Jerry Pournelle - Falkenberg's Legion 2 - Falkenberg's Legio

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Falkenberg’s Legion

Jerry Pournelle

1990

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A great start to a great series, August 11, 2001

Reviewer:

This book is the first of four novels, the next three being Prince of Sparta, Go Tell The

Spartans, and Prince Of Mercenaries. When I finished reading the series I remembered a

reviewer's comment about H. Beam Piper's classic book Space Viking. "First you read it for the

story, then you read it for the characters, then you read it to see how a civilization dies, then you

read it to see how a civilization is born." This is a ripping good yarn. Unlike many writers who do

military Science Fiction Jerry Pournelle has been there, done that. The battle scenes have the ring

of authenticity. The details of conventional and unconventional warfare are presented well and

realistically. This is not a great literary classic that will be taught in English LIt classes, but the

characters are well thought out and well written for an action adventure novel. By the way, did

anyone else catch the similarities between Skilly and Two Knife and Modesty Blaise and Willie

Garvin in the Modesty Blaise stories by Peter O'Donnell? The fall of the CoDominion and what

is left of a stagnant Terran civilization is written in a manner that is disturbingly dark and

realistic. This is a world that might have been. Jerry Pournele's vision of military adventures in

the twilight of empire owes much to history. The notorious stadium massacre on Hadley is based

on the Nike riots in Byzantium. If you want a really good description of what happened in

Byzantium read David Drake's intro to his book Caught In The Crossfire, That's one of the best

descriptions I've run across. In his novel Jerry fleshes out the bare facts with some political

analysis which sheds some light on what may have led to the riots in Byzantium. I've always been

suspicious of the official historical accounts. Finally this series shows how a civilization can rise

out of the ashes of a dying one. The fears, hopes, actions, and motivations of the characters are

well fleshed out. They aren't two dimensional cardboard figures. Even the antagonists have good

reasons for what they do. These are people who literally have their world dying about them. All

in all I recommend this series. It's a great read.

Chronology

Prologue

PART ONE: - THE CODOMINIUM YEARS

III

VII

VIII

XII

XIII

XIV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

PART TWO - MERCENARY

Chronology

1969 Neil Armstrong sets foot on Earth's Moon.

1990-2000 Series of treaties between U.S. and Soviet Union creates the CoDominium.

Military research and development outlawed.

1995 Nationalist movements intensify.

1996 French Foreign Legion forms the basic element of the CoDominium Armed

Services.

2004 Alderson Drive perfected at Cal Tech.

2008 First Alderson Drive exploratory ships leave the Solar System.

2010-2100 CoDominium Intelligence Services engage in serious effort to suppress all research

into technologies with military applications. They are aided by zero-growth organizations. Most

scientific research ceases.

2010 Inhabitable planets discovered. Commercial exploitation begins.

2020 First interstellar colonies are founded. The CoDominium Space Navy and Marines

are created, absorbing the original CoDominium Armed Services.

2020 Great Exodus period of colonization begins. First colonists are dissidents,

malcontents, and voluntary adventurers.

2030 Sergei Lermontov is born in Moscow.

2040 Bureau of Relocations begins mass outsystem shipment of involuntary colonists.

2043 John Christian Falkenberg II is born in Rome, Italy.

2060 Nationalistic revival movements continue.

Prologue

An oily, acrid smell assaulted him, and the noise was incessant. Hundreds of thousands had

passed through the spaceport. Their odor floated through the embarcation hall to blend with the

yammer of the current victims crammed into the enclosure.

The room was long and narrow. White painted concrete walls shut out bright Florida sunshine;

but the walls were dingy with film and dirt that had been smeared about and not removed by the

Bureau of Relocation's convict laborers. Cold luminescent panels glowed brightly above.

The smell and sounds and glare blended with his own fears. He didn't belong here, but no one

would listen. No one wanted to. Anything he said was lost in the brutal totality of shouted orders,

growls of surly trustee guards in their wire pen running the full length of the long hall; screaming

children; the buzz of frightened humanity.

They marched onward, toward the ship that would take them out of the solar system and

toward an unknown fate. A few colonists blustered and argued. Some suppressed rage until it

might be of use. Most were ashen-faced, shuffling forward without visible emotion, beyond fear.

There were red lines painted on the concrete floor, and the colonists stayed carefully inside

them. Even the children had learned to cooperate with BuRelock's guards. The colonists had a

sameness about them: shabbily dressed in Welfare Issue clothing mixed with finery cast off by

taxpayers and gleaned from Reclamation Stores or by begging or from a Welfare District

Mission.

John Christian Falkenberg knew he didn't look much like a typical colonist. He was a gangling

youth, already at fifteen approaching six feet in height and thin because he hadn't yet filled out to

his latest spurt of growth. No one would take him for a man, no matter how hard he tried to act

like one.

