Harry Turtledove has been called the master of alternate history. This is annoying.
Not because he isn't a master of that form, but because he's also a master of heroic fantasy, humorous fantasyfar more difficult to do wellspace opera, idea-oriented hard science fiction, straight historical fiction, and an implausibly large range of other types of literature. For relaxation, he reads Byzantine Greek chronicles.
Harry is an unfairly tall man of frightening intellect and reassuring warmth, who lives with his wife Laura (also a writer) and his three intimidatingly bright daughters in Southern California. It's as if the IQs slated for legions of surfer dudes and val-gals had been suctioned out and concentrated in one hilariously scholarly household in the San Fernando valley, where the art of conversation still lives.
Harry's work includes the classic WORLDWAR series, which single-handedly resurrects the alien-invasion stories of yore and updates them, The Guns of the South, a meditation on the American Civil War with Afrikaners and AK-47s, and the grimly majestic alternate-history masterpiece which begins with How Few Remain, continues through The Great War: American Front, and most recently culminates in Walk in HelL.
Here he showsthrough a protagonist many of us may somehow recognizehow even utter defeat can be a kind of victory.
Commodore Anson MacDonald strode into the underground refectory. "What's the latest?" he asked.
Nobody paid any attention to him. All eyes were riveted on the big, wall-mounted televisor. The news reader, her pretty face worn and haggard, her eyes red with tears that hadn'tquitepoured down her face, spoke like a machine: "San Francisco now definitely known to be vaporized. The government did not escape. Along with the destruction of Manhattan and Washington, this confirms"
Someone had a remote control. He aimed the little box at the televisor as if it were an assault rifle. And the infrared beam killed the screen, which went black. "That's that," somebody else said. "The Alliance for Democracy is washed up."
Across the room, someone said, "For God's sake, get me a beer."
MacDonald looked from one soldier to another. He was a lean, bald man in his mid-fifties, the graying hair he had left cropped close to the sides and back of his skull, a thin line of mustachedarker than the hair on his headjust above his upper lip. He felt very much a stranger here: he'd been rotated to the Nantahala Redoubt for a familiarization tour . . . just at the exact moment the Snakes chose to launch the Final War.
Even his uniform was wrong. He was a thirty-year Navy man, and proud of the deep blue, the blue of the tropical ocean at night, but it didn't fit here, not with everyone else in mottled woodland camouflage.
And the Navy-blue uniform wasn't the only thing that didn't fit in. Anson MacDonald felt as devastated as the news reader had sounded. The country he loved, the system he believed in, going down under the Domination of the Draka? What had that Englishman called the Snakes? A boot in the face of mankind foreversomething like that, anyhow. He had every right to feel as if the world had just ended. For all practical purposes, it had.
But the men in the mottled uniforms seemed grimly content with their fate, with their country's fate. One of them, a fellow with captain's bars on his collar tabs, came up to MacDonald and said, "Take it easy, Commodore. They didn't put us in the Redoubt for when things were going fine. This is what we're here for: to give the Draka as much trouble as we can for as long as we can, even though the Alliance for Democracy has lost the war."
"Madness," MacDonald said. "I've always thought so. Defeatist madness."
"No, sir." The captainthe name tape above the right breast pocket of his uniform said FISCHERshook his head. "Strategy. The Draka have won the phase of the game that just ended. Now we have to make sure they get as little joy from it as possible. We have to tie them down in endless cleanup operations, make sure they'll need to worry about us ten years from now, twenty years from now, maybe fifty years from now. We've got men and women in here, you know. We can raise up a whole new generation to give the Snakes grief."
"What's the point?" MacDonald asked bitterly. "The Afghans gave them grief after the Great War. The Finns gave them grief after the Eurasian War. The Afghans are Draka Janissaries these days; the Finns, poor bastards, are mostly dead. And those sons of bitches are going to turn the free men and women of the United States and the rest of the Alliance into serfs. Do you know what that is, Captain? It's the biggest rape in the history of the world."
"Yes, sir." Fischer had a long, skinny face that seemed stupid till you studied it for a little while. MacDonald had known a few men like that; what made them seem not quite in the real world wasn't stupidity but intense concentration. After a few seconds, Fischer returned to the here-and-now. "Sir, like it or not, you're here for the duration. Ever play a game of chess where you threw away your queen like a damn fool?"
Caught off guard, MacDonald let out a couple of syllables' worth of barking laughter. "Unfortunately, yes."
"Okay." When Fischer grinned, he looked years younger, almost like a kid. "You aren't going to win after that. But if you're feeling stubborn and you've got a halfway decent defense, you can go into a shell and make the other fellow work like a son of a bitch to finish you. That's what we're all about."
"But what's the point?" Anson MacDonald demanded. "The point was, we never should have lost our queen in the first place. Now that we have, we're still facing a lost game. We would have done better to put all this energy, all this manpower, all these resources, into first-strike capability. I always said so, to anyone who would listen. Not enough people did."
"And maybe we would have lost all those people, all those resources, on account of the Snakes' stinking virus," Captain Fischer said. "We're still dealing with that; the drugs only help so much. But that's not the point. The point is, this isn't chess. The rules are more elastic, when there are rules. And you've forgotten something else."
"What's that?" MacDonald barkedhe didn't like getting a lecture from this whippersnapper. Captain Fischer spoke two quiet words. MacDonald stiffened to attention. "I am at your service, sir."
Janissary Sergeant Hans rubbed at the orange slave tattoo behind his left ear. It didn't itch, but he imagined it did. He held up a hand. The squad he led was glad to stop for a blow. They liked the look of the mountainous woods ahead no better than he did. Even if the leaves were off the trees, anything could be hiding in there. It probably was, too.
"Where's the map say we're at, Sarge?" asked a trooper named Usama.
Being a sergeant, Hans had been trained in such mysteries. He didn't even need to consult the map to answer, "That last little town we just went through was called Cheoah." His English was the slurred dialect of the Dominationnot so very much different from what the folk here in the U.S. district of North Carolina spokewith something guttural underneath, a reminder that both his grandfathers had fought for the Reich and the Führer against the Draka. They'd lost, and now he marched under the dragon that held chains and sword. He didn't worry about it. He just did what his officers told him, and handled the squad with a veteran's lack of fuss.
"Nothing left of that place no more, not after the gunships gave it the once-over." Usama was tall and lean and dark, with a long scimitar of a nose and a neat black beard. He carried a scope-sighted sniper's rifle on his back.
"No more town there, sure enough." Hans spat. He lit a cigarette. "But those bastards nailed Boris and Kemal. Shouldn't never have happened."
Everyone nodded. "Stinking civilians," somebody said. "What're they doin' with so many rifles?"
