David Drake - General 06 - The Chosen

The Chosen

Table of Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHARTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

EPILOGUE

MAPS

THE CHOSEN

S.M. Stirling and

David Drake

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

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resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

ISBN: 0-671-87724-0

Cover art by Stephen Hickman

First printing, July 1996

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Typeset by Windhaven Press: Editorial Services, Auburn, NH

Printed in the United States of America

To Jan, with love.

And to Steve's dad, who did a good job.

GET USED TO IT . . .

Jackboots walked over the kitchen floor above Jeffrey and Lucretzia, making the planking creak and

sending little trickles of dust down into the cellar. To Jeffrey, the dark basement slowly took on a flat,

silvery tone as Center boosted his perceptions.

The voice of Raj echoed in Jeffrey's mind:to the right of the door.

Jeffrey's hand reached out to the knob, moving with an automatic precision that seemed detached and

slow. He jerked it backward, and the Land soldier stumbled through. A grid dropped down over his

sight, outlining the enemy. A green dot appeared right under the angle of the man's jaw. His finger

stroked the trigger, squeezing.

Crack.The soldier's head snapped sideways as if he'd been kicked by a horse. Jeffrey was turning,

turning, the pistol coming up. The second soldier was leveling her rifle, but the green dot settled on her

throat.

Crack.The woman fell back and writhed, blood spraying. The soldier behind her was jumping back, out

of sight, almost, but the green dot settled on his leg.

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Crack.A scream, as the third soldier tumbled out of sight. The grid outlined a prone figure against the

planks of the entranceway, and an aiming point strobed. Jeffrey squeezed the trigger four times. But there

was one more soldier, and the bark of the rifle was much deeper than Jeffrey's pistol. The

nickel-jacketed bullet ricocheted, whining around the stones of the cellar like a giant lethal wasp.

Jeffrey tumbled back down the stairs, snapping open the cylinder of his revolver and shaking out the

spent brass.

"Christ," Jeffrey muttered, staggering.I just killed four human beings.

this is what the world will be, for the rest of your life, Center said.

CHAPTER ONE

Visager

1221 A.F. (After the Fall)

305 Y.O. (Year of the Oath)

Commodore Maurice Farr lifted the uniform cap from his head and wiped at the sweat on his forehead

with a handkerchief. He was standing on the liner docks on the north shore of Oathtaking's superb

C-shaped harbor. Behind him were the broad quiet streets of Old Town, running out from Monument

Square behind his back. There the bronze figures of the Founders stood, raised weapons in their

hands—the cutlasses and flintlocks common three centuries ago. The Empire-Alliance war had ended an

overwhelming Imperial victory. The first thing the Alliance refugees had done was swear a solemn oath of

vengeance against those who'd broken their ambitions and slaughtered ever yone of their fellows who

hadn't fled the mainland.

After three years in the Land of the Chosen as a naval attaché, Farr was certain of two things: their

descendants still meant it, and they'd extended the future field of attack from the Empire to everyone else

on the planet Visager. Perhaps to the entire universe.

West and south around the bay ran the modern city of Oathtaking, built of black basalt and gray tufa

from the quarries nearby. Rail sidings, shipyards, steel mills, factories, warehouses, the endless tenement

blocks that housed the Protégé laborers. A cluster of huge buildings marked the commercial center; six

and even eight stories tall, their girder frames sheathed in granite carved in the severe columnar style of

Chosen architecture. A pall of coal smoke lay over most of the town below the leafy suburbs on the hill

slopes, giving the hot tropical air a sulfurous taste. A racket of shod hooves sounded on stone-block

pavement, the squeal of iron on iron and a hiss of steam, the hoot of factory sirens. Ships thronged the

docks and harbor, everything from old-fashioned windjammers in with cargoes of grain from the Empire

to modern steel-hulled steamers of Land or Republic build.

Out in the middle of the harbor a circle of islands linked by causeways marked the site of an ancient

caldera and the modern navy basin. Near it moved the low hulking gray shape of a battlewagon, spewing

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black smoke from its stacks. His mind categorized it automatically:Ezerherzog Grukin , name-ship of

her class, launched last year. Twelve thousand tons displacement, four 250-mm rifles in twin turrets fore

and aft, eight 175mm in four twin-tube wing turrets, eight 155mm in barbette mounts on either side,

200mm main belt, face-hardened alloy steel. Four-stacker with triple expansion engines, eighteen

thousand horsepower, eighteen knots.

The biggest, baddest thing on the water, or at least it would be until the Republic launched its first of the

Democrat -class in eighteen months.