A forelock of sand-colored hair fell across his forehead and threatened to blind him, and he

automatically brushed it aside with a nervous gesture. His bearing and posture set him apart from

the others, as did his almost comically serious expression. His clothing was also unusual: it was

new, and fit well, and obviously not reclaimed. He wore a brocaded tunic of real wool and cotton,

bright flared trousers, a new belt, and a tooled leather purse at his left hip. His clothes had cost

more than his father could afford, but they did him little good here. Still he stood straight and tall,

his lips set in defiance.

John stalked forward to keep his place in the long line. His bag, regulation space duffel

without tags, lay in front of him and he kicked it forward rather than stoop to pick it up. He

thought it would look undignified to bend over, and his dignity was all he had left.

Ahead of him was a family of five, three screaming children and their apathetic parents - or,

possibly, he thought, not parents. Citizen families were never very stable. BuRelock agents often

farmed out their quotas, and their superiors were seldom concerned about the precise identities of

those scooped up.

The disorderly crowds moved inexorably toward the end of the room. Each line terminated at

a wire cage containing a plastisteel desk. Each family group moved into a cage, the doors were

closed, and their interviews began.

The bored trustee placement officers hardly listened to their clients, and the colonists did not

know what to say to them. Most knew nothing about Earth's outsystem worlds. A few had heard

that Tanith was hot, Fulton's World cold, and Sparta a hard place to live, but free. Some

understood that Hadley had a good climate and was under the benign protection of American

Express and the Colonial Office. For those sentenced to transportation without confinement,

knowing that little could make a lot of difference to their futures; most didn't know and were

shipped off to labor-hungry mining and agricultural worlds, or the hell of Tanith, where their lot

would be hard labor, no matter what their sentences might read.

The fifteen-year-old boy - he liked to consider himself a man, but he knew many of his

emotions were boyish no matter how hard he tried to control them - had almost reached the

interview cage. He felt despair.

Once past the interview, he'd be packed into a BuRelock transportation ship. John turned again

toward the gray-uniformed guard standing casually behind the large-mesh protective screen. "I

keep trying to tell you, there's been a mistake! I shouldn't - "

"Shut up," the guard answered. He motioned threateningly with the bell-shaped muzzle of his

sonic stunner. "It's a mistake for everybody, right? Nobody belongs here. Tell the interview

officer, sonny."

John's lip curled, and he wanted to attack the guard, to make him listen. He fought to control

the rising flush of hatred. "Damn you, I - "

The guard raised the weapon. The Citizen family in front of John huddled together, shoving

forward to get away from this mad kid who could get them all tingled. John subsided and sullenly

shuffled forward in the line.

Tri-V commentators said the stunners were painless, but John wasn't eager to have it tried on

him. The Tri-V people said a lot of things. They said most colonists were volunteers, and they

said transportees were treated with dignity by the Bureau of Relocation.

No one believed them. No one believed anything the government told them. They did not

believe in the friendship among nations that had created the Co-Dominium, or in the election

figures, or -

He reached the interview cage. The trustee wore the same uniform as the guards, but his gray

coveralls had numbers stenciled across back and chest. There were wide gaps between the man's

jaggedly pointed teeth, and the teeth showed yellow stains when he smiled. He smiled often, but

there was no warmth in the expression.

"Whatcha got for me?" the trustee asked. "Boy dressed like you can afford anything he wants.

Where you want to go, boy?"

"I'm not a colonist," John insisted. His anger rose. The trustee was no more than a prisoner

himself - what right had he to speak this way? "I demand to speak with a CoDominium officer."

"One of those, huh?" The trustee's grin vanished. "Tanith for you." He pushed a button and the

door on the opposite side of the cage opened. "Get on," he snapped. "Fore I call the guards." His

finger poised menacingly over the small console on his desk.

John took papers out of an inner pocket of his tunic. "I have an appointment to CoDominium

Navy Service," he said. "I was ordered to report to Canaveral Embarcation Station for transport

by BuRelock ship to Luna Base."

"Get movin! - uh?" The trustee stopped himself and the grin reappeared. "Let me see that." He

held out a grimy hand.

"No. " John was more sure of himself now. "I'll show them to any CD officer, but you won't

get your hands on them. Now call an officer."

"Sure." The trustee didn't move. "Cost you ten credits."

"What?"

"Ten credits. Fifty bucks if you ain't got CD credits. Don't give me that look, kid. You don't

pay, you go on the Tanith ship. Maybe they'll put things straight there, maybe they won't, but

you'll be late reporting. Best you slip me something."

