John Ringo - Emerald Sea

Emerald Sea

John Ringo

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are

fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-7434-8833-4

Cover art by Clyde Caldwell

First printing, July 2004

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ringo, John, 1963-

Emerald sea / John Ringo.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-7434-8833-4 (hc.)

1. Mermen--Fiction. 2. Fascism--Fiction. 3. Despotism--Fiction. I. Title.

PS3568.I577E46 2004

813'.54--dc22

2004005564

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Typeset by Bell Road Press, Sherwood, OR

Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

Printed in the United States of America

Dedicated to Mark Turuk,

without whom this book would never have been written.

What doesn't kill us makes us strongerrrr!

Freakin' Canucks . . .

Baen Books by John Ringo

There Will Be Dragons

Emerald Sea

A Hymn Before Battle

Gust Front

When the Devil Dances

Hell's Faire

The Hero(with Michael Z. Williamson)

Cally's War(with Julie Cochrane, forthcoming)

The Road to Damascusby John Ringo & Linda Evans

with David Weber:

March Upcountry

March to the Sea

March to the Stars

Prologue

The fifteen-thousand-ton asteroid had been named, in the deepness of time when men still did such

things, AE-513-49. In the latter twenty-first century, when every chunk of ice and rock that was of any

conceivable danger to the earth had been mapped and tracked, it had been concluded that AE-513-49,

which looked a bit like an elephant's foot and was composed of nickel-iron, had a probability of impact

with the earth low enough that the heat death of the universe was a more likely problem.

AE-513-49 had been considered for mining until it was determined that, as a Helios asteroid, one

close in to the sun, bringing out the materials would be more costly than those on the relative

"downslope" towards the outer system. Then asteroid mining, after a very brief heyday, went away as

the human race started to dwindle and, with it, the need for metals from beyond the atmosphere.

Thus AE-513-49 had been permitted to continue on its lonely orbit, circling the sun like a very

small planet, hanging out at the very edge of the "life belt" between the earth and Mercury.

Until a curious thing happened.

A couple of years before, small gravitic nudges were applied to it. They first sent it inward towards

the sun where it would, of course, have impacted without any noticeable trace. But then it encountered

the gravity well of the small planet Mercury and "slingshotted" around it, headed back "outward" in the

system.

More small nudges, some of them infinitesimally faint, adjusted its trajectory until it was precisely

aligned with a point in space through which the earth would pass. Then, for almost a year, nothing.

As it approached the earth, however, more nudges were applied. A few adjusted the course so

that it would assuredly hit the earth and, what's more, on a particular circular zone of the earth. Other

nudges sped it up or slowed it down so that it would hit a particularpoint on that circle. Then, as it

approached the atmosphere, the nudges became more distinct. It was now targeted on that one small

point.As it entered the atmosphere, thin and high, it began to fluoresce, coruscating waves of fire leaping

off of it as the lighter materials it had picked up on its two-billion-year journey through the solar system

burned off leaving the solid nickel-iron core revealed. This, too, began to burn as it hurtled closer and

closer to the face of the earth, the metal subliming off in waves of fire.

Thus it was a melted ball of nickel-iron, hurtling downward at far more than orbital velocities,

trailing an immense line of fire behind it, that slammed to a stop in midair thirty-five meters from an

unassuming home that was sitting, against all reason, in a pool of lava.

In keeping with the laws of physics the nickel-iron, which was half ionized by heat, exploded

outward in titanic fury. But this, too, stopped in midair and the enormous detonation, which would have

destroyed much of the local area, was captured by some invisible force and quickly dissipated.

The nickel-iron that had once been AE-513-49 spread itself across an invisible hemispherical

barrier, practically covering the house and shutting off all light to its interior for a moment, then slid away,

bubbling as if from the application of some tremendous energy, to join the rest of the lava.

Inside the hemispherical protection field, the asteroid impact was noted as only a simple thump. At

the thump, Sheida Ghorbani opened up a view-screen, as she did at least once a day, and looked at the

lake of boiling lava that surrounded her home. The whole valley around her home was a mass of red and

black liquid rock, fuming and spitting plumes of yellowish sulfur-laden steam. As always she called to

mind the lofty Douglas firs, winding paths and crystalline mountain stream that had once been. Back in

the days before the Fall.

