Tactics of Mistake (34 page)

As it was, however, nearly half the half million were engaged in military occupations other than those of a fighting soldier or officer. And of the more than two hundred and fifty thousand men that this left technically available for active duty in the field, more than a hundred and fifty thousand at any one time were rendered—or managed to render themselves—ineffective through a variety of means and for a variety of causes.

Among these were deep suspicions and old rivalries between former Alliance officers and their new Coalition partners; also, there was laziness and inefficiency among those of all ranks and political backgrounds, and the sheer blundering that inevitably resulted from the disorganization in such a large, hastily formed partnership of military units.

In spite of this, with all these subtractions, there remained a hard core of perhaps eighty thousand well-trained and superbly equipped troops from Earth to face a couple of hundred thousand almost useless and practically nonequipped local Colonial troops, plus a relative handful of Dorsais. Cletus could hardly have put twenty thousand Dorsai men in the field, even if he had scraped together every male from that small world, including walking cripples, between the ages of twelve and eighty.

Sending small contingents of Dorsais to officer Colonial troops was one solution; but only where the Colonial troops had at least a shred of training and effectiveness. Where this was not the case—as on Cassida—or where there simply were no native Colonial troops to officer—as on St. Marie—actual contingents of Dorsais had to be sent.

“But why don't we just stop?” demanded Melissa, anguished one day after she had come back from visiting a neighboring household that had lost yet another of the family's men. “Why can't we just stop sending men out?”

“For the same reason the Coalition and the Alliance have combined to send men to reverse everything we've accomplished,” Cletus answered her. “If they beat us at every point, they'll destroy our value as soldiers for hire to the other colonies. That's what Dow's really after. Then they'll come on to the Dorsai and destroy us.”

“You can't be sure of that—that they're out to destroy us!”

“I can't be other than sure. Nor can anyone who's thought the matter through,” said Cletus. “We were winning every campaign and proving ourselves superior to their own troops. A little more of that, and troops from the Alliance and the Coalition wouldn't be needed any more on the new worlds. And with the need gone for any military support from Earth, there'd go Earth's influence among the colonies. This way, if they win, they protect their hold on the new worlds. While if we win—”

“Win!” snorted Eachan, who was in the room at the time.

“If we win,” repeated Cletus, looking steadily at the older man, “we break that hold for good. It's a battle for survival between us now—when it's over, either Earth or the Dorsai are going to be counted out on the new worlds.”

She stared at him, her eyes unnaturally wide, for a long moment of silence. “I can't believe that!” she said at last. She turned to her father. “Dad—”

“Oh, it's true enough,” said Eachan flatly, from across the room. “We
were
too successful—with Cletus's early campaigns on Newton and worlds like that. We scared the Alliance and the Coalition, both. Now they're out to make themselves safe. And they're very big, and we're very small… And we've already sent out the last men we've got to send.”

“They haven't any left in reserve either,” said Cletus.

Eachan said nothing. Melissa turned back to Cletus.

“No,” said Cletus, although she had not spoken, “I don't intend to lose.”

Eachan still said nothing. In the silence, distantly, the front door annunciator chimed. A second later, an aide opened the door.

“Rebon, Exotic Outbond to the Dorsai, sir,” he said.

“Bring him in,” said Cletus. The aide stood aside and a slight man in blue robes entered the room.

His face held the eternal Exotic calm, but his expression was serious nonetheless. He came up to Cletus as both Cletus and Eachan got to their feet.

“I've got some bad news I'm afraid, Cletus,” he said. “A military force of the Alliance-Coalition Peace Force has seized the Maran core-tap site and all the equipment and technicians there.”

“On what basis?” snapped Eachan.

“The Coalition has filed claims against the Associated Advanced Communities of Newton,” said Rebon, turning slightly to face Eachan. “They've seized the core-tap site as an AAC asset pending settlement of their claim. Mondar”—he turned back to Cletus—“asks your help.”

“When did this happen?” asked Cletus.

