Tactics of Mistake (14 page)

“I think they're ready for you now,” Cletus said to Wefer.

If anything more was needed to complete the demoralization of the guerrillas aboard the launches it was the sight of the black shape of the Mark V roaring up into view out of the river depths, the two heavy energy rifles in its turret sweeping ominously back and forth. Almost without exception those who had managed to cling to their battered crafts dove overboard at the sight and began to swim frantically for the banks of the river.

“Turret—” began Wefer excitedly. But Cletus put his hand over the phone.

“Let them go,” Cletus said. “The important men'll still be sealed inside the pods. Let's see about collecting them before they get too worried by all that's happened and start breaking out.”

The advice was good. The Neulanders inside the pods had reached the limits of their endurance with the tossing about they had taken in the wave generated by the Mark V. Already more than one of the pods bobbing helplessly on the surface of the water, still tethered to their grounded launches, was beginning to split along the top, as those within activated their emergency exits. Wefer wheeled the Mark V into the midst of the wreckage and sent his ensign with three seamen out the Mark V's top hatch with hand weapons to cover the Neulanders as they emerged. They were ordered to swim to the Mark V, where they were searched, put in wrist restraints and herded down the hatch to be locked up in the Mark V's forward hold. Cletus and Melissa stayed discreetly out of sight.

Its forward hold crammed with prisoners, and the cargo pods filled with supplies in tow, the Mark V returned to its base at the Bakhalla Navy Yard. After disposing of their prisoners and their spoils, Cletus, Melissa and Wefer at last got into the city for that late—now early morning—supper they had planned. It was after four in the morning when Cletus took a tired but happy Melissa back to her father's residence. However, as they approached their destination, Melissa sobered and fell silent; and when they pulled up in front of the door of the house that the Exotics had put at the disposal of Melissa and Eachan, she did not offer to get out of the car right away.

“You know,” she said, turning to Cletus, “you're pretty remarkable, after all. First those guerrillas on our way into Bakhalla, then the ones you captured up at fitter's pass. And now, tonight.”

“Thanks,” he said, “but all I did was anticipate the optimum moves for deCastries to make, and arrange to be on the scene when they were made.”

“Why do you keep talking about Dow as if he was having some sort of personal duel with you?”

“He is,” said Cletus.

“The Outworlds Secretary for the Coalition—against some unknown lieutenant-colonel in an Alliance Expeditionary Force? Does that make sense?”

“Why not?” Cletus said. “He has a great deal more to lose than an unknown lieutenant-colonel in an Alliance Expeditionary Force.”

“But you're just imagining it all. You have to be!”

“No,” said Cletus. “Remember I pushed him into an error of judgment with the sugar cubes in the dining lounge of the ship? The Outworlds Secretary for the Coalition can't afford to be made a fool of by an unknown Alliance lieutenant-colonel—as you describe me. It's true nobody but you knows—and only because I told you—that he did make a mistake, then—”

“Was that why you told me what you'd done?” Melissa interrupted quickly. “Just so I'd tell Dow?”

“Partly,” said Cletus. She drew in her breath sharply in the darkness. “But only incidentally. Because it really didn't matter whether you told him or not. He knew I knew. And it simply wasn't good policy to let someone like me walk around thinking that I could beat him, at anything.”

“Oh!” Melissa's voice trembled on the verge of anger. “You're making all this up. There's no proof, not a shred of proof for any of it.”

“There is, though,” said Cletus. “You remember the guerrillas on the way into Bakhalla attacked the command car, in which I was riding, instead of—as your father pointed out—the bus, which would have been a much more natural target for them. And this after Pater Ten had been burning up the ship-to-planet phone lines to Neuland before we left the ship.”

“That's coincidence—stretched coincidence, at that,” she retorted.

“No,” said Cletus, quietly. “No more than the infiltration through Etter's Pass, which, while it was also made to provide a coup for the Neulanders, would have had the effect of discrediting me as a tactical expert before I had a chance to get my feet on the ground here and learn about the local military situation.”