The human race had brought itself so far. Rising through the mists of history. Surviving wars and

famines. Until they had finally come to a technological point where so much was available, war, and even

government, had been all but forgotten. The AI entity called Mother, which had started as a security

protocol for the nearly mythical "internet" had morphed over the years until it was She who was the final

arbiter of need. Mother, with her Argus eye and processors ranging from extradimensional quantum field

systems to the honeycomb of bees, knew all and could see all. Beyond who was naughty and who was

nice, it was She who saw the sparrow fall.

But the dangers of such an entity were known long before it was possible to create one. And

Mother's creator, knowing the danger that She represented, She who was thefirst true AI, had

established human controls upon her. Thirteen "Key-holders," each with a physical pass item, who could

"tweak" Her protocols and, in extreme cases, open up her kernel and reprogram Her. The latter,

however, required complete unanimity.

The Keys had first been held by major corporate heads and by governments in the early days of

Her youth. But over the years some of them had fallen into a shadowy underworld. As Her power grew,

more and more capabilities and decisions were loaded upon Her shoulders until in the last millennia She

had become the defacto world government. She was controlled, primarily, by the overt "Council" of

thirteen Key-holders. They were the human link in the chain and mostly ensured that Her protocols were

tweaked and maintained while She did the grunt work of managing distribution of goods and services.

The last human-controlled world government had dissolved nearly two hundred years ago from sheer

lack of utility.

The reason for the lack of utility was simple; with no want there was limited conflict and crime.

Replication, teleportation, nannites and genetic engineering had created a world where any human could

live as they desired. A house on a mountaintop was easily created and the mountaintop could be

anywhere in the world, since with teleportation going elsewhere was a matter of wishing. Body

modification had taken wide forms, with humans Changing themselves into mer, unicorns, dolphins and a

host of other shapes. All conflict, and crime, comes down to a breach of written or unwritten contracts.

It was Mother that ensured that contracts, by and large, were not breached. In the rare case in which

they were, the individual involved was hunted down by an efficient, if small, police force and "adjusted,"

in extreme cases by a memory wipe and replacement to create a nice, docile, well-adjusted human.

But there had been problems with unlimited wealth and ease. Over the years both human birthrates

and scientific progress had fallen by the wayside. World population had peaked at twelve billion in the

latter twenty-first century and then had started a long, slow, decline until the population, pre-Fall, had

been a mere billion or so individuals, mostly residing in widely scattered homes and small hamlets. With

limitless recreational activities, and birth, thank God, removed from the bodies of women and moved to

uterine replicators, raising children was at the very bottom of most people's wish lists. And strong

protocols, enforced by Mother and voted upon in earlier times when massive social mistakes had

occurred, prevented any group from willy-nilly producing children. Each human being created in a

uterine replicator had to be from the base genetics of two humans and one or both had to take

responsibility for rearing the child "properly." Failure to do so resulted in the loss of birth privileges to

both individuals.

In the year before the Fall, less than ten percent of the population had produced children. Using

straight-line projections, in an estimated five hundred to a thousand years, the last human would have

closed the door on an extinct species.

Scientific progress had gone the same way. While there continued to be individuals who liked to

"tinker" with the borders of science, the last major breakthrough, teleportation, had occurred nearly five

hundred years ago.

Looking at both of these trends, the most senior council member, Paul Bowman, decided that

Something Must Be Done. He had decided that humans needed to learn to work again. That humans

needed to learn to be "strong" again. That implementing a work ethic, by limiting power to only those

who "produced" for the community, would bring back the science, and art and literature and birthrates,

which had languished over the past millennia.

Over the years he had gathered members of the Council who, for their own reasons, looked to him

for leadership. And in the end, when the rest of the Council refused his demands, they had struck,

attacking the others at a Council meeting with insects that carried a deadly binary neurotoxin.

Sheida was one of the Council who opposed him, arguably the leader of the opposition. And she, a

student of history as most of them were not, had feared that his fanaticism would lead to violence. She

had consulted with a friend who was even more steeped in the history of violence and had prepared as

well as she could. Very little that was dangerous could be brought into the Council chamber. The toxic

wasps had only worked because individually they were not poisonous; it was only with the sting from

two different types that the neurotoxin activated.

She had been stung, twice, by one type. Others of her faction had died.

But at the same time, they had struck back, killing members of Paul's faction. The late Javlatanugs

Cantor, a werebear, had killed one, falling himself in the battle. Ungphakorn, a Changed quetzacoatl,

had killed another, and seized that one's key.

