The tactics of mistake

23

A week later Cletus returned to New Earth with two leased cargo vessels, the crew and officers of which had agreed to being held in a locked room during the embarking and disembarking of the troops they were supposed to carry. They could testify afterward only to hearing the sounds of boots entering the ship for two and a half hours, on the Dorsai, and to some four hours of similar sounds as they hung in orbit above New Earth, while landing craft shuttled from their ships to some unannounced spot on the planet below. Agents for the Central Combine of city-states, however, observed these landing craft making their sit-downs in a wooded area just inside Breatha Colony's border with Spainville. On attempting to investigate further, the agents found themselves stopped and warned back by a cordon of armed Dorsais, but their estimate of the troops landed, taken from the number of trips from the spaceships in orbit, was of at least five thousand men.

General Lu May, commander of the city-states combined forces, grunted when this information was brought to him.

"That's the sort of thing this Grahame likes to pull," said Lu May. The general was in his mid-seventies, and had been retired from active soldiering until the new ambitions and war-like fervor of the city-states had summoned him back to take over-all command of their new army. "He'd like to shake us up with the idea that we've got to watch two separate invading commands. But I'll lay you odds he pulls them together at the first opportunity, as soon as he thinks he's got us out in the open where he can pull all sorts of fancy maneuvers. But we aren't going to fall for it. We'll stay dug in here in Spainville, and make him come to us."

He chuckled. He was fat as well as old, and the thought of being able to frustrate this unorthodox young upstart while remaining comfortably seated in his own home in Stanleyville tickled him. He ordered heavy energy weapons dug in all around the perimeter of the city and all approaches heavily mined. It would take more than the light-weaponed and light-armored Dorsai mercenaries to break through defenses such as these, even if they were equal in number to the men he had under arms inside the city.

Meanwhile, Cletus' forces were already in motion. A motley horde of civilian trucks and other heavy-duty, air-cushioned sliders had earlier converged on the area where the shuttleboats had landed from the spaceships. These now moved out like a transport and supply convoy, with an armed Dorsai driving each of them. This force crossed the border into Armoy, and swung inland toward Armoy City and its new spaceport, thereby raising flutters of alarm within the community's citizens.

"Sit tight!" grunted Lu May to the frantic messages that reached him from Armoy City for an expeditionary force to defend them against the oncoming Dorsais. He did not send the force, but instead followed his own advice, sitting tight and watching Cletus' other command, which was also in movement now, across the Spainville border, heading apparently through Spainville toward one of the other adjoining city-states. Still Lu May made no move, and sure enough, once it had passed the city of Spainville, Cletus' first command of Dorsais swung about and came up on the city's rear. At the same time, the command that had been threatening Armoy City swung away and cut in to come up before the city of Spainville , so that within a few days the city was ringed by the Dorsai troops.

Lu May chortled and slapped his fat knees. Curiously enough, in Cletus' headquarters outside the city, there was hardly less satisfaction to be found in the person of Chancellor Ad Reyes, representative of the government of Breatha Colony, who was accompanying Cletus, ostensibly as an "observer."

"Excellent, Marshal. Excellent!" Reyes, who was a thin, eager, scholarly-looking man with a high forehead, dressed in the long, black, official gown of his chancellorhood, rubbed his thin hands with pleasure. "You've managed to trap their army here. And there're no other forces who can come to their rescue. Excellently done!"

"You should thank General Lu May for that, instead of me," Cletus answered, dryly. "He has a good deal less to fear from us, sitting back behind his mine fields and his perimeter defenses, than he does in the open field, where the Dorsais are a great deal more mobile than his troops. He has more men and he's in an entrenched position."

"But you don't have to try to take the place by assault!" protested Reyes. "You can live off the country or supply yourself from Breatha as you want. Lu May's cut off from outside supplies. It's just a matter of starving him out!"

"That may not be easy," said Cletus, "unless he's been strangely forgetful, while preparing for everything else, to stock enough provisions for the city and his troops so that they can hold out longer than we can afford to sit here besieging them."

Reyes frowned. Plainly, it seemed to him that this Dorsai marshal was taking an entirely too gloomy a view of the situation.

"Do you object to besieging the city?" Reyes demanded. "If so, I should probably mention that the Breatha government considered this the optimum - indeed the only - course you could pursue, if you were lucky enough to trap Lu May in a fixed position."

"I don't object - for now," Cletus answered, quietly. "But that's because there're military reasons for it, far removed from the opinions of your government. I might remind you, Chancellor, that one of my stipulations in accepting employment with Breatha Colony, as it is with every government with whom I sign a contract, is that I, alone, be in charge of the conduct of the campaign."

