Dorsai!

Commander In Chief II

ArDell looked back at him out of a white face, but with eyes that did not bend before Donal’s bleak glance.

“I had to have work,” he said. “I was killing myself. I don’t apologize.”

“Was that all the reason?” asked Donal, ironically.

At that, ArDell’s face did turn aside.

“No—” he said. Donal said nothing. “It was her,” ArDell whispered. “He promised me her.”

“Her!” The note in Donal’s voice made the other two Dorsai take an instinctive step toward him. But Donal held himself without moving, under control. “Anea?”

“She might have taken pity on me—” ArDell whispered to the floor of the lounge. “You don’t understand… living close to her all those years… and I was so miserable, and she… I couldn’t help loving her—”

“No,” said Donal. Slowly, the sudden lightning of his tension leaked out of him. “You couldn’t help it.” He turned away. “You fool,” he said, with his back to ArDell. “Didn’t you know him well enough to know when he was lying to you? He had her in mind for himself.”

“William? Nor ArDell was suddenly on his feet. “Not him — with her! It can’t be… such a thing!”

“It won’t,” said Donal, wearily. “But not because it depends on people like you to stop him.” He turned back to face ArDell. “Lock him up, will you, captain.” El Man’s hard hand closed on ArDell’s shoulder and turned him toward the entrance to the lounge. “Oh… and captain—”

“Sir?” said El Man, turning to face him.

“We rendezvous with all units under Fleet Commander Lludrow as soon as possible.”

“Yes, sir.” El Man half-pushed, half-carried ArDell Montor out of the room; and, as if symbolically, out of the main current of the history of mankind which he had attempted to influence with his science for William, Prince of Ceta.

The N4J set out to make contact with Lludrow. It was not a thing to be quickly or easily accomplished. Even when it is known where it should be, it is far from easy to track down and pinpoint as small a thing as a fleet of human ships in the inconceivable vast-nesses of interstellar space. For the very good reasons that there is always the chance of human error, that a safety margin must always be maintained — better to fall short of your target than to come out too close to it — and that there is, for practical purposes, no such thing as standing still in the universe. The N4J made a phase shift from where it calculated it was, to where it calculated the fleet to be, sent out a call signal and got no answer. It calculated again, signaled again — and so continued until it got first, a very faint signal in response, then a stronger one, and finally, one which permitted communication. Calculations were then matched between the flagship of the fleet and the N4J — and at last a meeting was effected.

By that time, better than three more days of the alloted week of incommunicado had passed. Donal went aboard the flagship with Ian, and took command.

“You’ve got the news?” was his first question of Lludrow when the two of them were together again.

“I have,” said the Fleet commander. “I’ve had a ship secretly in shuttle constantly between here and Dunnin’s World. We’re right up to date.”

Donal nodded. This was a different problem from the N4J’s of finding Lludrow. A shuttle between a planet whose position and direction of movement was well known, and a fleet which knew its own position and drift, could hop to within receiving distance of that same planet in one jump, and return as easily, provided the distance was not too great — as it sometimes was between the various planets themselves — for precise calculation.

“Want to see a digest — or shall I just brief you?” asked Lludrow.

“Brief me,” said Donal.

Lludrow did. The hysteria that had followed on the charges of the Commission against Donal and Donal’s disappearance had caused the existing governments, already shaky and torn by the open-market dissension, to crumble on all the worlds but those of the Exotics, the Dorsai, Old Earth, and the two small planets of Coby and Dunnin’s World. Into the perfect power vacuum that remained, William and the armed units of Ceta had moved swiftly and surely. Pro-tem governments in the name of the general populace, but operating directly under William’s orders, had taken over New Earth, Freiland, Newton, Cassida, Venus, Mars, Harmony and Association and held them now in the iron grip of martial law. As William had cornered less sentient materials in the past, he had just prior to this cornered the field troops of the civilized world. Under the guise of training, reassignment, lease, stand-by — and a dozen other paper maneuvers — William had had under Cetan contract actual armies on each of the worlds that had fallen into disorder. All that had been necessary for him was the landing of small contingents, plus officers for the units already present, with the proper orders.

“Staff meeting,” said Donal.

