“Vater!” John screamed, knowing exactly who had touched off that last fuse.
“Oh, Jesus fuckin’ Christ, sir, stay down!” Barrjen shouted.
Barrjen and Smith wrestled with him. Then he grunted and collapsed into their arms.
“Damn, damn!” Smith said, hands scrabbling for the wound. “Damn, give me a bandage here, put some pressure on!”
Barrjen left them to their work, looking out over the square with a silent whistle. The crater was a hundred yards across, and he ran a quick calculation.
There can’t be that many dead people in that small a space, he thought. Then he looked around at the burning chaos that stretched on either side around the harbor, farther than the eye could penetrate, up the sides of the mountains where the flames marked every plantation manor and village.
I guess there can be.
“Okay, let’s get the boss back to the ship,” he said aloud.
* * *
“Nein,” Gerta Hosten said tonelessly.
“But sir, we have to strike quickly, before the enemy lands troops in the Land itself. We have half the area under control, and hundreds of thousands of armed—”
“Shut. Up.” Gerta told her son, looking down over the harbor of Westhavn. The fires were out, and the ships that crowded the roadstead were moving towards the docks. Occasionally a shot crackled, but nothing like yesterday when the local issue was still in doubt. She went on in the same flat mechanical voice:
“We have pockets of control in the north and east of the island. We have hundreds of thousands of children, Probationers; if it weren’t for the fact that they’d been called up and concentrated, we’d all be dead by now. I doubt there are more than two divisions worth of Chosen adults left in areas we control. Perhaps a division’s worth of Protégés who didn’t mutiny. Now let me give you some arithmetic; there were more than two million slave laborers in the camps around Oathtaking and Copernik alone. And enough arms in the warehouses waiting shipment to the mainland to equip ten divisions. So there are at least a million armed rebels in the southern and eastern lowlands, not counting several divisions of Protégés who’ve killed their officers. Suppose that our children—and some of them are shorter than the weapons they’re carrying—could retake that part of the Land, which they can’t possibly do, what do you think the Santie army would make of them? And they’ll be ready to put troops ashore here in fairly short order.”
“Their . . . their navy was heavily damaged in the battle of the Passage.”
Gerta nodded, her face still to the window. “They have six intact battleships. None of ours survived. The aircraft carriers are without aircraft. Perhaps two dozen other warships, all damaged, and several hundred merchantmen. We have no repair facilities, and no hope of restarting the industries—we had to kill nine tenths of the labor force over the past six days, or didn’t you notice?”
“Then—”
Gerta turned. Johan Hosten was standing rigidly, but tears were trickling down his cheeks.
Smack. The flat of her palm took him across the side of the face. “Attention!”
“Yes, sir!”
She could see him gather himself. “Now, you will hear what we are going to do, and then you will assist me in preparing the necessary orders. Those who wish to do so will entrench here in Westhavn and in Konugsburg, and surrender to the Santander forces. They will live, at least. Those who do not wish do do so will board ship.”
“Ship?” Johann asked. “For where, sir?”
“The Western Isles, of course,” Gerta said. “It’s our only remaining possession. The wireless reports that conditions are stable”—as much as they could be in a clutch of small jungle islands halfway around the world—”and it’s rather far for the enemy to get around to anytime soon. We’ll load all possible industrial equipment.”
“But sir . . . how will . . . even if only half our remaining population . . . the Western Isles don’t have any agriculture to speak of.”
“Then we’ll eat a lot of fish, won’t we?” Gerta said.
“But there aren’t enough Protégés there to support us!”