Farr shook his head.Enough. You're going home. He raised his eyes.

Snow-capped volcanoes ringed the port city of Oathtaking on three sides. They reared into the hazy

tropical air like perfect cones, their bases overlapping in a tangle of valleys and folds coated with rain

forest like dark-green velvet. Below the forest were terraced fields; Farr remembered riding among them.

Dusty gravel-surfaced lanes between rows of eucalyptus and flamboyants. A little cooler than down here

on the docks; a little less humid. Certainly better smelling than the oily waters of the harbor. Pretty, in a

way, the glossy green of the coffee bushes and the orange orchards. He'd gone up there a couple of

times, invited up to the manors of family estates by Chosen navy types eager to get to know the

Republic's naval attaché. Not bad oscos, some of them; good sailors, terrible spies, and given to asking

questions that revealed much more than they intended.

Also, that meant he got a travel pass for the Oathtaking District. There were some spots where a good

pair of binoculars could get you a glimpse at the base if you were quick and discreet. Nothing

earthshaking, just what was in port and what was in drydock and what was building on the slipways.

Confirming what Intelligence got out of its contacts among the Protégé workers in the shipyard. That was

how you built up a picture of capabilities, bit by bit. He'd been here three years now, he'd done a pretty

good job—gotten the specs on the steam-turbine experiments—and it was time to go home.

For more reasons than one. He dropped his eyes to the man and woman talking not far away.

* * *

What did I ever see in him? Sally Hosten thought.

Her husband—soon to be ex-husband—stood at parade rest, hands clasped behind his back. Karl

Hosten was a tall man even for one of the Chosen, broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted, as trim at

thirty-five as he had been twelve years ago when they married. His face was square and so deeply

tanned that the turquoise-blue eyes glowed like jewels by contrast; his cropped hair was white-blond. He

wore undress uniform: gray shorts and short-sleeved tunic and gunbelt.

"This parting is not of my will," he said in crisp Chosen-accented Landisch.

"No, it's mine," Sally agreed, in English.

She'd spoken Landisch for a long time, her voice had been a little rusty when she went to the Santander

embassy to see about getting her Republican citizenship back. She'd met Maurice there. And she didn't

intend to speak Karl's language again, if she could help it.

"Will you not reconsider?" he said.

Twelve years together had made it easy for her to read the emotions behind a Chosen mask-face. The

sorrow she sensed put a bubble of anger at the back of her mouth, hard and bitter.

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"Will you give John back his children?" she said.

A brief glance aside showed that her son John wasn't nearby anymore. Where . . . twenty feet or so,

bending over a cargo net with another boy of about the same twelve years. Jeffrey Farr, Maurice's son.

Karl Hosten stiffened and ran a hand over his stubbled scalp. "The law is the law; genetic defects must

be—"

"A clubfoot is not a genetic defect!" Sally said with quiet deadliness. "It's a result of carriage during

pregnancy"—a spear of guilt stabbed her—"which can be, was, corrected surgically. And you didn't

eventell me you were having him sterilized in the delivery room. I didn't find out until he was eleven years

old!"

"Would you have been happier if you knew? Would he?"

"How happy would he be when he found out he couldn't be Chosen?"

Karl swallowed and looked very slightly away.He is my son too, he didn't say. Aloud: "There are many

fine careers open to Probationers-Emeritus. Johan is an intelligent boy. The University—"

"As aWashout ," Sally said, using the cruel slang term for those who failed the exacting Trial of Life at

eighteen after being born to or selected for the training system. It was far better than Protégé status,

anything was, but in the Land of the Chosen . . .

"We've had this conversation too many times," she said.

Karl sighed. "Correct. Let us get this over with."

She looked around. "John!"

* * *

John Hosten felt prickly, as if his own skin were too tight and belonged to somebody else. Everyone had

been too quiet in the steamcar, after they picked him up at the school. He'd already said good-bye to his

friends—he didn't have many—and packed. Vulf, his dog, was already on board the ship.

I don't want to listen to them fight,he thought, and began drifting away from his mother and father.

That put him near another boy about his own age. John's eyes slid back to him, curiosity driving his

misery away a little. The stranger was skinny and tall, red-haired and freckled. His hair was oddly cut,

short at the sides and floppy on top, combed—a foreigner's style, different from both the Chosen crop

and the bowl-cut of a Proti. He wore a thin fabric pullover printed inbizarre colorful patterns, baggy

shorts, laced shoes with rubber soles, and a ridiculous looking billed cap.

