“Antipersonnel weapons,” he explained. “Nobody likes to shoot the poor helpless characters out of the sky as they fall in for an assault — so it’s an officer’s job. I usually take it over myself if I’m not tied up with something else at the moment. Staff Liaison Donal Graeme — First Officer Coa Benn.”
Donal and she shook hands.
“Well, shall we get on?” asked Andresen. They toured the rest of the ship and ended up before the door of Donal’s stateroom in Officer’s Country.
“Sorry,” said Andresen. “But we’re short of bunk space. Full complement under battle conditions. So we had to put your orderly in with you. If you’ve no objection—”
“Not at all,” said Donal.
“Good,” Andresen looked relieved. “That’s why I like the Dorsai. They’re so sensible.” He clapped Donal on the shoulder, and went hurriedly off back to his duties of getting his ship and crew ready for action.
Entering his stateroom, Donal found Lee had already set up both their gear, including a harness hammock for himself to supplement the single bunk that would be Donal’s.
“All set?” asked Donal.
“All set,” answered Lee. He still chronically forgot the “sir”; but Donal, having already had some experience with the fanatic literal-mindedness with which the man carried out any command given him, had refrained from making an issue of it. “You settle my contract, yet?”
“I haven’t had time,” said Donal. “It can’t be done in a day. You knew that, didn’t you?”
“No,” said Lee. “All I ever did was hand it over. And then, later on when I was through my term of service they gave it back to me; and the money I had coming.”
“Well, it usually takes a number of weeks or months,” Donal said. He explained what it had never occurred to him that anyone should fail to know, that the contracts are owned entirely by the individual’s home community or world, and that a contract agreement was a matter for settlement between the employer and the employee’s home government. The object was not to provide the individual so much with a job and a living wage, as to provide the home government with favorable monetary and “contractual” balances which would enable them to hire, in their turn, the trained specialists they needed. In the case of Lee’s contract, since Donal was a private employer and had money to offer, but no contractual credits, the matter of Lee’s employment had to be cleared with the Dorsai authorities, as well as the authorities on Coby, where Lee came from.
“That’s more of a formality than anything else, though,” Donal assured him. “I’m allowed an orderly, since I’ve been commandant rank. And the intent to hire’s been registered. That means your home government won’t draft you for any special service some place else.”
Lee nodded, which was almost his utmost expression of relief.
“…Signal!” chimed the annunciator in the stateroom wall by the door, suddenly. “Signal for Staff Liaison Graeme. Report to Flagship, immediately. Staff Liaison Graeme report to Flagship immediately.”
Donal cautioned Lee to keep from under the feet of the ship’s regular crew; and left.
The Flagship of the Battle made up by the Red and Green Patrols of the Freilander Space Force was, like the Class 4J Donal had just left, already in temporary loose orbit around Oriente. It took him some forty minutes to reach her; and when he entered her lock reception room and gave his name and rank, he was assigned a guide who took him to a briefing room in the ship’s interior.
The room was filled by some twenty-odd other Staff Liaisons.
They ranged in rank from Warrant Couriers to a Sub-Patrol Chief in his fifties. They were already seated facing a platform; and, as Donal entered — he was, apparently, the last to arrive — a Senior Captain of flag rank entered, followed closely by Blue Patrol Chief Lludrow.
“All right, gentlemen,” said the Senior Captain; and the room came to order. “Here’s the situation.” He waved a hand and the wall behind him dissolved to reveal an artist’s extrapolation of the coming bat-tie. Oriente floated in black space, surrounded by a number of ships in various patterns. The size of the ships had been grossly exaggerated in order to make them visible in comparison with the planet which was roughly two-thirds the diameter of Mars. The largest of these, the Patrol Class — long cylindrical interstellar warships — were in varying orbit eighty to five hundred kilometers above the planet’s surface, so that the integration of their pattern enclosed Oriente in web of shifting movement. A cloud of smaller craft, C4Js, A (subclass) 9s, courier ships, firing platforms, and individual and two-man gnat class boats, held position out beyond and planetward of them, right down into the atmosphere.
