Conqueror g-2 Read online

  As Horace did; the big black hound shook himself, spattering Raj and Suzette equally, flopped down on the sand, put his head on his paws and went to sleep. Raj laughed; so did Suzette, close to his ear. He jumped when she ran her tongue into it briefly.

  "When you start ignoring me even when I'm in your arms, my sweet. ." she said playfully.

  He walked a few steps further and set her down. In linen riding clothes, with a Colonial-made repeating carbine across her back, Suzette Whitehall did not look much like a Court lady of East Residence. But she looked very good to Raj, very good indeed.

  "To work," he said.

  The camp was already fully set up, a square half a kilometer on a side and ringed with ditch and earth embankment, and a palisaded firing-step on top. Within was a regular network of dirt lanes, flanked by the leather tents of the eight-man squads which were the basic unit of the Civil Government's armies. Broader lanes separated battalions, each with its Officers Row and shrine-tent for the unit standards. The two main north-south and east-west roadways met in the center at a broad open plaza, and in the center of that was a local landowners house that would be the commander's quarters. Dog-lines to the east, thunderous with barking as the evening mash was served; artillery park to the west; stores piled up mountainously under tarpaulins. .

  "Nicely done," he said. And exactly where we camped the last time, he thought, with a complex of emotions.

  A tall rangy man with a moustache pulled up-on a riding steer, an unusual choice of mount. Especially for a man with a Colonel's eighteen-rayed gold and silver star on his helmet and shoulder-patches. The inflamed rims around his eyes told why; he was violently allergic to dogs. A misfortune for a nobleman, disastrous for a nobleman set on a military career. Unless one was willing to settle for the despised infantry, of course. Probably a source of anguish to the man, but extremely convenient to Raj Whitehall. Usually the infantry got the dregs of the officer corps, men without either the connections or the ability to make a career in the mounted units.

  "Nicely done, Jorg," Raj repeated, as the man swung down.

  Jorg Menyez shrugged. "We've had three days, and I haven't wasted the time we spent stuck down there around Port Murchison," he said. They saluted and exchanged the embhrazo. "Spirit of Man but I'm glad to be out of the Territories! Nineteen battalions of infantry, five of cavalry, thirty guns, reporting as ordered, seyhor! And campgrounds, food, fodder and firewood for five more battalions of mounted troops." He bowed over Suzette's hand. "Enchanted, Messa."

  "Excellent," Raj said again. It was damned good to have subordinates you could rely on to get their job done without hand-holding. That had taken years.

  indeed, Center said.

  "All the old kompaydres together again, eh?" Jorg went on, as Gerrin Staenbridge came up. His eyes widened slightly as Ludwig Bellamy joined them, dripping.

  "Sinkhole," the ex-member of the Squadron said, and sneezed.

  "Make that sixty field guns, now," Grammek Dinnalsyn noted. "We brought another thirty, and some mortars. They may be useful."

  "Staff meeting at dinner," Raj said. He toed Horace in the flank. "Up, you son of a bitch."

  The hound sighed, yawned and stretched before rising.

  * * *

  "To fallen comrades," Bartin Foley said, rising and offering the toast as junior officer present. The remainder were battalion commanders and up, two dozen men who would form the core of the Western Territories Expeditionary Force from this day on. Plus the Honored Messer Fidal Historiomo, the head of the Administrative Department team who would handle civil control, but he had been notably quiet.

  "Fallen comrades," the others replied, raising their wineglasses as the servants cleared away the desserts which had followed the roast suckling pig and vegetables.

  Raj rose in his turn. "Messers, the Governor!"

  "The Governor!" Then they all stood. "To victory!" At that the wineglasses went cascading out the tall glass doors which stood open around three sides of the commandeered villa's dining room. A mild curse from one of the sentries followed the tinkle and crash of shattering crystal. A louder one followed, from his NCO.

  The ladies withdrew in a flutter of fans and lace-draped headdresses; ladies by courtesy, for the most part, of course. Except Suzette, and she stayed. Nobody looked surprised at that, except possibly Cabot Clerett, and he had been looking at her with a sandbagged expression all evening as she teased him gently out of shyness. The servants set out liqueurs and kave, and withdrew.

