Tactics of Mistake (6 page)

Cletus left the Headquarters building and went to see about establishing himself. Once set up in the Bachelor Officers' Quarters, he strolled over to the Officers' Pool HQ with a copy of his orders and checked to see if that Second Lieutenant Arvid Johnson, of whom he had spoken to Mondar, was still unattached. Informed that he was, Cletus filed a request for the lieutenant to be assigned to him as a research staff member and requested that he get in touch with him at the BOQ immediately.

He returned to the BOQ. Less than fifteen minutes later, the signal outside his room buzzed to announce a visitor. Cletus rose from his chair and opened the door.

“Arvid!” he said, letting the visitor in and closing the door behind him. Arvid Johnson stepped inside, turned and smiled happily down at Cletus as they shook hands. Cletus was tall, but Arvid was a tower, from the soles of his black dress boots to the tips of his short-cropped, whitish-blond hair.

“You came after all, sir,” Arvid said, smiling. “I know you said you'd come, but I couldn't believe you'd really leave the Academy for this.”

“This is where things are going on,” said Cletus.

“Sir?” Arvid looked incredulous. “Away out here on Kultis?”

“It's not the locality so much,” said Cletus, “as the people in it that makes things happen. Right now we've got a man among us named Dow deCastries and the first thing I want from you is to go with me to a party for him tonight.”

“Dow deCastries?” Arvid said, and shook his head. “I don't think I know—”

“Secretary to the Outworlds for the Coalition,” said Cletus. “He came in on the same ship from Earth as I did… A gamesman.”

Arvid nodded. “Oh, one of the Coalition bosses,” he said. “No wonder you say things might start to happen around here… What did you mean by gamesman, sir? You mean he likes sports?”

“Not in the usual sense,” said Cletus. He quoted, ” ‘
Whose
game was empires and whose stakes were thrones. Whose table, earth—whose dice were human bones… ‘ “

“Shakespeare?” asked Arvid, curiously.

“Byron,” said Cletus, “in his ‘The Age of Bronze,' referring to Napoleon.”

“Sir,” said Arvid, “you don't really mean this deCastries is another Napoleon?”

“No more,” answered Cletus, “than Napoleon was an earlier deCastries. But they've got points in common.”

Arvid waited for a moment longer, but Cletus said nothing more. The big young man nodded again.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “What time are we supposed to go to this party, Colonel?”

Thunder, deeper toned than Earth's, muttered beyond the ridge of hills inland from Bakhalla like a grumbling of giants, as Cletus and Arvid arrived at the residence of Mondar. But above the city the sky was clear. Out over the rooftops of the buildings leading down the harbor, the yellow sun of Kultis was filling the sky and sea alike with pinkish gold.

Mondar's home, surrounded by trees and flowering shrubs, both native and Earth variform, sat alone on a small hill in the eastern suburbs of the city. The building itself was made up of an assortment of basic building units put together originally with an eye more toward utility than appearance. However, utility no longer controlled any but the basic forms of the house. In everything else an artistic and gentle influence had been at work.

The hard white blocks of the building units, now tinted by the sunset, did not end abruptly at the green lawn, but were extended into arbors, patios and half-rooms walled with vine-covered trellises. Once Cletus and Arvid had left their car and passed into the first of these outer structures of the house, it became hard for them to tell at any time whether they were completely indoors or not.

Mondar met them in a large, airy half-room with solid walls on three sides only, and an openwork of vines on the fourth. He led them deeper into the house, to a long, wide, low-ceilinged room deeply carpeted and scattered with comfortably overstuffed chairs and couches. A number of people were already there, including Melissa and Eachan Khan.

“DeCastries?” Cletus asked Mondar.

“He's here,” said Mondar. “He and Pater Ten are just finishing their talk with some of my fellow Exotics.” As he spoke he was leading the two of them toward the small bar in one corner of the room. “Punch for whatever you'd like to drink. I've got to see some people right now—but I'd like to talk to you later, Cletus. Is that all right? I'll look you up just as soon as I'm free.”

“By all means,” said Cletus. He turned toward the bar as Mondar went off. Arvid was already picking up the glass of beer for which he had punched.

