David Drake - The Chosen

Of course, Jeffrey thought with tired distaste.

But it didn't matter. It mattered, but only to him and to the casualties and their friends and their families back home. He'd taken Corona, not only taken it but taken it by a coup de main that left the docks intact. Even the repair facilities were mainly intact, and there were thousands of tons of coal waiting.

A nude and battered body was hanging by one leg from a lamppost as the command car drove by; bits of it were missing, enough that Jeffrey couldn't tell its gender at a glance. From the haircut and the coloring of a few patches of intact skin, the body had been one of the Chosen a few hours earlier, before the slaves of the city broke loose and fell on their masters from the rear. One of the ones caught isolated and unable to make it back to New Town.

Chosen, all right, Jeffrey thought with a feeling of grim. . not quite satisfaction. More a sense of the fundamental connections between decision and outcomes. They chose this for themselves, some time ago.

"A message to the flagship, for relay to HQ," he said. "Message to read: Corona secured, docks intact. Dispatch."

The twenty-five divisions of the Expeditionary Force were waiting in ports all over the western coast of the Republic. Waiting for that word. Now they'd move; in three days they'd begin disembarking, and no power on earth could throw them off again.

Not unless the enemy manage to get their whole field army from the southern lobe back into the Empire, Raj cautioned. Well begun, half done, but we haven't won yet.

* * *

John Hosten wheezed as he duckwalked through the sewer. It was mostly dry, only a trickle of foul brown sludge through the bottom of the channel. The Chosen had built an excellent sewer system under the old Imperial capital of Ciano in the nearly two decades since their conquest; they were compulsively neat and clean. This section didn't appear on any of their records or maps. The forced labor gangs which built it had had a secondary function in mind, which didn't prevent it from being a perfectly good sewer most of the time.

It certainly stinks right, he thought. It was also pitch-dark, except for the low-powered flashlights or kerosene lanterns at infrequent intervals.

Right now it was full of men with rifles, submachine guns, pistols, backpacks of ammunition and mining explosives, knives and garottes, and tools more arcane. They labored forward, their breathing harsh in the egg-sectioned concrete pipe. Arturo Bianci waited at the junction of two tunnels.

"Still alive, I see," John said, panting.

"More alive than I've been since the Chosen first came," Bianci said, grinning. "Do you wish to do the honors?"

He held up a switch at the end of a cord. John took it and poised his thumb over the button. Silently he counted, and on three pushed the connection.

The tunnel shook; men cried out in involuntary terror as dust and bits of concrete fell from above. That subsided into choking, coughing order as the rumble died away. Men rose into a half-crouch in the taller connecting tunnel, rushing forward to the iron ladders leading upwards. John took the first, jerking himself up by the main force of his thick arms and shoulders, freeing the shotgun slung over one shoulder as he went.

The cellar was exactly as the plans had shown it, a big open space under stone arches with cell blocks leading off from all sides and an iron staircase in each corner. The plans hadn't included the steel cages hanging from the ceiling on metal cables that let them be raised or lowered. Each cage was of a different size and shape, some wired so that current could be run through them, some lined with saw-edges or spikes, most of exactly the dimensions that would let the inmate neither sit nor stand. All were occupied, although some of the victims were barely breathing, shapes of skin stretched over bone with the bone worn through the skin at contact points. Tongues swollen with thirst, or ripped out; hands broken by the boot to the fingers-that was the usual accompaniment to arrest. More hung on metal grids along the walls. Those had their eyelids cut off and lights rigged in front of them-steady arc lights, others blinking at precise intervals.

The building above was Fourth Bureau headquarters for the New Territories. The specialists had been at work right up until the partisans burst through the floors; the evidence lay bleeding and twitching on the jointed metal tables that were arranged in neat rows across the floor. Most of them were flat metal shapes with gutters for the blood; others looked like dental chairs. The secret policemen lay beside their clients now, equally bloody where the bullets and buckshot had left them.

John swallowed and suppressed an impulse to squeeze his eyes shut. He'd been fully aware of what went on in places like this, but that was not the same as seeing it all at once. He suspected that he'd be seeing it in his dreams for the rest of his life.

"Let's go," he said to the squad with him. "Remember, nothing is to be burned."

They were supposed to get to the central filing system before the operators had a chance to destroy it.

"And take prisoners if you can," he went on.

They'd talk. And then he'd turn them over to the people in the cells.

* * *

"They're attempting to mine the outer harbor," Elise Eberdorf said.

Half of her face was still covered with healing burn scars, and she was missing most of her left arm, but she was functional-which was more than she'd expected when the last series of explosions threw her off the bridge of the sinking Grossvolk in Barclon harbor. Functional enough to command the destroyer flotilla in Pillars, at least. The Chosen were a logical people, and the staff hadn't blamed her for losing to a force eight times her own. She'd managed to save the two battleships, and many of the transports.

"What ships?" she croaked. The burns distorted her voice, but it was. . functional, she thought.

"Light craft. Trawlers, mostly."

She missed Helmut, but Angelika was competent enough. "I strongly suspect air attack next," she said, tracing a finger up the map of the Land's east coast. "The Home Fleet is in Oathtaking, of course; if we join them, that will be a major setback for them and bring the odds back to something approaching even."

She paused. "The latest from Fleet HQ, please."

The orders remained the same. Rendezvous as per Plan Beta, A hundred twenty miles south-southeast of Oathtaking."

"Tsk." Overcaution, at a time when only boldness could retrieve the situation. At a guess, Home Fleet command simply wanted every ship they could under their command for the final battle. She'd offered to take her four-stackers out for a night torpedo attack.

"Sir!" A communications tech looked up from her wireless. "Air scouts report large numbers of enemy aircraft approaching from the southeast."

Eberdorf's finger moved again. That meant the Santie carriers would be about. . here. Useful information.

"Report to HQ," she said. "Notice to the captains. As soon as this air raid is over, we will depart and make speed on this heading."

Angelika Borowitz's eyebrows rose. "Sir. That will put us on an intercept course with the enemy fleet."

Eberdorf smiled, and even the Chosen present blanched slightly at the writhing of the scar tissue. "Exactly. If we meet the enemy on the way to the rendezvous, we can scarcely be faulted for engaging them. In my considered opinion, our squadron alone possesses the readiness necessary for a major night attack on the enemy fleet. The potential damage outweighs the importance of another twelve destroyers in a day action."

When they would be pounded into scrap by the cruiser screens of the Santie Northern Fleet, probably. But the Pillars flotilla hadn't had their crews robbed of Chosen personnel and experienced Proteges for operations on the mainland the way the Home Fleet had been. Night action had a big potential payoff-the enemy's scouting advantages would be neutralized, and all action would have to be within effective torpedo range-but it required exquisite skill and long practice.