Gordon R. Dickson - Childe Cycle 05 (17 page)

"Who once to prove their lie was good

"
Hanged Colonel Jacques Chretien
..."

—And suddenly they were all singing in the ranks facing us. It was a song of the young Colonel who had been put to death one hundred years before, when the Dorsai were just in their beginning. A New Earth city had employed a force of Dorsai with the secret intention of using them against an enemy force so superior as to surely destroy them utterly—so rendering payment for their services unnecessary while at the same time doing considerable damage to the enemy. Then the Dorsai had defeated the enemy, instead, and the city faced the necessity of paying, after all. To avoid this, the city authorities came up with the idea of charging the Dorsai commanding officer with dealing with the enemy, taking a bribe to claim victory for a battle never fought at all. It was the technique of the big lie; and it might even have worked if they had not made the mistake of arresting the commanding officer, to back up their story.

It was not a song to which I would have had any objection, ordinarily. But now—suddenly—I found it directed at me. It was at Pel, Moro, myself, that the soldiers of the Expedition were all singing it. Before, I had felt almost invisible on the stand behind Charley ap Morgan. Now, we three civilians were the focus of every pair of eyes on the field—we civilians who were like the civilians that had hanged Jacques Chretien; we who were St. Marians, like whoever had shot Kensie Graeme. It was like facing into the roaring maw of some great beast ready to swallow us up. We stood facing it, frozen.

Nor did Charley ap Morgan interfere.

He stood silent himself, waiting while they went through all the verses of the song to its end:—

. .
.One fourth of Rochmont's fighting strength-One battalion of Dorsai— Were sent by Rochmont
forth alone, To bleed Helmuth, and die
.

But look, look dawn from Rochmont's heights

Upon the Helmuth plain.

At all of Helmuth's armored force

By Dorsai checked, or slain.

Look down, look down, on Rochmont's shame To hide the wrong she'd done, Made claim Helmuth
had bribed Dorsais— No battle had been won.

To prove that lie, the Rochmont Lords Arrested Jacques Chretien, On charge he dealt with
Helmuth's Chiefs For payment to his men.

Commandant Arp Van Din sent word: 'You may not judge Dorsai, 'Return our Colonel by the
dawn, 'Or Rochmont town will die.'

Strong-held behind her walls, Rochmont Scorned to answer them, Condemned, and at the
daybreak, hanged, Young Colonel Jacques Chretien.

Bright, bright, the sun that morning rose Upon each weaponed wall. But when the sun set in the
west, Those walls were leveled all.

Then soft and white the moon arose On streets and roofs unstained, But when that moon was
down once more No street nor roof remained.

No
more is there a Rochmont town No more are Rochmont's men. But stands a Dorsai monument
To Colonel Jacques Chretien
.

So pass the word from world to world, Alone still stands Dorsai. But while she lives, no one of
hers, By foreign wrong shall die.

They little knew of brotherhood —The faith of fighting men— Who once to prove their lie was
good Hanged Colonel Jacques Chretien!

It ended. Once more they were silent—utterly silent. On the platform Charley moved. He took half a step forward and the sensors picked up his voice once more and threw it out over the heads of the waiting men.

"Officers! Front and Center. Face your men!"

From the end of each rank figures moved. The commissioned and non-commissioned officers stepped forward, turned and marched to a point opposite the middle of the rank they had headed, turned once more and stood at attention,

"Prepare to fire."

The weapons in the hands of the officers came up to waist level, their muzzles pointing at the men directly before them. The breath in my chest was sud-denly a solid thing. I could not have inhaled or exhaled if I had tried. I had heard of something like this but I had never believed it, let alone dreamed that I would be there to see it happen. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the angle of Charley ap Morgan's face, and it was a Dorsai face in all respects now. He spoke again.

"The command to dismiss has been given," Charley's voice rang and reechoed over the silent men, "and not obeyed. The command will be repeated under the stricture of the Third Article of the Professional Soldier's Covenant. Officers will open fire on any refusing to obey."