“Sir?” asked Arvid. “Can I get you…“

“Nothing right now, thanks,” said Cletus. He was glancing around again and his eye lit upon Eachan Khan, standing alone with a glass in his hand next to a wide window screen. “Stay around here, will you, Arvid? So I can find you easily when I want you?”

“Yes, sir,” said Arvid.

Cletus went toward Eachan Khan. The older man glanced around with a stony face, as though to discourage conversation, as he came up. Then, seeing who it was, Eachan's face relaxed—insofar as it could ever be said to be relaxed.

“Evening,” Eachan said. “I understand you've met your commanding officer.”

“News travels fast,” said Cletus.

“We're a military post, after all,” said Eachan. His gaze went past Cletus for a moment, and then returned. “Also, I hear you suggested something about a new infiltration of Neulander guerrillas through fitter's Pass?”

“That's right,” said Cletus. “You don't think it's likely?”

“Very likely—now you've pointed it out,” said Eachan. “By the way—I got hold of those three volumes on tactics you've already published. The Exotic library here had copies. I've only had time to glance through them, so far”—his eyes suddenly locked with Cletus's—“but it looks like sound stuff. Very sound… I'm still not sure I follow your tactics of mistake, though. As deCastries said, combat's no fencing match.”

“No,” said Cletus, “but the principle's applicable, all the same. For example, suppose a simple tactical trap you lay for an enemy consists of enticing his forces to strike at what seems to be a weak section of your line. But when they do, your line pulls back and draws them into a pocket, where you surround them and pinch them off with hidden, superior forces of your own.”

“Nothing new about that,” said Eachan.

“No,” Cletus said, “but apply the tactics of mistake to essentially the same situation. Only this time, in a succession of contacts with the enemy, you entice him into picking up a series of what seem to be small, easy victories. Meanwhile, however, you're getting him to engage a larger amount of his available forces with each contact. Then, when he finally commits the greatest part of his strength for what he conceives as one more easy win—you convert that contact into a trap and he discovers that you've gradually drawn him into a field position where he's outflanked and completely at your mercy.”

“Tricky,” Eachan frowned. “Too tricky, perhaps… “

“Not necessarily,” said Cletus. “Imperial China and Russia both used a crude version of this, drawing invaders deeper into their territories, until the invader suddenly realized he was too far from his supply and support bases and completely surrounded by the native enemy … Napoleon and the retreat from Moscow.”

“Still—” Eachan broke off suddenly. His gaze had gone past Cletus; and Cletus, turning, saw that Dow deCastries was now in the room. The tall, dark and elegant Secretary to the Outworlds for the Coalition was now standing in conversation with Melissa, by the opposite wall.

Glancing from the two figures back to Eachan, Cletus saw that the older man's face had become as cold and still as the first sheet of ice on the surface of a deep pond on a windless winter day.

“You've known deCastries awhile now?” Cletus asked. “You and Melissa?”

“The women all like him.” Eachan's voice was grim. His gaze was still on Melissa and Dow.

“Yes,” said Cletus. “By the way—” He broke off, and waited. With reluctance, Eachan removed his gaze from the pair across the room and looked back at him.

“I was going to say,” said Cletus, “that General Traynor came up with something strange when I was talking to him. He said he didn't have any jump troops here in Bakhalla. That surprised me. I did some reading up on you Dorsais before I came out here, and I thought a jump course was part of the training you gave your mercenaries?”

“We do,” replied Eachan, dryly. “But General Traynor's like a lot of your Alliance and Coalition commanders. He doesn't think our training's good enough to qualify the men for jump-troop work—or a lot of other combat field duties.”

“Hmm,” said Cletus. “Jealousy? Or do you suppose they look on you mercenaries as competitors of a sort?”

“I don't say that,” said Eachan, frostily. “You draw your own conclusions, of course.” His eyes showed a desire once more to wander back across the room to Melissa and Dow.

“Oh, and something else I was going to ask you,” said Cletus. “The assignment sheets for Bakhalla that I looked at back on Earth listed some Navy officers, on detached duty as marine engineers—something about river-and-harbors work. But I haven't seen any Navy people around.”