“We think,” said the Senior Captain, “that the enemy, at effective speed and already braking, will come into phase about here—” a cloud of assault ships winked into existence abruptly, a half million kilometers sunward of Oriente, and in the sun’s eye. They fell rapidly toward the planet, swelling visibly in size. As they approached, they swung into a circular landing orbit about the planet. The smaller craft closed in, and the two fleets came together in a myriad of patterns whose individual motions the eye could not follow all at once. Then the attacking fleet emerged below the mass of the defenders, spewing a sudden cloud of tiny objects that were the assault troops. These drifted down, attacked by the smaller craft, while the majority of the assault ships from Newton and Cassida began to disappear like blown-out candles as they sought safety in a phase shift that would place them light-years from the scene of battle.
To Donal’s fine-trained professional mind it was both beautifully thrilling — and completely false. No battle since time began had ever gone off with such ballet grace and balance and none ever would. This was only an imaginative guess at how the battle would take place, and it had no place in it for the inevitable issuance of wrong orders, the individual hesitations, the underestimation of an opponent, the navigational errors that resulted in collisions, or firing upon a sister ship. These all remained for the actual event, like harpies roosting upon the yet-unblasted limbs of a tree, as dawn steals like some gray thief onto the field where men are going to fight. In the coming action off Oriente there would be good actions and bad, wise decisions, and stupid ones — and none of them would matter. Only their total at the end of the day.
“…Well, gentlemen,” the Senior Captain was saying, “there you have it as Staff sees it. Your job — yours personally, as Staff Liaisons — is to observe. We want to know anything you can see, anything you can discover, anything you can, or think you can, deduce. And of course” — he hesitated, with a wry smile — “there’s nothing we’d appreciate quite so much as a prisoner.”
There was a ripple of general laughter at this, as all men there knew the fantastic odds against being able to scoop up a man from an already broken-open enemy ship under the velocities and other conditions of a space battle — and find him still alive, even if you succeeded.
“That’s all,” said the Senior Captain. The Staff Liaisons rose and began to crowd out the door.
“Just a minute, Graeme!”
Donal turned. The voice was the voice of Lludrow. The Patrol Chief had come down from the platform and was approaching him. Donal turned back to meet him.
“I’d like to speak to you for a moment,” said Lludrow. “Wait until the others are out of the room.” They stood together in silence until the last of the Staff Liaisons had left, and the Senior Captain had disappeared.
“Yes, sir?” said Donal.
“I’m interested in something you said — or maybe were about to say the other day — when I met you at Marshal Galt’s in the process of assessing this Oriente business. You said something that seemed to imply doubt about the conclusions we came to. But I never did hear what it was you had in mind. Care to tell me now?”
“Why, nothing, sir,” said Donal. “Staff and the marshal undoubtedly know what they’re doing.”
“It isn’t possible, then, you saw something in the situation that we
didn’t?” Donal hesitated.
“No, sir. I don’t know any more about enemy intentions and plans than the rest of you. Only—” Donal looked down into the dark face below his, wavering on the verge of speaking his mind. Since the affair with Anea he had been careful to keep his flights of mental perception to himself. “Possibly I’m just suspicious, sir.”
“So are all of us, man!” said Lludrow, with a hint of impatience. “What about it? In our shoes what would you be doing?”
“In your shoes,” said Donal, throwing discretion to the winds, “I’d attack Newton,”
Lludrow’s jaw fell. He stared at Donal.
“By heaven,” he said, after a moment. “You’re not shy about expedients, are you? Don’t you know a civilized world can’t be conquered?”
Donal allowed himself the luxury of a small sigh. He made an effort to explain himself, once again, in terms others could understand.