John held out a twenty-dollar piece. "That all you got?" the trustee demanded. "OK, OK, have

to do." He punched a code into the phone, and a minute later a petty officer in blue CoDominium

Space Navy coveralls came into the cage.

"What you need, Smiley?"

"Got one of yours. New middy. Got himself mixed up with the colonists." The trustee laughed

as John struggled to control himself.

The petty officer eyed Smiley with distaste. "Your orders, sir?" he said.

John handed him the papers, afraid that he would never see them again. The Navy man

glanced through them. "John Christian Falkenberg?"

"Yes."

"Thank you, sir." He turned to the trustee. "Gimme."

"Aw, he can afford it."

"Want me to call the Marines, Smiley?"

"Jesus, you hardnosed - " The trustee took the coin from his pocket and handed it over.

"This way, please, sir," the Navy man said. He bent to pick up John's duffel. "And here's your

money, sir."

"Thanks. You keep it."

The petty officer nodded. "Thank you, sir. Smiley, you bite one of our people again and I'll

have the Marines look you up when you're off duty. Let's go, sir.

John followed the spacer out of the cubicle. The petty officer was twice his age, and no one

had ever called John "sir" before. It gave John Falkenberg a sense of belonging, a sense of having

found something he had searched for all his life. Even the street gangs had been closed to him,

and friends he had grown up with had always seemed part of someone else's life, not his own.

Now, in seconds, he seemed to have found - found what, he wondered.

They went through narrow whitewashed corridors, then into the bright Florida sunshine. A

narrow gangway led to the forward end of an enormous winged landing ship that floated at the

end of a long pier crowded with colonists and cursing guards.

The petty officer spoke briefly to the Marine sentries at the officers' gangway, then carefully

saluted the officer at the head of the boarding gangway. John wanted to do the same, but he knew

that you didn't salute in civilian clothing. His father had made him read books on military history

and the customs of the Service as soon as he decided to find John an appointment to the

Academy.

Babble from the colonists filled the air until they were inside the ship. As the hatch closed

behind him the last sounds he heard were the curses of the guards.

"If you please, sir. This way." The petty officer led him through a maze of steel corridors,

airtight bulkheads, ladders, pipes, wire races, and other unfamiliar sights. Although the CD Navy

operated it, most of the ship belonged to BuRelock, and she stank. There were no viewports and

John was lost after several turns in the corridors.

The petty officer led on at a brisk pace until he came to a door that seemed no different from

any other. He pressed a button on a panel outside it.

"Come in," the panel answered.

The compartment held eight tables, but only three men, all seated at a single booth. In contrast

to the gray steel corridors outside, the compartment was almost cheerful, with paintings on the

walls, padded furniture, and what seemed like carpets.

The CoDominium seal hung from the far wall - American eagle and Soviet sickle and

hammer, red, white, and blue, white stars and red stars.

The three men held drinks and seemed relaxed. All wore civilian clothing not much different

from John's except that the older man wore a more conservative tunic. The others seemed about

John's age, perhaps a year older; no more.

"One of ours, sir," the petty officer announced. "New middy got lost with the colonists."

One of the younger men laughed, but the older cut him off with a curt wave. "All right, Cox'n.

Thank you. Come in, we don't bite."

"Thank you, sir," John said. He shuffled uncertainly in the doorway, wondering who these

men were. Probably CD officers, he decided. The petty officer wouldn't act that way toward

anyone else. Frightened as he was, his analytical mind continued to work, and his eyes darted

around the compartment.

Definitely CD officers, he decided. Going back up to Luna Base after leave, or perhaps a duty

tour in normal gravity. Naturally they'd worn civilian clothing. Wearing the CD uniform off duty

earthside was an invitation to be murdered.

"Lieutenant Hartmann, at your service," the older man introduced himself. "And Midshipmen

Rolnikov and Bates. Your orders, please?"

"John Christian Falkenberg, sir," John said. "Midshipman. Or I guess I'm a midshipman. But

I'm not sure. I haven't been sworn in or anything."

All three men laughed at that. "You will be, Mister," Hartmann said. He took John's orders.

"But you're one of the damned all the same, swearing in or no."

He examined the plastic sheet, comparing John's face to the photograph, then reading the

bottom lines. He whistled. "Grand Senator Martin Grant. Appointed by the Navy's friend, no less.

With him to bat for you, I wouldn't be surprised to see you outrank me in a few years."

"Senator Grant is a former student of my father's," John said.

"I see," Hartmann returned the orders and motioned John to sit with them. Then he turned to

one of the other midshipmen. "As to you, Mister Bates, I fail to see the humor. What is so funny

about one of your brother officers becoming lost among the colonists? You have never been

lost?"

