The tactics of mistake

5

The command car, its compressor damaged by guerrilla fire, was left behind. One of the battle aircars carried its four surviving passengers the rest of the way into the port city of Bakhalla. The air-car dropped the four of them off at the transport section of Alliance Headquarters in Bakhalla. Eachan Khan and Melissa said good-bye and left by autocab for their own residence in the city. Mondar opened the door of another autocab and motioned Cletus inside.

"You'll need to go to Alliance HQ for your assignment and billeting, and that's on my way. I'll drop you off."

Cletus got in; Mondar reached to punch out a destination on the control board of the autocab. The cab rose on its air cushion and slid smoothly off between the rows of white-painted military buildings.

"Thanks," said Cletus.

"Not at all," said Mondar. "You saved all our lives back in the jungle just now. I want to do more than just thank you. I take it you might like to talk to Dow deCastries again?"

Cletus looked at the Outbond curiously. All his life he had enjoyed watching people of strong aims at work to achieve them; and in the five days since he had met Mondar he had become aware of a purposefulness in the Exotic that might well be as dedicated as his own.

"I thought deCastries went down to Capital Neuland."

"He did," said Mondar, as the autocab made a right turn into a somewhat broader boulevard and began to approach a large building of white concrete with the Alliance flag flying on top of it. "But Neuland's only twenty-five minutes from here by air. The Coalition hasn't any direct diplomatic relations with our Exotic government here on Kultis, and neither our people nor Dow want to pass up a chance to talk. After all, it's really the Coalition we're fighting - Neuland couldn't last six weeks without them. So I'm giving an unofficial little party at my home this evening - with a buffet supper and general conversation. Eachan and Melissa will be there. I'd appreciate having you, too."

"Be happy to come," said Cletus. "May I bring my aide?"

"Aide?"

"A first lieutenant named Arvid Johnson, if I'm lucky enough to find him still unassigned," Cletus said. "One of my former students at the Academy. He came to visit me when he was home from here on leave a couple of months ago. It was what he told me that got me interested in Bakhalla."

"Was it? Well, bring him by all means." The autocab slid to a halt before the walkway leading up to the entrance of the large white building. Mondar pressed a button and the autocab door next to Cletus swung open. "Bring anyone you think might enjoy it. About eight o'clock."

"We'll be there," said Cletus. He turned and let the walkway carry him up into the Headquarters building.

"Colonel Cletus Grahame?" echoed the narrow-faced, young second lieutenant at the cluttered desk behind the glass door of the billeting and assignments office, when Cletus confronted him. "You're to report to General Traynor immediately - immediately when you arrive."

He had a high tenor voice and he grinned unpleasantly as he spoke. Cletus smiled agreeably, asked directions to the general's office and left.

The glass door he finally found marked Brigadier General John Houston Traynor led him first into an outer office where a square-set, half-bald colonel in his early fifties stood, evidently just completing the giving of some directions to an overweight, thirtyish captain behind the room's single desk. Finishing, the colonel turned around and eyed Cletus.

"You're Grahame?" he asked abruptly.

"That's right, Colonel," said Cletus pleasantly, "and you... ?"

"Dupleine," said the other, ungraciously. "I'm chief of staff to General Traynor. You're not going into the officers pool, then?"

"I'm on special assignment from Geneva, Colonel," said Cletus.

Dupleine grunted, whirled around and went out the door Cletus had just entered. Cletus looked back at the fat captain behind the desk.

"Sir," said the captain. His voice held the hint of a note of sympathy. His face was not unkind, and even intelligent, in spite of the heavy dewlap of the double chin supporting it from beneath. "If you'll just sit down a moment, I'll tell General Traynor you're here."

Cletus sat down and the captain leaned forward to speak into the intercom grille of his desk. The reply he received was inaudible to Cletus, but the captain looked up and nodded.

"You can go right in, Colonel," he said, nodding to another door behind his desk.

