Another crack, and a voice swearing softly. Men dropped past him to stand on the edge of the stream, and another walked up it leading a flop-eared hound. Men in uniform . . .
Royalists, he thought. Camouflage uniforms, Nemourlon armor and helmets, but the shoulder-flashes showed Brotherhood militia. Not Royal Army regulars, and thank God not the mercenary SAS-scouts of Falkenberg’s Legion. The relief was irrational, he knew; there were a dozen of them, and he had only five rounds left in the clip. The militia were countrymen used to tracking, and well-trained; they would check this overhang eventually. He had escaped from the last battle in the Dales by drifting downstream on a river that eventually fed into the Eurotas. It had carried him far into Royalist-held territory and it had been a long slow journey back into the wilderness.
I can’t even blame Grand-Uncle for sending me here, he thought bitterly. He had asked to go to Sparta, to serve in the revolution Grand Senator Bronson was clandestinely backing. I wanted adventure. God!
* * *
“Lost him, Sarge,” the man with the dogs said disgustedly. “He went into the creek downstream where it’s clear, but I’m damned if I can find where he came out.”
The militia noncom grunted. “Everyone, spread out; he may be lying low around here. And keep alert—we’ve come a long ways west, he isn’t the only Helli around here. Sparks, get me—”
Pffft.
The soldier doubled over and fell backwards into the water with a red spot blossoming on his chest. The others went to ground in trained unison, scrambling back up the overhang to return fire. The sharp crackling of their New Aberdeen rifles echoed back overhead, answered by others out in the woods; the silenced sniper weapon fired again, and a light machine gun opened up on the Royalist patrol. A body slid back downslope to lie twitching at the edge of the water next to the bobbing corpse. Branches and scrub fell after it, cut by the hail of bullets; a man was screaming, an endless high keening sound.
Niles flogged his mind into thought. He had been running far and fast ahead of this pursuit; it was unlikely there was another Royalist patrol near enough to intervene. From the sound of the firing the guerrillas outnumbered the government soldiers handily, and according to Spartan People’s Liberation Army—Helot—tactics they should . . .
God. If there still are any Helots— The attempted ambush in the Dales had fallen apart so fast the Royalists might have mopped up everything but scattered bands.
Fwhump. A rifle-grenade blasting off the muzzle of a rifle some distance away. It landed on the lip of the rise over his head and detonated in a spray of notched steel wire. Then more rifle fire came from the other side of the creek bed, into the backs of the Royalist soldiers, and more grenades. The noise rose to a crescendo and then died away with startling suddenness. Niles waited while the Helots made their cautious approach, waited until their leader whistled an all clear. Then he called out:
“I’m coming out! Senior Group Leader Geoffrey Niles, SPLA!” Spartan People’s Liberation Army, the formal name of the Helots.
“Out careful,” a hard voice replied.
He pushed through the witch hazel, leaving his rifle behind. The tough springy stems parted reluctantly, powdering him with snow. He stood with his hands raised. Half a platoon of Helot guerrillas surrounded him, most busy about their chores. A few leveled rifles at him.
“Police it up good, don’t leave nothin’ for the Cits,” the Helot sergeant was saying. Men moved briskly, stripping the Royalist militiamen of weapons, armor, kit and clothing.
One Brotherhood fighter was still alive, despite the row of bullet-holes across the small of his back. The guerrilla noncom stepped up behind him as he crawled and fired with the muzzle of his rifle an inch from the back of the other man’s head. The helmet rolled away in a spray of blood. Then he turned back to Niles.
“Who did you say—” he began, then stopped. His eyes widened as he recognized the scarecrow figure in the rags the winter woods had left of his uniform.
The sergeant was a short man, as were most of the guerrillas, a head shorter than the Englishman’s 185 centimeters; virtually all of the guerrillas were transportees from Earth’s Welfare Islands, chronically malnourished as children. American, from his accent, and Eurasian by the odd combination of slanted eyes that were a bright bottle green color.
“Jesus and Maria, it is Senior Group Leader Niles,” he said, saluting and then holding out a hand. “Sergeant Andy Cheung, sir—hell, we thought you were dead meat for sure!”