"Hi," he said, holding out a hand. Then: "Ah,guddag. "

"I speak English," John said, shaking with the brief hard clamp of the Land. English and Imperial were

compulsory subjects at school, and he'd practiced with his mother.

The other boy flexed his fingers. "Better'n I speak Landisch," he said, grinning. "I'm Jeffrey Farr. That's

my dad over there."

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He nodded towards a tall slender man in a white uniform who was standing a careful twenty meters from

the Hosten party. John recognized the uniform from familiarization lectures and slides: Republic of

Santander Navy, officer's lightweight summer garrison version. It must be Captain Farr, the officer Mom

had been seeing at the consulate about the citizenship stuff.

I wish she'd tell me the truth. I'm not a little kid or an idiot,he thought. That wasn't the only reason

she was talking to Maurice Farr so much. "John Hosten, Probationer-hereditary," he replied aloud.

A Probationer-hereditary was born to the Chosen and automatically entitled to the training and the Test

of Life; only a few children of Protégés were adopted into the course. Then he flushed. He wasn't going

to be a Probationer long, and he could never have passed the Test, not the genetic portions. Not with his

foot. He couldn't be anything but a Washout, second-class citizen.

"You don't have to worry about all that crap any more," Jeffrey said cheerfully, jerking a thumb over his

shoulder at the linerPride of Bosson. "We're all going back to civilization."

The flag that fluttered from her signal mast had a blue triangle in the left field with fifteen white stars, and

two broad stripes of red and white to the right. The Republic of Santander's banner.

John opened his mouth in automatic reflex to defend the Land, then closed it again. He was going to

Santander himself. To live.

"Ya, we're going," he said. They both looked over towards their parents. "Your mother?"

"She died when I was a baby," Jeffrey said.

There was a crash behind them. The boys turned, both relieved at the distraction. One of the steam

cranes on theBosson 's deck had slipped a gear while unloading a final cargo net on the dock. The

Protégé foreman of the docker gang went white under his tan—he'd be held responsible—and turned to

yell insults and complaints up at the liner's deck, shaking his fist. Then he turned and whipped his

lead-weighted truncheon across the side of one docker's head. There was a sound like a melon dropping

on pavement; the docker's face seemed to distort like a rubber mask. He fell to the cracked uneven

pavement with a limp finality, as if someone had cut all his tendons.

"Shit," Jeffrey whispered.

The foreman made an angry gesture with his baton, and two of the dockers took their injured fellow by

the arms and dragged him off towards a warehouse. His head was rolled back, eyes disappeared in the

whites, bubbles of blood whistling out of his nose. The foreman turned back to the ship and called up to

the seamen on the railing, calling for an officer. They looked back at him for a moment, then one silently

turned away and walked towards the nearest hatch . . . slowly.

The gang instantly squatted on their heels when the foreman's attention went elsewhere. A few lit up

stubs of cigarette; John could smell the musky scent of hemp mingled with the tobacco. A few smirked at

the foreman's back, but most were expressionless in a different way from Chosen, their faces blank and

doughy under sweat and stubble. They were wearing cotton overalls with broad arrows on them,

labor-camp inmates' clothing.

"Hey, that crate's busted," Jeffrey said.

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John looked. One wood-and-iron box about three meters on a side had sprung along its top. The

stencils on the side readMuseum of History and Naturel Copernik. He felt a stir of curiosity. Copernik

was capital of the Land, and the Museum was more than a storehouse; it was the primary research center

of the most advanced nation on Visager. He'd had daydreams of working there himself, of finally figuring

out some of the mysterious artifacts of the Ancestors, the star-spanning colonizers from Earth. The

Federation had fallen over a thousand years ago—it was 1221 A.F. right now—and nobody could

understand the enigmatic constructs of ceramic and unknown metals. Not even now, despite the way

technology had been advancing in the past hundred years. They were as incomprehensible as a steam

engine or a dirigible would be to one of the arctic savages.

"What's inside?" he said eagerly.

"C'mon, let's take a look."

The laborers ignored them; John was in a Probationer's school uniform, and Jeffrey was an obvious

foreigner—an upper-class boy could go where he pleased, and the Fourth Bureau would be lethally

interested if they heard of Protégés talking to anauzlander. Even in the camps, there was always

someplace worse. The foreman was still trading cusswords with the liner's petty officer.

John grabbed at the heavy Abaca hemp of the net and climbed; it was easy, compared to the obstacle

courses at school. Jeffrey followed in an awkward scramble, all elbows and knees.

"It's just a rock," he said in disappointment, peering through the sprung panels.