However, in the end, Sheida and her surviving cohorts had retreated. And the war had begun. And

the Fall started.

The Council now waged war amongst itself with the energy that had once powered the society.

The lava outside her home was the side effect of the massive energy beam being directed upon the

shields of her fastness by Paul's side, which had taken the name "New Destiny." Just as other energy

beams attacked the power stations under the control of her faction, which had taken the name "The

Freedom Coalition." The Coalition had attacked in turn and now virtually all of the energy that had

supported human society had been used in attacks and defense by the Council.

This had left the rest of the world in a truly apocalyptic state. Food had been teleported or

replicated for centuries. Homes were often in places impossible to live without ongoing power. Failure of

personal energy shields had doomed humans from the bottom of the ocean to the photosphere of the

sun. Failure of food delivery, or being left on a mountaintop, or far out at sea, had doomed others more

slowly.

Thus had begun the Fall, and the Dying Time that followed it, when more than ten percent of the

population of the world, some one hundred million human beings in their various forms, had died. Some,

mercifully, before they knew what was happening. Others to falls or drowning or slow deaths from

starvation and exposure.

And the lives of those left after the Dying Time were anything but easy. The world had descended

to a preindustrial environment with farmers scratching a toe-hold in the land, and armies fighting a

thousand small battles with bandit gangs to hold the line and maintain some semblance of civilization.

The most important single group who saved the remnant population of earth was made up of small

groups of "reenactors," people who had wrapped their lives around earlier times. There were small

communities where people lived the lives of their forefathers, using hand tools and domestic animals to

replicate the lives of the ancients.

Many of these people had been living their hobby for decades, or even centuries, and knew

techniques that no single person from any period in history would know. They had used every trick,

every technique, to save the lives of the refugees, an old word that had been forgotten prior to the Fall,

who arrived at their doorstep.

In the area that had fallen to Sheida's purview, the areas of the former North American Union, the

reenactor societies had gathered the refugees, taught them how to survive, and in extraordinary cases

even thrive, and slowly rebuilt society and government. Not so slowly, even. In no more than a year

there was a core government, a constitution and a burgeoning ground and naval force.

The latter two were vital because in Ropasa Paul had been doing the same thing. But he was taking

a different tack, establishing himself as dictator and using the power in the bodies of people to Change

them into a form "more suitable for the current conditions." His Changed legions, growing in size every

time they took another section of Ropasa, had quickly overrun the entire area and established an

iron-fisted rule. And then he had begun his plan to invade the Norau heartland of his enemy.

Sheida often wondered if she had been right to oppose Paul. On the face his plan was not nearly as

horrible as what had actually occurred. And he was getting most of what he wanted from the war,

anyway. Populations were booming since the release of energy and most protocols had caused women

to become fertile again. People were certainly learning how to work.

But all she had to do was look at what had happened in Ropasa. Over the centuries the strictures

against using Mother as a universal eye, a universal tool of coercion, had grown strong. Mother knowing

your innermost secrets was one thing; a person could handle that if they were sure no human was

watching. But everyone had secrets they didn't want the world to know. Everyone had the occasional

minor moral slip. Under the protocols pre-Fall, Mother could not be used for criminal surveillance,

period. For the small, volunteer and chronically overworked police to track a criminal, to prevent a

crime, to read a person's mind, meant using other methods, other systems, rather than the All-Seeing

Mother.

If Paul had taken full control of the system, Mother would change from a distant, uncaring, deity to

one that was poking into everyone's lives constantly. The way that Paul was going, She would be used

for the most extremes of coercion. To Change a person, now, required direct, personal, intervention. If

Paul had control of Mother, he could turn the whole human race into a series of separate, specialized,

insects.

Itwasa just war, she thought, turning off the view-screen and going back to the myriad duties of

the chairwoman for the Freedom Coalition, and the newly crowned "queen" of the United Free States.It

has just cause, it has a chance of winning and the group against which it is fighting is clearly and

unmitigatedly evil, for all that the evil, on Paul's part at least, stemmed from "good" intentions.

Now, if they could only win it.

CHAPTER ONE

The horseman reined in at a side road and looked at the fields stretching to the east.

