If Scott lived, it was probable that he would be elected cinc.
It was, therefore, decidedly to Mendez’s advantage to kill the imprisoned man.
A shadow crossed the doorway. Mendez, his back to the newcomer, did not see Commander Bienne halt on the threshold, scowling at the tableau. Scott knew that Bienne understood the situation as well as he himself did. The commander realized that in a very few moments Mendez would draw his gun and fire.
Scott waited. The cinc’s fingers tightened on his gun butt.
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Bienne, grinning crookedly, said, “I thought that shell had finished you, sir. Guess it’s hard to kill a Dooneman.”
Mendez took his hand off the gun, instantly regaining his poise. He turned to Bienne.
“I’m glad you’re here, Commander. It’ll probably take both of us to move that beam.”
“Shall we try, sir?”
Between the two of them, they managed to shift the weight off Scott’s torso. Briefly the latter’s eyes met Bienne’s. There was still no friendliness in them, but there was a look of wry self-mockery.
Bienne hadn’t saved Scott’s life, exactly. It was, rather, a question of being a Dooneman. For Bienne was, first of all, a soldier, and a member of the Free Company.
Scott tested his limbs; they worked.
“How long was I out, Commander?”
“Ten minutes, sir. The Armageddon’s in sight.”
“Good. Are the Helldivers veering off?”
Bienne shook his head. “So far they’re not suspicious.”
Scott grunted and made his way to the door, the others at his heels.
Mendez said, “We’ll need another control ship.”
“All right. The Arquebus. Commander, take over here. Cinc Mendez—”
A flitterboat took them to the Arquebus, which was still in good fighting trim. The monitor Armageddon, Scott saw, was rolling helplessly in the trough of the waves. In accordance with the battle plan, the Doone ships were leading the Helldivers toward the apparently capsized giant. The technicians had done a good job; the false keel looked shockingly convincing.
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Aboard the Arquebus, Scott took over, giving Mendez the auxiliary control for his sub-strafers. The cinc beamed at Scott over his shoulder.
“Wait till that monitor opens up, captain.”
“Yeah . . . we’re in bad shape, though.”
Neither man mentioned the incident that was in both their minds. It was tacitly forgotten—the only thing to do now.
Guns were still bellowing. The Helldivers were pouring their fire into the Doone formation, and they were winning. Scott scowled at the screens. If he waited too long, it would be just too bad.
Presently he put a beam on the Armageddon. She was in a beautiful position now, midway between two of the Helldivers’s largest battleships.
“Unmask. Open fire.”
Firing ports opened on the monitor. The sea titan’s huge guns snouted into view. Almost simultaneously they blasted, the thunder drowning out the noise of the lighter guns.
“All Doone ships attack,” Scott said. “Plan R-7.”
This was it. This was it!
The Doones raced in to the kill. Blasting, bellowing, shouting, the guns tried to make themselves heard above the roaring of the monitor. They could not succeed, but that savage, invincible onslaught won the battle.
It was nearly impossible to maneuver a monitor into battle formation, but, once that was accomplished, the only thing that could stop the monster was atomic power.
But the Helldivers fought on, trying strategic formation. They could not succeed. The big battlewagons could not get out of range of the Armageddon’ s guns. And that meant—
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Cinc Flynn’s face showed on the screen.
“Capitulation, sir. Cease firing.”
Scott gave orders. The roar of the guns died into humming, incredible silence.
“You gave us a great battle, cinc.”
“Thanks, So did you. Your strategy with the monitor was excellent.”
So—that was that. Scott felt something go limp inside of him.
Flynn’s routine words were meaningless; Scott was drained of the vital excitement that had kept him going till now.
The rest was pure formula.
Token depth charges would be dropped over Virginia Keep. They would not harm the Dome, but they were the rule. There would be the ransom, paid always by the Keep which backed the losing side.
A supply of korium, or its negotiable equivalent. The Doone treasury would be swelled. Part of the money would go into replacements and new keels. The life of the forts would go on.
Alone at the rail of the Arquebus, heading for Virginia Keep, Scott watched slow darkness change the clouds from pearl to gray, and then to invisibility. He was alone in the night. The wash of waves came up to him softly as the Arquebus rushed to her destination, three hundred miles away.
Warm yellow lights gleamed from ports behind him, but he did not turn. This, he thought, was like the cloudwrapped Olympus in Montana Keep, where he had promised Ilene—many things.
Yet there was a difference. In an Olympus a man was like a god, shut away completely from the living world. Here, in the unbroken dark, there was no sense of alienage.
Nothing could be seen—Venus has no moon, and the clouds hid the stars. And the seas are not phosphorescent.
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Beneath these waters stand the Keeps, Scott thought. They hold the future. Such battles as were fought today are fought so that the Keeps may not be destroyed.
And men will sacrifice. Men have always sacrificed, for a social organization or a military unit. Man must create his own ideal. “If there had been no God, man would have created Him.”
Bienne had sacrificed today, in a queer, twisted way of loyalty to his fetish. Yet Bienne still hated him, Scott knew.
The Doones meant nothing. Their idea was a false one.
Yet, because men were faithful to that ideal, civilization would rise again from the guarded Keeps. A civilization that would forget its doomed guardians, the watchers of the seas of Venus, the Free Companions yelling their mad, futile battle cry as they drove on—as this ship was driving—into a night that would have no dawn.
Ilene.
Jeana.
It was no such simple choice. It was, in fact, no real choice at all.
For Scott knew, very definitely, that he could never, as long as he lived, believe wholeheartedly in the Free Companions. Always a sardonic devil deep within him would be laughing in bitter self-mockery.
The whisper of the waves drifted up.
It wasn’t sensible. It was sentimental, crazy, stupid, sloppy thinking.
But Scott knew, now, that he wasn’t going back to Ilene.
He was a fool.
But he was a soldier.
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