His staff congregated in the executive room of the flagship. Lludrow, Fleet Commander, Ian, Field Commander — and half a dozen senior officers under each.

“Gentlemen,” said Donal, when they were seated around the table. “I’m sure all of you know the situation. Any suggestions?”

There was a pause. Donal ran his eye around the table.

“Contact Freiland, New Earth — or some place where we have support,” said Ian. “Land a small contingent and start a counteraction against the Cetan command.” He looked at his nephew. “They know your name — the professionals on all sides. We might even pick up support out of the enemy forces.”

“No good,” said Lludrow, from the other side of the table. “It’s too slow. Once we were committed to a certain planet, William could concentrate his forces there.” He turned to Donal. “Ship for ship, we overmatch him — but his ships would have ground support from whatever world we were fighting on; and our ground forces would have their hands full trying to establish themselves.”

“True enough,” Donal said. “What’s your suggestion, then?”

“Withdraw to one of the untouched worlds — the Exotics, Coby, Dunnin’s World. Or even the Dorsai, if they’ll take us. We’ll be safe there, in a position of strength, and we can take our time then about looking for a chance to strike back.”

Ian shook his head.

“Every day — every hour,” he said, “William grows stronger on those worlds he’s taken over. The longer we wait, the greater the odds against us. And finally, he’ll have the strength to come after us — and take us.”

“Well, what do you want us to do, then?” demanded Lludrow. “A fleet without a home base is no striking weapon. And how many of our men will want to stick their necks out with us? These are professional soldiers, man — not patriots fighting on their home ground!”

“You use your field troops now or never!” said Ian shaking his head. “We’ve got forty thousand battle-ready men aboard these ships. They’re my responsibility and I know them. Set them down on some backwater planet and they’ll fall apart in two months.”

“I still say—”

“All right. All right!” Donal was rapping with his knuckles on the table to call them back to order. Lludrow and Ian sat back on their floats again; and they all turned to look at Donal.

“I wanted you all to have a chance to speak up,” he said, “because I wanted you to feel that we had explored every possibility. The truth of the matter is that both you gentlemen are right in your objections — just as there is some merit in each of your plans. However, both your plans are gambles; long gambles — desperate gambles.”

He paused to look around the table.

“I would like to remind you right now that when you fight a man hand-to-hand, the last place you hit him is where he expects to be hit. The essence of successful combat is to catch your enemy unawares in an unprotected spot — one where he is not expecting to be caught.”

Donal stood up at the head of the table.

“William,” he said, “has for the last few years put his emphasis on the training of ground troops — field troops. I have been doing the same thing, but for an entirely different purpose.”

He placed his finger over a stud on the table before him and half-turned to the large wall behind him.

“No doubt all you gentlemen have heard the military truism that goes — you can’t conquer a civilized planet. This happens to be one of the ancient saws I personally have found very irritating; since it ought to be obvious to any thinking person that in theory you can conquer anything — given the necessary wherewithal. The case for conquering a civilized world becomes then a thing of perfect possibility. The only problem is to provide that which is necessary to the action.”

They were all listening to him — some a little puzzled, others doubtfully, as if they expected all of what he was saying to turn suddenly into some joke to relieve the tension. Only Ian was phlegmatic and absorbing.

“Over the past few years, this force, which we officer, has developed the wherewithal — some of it carried over from previous forces, some of recent development. Your men know the techniques, although they have never been told in what way they were going to apply them. Ian, here, has produced through rigorous training the highly specialized small unit of the field forces — the Group, which under ordinary battle conditions numbers fifty men, but which we have streamlined to a number of thirty men. These Groups have been trained to take entirely independent action and survive by themselves for considerable periods of time. This same streamlining has gone up through the ranks — extending even to your fleet exercises, which have also been ordered, with a particular sort of action in mind.”

He paused.

“What all this boils down to, gentlemen,” he said, “is that we are all about to prove that old truism wrong — and take a civilized world, lock, stock, and barrel. We will do it with the men and ships we have at hand right here, and who have been picked and trained for this specific job — as the planet we are about to take has been picked and thoroughly intelligenced.” He smiled at them. They were all sitting on the edges of their floats now.

