Aware of the brawny officer's fame as a martial artist, the hothead hesitated. Reluctantly, he decided against bucking too-great odds. Scowling, he kept his eyes glued to the man confronting him.
Galt likewise recognized the futility of precipitating an affray when three opponents bore electronic weapons warmed and ready, and his archrival's hand hung in close proximity to the butt of the deadly device still holstered.
Arlen's imperious voice carried easily to all twenty-four men. "Well, Galt, I've spent the day seizing the Earth-armed ships of my commanders--Wassel's as well as this vessel. I'm leaving you the two ships now engaged in hunting Chapell, or at least, leaving those under the control of the Commander of Second Corps. I'm assuming you'll wish to retain your seniority. To do so, you'll need to accept certain alterations I'm making in Columbia's military establishment.
"Tomorrow, I'll meet with my commanders to explain those. Any one of the four of you who actively opposes those changes, or passively resists implementing them, I'll replace. In the crisis I see facing our world at this point in our history, I need men upon whom I can rely absolutely, in possession of the highest rank. Leaders as effective as yourself, Galt."
Tall as Arlen, but broader in the shoulders, blonde, strikingly handsome, Galt projected an aura of command almost as potent as that of the antagonist he faced. Glacial blue eyes regarded the engineer of a successful coup, and veiled vitriolic hatred for this supremely assured military dictator: enmity harbored for Earthyears prior to this day. When the man spoke, his voice bore only an overtone of sardonic scorn. "I sense that I'm presented with an accomplished fact. Well, I yield to necessity. Whatever alterations Second Corps faces, I'll retain command of the men I'm proud to lead."
"I welcome that decision. Aware as I am of your admirable ability to win the loyalty of the men under you, I'll do you the courtesy to pass an invitation to your captains through you. I'll deploy the ships armed with the irreproducible weaponry into the Special Force under my direct command. I'll maintain our present supremacy in space, and counteract any attempt by the Gaeans to wage war on us in that element. I offer a commission to any of the four men who prior to today captained your first-class ships, should any wish to join me in that endeavor."
Galt returned Arlen a wintry smile. "Seventeen ships to fight one! And two to hunt renegades. Perhaps my veterans should consider your offer. They likely stand in need of a rest."
Flynn, who had not taken his eyes off Evan, snorted audibly. Not a muscle of the martial artist's face so much as twitched.
Arlen countered equably, "Seven of Norman's captains enjoy permanent rest in Gaea, Galt. If I'm overestimating the threat Signe poses in space, my excess of caution will operate to Columbia's advantage. I'm firmly of the opinion that it's best to err on the side of caution. At some point, we'll be forced to meet a challenge. No renegade possesses a first-class ship. One such loose to strike out of the void isn't a threat to laugh off lightly. Well. I regret that you'll undoubtedly talk your captains out of accepting, but I respect their loyalty to their corps and their commander. So. Evan, escort these gentlemen to Fifth Corps' Headquarters, and detain them until I arrive."
Galt's eyes now projected detectable malevolence, but he stalked off ahead of his men. Of all the foul luck! he raged inwardly. Courtney must have blown his chance! What bloody cur tipped Arlen off? Has he a network of informers the equal of mine? Hell, no! I felt sure …
Damn! With Arlen dead at Brant's hand, Dexter would have lost no time finding a pretext to skewer Courtney, and make his play. I'd have stepped in to prevent incipient civil war--used my ties to Internal Security to gain a stranglehold on the civilian populace, and my reputation as a warrior enjoying the unswerving loyalty of his own men to rally leaderless Fourth and Fifth Corpsmen behind me. I'd have seen to it that Amin and Lacey met with unfortunate accidents. Early demise! This bastard as well, and that cocky upstart who fancies himself a duelist--Danner. Damn! Twice, Arlen has outmaneuvered me! Twice! Blast his slime-eaten soul!
Standing as if carven of stone, Arlen watched as his Captain marched Galt and his spacers down the corridor. Impressed by the manner in which Evan and his crewmen handled their touchy chore, their superior passed through the outer lock, ascended the ladder that stretched upward to the docking module of the ship, and rode the elevator to the bridge. Having changed the startup-code, and inserted a locking device into the port, he descended, and strode purposefully to Fifth Corps' Headquarters, where he made certain that Evan had arrived with his contingent. From there, he hastened to Ministry Main Habitat.