"No, it's a meteorite," John said.

The lumpy rock was about a meter across, suspended in an elastic cradle in the center of the crate. It

hadn't taken any damage when the net dropped—unlike a keg of brandy, which they could smell

leaking—but then, from the slagged and pitted appearance, it had survived an incandescent journey

through the atmosphere. John was surprised that it was being sent to the museum; meteorites were

common. You saw dozens in the sky, any night. There must be something unusual about this one, maybe

its chemical composition. He reached through and touched it.

"Sort of cold," he said. Not quite icy, but not natural, either. "Feel it."

Jeffrey stretched a long thin arm through the crack. "Yeah, like—"

The universe vanished.

* * *

Sally looked over her shoulder. Wherewas John? Then she saw him, scrambling over the cargo net with

another boy. With Maurice's son. She opened her mouth to call them back, then closed it.It's important

that they get along. Maurice hadn't made a formal proposal yet, but . . . She turned back.

Karl had his witnesses to either side: his legal children, Heinrich and Gerta, adopted in the fashion of the

Chosen. Heinrich was the son of a friend who'd died in an expedition to the Far West Islands; they were

dangerous, and the seas between, with their abundant and vicious native life, even more so. The other

had been born to Protégé laborers on the Hosten estates and christened Gitana. Karl had sponsored her;

she was a bright active youngster and her parents were John's nurse and attendant valet/bodyguard

respectively.

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Maria and Angelo stood at a respectful distance; their daughter ignored them. Ex-daughter; no Chosen

were as strict as those Chosen from Protégé ranks. She was Gerta Hosten now, not Gitana Pesalozi.

A Chosen attorney exchanged papers with the plump little Santander consul, then turned to Sarah.

"Sarah Hosten, née Kingman, do you hereby irrevocably renounce connubial ties with Karl Hosten,

Chosen of the Land?"

"I do."

"Karl Hosten, do you acknowledge this renunciation?"

"I do."

"Do you also acknowledge Sarah Hosten as bearing full parental rights to John Hosten, issue of this

union?"

"Excepting that John Hosten may continue to claim my name if he wishes, I do." Karl swallowed, but his

face might have been carved from the basalt of the volcanoes.

"Heinrich Hosten, Gerta Hosten, Probationers-adoptee of the line of Hosten, do you witness?"

"We do."

"All parties will now sign, fingerprint and list theirgeburtsnumero on this document."

Sally complied, although unlike anyone born in the Land of the Chosen she didn't have a birth-number

tattooed on her right shoulderblade and memorized like her name. The ink from the fingerprinting stained

her handkerchief as she wiped her hands.

The consul stepped forward. "Sarah Jennings Kingman, as representative of the Republic of Santander, I

hereby officially certify that your lapsed citizenship in the Republic is fully restored with all rights and

duties appertaining thereunto; and that your son John Hosten as issue of your body is accordingly entitled

to Santander citizenship also. . . . Where is the boy?"

* * *

The universe vanished. John found himself in a . . . place. It seemed to be the inside of a perfectly

reflective sphere, like being inside a bubble made of mirror glass. He tried to scream.

Nothing happened. That was when he realized that he had no throat, and no mouth. No body.

No body no body nobodynobody—

The hysteria damped down suddenly, as if he'd been slipped a tranquilizer. Then he became conscious

of weight, breath,himself. For a moment he wanted to weep with relief.

"Excuse me," a voice said behind him.

He turned, and the mirrored sphere had vanished. Instead he saw a room. The furnishings were familiar,

andwrong. A fireplace, rugs, deep armchairs, books, table, decanters, but none of them quite as he

remembered. A man was standing by a table, in uniform, but none he knew: baggy maroon pants, a blue

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swallowtail jacket, a belt with a saber; a pistol was thrown on the table beside the glasses. He was dark,

darker than a tan could be, with short very black hair and gray eyes. A tall man, standing like a soldier.

"Where . . . what . . ." John began.

"Attention!" the man said.

"Sir!" John barked, bracing. Six years of Probationer schooling had made that a reflex.

"At ease, son," the dark man said, and smiled. "Just helping you get a grip on yourself. First, don't worry.

This is real"—he gestured around at the room—"but it isn't physical. You're still touching the meteorite in

the crate. Virtually no time is passing in the . . . the outside world. When we've finished talking, you'll be

back on the dock and none the worse for wear."

"Am I crazy?" John blurted.

"No. You've just had something very strange happen." The smile grew wry. "Pretty much the same thing

happened to me, lad. A long time ago, when I wasn't all that much older than you are now. Sit."