“I remember the marshal saying that,” he said. “I’m not so sanguine, myself. In fact, that’s a particular maxim I’d like to try to disprove some day. However — that’s not what I meant. I didn’t mean to suggest we attempt to take Newton; but that we attack it. I suspect the Newtonians are as maxim-ridden as ourselves. Seeing us try the impossible, they’re very like to conclude we’ve suddenly discovered some way to make it possible. From their reactions to such a conclusion we might learn a lot — including about the Oriente affair.”
Lludrow’s look of amazement was tightening into a frown.
“Any force attacking Newton would suffer fantastic losses,” he began.
“Only if they intended to carry the attack through,” interrupted Donal, eagerly. “It could be a feint — nothing more man that. The point wouldn’t be to do real damage, but to upset the thinking of the enemy strategy by introducing an unexpected factor.”
“Still,” said Lludrow, “to make their feint effective, the attacking force would have to run the risk of being wiped out.”
“Give me a dozen ships—” Donal was beginning; when Lludrow started and blinked like a man waking up from a dream.
“Give you—” he said; and smiled. “No, no, commandant, we were speaking theoretically. Staff would never agree to such a wild, unplanned gamble; and I’ve no authority to order it on my own. And if I did — how could I justify giving command of such a force to a young man with only field experience, who’s never held command in a ship in his life?” He shook his head. “No, Graeme — but I will admit your idea’s interesting. And I wish one of us at least had thought of it.”
“Would it hurt to mention it—”
“It wouldn’t do any good — to argue with a plan Staff has already had in operation for over a week, now.” He was smiling broadly. “In fact, my reputation would find itself cut rather severely. But it was a good idea, Graeme. You’ve got the makings of a strategist. I’ll mention the fact in my report to the marshal.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Donal.
“Back to your ship, then,” said Lludrow.
“Good-by, sir.”
Donal saluted and left. Behind him, Lludrow frowned for just a moment more over what had just been said — before he turned his mind to other things.
Acting Captain
Space battles, mused Donal, are said to be held only by mutual consent. It was one of those maxims he distrusted; and which he had privately determined to disprove whenever he should get the chance. However — as he stood now by the screen of the Control Eye in the main control room of the C4J, watching the enemy ships appearing to swell with the speed of their approach — he was forced to admit that in this instance, it was true. Or true at least to the extent that mutual consent is involved when you attack an enemy point that you know that enemy will defend.
But what if he should not defend it after all? What if he should do the entirely unexpected—
“Contact in sixty seconds. Contact in sixty seconds!” announced the speaker over his head.
“Fasten all,” said Andresen, calmly into the talker before him. He sat, with his First and Second Officers duplicating him on either side, in a “dentist’s chair” across the room — “seeing” the situation not in actual images as Donal was doing, but from the readings of his instruments. And his knowledge was therefore the more complete one. Cumbersome in his survival battle suit, Donal climbed slowly into the similar chair that had been rigged for him before the Eye, and connected himself to the chair. In case the ship should be broken apart, he and it would remain together as long as possible. With luck, the two of them would be able to make it to a survival ship in orbit around Oriente in forty or fifty hours — if none of some dozens of factors intervened.
He had time to settle himself before the Eye before contact was made. In those last few seconds, he glanced around him; finding it a little wonderful in spite of all he knew, that this white and quiet room, undisturbed by the slightest tremor, should be perched on the brink of savage combat and its own quite possible destruction. Then mere was no more time for thinking. Contact with the enemy had been made and he had to keep his eyes on the scene.
Orders had been to harry the enemy, rather than close with him. Estimates had been twenty per cent casualties for the enemy, five per cent for the defending forces. But such figures, without meaning to be, are misleading. To the man in the battle, twenty per cent, or even five per cent casualties do not mean that he will be twenty per cent or five per cent wounded. Nor, in a space battle, does it mean that one man out of five, or one man out of twenty will be a casualty. It means one ship out of five, or one ship out of twenty — and every living soul aboard her; for, in space, one hundred per cent casualties mean ninety-eight per cent dead.