Cletus rose and obeyed... As he stepped through the door into the further office, he found himself directly facing a much larger desk, behind which sat a bull-like man in his mid-forties with a heavy-boned face decorated by a startling pair of thick, black eyebrows. "Bat" Traynor, the general had been nicknamed, Cletus recalled, because of those brows. Bat Traynor stared now, the brows pulled ominously together as Cletus walked forward toward his desk.

"Colonel Cletus Grahame reporting, sir," Cletus said, laying his travel orders on the desk. Bat shoved them aside with one big-knuckled hand.

"All right, Colonel," he said. His voice was a rough-edged bass. He pointed to a chair facing him at the left side of his desk. "Sit down."

Cletus limped gratefully around to the chair and dropped into it. He was beginning to feel the fact that he had strained one or more of the few remaining ligaments in his bad knee during the episode in the ditch outside of town. He looked up to see Bat still staring point-blank at him.

"I've got your dossier here, Colonel," Bat said after a moment. He flipped open the gray plastic folder that lay on the desk before him and looked down at it. "You come from an Academy family, it says here. Your uncle was General Chief of Staff at Geneva Alliance HQ just before he retired eight years ago. That right?"

"Yes, sir," said Cletus.

"And you" - Bat flipped papers with a thick forefinger, scowling a little down at them - "got that bad knee in the Three-Month War on Java seven years ago?... Medal of Honor, too?"

"Yes," said Cletus.

"Since then" - Bat flipped the folder shut and raised his eyes to stare unwaveringly once more across it at Cletus' face - "you've been on the Academy staff. Except for three months of active duty, in short, you've done nothing in the Army but pound tactics into the heads of cadets."

"I've also," said Cletus, carefully, "been writing a comprehensive 'Theory of Tactics and Strategical Considerations.' "

"Yes," said Bat, grimly. "That's in there, too. Three months in the field and you're going to write twenty volumes."

"Sir?" said Cletus.

Bat threw himself back heavily in his chair. "All right," he said. "You're supposed to be here on special assignment to act as my tactical adviser." The black eyebrows drew together in a scowl and rippled like battle flags in the wind. "I don't suppose I've got you because you heard some rumor they were going to clean out all the dead wood at the Academy and you pulled strings to be sent to some nice soft job where there's nothing for you to do?"

"No, sir," said Cletus, quietly. "I may have pulled a string or two to get sent here. But, with the General's permission, it wasn't because I thought this a soft job. I've got to do a great deal out here."

"I hope not, Colonel. I hope not," said Bat. "It just happens I put in a request for a dozen jungle-breaker tanks three months ago... You're what I got instead. Now, I don't give a damn what the Academy wants to do with its Tactics Department. The kids just have to come out here into the field and relearn it all over again under practical conditions, anyway. But I needed those tanks. I still need them."

"Possibly," said Cletus, "I can come up with some means to help the General get along without them."

"I don't think so," said Bat, grimly. "What I think is that you're going to hang around here for a couple of months or so and turn out not to be particularly useful. Then I'm going to mention that fact to Alliance HQ back on Earth and ask for my jungle-breakers again. I'll get them, and you'll be transferred back to Earth - if with no commendations, at least without any black marks on your record... That's if everything goes smoothly, Colonel. And" - Bat reached across to a corner of his desk and pulled a single sheet of paper toward him - "speaking of the way things go, I've got a report here that you got drunk your first night out, on the ship headed here, and made a fool of yourself in front of the Outworld's Secretary for the Coalition, who was aboard."

"That's fast reporting," said Cletus, "considering that, when our party for Bakhalla left the ship, the phones aboard were all still tied up by Coalition people. I take it this report to the General comes from one of them?"

"It's none of your business who made the report!" rumbled Bat. "As a matter of fact, it comes from the captain of the spaceship."

Cletus laughed.

"What's the joke, Colonel?" Bat's voice rose.

"The idea, sir," said Cletus, "of a civilian ship commander reporting on the fitness of an Alliance officer."

"You won't find it all that funny if I have the information entered in your record, Colonel," said Bat. He stared at Cletus, at first grimly, and then a trifle disconcertedly, when Cletus did not seem greatly sobered by this threat. "But, never mind the Coalition or any civilian shipmaster. I'm your commanding officer, and I'm asking for an explanation of your drunkenness."