John sank gingerly into one of the chairs. It was comfortable, old leather that sighed under his weight. He

sat with his feet on the floor and his hands on the arms of the chair.

"My name's Raj Whitehall, by the way. And this"—he waved a hand at the room—"is Center. A

computer."

Despite the terror that boiled somewhere at the back of his mind, John shaped a silent whistle. "A

computer ? Like the Ancestors had, the Federation? I've read alot about them, sir."

Raj Whitehall chuckled. "Well, that's a good start. My people thought they were angels. Yes, Center's a

holdover from the First Federation. Military computer, Command and Control type. Don't ask me any of

the details. Where I was brought up, experts understood steam engines, a little. Look there."

John turned his head to look at the mirrored surface. Instead, he was staring out into a landscape. It

wasn't a picture; there was depth and texture to it. Subtly different from anything he'd ever seen, the

moons in the faded blue sky were the wrong size and number, the sunlight was a different shade. It cast

black shadows across eroded gullies in cream-white silt. Out of the badlands came a column of men in

uniforms like Raj's. They were riding, but not on horses. Ondogs , giant dogs five feet high at the

shoulder. They looked a lot like Vulf, except their legs were thicker in proportion. John whistled again,

this time aloud.

The column of men went by, and a clumsy-looking field gun pulled by six more of the giant dogs. Then

Raj Whitehall pulled up his . . . well, his giant hound. A woman rode beside him, not in uniform. Her face

was dusty and streaked with sweat, and beautiful. Slanted green eyes glowed out of it.

The vision faded, back to the absolutely perfect mirror. John looked back to Raj. "Where was that?" he

said. Then, slowly: "When was that?"

Raj nodded, leaning his hips back against the table and crossing his arms. "That was Bellevue, the planet

where I was born. About a hundred and fifty years ago."

"You're . . . a ghost?"

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"A ghost in a machine. A recording that thinks its a man. It's a convincing illusion, even to me."

John sat silently for what felt like a minute. "Why are you talking to me?"

"Good lad," Raj said. John felt an obscure jolt of pride at the praise. Raj went on. "Now, listen carefully.

You know how the Federation collapsed?"

John nodded. Visager had preserved the records; he'd seen them in school. Expansion from Earth, then

rivalries and civil war. Civil war that continued until the Tanaki Nets were destroyed and interstellar travel

cut off, and then on Visager itself until civilization was thoroughly smashed. After that a long process of

rebirth, slow and painful.

"That happened all over the human-settled galaxy. On Bellevue, the collapse was even worse than here.

Center was left in the rubble underneath the planetary governor's mansion. Center waited a long, long

time for the time to be right. More than a thousand years; then it found me. Bellevue's problem was

internal division. We were set to slag ourselves down again, this time right back to stone hatchets, all the

more surely because we were doing it with rifles and not nukes. I was a soldier, an officer. With Center's

help—and some very brave men—I reunited the planet. Bellevue's the capital of the Second Federation,

now."

"You want me tounite Visager ?" John felt his mouth drop open. "Me?" His voice broke

embarrassingly, the way it had taken to doing lately, and he flushed.

Raj shook his head. "Not exactly. More toprevent it being unified, at least by the wrong people." He

leaned forward slightly. "Tell me honestly, John. What do you think of the Chosen?"

John opened his mouth, then closed it. Memories flickered through his mind; ending with the blank,

caved-in faces of the dockers as the unconscious man was carried away.

"Honestly, sir—not much. Mom doesn't, either. I tried talking to Dad about it once, but . . ." He

shrugged and looked away.

Raj nodded. "Center can foresee things. Notthe future always, but what will probably happen, and how

probable it is. Don't ask me to explain it—I've had three lifetimes, and I still can't understand it. But I

know it works."

maintenance of your personality matrix is incompatible with the modifications necessary to

comprehend stochastic analysis.

John started and put his hands to his ears. The voice had come from everywhere and nowhere. It felt

heavy , somehow, as if the words held a greater freight of meaning than any he'd ever heard. The sound

of them in his head had been entirely flat and even, but there were undertones that resonated like a

guitar's strings after the player's fingers left them. The voice felt . . . sad.

"Center means that if I was changed that much, I wouldn't be me," Raj said.

john hosten, the ancient, impersonal voice said, in the absence of exterior intervention, there is a 51%

probability ±6%, that the chosen will establish complete dominance of visager within 34 years. observe.

John looked toward the mirrored wall.

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David Drake - General 06 - The Chosen

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