Battle Hymn (7 page)

"How's my father-in-law?"

Andrew shook his head.

"Our president is proving to be a president."

"He's a pain, he is," Pat interjected. "Wants to cut the budget again, divert rail development back into Rus, and Marcus agrees—as long as it means extra lines inside Roum. And he wants to cut the training and field assignment of new troops down to one year from two."

"Damn! We need it out here," Vincent replied sharply. "We're nearly a thousand miles past Roum now, in the middle of nowhere. I've only got five thousand mounted patrolling a frontier more than five hundred miles across to the east and another five thousand on the defensive line to the south. They could slip ten umens through that cordon and be halfway here before we'd even notice."

He nodded toward the two hundred fifty men lined up to receive Andrew. "And look at those boys. I've got exactly twenty-two vets with this battalion. The rest of them are recruits who were underage kids when the Merki came. We need two years to get them in shape before sending them into the reserve. What the hell is Kal thinking?"

"Ah, politics, my lad," Emil interrupted. "Remember now, they're voters back home, not a bunch of terrified peasants with the bogeyman at the gate. The danger's past, at least according to some in Congress. The Merki are scattered, the Tugars have gone east, and the Bantag are a thousand miles away and supposedly moving east as well. The wars are over, and they don't need us old soldiers now."

"And it's another four hundred miles to the capital of the Nippon," Andrew replied. "Four hundred miles of rail and bridges, to Kal's thinking, can help link a lot of towns together before the next election. The votes are back there, not out here. Kal's party is facing opposition, and that's their complaint. And getting across that next river thirty miles ahead. That's a mile of bridging, and Ferguson's talking about a thousand-foot span in the middle. That same material could build a dozen rail bridges back home."

"We need that bridge," Vincent snapped. "Forward projection. That was the whole idea, which we agreed upon if the Bantag should turn north. We fortify the narrows south of Roum between the Inland Sea and the Great Sea, use that as a barrier. But even that's more than a hundred fifty miles across, and the rail to that position still has eighty miles to go. By God, sir, if they should come at us from that direction, how in hell are we to hold a front, with the railhead so far in the rear? We'll lose it all, and if the army deploys out, we'll lose that as well."

Andrew nodded in agreement. "I think we'll get the appropriation to finish running the rail line south, but that's it."

Hawthorne threw up his hands in exasperation. "Sir. It's not just that. We need a rail line running parallel to where we want to fortify. We need stockpiles of equipment there. And I've been screaming for half a year to build a new airship base down there. If we base our air fleet out of there, build that airship resupply vessel that Bullfinch here has been talking about, we might even be able to push an airship into their territory."

"Provocative act, there," Pat said dryly.

"Provocative or not, it needs to be done," Bullfinch interjected. "I'd like to see an airship in there right now, especially up that river. You saw the report I forwarded about that escaped slave the sloop picked up. They're building ships up there, sir, and here we've barely got a proper naval base and nothing much more than an anchoring spot down on the defensive line."

"I'm still arguing for it, Admiral, but we have to face facts. The money, the resources are stretched beyond the breaking point. If we had not been blessed with a damn good harvest last year, which gave us some surplus to trade with Cartha, we'd be in the barrel now. Everyone in Congress is screaming internal improvements first. They need more harvesting machines, every congressman is crying for a rail line to his town and the hell with wasting track in the wilderness, and the pensions for disabled soldiers are staggering."

"Then push on to Nippon and get them allied with us," Vincent shot back. "That could be another ten corps worth of troops, and damn good ones at that. I've been there. I know."

"And it was your report, I think, that scared some people in Congress," Emil replied. "Remember, Rus lost half its population in the wars. There's barely seven hundred thousand still alive. Roum outnumbers them nearly two to one. But Nippon has more people than Roum and Rus put together."

"Precisely why we need them," Vincent replied heatedly. "We could double the army. At best we'll get a corps out of the Asgard and it will take years to get them adapted. Right now they're next to useless except as raiding troops and scouts."