“I don't believe it,” Melissa said vehemently. “It has to be all in your head!”

“If that's so, then deCastries shares the delusion,” answered Cletus. “When I slipped out of the first trap, he was impressed enough to offer me a job with him—a job, however, which obviously would have put me in a subordinate position with regard to him… That happened at Mondar's party, when you stepped over to talk to Eachan, and deCastries and I had a few moments together.”

She stared at him through the night shadow of the car, as if trying to search out the expression on his face in the little light that reached them from the lamp beside the doorway of the house and the dawn-pale sky above the aircar.

“You turned him down?” she said, after a long moment.

“I just have. Tonight,” said Cletus, “after the guerrillas on landing and Etter's Pass, he couldn't delude himself that I wouldn't expect that the next obvious move for the Neulanders would be to take advantage of the high tide on the river to run in supplies and saboteurs to Bakhalla. If I'd let that infiltration take place without saying or doing anything, he'd have known that I'd become, to all intents and purposes, his hired man.”

Again, she stared at him. “But you—” She broke off. “What can you expect to get out of all this, this… chain of things happening?”

“Just what I told you on the ship,” said Cletus. “To trap deCastries into a personal fencing match with me, so that I can gradually lead him into larger and larger conflicts—until he commits himself completely in a final encounter where I can use his cumulative errors of judgment to destroy him.”

Slowly, in the shadow, she shook her head. “You must be insane,” she said.

“Or perhaps a little more sane than most,” he answered. “Who knows?”

“But…” She hesitated, as though she was searching for an argument that would get through to him. “Anyway, no matter what's happened here, Dow's going to be leaving now. Then what about all these plans of yours about him? Now he can just go back to Earth and forget you—and he will.”

“Not until I've caught him in an error of judgment too public for him to walk away from or hide,” said Cletus. “And that's what I have to do next.”

“One more—what if I tell him you're going to do that?” she demanded. “Just suppose the whole wild thing's true, and I go to Capital Neuland tomorrow and tell him what you're planning? Won't that ruin everything for you?”

“Not necessarily,” said Cletus. “Anyway, I don't think you'll do that.”

“Why not?” she challenged. “I told you on the ship, that first night, that I wanted help from Dow for Dad and myself. Why shouldn't I tell him anything that might make him more likely to help me?”

“Because you're more your father's daughter than you think,” said Cletus. “Besides, your telling him would be a waste of effort. I'm not going to let you throw yourself away on deCastries for something that'd be the wrong thing for Eachan and you anyway.”

She stared at him, saying nothing, for one breathless minute. Then she exploded.

“
You
aren't going to let me!” she blazed. “
You're
going to order my life and my father's, are you? Where'd you get that kind of conceit, to think you could know what's best for people and what isn't best for them—let alone thinking you could get what you think best for them, or take it away from them if they want it? Who made you… king of everything…“

She had been fumbling furiously with the latch of the door on her side of the aircar as the words tumbled out of her. Now her fingers found it, the door swung open and she jumped out, turning to slam the door behind her.

“Go back to your BOQ—or wherever you're supposed to go!” she cried at him through the open window. “I knew there was no point going out with you tonight, but Dad asked me. I should have known better.
Good night
!”

She turned and ran up the steps into the house. The door slammed behind her. Cletus was left to silence and the empty, growing light of the pale dawn sky, unreachable overhead.

“Well, Colonel,” said Bat, grimly, “what am I supposed to do with you?”

“The General could put me to use,” said Cletus.

“Put you to use!” They were standing facing each other in Bat's private office. Bat turned in exasperation, took two quick steps away, wheeled and stepped back to glare up at Cletus once more. “First you make a grandstand play up by Etter's Pass, and it pays off so that you collect about five times as many prisoners as you had men to collect them with. Now you go out for a midnight picnic with the Navy and come back loaded with guerrillas and supplies bound for Bakhalla. Not only that, but you take a civilian along with you on this Navy spree!”