He turned and sat down behind the desk in the office of the field structure in which they had been talking. "And now, if you'll excuse me, I've got work to do."

Reyes hesitated, then turned on his heel and walked out.

Cletus continued the siege for three weeks, throwing up breastworks and digging his own trenches behind them to encircle the city, as if he had every intention of staying indefinitely. Meanwhile, outside of an occasional exchange of small-arms fire, there was little open conflict between the city defenders and its Dorsai attackers.

Meanwhile, overhead, a similar unspoken truce existed. Dorsai aircraft patrolled the atmosphere above and about the city to prevent city-state vessels from entering or leaving it. But beyond this, there was no aerial conflict. As in most inter-colony armed conflicts on the new worlds, air warfare was being avoided by the sort of tacit agreement that had interdicted the use of poison gas during World War II in the twentieth century on Earth. The object of armed struggle between opposed technology-poor communities, such as the young colonies, was not so much to destroy the enemy's productive capacity as to take it away from him. One did not obliterate by bombing that which one had started a war to obtain. And if the factories and other hardware of civilization were valuable, the men who had the skills to operate them were almost as valuable.

Therefore, bombing and even the indiscriminate use of heavy weapons in the vicinity of built-up areas was avoided, and - atmosphere craft being almost as expensive as spacecraft - any other use of the skies other than for reconnaissance or the transporting of troops was likewise avoided.

At the end of three weeks, however, Cletus apparently lost patience with this stalemate and issued orders, orders that brought Chancellor Ad Reyes literally running to Cletus' headquarters office, the black gown tucked up to allow free movement to the chancellor's legs.

"You're pulling out half your forces and sending them to take Armoy City and its spaceport!" Reyes accused him, bursting into Cletus' office.

Cletus looked up from the desk at which he was working. "You've heard of that, have you?" Cletus asked.

"Heard of it!" Reyes strode up to the edge of the desk and leaned over it almost as though he would have liked to have thrust his face nose-to-nose with Cletus'. "I've seen them! All those civilian trucks you requisitioned to transport your secondary command are headed off toward Armoy! Don't tell me that isn't where they're headed!"

"That's where they're headed," said Cletus, agreeably. "The rest of us will be following them in twenty-four hours. There's plainly no point in continuing this siege any longer. I'm going to raise it, move on Armoy City and take that spaceport of theirs."

"Raise the siege?... What kind of trick is this? If you'd been paid by the city-states to betray us, you couldn't have picked a better - " He broke off abruptly, shrinking a little at the sudden sound of his own words in his ears. Cletus was on his feet behind the desk.

"I hope I don't hear you correctly, Chancellor." Cletus' voice and eyes had changed. "Are you accusing Dorsais of dishonoring a contract with your government?"

"No... that is, I didn't mean... " Reyes stammered.

"I'd advise you to be careful of what you do mean," said Cletus. "The Dorsais don't break contracts, and we don't tolerate talk that we do. And now, for the last time, let me remind you that I - I, alone - am in command of this campaign. Perhaps you should get back to your own quarters, now."

"Yes, I... " Reyes fled.

Just before dawn the following morning, the rest of the Dorsais besieging Spainville mounted their military vehicles and pulled out with all armor and weapons. Only their aircraft remained above Spainville to discourage pursuit by air reconnaissance.

Dawn rose on the empty trenches and breastworks that the mercenaries had thrown up, but it was nearly noon before their silence and appearance of abandonment could tempt patrols out from Spainville to investigate. When, however, the former Dorsai positions had been investigated and found to be abandoned, the patrols took note of the direction of the signs of departure visible in the pasture earth and summer grass south of the city, and passed the word hastily to General Lu May.

Lu May, roused with this news from his slumbers after a late evening, swore in a way that had gone out of fashion forty years ago.

"We've got him!" the old man exploded, rolling out of bed and beginning hastily to struggle into his clothes. "He couldn't stand the waiting - now he's cut his own throat!"

"Sir?" protested the colonel who had brought him the news. "Cut his own throat? I don't understand - "

"That's because you kids know nothing about war the way it's really fought!" trumpeted Lu May, getting into his trousers. "Grahame's headed for Armoy City, idiot!"

