“As far as this office has been informed, fighting is going on on the present worlds—Venus, Mars, Cassida, New Earth, Freiland, Association, Harmony, and St. Marie; and the governments of the following worlds are known to be deposed, or in hiding—Cassida, New Earth, and Freiland. No outbreaks are reported on Old Earth, Dunnin’s World, Mara, Kultis, or Ceta. And there is no present violence here on Coby at all. Prince William has offered the use of his leased troops as a police force to end the disturbances; and levies of Cetan troops are either on, or en route to, all trouble spots at the present time. William has announced that his troops will be used to putdown trouble wherever they find it, without respect to what faction this leaves in power. ‘Our job is not to take sides,’ he is reported as stating, ‘but to bring some kind of order out of the present chaos and put out the flames of self-destruction.’
“A late signal received from Old Earth reports that a number of the insurgent factions are agitating for the appointment of William as World’s Regent, with universal authority and strong-man powers to deal with the present emergency. A somewhat similar movement puts forward the name of Graeme, the missing Com Chief, for a similar position.”
“That’s all for now,” concluded the man at the desk, “watch for our next signal in fifteen minutes.”
“Good,” said Donal, and gestured to El Man to shut off the receiver, which the scarred Dorsai captain did. “How long until planetfall?”
“A couple of hours,” replied El Man. “We’re a bit ahead of schedule. That was the last phase shift. We’re on our way in on straight drive now. Do you have co-ordinates on our landing point?”
Donal nodded; and stood up.
“I’ll come up to control,” he said.
The process of bringing the N4J into the spot on the surface of Coby, corresponding to the co-ordinates indicated by Donal, was a time-consuming but simple procedure—only mildly complicated by Donal’s wish to make their visit undetected. Coby had nothing to defend in the sense a terraformed world might have; and they settled down without incident on its airless surface, directly over the freight lock to one of the subsurface transportation tunnels.
“All right,” said Donal, five minutes later, to the armed contingent of men assembled in the lounge. “This is an entirely volunteer mission, and I’ll give any of you one more chance to withdraw without prejudice if you want to.” He waited. Nobody stirred. “Understand,” said Donal, “I want nobody with me simply because he was shamed into volunteering, or because he didn’t want to hesitate when his shipmates volunteered.” Again he waited. There were no withdrawals. “Right, then. Here’s what we’ll be doing. You’ll follow me down that freight lock and into a receiving room with a door into a tunnel. However, we won’t be taking the door, but burning directly through one of the walls to the service section of an adjoining residence. You’ve all seen a drawing of our route. You’re to follow me, or whoever remains in command; and anyone who can’t keep up gets left behind. Everybody understand?” He looked around their faces.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s go.”
He led out down the passageway of the ship, out through their lock and down into the freight lock into the receiving room. This turned out to be a large, gloomy chamber with fused rock walls. Donal measured off a section of one wall and set his torchmen to work. Three minutes later they were in the service section of a Coby residence.
The area in which they found themselves was a network of small tunnels wide enough for only one man at a time, and interspersed with little niches and crannies holding technical devices necessary to the maintenance and appearance of the residence. The walls were coated with a permanent illuminating layer; and, in this cold white light, they filed along one of the tunnels and emerged into a garden.
The cycle of the residence’s system was apparently now set on night. Darkness held the garden and a fine imitation of the starry heavens glittered overhead. Ahead and to their right was the clump of main rooms, soft-lit with interior light.
“Two men to hold this exit,” whispered Donal, “The rest of you follow me.”
He led the way at a low crouching run through the garden and to the foot of some wide stairs. At their top, a solitary figure could be seen pacing back and forth on a terrace before an open wall.
“Captain—” said Donal. El Man slipped away into the bushes below the terrace. There was a little wait in the artificial night and then his dark shadow was seen to rise suddenly upon the terrace behind the pacing figure. They melted together, sagged, and only the shadow of El Man was left. He beckoned them up.
“Three men to hold this terrace,” whispered Donal, as they all came together at the head of the stairs. El Man told off the necessary number of the assault party; and they continued on into the lighted interior of the house.
For several rooms it seemed almost as if they would achieve their objective without meeting anyone other than the man they had come to seek. Then, without anything in the way of warning at all, they were suddenly in the middle of a pitched battle.
As they emerged into the main hall, hand weapons opened up on them from three converging rooms at once. The shipmen, automatically responding to training, dropped to the floor, took cover and returned the fire. They were pinned down.
They were, but not the three Dorsai. Donal, Ian, and El Man, reacting in that particular way that was a product of genes, reflexes and their own special training, and that made the Dorsai so particularly valuable as professional soldiers—these three had responded automatically and in unison a split-second before the fire opened up on them. It was almost as if some small element of precognition had entered the picture. At any rate, with a reaction too quick for thought, these three swung about and rushed one of the enemy doorways, reached it and closed with their opponents within before that opposition could bring their fire to bear. The three found themselves in a darkened room and fighting hand to hand.