"It's like they're all Citizens," Hans said.
"My ass." That was Usama again. "We can lick these Yankees hand to hand. Real Citizens, they'd have 'em for breakfast."
"No, not Citizens like that." A thoroughly hard man, Hans admired the Draka not least because he knew they were harder. "But they've all got the right to carry weapons. Somethin' in their constitutionthe . . . fifth amendment?" He shrugged. He couldn't precisely remember the briefing. "So we got to deal with more goddamn francs-tireurs than you can shake a stick at, on top of whatever real soldiersholdoutsthey've got left."
He scowled at the last sentence. The USA wasn't pacified. Hell, it wasn't even occupied. That was his job. It was a nasty one, too. He wondered what his chances were of getting old enough to retire and buy himself a tavern or something. He shrugged against the weight of body armor. Not so good, probably.
"That one old bastard got Boris right between the eyes." Usama spoke with grudging professional respect. "Had to be five, six hundred meters, too. Good shot."
Corporal Soshangane was a Zulu; his folk had been under the Draka yoke longer than almost any other. From what he'd told Hans, he was a sixth-generation Janissary, and he thought very much like his masters. "Damn fools," he said now, in accents that might almost have belonged to a von Shrakenberg. "Kill a coupla us, cost 'em that whole damn town."
"I don't think they reckon that way," Hans said. "This here's like it was in Europe fifty years ago, only more so. They ain't gonna go down easy."
"Long as they go down." Soshangane grinned, white teeth extra bright in his dark face. "Some o' the girls, they go down mighty nice."
"Ja," Hans said, a word that did duty for yeah in the English spoken between the Rhine and the Oder. He ground the cigarette out under his bootheel. "Come oninto the woods." He pointed north and south. "We aren't gonna let those bastards go in all by themselves, are we?" Nobody said no. You didn't let your buddies down. The Janissaries fought by few rules, but that was one of them.
Hans's boots scrunched in dead leaves. He cursed under his breath, in English and in the German he'd learned as a child. Nothing to be done about it. The leaves were everywhere, here and there drifted deep like snow. Hans's eyes flicked back and forth, up and down. He wished for eyes in the back of his head. His buddies were the eyes in the back of his head, but that didn't seem enough.
Back and forth, up and down. They didn't have woods like this in Germanynot anywhere in Europe that he knew of. This place looked as if he were the first man who'd ever set foot here. It would probably be glorious in spring, with the trees in full leaf, with the birds singing songs he'd never heard before, and with squirrels peering at him out of beady black eyes.
Everything was quiet now, except for the small sounds he and his men couldn't help making. The hair on the back of his neck kept wanting to prickle up. He couldn't have proved he was being watched, but he had that feeling. He'd learned to pay attention to it. If you didn't pay attention to such feelings, you ended up buying a plot, not a tavern.
Still, he was taken by surprise when automatic-weapons fire ripped into the squad from behind. He whirled and dove for cover, his Holbars T-7 already spitting death. Even as he thudded down onto the ground, he knew he was up for a court-martial. How the devil had he walked right past those Yankee bastards without even knowing they were there?
Then a grenade burst half a meter in front of his face, and such questions became academic.
Anson MacDonald felt uncomfortable in a uniform of green and brown camouflage splotches, even though the holdouts had supplied him with one with a star on each collar tabbrigadier general was the Army equivalent of commodore. I'm not betraying Annapolis, he told himself. This is the only way I have left to hit back at the enemy. Oh, some of the Alliance submersibles are probably still out there, but I'd have just as easy a time getting to the asteroid belt as going aboard one of them. They're on their own now, same as I am. I hope they do a lot of damage before the Snakes finally sink 'em.
"Did you spray yourself with insect repellent?" Captain Fischer asked as they emerged from the mouth of a cave.
"Of course I did." MacDonald knew he sounded offended. He couldn't help it. "I grew up in Missouri," he told the younger officer, frost still in his voice. "I knew about chiggers twenty years before you were a gleam in your old man's eye."
"All right, sir." Fischer remained unruffled. "Some people need a head start." I've just been given the glove, MacDonald thought, and chuckled under his breath. Fischer went on, "Nowcan you see the cave we just came out of?"
After looking back, Commodore MacDonald had to shake his head. "Noand we can't have moved more than three or four meters."
"That's right." Fischer smiled. Again, the grin took years off him. "That rock overhang hides it unless you know exactly where to lookand even then it's not easy to spot. It's even harder in the summertime. The trees have their leaves, and the wild rhododendrons and such grow like madmen underneath 'em. If you can't see it, the Draka won't, either."
"Not until we come out and give 'em a hard time." Anson MacDonald grinned a grin of his own, a savage grin that made his teeth seem extraordinarily sharp. "Those Janissaries never knew what hit 'em." He looked to the east. It was after ten in the morning, but the sun still hadn't climbed over the edge of the valley near whose bottom they stood. "This country's even more rugged than I thought coming into the Redoubt."
"Nantahala's a Cherokee word, they tell me," Fischer answered. "Supposed to mean `Land of the Noonday Sun.' A lot of the valleys hereabouts are so steep, noon's the only time the sun gets down into 'em at all. Add in all the caves and all the mineshaftspeople went after mica and talc and emeralds, but they hardly ever made enough to pay their wayand you've got some nasty terrain to overrun."
"And we've tied a lot of the caves and the shafts together into a nice network," MacDonald said.
"No, sir," Fischer said, quietly but emphatically. "Not a network. A lot of different networks, all through this whole area. Sooner or later, we'll lose prisoners. We have to assume they won't all be able to suicide, and that means the Draka will start squeezing things out of them. We don't want the Redoubt unraveling when the first string comes loose, the way a cheap sweater would. If they want us, they'll have to come in and dig us out, and it'll cost 'em."
"I should hope so." Anson MacDonald looked around. "You could turn most of this to radioactive glass without bothering us much."
Fischer nodded. "That's the idea. We come out, give them hell in four different states, and then disappear again." He grimaced. "The only rough spot is, since we're up against the Snakes it's hard as hell on the civilian population."
But now Commodore MacDonald shook his head. "If the Draka want to kill hostages, that's their mistake. Better for Americans to die as free men than to live as slaves."
"Sir, do me a favor," Fischer said. "Take that to the Propaganda Section. One of our biggest worries is how to get our personnel to carry on with the Snakes holding a gun to the country's head."
MacDonald's face and voice were bleak. "The gun's already gone off. The Alliance is dead. The USA is dead. We're not fighting to winyou said so yourself. We're fighting to hurt the Draka and keep on hurting them. That's a different business. I presume everyone in the Redoubt is a volunteer?" He'd never asked before, but the answer seemed obvious.
