Chapter 5: The Strategy

General Sebastian MacMaine, sometime Colonel of Earth’s Space Force, and presently a General of the Kerothi Fleet, looked at the array of stars that appeared to drift by the main viewplate of his flagship, the blaster-boat Shudos.

Behind him, General Tallis was saying, “You’ve done well, Sepastian. Better than anyone could have really expected. Three battles so far, and every one of them won by a margin far greater than anticipated. Any ideas that anyone may have had that you were not wholly working for the Kerothi cause has certainly been dispelled.”

“Thanks, Tallis.” MacMaine turned to look at the Kerothi officer. “I only hope that I can keep it up. Now that we’re ready for the big push, I can’t help but wonder what would happen if I were to lose a battle.”

“Frankly,” Tallis said, “that would depend on several things, the main one being whether or not it appeared that you had deliberately thrown the advantage to the enemy. But nobody expects you, or anyone else, to win every time. Even the most brilliant commander can make an honest mistake, and if it can be shown that it was an honest mistake, and one, furthermore, that he could not have been expected to avoid, he wouldn’t be punished for it. In your case, I’ll admit that the investigation would be a great deal more thorough than normal, and that you wouldn’t get as much of the benefit of the doubt as another officer might, but unless there is a deliberate error I doubt that anything serious would happen.”

“Do you really believe that, Tallis, or is it just wishful thinking on your part, knowing as you do that your punishment will be the same as mine if I fail?” MacMaine asked flatly.

Tallis didn’t hesitate. “If I didn’t believe it, I would ask to be relieved as your Guardian. And the moment I did that, you would be removed from command. The moment I feel that you are not acting for the best interests of Keroth, I will act--not only to protect myself, but to protect my people.”

“That’s fair enough,” MacMaine said. “But how about the others?”

“I cannot speak for my fellow officers--only for myself.” Then Tallis’ voice became cold. “Just keep your hands clean, Sepastian, and all will be well. You will not be punished for mistakes--only for crimes. If you are planning no crimes, this worry of yours is needless.”

“I ceased to worry about myself long ago,” MacMaine said coolly. “I do not fear personal death, not even by Excommunication. My sole worry is about the ultimate outcome of the war if I should fail. That, and nothing more.”

“I believe you,” Tallis said. “Let us say no more about it. Your actions are difficult for us to understand, in some ways, that’s all. No Kerothi would ever change his allegiance as you have. Nor has any Earth officer that we have captured shown any desire to do so. Oh, some of them have agreed to do almost anything we wanted them to, but these were not the intelligent ones, and even they were only doing it to save their own miserable hides.

“Still, you are an exceptional man, Sepastian, unlike any other of your race, as far as we know. Perhaps it is simply that you are the only one with enough wisdom to seek your intellectual equals rather than remain loyal to a mass of stupid animals who are fit only to be slaves.”

“It was because I foresaw their eventual enslavement that I acted as I did,” MacMaine admitted. “As I saw it, I had only two choices--to remain as I was and become a slave to the Kerothi or to put myself in your hands willingly and hope for the best. As you--”

He was interrupted by a harsh voice from a nearby speaker.

“Battle stations! Battle stations! Enemy fleet in detector range! Contact in twelve minutes!“

Tallis and MacMaine headed for the Command Room at a fast trot. The three other Kerothi who made up the Strategy Staff came in at almost the same time. There was a flurry of activity as the computers and viewers were readied for action, then the Kerothi looked expectantly at the Earthman.

MacMaine looked at the detector screens. The deployment of the approaching Earth fleet was almost as he had expected it would be. There were slight differences, but they would require only minor changes in the strategy he had mapped out from the information brought in by the Kerothi scout ships.

Undoubtedly, the Kerothi position had been relayed to the Earth commander by their own advance scouts buzzing about in tiny, one-man shells just small enough to be undetectable at normal range.