“So did I for a while, Sergeant, so did I,” he said. Relief shook him, and bitter regret. I wanted out, he thought. Out of the Helots certainly, after the horrors of the campaign last year; poison gas and slaughtered prisoners, capital crimes under the Laws of War. But the Royalists would hang him; the only chance he had of getting off this world alive was with the guerrillas. Off this world and back to a place where the Bronson power and wealth could buy immunity from anything.
“We gotta get out of here real quick,” Sergeant Cheung was saying. “Lost half a platoon to them SAS buggers around here just last week; they’re seven klicks of bad news.” The noncom grinned at him. “Field Prime will sure be glad to see you again, sir.”
Skilly, he thought, with a complex shiver. Oh, God.
* * *
“Are you telling me, gentlemen, that there is nothing we can do to rid our world of these murderous vermin?”
Crown Prince Lysander Collins paced back and forth before the broad windows that looked out over Government House Square; the Council Chamber where the Cabinet met was on the second floor of the Palace. It was a rainy spring day, and the breeze carried in odors of wet vegetation from the gardens, together with a damp salty smell from the Aegean. He was a tall young man in his mid-twenties, with short-cropped brown hair and regular features. Until recently it had been a rather boyish face.
Peter Owensford, Major in Falkenberg’s Legion, Major General in the Spartan Royal Army, looked up from his readout and files to the prince. Not so young as he was.
A good deal had happened to Crown Prince Lysander Collins over the past eighteen Terran months. Sent to the CoDominium prison-planet of Tanith as unofficial ambassador to Falkenberg’s Mercenary Legion; he had “seen the elephant” there, as a volunteer junior officer, and incidentally earned the respect of many of the Legion officers. Owensford suspected Lysander Coffins would have been more than happy to maintain his pseudonym of “Mr. Cornet Prince” and remain in the Legion’s ranks. That was impossible, of course, despite Lysander’s bravura performance, highjacking the rebel shuttle and the smuggled drugs . . . as impossible as his brief and doomed affair with Ursula Gordon, sometime hotel girl on Tanith. Sparta was too important to civilization, and to the plans of Grand Admiral Sergei Lermontov, for Lysander Collins to have any role but the straight one laid out for him by hereditary duty. If there’s to be any civilization left once the CoDominium collapses.
Lad’s grown up a lot, Owensford thought. Lysander had returned to Sparta to find a full-fledged rebellion in progress. Did all right, too. Decent as battalion commander. Even better as field commander in chief. I’ve fought for worse ones. Now even that was denied him; with his father’s judgment impaired by the enemy’s viral sabotage he was de facto ruler of the Collins half of the Dual Monarchy’s executive. He’s seen the elephant with a vengeance.
“No, sir,” Owensford said aloud. “There is a great deal that we can and must do.”
The Crown Prince was in uniform at this meeting; as a Lieutenant General, he could be addressed as a military superior rather than sovereign, a useful fiction. “But I am saying for the record that under present conditions it will be very difficult to achieve swift and decisive victory over the enemy.”
He looked over at Hal Slater, the other mercenary present. Commandant of the Royal War College, making him a Major General in the Royal Army. Possibly a more permanent one. Owensford would revert to his mercenary rank of Major whenever the Fifth Battalion of Falkenberg’s Legion left Sparta . . . if they left; quite probably this would be permanent base for at least part of the mercenary outfit. And I’m running a whole army here. Challenging. Long-term if he wanted to stay here and become a Spartan Citizen. Tempting. Sparta’s a good place, and I’m tired of running from planet to planet. Owensford looked again at Prince Lysander. He’s grown up. I could accept him as sovereign. I think Hal already has.
Hal Slater wouldn’t be filling any active commands. He had gone to the regeneration tanks once too many times, too many bones were titanium-titanium matrix, and his wounds would keep him behind a desk for the rest of his life. Running the War College was a good final berth. One he would do well; Hal Slater had taught Owensford and many another young officer, back in his days with the Legion. His son George was a Legion Captain, and a Brigadier in the Royal forces.