And, sure enough, Captain Fischer said, "Yes, sir."
"All right, then." Anson MacDonald had never been a man to brook much nonsense from anyone. "I presume they knew what they were volunteering for, too. We've got no magic way to throw the Snakes back across the Atlantic. We can't very well start a new religion and go crusading against them. All we can do is give them grief."
"That's right," Fischer said. "That's the attitude. If I'm down to my king, I want the other fellow down to a king and a pawn, and I want to make him have to work like hell to promote that pawn."
"There you go, son." Suddenly, crazily, MacDonald felt years younger than he had any business being. Maybe Fischer felt the same, for he grinned again. They both slid down into the cave. Once they'd scrambled a little way back from the entrance, there was room to stand up. The air inside was cool and damp and smelled of dirt. From what Fischer said, it was always like that, winter and summer. Fischer reached up and touched a piece of the cave roof that looked no different from any other piece. A doorway opened. Till it did, MacDonald couldn't have told it from the rest of the back wall. He and Captain Fischer walked into the Redoubt. The door closed behind them.
In a tent outside Gastonia, North Carolina, two Draka officers studied a map that looked as if it had a bad case of the measles. "Wotan's prick, what're we gonna do about this place?" Moirarch Benedict Arnold asked. These past couple of generations, every male Citizen surnamed Arnold seemed to have that first name, a reminder of just what the Domination thought of the Yankees they'd been hating for two hundred years.
"I know what I'd like to do, Ben," answered his superior, Merarch Piet van Damm. His family had deeper roots in southern Africa than anyone this side of the Bushmen. When Arnold raised a questioning eyebrow, he went on, "I'd like to air-burst enough H-bombs over that country to turn it all to slag."
"Still wouldn't get rid of the holdouts," Arnold said mournfully. "From what the Security Directorate says, they're based underground. They've been gettin' ready for this for a long time, the sons of bitches."
Merarch van Damm chuckled. "And we ain't?" But the grin slid off his face. He was all business as he went on, "I don't care if it'd get rid of 'em or not. It'd take away their cover. That's triple-canopy forest thereunderbrush up to your chest, then a second layer twice as high as a man, and then the big hardwoods and pines on top o' that. Blast it down to the ground an' we'd be able to spot those bastards when they came topside to do their mischief."
"Sounds good to me," Arnold said. "We've lost too many men alreadynot just Janissaries, either, but Citizens, more'n we can afford. Damn the Yankees, they stashed some of their best down there. How do we go about gettin' authorization for it?"
"I tried," Piet van Damm answered. "We don't. Won't happen. Forget about it. Wish for the moon. Hell, we've got the moon."
"Who's got his head up his ass in the High Command?" Arnold asked. The two of them were old friends. Had they been anything else, the moirarch wouldn't have put his career on the line like that.
Before answering, van Damm walked out of the tent into the cold, nasty rain that drummed down outside. Benedict Arnold pulled up his head and followed. "Never can tell who might be listening," van Damm remarked. "Even out here, I won't name names. But the initials are v.S."
Benedict Arnold stared. "The von Shrakenbergs? Jesus Christ, why?" He was horrified enough to swear by something stronger than the neopagan pantheon.
"As best I can make out, two reasons, maybe three," Merarch van Damm said. "Number one, they say both sides have already used too many atomic weapons."
"Something to that," Arnold admitted reluctantly.
"Something," van Damm said. "Not enough, if you ask me. Number two is kind of related to number one. Those Yankee bastards there are enough of a nuisance to keep our soldiers sharp for years to come. They won't get soft from lack of anything to do. Our grandfathers used the Finns the same way fifty years ago."
"Something to that, too," Moirarch Arnold said. This time, he raised the objection himself: "But not enough, like you said before. We needed to stay sharp after we licked the Nazis and the Redswe still had the Alliance to worry about. But now it's whipped. The world is ours, sir."
"I know." His superior walked a little farther from the tent, as if to put more distance between himself and any possible listening devices. Arnold followed once more. After a dozen squelching steps, van Damm deigned to continue: "And there's a third reason, or I've heard there's a third reason." He moved on again.
So, perforce, did Benedict Arnold. "Well?" he asked at last.
"You didn't hear this from me," Merarch van Damm told him. "I don't care if the Security Directorate shoves burning pine slivers up under your fingernails, but you didn't hear this from me."
"I got you," Arnold said. If the SD boys ever started grilling him, burning pine slivers were the least he had to worry about in this electronic age, but van Damm had made his point.
"All right." The senior officer nodded heavily. "The third reason, from what I hearand you don't need to know where I heard itis that the von Shrakenbergs want that whole region kept as a game preserve for the days after we whip this continent into our kind of shape. It's one of the last stretches of this kind of forest left in eastern North America."
"A game preserve?" Benedict Arnold didn't say the words out loud. He couldn't. He just mouthed them. After a few seconds, he found his voice again: "The von Shrakenbergs are going to let us bleed for the sake of a game preserve?"
Piet van Damm chuckled. "Sounds like them, doesn't it? And it fits together with number two. After all, what are the Yankees these days but game? You ever read the story that Englishman wrote back before we were born?"
"Who hasn't?" Arnold said. "But a proper Draka wouldn't have let that bastard bushwhack him. You hunt the way you do everything else: to win. You don't win, there's no point to it."
"Of course not." Van Damm nodded. "But he wrote it for Englishmen and Americans, so naturally the Draka had to lose." One hand folded briefly into a fist. "Well, we didn't lose, and we're not going to lose. The world is ours, and we'll do whatever we damn well please with it."
Benedict Arnold started to say something, then checked himself. When he did speak, it was after some little thought: "You're right, sir. And on that scale of things, what's one game preserve more or less?" He came to attention, ignoring the rain with the ease of a man who'd known worse. "Service to the State!"
"Glory to the Race!" Piet van Damm finished the secularthe nearly secularinvocation. He peered west toward the Great Smoky Mountains, not that visibility was even a kilometer right this minute. "All the same, the sooner we stop hunting holdouts and start hunting boar, the happier I'll be."
Anson MacDonald sat down at a table and opened an MFR. The initials stood for Meal, Fully Ready. The troops, predictably, had come up with a rather different meaning for the acronym, one that Oedipus would have approved of. The MFRs were supposed to be able to sustain life indefinitely. Maybe it only seems like forever, MacDonald thought as he opened the foil-wrapped serving of what was alleged to be beef stew.
Captain Fischer sat down beside him. His MFR held chicken à la kingchicken à la thing, in the parlance of the soldiers of the Redoubt. He spooned up a mouthful, then grimaced. "Eating these bastards is about the only thing that tempts me to surrender to the Snakes," he said.
