Riding the Red Horse by Jerry Pournelle, Christopher Nuttall, Rolf Nelson, Chris Kennedy, Brad Torgersen, Thomas Mays, James F. Dunnigan, William S. Lind Page B

beyond was no different from the one behind them, and there was another ridge at its end.
    “What do you think those people out there want?” Barton said. He waved expressively.
    “Freedom.”
    “Maybe to be left alone. Maybe they'd be happy if the lot of us went away.”
    “They'd be slaves. Somebody's got to help them—” Peter caught himself. There was no point to this, and he thought Barton was laughing at him.
    Instead, the older man wore a curious expression. He kept the sardonic grin, but it was softened almost into a smile. “Nothing to be ashamed of, Pete. Most of us read those books about knighthood and all that. We wouldn't be in the services if we didn't have that streak in us. Just remember this, if you don't get over most of that, you won't last.”
    “Without something like that, I wouldn't want to last.”
    “Just don't let it break your heart when you find out different.”
    What is he talking about? Peter wondered. “If you feel that way about everything, why are you here? Why aren't you in one of the mercenary outfits?”
    “Commissars ask that kind of question,” Barton said. He gunned the motor viciously and the Cadillac screamed in protest.
    It was late afternoon when they got to Tarazona. The town was an architectural melange, as if a dozen amateurs had designed it. The church, now a hospital; was Elizabeth HI modern, the post office was American Gothic, and most of the houses were white stucco. The volunteers were unloaded at a plastisteel barracks that looked like a bad copy of the quad at West Point. It had sally ports, phony portcullis and all, and there were plastic medieval shields pressed into the cornices.
    Inside there was trash in the corridors and blood on the floors. Peter set the men to cleaning up.
    “About that blood,” Captain Barton said. “Your men seem interested.”
    “First blood some of 'em have seen,” Peter told him. Barton was still watching him closely. “All right. For me too.”
    Barton nodded. “Two stories about that blood. The Dons had a garrison here, made a stand when the Revolutionaries took the town. Some say the Dons slaughtered their prisoners here. Others say when the Republic took the barracks, our troops slaughtered the garrison.”
    Peter looked across the dusty courtyard and beyond the hills where the fighting was. It seemed a long way off. There was no sound, and the afternoon sun seemed unbearably hot. “Which do you think is true?”
    “Both.” Barton turned away toward the town. Then he stopped for a moment. “I'll be in the bistro after dinner. Join me if you get a chance.” He walked on, his feet kicking up little clods of dust that blew across the road.
    Peter stood a long time in the courtyard, staring across fields stretching fifty kilometers to the hills. The soil was red, and a hot wind blew dust into every crevice and hollow. The country seemed far too barren to be a focal point of the struggle for freedom in the known galaxy.
    Thurstone was colonized early in the CoDominium period but it was too poor to attract wealthy corporations. The third Thurstone expedition was financed by the Carlist branch of the Spanish monarchy, and eventually Carlos XII brought a group of supporters to found Santiago. They were all of them malcontents.
    This was hardly unusual. Space is colonized with malcontents or convicts; no one else wants to leave Earth. The Santiago colonists were protesting the Bourbon restoration in Spain, or John XXVI's reunification of Christendom, or the cruel fates, or, perhaps, unhappy love affairs. They got the smallest and poorest of Thurstone's three continents, but they did well with what little they received.
    For thirty years Santiago received no one who was not a voluntary immigrant from Spanish Catholic cultures. The Carlists were careful of those they let in, and there was plenty of good land for everyone. The Kingdom of St. James had little modern technology, and no one was very rich, but there were few who