The rider was massively built, but he sat the war-horse lightly despite his armor. He was wearing a

gray cloak fastened with a bronze brooch worked in the figure of an eagle, loricated plate—segmented

armor that was overlapped like the plates on a centipede's back—steel greaves and bracers and a kilt

made of straps of leather with iron plates riveted on the outside. Tied to the right side of his saddle was a

large helmet with a narrow T slit in the front while on the left was a large wooden shield with iron rim and

a boss worked in the figure of a stooping eagle. The armor, the bracers, the helmet and the shield were

nicked and battered but well polished and maintained.

His right hand rested loosely on his leg while the hook and clamp that substituted for a left hand

held his reins. The device was decidedly out of character considering the tech base of the rest of his

equipment; it was a complex curved prosthetic clamp with a sharpened inner blade. It looked as if it

were made for cutting small limbs and would probably make opening bottles a treat. There was a small

scar under his right eye and more scars could be seen scoring the skin of his right arm wherever the

bracers didn't cover.

Also tied to the saddle were a short sword in a scabbard and a large bow case. On the rear of the

saddle there was a large pack, a blanket roll, a quiver of arrows and a bag of feed for the horse. Despite

the size of the rider and the weight of the equipment, the horse bore the load with no sense of worry. It

stamped after a moment, but that seemed more impatience than fatigue. The rider shushed at it and the

horse settled down without another shiver.

The rider, his panoply and the horse were all covered in a thick layer of dust.

Despite the battered armor and weather-beaten look, the rider was a young man, good looking in a

hard-faced way with short black hair and green eyes. It was hard to tell from his expression but he had

just passed his nineteenth year. And a good bit of the fields he was looking at were his.

They were being harvested in a late autumn Indian summer with the skies blue and warm above.

On the far side of the large field two men were managing the take from a combination harvester. One

drove the harvester while the other drove a wagon that was capturing the grain. The grain was short and

as the ox-drawn harvester passed it left behind stubble and straw that was laid out in rows for baling.

The rider paused, indecisively, then turned his horse into the field. The near end of the field hadn't

been harvested yet and the horse whickered at him until he paused to let it strip a mouthful of the grain.

"Go ahead, Diablo," the young man said, humorously. "Mike shouldn't begrudge it."

The harvester looked up at a shout from the man driving the wagon and pulled the oxen to a stop.

They nuzzled at the grain but since their mouths were covered by feed bags they couldn't emulate the

horse. He said something to the man on the wagon then climbed down off the harvester and walked

across the fields towards the rider. At that the rider pulled the horse's head up with a word and tapped

him into an easy trot. When he approached the other man he reined in and smiled.

" 'I will feast my horse on the standing grain,' " he said, then dismounted, hooking his reins onto the

saddle to tell the horse to stay.

"Herzer," the harvester said with a smile, holding out his hand. "It's good to see you, man."

"Good to see you, Mike," the young man replied, clasping his friend's forearm and gesturing with

his hook at the fields. "Damn, you've been working hard."

"Yeah, but it's paying off," Mike said, looking at his friend and shaking his head. "You look tired."

"I am," Herzer admitted. "And I'm glad to be home. But I'm due for a tour at the Academy, so

maybe I can chill there for a while."

"What doyou have to learn?" Mike asked.

"What do you have to learn about farming?" Herzer replied.

"Lots."

"Yeah, same here. But Edmund's talking about an instructor position. I figure I'll be doing some

research at the same time. Time to brush up on my ancient Greek."

"Makes sense," Mike said, wiping at his brow. "What are we doing talking about this out here?

Let's go up to the house."

"What about the field?" Herzer asked.

"It'll keep," Mike said. "The rain's supposed to hold off for another couple of days and this is the

last one I have to cut. I saved mine for last."

"Yours?" Herzer asked, waving at the horse to follow as they walked back towards the reaper.

"I could scratch up enough capital to float a loan for the reaper," Mike said. "I've been harvesting

half the fields in the valley the last month. And, yes, this is actuallyyour field."

"That wasn't what I meant and you know it," Herzer said with a grin. "I wouldn't know the first

damned thing about farming this place."

"Well, I'm learning," Mike admitted. "I'm learning every day."

The helper had been watering and feeding the oxen during the break and he nodded at Mike and

Herzer as they walked up.

"Harry, this is Herzer Herrick," Mike said. "Herzer this is Harry Wilson. He's got a small farm

down the river."

"I've heard of you," Harry replied, wiping his hand and shaking Herzer's.

"I'm taking Herzer up to the house. Go ahead and use the basket on the reaper, then cross-fill. I'll

be back in a while."