He meant it for a joke, but MacDonald frowned. "Do you suppose that might prove enough of a problem to lead to desertions?" he asked.
"I doubt it, sir." Fischer waved to the televisor screen, which was showing Draka programming these days: at the moment, instructions on the proper behavior for serfs in the presence of Janissaries or Draka Citizens themselves. That was fairly innocuous. But Fischer went on, "Remember last night?"
MacDonald grunted. "I'm not likely to forget it." The Snakes had broadcast what they called an object lesson: the execution of several men who'd presumed to shoot at one of their vehicles. It had taken a long time, and it hadn't been pretty.
"I hope that's not going to be a problem with the troops here," Fischer said in worried tones. "They've been briefed that they have to think of the civilian population of the USA as if it were already taken off the board."
"And so it is," Commodore MacDonald replied. "Say what you will about the Draka, they're the most efficient slavemakers this poor sorry world has ever seen." He dug into his MFR, then wished he hadn't.
"I know," Fischer said. "But some of those new slaves are family or sweethearts or friends to our men here. Watching what happens to them as they go under the yoke can't be good for morale."
"Not for ours, and not for that of the other bands of free men still running around loose," MacDonald agreed. "But it's a military reality, Captain. We have to deal with it as best we can."
"I know that, sir." Was Fischer showing exaggerated patience? MacDonald studied him. He probably was. Fischer went on, "And it's one more problem the goddamn Snakes don't have to worry about and we do."
Anson MacDonald frowned, partly because of the alleged meal in front of him, partly because he saved profanity and obscenity for special occasions, and disapproved of those who didn't. He said, "You know, Captain, in a way this is a judgment on us. Worse than we deserved, maybe, but a judgment all the same."
Fischer frowned. "I'm not sure I follow that, sir," he said stiffly.
"By which you mean you think I ought to go soak my head," MacDonald said.
The younger officer chuckled. "Now that you mention it, yes, sir."
"You don't tell a man to go soak his head when you don't understand him. You ask him what he means." MacDonald forced his deep voice, raspy from too many years of too many cigarettes, up the scale to imitate Fischer's: " `What do you mean, sir?' "
Fischer snorted, then tried to pretend he hadn't. "Go on ahead without me. You seem to be doing that anyhow."
"It's not hard, Captain." MacDonald went over to a tap to pour hot water on the instant coffee from the MFR. It was lousy, but better than no coffee at all. "We were soft, and we've paid the price for being soft. Draka Citizens are A-Number-One bastards, but they've always known what's on the line for them. If they ever let up, even for a second, they were doomed. They had responsibility and discipline forced on them. We didn't. And so . . . we're in the Redoubt, and they're out there."
That got under Captain Fischer's skin. MacDonald had thought it wouldhe'd hoped it would, anyhow. Voice wooden with disapproval, Fischer said, "I don't think it's anywhere near so simple as that, sir."
"Probably not," Commodore MacDonald said cheerfully. "But are you going to tell me it's not one of the reasons they won and we lost?"
Fischer's lips skinned back from his teeth in what was anything but a grin. He hid from the Draka down here in the Redoubt, but he hesitated to admit the USA and the Alliance for Democracy had failed all over the Earth, all over the Solar System. He said, "We did the best we could, sir. We hurt the Snakes bad, and we're going to hurt 'em worse."
"And can you imagine anything more useless and more expensive than the second best military in the world?" Anson MacDonald asked. Fischer turned a dull red. MacDonald jabbed a thumb at his own chest. "That includes me just as much as it does you, son. Remember Lenin saying that the capitalists would sell him the rope he'd use to hang them?"
"I've heard of Lenin," Fischer said, at which MacDonald rolled his eyes. But it had been a crowded century, and Lenin and Communism both lay on the ash-heap of history long before the younger officer came on the scene. As if to point that out, Fischer went on, "Anyway, it was the Draka who hanged the Russians."
"That's true, but the principle still holds," MacDonald said. "Right up till the end, we kept dealing with the enemy, selling him things he couldn't make for himself, treating him as if he were just another neighbor. You don't trade steaks to the lion next door; it just makes him hungry."
"Nobody wanted this war," Fischer said. "You don't win a chess game by kicking over the board."
"You do if you see the other fellow's about to promote a pawn," MacDonald said. "Nobody here wanted this war. The Draka? That's liable to be another story. We might have beaten then economically. Some of our most effective propaganda went into letting their serfs know what we had and they didn't and couldn't. So they kicked over the boardand we helped. By rights, they should have been stretched too thin to charge full speed ahead into electronics and space engineering and genetic engineering all at the same time. But we sold them half of what they needed. Even after they gobbled up India, we kept on selling to them. I can't think of anything in the universe that will kill you deader faster than stupidity."
"You . . . have strong views on these things," Fischer said after a brief pause for thought.
"So I do, and much good it's done me," Commodore MacDonald replied with lighthearted bitterness. "People kept telling me I'd have two stars, maybe three, by now if I could learn to keep my mouth shut. They were probably right, but . . ." He shrugged. "I've always been a loose cannon."
Captain Fischer's eyes said something like, I never would have guessed. But all he said aloud was, "Well, they're not going to court-martial you for it now."
"No, indeed." MacDonald laughed. "They can't even discharge me. They're stuck with me, is what they are."
By Fischer's expression, he felt stuck with Commodore MacDonald, too. Again, though, he kept his speech circumspectmore circumspect than MacDonald thought he would have been able to manage himself: "Yes, sir." Hard to go wrong with that.
"And speaking of which," MacDonald persisted, "as things stand right now, I'm just eating up foodto use the term looselythat would do better going to a genuine fighting man. We can't really afford to keep noncombatants down here. When do I get my rifle and my Snake-hunting license?"
"You're, ah, not so young as you might be, sir," Fischer said.
"I know that. I get reminded every time I look in the mirror," MacDonald said. "One good reason for not looking in the mirror very often." That jerked a chuckle from Captain Fischer, even if it was the heartless chuckle of a man who didn't yet have to worry about such thingsand who wasn't likely to get that old, anyhow. MacDonald pressed on: "I'm not asking to be a brigadier up there. But I know how to shoot. I've got marksman's medals on my record, even if they are from Annapolis and not West Point."
"There is one thing you have to take care of first, you know," Captain Fischer told him. "You have to go to the dentist."
Anson MacDonald winced. Somehow, going up against the Draka was easier to contemplate in cold blood. But, after a moment, he nodded. "The sacrifices I make for my country," he said. Fischer laughed again, though MacDonald hadn't altogether been joking. And the United States was already a sacrificial victim. That being so, how could he begrudge one more sacrifice? He couldn't, and he knew it.