Bates squirmed uncomfortably. His voice was high-pitched, and John realized that Bates was

no older than himself. "Why didn't he show the guards his taxpayer status card?" Bates

demanded. "They would have taken him to an officer. Wouldn't they?"

Hartman shrugged.

"I didn't have one," John said.

"Um." Hartmann seemed to withdraw, although he didn't actually move. "Well," he said. "We

don't usually get officers from Citizen families - "

"We are not Citizens," John said quickly. "My father is a CoDominium University professor,

and I was born in Rome."

"Ah," Hartman said. "Did you live there long?"

"No, sir. Father prefers to be a visiting faculty member. We have lived in many university

towns." The lie came easily now, and John thought that Professor Falkenberg probably believed it

after telling it so many times. John knew better: he had seen his father desperate to gain tenure,

but always, always making too many enemies.

He is too blunt and too honest. One explanation. He is a revolving S.O.B. and can't get along

with anyone. That's another. I've lived with the situation so long I don't care anymore. But, it

would have been nice to have a home, I think.

Hartmann relaxed slightly, "Well, whatever the reason, Mister Falkenberg, you would have

done better to arrange to be born a United States taxpayer. Or a Soviet party member.

Unfortunately, you, like me, are doomed to remain in the lower ranks of the officer corps."

There was a trace of accent to Hartmann's voice, but John couldn't place it exactly. German,

certainly; there were many Germans in the CD fighting services. This was not the usual German

though; John had lived in Heidelberg long enough to learn many shades of the German speech.

East German? Possibly.

He realized the others were waiting for him to say something. "I thought, sir, I thought there

was equality within the CD services."

Hartmann shrugged. "In theory, yes. In practice - the generals and admirals, even the captains

who command ships, always seem to be Americans or Soviets. It is not the preference of the

officer corps, Mister. We have no countries of origin among ourselves and no politics. Ever. The

Fleet is our fatherland, and our only fatherland." He glanced at his glass. "Mister Bates, we need

more to drink, and a glass for our new comrade. Hop it."

"Aye, aye, sir." The pudgy middy left the compartment, passing the unattended bar in the

corner on his way. He returned a moment later with a full bottle of American whiskey and an

empty glass.

Hartmann poured the glass full and pushed it toward John. "The Navy will teach you many

things, Mister Midshipman John Christian Falkenberg. One of them is to drink. We all drink too

much. Another thing we will teach you is why we do, but before you learn why, you must learn

to do it."

He lifted the glass. When John raised his and took only a sip, Hartmann frowned. "More," he

said. The tone made it an order.

John drank half the whiskey. He had been drinking beer for years, but his father did not often

let him drink spirits. It did not taste good, and it burned his throat and stomach.

"Now, why have you joined our noble band of brothers?" Hartmann asked. His voice carried a

warning: he used bantering words, but under that was a more serious mood - perhaps he was not

mocking the Service at all when he called it a band of brothers.

John hoped he was not. He had never had brothers. He had never had friends, or a home, and

his father was a harsh schoolmaster, teaching him many things, but never giving him any

affection - or friendship. "I - "

"Honesty," Hartmann warned. "I will tell you a secret, the secret of the Fleet. We do not lie to

our own." He looked at the other two midshipmen, and they nodded, Rolnikov slightly amused,

Bates serious, as if in church.

"Out there," Hartmann said, "out there they lie, and they cheat, and they use each other. With

us this is not true. We are used, yes. But we know that we are used, and we are honest with each

other. That is why the men are loyal to us. And why we are loyal to the Fleet."

And that's significant, John thought, because Hartmann had glanced at the CoDominium

banner on the wall, but he said nothing about the CD at all. Only the Fleet. "I'm here because my

father wanted me out of the house and was able to get an appointment for me," John blurted.

"You will find another reason, or you will not stay with us," Hartmann said. "Drink up."

"Yes, sir."

"The proper response is 'aye aye, sir.' "

"Aye aye, sir." John drained his glass.

Hartmann smiled. "Very good." He refilled his glass, then the others. "What is the mission of

the CoDominium Navy, Mister Falkenberg?"

"Sir? To carry out the will of the Grand Senate - "

"No. It is to exist. And by existing, to keep some measure of peace and order in this corner of

the galaxy. To buy enough time for men to get far enough away from Earth that when the damned

fools kill themselves they will not have killed the human race. And that is our only mission."

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Falkenberg’sLegionJerryPournelle1990CustomerReviewsAvg.CustomerReview:Writeanonlinereviewandshareyourthoughtswithothercustomers.Agreatstarttoagreatseries,August11,2001Reviewer:Thisbookisthefirstoffournovels,thenextthreebeingPrinceofSparta,GoTellTheSpartans,andPrinceOfMercenaries.WhenIfinishedreading...

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