“Eight hours ago,” said Rebon.

“Eight hours!” exploded Eachan. The fastest spaceship—and there was no known swifter way of transmitting messages across interstellar space—required at least three days to cover the light-years between Mara and the Dorsai. Rebon's eyes veiled themselves slightly.

“I assure you it's true,” he murmured.

“And where'd the troops come from?” demanded Eachan. He threw a glance at Cletus. “They weren't supposed to have any more available!”

“From the Friendlies, undoubtedly,” replied Cletus.

Rebon lifted his gaze back to Cletus, slowly. “That's true,” he said, on a note of surprise. “You expected this?”

“I expected deCastries to hire help from Harmony or Association eventually,” said Cletus, brusquely. “I'll leave right away.”

“For the core-tap site on Mara?” Relief sounded in Rebon's voice. “You
can
raise men to help us, then?”

“No. Alone. For Kultis,” said Cletus, already striding out of the room, “to talk to Mondar.”

Boarding the spaceship that would take him to Kultis, he encountered at the foot of the boarding ladder Vice-Marshal Arvid Johnson and Battle Operator William Athyer, who had been ordered to meet him here. Cletus stopped for a moment to speak to them.

“Well,” said Cletus, “do you still have any notion I gave you a nothing job when I put you in charge of defending the Dorsai?”

“No, sir.” Arvid looked calmly at him.

“Good. It's up to you then,” said Cletus. “You know the principles behind whatever action you'll need to take. Good luck.”

“Thank you,” said Bill. “Good luck to you, too, sir.”

“I make it a point not to know the lady,” said Cletus. “I can't afford to count on her.”

He went up the boarding ladder and the entry port of the ship closed behind him.

Five minutes later it leaped skyward in thunder and was lost into space.

Mondar had changed in some indefinable way, since Cletus had seen him last, when they met again in Mondar's garden-enclosed residence in Bakhalla. There were no new lines in the calm face, no touch of gray in the Exotic's hair, but the blue eyes, like Melissa's, were becoming strangely deeper in color, as though the time that had passed had dredged new levels of understanding in the mind behind them.

“You can't help us on Mara, then, Cletus?” were the words with which he greeted Cletus on the latter's arrival.

“I don't have any more troops to send,” said Cletus. “And if I had, I'd strongly suggest we not send them.”

They passed through the halls of Mondar's house, walking side by side, and emerged into an enclosure half-room, half-arbor, where Mondar waved Cletus to a wide, basket-weave chair, and then took one like it himself. All this time Mondar had not spoken; but now he did.

“We stand to lose more than we can afford, if we lose our present investment in the core-tap,” said Mondar. “We've still got a contingent of your Dorsais here in Bakhalla. Can't we use some of them to retake the core-tap site?”

“Not unless you want the additional Alliance-Coalition troops that have been put into Neuland to come boiling over the border into your colony, here,” said Cletus. “You don't want that, do you?”

“No,” said Mondar. “We don't want that. But what's to be done about the Friendly mercenaries occupying the core-tap site?”

“Leave them there,” said Cletus.

Mondar gazed at him. “Cletus,” he said softly after a second, “you aren't just trying to justify this situation you've created?”

“Do you trust my judgment?” countered Cletus.

“I've got a high regard for it,” Mondar answered slowly, “personally. But I'm afraid that most of the other Outbonds here and in the Maran colonies of our people don't share that high regard at the moment.”

“But they still trust you to make the decisions about me, don't they?” asked Cletus.

Mondar gazed at him, curiously. “What makes you so sure of that?” he asked.

“The fact that I've gotten everything I've ever asked the Exotics for, through you—up until now,” answered Cletus. “You're the man who has to recommend me as a bad bet or a good one, still, aren't you?”

“Yes,” said Mondar, with something of a sigh. “And that's why I'm afraid you won't find me as personally partial to you now as I might be, Cletus. I've got a responsibility to my fellow Exotics now that makes me take a harder view of the situation than I might take by myself. Also, I've got a responsibility to come to some kind of a decision between you and the Alliance-Coalition combination.”