"Idiots. Fools. Morons. Bureaucrats." Merarch Piet van Damm glowered at the orders the fax had just delivered. "But I repeat myself."
Moirarch Benedict Arnold nodded. "If they were going to send us into the mountains after those holdouts, why did they wait till springtime? Why didn't they do it three months ago?"
" `More urgently prioritized tasks elsewhere,' " van Damm read, as if the words were scatological rather than insipid. He came to stiff attention. "Ave, Imperator! Nos morituri te salutamus!"
"Maybe it won't be as bad as that," Arnold said.
"You're right. Maybe it'll be worse. Matter of fact, you can bet your balls it'll be worse." Van Damm pointed west, toward the Great Smokies. "Pretty, aren't theyall nice and green?"
"Yes, sir," Moirarch Arnold agreed. "No country like that back in Africa. Hardly any like it anywhere in the Domination. I suppose the Urals come closest, but they aren't really what you'd call a good match, either."
His superior suggested that the powers that be use one of the Uralsor perhaps the whole range; van Damm was more irate than preciseas a suppository. Before Benedict Arnold could do anything more than begin to contemplate that, van Damm went on, "Do you know what all that bloody green means?"
"Spring," Arnold said. "Some of the oddest birds you've ever seen, too," he added, for he was an enthusiastic amateur ornithologist. "I saw my first hummingbird the other day. Astonishing creaturesit's as if vertebrates were evolving to compete with bees and butterflies."
"Hummingbirds!" Piet van Damm clapped a hand to his forehead. "We're all going to get our nuts shot off, and the man's babbling about hummingbirds. Thor's hammer!and don't I wish I could drop it on those mountains? What the green means is, all the trees and bushes in Wotan only knows how many square klicks are in new leaf. And do you know what that means, or are your brains still flitting like those hummingbirds?"
"No, sir." Moirarch Arnold, like any Citizen officer, quickly returned to the business at hand. "It means our airborne infrared and satellite reconnaissance views aren't going to be worth much."
"Give the man a cigar!" van Damm said sourly. "That's just what it means, and they want to commit more Citizen troops along with the Janissaries: have to set the proper example, you know."
"Oh, yes." Benedict Arnold nodded. Of necessity, the Domination fielded far more slave troops than Citizen formations. Never letting the Janissaries believe even for a moment that the tail might wag the dog was a cornerstone of Draka administration. Suppressing mutinies was feasible, but expensive. Making sure they didn't happen in the first place sometimes cost Citizen lives, but paid dividends in the long run.
"We will have some ghouloons," van Damm said, brightening for the first time. "They'll help in the trackingbut not enough, dammit, not enough."
"When do we go in?" Moirarch Arnold asked.
"Orders are to commence the operation at 0600 hours tomorrow and to continue until there are no more Yankee holdouts in the area," his superior answered. "We're allotted three weeks to root 'em all out."
"Three . . . weeks?" Arnold burst out laughing: it was either that or burst into tears, and he hadn't cried since he was a little boy. "What's the High Command been smoking? Whatever it is, I want some, too."
"Oh, yeah." Piet van Damm nodded. "But we've got our orders. And ours is but to door die." He turned soldierly again. "I'll see you at 0600. Let the games begin. Service to the State!"
"Glory to the Race!" Benedict Arnold finished the formula. Moirarch and merarch exchanged somber salutes.
Commodore Anson MacDonald didn't like the feel of the automatic rifle he held. He hadn't been lying about his marksman's medals. But he'd won them a long time ago, at a Naval Academy far, far away. Since then, he hadn't worried much about firearms light enough for one man to carry. The Navy was the gentlemanly service, the one that did its killing at ranges too far for the human eye to note the details of what it had done. Close-in fighting, the sort that involved assault rifles and entrenching tools with sharpened blades? That was why God made marines.
He hefted the Colt-Enfield again. It wasn't the weapon with which he'd trained, either. No long wooden stock here. No elegance. No beauty. No class. Just steel and plastic, as functional as a hacksaw and about as lovely. He shrugged. As a tool for killing people, it was first-rate.
Captain Fischer watched him with some amusement. "Well, sir, you wanted the chance. Now you've got it. The Snakes are coming inand they're loaded for bear."
"Good!" MacDonald's doubts about the weapon he held vanished, swept away in a hot wind of fury and blood lust. "Now we make them pay."
"We've already started." Fischer's grin had a certain blithe ferocity to it, too. "You know about their ghouloons?"
"Oh, yes. Horrible things. A bad sign, too. If it hadn't been for their biotech, we would have licked them. Damned time-bomb virus." How were you supposed to fight a war while half your key personnel were having psychotic breakdowns?
"Dangerous things, too," Fischer said. "They started sending 'em into the woods to sniff out our doorways." The grin got wider. "But they missed a trickno such thing as a gas mask for a ghouloon."
"That is a missed trick," agreed MacDonald, an avid, and highly skilled, bridge player. "Back in the Great War, they had masks for horses and even for runner dogs. I've seen the old photos. Well, too bad for the Snakes." He paused. "I presume they can't use the gas to find any of our tunnel entrances."
"Oh, no, sir." Fischer still wore that grin. "Canisters, carefully set out while none of our little friends was looking. Some of them are close to the cave mouths, some a long ways off: the Draka won't be able to draw any conclusions by where we turned the gas loose and where we didn't."
"Sounds like good tactics." Commodore MacDonald set a pot helmet on his head. It was of some fancy synthetic, lighter and stronger than steel. Unlike the steel helmets U.S. soldiers had worn in the Eurasian War, this one offered proper protection for the back of the neck, as Draka headgear always had. As a result, the soldiers universally called it a Snake hat. They sneered at it, but they wore it.
"You ready, sir?" Captain Fischer asked.
"Ready as I'll ever be," Anson MacDonald answered. His heart thutteredpart eagerness, part buck fever. The stars he wore for rank badges were a joke. He was just an overage grunt, ready to do or dieready, in the end, to do and diefor the United States and against the nastiest tyranny the world had ever seen.
As he followed Fischer through winding corridors toward a cave mouth, he pondered the strangeness of the Draka. A lot of the Snakes he'd met had been perfectly charming, but they all kept that slight . . . carnivorous undertone, as if descended from hunting dogs rather than social apes.
Or maybe tribal was a better word for the undertone. As technology advanced, so had the recognition of who counted as a fellow human being. After a while, it wasn't just your family or your clan or your tribe or the folk who spoke your language or looked like you. For most people, human came to mean walking on two legs and speaking any language at all. Not among the Snakes, though. To them, anybody not Draka counted as fair game.
