_The Strategy_
General Sebastian MacMaine, sometime Colonel of Earth's Space Force,and presently a General of the Kerothi Fleet, looked at the array ofstars that appeared to drift by the main viewplate of his flagship, theblaster-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. Anyideas that anyone may have had that you were not wholly working for theKerothi cause has certainly been dispelled."
"Thanks, Tallis." MacMaine turned to look at the Kerothi officer. "Ionly 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 mainone being whether or not it appeared that you had deliberately thrownthe advantage to the enemy. But nobody expects you, or anyone else, towin every time. Even the most brilliant commander can make an honestmistake, and if it can be shown that it _was_ an honest mistake, andone, furthermore, that he could not have been expected to avoid, hewouldn't be punished for it. In your case, I'll admit that theinvestigation would be a great deal more thorough than normal, and thatyou wouldn't get as much of the benefit of the doubt as another officermight, but unless there is a deliberate error I doubt that anythingserious would happen."
"Do you really believe that, Tallis, or is it just wishful thinking onyour part, knowing as you do that your punishment will be the same asmine if I fail?" MacMaine asked flatly.
Tallis didn't hesitate. "If I didn't believe it, I would ask to berelieved as your Guardian. And the moment I did that, you would beremoved from command. The moment I feel that you are not acting for thebest interests of Keroth, I will act--not only to protect myself, butto 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 willbe well. You will not be punished for mistakes--only for crimes. If youare planning no crimes, this worry of yours is needless."
"I ceased to worry about myself long ago," MacMaine said coolly. "I donot fear personal death, not even by Excommunication. My sole worry isabout the ultimate outcome of the war if I should fail. That, andnothing more."
"I believe you," Tallis said. "Let us say no more about it. Youractions are difficult for us to understand, in some ways, that's all.No Kerothi would ever change his allegiance as you have. Nor has anyEarth officer that we have captured shown any desire to do so. Oh, someof them have agreed to do almost anything we wanted them to, but thesewere not the intelligent ones, and even they were only doing it to savetheir own miserable hides.
"Still, you are an exceptional man, Sepastian, unlike any other of yourrace, as far as we know. Perhaps it is simply that you are the only onewith enough wisdom to seek your intellectual equals rather than remainloyal 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 Idid," MacMaine admitted. "As I saw it, I had only two choices--toremain as I was and become a slave to the Kerothi or to put myself inyour 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. Thethree other Kerothi who made up the Strategy Staff came in at almostthe same time. There was a flurry of activity as the computers andviewers were readied for action, then the Kerothi looked expectantly atthe Earthman.
MacMaine looked at the detector screens. The deployment of theapproaching Earth fleet was almost as he had expected it would be.There were slight differences, but they would require only minorchanges in the strategy he had mapped out from the information broughtin by the Kerothi scout ships.
Undoubtedly, the Kerothi position had been relayed to the Earthcommander by their own advance scouts buzzing about in tiny, one-manshells just small enough to be undetectable at normal range.
Watching the positions on the screens carefully, MacMaine called out aseries of numbers in an unhurried voice and watched as the orders,relayed by the Kerothi staff, changed the position of parts of theKerothi fleet. Then, as the computer-led Earth fleet jockeyed tocompensate for the change in the Kerothi deployment, MacMaine calledout more orders.
The High Commander of Keroth had called MacMaine a "computing animal,"but the term was far from accurate. MacMaine couldn't possibly havecomputed all the variables in that battle, and he didn't try. It was amatter of human intuition against mechanical logic. The advantage laywith MacMaine, for, while the computer could not logically fathom theintuitive processes of its human opponent, MacMaine could and did havean intuitive grasp of the machine's logic. MacMaine didn't need to knowevery variable in the pattern; he only needed to know the pattern as awhole.
The _Shudos_ was well in the rear of the main body of the Kerothifleet. There was every necessity for keeping MacMaine's flagship out ofas 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 thestaff officers; his mind was so fully occupied with the moving patternbefore him that he noticed nothing else in the room around him.
Spaceship against spaceship, the two fleets locked in battle. Thewarheads of ultralight torpedoes flared their eye-searing explosionssoundlessly into the void; ships exploded like overcharged beer bottlesas blaster energy caught them and smashed through their screens; menand machines flamed and died, scattering the stripped nuclei of theircomponent atoms through the screaming silence of space.
And through it all, Sebastian MacMaine watched dispassionately, callingout his orders as ten Earthmen died for every Kerothi death.
This was a crucial battle. The big push toward the center of Earth'scluster of worlds had begun. Until now, the Kerothi had been fightingthe outposts, the planets on the fringes of Earth's sphere of influencewhich were only lightly colonized, and therefore relatively easy totake. Earth's strongest fleets were out there, to protect planets thatcould not protect themselves.
Inside that periphery were the more densely populated planets, theself-sufficient colonies which were more or less able to defendthemselves without too much reliance on space fleets as such. But nowthat 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 theoriginal Kerothi intention. But MacMaine had told them that there wasanother way--a way which, if it succeeded, would save time, lives, andmoney for the Kerothi. And, if it failed, MacMaine said, they would beno worse off, they would simply have to resume the original plan.