  Raj rose and walked to a map-board on an easel that had probably served the local squire's daughter when she dabbled in watercolors, before the Civil Government armada landed. Now it held a tacked map of Stern Isle, a blunt wedge shape of about thirty thousand square kilometers. The bottom of the wedge pointed south, and the Expeditionary Force was encamped on the northern coast. It was an excellent map; the Civil Governments cartographic service was one of its major advantages over its barbarian opponents. Center could give him more data, in any form it pleased. . although some of it was a thousand years old, the time-lag since Bellevue's surveillance satellites had died.

  Silence fell as he took up a pointer. "All right, messers," he said quietly. "Most of you have campaigned with me before; those who haven't, know my reputation."

  Which was why there had been a flurry of resignations and shifts of posting among the commands of units assigned to him. The first time he'd led an army in the field he'd broken one in six officers out of the service before the campaign even started. This time there had been plenty of officers volunteering for the slots opened; in fact, there had been duels and massive bribery to get into the Expeditionary Force. That had not happened the first time, out on the eastern frontier. The type who wanted to join a field force under Raj Whitehall's command presented their own problems, of course.

  Better to be forced to restrain the fiery war-dog than prod the reluctant ox, he thought, and went on:

  "Let me sketch out the general situation. We have eleven thousand Regular infantry, about seven thousand Regular cavalry, since some of the battalions are overstrength, and about a thousand tribal auxiliaries. Mostly mounted. Including six hundred Skinners, who will be useful while there's fighting and a cursed nuisance the rest of the time." There were a few chuckles at that. "The Skinners will join us when and if we move to the mainland-leaving them on this island for any length of time would wreck it.

  "The Brigade territories have a total population of about thirty million." Less than a third what the Civil Government did, but still a vast number for thirty-one battalions to attack. "Of those, the overwhelming majority are civilians."

  Worshippers of the Spirit of Man of the Stars, and closely related to the population of the Civil Government proper. In theory, they-more importantly, the landowners, priests and merchants among them-would be on the invaders' side.

  "One and a half million are Brigaderos. Unlike the late unlamented Squadron, the Brigade has a regular army, besides the private retainers of noblemen-some of whom have whole regiments, by the way. Fifty thousand of the General's troops are under arms at any one time; they have a system of compulsory service. Another two hundred thousand can be called out at need, not counting mercenaries-and all of them will have some military experience. The Brigade has strong enemy tribes on its northern frontiers, and most of their standing army has seen action.

  "Furthermore," he went on, "also unlike the Squadron, the Brigade troops are not armed with flintlock smoothbores." Raj nodded to the orderlies standing in the back of the room. The men laid half-a-dozen long muskets on the table among the kave-cups.

  "An external percussion cap fits under the hammer," he said, as the officers examined the enemy weapons. "It's loaded with a paper cartridge and a hollow-base pointed bullet, from the muzzle. Two rounds a minute, but the extreme range is up to a thousand meters. Note the adjustable sights. At anything under six hundred meters, it's man-killing accurate against individual targets. The Brigaderos are landed men,
mostly, even those who aren't full-time soldiers. They like to hunt, and most of them are crack shots."

  Which was more than could be said of the Civil Government force, especially the infantry, even after more than a year under Jorg Menyez' training.

  Cabot Clerett stirred. Like his uncle, he was a square-faced, barrel-chested man. Unlike him he had the weathered look of an outdoorsman despite being in his twenties.

  "The Armory rifle fires at better than six rounds a minute," he said. "Twelve, in an emergency."

  "I'm aware of that, Major Clerett," Raj replied dryly. A flush spread under the natural olive brown of the younger man's skin. Suzette leaned close to whisper in his ear, and he relaxed again.

  "However, it means we're not going to be able to stand in full sight and shoot them down outside the effective range of their weapons, the way we did with the Squadrones. Nor can we count on them simply rushing at us head-on, like a bull at a gate. They're barbarians and will fight like barbarians-"

  They'd better, he added to himself, or Center or not we're fucking doomed.