And now the whole world was their oyster.
Well, here's to grit, MacDonald thought. Along with Captain Fischer and six or eight other men half his age or less, he came out of the Redoubt and into a natural cave. When Fischer closed the door behind them, it seemed to disappear.
Inside the cave, it was as cool and damp as it had been back in the fall. Once MacDonald and his comrades left that cave and came out into the real world, though, he knew the season had changed. Even under the trees, it was warm and humid. And it would get worse when summer replaced spring. Of course, by then there may be no trees left standing, he thought.
Just pushing through the underbrush took work. It also made a frightening amount of noise. "Take it slow and easy," Captain Fischer called from somewhere aheadhe'd vanished into the thick greenery. "No Snakes anywhere close. We've got plenty of time to get where we're going and set the ambush."
"Right, Captain." That wasn't Anson MacDonald. It was one of the youngsters moving along with him. His voice also came from in front of MacDonald, who fought down worry. Can I keep up? Can I nail some of those bastards? Can I get some tiny bit of revenge for my raped and murdered country?
Sweat sprang out on his forehead. I'm an old man. I feel like an old man, by God, trying to get through this brush. He coughed. His eyes watered. He knew it was just pollen in the air, but it made him worry more, about his lungs this time. As a young officer just out of Annapolis, he'd come down with TB. A few decades earlier, before antibiotics, that would have washed him out of the Navy. He wondered what he would have done. Politics? He'd always had strong views about everything. Engineering? He made a decent engineer, but no more, and he always wanted to be the best at whatever he did. Writing? He'd been called on the carpet plenty of times for making his reports and evaluations livelier than the wooden official style. Reading that stuff bored him; writing it bored him worse.
But, thanks to wonder drugs, it was moot. Even though he worried about his lungs, they were as good as any of those kids', or they would have been if he hadn't kept on smoking in spite of everything.
Somewhere not far off, a mockingbird trilledexcept it wasn't a mockingbird. It was Captain Fischer, whistling to let his men know they'd reached the slope where they would meet the enemy.
MacDonald whistled back, fluttering his tongue against the roof of his mouth. He was pretty good at bird calls, but he didn't need to be note-perfect: how many Draka knew what North American birds really sounded like? You used whatever edge you could get.
He found his foxhole in the middle of a laurel thicket. Settling himself, he peered out toward a game track along which enemy soldiers were likely to come. They couldn't possibly see him, not when the undergrowth shadowed his position. His countrymen had had plenty of time to fortify these mountain valleys. They'd had to do most of it at night, of course, but they'd got it done.
He wondered how many soldiers had come up out of the Redoubt to challenge the Snakes here. He didn't know. Nobody'd told him. That made excellent military sense. If he didn't know, neither pharmaceuticals nor wires clipped to sensitive spots nor the impaling stake could rip the information out of him.
What had that Nazi general called the memoirs he'd written once he got to London? Without Hope and Without Fear, that was it. That was how Anson MacDonald felt now. He marveled that people had got so exercised about the Nazis and paid the Draka so little attention before the Eurasian War. Hitler's crowd talked the talk, but the Draka walked the walk.
But the Nazis did what they did to white people, to Europeans, MacDonald thought. The Draka came down on niggers and ragheads and chinks, so it didn't seem to matter so much. One brutalized blond kid is worth a dozen with black skin and kinky hair. That was how a lot of people had looked at it, anyhow. MacDonald didn't weep that the Nazis had gone down. But who would have thought they'd go down to something worse?
Somebody somewhere stepped on a dry twigthe oldest cliché in the book, but one of the hardest things to avoid just the same. Anson MacDonald stopped worrying about what had happened long ago and what might have been. None of that mattered any more, not compared to staying alive through the next few minutes.
An American screwing up . . . or a Snake? He had a round in the chamber of his assault rifle, and he peered along the sights down to the little stretch of path he could see. He had an earpiece to listen for Captain Fischer's orders, but Fischer was maintaining radio silence. The Draka would be listening.
And then he saw the bastards: lean, sun-browned white men in camouflage colors that didn't quite fit this forest. Ice and fire ran through him. Not Janissaries, he realized. Those are Citizen troops. They've sent in the first team. That only made him want to kill them all the more.
Gas masks gave them snouts, made them look like things rather than people. They are things, he thought as his finger tightened on the trigger. And they'll make things out of us. But some of them will burn in hell before they do.
He wanted to kill them all. If that meant gas, he didn't mind. If he'd had a nuclear bomb, he would have used it on Citizensno point wasting it on Janissaries. He wondered why the Draka hadn't cratered these mountains with atomic weapons. Their aristocrats probably want to keep them for a hunting park, he thought. Come on, you murdering slavemasters. I'll give you something to hunt.
His finger twitched on the trigger again. He didn't open up. Someone else, someone who had a better notion of when the time was just right, would take care of that. But when the time cameand it could only be moments awayhe would take a good many Snakes with him before he went.
Moirarch Benedict Arnold's head kept whipping back and forth, back and forth. In these woods, it didn't do him a hell of a lot of good. It wouldn't have done him much good even if he hadn't been peering out through the lenses of his gas mask. The Yankees could have stashed a couple of armored divisions within a klick of him, and he never would have known it till they started their engines.
The mask was bad enough. Full protective clothing . . . In this heat and humidity, he didn't even want to think about that. One big reason neither side used gas all that much was that the countermeasures you needed against it made any sort of fighting almost impossible.
But the Americans had been smart to take out the ghouloons that way. Right now, probably, someone was designing a mask they could wear. And somebody else was probably busy figuring out how to persuade them to wear it. In the long run, that would make them more useful to the Race. In the short run, somebody's career had probably just gone down in flames because he hadn't figured out they would need masks.
All through the woods, birds chirped and sang. Sweet sounds, but not sounds he was used to. He wouldn't have been surprised if some of those calls didn't spring from feathered throats. Easy to hide information there.
And he wouldn't have been surprised if some of those calls weren't the sound of a goose walking over his grave. The Yankees had shown they didn't want the Domination sending semianimal reconnaissance patrols into these woods. They wouldn't take kindly to soldiers marching through.
If somebody opened up on him right now, he'd dive behind . . . that rock. Unless there's a Yankee behind it already, he thought. The mask hid his chuckle. If there is, I'll kill the bastard. Hand to hand, the odds were with him; even American soldiers were soft and slow by Draka standards. But nobody dodged the bullet with his name on it.
Those folk who took their neopaganism seriouslya tiny minority, a century after the old Germanic gods were reborn and then seen to be no real answerwould have called him fey. He didn't look at it that way. He wanted to live. It was just that his superiors had set things up in such a way that his chances were less than they would have been had those superiors had any real idea what the devil they were doing.