Confronting Norman as he completed the duty that had occupied himself and twenty Third Corpsmen all day, Arlen summoned Gaea's former nemesis into the privacy of a vacant office, informed him of the changes now in effect, and repeated the stern ultimatum he had issued Dexter and Galt.
The arrogant, deeply lined face of the hearer creased into a scowl, but the intent observer sensed that the heavier blow falling out of the black upon his peers provided a measure of balm to the man's smarting pride. "Since you're presenting me with an accomplished fact, I'm forced to accept your high-handed appropriation of my ship, and accede to the changes," Norman rasped. "I'll retain command of Third Corps."
"I commend you on your flexibility," the Commander-in-Chief replied smoothly, concluding the interview.
Gifted with a formidable power of persuasive eloquence, self-conditioned habitually to hide any emotion he chose not to let show on his expressive face, Arlen possessed a sense of personal honor that rendered him incapable of speaking or acting a lie. He found dealing with an associate whom he regarded as a criminal distasteful. Exquisitely attuned to the political realities of his world, the military dictator put up with that necessity, and contented himself with rendering the defeated invader of Gaea ineffectual as a rival for power. His realization that Norman's bitter change in fortune constituted a severe punishment in itself for a ruthless careerist who once harbored high ambitions, served to blunt the edge of his disgust at being forced to withhold the punishment the man deserved.
Elated by his victory, Arlen returned to Fifth Corps' Headquarters, where he candidly informed Dexter of his success in persuading the latter's three most experienced captains to join the force he planned to create. That news did nothing to mitigate the Commander's wrath--a fact patently clear to the man unerringly interpreting his subordinate's body language--but the autocrat's subsequent revelations produced in Dexter the same sort of satisfaction with the misfortune of his peers as that which the Commander-in-Chief knew animated Norman.
Having released his detainees, Arlen returned to his office.
Looking up from his work as his superior took the seat next to his, Dahl listened as Arlen raised Lacey, commanded him to dock his ship, and instructed Rafael to do the same. A moment's thought enabled a veteran spacer-captain well versed in military strategy to guess what order Lacey stood prepared to obey throughout that interminable day. When Arlen determines on a move, he doesn't settle for half-measures, Dahl reflected. Well. Signe will find that she has charged headlong into a worse brawl than she can handle, if she takes Arlen on in a war in space!
Perhaps she won't. She might intend merely to protect her world from any future invasion. A vivid memory of an unforgettable face rose to fill the screen of the aide's mind. I wouldn't put taking the offensive past her, he conceded wryly. What a woman she is! I can't blame her for hating us, knowing as I do what her people suffered.
A long, ragged exhalation of breath escaped the ex-Third Corpsman whose eyes grew bleak. I share in that guilt, if only by association , he admitted as pain smote him. I sullied my honor by serving under a butcher, so that I could captain a ship--even if I didn't perpetrate any butchery. I enlisted out of patriotism, learned what I joined so as to learn, and lived with devastating disillusionment, but my guilty conscience didn't stop me from reenlisting for a second six-Earthyear tour of duty.
Now that my anger over Signe's snatch of my ship ha
s cooled, I realize how lucky we were that she didn't annihilate that station with us on it. Gallant gesture, she made. And now that I serve a man I respect, will I end by participating in Signe's final defeat? Helping to kill her? That could easily happen. I hate the thought, rot me if I don't--but I'll wager that Signe would damned well agree that a corpsman ought unflinchingly to do what his duty to his world demands.
In the hearing of his aide, Arlen raised his wife. Dahl divined the depth of Karyn's relief, though she preserved a seemly, unemotional bearing as she heard the summons to return. Lovely woman , he mused, as he caught a glimpse of violet eyes shaded by dark lashes, and delicate features framed by fashionably coiffed dark hair. It's been quite a while since I laid a courtesan, he reflected, stifling a sigh. No time, this past fourweek. Well, I've got absolutely no grounds for complaint.