There was something like a small sigh that ran through all the standing men, followed by the faint rattle of safeties being released on the weapons of the men in ranks. They stood facing their officers and non-commissioned officers now—fellow soldiers and old friends. But they were all professionals. They would not simply stand and be executed if it came to the final point. The breath in my chest was now so solid it hurt, like something jagged and heavy pressing against my ribs. In ten seconds we could all be dead.

"Brigade-Major," said the level voice of Charley. "Dismiss your troops."

The Brigade-major, who had turned once more to face Charley, when Charley spoke to him, turned back again to the parade ground of men.

"Dis—" No more than in Charley's voice was there perceptible change in the Brigade-Major's command from the time it had been given before, "-miss!"

The formations dissolved. All at once the ranks were breaking up, the men in them turning away, the officers and non-coms lowering the weapons they had lifted to ready position at Charley's earlier command. The long-held breath tore itself out of my lungs so roughly it ripped at my throat. I turned to Charley but he was halfway down the steps from the platform, as expressionless as he had been all through the last few minutes. I had to half-run to catch up to him.

"Charley!" I said, reaching him.

He turned to look at me as he walked along. Suddenly I felt how pale and sweat dampened I was. I tried to laugh.

"Thank God that's over," I said.

"Over?" He shook his head. "It's not over, Tom. The enlisted men will be voting now. It's their right."

"Vote?" The world made no sense to me, for a second. Then suddenly it made too much sense. "You mean—they might vote to march on Blauvain, or something like mat?"

"Perhaps—something like that," he said.

I stared at him.

"And then?" I said. "You wouldn't… if their vote should be to march on Blauvain—what would you do?"

He looked at me almost coldly.

"Lead my troops," he said.

I stopped. Standing there, I watched him walk away from me. A hand tugged at my elbow", and I turned around to see that Pel and Moro had caught up to me. It was Moro who had his hand on my arm.

"Tom," said Moro, "What do we do, now?"

"See Padma," I said. "If he can't do something, I don't know anybody who can."

Charley was not flying directly back to Blauvain.

He was already in a staff meeting with his fellow officers, who were barred from the voting of the enlisted men by the Covenant. We three civilians had to borrow a land car from the encampment motor pool.

It was a silent ride, most of the way back into town. Once again I was at the controls, with Pel beside me. Sitting behind us, just before we reached the west area of the city, Moro leaned forward to put his head between us.

"Tom," he said. "You'll have to put your police on special duty. Pel, you've got to mobilize the militia

—right now."

"Moro," I answered—and I suddenly felt dog-tired, weary to the point of exhaustion. "I've got less than three hundred men, ninety-nine per cent of them without anything more exciting in the way of experience than filling out reports or taking charge at a fire, an accident or a family quarrel. They wouldn't face those mercenaries even if I ordered them to."

"Pel," he said, turning away from me, "your men are soldiers. They've been in the field with these mercenaries—"

Pel laughed at him.

"Over a hundred years ago, a battalion of Dorsais took a fortified
city—
Rochmont—with nothing heavier than light field pieces. This is a
brigade—
six battalions—armed with the best weapons the Exotics can buy them—facing a city with no natural or artificial defenses at all. And you want my two thousand militiamen to try to stop them? There's no force on St. Marie that could stop those professional soldiers."

"At Rochmont they were all Dorsai—" Moro began.

"For God's sake!" cried Pel. "These are Dorsai-officered, the best mercenaries you can find. Elite troops—the Exotics don't hire anything else for fear they might have to touch a weapon themselves and damage their, enlightenment—or whatever the hell it is! Face it, Moro! If Kensie's troops want to chew us up, they will. And there's nothing you or I can do about it!"

Moro said nothing for a long moment. Pel's last words had hit a near-hysterical note. When the Mayor of Blauvain did speak again, it was softly.

"I just wish to God I knew why you want just that to happen, so badly," he said.