"Yes, sir," said the colonel. "But I still don't see - "

"He's faced the fact that there was no hope of his taking the city here!" snapped Lu May. "So he's pulled out and decided to take Armoy City, instead. That way he can claim that he did the best he could, and at least got Breatha Colony the spaceport that was giving them competition! With the spaceport, he'll tell them, they can make a deal to protect their corridor to the sea! Don't you see? Grahame's finally faced the fact that it was a bad contract he signed. He wants to get out of it on any terms - but he can't get out unless he has at least something to offer Breatha. Armoy City and that spaceport will be it!"

"Yes, sir," said the colonel, earnestly. "I see all that. But what I don't understand is why you say he cut his own throat. After all, if he's able to give Breatha Colony the spaceport and Armoy City to bargain with - "

"Idiot! Double idiot!" roared Lu May. "He has to take Armoy City first, doesn't he, fool?"

"Yes, sir - "

"Then he's going to have to occupy Armoy City with his forces, isn't he?"

Dressed at last, Lu May waddled hastily toward the door. Over his shoulder, he continued, "If we move fast after him, we'll catch him inside Armoy City, and we can surround him! He's got no supplies to last in a city like that very long - and if we need to, we even have the men and weapons to take the city by storm! Either way we can wrap his Dorsais up and have him as a prisoner to do what we want with!"

Lu May wasted no time in getting his army in pursuit of Cletus and the Dorsais. But for all his hurry, he did not fail to move out in good marching order, or without the heavy energy weapons he had dug in around the perimeter of the city, and which he now took with him, even though having them with him would necessarily show his movement. Ponderous, but deadly, he slid along over the plain track Cletus' two departing commands had left behind through the standing grass and grain.

The direction of the track aimed directly at Armoy City, perhaps three days' travel away for Cletus' lightly equipped Dorsais. Lu May would be lucky to do it in four with his command, but the extra day should bring the Spainville general on the scene at Armoy City, as he calculated, just in good tune to take advantage of that moment in which Cletus' troops were letting down, after having made their conquest of Armoy City and the spaceport an accomplished fact.

All the same, it was wise - thought Lu May - to give himself a little time margin if at all possible. If he should find himself ahead of schedule, he could always dawdle a bit in coming up to the city at the far end of his pursuit. Therefore, he issued orders after the evening meal for his command to continue after dark, under the moonless but star-bright New Earth sky. He pushed them on through the darkness until men began falling asleep at the controls of their vehicles, or on their feet. Finally, reluctantly, he called a halt for the night about three hours after midnight.

His army had just managed to get deeply into exhausted slumber, when a series of sharp, blasting explosions jerked them back to wakefulness, and they sat up to see the heavy energy weapons they had been hauling burning with sparkling red-white flames as their energy storage units melted under their own fierce heat like butter in a furnace. In the same moment, dark-clad Dorsais were suddenly among Lu May's troops stripping them of their body weapons and heading them into groups under the watchful eyes and guns of other mercenaries standing guard.

General Lu May, himself, started out of deep slumber, and sat up in his field bed to find Cletus standing over him, an uncapped holster showing the sidearm at Cletus' side. Lu May stared in befuddlement.

"But you're... up ahead of me... " he stammered, after a moment.

"I've got a detachment of empty civilian trucks up ahead of you," answered Cletus. "Trucks that never had any men in them except the drivers. What men I had are here with me now - and your command is taken prisoner, General. You'll make things simpler by giving me your surrender, right now."

Lu May fumbled out of bed. Suddenly he was very old, and chilly, and helpless, standing there in his pajamas. Almost humbly, he went through the motions of surrender.

Cletus went back to the field unit that had already been set up as his temporary headquarters. Waiting inside for him was Chancellor Ad Reyes.

"You can inform your government that the effective military forces of the combined city-states are now our prisoner, Chancellor... " he began, and broke off as Arvid entered, bearing a yellow message slip.

"Signal from Colonel Khan on the Dorsai," said Arvid, "forwarded on by our base camp at Adonyer, back in Breatha Colony."

Cletus took the message sheet and unfolded it. He read:

Attack made through Fitter's Pass from Neuland into Bakhalla territory beaten off. Alliance and Coalition forces combined in a joint "Peace Force" for the new worlds. Dow deCastries has supreme command of this force.

Cletus folded the message and put it in a pocket of his battle tunic. He turned to Reyes. "You've got twenty-four hours," he said, "to get Breatha troops here to take charge of these prisoners we've just captured. I and my troops must return immediately to the Dorsai."

Reyes stared at him in combined awe and amazement. "But we'd planned a triumphal parade in case of victory... " he began, uncertainly.

"Twenty-four hours," said Cletus, brusquely. He turned on his heel and left the chancellor standing.