“Civilian, sir?” said Cletus.

“Oh yes, I know the official story!” Bat interrupted him, harshly. “And as long as it's a Navy matter, I'm letting it ride. But I
know
who you had with you out there, Colonel! Just as I know that wooden-headed young character, Linet, couldn't have dreamed up the idea of capturing those motor launches full of guerrillas. It was your show, Colonel, just like it was your show up at Etter's Pass! …And I repeat, what am I going to do with you?”

“In all seriousness, General,” said Cletus, in a tone of voice that matched his words, “I mean what I say. I think you ought to put me to use.”

“How?” Bat shot at him.

“As what I'm equipped to be—a tactician,” said Cletus. He met the glare from under the general's expressive brows without yielding, and his voice remained calm and reasonable. “The present moment's one in which I could be particularly useful, considering the circumstances.”

“What circumstances?” Bat demanded.

“Why, the circumstances that've more or less combined to trap the Military Secretary of the Coalition here on Kultis,” Cletus replied. “I imagine there's little doubt, in the ordinary way of things, that Dow deCastries would be planning on leaving this planet in the next day or two.”

“Oh, he would, would he?” said Bat “And what makes you so sure that you know what a Coalition high executive like deCastries would be doing—under any circumstances?”

“The situation's easily open to deduction,” answered Cletus. “The Neulander guerrillas aren't in any different situation than our Alliance forces here when it comes to the matter of getting supplies out from Earth. Both they and we could use a great many things that the supply depots back on Earth are slow to send us. You want tanks, sir. It's a safe bet the Neulander guerrillas have wants of their own, which the Coalition isn't eager to satisfy.”

“And how do you make that out?” Bat snapped.

“I read it as a conclusion from the obvious fact that the Coalition's fighting a cheaper war here on Kultis than we are,” said Cletus, reasonably. “It's typical of Alliance-Coalition confrontations for the past century. We tend to supply our allies actual fighting forces and the equipment to support them. The Coalition tends merely to arm and advise the opposition forces. This fits well with their ultimate aim, which isn't so much to win all these minor conflicts they oppose us in but to bleed dry the Alliance nations back on Earth, so that eventually the Coalition can take over, back there where they believe all the important real estate is.”

Cletus stopped speaking. Bat stared at him. After a second, the general shook his head like a man coming out of a daze.

“I ought to have my head examined,” Bat said. “Why do I stand here and listen to this?”

“Because you're a good general officer, sir,” said Cletus, “and because you can't help noticing I'm making sense.”

“Part of the time you're making sense… “ muttered Bat, his eyes abstracted. Then his gaze sharpened and he fastened it once more on Cletus' face. “All right, the Neulanders want equipment from the Coalition that the Coalition doesn't want to give them. You say that's why deCastries came out here?”

“Of course,” said Cletus. “You know yourself the Coalition does this often. They refuse material help to one of their puppet allies, but then, to take the sting out of the refusal, they send a highly placed dignitary out to visit the puppets. The visit creates a great deal of stir, both in the puppet country and elsewhere. It gives the puppets the impression that their welfare is very close to the Coalition's heart—and it costs nearly nothing. Only, in this one instance, the situation's backfired somewhat.”

“Backfired?” said Bat.

“The two new guerrilla thrusts that were supposed to celebrate deCastries' visit—that business up at Etter's Pass, and now last night's unsuccessful attempt to infiltrate a good number of men and supplies into the city of Bakhalla—have blown up in the Neulanders' faces,” Cletus said. “Of course, officially, Dow's got nothing to do with either of those two missions. Naturally we know that he undoubtedly did know about them, and maybe even had a hand in planning them. But as I say, officially, there's no connection between him and them, and theoretically he could leave the planet as scheduled without looking backward once. Only I don't think he's likely to do that now.”

“Why not?”