"There isn't any explanation... " began Cletus.

"Oh?" said Bat.

"No explanation, I was going to say," continued Cletus, "because no explanation's necessary. I've never been drunk in my life. I'm afraid the ship's captain was wrongly advised - or drew the wrong conclusion."

"Just made a mistake, eh?" said Bat, ironically.

"As it happens," said Cletus, "I think I've got a witness who'll testify I wasn't drunk. He was at the table. Mondar, the former Outbond from here to St. Louis Enclave."

Bat's mouth, opened to retort before Cletus was half done, closed instead. The general sat silent for several seconds. Then his eyebrows quivered and the frown line between his eyes smoothed somewhat.

"Then why this report?" he asked in a more neutral voice.

"The ship's people, from what I saw," said Cletus, "seemed partial to the Coalition people aboard."

"Well, then, damn it!" exploded Bat, "if you saw them jumping to the wrong conclusion, why didn't you set them straight?"

"As a matter of elementary strategy," said Cletus, "I thought it wouldn't do any harm to let the Coalition people pick up as low an opinion of me as possible - of me, and my usefulness to you, as a tactical expert."

Bat looked balefully at him. "Their opinion couldn't be any lower than mine, anyway," he said. "You're no use to me, Colonel. This is a dirty, little, hole-in-the-wall war, with no room for strategical mysteries. This Exotic colony's got brains, money, technical developments and a seacoast. The Neulanders've got no seacoast, no industry and too much population for their back-country farms to support - because of this multiple-wife religious cult of theirs. But that same excess population's just fine for supplying guerrillas. So, the Neulanders want what the Exotics've got and the Coalition's trying to help them get it. We're here to see they don't. That's the whole situation. What the Neuland guerrillas try to do, and what we do to stop them from doing it, is just plain obvious. I need a book-strategy and tactics expert like I need a hundred-piece symphony orchestra. And I'm sure deCastries and the other Coalition people on that ship knew it as well as I do."

"Maybe I won't be quite as useless as the General thinks," said Cletus, unperturbed. "Of course, I'll have to survey and study the situation, starting by setting up a plan for trapping those guerrillas they'll be infiltrating through Etter's Pass, up country, in the next few days."

Bat's eyebrows shot up into flag position again. "New guerrillas? Who told you anything about Etter's Pass?" he snapped. "What kind of a rabbit is this you're trying to pull out of your hat?"

"No rabbit," said Cletus, "not even a professional judgment, I'm afraid. Just common sense. With Dow deCastries here, the Neulanders have to try to put on some sort of spectacular during his visit... Have you got a map handy?"

Bat jabbed a button on the surface of his desk, and the wall of the room to Cletus' left lit up suddenly with the projection of a large map showing the long, narrow coastline country of the Exotic colony, and the interior range of mountains that divided it from the Neuland colony inland. Cletus stepped over to the projection, looked it over and reached up to tap with his left forefinger at a point in the middle of the mountain range running down the left side of the map. "Here's Etter's Pass," he said to Bat. "A good, broad cut through the mountains, leading from Neuland down to Bakhalla - but according to reports, not much used by the Neulanders, simply because there's nothing much worth raiding on the Exotic side for over a hundred miles in any direction. On the other hand, it's a fairly easy pass to get through. There's nothing but the small town of Two Rivers down below it, here. Of course, from a practical standpoint, the Neulanders are better off sending their guerrillas into the country through passes closer to the larger population centers. But if they aren't after profit so much as spectacle, it'd pay them to infiltrate a fairly good-sized force through here in the next few days, so that a week from now they can hit one of the smaller coastal towns in force - maybe even capture and hold it for a few days."

Cletus turned, limped back to his chair and sat down. Bat was frowning at the map.

