The principal military opposition is a battalion of mercenaries, Barton's Bulldogs, commanded by Major Ace Barton a former Legion officer , who are working for the planters. Lysander plays a major role in the Legion's foiling the theft of the drugs.
Barton and Falkenberg broker a truce between the Tanith government and the planters, with the Bulldogs rescuing Falkenberg when one of the planters reneges on the agreement and takes Falkenberg hostage. Barton's part in the rebellion and his turning against Bronson means he has to leave the planet.
With few options, he rejoins Falkenberg, who absorbs the defeated Bulldogs into Falkenberg's Mercenary Legion. After the ending of the planters' rebellion and the expiration of the Legion's contract with the Tanith government, Falkenberg is approached by a rebel group from the planet New Washington to become the main striking force in a revolution against the government of the Franklin Confederacy, another planet in the same system that treats them as a backward colony.
At the same time the newly activated Fifth Battalion of the Legion, commanded by the just-promoted Major Peter Owensford with Captain Ace Barton as his second-in-command, is dispatched on contract to the Dual Monarchy of Sparta to set up the Royal Army there.
Originally a short novel, 'Sword and Scepter'. Part of the novel The Mercenary , later incorporated into Falkenberg's Legion. This is one of a pair of planets, orbiting a common center which itself orbits a red dwarf star.
The two planets are tidally locked, so they always present the same face to each other. As day progresses to night on New Washington, the side of the sister planet Franklin facing it goes from night to day. One revolution takes 40 hours. The pair revolve around their star in 52 days. It is one of the farthest colonies from Earth, being over a hundred parsecs away. New Washington was founded by dissidents from the colony on Franklin.
They eventually rebel against the officials from Franklin who govern New Washington. Franklin responded by sending both its own troops and later, mercenaries from Earth, Friedland a German-settled planet whose mercenary forces specialize in mobile armored warfare , and Covenant a Scots-settled planet with a well deserved reputation for producing fierce infantrymen.
This first rebellion succeeds brilliantly against Franklin's domestic army, but is crushed in a set piece battle on the open plain on the Franklin-occupied side of the mountains which divide New Washington's only continent when it faces mercenaries hired by the Franklin Confederacy.
The Friedlander tanks and Covenant infantry destroy New Washington's citizen army, and Franklin's forces retaliate against the rebel populace, burning ranches and towns to discourage further rebellion. Franklin leaves the Friedland armor and the Covenanters to maintain order. Falkenberg is hired to throw out the invaders. The rebel leaders on New Washington are not entirely behind his military objectives, but see his mercenary unit as a nucleus around which a new rebellion can form.
After a stealthy spaceborne insertion, Falkenberg and his forces execute a blitzkrieg attack on the isolated loyalist town of Allansport to give him an operating base, from which his troops take the allegedly impregnable fortress of Astoria, capturing a number of Friedland self-propelled guns in the process. After Astoria is taken, Falkenberg's units mount a 'shock and awe' invasion through large areas of territory, leading the organized forces of the rebel government in another blitzkrieg.
The Legion and their allies overwhelm the occupying troops on the west side of the mountain range, 'keepin' up the skeer' and sending them running frantically while bypassing and besieging the few large concentrations of Franklin troops and their off-planet mercenaries.
In an eighty-hour campaign, Falkenberg and the rebel forces occupy almost all of New Washington west of the Temblors, the continent's major mountain range. The campaign comes to a decisive battle when a detachment of Falkenberg's forces, supported by the self-propelled artillery captured from the Friedland garrison at Astoria and Franklin units in the path of the blitzkrieg, and a force of New Washington rebel militia guarding the guns and also operating as a vanguard, fight a battle within Hillyer Gap, the only usable pass through the Temblor Mountains between rebel-held country and Franklin territory.
Falkenberg's ad-hoc task force stops the advance of a brigade of Friedland armor and a regiment of Covenant Highlanders at the pass, inflicting devastating casualties on them with his captured artillery. That phase of the second New Washington rebellion is won when a Covenant Highlander officer comes forward under a white flag seeking a truce that would permit the Covenanters to recover their dead and wounded, and for the Legion to transfer the Highlander wounded back to their own medics.
Falkenberg grants a truce of four New Washington days and nights— standard hours. Honor is satisfied. Now the Confederacy will have to bring up its own Regulars if they want to force a way through the Gap. I don't think they'll squander men like that, and anyway it takes time. Falkenberg then becomes embroiled in rebel politics, at the same time easing into a relationship with Glenda Ruth Horton, commander of the rebel infantry forces and leader of one of the major rebel factions.
The rebel force sent to relieve the small garrison Falkenberg left behind in Allansport to secure the town loots and burns it after their commander tells them they can claim part of any government property they find as a reward, this occurring just after Falkenberg and Glenda Ruth won the engagement at Hillyer Gap. The sack of Allansport is a direct violation of the Laws of War, a vestige of CoDominium control over its former colonies that is sporadically enforced by the CoDominium Navy and Marines.
Falkenberg leaves the Legion guarding the pass, bringing a detachment with him to investigate the situation at Allansport. He convinces Glenda Ruth to relieve the ambitious politician Jack Silana who had taken over at Allansport, then returns to the rebel capital with Glenda Ruth and the mayor of Allansport, an influential Loyalist politician. Silana is outraged at his removal and has influence with the leadership.
