The Prince by Jerry Pournelle and S.M. Stirling

“What does Bronson want?” Lysander demanded.

Hal Slater shook his head. “We don’t know.”

“He seems to have an active hatred for Falkenberg.”

“Yes, sir,” Slater said. “But that’s a very old story.”

“Falkenberg ruined his Tanith operation,” Lysander said.

“Yes, sir. With your help.” Slater shrugged. “Bronson never forgets an enemy. You’ll have noticed that he hasn’t even tried to negotiate with you. But given the resources he’s putting into this operation, there has to be more at stake than personal animosity. Unless—”

“Unless?”

“Unless he’s feeling old and useless and has nothing left but his hatreds,” Slater said.

“Whatever his motives, this has to stop.” Lysander stared out at the Spartan landscape. “Even if we called out every Brotherhood militiaman,” he said slowly, “we wouldn’t have enough to finish this quickly. Would we?”

“No, sir,” Owensford replied flatly. “They’d disperse, go to earth and wait for new supplies. We can’t keep any militia unit in the field for more than a month or so. Helot attacks are planned long in advance; if we detect them concentrating and mass to defend or counterattack, they simply call off their assault and pick another target somewhere else. They never attack without a locally superior ratio of forces, and we don’t have enough mechanical transport to respond quickly in such cases.”

There were a million Citizens; the first-line militia of their Brotherhoods could field a quarter of a million troops. Unfortunately, when they did the entire planet had to shut down; the Citizens were over a third of the total labor force, and a much higher percentage of the skilled and managerial classes.

“We’re keeping fifteen battalions under arms at any one time as regional reaction-forces, and we’re building up the standing forces of the Royal Army to twenty-five thousand troops,” Owensford said. He ran a hand over his short-cropped brown hair. “Whatever else the Dales campaign did, it certainly gave us plenty of combat-tested men.” Action was the best way to identify potential small-unit leaders. “And the cream of the newcomers as recruits, too. Everyone wants to fight for a winner. We’ll keep grinding at the enemy.”

Hal Slater grimaced slightly. “Now you see why professionals hate guerrilla wars, sir,” he said. “It’s pure attrition, unless we can kill or capture their top leaders.”

Lysander smiled sourly. “I’ve known mercenaries who liked that kind of thing. A long war and no resolution—no, of course I don’t suspect that of Falkenberg.”

Slater didn’t say anything.

“All right,” Lysander said. “Attrition with Grand Senator Bronson sending the Helots weapons and money, and the CoDominium Bureau of Relocation sending convicts and involuntary transportees for them to recruit from. It takes twenty years to produce a Citizen, gentlemen, and only eight months to ship a transportee from Earth to Sparta. And yes, I know, you can recruit among those as well as the enemy. But damn it, no offense intended, Sparta needs Citizens, not more mercenaries.”

He moved his shoulders, the unconscious gesture of a man settling a burden he means to carry. “We can also proceed on the political front,” he went on. “Breaking up the enemy’s clandestine networks. And nailing Croser.”

For a moment all three men shared a wolfish grin. Senator Dion Croser, head of the Non-Citizen’s Liberation Front . . . and almost certainly leader of the whole insurrection. Almost all the insurgents were transportees and non-Citizens; Croser was the son of one of the Founders, and there was as yet no smoking-gun proof of his involvement with the insurrection.

“He won’t be the last,” Lysander went on softly. Even the mercenaries were slightly daunted by the look in his grey eyes. “We can’t attack a man who’s a power in the CoDominium—we can’t even defy the CoDominium—yet. But Croser we will get; and eventually, beyond him, those responsible for backing him. As God is my witness, I’m going to see that nobody is ever in a position to do this to Sparta again. Or,” he went on, “to anyone else, if I can help it.”

“Meanwhile,” he continued more briskly, “we should prepare for the War Cabinet meeting.”