Watching the positions on the screens carefully, MacMaine called out a series of numbers in an unhurried voice and watched as the orders, relayed by the Kerothi staff, changed the position of parts of the Kerothi fleet. Then, as the computer-led Earth fleet jockeyed to compensate for the change in the Kerothi deployment, MacMaine called out more orders.

The High Commander of Keroth had called MacMaine a “computing animal,” but the term was far from accurate. MacMaine couldn’t possibly have computed all the variables in that battle, and he didn’t try. It was a matter of human intuition against mechanical logic. The advantage lay with MacMaine, for, while the computer could not logically fathom the intuitive processes of its human opponent, MacMaine could and did have an intuitive grasp of the machine’s logic. MacMaine didn’t need to know every variable in the pattern; he only needed to know the pattern as a whole.

The Shudos was well in the rear of the main body of the Kerothi fleet. There was every necessity for keeping MacMaine’s flagship out of as much of the fighting as possible.

When the first contact was made, MacMaine was certain of the outcome. His voice became a steady drone as he called out instructions to the staff officers; his mind was so fully occupied with the moving pattern before him that he noticed nothing else in the room around him.

Spaceship against spaceship, the two fleets locked in battle. The warheads of ultralight torpedoes flared their eye-searing explosions soundlessly into the void; ships exploded like overcharged beer bottles as blaster energy caught them and smashed through their screens; men and machines flamed and died, scattering the stripped nuclei of their component atoms through the screaming silence of space.

And through it all, Sebastian MacMaine watched dispassionately, calling out his orders as ten Earthmen died for every Kerothi death.

This was a crucial battle. The big push toward the center of Earth’s cluster of worlds had begun. Until now, the Kerothi had been fighting the outposts, the planets on the fringes of Earth’s sphere of influence which were only lightly colonized, and therefore relatively easy to take. Earth’s strongest fleets were out there, to protect planets that could not protect themselves.

Inside that periphery were the more densely populated planets, the self-sufficient colonies which were more or less able to defend themselves without too much reliance on space fleets as such. But now that the backbone of the Earth’s Space Force had been all but broken, it would be a relatively easy matter to mop up planet after planet, since each one could be surrounded separately, pounded into surrender, and secured before going on to the next. That, at least, had been the original Kerothi intention. But MacMaine had told them that there was another way--a way which, if it succeeded, would save time, lives, and money for the Kerothi. And, if it failed, MacMaine said, they would be no worse off, they would simply have to resume the original plan.

Now, the first of the big colony planets was to be taken. When the protecting Earth fleet was reduced to tatters, the Kerothi would go on to Houston’s World as the first step in the big push toward Earth itself.

But MacMaine wasn’t thinking of that phase of the war. That was still in the future, while the hellish space battle was still at hand.

He lost track of time as he watched the Kerothi fleet take advantage of their superior tactical position and tear the Earth fleet to bits. Not until he saw the remains of the Earth fleet turn tail and run did he realize that the battle had been won.

The Kerothi fleet consolidated itself. There was no point in pursuing the fleeting Earth ships; that would only break up the solidity of the Kerothi deployment. The losers could afford to scatter; the winners could not. Early in the war, the Kerothi had used that trick against Earth; the Kerothi had broken and fled, and the Earth fleet had split up to chase them down. The scattered Earth ships had suddenly found that they had been led into traps composed of hidden clusters of Kerothi ships. Naturally, the trick had never worked again for either side.

“All right,” MacMaine said when it was all over, “let’s get on to Houston’s World.”

The staff men, including Tallis, were already on their feet, congratulating MacMaine and shaking his hands. Even General Hokotan, the Headquarters Staff man, who had been transferred temporarily to the Fleet Force to keep an eye on both MacMaine and Tallis, was enthusiastically pounding MacMaine’s shoulder.