“That world,” — he pressed the stud that had been under his finger all this time; the wall behind him vanished to reveal the three-dimensional representation of a large, green planet — “is the heart of our enemy’s power and strength. His home base — Ceta!”

It was too much — even for senior officers. A babble of voice burst out around the table all at once. Donal paid no attention. He had opened a drawer at his end of the table and produced a thick sheaf of documents, which he tossed on the table before him.

“We will take over Ceta, gentlemen,” he said. “By, in a twenty-four hour period, replacing all her local troops, all her police, all her garrisons and militia and law enforcement bodies and arms, with our own men.”

He pointed to the sheaf of documents.

“We will take them over piecemeal, independently, and simultaneously. So that when the populace wakes up the following-morning they will find themselves guarded, policed and held, not by their own authorities, but by us. The details as to targets and assignments are in this stack, gentlemen. Shall we go to work?”

They went to work. Ceta, large, low-gravity planet that it was, had huge virgin areas. Its civilized part could be broken down into thirty-eight major cities, and intervening agricultural and residential areas. There were so many military installations, so many police stations, so many armories, so many garrisons of troops — the details fell apart like the parts of a well-engineered mechanism, and were fitted together again with corresponding units of the military force under Donal’s command. It was a masterpiece of combat preplanning.

“Now,” said Donal, when they were done. “Go out and brief your troops.”

He watched them all leave the conference room — all, with the exception of Ian, whom he had detained; and Lee, for whom he had just rung. When the others were gone, he turned to the two still with him.

“Lee,” he said, “in six hours every man in the fleet will know what we intend to do. I want you to go out and find a man — not one of the officers — who doesn’t think it’ll work. Ian” — he looked over at his uncle — “when Lee finds such a man and reports to you, I want you to see that the man is sent up to see me, right away. Is that clear?”

The other two nodded; and went out, to do each his own job in his own fashion. So it was that a disgruntled Groupman from a particular landing force had a surprising meeting and surprisingly cordial chat with his commander in chief, and that they went out together, half an hour later, arm-in-arm, to the control room of the flagship, where Donal requested, and got, a voice-and-picture hookup to all ships.

“All of you,” Donal said, smiling at them out of their screens after he had been connected, “have by this time been informed about the impending action. It’s the result of a number of years of top-level planning and the best intelligence service we have been lucky enough to have. However, one of you has come to me with the natural fear that we may be biting off more than we can chew. Therefore, since this is an entirely new type of operation and because I believe firmly in the rights of the individual professional soldier not to be mishandled, I’m taking the unprecedented step of putting the coming assault on Ceta to a vote. You will vote as ships, and the results will be forwarded by your captain, as for or against, to the Flagship here. Gentlemen” — Donal reached out an arm and brought the man Lee had discovered into the screen area with him — “I want you to meet Groupman Theiss, who had the courage to stand up like a free man and ask questions.”

Caught unawares, and dazzled by the sudden limelight into which he had been thrust, the Groupman licked his lips and grinned a little foolishly.

“I leave the decision to all of you,” added Donal, and signaled for the viewing eyes to be cut off.

Three hours later, Groupman Theiss was back on his own ship, astounding his fellow soldiers with an account of what had happened to him; and the votes were in.

“Almost unanimous,” reported Lludrow, “in favor of the attack. Only three ships — none of the first line, and none troop carriers — voting against.”

“I want those three ships held out of the attack,” said Donal. “And a note made of their names and captains. Remind me about that after this is over. All right.” He got up from the float where he had been sitting in the Flagship Lounge. “Give the necessary orders, commander. We’re going in.”

They went in. Ceta had never taken the thought of enemy attack too seriously. Isolated in her position as the single inhabitable planet, as yet largely unexplored and unexploited, that circled her G8 type sun of Tau Ceti; and secure in the midst of an interstellar maze of commitments that made every other planetary government to some extent dependent upon her good will, she had only a few ships in permanent defensive orbit about her.

These ships, their position and movement fully scouted by Donal’s intelligence service, were boxed and destroyed by Donal’s emerging fleet almost before they could give warning. And what warning they did give fell on flabbergasted and hardly-believing ears.

But by that time the asault troops were falling planetward, dropping down on city and military installation and police station behind the curtain of night as it swung around the big, but swiftly-turning world.

