that stank with the iron-copper of blood and slimy feces and body fluids. They ran down over him, matting his clothing, running into his mouth and eyes. He heaved again, feeling his frock coat rip with the strain. Bodies slid, and a draft of fresher air brought him back to conscious thought.

  Can't attract attention . . .

  Through a gap he could see the rooftops beyond the barricade of war-cars. Something moved there, and something smaller flew though the air.

  Crump. The dynamite bomb landed between two cars and rolled under the front wheels of one. It backflipped onto the vehicle next to it with a rending crash of glass and metal; superheated steam flayed men for yards around as the flash-boiler coils in both ruptured. Some officer with strong presence of mind was redirecting fire to the rooftops on either hand, but more dynamite bombs rained down. Crump. Crump. Crump.

  There hadn't been time for panic to infect the whole mob, even though hundreds—thousands—had been killed or wounded. Not even Center could have predicted their reaction. The survivors ran forward, and John ran with them. One machine gun snarled back into action briefly, and then the forefront of the mob was scrambling over the ramp of dead and dying that stood four and five bodies deep in front of the wrecked war-cars. He dove over it headfirst, while the surviving soldiers shot down the rioters silhouetted upright on the edge. The automatic was in his hand as he knelt. A green grid of lines settled over his vision, and the aim strobed red as he swung from one target to the next. Crack. A soldier pitched backward from the spade grips of his machine gun with a round blue hole between his eyes and the back blown out of his head by the wadcutter bullet. Crack. An officer folded in the middle as if he'd been gut-punched, then slid forward to lie limply among the other dead. Crack. Crack. The slide locked back and his hands automatically ejected the empty magazine and replaced it with one from the clips attached to the shoulder-holster rig.

  John blinked, breathing hoarsely. His hand shook slightly as he holstered the automatic and he blinked again and again, trying to shed the glassy sensation that made him feel like an abandoned hand-puppet.

  I never liked it either, Raj said. There was the momentary image of a room in a tower, with half a dozen men sprawled in death across tables and benches. It's necessary, sometimes. Brace up, lad. Work to be done.

  John nodded and wiped at the congealing blood on his face. Well, that didn't work. He stripped off his businessman's frock coat and used the relatively dry lining instead, cleaning away enough so that his eyes didn't stick shut and spitting to clear the taste out of his mouth. Then he bent to pick up a soldier's fallen rifle and bandolier; the weapon was Land-made or a copy. No, Oathtaking armory marks. He thumbed two stripper clips into the magazine and slapped the bolt home before working his way to the edge of the crowd. Not much chance his contact would be at home, but it wasn't far and he had to check.

  Snipers were firing from the towers of the Bassin du Sud cathedral. The Maison Municipal was directly across from it, with improvised barricades of furniture and planter boxes full of flowers in front of the entrances and people shooting back from behind them, and from the windows above. John went down on his belly and leopard-crawled along the sidewalk from one piece of cover to the next. When he was halfway across an explosion lifted him and slammed him against the wall of the building, leaving him half-stunned as the cathedral facade slid into the square in a slow-motion collapse, falling almost vertically. Quarter-ton limestone building blocks mixed with gargoyles and fretwork and fragments of glass avalanched across the pavement. John pressed his face into the sidewalk and hoped that the plane trees and benches to his right would stop anything that bounced this far. There was a pattering of rubble, and something grazed his buttocks hard enough to sting; then a cloud of choking dust swept across him, making him sneeze repeatedly. The earthquake rumble died down, and he doggedly resumed his crawl.

  Willing hands pulled him over the barricade; the crowd behind it included everyone from Assault Guards to female file clerks, armed with everything conceivable, including fireplace pokers and Y-fork kid's catapults. Many of the people there were standing on the piled furniture and cheering the ruin of the cathedral, despite the fact that hostile fire was coming from other buildings around the plaza as well. John prudently rolled to one side before coming erect, grunting slightly as his bruises twinged. An Assault Guard looked at him, unconsciously fingering the pistol at his side.

  "Who are you?" he said.

  "I'm here to see Jean-Claude Deschines," John replied.

