The Chosen

by S. M. Stirling

  She laughed again and ran a hand over the place where her hair had been, once. "I seem to make a habit of leading forlorn hopes. Although I doubt anyone will swim ashore with me from this one."

  * * *

  "Sir." Maurice Hosten saluted and came to attention before his grandfather. "Sir, they beat us off. I doubt we sank so much as a fishing boat."

  There was a faint edge of bitterness in the young pilot's voice, even now, even on the bridge of the Great Republic.

  "The flak was like nothing I've ever seen," he went on. "And their land-based air were waiting for us, three times our numbers or better. They were working over the minelayers pretty badly, too."

  The admiral nodded. "It had to be tried," he said quietly, more to himself than to his grandson. Aloud: "Very well, Wing Commander. You may go."

  "Well, that was a fuckup," Admiral Cunningham said mildly.

  "Had to be tried," Maurice Farr repeated. "That's a dozen tin cans and a good modern cruiser, well crewed and too mobile by half."

  He looked out the windows into the darkness. "Too mobile by half and probably—"

  "Sir! Destroyer Hyacinth reports enemy ships in unknown numbers."

  Farr looked down at the map. "Coming straight at us," he said. "Well, you can't fault their aggressiveness," he said. "Transports, carriers, and carrier escorts to maintain course. The remainder of the fleet will come about as follows."

  The orders rattled out. Cunningham raised his brows. "Putting everything about to face twelve destroyers and a cruiser?" he said.

  "We can't afford too many losses," Farr answered. "Particularly not of capital ships."

  Cunningham nodded. "You're the boss. I'd better see to my own."

  Farr nodded, looking out through the bridge windows. The first shots were already being fired: starshells, to give as much light as possible. Bloody murthering great fleet, he thought. Be lucky if we don't sink a few of our own ships by friendly fire.

  He considered sending out a "caution on target" notice, then shook his head silently. More likely to lose ships that way, as gunners hesitated to the last minute and let the Land destroyers too close. Searchlights flickered over the water. Wish there was some way of seeing in the dark, he thought. Some sort of detection device. But there wasn't . . .

  "Cruiser Iway under attack," the signals yeoman said tonelessly, translating the code as it came through the earphones in dots and dashes.

  More than starshells lit the sky to the northwest. Gun flashes, eight-inchers. The thudding of the muzzle blasts traveled more slowly, but not much. It wasn't far . . .

  "Iway reports she is under gun attack by enemy heavy cruiser," the yeoman said. "Desmines and Nawlin are moving to support."

  "Negative," Farr rapped. "Cruiser Squadron A to maintain stations."

  That was probably what the Chosen commander was trying to do, punch a hole through the cruiser screen and send the destroyers in through it. Easy enough even if they maintained station; the destroyers wouldn't be visible long enough to get most of them.

  "Sir, Iway reports—"

  There was a flash of light on the northwestern horizon, followed almost immediately by a huge dull boom.

  "God damn," Farr said slowly and distinctly. I never liked the magazine protection on those City-class cruisers, he thought. They'd skimped on internal bulkheads to strengthen the main belt. . . .

  "Sir." This time the yeoman's voice quavered a bit, just for an instant. "Desmines reports the Iway . . . she's gone, sir. Just gone. The stern section was all that's left and it sank like a rock."

  "There's something wrong with our bloody cruisers today," Farr said, and lit a cigarette, looking at the map again and calculating distances and times. The captain of the Great Republic was the center of a flurry of activity; searchlights went on all over the superstructure.

  "Here they come," he said, speaking loudly over the squeal of turrets training. Only the quick-firers and secondary armament; nobody was going to fire twelve-inch guns into the dark with dozens of Santander Navy ships around.

  Long lean shapes were coming in, weaving between the cruiser squadrons, heading for the capital ships. Red-gold balls of light began to zip through the night, shells arching out to meet the enemy. The Chosen destroyers were throwing plumes back from their bows as high as their forward turrets, thirty knots and better.