* * * * *
Now, the first of the big colony planets was to be taken. When theprotecting Earth fleet was reduced to tatters, the Kerothi would go onto Houston's World as the first step in the big push toward Earthitself.
But MacMaine wasn't thinking of that phase of the war. That was stillin the future, while the hellish space battle was still at hand.
He lost track of time as he watched the Kerothi fleet take advantage oftheir superior tactical position and tear the Earth fleet to bits. Notuntil he saw the remains of the Earth fleet turn tail and run did herealize that the battle had been won.
The Kerothi fleet consolidated itself. There was no point in pursuingthe fleeting Earth ships; that would only break up the solidity of theKerothi deployment. The losers could afford to scatter; the winnerscould not. Early in the war, the Kerothi had used that trick agains
tEarth; the Kerothi had broken and fled, and the Earth fleet had splitup to chase them down. The scattered Earth ships had suddenly foundthat they had been led into traps composed of hidden clusters ofKerothi ships. Naturally, the trick had never worked again for eitherside.
"All right," MacMaine said when it was all over, "let's get on toHouston'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 theFleet Force to keep an eye on both MacMaine and Tallis, wasenthusiastically pounding MacMaine's shoulder.
No one aboard was supposed to know that Hokotan was a Headquartersofficer, but MacMaine had spotted the spy rather easily. There was adifference between the fighters of the Fleet and the politicoes ofHeadquarters. The politicoes were no harder, perhaps, nor moreruthless, than the fighters, but they were of a different breed. Theirswas the ruthlessness of the bully who steps on those who are weakerrather than the ruthlessness of the man who kills only to win a battle.MacMaine had the feeling that the Headquarters Staff preferred to spendtheir time browbeating their underlings rather than risk their neckswith someone who could fight back, however weakly.
General Hokotan seemed to have more of the fighting quality than mostHQ men, but he wasn't a Fleet Officer at heart. He couldn't be comparedto Tallis without looking small and mean.
As a matter of cold fact, very few of the officers were in anywaycomparable to Tallis--not even the Fleet men. The more MacMaine learnedof the Kerothi, the more he realized just how lucky he had been that ithad been Tallis, and not some other Kerothi general, who had beencaptured by the Earth forces. He was not at all sure that his planwould 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 lookof pleasure on his face, and when they had subsided somewhat, hegrinned and said:
"Let's get a little work done around here, shall we? We have a planetto reduce yet."
They laughed. Reducing a planet didn't require strategy--onlyfire-power. The planet-based defenses couldn't maneuver, but the energyreserve of a planet is greater than that of any fleet, no matter howlarge. Each defense point would have to be cut down individually by themassed power of the fleet, cut down one by one until the planet washelpless. The planet as a whole might have more energy reserve than thefleet, but no individual defense point did. The problem was to avoidbeing hit by the rest of the defense points while one single point wasbearing the brunt of the fleet's attack. It wasn't without danger, butit 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 wasover, the blaster-boats of the Kerothi fleet and the shuttles from thegreat battle cruisers landed on Houston's World and took possession ofthe planet.
* * * * *
MacMaine was waiting in his cabin when General Hokotan brought the newsthat the planet was secured.
"They are ours," the HQ spy said with a superior smile. "The snivelinganimals didn't even seem to want to defend themselves. They don't evenknow how to fight a hand-to-hand battle. How could such things haveever evolved intelligence enough to conquer space?" Hokotan enjoyedmaking such remarks to MacMaine's face, knowing that since MacMaine wastechnically a Kerothi he couldn't show any emotion when the enemy wasinsulted.
MacMaine showed none. "Got them all, eh?" he said.
"All but a few who scattered into the hills and forests. But not manyof them had the guts to leave the security of their cities, even thoughwe 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'sWorld because we can withdraw from it without weakening our position;its position in space is such that it would constitute no menace to useven if we never reduced it. That way, we can be sure that our littlemessage is received on Earth."
Hokotan's grin was wolfish. "And the whole weak-hearted race will shakewith fear, eh?"
"Exactly. Tallis can speak English well enough to be understood. Havehim make the announcement to them. He can word it however he likes, butthe essence is to be this: Houston's World resisted the occupation byKerothi troops; an example must be made of them to show them whathappens to Earthmen who resist."
"That's all?"
"That's enough. Oh, by the way, make sure that there are plenty oftheir cargo spaceships in good working order; I doubt that we've ruinedthem all, but if we have, repair some of them.
"And, too, you'd better make sure that you allow some of the merchantspacemen to 'escape,' just in case there are no space pilots amongthose who took to the hills. We want to make sure that someone can usethose ships to take the news back to Earth."
"And the rest?" Hokotan asked, with an expectant look. He knew what wasto 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 bedecorating every lamppost and roof-beam on the planet, dangling likeoverripe fruit when the Earth forces return."