“What's the procedure if you decide for them—and against us?” asked Cletus.

“I'm afraid we'd have to come to the best possible terms with them that we could,” Mondar answered. “Undoubtedly they'd want us to do more than dismiss the troops we've now got in hire from you, and call in your loan. They'd want us to actively throw our support on their side, hire their troops and help them against you on the Dorsai.”

Cletus nodded. “Yes, that's what they'd want,” he said. “All right, what do you need to decide to stick with the Dorsai?”

“Some indication that the Dorsai stands a chance of surviving the present situation,” said Mondar. “To begin with, I've told you we face a severe loss in the case of the Maran core-tap, and you said just now, even if you had the troops to spare, you'd suggest doing nothing about the Alliance-Coalition occupation of the site. You must have some reasoning to back that suggestion?”

“Certainly,” said Cletus. “If you stop and think for a moment, you'll realize the core-tap project itself is perfectly safe. It's a structure with both potential and actual value—to the Alliance and Coalition, as well as to anyone else. Maybe they've occupied the site, but you can be sure they aren't going to damage the work done so far by the men or machines that can finish it.”

“But what good's that do us, if it stays in their hands?”

“It won't stay long,” said Cletus. “The occupying troops are Friendlies and their religious, cultural discipline makes them excellent occupying troops—but that's all. They look down their noses at the very people who hire them, and the minute their pay stops coming they'll pack up and go home. So wait a week. At the end of that time either Dow will have won, or I will. If he's won, you can still make terms with him. If I've won, your Friendlies will pack up and leave at a word from me.”

Mondar looked at him narrowly. “Why do you say a week?” he asked.

“Because it won't be longer that that,” Cletus answered. “Dow's hiring of Friendly troops gives away the fact that he's ready for a showdown.”

“It does?” Mondar's eyes were still closely watching him. Cletus met them squarely with his own gaze.

“That's right,” he said. “We know the number of the available field troops in the Alliance-Coalition force that Dow's put together. It can be estimated from what we already knew of the number of troops the Alliance and the Coalition had out on the new worlds, separately. Dow had to use all of them to start enough brush wars to tie up all my Dorsais. He hadn't any spare fighting men. But, by replacing his fighting troops with Friendlies, he can temporarily withdraw a force great enough, in theory, to destroy me. Therefore the appearance of Friendly troops under Dow's command can only mean he's forming such a showdown force.”

“You can't be sure his hiring of Friendlies as mercenaries means just that, and not something else.”

“Of course I can,” said Cletus. “After all, I was the one who suggested the use of the Friendly troops in that way.”

“
You
suggested?” Mondar stared.

“In effect,” said Cletus. “I stopped off at Harmony myself some time back, to talk to James Arm-of-the-Lord and suggest he hire out members of his Militant Church as raw material to fill uniforms and swell the official numbers of my Dorsais. I offered him a low price for the men. It hardly took any imagination to foresee that once the idea'd been suggested to him, he'd turn around as soon as I'd left and try to get a higher price from Dow for the same men, used the same way.”

“And Dow, of course, with Alliance and Coalition money, could pay a higher price,” said Mondar, thoughtfully. “But if that's true, why didn't Dow hire them earlier?”

“Because exposing them to conflicts with my Dorsais would have quickly given away the fact that the Friendlies hadn't any real military skills,” replied Cletus. “Dow's best use of them could come only from putting them into uniform briefly, to replace the elite Alliance-Association troops he wanted to withdraw secretly, for a final battle to settle all matters.”

“You seem,” said Mondar slowly, “very sure of all this, Cletus.”

“That's natural enough,” said Cletus. “It's what I've been pointing toward ever since I sat down at the table with Dow and the rest of you on board the spaceship to Kultis.”

Mondar raised his eyebrows. “That much planning and executing?” he said. “Still, it doesn't mean you can be absolutely sure Dow will do what you think he'll do.”