"At any rate," Cletus said, "it shouldn't be too difficult to set up a net to sweep most of them in, as they try to pass Two Rivers. In fact, I could do it myself. If you'd let me have a battalion of jump troops - "

"Battalion! Jump troops!" Bat started suddenly out of his near-trance and turned a glare on Cletus. "What do you think this is? A classroom, where you can dream up whatever force you need for a job? There're no jump troops on Kultis. And as for giving you a battalion of any kind of troops - even if your guess has something going for it... " Bat snorted.

"The guerrillas are coming, all right. I'd bet my reputation on it," said Cletus, undisturbed. "In fact, you might say I've already bet it, come to think of it. I remember talking to some of my fellow staff members at the Academy, and a friend or two down in Washington, and forecasting that infiltration, just as soon as Dow deCastries reached Neuland."

"You forecast... " Bat's tone became thoughtful - almost cunning - suddenly. He sat behind his desk, pondering Cletus with knitted brows. Then his dark eyes sharpened. "So you bet your reputation on this, did you, Colonel? But spare troops are something I haven't got, and in any case, you're here as a technical adviser... Tell you what. I'll pull a company off Rest and Retraining and send them out with a field officer in charge. He'll be junior to you, of course, but you can go along if you want to. Officially, as an observer only, but I'll tell the officer commanding that he's to keep your advice in mind... Good enough?"

The last two words were barked sharply at Cletus, in a put-up-or-shut-up tone of voice.

"Certainly," said Cletus. "If the General wishes."

"All right!" Bat beamed suddenly, showing his teeth in a hearty, wolfish grin. "You can go on and see about your quarters, then, Colonel. But stay on call."

Cletus rose to his feet. "Thank you, sir," he said, and took his leave.

"Not at all, Colonel. Not at all," he heard Bat's voice saying, with almost a chuckle in it, as Cletus closed the door of the office behind him.

Cletus left the Headquarters building and went to see about establishing himself. Once set up in the Bachelor Officers' Quarters, he strolled over to the Officers' Pool HQ with a copy of his orders and checked to see if that Second Lieutenant Arvid Johnson, of whom he had spoken to Mondar, was still unattached. Informed that he was, Cletus filed a request for the lieutenant to be assigned to him as a research staff member and requested that he get in touch with him at the BOQ immediately.

He returned to the BOQ. Less than fifteen minutes later, the signal outside his room buzzed to announce a visitor. Cletus rose from his chair and opened the door.

"Arvid!" he said, letting the visitor in and closing the door behind him. Arvid Johnson stepped inside, turned and smiled happily down at Cletus as they shook hands. Cletus was tall, but Arvid was a tower, from the soles of his black dress boots to the tips of his short-cropped, whitish-blond hair.

"You came after all, sir," Arvid said, smiling. "I know you said you'd come, but I couldn't believe you'd really leave the Academy for this."

"This is where things are going on," said Cletus.

"Sir?" Arvid looked incredulous. "Away out here on Kultis?"

"It's not the locality so much," said Cletus, "as the people in it that makes things happen. Right now we've got a man among us named Dow deCastries and the first thing I want from you is to go with me to a party for him tonight."

"Dow deCastries?" Arvid said, and shook his head. "I don't think I know - "

"Secretary to the Outworlds for the Coalition," said Cletus. "He came in on the same ship from Earth as I did... A gamesman."

Arvid nodded. "Oh, one of the Coalition bosses," he said. "No wonder you say things might start to happen around here... What did you mean by gamesman, sir? You mean he likes sports?"

"Not in the usual sense," said Cletus. He quoted, " 'Whose game was empires and whose stakes were thrones. Whose table, earth - whose dice were human bones... ' "

"Shakespeare?" asked Arvid, curiously.

"Byron," said Cletus, "in his 'The Age of Bronze,' referring to Napoleon."

"Sir," said Arvid, "you don't really mean this deCastries is another Napoleon?"

"No more," answered Cletus, "than Napoleon was an earlier deCastries. But they've got points in common."

Arvid waited for a moment longer, but Cletus said nothing more. The big young man nodded again.

"Yes, sir," he said. "What time are we supposed to go to this party, Colonel?"