  "-but they won't be that stupid."

  observe, Center said.

  * * *

  Rat-tat-tat beat the drum. The line of blue-coated Civil Government infantry stretched across the fields, wading through the waist-high wheat and leaving trampled desolation behind them. The battalion colors waved proudly ahead of the serried double rank of bayonets; officers strode before their units, sabers sloped over their shoulders. Sun glinted on edged steel, hot and bright. Shells went by overhead with a tearing-canvas sound, to burst in puffs of dirty-white smoke and plumes of black earth at the edge of the treeline ahead. Apart from the shelling and the crunching, rustling sound of the riflemen's passage, the battlefield was silent.

  Then malignant red fireflies winked in the shadow of the trees. Thousands of them, through the offwhite smoke of black powder rifles. Men staggered and fell down the Civil Government line, silent or screaming and twisting. The Armory rifles jerked up in unison in response to shouted orders and volley-fire crashed out; then the bayonets leveled and the men charged forward with the colors slanting down ahead of them. More muzzle flashes from the treeline and the snake-rail fence that edged it, again and again, winking through the growing cloud of powder smoke and tearing gaps in the advancing line. It wavered, hesitated-trapping itself in the killing zone, caught between courage and fear.

  * * *

  Raj blinked. The audience was still attentive; it had only been a few seconds, and men were used to Raj Whitehall's peculiar moments of introspection. Night had fallen, and glittering six-winged insects flew in through the opened windows to batter themselves against the coal-oil lanterns along the pilastered wall.

  "— so we have two problems, tactical and operational." I get the strategic worries.

  "Tactically, we're going to have to make use of our strong points. Artillery, and we've twice the guns a force this size usually does. The Armory rifle's higher rate of fire and, even more important, the fact that it can be loaded lying down. Field entrenchments wherever possible; you'll note the number of shovels which have been issued. You'll also note that the cavalry have been ordered to hang their sabers from the saddle, not their belts. The cult of cold steel is strictly for the barbs, messers-I want nobody to forget that.

  "Our true advantage is our discipline and maneuverability, and that applies to tactics and operations. I intend to move fast, keep the enemy off balance, and never fight except at a time and place of my own choosing. I need to know-must know that my orders will be obeyed with speed and precision and common sense, at all times. Against an enemy with respectable weapons and reasonable organization who outnumbers us eight or more to one, we cannot afford to lose a battle, we cannot afford to lose even a major skirmish. . and since we can't possibly win a war of attrition, we can't be excessively cautious, either. Is that clear?"

  Nods, and a few uncomfortably thoughtful faces. "Good." Because it's all right if the men think I'm invincible, but the Spirit help us if you do.

  With Center whispering in his mind's ear, he was unlikely to fall victim to that illusion himself. Occasional doubts about his own sanity were another matter. Night sweats when he thought about the Spirit having a direct link to his own grimy soul were part of it, too-although come to think of it, everyone had a Personal Computer, according to orthodox doctrine.

  "Which brings us," he went on, balancing the pointer with an end in each palm, "to Stern Isle. I regard this as in the nature of a training exercise-assuming that the negotiations with the Brigade leaders fail and we have to conquer the mainland. Because, gentlemen, if we can't take this island from the Brigade with dispatch, then we'd cursed well better blow our own brains out and send the troops home before we do real damage to the Civil Government.

  "According to the Ministry of Barbarians' files and Colonel Menyez' scouting reports"-collated and interpreted by Center-"there are about twelve thousand Brigaderos males of military age on the island. No more than three thousand are actual professional fighting men, including those in the service of individual nobles. We'll snap the rural nobles and their retainers up with mobile columns. I want you messers to pay particular attention to perfecting movement from battalion to company columns and from column into line-of-battle in any particular direction. The enemy are fairly slow at that, and we'll need any advantage we can get.

  "We'll then move the main body of the army south"-he traced the route across the center of the island-"to the provincial capital at Wager Bay. The city itself shouldn't be much of a problem; the enemy doesn't have enough men to hold the walls."

