Free Go Tell the Spartans by Jerry Pournelle, S.M. Stirling

mercenaries of their own to boot. Covenant Highlanders and Friedland armor, at that; Christian Johnny's plan would get into the textbooks with a vengeance, if it worked. While Major Peter Owensford built a base camp, trained yokels and chased a few bandits through the hills.
     
     

    No, there are no clean endings, Owensford thought. Or fresh beginnings. But we do our jobs.
     
     
    * * *

    Dion Croser leaned back in the armchair and stared into the embers of the coal fire, holding the brandy snifter in one hand, his pipe in the other. Cool air drifted in through the French windows to his left, the ones that opened out on the gardens, smelling of eucalyptus and clipped grass. The study was a big room, paneled with slabs of dark native stone; there had been little wood available when Croser's father built the ranch house, in the early days of settlement on Sparta. A coal fire burned in the big hearth, casting flickering red shadows that caught at the crystal decanters on the sideboard, the holos and pictures amid the bookcases on the walls. One big oil portrait, of Elliot Croser as a young man on Earth, standing before the library of the University in Berkeley. Back when Sparta was a plan, something talked about in student cafés and in the living rooms of the faculty.
     
     

    He raised his glass, meeting the eyes of the painted figure. They twisted your dream, father, he thought. Twisted it, denied him the place he'd earned as one of the founders of Sparta. Drove him into exile on this estate, into drink-sodden futility. I'm going to set it straight. The face in the painting might have been his, perhaps not so high in the cheekbones, and without the slanted eyes that were a legacy from Dion's Hawaiian-Japanese mother. Without the weathered look and rangy muscle that forty years spent outside and largely in the saddle brought, either.
     
     

    A discreet cough brought his attention to the door.
     
     

    "Miss Thibodeau," the butler said, disapproval plain beneath the smooth politeness of his tone. Chung had worked for his father back on Earth, and his grandfather before that, and Skida Thibodeau was not the sort of person a Taxpayer in California would receive.
     
     

    "Ah, you re mem ber Skilly," she said ironically to the servant, handing him her bulky sheepskin jacket and gunbelt, before pushing through into the study and walking over to pour herself a glass of wine.
     
     

    Dion rose courteously for a moment and nodded to her, feeling his breath catch slightly; they had been political associates for ten years, lovers for five, and it was still pure pleasure to watch her move. Nearly two meters tall—and the tight leather pants and cotton shirt showed every centimeter to advantage, moving the way he imagined a jaguar might in the jungles of her homeland. With a sigh she threw herself into the seat across from him, hooking a leg over one arm; that pushed the high breasts against the thin fabric of her shirt. He swallowed and looked up, to the chocolate-brown face framed in loose-curled hair that glinted blue-black. High cheekbones and full lips, nose slightly curved, eyes tilted and colored hazel, glinting green flecks. Her mother had been Mennonite-German, he remembered, a farmer's daughter from the colonies in northern Belize kidnaped into prostitution during a visit to Belize City. Father a pimp; and both had died young.
     
     

    "Dion my mon," she said, raising her glass.
     
     

    "Skida," he replied, not using the nickname.
     
     

    "Skilly hears Van Horn met with the accident she recommended," she said. "Bobber in line for his job?"
     
     

    Croser winced slightly; setting up an assassination squad reporting directly to himself had been her idea. Skilly had been eclectically well read even before she arrived on Sparta, but sometimes he regretted introducing her to the classic works on guerrilla warfare and factional politics. Van Horn had been necessary, of course, once he had brought his toughs into the