"Okay," Harry said, getting on the reaper and clucking the oxen into motion.

"Slower that way, but it'll get some of the field done," Mike said.

"You want a ride up to the house?" Herzer asked, gesturing at the horse.

"I can walk," Mike replied gruffly.

They strode up the side road towards a distant hill, passing through a screen of trees that was

apparently kept as a windbreak. On both sides of the road, before and after the trees, there were fields.

Some of them were ready for harvesting, in grain and corn, others had plants that were not quite ready

for harvest and a few were apparently fallow. The latter were covered in an odd golden plant that

looked like a weed.

"Cover clover," Mike said at a gesture from Herzer. "Very good for fixing nitrogen and it forms a

'standing hay' that horses and cattle can eat in the winter." He gestured to one of the fields where low

bushes were covered in purple-green berries. "Olive bushes. I'm hoping to get a good crop of olives off

them."

"I thought olives grew on trees," Herzer said, fingering the eagle emblem at his throat. In the left

talon it held a bundle of arrows and in the right an olive branch. The eagle's screaming beak was pointed

to the left.

"They do. And the trees take decades, centuries really, to grow to maturity," Mike said with a

shrug. "These grow in a season and you can get more olives per acre than with trees."

"Seems like cheating," Herzer grumbled. "You know why the olive is the symbol of peace?"

"No."

"Because it takes so long for the trees to grow. If you have olive trees it shows that armies haven't

fought over the land in a long time. Take away the long maturity and what does it mean? Nada."

"Great, but I'm getting fifty chits a barrel for mature olives," Mike said, with apparent grumpiness.

"And I can get two crops a year off the bushes. Even with the cost of field hands and preparation I'm

getting ten- or elevenfold profits per season. So you can take your philosophical objections and stuff

them."

Herzer laughed and pointed to a group of trees on the back side of the olive field. They were short

and had broad glossy leaves that were a dark, rich green.

"Rubber plants," Mike replied. "I'm trying them out. They're supposed to be freeze resistant and

fast growing. They grow fast, that's for sure, but this is the first winter they've been out so we'll see how

they do."

There was more. Growing fruit and nut orchards, stands of hay, partially cleared fields with cattle

on them. Herzer pointed to the latter in question.

"I got together with some other farmers and we rounded up more ferals last year," Mike said as

they passed the last field. "That's where I got the oxen, too. And you've never lived until you've tried to

turn a feral bull into a plow-ox."

Herzer laughed again as they came in sight of the house. It was a low, log structure, rough in

appearance but sturdy and well made. The barn to the side of it was much larger and made of a

combination of logs and sawn wood. There were two or three other outbuildings as well.

"Leave it to you to have a better barn than you do a house," Herzer chuckled.

"That's what Courtney keeps saying," Mike replied. "But we're not made of money."

The woman in question came out the door as Herzer was loosening Diablo's saddle. She was a

short, buxom woman with fiery red hair and an open, smiling face. Having watched her negotiate, Herzer

was well aware that that heart-shaped face masked a mind like a razor, but he was fairly sure the smile

in this case was genuine.

"Herzer," she yelled, pulling her skirts away from the child at her side and running to the hitching

post. "Where did you come from?"

"Harzburg," he said, picking her up and kissing her on the cheek. As he did he noticed a decided

roundness to her abdomen. "Got another one in the oven?"

"Yes," she said with a tone of asperity. "This will make three."

"Three?" he asked then nodded. "I hadn't realized I'd been gone that long."

"Little Daneh is in the crib," she said, gesturing at the child that was still hiding by the door. "Mikey,

come here. This is our friend Herzer."

The boy shook his head and then, as her face clouded up, darted in through the door.

"I doubt he's used to strangers in armor at his door," Herzer said then frowned. "I hope he doesn't

get familiar with strangers in armor at his door."

"Trouble?" Mike asked.

"Not down here that I've heard," Herzer said. He finished loosening Diablo's saddle and lifted all

the gear off, then led the horse to the trough and tied him off. "That was why I was up in Harzburg.

Tarson had been taken over by a band of brigands, for want of a better term. They had been raiding

Harzburg and the city fathers requested federal help. They got me."

"That must have been a pleasure for them," Mike said with a chuckle.

"Yeah, they'd requested a century of Blood Lords, as if wehave a century of trained Blood Lords

to send. And they had a militia but they'd never founded a local Blood Lord chapter. Or even sent

anyone to the Academy. So I got to go whip them into shape." Herzer laid his saddle, tack and blanket

on a railing, then grabbed the rest with his hook and slung it over his shoulder. "Lead on, Macduff!"