  He flipped the map, revealing another of Wager Bay itself. Over it Center painted a holographic diagram, rotating it to show different angles. Raj blinked back to the flat paper his officers would see. The city was a C with the open end pointing south at the ocean, around a harbor that was three-quarters of a circle.

  "Wager Bay; most of the island's trade goes through here. About forty thousand people, virtually none of them Brigaderos. So, no problem. . except for the fortress."

  His pointer tapped the irregular polygon which topped the hill closing the east flank of the harbor. Raj had memorized schematic drawings of all the major fortresses within the Civil Government, and quite a few without. Center amplified that knowledge with three-dimensional precision. Deep stone-lined moats all around and a steep drop to the shingled beaches on the water side where an arc of cliffs fronted the sea. Low-set modern walls of thick stone and earthwork behind the moats, built to withstand siege guns. They mounted scores of heavy built-up smoothbore guns, able to sweep the bay. Bastions and ravelins, outworks giving murderous crossfire all along the landward side, a smooth sloping approach with neither cover nor dead ground.

  "We're certainly not going to take that with a rush. But take it we must, and soon."

  observe, Center said.

  * * *

  — and ships sailed into Wager Bay, their blunt wooden bows casting back plumes of white spray from blue ocean; whitecaps glittered across the broad reach of the harbor. There was a stiff breeze, enough to belly out the brown canvas of the sails and snap the double lightning flash flag of the Brigade from every masthead. The decks were black with troops, dozens of ships, thousands of men.

  A Civil Government steam ram came butting through the waves, water flinging back in wings from the steel beak just below the surface at its bows, frothing away from the midships paddle-boxes. Black coal smoke streamed from its funnel, and five more rams followed behind. Behind them the city rose from the waterside in whitewashed and pastel-colored tiers, its tile roofs glowing in the sun. The fortress on its headland was built of dun-colored rock, squatting like a coiled dragon on the heights. No cannon fired from the water could reach that high, and the walls were broad and squat and sunken behind their ditch, built to resist fire from guns far heavier than the converted fieldpieces the rams carried on their decks.

  Guns as heavy as the ones mounted in the fort's
casements. The first of them boomed like distant thunder, a long rolling sound that echoed from the cliffs and the facing buildings across the bay. The sound of the shell passing was like thick sailcloth ripping, tearing the sky. A long plume of smoke with a red spark at its heart blossomed from the bay-side wall of the fortification. The forty-kilogram cast-iron cannonball was a trace of blur in the air, and then a fountain of spray near one of the rams. The ships ignored the shot-the ranging shot, it must be-and kept on toward the Brigade transports a kilometer away. Their formation began to open out, as each steamship picked a target and fell out of line behind the leading vessel. A whistle screeched a signal, and the flat huffchuff of their engines blatted louder as they went to ramming speed.

  Staccato thunder rolled across Wager Bay. BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM as the cannon fired one after another at two-second intervals, then bambambambambambambmmmm-as the echoes slapped back and forth across the water. The whistling shriek of the projectiles was a diminuendo under the coarser sounds of the discharge. Suddenly the warships were moving amid a forest of waterspouts, dozens of them. . except for the two ships that were struck.

  The heavy cannonballs had been fired from mounts over a hundred meters above sea level. They were plunging almost vertically downward when they struck the plank decks of the ships. They went through the inch-thick decking without slowing perceptibly, sending lethal foot-long splinters of wood spinning like shrapnel across both flush decks.

  One ship was struck near the stern. Some of the splinters flicked through the vision slit of the sheet-iron binnacle that was raised and bolted about the wheel and slashed the face off the steersman there. His convulsing body spun the wheel, but the ship was already turning so rapidly that it heeled one paddle almost out of the water; the cannonball had snapped and jammed the underdeck chains that connected wheel to rudder. The captain clinging to the bridge that crossed the hull between the paddle boxes could only watch in horrified fascination as the vessel's ram drove at full speed into the hull of the warship next to it-aimed with an accuracy no deliberate skill could have equaled. He was flung high by the impact, an instant before the steel tip of the ram gashed open the steamer's boiler. Beams, bodies and pieces of machinery fountained skyward.