No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than small-arms fire started barking. A second later, after two or three bullets cracked past his head, he was behind that rock, with no company but a little lizard with a blue belly that scurried off into the leaves when he thudded down.
"Base, we are under attack!" he shouted into his radio. "Map square Green 2. I say again, we are under attack at Green 2. Do you copy?"
The only noise that came from the set was the one bacon might have made frying in a pan. Benedict Arnold cursed. The Yankees had always been too stinking good with electronics. They were jamming for all they were worth. No instant air support. No friendly helicopter gunships rushing in to hose down the enemy with Gatlings and rockets. No fighter-bombers screaming down out of the sky to plaster the Americans with napalm. If he and his men were going to come out of this in one piece, they'd have to do it themselves, for the time being, anyhow.
He squeezed off a short burst in the direction from which the enemy fire seemed heaviest. A couple of Citizens were down in spite of body armor, one writhing with a leg wound, the other motionless, shot through the head. Moirarch Arnold cursed again. Dammit, the Race shouldn't be spending men like this in a country it had already conquered.
One thingeverybody who heard the fighting would move toward it. The Draka took care of their own. They had tonobody else would. He just hoped the other units in these stinking woods weren't pinned down like his men.
Well, if they had to fight the old-fashioned way for a while till they could beat the jamming, they bloody well would. "Forward by squads!" he yelled, hoping his voice would carry. "Leapfrog!"
What would the Yankees least expect? A movement straight toward them, unless he missed his guess. He didn't think so. He wanted to get at close quarters with them. At close quarters, he and his men had the edge.
He scrambled out from behind the rock and dashed toward a tree up the slope. The men from the squads not moving fired to make the enemy keep his head down. Bullets stitched the ground by his feet. Grenades burst not far away. Mortar bombs started raining down on the Draka. And one of his men stepped on a mine that tore him to red rags.
Arnold dove down behind the tree. Somewhere behind him, more Yankees opened up on his beleaguered men. He cursed every von Shrakenberg ever born. Hunting preserve, my left ballock, he thought. The Americans couldn't have set a better ambush if they'd planned it for years.
Of course, they had planned it for years. And now the Draka would pay the price. Arnold's grin behind the mask was savage. The Alliance for Democracy had already paid the price. In the long run, this was just small change. But a man who got killed in a fight that didn't mean much was every bit as dead as one who got killed any other way. Benedict Arnold didn't want to die. That, after all, was what enemies and serfs were for.
Ground combat was even more chaotic, even more frightening and frightful, than Anson MacDonald had thought it would be. On a ship, he was part of a smoothly functioning team. He didn't have that feeling here. On the contrary: he'd never felt more alone in his life. And every Draka in the world seemed to be trying to kill him and nobody else.
He'd hit a couple of Snakes. He was sure of it. He wasn't sure he'd killed them. Their body armor was at least as good as his, and they could carry more than he and his countrymen did. The sons of bitches were just out-and-out strong.
They were quick, too. As Captain Fischer had predicted, the Draka came straight at the men who opened up on them. "Don't try to duke it out with a Snake," Fischer had warned. "You'll lose. We can't afford that. Shoot him or run away."
Fischer had told that to the twenty-year-olds who were supposed to be fast and strong. What about me? MacDonald wondered. But the answer seemed pretty obvious. If you're dumb enough to volunteer for the Poor Bloody Infantry, you deserve whatever happens to you. And it will.
I'm putting my body between my home and war's desolation. That sounded very fine and noble . . . till the bullets started flying. And war's desolation had already visited his home, and all the other homes in the Alliance for Democracyand a good many homes in the Domination of the Draka, too.
So what am I doing here? The answer there wasn't subtle, either. No room for subtlety, not any more. I'm going to kill a few Snakes before they kill me. All rightfair enough.
A few tiny holes were left in the jamming that scrambled radio reception through the area above the Redoubt. "Fall back!" Captain Fischer called through the speaker in MacDonald's left ear. "They're putting a little more pressure on us than we thought they'd be able to."
That would do for an understatement till a bigger one came along. Enemy firing came from both sides of MacDonald now, not just from in front of him. In spite of everything, the Draka had got in among the Americans. Guessing what they'd do didn't necessarily mean you could stop them. Who was outflanking whom was now very much a matter of opinion. They're good, damn them, MacDonald thought as he scuttled back toward another foxhole. If the Snakes hadn't been so good, he would have been fighting on their home turf, not his.
His heart thudded in his chest as he scrambled through the thick undergrowth. He panted when he threw himself into the new hole in the ground and looked around for targets. That'd be an embarrassing way to check outdying of a coronary on the battlefield. You won't do ityou won't, you hear me? He tried to give his body orders as if it were an able seaman. But if it decided to be insubordinate, what could he do about it? Not much.
Above the crackle and thunder of gunfire came another sound, a loud thuttering. It came literally from above: from over the forest canopy. MacDonald couldn't see the machines making the new racket, but he knew what they were. In spite of the jamming, the Draka had got helicopter gunships over the right part of the field.
They won't use them when their fellows are all mixed up with ours . . . will they? The Snakes would. They did. They seemed to take the view that getting rid of the holdouts was worth whatever it cost.
Gatlings overhead roared, a sound like giants ripping thick canvas. Snake gunners ripple-fired rocket pods under their helicopters. MacDonald had never imagined such punishment. The ground beneath him shuddered as the rockets slammed home. Blasts picked him up and flung him down. He tasted blood in his mouth. Those explosions had tried to tear his lungs right out of his body, and they'd damn near done it.
He knew he was screaming, but he couldn't hear a thing. Maybe the din all around was too loud. Maybe he was partly, or more than partly, deafened. He felt all turned around. Where the devil was the closest cave mouth? He could use his compass to find out, he supposed, doing his best to think straight in the midst of hell. But what were the odds he'd get there? Thin. Very thin.
More rockets rained down. One of them burst close to his new holemuch too close, in fact. It picked him up and slammed him down, harder than he was designed to be slammed. He felt things snap that had no business snapping. Pain flared red, then black, as consciousness fled.
With the Yankees' damned jammers still going flat out, Benedict Arnold had no control over the air strikes flown to help the Domination's troopers. He wasn't at all sure they were helping; they were right on top of the Americans, sure enough, but that meant they were also right on top of his own men.
He wasn't ashamed to scream when rockets from the helicopter gunships plowed up the landscape right under his own boots. Anybody who said he'd been in combat without getting scared almost out of his sphincters was either a dangerous liar or an even more dangerous psychopath. It was necessary. That didn't make it fun, except talking about it afterwards over booze or kif.