"How'd it go?" Courtney asked as they went in the house. She brought over a flagon and set it on

the table, then laid out cold pork, cheese and bread.

"Thank you," Herzer said, taking a slice of the cheese. It was sharp and tangy and went well with a

slice of the cold pork. "I'd thought about eating on the road but I figured I'd stop by and you might be

willing to feed me something other than monkey on a stick."

"Not a problem." She smiled, nibbling at the cheese herself. "And I repeat, how'd it go?"

"Well, it was a little sticky to start," Herzer admitted. "They'd expected someone . . . older."

Mike chuckled and shook his head. "You've got the silver sword and the laurel of valor."

"Which meant just about nothing to most of them," Herzer said around a mouthful of cheese and

bread. "So I just worked at it until they realized they could do it my way or die. I made it pretty clear I

didn't care which. The Tarsons finally attacked the town, where we wiped out most of their fighters, then

more or less walked in and took Tarson over. The leader of them had set up a 'citadel' made of a

free-standing stockade and a couple of log blockhouses. They burned quite nicely with the application of

a little tallow and brush." He frowned at the memory, then shook his head.

"You make it sound easy," Mike said.

"Easy. Yeah. Only took me a year and a half." Herzer shook his head again and took another bite

of the pork. "Nice. So what's been happening around here?"

"It's been quiet, thank God," Courtney replied. "We had a petroleum prospecting party through

here.""I've heard about that," Herzer said. "They sold some processed product to the Academy and

we've been experimenting with it."

"Doing what?" Courtney asked.

"Well, it burns a treat," Herzer said, grimly. "Useful if we can figure out a way to get the burning

stuff overthere where the bad guys are," he continued, pointing in a random direction. "There's a device

called a flamethrower that we're working on. If we perfect it we're going to have to figure out a new way

to fight because it's going to make tight formations suicidal, especially wearing armor."

"Ouch!" Courtney said. She shook her head and changed the subject. "The town's pretty much

stopped growing. Hotrum's Ferry has been drawing off a lot of people. We're starting to sell a lot of

produce down the river."

"Getting good prices for it, too," Mike said. "They can ship it up river to the dwarf mines from there

more easily than we can truck it from Raven's Mill."

"I hope they've got decent defenses," Herzer said. "Paul's going to make a grab for Norau sooner

or later."

"Well, that's their beef," Mike replied. "Were the Tarson brigands working for Paul?"

"We never were sure," Herzer replied. "If I had to guess I'd say yes. Paul and Chansa have got

their fingers in a lot of the pies that are causing us trouble."

"But it's settled now?" Courtney asked.

"As far as I can tell." Herzer shrugged. "The people of Tarson are certainly on the side of light.

Harzburg . . . you can burn the place to the ground for all I give a damn."

"So are you staying the night?" she pressed.

"No, unfortunately," the soldier said with a sigh. "My orders were to report 'without delay.' So I'm

going to have to head into town pretty soon. But I figured I could take enough time to stop by and have

some real food at least." He grinned and carved off another slice of the pork. "You're both looking

good. The farm is looking good. I'm glad." He chewed on the pork with a thoughtful and sad expression

for a moment, then smiled again. "Life could be a hell of a lot worse."

"Herzer, tell Duke Edmund that he'd better let you get some rest or he'll be talking tome ,"

Courtney said dangerously. "And you had bettertake it, Herzer Herrick."

"I will," Herzer replied, looking around at the low room. It was clean andhomey in a way that

nothing in his life had been in a long time. It was like a slice of some peaceful place that he was afraid he

would be shut out of for all eternity.

"I've got to get going," he said after a bit. "Thanks for lunch. Hopefully we'll be able to get together

some while I'm around."

"We'll do that," Courtney said with a smile. "We'll make an event of it."

Herzer grabbed his gear and headed back out to the horse. Diablo looked at him balefully when

the gear started going on but the horse sat quietly as Herzer saddled up and loaded item after item.

"Is all that necessary?" Courtney asked.

"Not really," Herzer said. "I suppose there are things that I could pick up along the way. But I like

the tools that I have."

Finally he was saddled up and gave Courtney a hug and shook Mike's hand.