“Commander Wefer Linet,” said Eachan, promptly, “wearing civvies, down at the end of the couch across the room there. Come along. I'll introduce you.”

Cletus followed Eachan at a long slant across the room, which brought them to a couch and several chairs where half a dozen men sat talking. Here, they were less than a quarter of the distance they had been before from Dow and Melissa—but still too distant to catch the conversation going on between the two.

“Commander,” said Eachan, as they reached the couch, and a short, square-faced man in his middle thirties got up promptly from the end of the couch, a drink still in his hand, “I'd like you to meet Colonel Cletus Grahame, just out from Earth, to be attached to General Traynor's staff—tactical expert.”

“Happy to meet you, Colonel,” said Wefer Linet, shaking Cletus's hand with a hard, friendly grip. “Dream something up for us to do besides dredging river mouths and canals and my men'll love you.”

“I'll do that,” said Cletus, smiling. “It's a promise.”

“Good!” said Wefer energetically.

“You've got those large, underwater bulldozers, haven't you?” asked Cletus. “I read about them in the Alliance Forces Journal, seven months back, I think.”

“The Mark V, yes,” Linet's face lit up. “Six of them here. Care for a ride in one someday? They're beautiful pieces of machinery. Bat Traynor wanted to take them out of the water and use them knocking down jungles for him. Do it better than anything you Army people have, of course. But they're not designed for land work. I couldn't tell the general no, myself, but I insisted on direct orders from Earth and kept my fingers crossed. Luckily, they turned him down back there.”

“I'll take you up on that ride,” said Cletus. Eachan was once more watching Melissa and Dow with a stony concentration. Cletus glanced about the room and discovered Mondar, standing talking to a pair of women who looked like the wives of diplomatic personnel.

As if Cletus's gaze had an actual physical touch to it, the Exotic turned toward him just then, smiled and nodded. Cletus nodded back and turned once more to Wefer, who had launched into an explanation of how his Mark V's worked, at depths down to a thousand feet or in the teeth of thirty-knot currents and tides.

“It looks as if I may be tied up for the next few days, out of the city,” Cletus said. “But after that, if for some reason I shouldn't leave town…“

“Give me a ring, anytime,” Wefer said. “We're working on the main harbor here at Bakhalla right now. I can have you off the docks and down inside my command unit in ten minutes, if you'll just phone me half an hour or so ahead of time to make arrangements… Hello, Outbond. The Colonel here's going to take a ride with me one of these days in a Mark V.”

Mondar had come up while Wefer had been speaking.

“Good,” said the Exotic, smiling. “He'll find that interesting.” His gaze shifted to Cletus. “But I believe you wanted to talk to Dow deCastries, Cletus? His business with my people's over for the evening. You can see him, right across the room there, with Melissa.”

“Yes… I see,” said Cletus. He looked around at Wefer and Eachan. “I was just going over there. If you gentlemen will excuse me?”

He left Wefer with a promise to phone him at the earliest opportunity. As he turned away, he saw Mondar touch Eachan lightly on the arm and draw him off to one side in conversation.

Cletus limped over to where Dow and Melissa were still standing together. As Cletus came up they both turned to look at him, Melissa with a sudden, slight frown line between her darkened eyebrows. But Dow smiled genially.

“Well, Colonel,” he said. “I hear all of you had a close call coming in from the spaceport earlier today.”

“Only the sort of thing to be expected here on Bakhalla, I suppose,” said Cletus.

They both laughed easily, and the slight frown line between Melissa's eyes faded.

“Excuse me,” she said to Dow. “Dad's got something to say to me, I guess. He's beckoning me over. I'll be right back.”

She left. The gazes of the two men met and locked.

“So,” said Dow, “you came off with flying honors—defeating a guerrilla band single-handed.”

“Not exactly. There was Eachan and his pistol.” Cletus watched the other man. “Melissa might have been killed, though.”

“So she might,” said Dow, “and that would have been a pity.”

“I think so,” said Cletus. “She deserves better than that.”