* * *

The rain had been hitting harder as the Helot patrol moved northwest. The horses hung their heads slightly, wearily placing one hoof down at a time. For Geoffrey Niles the trip was rest and recuperation, after starving and freezing for the better part of two months. By the end of the second week he was strong enough to curse the cold drops that flicked into his face as they rode and trickled down inside his camouflaged rain-poncho, to realize how much he detested the constant smells of wet human and horse. The forest thickened as they moved closer to the foothills of the Drakons, spreading up from the low swales and valleys to conquer the slopes of the hills, leaving only patches in the tallgrass prairie that was so common elsewhere in the Illyrian Dales. Occasionally they passed other patrols—once they nearly tripped an ambush—and more often saw foraging parties, out cropping the vast herds of game and feral cattle.

“Not many enemy in this far?” he asked the Helot NCO.

“No, sir,” the man replied he kept his rifle across his saddlebow, and his eyes were always moving. “Leastways, not big bunches of ’em. Sometimes they send in fightin’ patrols, battalion or better, but we scatter an’ harass and they go away. Hard to supply this far in, too. They got no satellite recce now, can’t put aircraft anywhere near us. Keep tryin’ t’locate our bases, though. Lots of infiltrators. Ambush and counter-ambush work—helps with training the new chums, anyway.”

Niles nodded. They were riding up a long slope; the rain had a little sleet in it now, they must be at least a thousand meters above sea level. Well into the foothills, and Sparta’s 1.21 G gave it a steep atmosphere and temperature gradient. The slopes on either side were heavily wooded with Douglas fir and Redwoods, oaks and beech; the genetic engineers and seeders had done their work well here. Branches met overhead, and the hooves clattered through gravel and broken rock. They turned a corner; it took a moment’s concentration for Niles to pick out the bunkers that flanked the pathway. They were set deep in the lime, with narrow firing slits hiding the muzzles of 15mm gatlings. His shoulders crawled slightly with the knowledge that Peltast heavy sniper-rifles had probably been trained on them for the better part of an hour.

“Sir,” an officer said, as he swung down from the saddle. “We’ve got transport for you. Field Prime is anxious to debrief you herself.”

Niles raised a brow at the sight of the jeep; it was a local model, six balloon-wheels of Charbonneau thread, but the Helots had had little mechanical transport before. We’re coming up in the world, he thought.

The new base-headquarters was a contrast to the old, as well. It was a rocky bowl several kilometers in extent, a collapsed dome undercut by water seepage. That was common in the Dales, with multiple megatonnes of water coming down off the Drakon slopes every year and hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of old marine limestones to run through. The edges of the ring were jagged fangs thrusting at the sky; his eyes widened at the sight of detection and broadcast antennae up there, and launching frames for Skyhawk and Talon antiaircraft missiles. Cave-mouths ringed the bowl, busy activity about most, but the rolling surface itself was occupied as well.

Not afraid of aerial surveillance any more, he thought. Neat rows of squared-log cabins, and troops drilling in the open. More troops than he expected, many more, but what was really startling was the equipment. Plenty of local make, everything from rifles and machine guns up to the big 160mm mortars that were the local substitute for artillery; Dion Croser had been siphoning off a share of local production and caching it in cave-dumps here in the Dales for a full decade before the open war began. But there was off-planet material as well, in startling quantity, items he remembered from Sandhurst lectures. A dozen stubby 155mm rocket-howitzers, Friedlander-made, with swarms of Helot troopers around them doing familiarization. Six Suslov medium tanks, slab-and-angle composite armor jobs with low-profile turrets and 135mm cannon in hydraulic pods. Those were CoDominium issue, made on Earth.

And bloody expensive, he thought.

The jeep pulled up at one of the cave entrances. A man was waiting for him. Niles recognized the figure; 190 cm tall and broad enough to be squat. Skin the color of old mahogany, a head bald as an egg, and a great beak of a nose in the round face. Over his shoulders were the twin machetes that had given him his nickname, and dangling from one hand was a light machine gun looking no bigger than a toy rifle in the great paw. The only change he could see was a certain gauntness to the face.