No one aboard was supposed to know that Hokotan was a Headquarters officer, but MacMaine had spotted the spy rather easily. There was a difference between the fighters of the Fleet and the politicoes of Headquarters. The politicoes were no harder, perhaps, nor more ruthless, than the fighters, but they were of a different breed. Theirs was the ruthlessness of the bully who steps on those who are weaker rather than the ruthlessness of the man who kills only to win a battle. MacMaine had the feeling that the Headquarters Staff preferred to spend their time browbeating their underlings rather than risk their necks with someone who could fight back, however weakly.

General Hokotan seemed to have more of the fighting quality than most HQ men, but he wasn’t a Fleet Officer at heart. He couldn’t be compared to Tallis without looking small and mean.

As a matter of cold fact, very few of the officers were in anyway comparable to Tallis--not even the Fleet men. The more MacMaine learned of the Kerothi, the more he realized just how lucky he had been that it had been Tallis, and not some other Kerothi general, who had been captured by the Earth forces. He was not at all sure that his plan would have worked at all with any of the other officers he had met.

Tallis, like MacMaine, was an unusual specimen of his race.

MacMaine took the congratulations of the Kerothi officers with a look of pleasure on his face, and when they had subsided somewhat, he grinned and said:

“Let’s get a little work done around here, shall we? We have a planet to reduce yet.”

They laughed. Reducing a planet didn’t require strategy--only fire-power. The planet-based defenses couldn’t maneuver, but the energy reserve of a planet is greater than that of any fleet, no matter how large. Each defense point would have to be cut down individually by the massed power of the fleet, cut down one by one until the planet was helpless. The planet as a whole might have more energy reserve than the fleet, but no individual defense point did. The problem was to avoid being hit by the rest of the defense points while one single point was bearing the brunt of the fleet’s attack. It wasn’t without danger, but it could be done.

And for a job like that, MacMaine’s special abilities weren’t needed. He could only watch and wait until it was over.

So he watched and waited. Unlike the short-time fury of a space battle, the reduction of a planet took days of steady pounding. When it was over, the blaster-boats of the Kerothi fleet and the shuttles from the great battle cruisers landed on Houston’s World and took possession of the planet.

MacMaine was waiting in his cabin when General Hokotan brought the news that the planet was secured.

“They are ours,” the HQ spy said with a superior smile. “The sniveling animals didn’t even seem to want to defend themselves. They don’t even know how to fight a hand-to-hand battle. How could such things have ever evolved intelligence enough to conquer space?” Hokotan enjoyed making such remarks to MacMaine’s face, knowing that since MacMaine was technically a Kerothi he couldn’t show any emotion when the enemy was insulted.

MacMaine showed none. “Got them all, eh?” he said.

“All but a few who scattered into the hills and forests. But not many of them had the guts to leave the security of their cities, even though we were occupying them.”

“How many are left alive?”

“An estimated hundred and fifty million, more or less.”

“Good. That should be enough to set an example. I picked Houston’s World because we can withdraw from it without weakening our position; its position in space is such that it would constitute no menace to us even if we never reduced it. That way, we can be sure that our little message is received on Earth.”

Hokotan’s grin was wolfish. “And the whole weak-hearted race will shake with fear, eh?”

“Exactly. Tallis can speak English well enough to be understood. Have him make the announcement to them. He can word it however he likes, but the essence is to be this: Houston’s World resisted the occupation by Kerothi troops; an example must be made of them to show them what happens to Earthmen who resist.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s enough. Oh, by the way, make sure that there are plenty of their cargo spaceships in good working order; I doubt that we’ve ruined them all, but if we have, repair some of them.

“And, too, you’d better make sure that you allow some of the merchant spacemen to ‘escape, ‘ just in case there are no space pilots among those who took to the hills. We want to make sure that someone can use those ships to take the news back to Earth.”

“And the rest?” Hokotan asked, with an expectant look. He knew what was to be done, but he wanted to hear MacMaine say it again.

MacMaine obliged.

“Hang them. Every man, every woman, every child. I want them to be decorating every lamppost and roof-beam on the planet, dangling like overripe fruit when the Earth forces return.”