Here again, the particular character of the Dorsai soldier paid off. There were eight men in ambush within this particular room and they were all veteran soldiers. But no two of them were a match at hand-to-hand fighting with any single Dorsai; and in addition the Dorsai had the advantage of being able, almost by instinct, to recognize each other in the dark and the melee, and to join forces for a sudden common effort without the need for discussion. The total effect of these advantages made it almost a case of three men who could see fighting eight who were blind.
In Donal’s case, he plunged into the dark room right on the heels of El Man and to El Man’s left, with Ian right behind him. Their charge split the defenders within into two groups and also carried them farther back into obscurity—a movement which the Dorsai, by common silent consent, improved on for the purpose of further separating the enemy. Donal found himself pushing back four men. Abandoning three of these to Ian behind him under the simple common-sense precept that you fight best when you fight only one man at a time, he dove in almost at the level of his opponent’s knees, tackled him, and they went down and rolled over together, Donal taking advantage of the opportunity to break the other soldier’s back in the process.
He continued his roll and came up, pivoting and instinctively side-stepping. A dark body flung past him—but that instinct spoken of before warned him that it was El Man, flinging himself clear across the room to aid the general confusion. Donal reversed his field and went back the way from which El Man had come. He came up against an opponent plunging forward with a knife held low, slipped the knife, chopped at the man’s neck with the calloused edge of his hand—but missed a clean killing stroke and only broke the man’s collar bone. Leaving that opponent however in the interests of keeping on the move, Donal spun off to the right, cornered another man against the wall and crushed this one’s windpipe with a stiff-fingered jab. Rebounding from the wall and spinning back into the center of the room, his ears told him that El Man was finishing off one opponent and Ian was engaged with the remaining two. Going to help him, Donal caught one o
f Ian’s men from behind and paralyzed him with a kidney punch. Ian, surprisingly enough, was still engaged with the remaining enemy. Donal went forward and found out why. Ian had caught himself another Dorsai.
Donal closed with both men and they went down in a two-on-one pin, the opponent in a stretcher that held him helpless between Donal and his uncle.
“Shai Dorsai!” gasped Donal. “Surrender!”
“Who to?” grunted the other.
“Donal and Ian Graeme,” said Ian. “Foralie.”
“Honored,” said the strange Dorsai. “Heard of you. Hord Vlaminck, Snelbrich Canton. All right then, let me up. My right arm’s broken, anyway.”
Donal and Ian let go and assisted Vlaminck to his feet. El Man had finished off what else remained, and now came up to them.
“Hord Vlaminck—Coruna El Man,” said Donal.
“Honored,” said El Man.
“Honor’s mine,” replied Vlaminck. “I’m your prisoner, gentlemen. Want my parole?”
“I’d appreciate it,” said Donal. “We’ve got work to do here yet. What kind of contract are you under?”
“Straight duty. No loyalty clause. Why?”
“Any reason why I can’t hire you on a prisoner’s basis?” asked Donal.
“Not from this job.” Vlaminck sounded disgusted. “I’ve been sold twice on the open market because of a typo in my last contract. Besides,” he added, “as I say, I’ve heard of you.”
“You’re hired, then. We’re looking for the man you’re guarding here. Can you tell us where we’ll find him?”
“Follow me,” said Vlaminck; and led the way back through the darkness; and opened a door. They stepped through into a short corridor that led them up a ramp and to another door.
“Locked,” said Vlaminck. “The alarm’s gone off.” He looked at them. Further than this he could not in honor go, even on a hired prisoner’s basis.
“Burn it down,” said Donal. He and Ian and El Man opened up on the door, which glowed stubbornly to a white heat, but finally melted. Ian threw a concussion bolt at it and knocked it open.
Within, a large man with a black hood over his head was crouched against the far wall of the room, a miner’s heavy-duty ion gun in his hand pointing a little unsteadily at them and shifting from one to the other.
“Don’t be a fool,” said Ian. “We are all Dorsai.”
The gun sagged in the hand of the hooded man. A choked, bitter exclamation came from behind the mask.
“Come on,” Donal gestured him out. He dropped the gun and came, shoulders bowed. They headed back through the house.
The fire fight in the hall was still going on as they retraced their footsteps; but died out as they reached the center hall. Two of the five men they had left behind there were able to navigate on their own power and another one could make it back to the ship with assistance. The other two were dead. They returned swiftly to the terrace, through the garden, and back into the tunnel, picking up the rest of their complement as they went. Fifteen minutes later, they were all aboard and the N4J was falling into deep space.
In the lounge, Donal was standing before the hooded man, who sat slumped on a float.
“Gentlemen,” said Donal, “take a look at William’s social technician.”
Ian and El Man, who were present, looked sharply over at Donal—not so much at the words as at the tone in which he had said them. He had spoken in a voice that was, for him, unexpectedly bitter.
“Here’s the man who sowed the whirlwind the civilized worlds are reaping at this moment,” went on Donal. He stretched out his hand to the black hood. The man shrank from him, but Donal caught the hood and jerked it off. A slow exhalation of breath slipped out between Donal’s lips.
“So you sold out,” he said.
The man before them was ArDell Montor.
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 allotted 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 sw
iftly 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.”
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