  "Here they come," repeated the captain. The battleship heeled sharply as it came about, presenting its bow to the destroyers and the smallest possible target to their torpedo sprays. "For what we are about to receive—"

  "—may the Lord make us truly thankful," the bridge muttered with blasphemous piety.

  * * *

  Heinrich Hosten blinked. "He has said what?"

  "Sir. Libert has announced that the Union is, ah, affirmatively neutral, as of one hundred hours today. Unionaise forces will not attempt to engage either Santander or Land forces except in direct self-defense. Sir, a number of our posts report that the Unionaise here in the Sierra are laagering and refusing contact. Shall I order activation of Plan Coat, sir?"

  Heinrich stood stock-still for a full forty seconds. Sweat broke out on his expressionless face. "Not at the moment," he said very quietly. Plan Coat was the standing emergency option for the takeover of the Union.

  Well, it looks like you were wrong for once, Gerta, he thought. Leaving Libert alive had been a mistake . . . although justified at the time.

  "No, I don't think we'll distract ourselves just yet. Libert has two hundred and fifty thousand men. The Santies first, I'm afraid, tempting as it is. Attention, please."

  His chief of staff bent forward. Heinrich looked down at the map. "Pending clarification from central HQ, the forces on the Confrontation Line are to stand in place." Selling their lives as dearly as they could. "All other forces in the Union are to retreat northward, destroying communications links behind them as far as possible, and catch us if they can."

  "Catch us, sir?"

  Heinrich tapped one thick finger on the center of the Sierra. "We're the only concentrated force the Land has left on the mainland. It's obvious what the Santies are doing: they've taken Corona, they're shipping their First Corps there as fast as they can, and they're going for our Home Fleet in the Passage."

  His hand moved to the western shores of the Republic, and then swept up towards the Chosen homeland.

  "Bold. Daring. It all turns on us, and on the Navy. If we can break their fleet and destroy their First Corps, then even losing the Union and the Sierra will be meaningless. We can retake them at our leisure and crush Santander next year."

  And if we lose, or the Navy loses, the Chosen are doomed, he knew. By their faces, so did everyone else in the room.

  "Sir, the communications grid is in very poor shape," the logistics chief warned.

  Heinrich nodded. "Which means trains moving north are likely to go just as fast as the handcarts traveling ahead of the locomotives," he said. "That's still faster than oxcarts," he said. "Priorities: all light- and medium-armored fighting vehicles, then fuel, then artillery and artillery ammunition, and other supplies directly in tandem."

  "What about the heavy armor?"

  "Blow it in place."

  "Sir!"

  Heinrich tapped the map again. "Those monsters would be priceless if we could get them there. We can't. They take up too much space and effort. Better to have what we can in the right spot rather than what we can't halfway there at the crucial moment. Blow them."

  "Zum behfel, Herr General."

  "Aircraft, sir?"

  "Coenraad, you and your staff get me an appreciation of how many we can shuttle back into the New Territories and refuel on the way. Blow the rest in place and assign the personnel to infantry units short of their quota of Chosen." Of which there were quite a few.

  "Now, get me New Territories HQ."

  "Sir . . . they haven't responded to signals, for the past half hour. Last report was that insurgents had . . . emerged somehow . . . from Fourt
h Bureau headquarters and were attacking the administrative compound from within in conjunction with a general uprising of the animals."

  Heinrich closed his eyes for a second, then shrugged. "All right, then let's do what we can with what we have. Next—"

  The planning session went on. It was still going on when the vanguard of the last Chosen army moved north less than two hours later.

  * * *

  The last of her wingmates vanished in an orange globe of fire. Erika Hosten held the twin-engine biplane bomber straight and level until the last instant, then jerked on the stick. Wings screaming protest, the plane rose over the destroyer, clearing the stacks by less than six feet. Smoke and rising air buffeted at her for an instant, and then she was back on the surface, wheels almost touching the water.