The Results

“I don’t understand it,” said General Polan Tallis worriedly. “Where are they coming from? How are they doing it? What’s happened?”

MacMaine and the four Kerothi officers were sitting in the small dining room that doubled as a recreation room between meals. The nervous strain of the past few months was beginning to tell on all of them.

“Six months ago,” Tallis continued jerkily, “we had them beaten. One planet after another was reduced in turn. Then, out of nowhere, comes a fleet of ships we didn’t even know existed, and they’ve smashed us at every turn.”

“If they are ships,” said Loopat, the youngest officer of the Shudos staff. “Who ever heard of a battleship that was undetectable at a distance of less than half a million miles? It’s impossible!”

“Then we’re being torn to pieces by the impossible!” Hokotan snapped. “Before we even know they are anywhere around, they are blasting us with everything they’ve got! Not even the strategic genius of General MacMaine can help us if we have no time to plot strategy!”

The Kerothi had been avoiding MacMaine’s eyes, but now, at the mention of his name, they all looked at him as if their collective gaze had been drawn to him by some unknown attractive force.

“It’s like fighting ghosts,” MacMaine said in a hushed voice. For the first time, he felt a feeling of awe that was almost akin to fear. What had he done?

In another sense, that same question was in the mind of the Kerothi.

“Have you any notion at all what they are doing or how they are doing it?” asked Tallis gently.

“None,” MacMaine answered truthfully. “None at all, I swear to you.”

“They don’t even behave like Earthmen,” said the fourth Kerothi, a thick-necked officer named Ossif. “They not only outfight us, they outthink us at every turn. Is it possible, General MacMaine, that the Earthmen have allies of another race, a race of intelligent beings that we don’t know of?” He left unsaid the added implication: “And that you have neglected to tell us about?“

“Again,” said MacMaine, “I swear to you that I know nothing of any third intelligent race in the galaxy.”

“If there were such allies,” Tallis said, “isn’t it odd that they should wait so long to aid their friends?”

“No odder than that the Earthmen should suddenly develop superweapons that we cannot understand, much less fight against,” Hokotan said, with a touch of anger.

“Not ‘superweapons’,” MacMaine corrected almost absently. “All they have is a method of making their biggest ships indetectable until they’re so close that it doesn’t matter. When they do register on our detectors, it’s too late. But the weapons they strike with are the same type as they’ve always used, I believe.”

“All right, then,” Hokotan said, his voice showing more anger. “One weapon or whatever you want to call it. Practical invisibility. But that’s enough. An invisible man with a knife is more deadly than a dozen ordinary men with modern armament. Are you sure you know nothing of this, General MacMaine?”

Before MacMaine could answer, Tallis said, “Don’t be ridiculous, Hokotan! If he had known that such a weapon existed, would he have been fool enough to leave his people? With that secret, they stand a good chance of beating us in less than half the time it took us to wipe out their fleet--or, rather, to wipe out as much of it as we did.”

“They got a new fleet somewhere,” said young Loopat, almost to himself.

Tallis ignored him. “If MacMaine deserted his former allegiance, knowing that they had a method of rendering the action of a space drive indetectable, then he was and is a blithering idiot. And we know he isn’t.”

“All right, all right! I concede that,” snapped Hokotan. “He knows nothing. I don’t say that I fully trust him, even now, but I’ll admit that I cannot see how he is to blame for the reversals of the past few months.

“If the Earthmen had somehow been informed of our activities, or if we had invented a superweapon and they found out about it, I would be inclined to put the blame squarely on MacMaine. But--”

“How would he get such information out?” Tallis cut in sharply. “He has been watched every minute of every day. We know he couldn’t send any information to Earth. How could he?”

“Telepathy, for all I know!” Hokotan retorted. “But that’s beside the point! I don’t trust him any farther than I can see him, and not completely, even then. But I concede that there is no possible connection between this new menace and anything MacMaine might have done.