Sitting back, Arlen let a sigh of wholehearted satisfaction escape him. "Dahl," he instructed, "shut this damned board down. We'll lock up--take off early. You've put in a full shift today. Enjoy a leisurely meal, and relax. Find some charming companion to enliven your evening. We've got a hectic fourweek ahead of us, spacer."
Warmed to the core, Dahl shot the now firmly entrenched holder of supreme power over his world an ear-to-ear grin, confirmed in his belief that Arlen read one man's mind at least, with uncanny ease.
Chapter Five
Feats of stupendous labor succeeded Signe's ambitious directive. Pressure-suited men and women wrought prodigies of innovation while refitting a lock not designed for making repairs into a means of resurrecting a single functional vessel from two shattered hulks. Hanging precariously from spidery scaffolding rising a gut-chilling height above the surface of the planetoid, workers hampered by their protective gear carried out precise, intricate tasks.
Jassy found himself shouldering a crucial responsibility. An expert second to none in the field of electronics, the burly patriot doggedly, painstakingly, familiarized himself with the maze of circuitry governing the operation of the captured vessel. Imbued with reverence for the tenet of civic cooperativeness--a virtue relentlessly promoted at all levels of his socially cohesive, Spartan society--the short-tempered Captain worked for the most part in admirable harmony with his fellows while improvising highly technical solutions to problems posed by Signe's demands. Neither Wong nor Yuri irritated Jassy's sensitive nerves, nor did either man take offense when he lapsed into curt irascibility while frustrated by some aggravating difficulty. As aware of his old comrade's idiosyncrasies as he was of his genius, Conor treated him with the same grave courtesy that the warrior extended to all those under his command.
Standing pressure-suited, his magnetic boot-soles holding him fast to the curving surface of the horizontal torus, Jassy stared across its hundred-ten-meter diameter. Idly, he flexed fingers tired to the bone from delicate manipulations, and wiggled toes numb with fatigue from working the switches integral to his boots when he walked. His eyes, drawn unerringly to the giant turquoise planet dominating his view of the void, remained riveted to that imposing sight. Accustomed to the vista that initially produced awe, he scarcely noticed it now, but at this particular juncture he paid it the attention it deserved.
Dyson, visible as a bright, creamy half-disc faintly mottled with irregular dark blotches, rode low in the star-sprinkled black vault. That satellite of the giant gaseous planet, co-orbiting with the Gaean and Columbian Groups, competed desultorily with the far-off, diamond-white sun for Jassy's attention. Feynman, a distant, ice-covered moon of the turquoise body, appeared as a luminous, featureless, gibbous shape no more imposing than the brightest stars. The dark rocks making up the O'Neill Group and the unexplored Glaser Group--two aggregations sharing an orbit with Feynman--escaped observation by the naked eyes of the man contemplating the starkly austere beauty of his solar system. On the screen of his mind, an even more impressive image formed: the panoramic grandeur of his wheeling galaxy.
Shifting his glance from the vault of space to the hull on which he stood, Jassy wrenched his attention back to the delicate operation he had just completed. In concert with his fellow patriots, the Captain concerned himself these days less with the splendor of the view, than with guarding against lethal damage to his suit, and in avoiding any misstep on the scaffolding encircling the perimeter of the huge structure on which he now stood. He worked acutely aware that the slightest error could result in a plunge to an exceedingly nasty death.
Musingly, the archetypical Gaean focused on the destructive capability of the ship. Certain that the rewiring just completed on the hull beneath his feet rendered the Earth-built weaponry integral to the horizontal torus functional, he grunted in profound satisfaction within the helmet that prevented either the grunt or the ensuing sigh to escape its confines. No Gaean ever unleashed such frightful energy with intent to kill , he reflected morosely. I wonder which of us might be the first whose duty demands that he annihilate a Columbian ship. Or worse … a military installation manned by hundreds of men.
Sobering thought, that. Norman committed mass murder of civilians--reduced five stations to crater-lakes of molten slag. Every one of us lost friends or family when the filthy rotter blasted Davis Station, here on Main World. And at the start… Shades of our martyred dead, why would a man who witnessed that carnage cavil at wiping however many of the bastards he could?