They came down in most cases almost on top of their targets, for the ships that had sowed them in the sky above had not been hampered in that action by enemy harassment. And the reaction of those on the ground was largely what might have been expected, when veteran troops, fully armed and armored, move in on local police, untried soldiers in training, and men relaxed in garrison. Here and there, there was sharp and bitter fighting where an assault unit found itself opposed to leased troops as trained in war as they. But in that case, reinforcements were speedily brought in to end the action.

Donal himself went down with the fourth wave; and when the sun rose the following morning large and yellow on the horizon, the planet was secured. Two hours later, an orderly brought him word that William himself had been located — in his own residence outside the city of Whitetown, some fifteen hundred kilometers distant.

“I’ll go there,” said Donal. He glanced around him. His officers were busy, and Ian was off somewhere with an arm of his field troops. He turned to Lee. “Come on, Lee,” he said.

They took a four-man platform and made the trip, with the orderly as guide. Coming down in the garden of the residence, Donal left the orderly with the platform, motioned Lee to accompany him, and entered the house.

He walked through silent rooms, inhabited only by furniture. All the residents of the house seemed to have vanished. After some little time, he began to think that perhaps the report had been in error; and that William was gone, too. And then he passed through an archway into a little anteroom and found himself facing Anea.

She met his gaze with a pale but composed face.

“Where is he?” asked Donal.

She turned and indicated a door on the far side of the room.

“It’s locked,” she said. “He was in there when your men started to land; and he’s never come out. Nobody else would stay here with him. I… I couldn’t leave.”

“Yes,” said Donal, somberly. He examined the locked door from across the room. “It wouldn’t have been easy — for him.”

“You care about him?” Her voice brought his head up sharply. He looked at her, seeking some note of mockery in her expression. But there was none. She was honestly questioning.

“I care somewhat for every man,” he said. He walked across the room to the door and laid his hand upon it on a sudden impulse, he put his thumb into the finger-lock — and the door swung open.

A sudden coldness blossomed inside him.

“Stay with her,” he threw over his shoulder to Lee. He pushed open the door, found himself faced by another, heavier door — but one which also opened to his touch — and went in.

At the end of a long room William sat behind a desk occupied by a mass of papers. He stood up as Donal entered.

“So you’re finally here,” he said, calmly. “Well, well.”

Going closer, Donal examined the man’s face and eyes. There was nothing there to evoke such a notion; but Donal had the sudden suspicion that William was not as he should be.

“It was a very good landing. Very good,” said William tiredly. “It was a clever trick. I acknowledge the fact, you see. I underestimated you from the first day I met you. I freely admit it. I’m quite conquered — am I not?”

Donal approached to the other side of the desk. He looked into William’s calm exhausted face.

“Ceta is in my control,” said Donal. “Your expeditionary forces on the other worlds are cut off — and their contracts aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. Without you to give the orders, it’s all over with.”

“Yes… yes, I thought as much,” said William, with the hint of a sigh. “You’re my doom, you know — my weird. I should have recognized it earlier. A force like mine among men must be balanced. I thought it would be balanced with numbers; but it wasn’t.” He looked at Donal with such a strange, searching expression that Donal’s eyes narrowed.

“You’re not well,” said Donal.

“No, I’m not well.” William rubbed his eyes, wearily. “I’ve been working too hard lately — and to no purpose. Montor’s calculations were foolproof; but the more perfect my plan, the more perfectly it always went awry. I hate you, you know,” said William, emotionlessly, dropping his hand and looking up at Donal again. “No one in all the history of man has ever hated the way I hate you,”

“Come along,” said Donal, going around the desk toward him. “I’ll take you to someone who can help you—”

“No. Wait—” William held up his hand and backed away from Donal. Donal stopped. “I’ve got something to show you first. I saw the end the minute I got reports your men were landing. I’ve been waiting nearly ten hours now.” He shivered, suddenly. “A long wait. I had to have something to keep myself occupied.” He turned about and walked briskly back to a set of double doors set in a far wall. “Have a look,” he invited; and pressed a button.

The doors slid back.

Donal looked. Hanging in the little close area revealed there was something only barely recognizable by what was left of its face. It was, or had been, his brother Mor.