There were three lines of defense. The first were the light craft that were meant to slow down the oncoming ships so that the larger, more ponderous craft, could try to match velocities well enough to get to work with heavy weapons. Then there were the large craft themselves in their present orbits. Lastly, there were the second line of smaller craft that were essentially antipersonnel, as the attackers dropped their space-suited assault troops. Donal in a C4J was in the first line.
There was no warning. There was no full moment of battle. At the last second before contact, the gun crews of the C4J had opened fire. Then—
It was all over.
Donal blinked and opened his eyes, trying to remember what had happened. He was never to remember. The room in which he lay, fastened to his chair, had been split as if by a giant hatchet. Through the badly-lit gap, he could see a portion of an officer’s stateroom. A red, self-contained flare was burning somewhere luridly overhead, a signal that the control room was without air. The Control Eye was slightly askew, but still operating. Through the transparency of his helmet, Donal could see the dwindling lights that marked the enemy’s departure on toward Oriente. He struggled upright in his chair and turned his head toward the Control panel.
Two were quite dead. Whatever had split the room open had touched them, too. The Second officer was dead, Andresen was undeniably dead. Coa Benn still lived, but from the feeble movements she was making in the chair, she was badly hurt. And there was nothing anyone could do for her now that they were without air and all prisoners in their suits.
Donal’s soldier-trained body began to react before his mind had quite caught up to it. He found himself breaking loose the fastenings that connected him to his chair. Unsteadily, he staggered across the room, pushed the lolling head of Andresen out of the way, and thumbed the intership button.
“C4J One-twenty-nine,” he said. “C4J One-twenty-nine—” he continued to repeat the cabalistic numbers until the screen before him lit up with a helmeted face as bloodless as that of the dead man in the chair underneath him.
“KL,” said the face. “A-twenty-three?” Which was code for: “Can you still navigate?”
Donal looked over the panel. For a wonder, it had been touched by what had split the room — but barely. Its instruments were all reading.
“A-twenty-nine,” he replied affirmatively.
“M-Forty,” said the other, and signed off. Donal let the intership button slip from beneath his finger. M-Forty was — Proceed as ordered,
Proceed as ordered, for the C4J One-twenty-nine, the ship Donal was in, meant — get in close to Oriente and pick off as many assault troops as you can.
Donal set about the unhappy business of removing his dead and dying from their control chairs.
Coa, he noted, as he removed her, more gently than the others, seemed dazed and unknowing. There were no broken bones about her, but she appeared to have been pinched, or crushed on one side by just a touch of what had killed the others. Her suit was tight and intact. He thought she might make it, after all.
Seating himself in the captain’s chair, he called the gun stations and other crew posts.
“Report,” he ordered.
Gun stations One and Five through Eight answered.
“We’re going in planetward,” he said. “All able men abandon the weapon stations for now and form a working crew to seal ship and pump some air back in here. Those not sealed off, assemble in lounge. Senior surviving crewman to take charge.”
There was a slight pause. Then a voice spoke back to him.
“Gun Maintenanceman Ordovya,” it said. “I seem to be surviving Senior, sir. Is this the captain?”
“Staff Liaison Graeme, Acting Captain. Your officers are dead. As ranking man here, I’ve taken command. You have your orders, Maintenanceman.”
“Yes, sir.” The voice signed off.
Donal set himself about the task of remembering his ship training. He got the C4J underway toward Oriente and checked all instruments. After a while, the flare went out abruptly overhead and a slow, hissing noise registered on his eardrums — at first faintly, then scaling rapidly up in volume and tone to a shriek. His suit lost some of its drum-tightness.
A few moments later, a hand tapped him on his shoulder. He turned around to look at a blond-headed crewman with his helmet tilted back.
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