Memories flashed into the veteran's mind. Norman deployed the massed might of fourteen Earth-armed ships against Gaea when he arrived , he recalled with searing bitterness. That array, manned by skilled captains ready and willing to kill, outnumbered the eight identical ships that rode to this system clamped to the hull of the Gaea.
The canny brute knew what he faced. Four of our ships sat unused, unmanned, on their locks throughout much of our history. We couldn't afford to squander the prodigious amount of water required to operate all eight of them. So they lay moored, providing a site for training exercises. Four other Earth-armed vessels made infrequent transits within the Group when raids by Columbian renegades flying stolen second-class ships from hideouts in the O'Neill Group sparked public outrage. No Gaean captain ever employed the awesome power of that weaponry in a combat situation. Their possessing the capability to do so sufficed to produce capitulation.
Norman blackmailed Sigurd's pitifully outnumbered corps of spacers familiar with the operation of those Earth-armed ships into surrendering. The thrice-damned cur threatened to wipe all eight municipal units crammed with civilians off the face of our second most populated planetoid, unless they complied with his demand. And when the members of our national defense force voluntarily marched into custody as a group, so as to prevent an orgy of mass murder, he spaced them. Massacred them, to a man. Wrong usage, Jassy. Sixteen of those fifty crewmembers were women.
Hatred swirled up from smoldering depths in the Captain's soul, and flared into incandescent heat. If I'm the man whose finger rests on the control, I'll fire on whatever target I must, he resolved grimly, and lose no sleep over the business. The Columbians started this war, damn the vile curs to slow rot. Signe will sure as hell finish it!
Slowly, the difficult undertaking drew to an end. Swarms of fighters pressed into unaccustomed labors finished the Herculean task to Conor's satisfaction and Signe's patent delight. Aware of the toll the exacting, dangerous work took on the participants, the Commander decreed that the equally daunting task of using small, mobile, highly specialized vehicles to spray every square meter of the exteriors of two huge vessels with the vapor obtained by subjecting to extreme heat large quantities of a precious mineral would be delayed for a week.
Standing in the command-center from which she oversaw the recently completed work, Signe swept her eyes over the area crammed with terminals, lockers, counters stacked with datapads, and long metal worktables strewn with more of the slim, rectangular electronic devices. Her glance crossed to the board from which she kept track of her entire military operation. No flashing lights above the complex panels and large screens indicated
a call demanding her attention. Seldom during the preceding hectic fourweeks had she entered the office reserved for her use within the Gaea : the seat of civil government more commonly known as Ministry Central.
Conor strode through the door, accompanied by Morgan. Between the two tall swordsmen trotted Wong. The diminutive martial expert felt a bit more at ease with this pair of premier warriors after playing so vital a part in the work just completed, but he still suffered from a sense of inadequacy when he contemplated fighting alongside them. Behind the trio, Theo and Jassy walked in shoulder to shoulder, followed by Sean, Yuri, and Eric. Eight officers seated themselves on hard utilitarian chairs pulled from beneath the largest table, and turned inquiring eyes on their commander.
"Gentlemen, we need a change of pace," Signe announced, scanning faces gray with fatigue. No less tired than were they, from having spent her share of time working suited, watching with fierce pride as the ship rose like the Phoenix from the ashes of avenging wrath, she sympathized with her captains. Her own splendid physique she discovered to be no proof against the exhaustion plaguing those engaged in the heroic endeavor.
"Wong will begin teaching our officers the course he and I are developing. I'll select, and he and I will commence to train, a special assault force: men and women capable of fighting after withstanding brutal deceleration in our altered ships. We won't finish that training by the end of the next seven days--a less stressful interval that'll provide us a chance to rest--but we'll continue while Morgan oversees the application of a microlayer of Gaeanite by vacuum vapor deposition. That task won't require so large a workforce. You'll have time during this week, Morgan, to instruct Wong as I asked earlier."
Nodding in assent, the redhead who managed to conceal grave doubts that his slightly built associate would be able to lead experienced spacer-fighters in battle effectively, resolved to do his best. Wong ranks as a genius with computers , he admitted, pondering Signe's motives. He learned quickly how to work in a pressure suit, and didn't seem fazed at hanging off Conor's scaffolding, more than one hundred meters above the surface. He's got guts--no doubt about that. But fighting hand-to-hand?
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