  A shape ahead of her. A long, flat, island superstructure to one side. Planes above it, a swarm of them—planes over the whole bowl of fire and smoke and ships that stretched to the horizon on either side, the others from the Land aircraft carriers, hundreds more on one-way trips from the Land itself. Pom-poms in gun tubs all the way along the edge of the carrier, and firing at her from behind, from the destroyer screen. Her gunner was slumped in the rear seat, and blood ran along the bottom of the cockpit and sloshed over the edges of her boots. Fabric was peeling off the wings.

  "Just a little longer," she crooned to the aircraft. "Just a little."

  Closer. Closer. Now.

  She jerked the release toggle beside her seat. The biplane lurched as the torpedo released, and then again as something struck it. She yanked at the stick again, and—

  Blackness.

  * * *

  "Welcome aboard, Admiral," the commander of the Empire of Liberty said. "We've notified the fleet you're transferring your flag."

  Maurice Farr nodded as he moved to the front of the battleship's bridge. Forward, one of the eight-inch gun turrets was twisted wreckage. More twisted wreckage was being levered overside, the remains of a Land aircraft that had come aboard with its bombs still under the wings. That had caused surprisingly little damage, although the open-tub pom-poms on that side were silent, their barrels like surrealist sculpture.

  "Status," he said crisply, despite the oil and water stains that soaked his uniform.

  "Sir. Sixteen units of BatDivOne report full or nearly full operational status."

  Two battleships lost last night to the torpedo attack and three cruisers. Three more this morning, running the gauntlet of Chosen air attacks from both sides of the Passage. That left him with an advantage of four, twice that in heavy cruisers, most of his destroyer screen still intact—less than a third of the enemy flotilla from Pillars had made it out—and with one crucial advantage. . . .

  "Air?"

  "Sir, we have the enemy main fleet under constant surveillance. The Saunderton is counterflooding to try and put out the fires, and the torpedo hit took out her rudder, but the Lammas and Miller's Crossing are still ready to retrieve aircraft."

  They wouldn't be crowded. Most of the fighters were gone.

  Maurice Farr looked at the horizon. All his life had been a preparation for this moment.

  "Report movement."

  "Sir, enemy destroyers are advancing at flank speed, followed by their battle line."

  Which put them nose-on to his ships, which were advancing in exactly the same formation. There was one crucial difference: his heavy gun ships had aircraft to spot for them, and they'd honed the technique in years of practice. The Land fleet had excellent optical sights and good gunnery, but they couldn't use either until they came into sight. That was a long, long stretch of killing ground to run through, under the iron flail.

  "The enemy carriers?"

  "They've both broken off and are steaming northward at speed."

  That puzzled him for an instant. Ah. No more planes. Without aircraft, they were as useless as merchantmen in a fleet engagement.

  "Prepare to execute fleet turn; turn will be to port."

  "Sir."

  The Santander battleships were strung out like a line of sixteen beads, boiling forward at eighteen knots. The Land heavy ships were coming towards them at a knot or two better; some of his battlewagons had damage and weren't making their best speed.

  "Turn."

  The Empire of Liberty heeled, coming about to show her side to the enemy still beyond sight over the horizon. The turrets squealed as the long barrels of the twelve-inch guns came around. On either side her sisters did the same. Now the sixteen Santander battleships were moving west instead of north . . . and presenting the combined fire of their broadsides to their Land equivalents. If the enemy fleet tried to charge, close the range, they would be unable to reply with more than half their guns . . . and they would be firing blind for a long, long time anyway. If they duplicated his maneuver, they never would get within range. And if they withdrew, they'd never have an opportunity for a fleet engagement on anything like as favorable terms again. He could sail into Corona and refit, blockading the mainland under cover of land-based aircraft.

  "Commence firing," he said.

  One hundred and twenty heavy guns fired, and the Santander fleet disappeared for an instant in flame and smoke. Every man on the bridge opened his mouth and put his hands over his ears. The Empire of Liberty heeled over on her side, her structure screaming and flexing with the strain of the massive muzzle-horsepower of her four twelve-inch and four eight-inch broadside guns; for a brief instant he could see the shapes of the 800-pound shells at the top of their trajectory, and then they were falling towards the decks of the Land battlewagons. Towards the thinner deck armor, not the massive belts that protected their flanks.