Other rebel leaders are outraged at Falkenberg's four-day-long truce with the Highlanders, demanding that Falkenberg try to force the pass himself. Falkenberg and Glenda Ruth realize this would place their forces at the mercy of the Friedland and Covenant troops that defeated the rebels the first time.
Glenda Ruth uses every trick of politics and parliamentary procedure she knows to stall a vote on forcing the Legion to attack. At this point, a CoDominium cruiser arrives, ostensibly to investigate reports of an alleged breach of the Laws of War. Her captain is a Lermontov loyalist, helping to implement the Grand Admiral's plan for the survival of civilization. In possession of New Washington's mines and industrial plants, Franklin would be able to build a naval fleet that could attack other star systems.
Lermontov's goal was to pacify the planet at minimum cost by creating a pretext for the CoDominium to order the mercenaries on both sides to leave. The Franklin Confederacy alone does not possess enough strength to bring New Washington back under its control, thus ending that particular threat to the peace. Aware of all of this, Falkenberg had been expecting the arrival of that CoDominium ship for some time. However, Colonel Falkenberg has decided to stay on New Washington.
He plans to marry Glenda Ruth Horton. In the end, Falkenberg drives the Confederates off the planet and becomes Protector of New Washington. In fact he is effectively king of New Washington, observing that 'Maybe people are ready for monarchy again, at that. Meanwhile, tensions on Earth have grown to the point that when there is a vote of no confidence in the Grand Senate, the Senate dissolves and there is not enough stability in many districts to appoint or elect new Grand Senators.
Earth is lurching towards the Great Patriotic Wars which will leave the planet a devastated, desolate ruin and destroy the CoDominium.
Stirling [5]. The remaining narrative takes place on the planet Sparta. This terraformed world has a higher gravity that Earth, a higher partial pressure of oxygen, and was settled by academics pursuing a form of government inspired partly by the United States Constitution and partly by the culture of the Kingdom of Sparta in the Classical Era of Greece.
The planet has been settled for approximately three generations. Like all of the colony worlds, the population is partly volunteer emigrants and partly involuntary colonists and convicts dispatched there by BuReLock the Codominium's Bureau of Relocation. The latter form an underclass. Sparta is a constitutional dual monarchy, one King taking external affairs, the other King being involved in the domestic economy.
Citizenship with the right to vote is an earned privilege, as in the Terran Federation of Heinlein's Starship Troopers. Citizens are also expected to join the militia, built on the model of the Swiss militia system.
The militia battalions are based on membership in the phratries of Sparta, to which all Citizens and Citizen-candidates must belong. Other than enforcing basic law and providing education and public services, the government does not interfere in the lives of the people. Prosperity or starvation is the responsibility of the individual. The underclass can attempt to become Citizens; many do, and on achieving Citizenship enjoy the same rights and privileges as those born on Sparta.
For the rest, the usual populists and progressives try to organize them into a Movement. Paradoxically, Sparta's openness and political transparency makes it more vulnerable to such a movement than dictatorships such as Carlist Santiago. After the episode on Tanith, Grand Senator Bronson begins building up the open and covert oppositions on Sparta. His motives are actually similar to Admiral Lermontov's; he too wishes to set up a power base among the colonies to preserve his version of civilization when the CoDominium collapses.
Please note that the tricks or techniques listed in this pdf are either fictional or claimed to work by its creator. We do not guarantee that these techniques will work for you.
Some of the techniques listed in Prince of Mercenaries may require a sound knowledge of Hypnosis, users are advised to either leave those sections or must have a basic understanding of the subject before practicing them. DMCA and Copyright : The book is not hosted on our servers, to remove the file please contact the source url.
If you see a Google Drive link instead of source url, means that the file witch you will get after approval is just a summary of original book or the file has been already removed. Loved each and every part of this book. But now the CoDominium is dying, and its death-throes will be terrible; already the nations arm for their final bat-de. The Earth seems doomed, and mankind's sole hope for a future worth having rests on a planet called Sparta, a planet where American idealists have raised once more the banner of a liberty that has been forgotten amid the corruptions and tyrannies of Earth.
The Spartans have hired John Christian Falkenberg, born leader and military genius, and his mercenary legion to train them. If Falkenberg succeeds, the tattered remnants of civilization may still be welded into a single galaxy-spanning free society. Jerry Pournelle is a reigning master of military science fiction, author of the series of novels about John Christian Falkenberg and his legion of interstellar mercenaries, and many other works, such as Janissaries, Exiles to Glory, High Justice, King David's Spaceship, Starswarm, and others.
He holds advanced degrees in psychology, statistics, engineering, and political science, and has been involved professionally in all these fields. He and his wife live in Los Angeles. Stirling is the author of the Draka trilogy. Set in a parallel universe, a nation founded on slavery and the United States battle for domination of the world. The trilogy was recently republished in one huge volume as The Domination.
Stirling has also written Drakon, a novel of a Draka warrior hurled into our world, and edited a companion volume, Drakas! He and his wife live in Santa Fe, NM. Jerry Pournelle. Aunties Books. Mysterious Galaxy. Powell's Books. Uncle Hugo's.
0コメント