"Vincent! And here you're married to the president's daughter," Emil said with a shake of his head. "Don't you get the political ramifications? If we bring Nippon in as a state of the Republic it'll control half the seats in Congress. Come next election it might even be able to put a president in."

Vincent shook his head angrily. "To base a cutback decision on that is obscene. The ideal of the Republic is that all men are created equal regardless of race. Didn't we join the Army of the Potomac for that? Lord knows, I did, even though I was a Quaker. We fought and a hell of a lot of our comrades died for an ideal. Now let's live up to it."

"Idealism," Pat interjected with a smile. Vincent flinched and then saw the admiration in Pat's eyes.

"Me bucko, you're a wonder. Too bad not everyone is as high-minded and book-learned as you."

Andrew smiled at Pat's words. Shortly after he had joined the army in '62, Colonel Estes, the first commander of the Thirty-fifth, had snapped, "Just what the hell am I supposed to do with a book-learned professor?"

And now look at me, he thought with a twinge of irony. General of the Armies. The life and death of human civilization on this insane world resting on my shoulders for nearly eight years. He fully agreed with Vincent.

"There'd still be the balance in the Senate, though," Vincent finally replied. "Nippon will get only five seats, the same as Asgard, once it becomes a state of the Republic, and Rus and Roum will each hold their fifteen and ten seats."

"Well, now," Emil replied, as if lecturing a student, "so what? Right now the balance is there between Roum and Rus even though Roum controls the House by virtue of population. But the alliance between us, so far, is one of blood spilled on the battlefield, and we still trust each other. Nippon is an unknown. Maybe after the next presidential election, when Kal is secure for six more years, maybe then we'll push the railhead, but not before."

Vincent looked at Andrew appealingly. "You wrote the bloody Constitution. Didn't you see this?"

"I figured it might be a possibility," Andrew replied. "That's why we put in that the two founding states of the Republic, Rus and Roum, each had more senators than the five granted to new states as they join. We'll maintain control in the Senate for a long time to come, but it's the House that will be up for grabs if Nippon joins us, and that has them spooked."

"Can't you convince Kal?"

"Oh, eventually."

"The damn thing's nuts," Vincent stormed, his voice growing louder. "During the war we got what we needed and the hell with politics. This damn Constitution will get our asses in the wringer."

Andrew, in a fatherly fashion, put his hand on Vincent's shoulder and led him off the platform, beyond the hearing of their three comrades and the troops deployed along the depot siding.

"If I ever hear you say that in public again I'll strip you of command," Andrew said quietly. "Do I make myself clear, General?"

Vincent looked straight up into Andrew's eyes. "But, sir, you see the problem it's created."

"Do I make myself clear, General?" Andrew repeated, his voice growing hard.

Vincent stared at him, wanting to raise a protest, but the growing anger evident in Andrew's eyes stilled his voice. He snapped to attention. "Yes, sir."

Andrew knew that several of Vincent's men had overheard the comment and were now watching the dressing-down. He had to maintain discipline but at the same time not cause Vincent to lose too much face.

"You are not in McClellan's army, Mr. Hawthorne. That talk might have been tolerated back in sixty-two but it will never be tolerated here. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, sir."

He now raised his voice slightly so the men, who were undoubtedly straining to catch every word, would hear. "I don't care if you are the best fighting general in the army. When it comes to this issue, in this country, the military must take its orders from the civilian government, like it or not. That is the oath we swore to uphold."

Vincent nodded, his face turning red.

"Fine. We understand each other, then."

"Yes, sir. I apologize, sir."

Andrew nodded. Handling Hawthorne was always something of a tricky job. There was, of course, the political connection. Though Kal would never interfere in the way Vincent was disciplined, he knew that the boy—after all, he was only twenty-seven— could not help but feel that the presence of his father-in-law gave him certain leverage.

Beyond that, Vincent simply was the best he had. His defense of the center at the second and third day of Hispania was now the stuff of legend. One of the most popular paintings to emerge from the war was that of Vincent standing like an immovable rock on a flatbed car, the Merki host storming around him. The painting rivaled Showalter's Last Stand as the most popular illustration hanging in bars throughout the Republic.