  "Splash," the signals yeoman said. "Forward air reports overshot. Range, correction—"

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  "General," the officer in the staff car said.

  Jeffrey leaned down from the side of his armored car. Something went CRACK through the space he'd just vacated, far too loud for a bullet. He grabbed frantically for the railing at the side as the car lurched backwards.

  That put them hull-down. "That was a tank gun, or I'm a snail-eater," the driver muttered.

  Several Santander armored vehicles were advancing to either side of the road Jeffrey had been using. Four tanks, Whippet mediums with a 2.5-inch gun in their turrets; three troop carriers, Whippets with the turrets removed; a pom-pom Whippet, freed from its original tasking of antiaircraft work by the virtual absence of Land aircraft and doing fire support, instead. The Republic's armor clattered forward, halting with only the tank turrets showing over the hill and their guns at maximum depression. One fired, and a few seconds later there was a gout of smoke and fire in the middle distance, visible even over the ridge.

  All across the rolling cropland to the west the Expeditionary Corps was advancing, infantry spread out in preparation for the engagement that seemed inevitable. A brace of ground-attack fighters flew by, their wheels less than fifty feet overhead, heading east for targets of opportunity.

  "General," the breathless staff officer in the car said.

  Jeffrey leaned down again. He grinned as he read the dispatches.

  "Sir?" Henri said, his hands on the grips of the vehicle's machine gun. He didn't believe in taking unnecessary chances, and there still might be a few Chosen aircraft around. A couple of obvious command vehicles bunched right behind the front made a very tempting target.

  "Message from Dad. Admiral Farr. We have met the enemy and they are ours."

  The Unionaise gave a soft whistle. "We hold the Passage, then?"

  Jeffrey nodded. As long as the Expeditionary Force didn't get thrown back into the sea . . . which was looking increasingly unlikely.

  He flipped to the other message and prevented his mouth falling open with an effort.

  "Son of a bitch."

  Henri looked at him; that hadn't really been a curse.

  "Libert. Libert has offered all the Chosen and Protégés remaining on Union or Sierran territory a
sylum. Union citizenship, land grants . . . the bastard's trying to get himself enough of an army so we won't feel like getting rid of him when this is all over."

  Henri's face went white with rage around the nostrils and mouth. The Santander public hated Libert and his collaborationist regime almost as much as the Loyalist refugees did. The question of whether they hated him enough to fight another war was an entirely different one.

  "Cheer up," Jeffrey said. "I haven't seen many of the Chosen surrendering yet."

  He looked down at the map table. "All we have to do is hold them. They're out of supplies, out of fuel, out of hope."

  The remnants of the force that had marched north out of the Sierra to meet him was strung out along the upper Pada River east of Ciano, fighting its way through swarms of guerillas. The few Chosen left alive in the Empire were laagered in the forts and towns that hadn't been overrun at the beginning of the uprising. There was nothing behind the last army of the Land but death.

  "General message," he said to the signals technician. "All we have to do is hold their first attack. Hold them. The Protégés have already started to turn on their masters. If we can hold this attack, they'll disintegrate."

  * * *

  Heinrich Hosten looked around the position. There were six of them left, all of his remaining staff. Probably thousands left alive elsewhere, scattered pockets isolated where the fury of their attack had left them deep in the Santander positions. He checked the magazine of his automatic.

  The Santies were ahead, in among the trees that lined the road. Probably a platoon of them, and certainly an armored car.

  Heinrich estimated distances. At least I don't have to make any more decisions, he thought. He laughed, feeling the weight on his shoulders lighten. Nothing good had come of that. Just one more. He laughed again, feeling young. Young as he had been at the beginning of the war, young and confident and happy.

  "Sturm!" he shouted. "Charge!"

  Knife in one hand, pistol in the other, he went forward at a pounding run with the others at his heels. Muzzle flashes winked through the twilight at him, rifles from among the trees. Then a continuous blinking flicker from the half-seen shape of the armored car.