"Go to hell!" said Pel. "Just go-"

I slammed the car into retro and we skidded to a halt, thumping down on the grass as the air-cushion quit I looked at Pel.

"That's something I'd like to know, too," I said. "All right, you liked Kensie. So did I. But what we're facing is anything from the leveling of a city to a possible massacre of a couple of hundred thousand people. All that for the death of just one man?"

Pel's face looked bitter and sick

"We're no good, we St. Marians," he said, thickly. "We're a fat little farm world that's never done anything since it was first settled but yell for help to the Exotics every time we got into trouble. And the Exotics have bailed us out every time, only because we're in the same solar system with them. What're we worth? Nothing! At least the Dorsai and the Exotics have got some value—some use!"

He turned away from Moro and myself; and we could not get another word out of him.

We drove on into the city, where, to my great relief, I finally got rid of Pel and Moro both; and was able to get to Police Headquarters and take charge of things.

As I had expected, things badly needed taking care of there. As I should also have expected, I had very much underestimated how badly they needed it. I had planned to spend two or three hours getting the situation under control, and then be free to seek out Padma. But, as it ended up, it took me nearly seven straight hours to damp down the panic, straighten out the confusion, and put some purpose and order back into the operations of all my people, off-duty and otherwise, who had reported for emergency service. Actually, it was little enough we were required to do —merely patrol the streets and see that the town's citizens stayed off the streets and out of the way of the mercenaries. Still, that took seven hours to put into smooth operation; and at the end of that time I was still not free to go hunting for Padma, but had to respond to a series of calls for my presence by the detective
crew
assigned to work with the mercenaries in tracking down the assassins.

I drove through the empty nighttime streets slowly, with my emergency lights on and the official emblem on my police car clearly illuminated. Three times, however, I was stopped and checked by teams of three to five mercenaries, in battle dress and fully weaponed, that appeared unexpectedly. The third time, the Groupman—a non-commissioned officer-in command of the team stopping me, joined me in the car.

When twice after that we encountered military teams, he leaned out the right window to show himself; and we were waved through.

We came at last to a block of warehouses on the north side of the city; and to one warehouse in particular. Within, the large, echoing structure was empty except for a few hundred square feet of crated harvesting machinery on the first of its three floors. I found my men on the second floor in the transparent cubicles that were the building's offices, apparently doing nothing.

"What's the matter?" I said, when I saw them. They were not only idle, but they looked unhappy.

"There's nothing we can do, Superintendent," said the senior detective lieutenant present—Lee Hall, a man I'd known for sixteen years. "We can't keep up with them, even if they'd let us."

"Keep up?" I asked.

"Yes sir," Lee said. "Come on, I'll show you. They let us watch, anyway."

He led me out of the offices up to the top floor of the warehouse, a great, bare space with a few empty crates scattered between piles of unused packing materials. At one end, portable floodlights were illuminating an area with a merciless blue-white light that made the shadows cast by men and things look solid enough to stub
your
toe on. He led me toward the light until a Groupman stepped forward to bar our way.

"Close enough, Lieutenant," he said to Lee. He looked at me.

"This is Tomas Velt, Blauvain superintendent of police."

"Honored to meet you, sir," said the Groupman to me. "But you and the Lieutenant will have to stand back here if you want to see what's going on."

"What is going on?" I asked.

"Reconstruction," said the Groupman. "That's one of our Hunter Teams."

I turned to watch. In the white glare of the light were four of the mercenaries. At first glance they seemed engaged in some odd ballet or mime acting. They were at little distances from one another; and first one, then another of them would move a short distance—perhaps as if he had gotten up from a nonexistent chair and walked across to an equally nonexistent table, then turned to face the others. Following which another man would move in and apparently do something at the same invisible table with him.

"The men of our Hunter Teams are essentially trackers, Superintendent," said the Groupman quietly in my ear. "But some teams are better in certain surroundings than others. These are men of a team that works well in interiors."

"But what are they doing?" I said.