  "Just like that?" The gendarme had narrow eyes and a heavy black stubble. "I asked who you are."

  "And I asked to see Jean-Claude. Tell him John is here with the package he was expecting."

  The other man's eyes narrowed; he nodded and trotted off. John set his back against a twisting granite column and wrestled his breath and heartbeat back under control, ignoring the sporadic shooting and cheering and trying to ignore the deadly whine of the occasional ricochet making it through the barricaded windows. Ten years ago he wouldn't have been breathing hard. . . . The entrance hall was dark because of those barricades, just enough light to see the big curving staircase at its rear, and the usual allegorical murals depicting Progress and Harmony and Industry, the sort of thing the Syndicat d'Initative put up in any Unionaise town hall. One did catch his eye, a mosaic piece showing Bassin du Sud as it had looked a couple of centuries ago, with only the grim bulk of the castle on its hill, and a small walled village at its feet. That castle had been built as a base to stop Errife corsairs, back when the island pirates had virtually owned the coast, setting up bases and raiding far inland for slaves and loot.

  The castle was still there. And it was the garrison HQ for the Bassin du Sud military district. The curtain walls and moats and arrowslits weren't all that relevant anymore, but there were heavy shore-defense mortars in the courtyards, Land-made breechloaders, capable of commanding the harbor if the plotters consolidated their hold on the garrison.

  A tall man with a swag belly clattered down the staircase; he had a police carbine over his shoulder and a pistol thrust through the sash around his waist.

  "Jean!" he roared genially, and came toward John with open arms for the hug and kiss on both cheeks that was the standard friendly greeting in the Union. At the last moment he recoiled.

  John looked down briefly at his shirt. "Most of it's other people's blood," he said helpfully.

  "Name of a dog! You were caught in the street fighting?"

  John nodded. "Nearly got massacred by some soldiers with car-mounted machine guns, but somebody dropped dynamite on them. There seem to be a lot of explosions going on today." He jerked his head towards the doors leading out onto the plaza.
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  "My faith, yes," the mayor of Bassin du Sud said happily. "Copper miners. I . . . ah . . . arranged for a special train to bring in a few hundred of them from up in the hills. Ingenious fellows, aren't they?"

  John nodded. They were also anarchists almost to a man, those that weren't members of the radical wing of the Travailleur party. A few years ago, when the Conservatives had been in power, they'd taken up arms in a revolt halfway between a damned violent strike and outright revolution. The government had turned General Libert's Legionnaires and Errife loose on them when the regular army couldn't put the insurrection down.

  "You're going to need more than dynamite and hunting shotguns to get the garrison out of the castle. Especially if you want to do it before Libert arrives. What've you got in the way of ships to stop him crossing?"

  "Three cruisers were lost."

  "I saw it. Sabotage?'

  The mayor nodded. "Time bombs in the magazines, we think. But there's one corsair-class commerce raider, and some torpedo boats. There were nothing but merchantmen in Errif harbor at last report."

  "That's last report. He may shuttle men over by air. Chosen 'volunteers' under 'private contract.' In fact, I wouldn't put it past the Chosen to escort his troopships in with a squadron of cruisers."

  "That would mean war!" The mayor's natural olive changed to a pasty gray. "War with the Republic."

  "Not if they could claim a local government invited them in."

  "Nobody could—"

  "Mon ami, you don't know what Santander lawyers are like. They could argue the devil into the Throne of God—or at least tie everything up on the question for a year or better. Which is why you have to get some transport down to my ship; she's stuffed to the gills with rifles, machine guns, ammunition, explosives, mortars, and field-guns."

  Jean-Claude nodded decisively. "Bon." He turned and began to shout orders.

  * * *

  Gerta Hosten put her eye to a crack in the worn planks of the boathouse. It was crowded, with the half-dozen Chosen commandos and the fishing boat pulled up on the ways, and the stink of old fish was soaked into the oak and pine timbers. The rubber skinsuit she was wearing was hot and clammy out of the water; she shrugged back the weight of the air tank on her back and peered down the docks.