Andrew hoped that there would come a day when Vincent became general of the armies. He mused on that for a moment and found the thought troubling. But it was an option that might become necessary before much longer. Though Pat could possibly fill the post, he did not have the charismatic appeal of Vincent, especially with the Roum, who viewed Vincent as their hero as well for his defense of the palace during the Cartha War. If it came to that choice, Pat could serve publicly as direct commander of all Rus troops but in private he would be the brake and steady hand, a Hans for a new general.

Hans. Again the troubling memory. Wish you were here, old friend, Andrew thought sadly, and then he focused again on Vincent. The boy would need more grooming, especially when it came to his temper and his often impetuous actions.

"Fine. We understand each other, then," Andrew said again, letting his voice go softer.

"Yes, sir, we do."

Andrew could sense the embarrassment in Vincent's tone. Good, let it stay there for a while.

He looked back at Bullfinch, who had respectfully withdrawn while his friend was being chewed out. "Mr. Bullfinch, shall we start this inspection tour?"

"Aye, aye, sir."

Pat chuckled at the nautical terminology, feeling, as most soldiers did, that the vocabulary of sailors was nothing but an affectation.

"How much time do we have before the meeting with the Nippon military liaison?"

Vincent pulled out his pocket watch. "We have a couple of hours, sir. Last report from the telegraph station said he crossed the river shortly after dawn. We should have plenty of time."

Though Andrew still wore the pocket watch given to him by the men of the Thirty-fifth after he was wounded at Gettysburg, he didn't even bother to wind it anymore. The days on this planet were fifty minutes shorter, and trying to reset the timing had caused endless confusion. A team under Chuck Ferguson, the scientific wizard who, perhaps more than anyone else, had helped to save them all, had worked out a new twenty-four-hour standard after endless debate about going to a ten-hour rather than twenty-four-hour day, just how long was a second, and should there be sixty or a hundred minutes in an hour. In the end, no matter how illogical it really was, the Republic had adopted the twenty-four-hour day, with the seconds just slightly shorter than back home to make up the difference. One of the new watchmakers, a former Rus artillery major, had offered to regear Andrew's watch, but he had yet to get around to having it done. Besides, he realized, one of the prerogatives of command was that he could simply rely on his staff for the time.

"Fine, then. Let's go see Mr. Bullfinch's new ship."

Following Vincent and Bullfinch's lead, Andrew fell back in with Emil and Pat, both of them watching Vincent, who stayed several feet ahead. Andrew could see that Pat wanted to make a wisecrack, but he shook his head.

"Ah, youth," Pat muttered, loud enough for Vincent to hear. Vincent turned angrily, and Pat, with a smile, went up and slapped him on the shoulder, moving him forward and away from Andrew.

"They'll make a good team," Emil said softly. "Reminds me of you and Hans."

Andrew smiled and nodded as he watched the two of them, Pat's hand on Vincent's shoulder and Vincent obviously pouring out his frustration. As they walked down the main street of the town that had sprung up around the railhead and port, Andrew could not help but feel a certain sense of awe.

At one of the sidings a crew was unloading cut railroad ties off a narrow gauge line that ran northward for fifty miles up into the forest, where a steam-powered mill operated. The laborers were a mixed lot of Rus and Roum, with a few Cartha refugees and Asgard thrown in. He could hear the polyglot language they spoke, a mixture of medieval Russian and ancient Latin, with a fair sprinkling of English, especially for military and technical terms. Gates, the editor of the Republic's most popular paper, Gates's Illustrated Weekly, had even written a couple of articles speculating that because of the rapid rise in literacy, the speed of transportation, and the mixing of formally isolated societies through the army and politics a new language might eventually emerge.

The laborers paused upon seeing Andrew, and several of the men came to attention, snapping off salutes.

Andrew smiled and saluted in turn.

"Bloody Seventh Murom!" one of them shouted. "Twenty-third Roum," another chimed in proudly as he pulled up his sleeve to show a jagged white scar. Andrew waved in reply.

"Roll his sleeve, and bare his scars, and say these wounds I won on Chrispen's Day."