"See you in town," Herzer said, mounting the horse with a grunt. Diablo sighed and shook himself,

not so much telling Herzer to get off as settling hisown gear to his satisfaction.

"We'll take care of your farm until it's time to come home," Courtney said. "You just come back,

okay?"

"Home," Herzer said, shaking his head. "What an interesting abstract notion." He smiled and waved

as he trotted back down the road.

CHAPTER TWO

Herzer turned left and headed south when he reached the road, then quickly moved Diablo to the

side as a dispatch rider came trotting from the direction of town. The rider, who was a private in the

Federal Army by the look of it, gave him a glance then a salute as he passed. Herzer returned the salute

abstractedly, concentrating on a problem.

At the time of the Fall, world population had been just about one billion. The aftermath of the Fall

had not seen as much die off as anticipated, mostly because of small towns like Raven's Mill. But the

effectively total loss of technology had created enormous implications that were just beginning to sink in.

The one that was near and dear to his heart was military manpower. The military technology available

was pregunpowder because of the explosive prohibitions still slavishly followed by Mother. Historical

battles in pregunpowder days meant that each side had a near parity of forces. But raising large armies

was practically out; there was too great a labor shortage. Conscripting large groups meant that

something vital simply wouldn't occur; farming, manufacturing, something was going to fail.

Thus it was up to relatively small handfuls of soldiers to protect civilization from the barbarians.

And to protect the new and faltering United Free States from the various feudal warlords and the

technological despotism of New Destiny.

Like a ship captain of old, Herzer lusted for more men, more soldiers. Too many times he had had

to fight in battles outnumbered. Mike would make a superlative soldier but heneeded to be right where

he was, farming.

Some of the pressure was relieved by new/old technology. The harvesting that Mike was engaged

in would have been done by a team of six, at least, in preindustrial times. Powered looms, Bessemer

forges, meant that there were fewer people producing more per person. But even with the productivity

increase there weren't enough workers for all the potential positions. Which meant fewer soldiers as well.

It was an insoluble problem, but one that Herzer wrestled with constantly. The dispatch rider, for

example, was supported by way stations in the controlled areas of Overjay. Each of the way stations

had to be manned, and what's more had to have horses at it. Figuring out a better means of

communication would mean freeing up all of those people, and horses, for soldiers. Which might have

meant sending more than one barely trained lieutenant to Harzburg and ending the problem in a week

instead of a year and a half.

These musings carried him through the fields on the way to town and up to the gates. Most of the

fields had been cleared before he left but he saw new orchards on the hillsides as well as new

outbuildings. The town, whatever Courtney might think, continued to build.

There was work going on at the top of the hills north of town as well but it was more martial in

nature. A wooden gate was under construction and a stockade stretched up the hill to the Academy on

the right. On the left the stockade had been torn down and a bed of gravel followed the track of the top

of the hill.

"Lieutenant Herrick," the team leader of the gate guards said, nodding his head.

"The duke's pushing ahead on the curtain walls?" Herzer asked, nodding at the gravel that was

being dropped by ox carts then leveled out by prisoners. More than a few of the prisoners were

Changed, taken in the brief foray by Dionys McCanoc against the town. They were, as far as anyone

could tell, normal people who had been caught up by McCanoc and converted, against their wills, into

soldiers for him.

The actions of the raiders even before their attack on the town had been such that life sentences

had been handed down for all of them. There was, however, a good bit of sentiment suggesting that at

some point the "normal" humans might be rehabilitated. The Changed, however, short of being Changed

"back," were subject to no such sympathy. Generalized sympathy for what had occurred to them, yes,

but not direct sympathy for their plight because they were as vicious as a pack of oversized weasels.

They were incredibly strong, short, and brutish in appearance and had the personalities of rabid pit bulls.

They had been christened "orcs" on first sight and the name had stuck.

Whenever Herzer, personally, felt sorry for them he just watched a group of them, like this one,

working, and got over it. They were unwilling to work except under threat of immediate punishment and

even then spent more time fighting among themselves than working. Slowly, over the last couple of

years, their numbers had been reduced through one accident or murder or another until it looked like

clemency might be unnecessary; in another couple of years they'd have killed each other off.

In a way the use that the prisoners were put to was a shame; they'd make decent sword fodder.

For that matter, the Changed were apparently New Destiny's idea of what made good soldiers. Which

just showed that New Destiny had its head firmly up its ass. They were tough and aggressive but they

John Ringo - Emerald Sea

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