Not far away, one of his men went down, head neatly severed by a chunk of rocket casing. Even through the gas mask, Arnold smelled blood and shit. Friendly fire, they called it, the lying bastards.
Another Citizen fell, this one shot in the face. The pounding hadn't settled the Yanks' hash, then. Moirarch Arnold cursed. He'd known it wouldn't, though it did help some.
And then, from a few hundred meters behind him, came a roar louder than any of the mortar rounds or rockets bursting. He cursed again: that couldn't be anything but a gunship going down in flames. Bad luck? Or did the Yankees have some of those nasty little shoulder-mounted AA missiles of theirs? He wouldn't have been a bit surprised. In their shoes, he would have made sure he stocked some.
Another gunship crashed, even more noisily than the first. "Missiles," he muttered. Even without the din all around, the mask would have muffled the word. Not all the helicopters were out of action, though. Gatling fire and rockets flagellated the forest.
Some of that came in much too close to him. He dove into the nearest hole he could findand then started to dive right out again, because an American soldier, his camouflage uniform a medley of shades different from the Domination's, already occupied it. But the Yankee didn't go for the assault rifle by himhe was either dead or unconscious, Arnold realized. One of his legs bent at an unnatural angle.
An old man, Arnold thought. Then he saw the single stars the American wore; they were almost invisible against his uniform. Excitement coursed through him. I've caught a big fish, if he's still breathing.
He felt for a pulse, and felt like whooping. The Yankee had one. And he was coming to; he stirred and groaned and reached for the rifle. Benedict Arnold grabbed it before he could. And the moirarch shed his gas mask. If the American wasn't wearing one, he was damned if he would.
The Yankee's eyes came open. They held reasonreason and danger. He might be an old man, but he's nobody to screw around with, Arnold thought. If he looked away for even a second, this fellow would make him pay.
Well, don't look away, then. Field interrogation was an art form in its own right. He smiled. It could be fun, too. "Hello, Yank," he said.
"Hello, Yank." The words told Anson MacDonald the worst. So did the greens of the other soldier's combat uniformthey were jungle greens, not those of the forest. And so did the barrel of the Holbars T-7 aimed at his head. That 4.45mm barrel looked wide as a tunnel.
MacDonald took inventory. Everything hurtribs and right leg worst. He could, after a fashion, bear it. If the Draka decided to give that leg a boot . . . Snakes were supposed to enjoy things like that, and they weren't exactly meeting over a tea party.
"My name is Anson MacDonald," he said. "My rank is commodore, U.S. Navy. My pay number . . ." He rattled it off. For close to forty years, it had been as much a part of him as his name.
How much good would any of this do? The Draka acknowledged the Geneva Convention only when they felt like it, and now there was nobody on the outside to pressure them to behave. The only rules left were the ones they felt like following.
For a moment, he'd succeeded in surprising this Snake. "Commodoah?" the fellow drawled. "You're a hell of a long way from the water, Navy man."
MacDonald started to shrug, then thought better of it. "I don't have to answer that," he said.
The Draka didn't reply, not in words. He just flicked out a booted foot and kicked MacDonald's right leg. MacDonald shrieked, then clamped down on it. "That there's just a taste," the Draka said mildly. "Don't waste my time, serf, not if you want to keep breathin'."
"Not likely," MacDonald said. "You'd never trust the likes of me as a serf, anyhow. You'll squeeze me and then you'll get rid of me. But I'll tell you this: when I go to hell, I'll have a couple of Draka sideboys along for escorts."
He wondered if that would get him killed in the next instant. But the Drakaa moirarch, MacDonald saw, gradually noticing finer details: my luck to have one of their colonels get the drop on me while I was outjust nodded. "All right, pal," he said. "We both know what's what, then. You better remember who's top and who's bottom, though."
Sex slang, MacDonald thought scornfully. But he nodded. "I'm not likely to forget."
"Right." The Draka had an easy, engaging smile. MacDonald might have liked himhad he not been one of the slaveowning sons of bitches who'd murdered the United States. "Now, Commodoah, suppose you tell me all about this holdout base of yours."
"Suppose I don't," MacDonald said.
That earned his broken leg another kick. He'd been sure it would. This time, he couldn't clamp down on his scream. Amid battlefield chaos, who noticed one more howl of anguish? Still smiling, the moirarch said, "You're hardly any sport, Yankeetoo easy. But we're got all day, or as long as it takes."
Wrong, Anson MacDonald thought when he was capable of coherent thought againwhich took some little while. Panting, he said, "I'll tell you something even more important first."
With a shake of the head, the Draka officer said, "No deal, pal. Tell me what I want to know."
"Afterwards."
"Who's top, Yank? You haven't got much in the way of a bargaining position."
Better than you think. MacDonald braced himself for another kick, not that bracing himself would do the slightest bit of good.
But the moirarch looked thoughtful. "Well, why not? Make it short, make it sweetand then sing. You know how unhappy I'll be if you're lying or wasting my time. You know how unhappy you'll be, too."
"I have some idea," MacDonald said dryly.
And that made the Snake laugh out loud. "I like you, Yank, stick a stake up my ass if I don't. You're wasted on your side, you know that? Now sing."
"Oh, I will," MacDonald said. "How long to you think it'll take the Domination to clean things up here?"
"Fo'ty, fifty years," the Draka answered at once, and surprised MacDonald with his candor. "You Yankee bastards are a tough nut, maybe even tougher'n we reckoned. But so what? You're busted open now. We can do what we want with youan' we will."
"No." Anson MacDonald shook his head. In spite of everything, this was what triumph felt like. "Because all the resources you spend here aren't going after what really matters."
"Nothin' really matters, not any more. This is mop-up time," the Draka moirarch said. "The Earth is ours. The Solar System is ours."
Baring his teeth in a fierce grin, MacDonald said, "And the New America is ours, by God." Those two words, New America, had kept him going after disaster engulfed the USA, engulfed the Alliance. "Alpha Centauri will be a going concern long before you Snake bastards can even start to try snuffing it out. It's not over, damn you. It's only starting. And I live for that, and so does everybody else in the Redoubt."
The Draka leaned forward. "The Redoubt, eh? So that's what you call it? Now you've made your speech, and you're going to tell me all about it . . . one way or another." Anticipation filled his voice.
MacDonald's smile got wider. "Goodbye," he said, and bit down hard. The false tooth the dentist had implanted cracked. The taste of bitter almonds filled his mouth, overwhelmingly strong, burning, burningbut not for long. The poison worked almost as fast as they'd promised. He nodded once before everything faded. He'd even got the last word.