Imperial Stars 1-The Stars at War Page 4

  Demaris acknowledged Sath's presence with a shake of his head. The Overchief had made him the Tjetlyn's superior by one grade, but Demaris had no illusions about that. No Agency man ever worked without his employer's setting a watchdog over him.

  Deep within the Marakian interior, the Earthman smiled. That didn't always work out the way it was meant to. Old Connie Jones, for instance, working with Farla's paranoid culture, had so maneuvered his personal watchdog assassin that, in the end, the assassin had seen the expediency not only of not killing Jones but of taking the victorious fleet back to Farla and staging a revolution.

  Quis custodiet—But that wouldn't work here, nor was it necessary. Marak was not Farla, though the two races were descended from the same ancestor, There was no danger here of an attempt to kill the mercenary once he'd done his work.

  Demaris wasn't sure he wouldn't have welcomed that added fillip.

  "At your orders, Tjetlyned." Sath said. Demaris shot a look past him at the Overchief and saw that he was pointedly ignoring both of them.

  Ugh. He'd been daydreaming at the wrong time. He nodded quickly to Sath, and they slipped out the door together.

  "Ah, we are the Agency's offspring,

  The brood of a sinful old maid.

  There isn't one chance that she'd sell us out—

  Unless things were such that it paid."

  (alternate chorus)

  Chapter Five

  Three months later, Sath laid a fresh set of reports on Demaris' desk. "Here we are, Koil. Top sheet's the summary." He dropped down on the bench beside the desk and wearily dug a flask out of his belt. "Have some?" he offered, holding up the flask.

  Demaris twitched an ear negatively, and took his own brand out of a drawer. "Can't stand that gunk you use." He tilted the flask and touched his tongue to the mild stimulant. Recapping the flask, he yawned broadly. He looked at the report in disgust.

  "Same thing?"

  Sath nodded. "Yep. In the past fifteen days, our demolitions teams have immobilized such-and-such a tonnage of Geneiid naval vessels. Our infiltrators have immobilized this-and-that additional tonnage by misrouting supplies, disrupting communications, altering fleet orders, et cetera. We can truthfully report that our organization has been doing an excellent job, and that we are performing far above the expectations set down by Staff."

  Demaris grimaced. "And how far behind schedule is the push against Farla?"

  Sath coughed. "Well, if you plotted the curve of Staff's failure against our curve of success, they'd be almost superimposed."

  Demaris shook his head. "Still the same trouble?"

  "Yep. Seems like Genis has just as good an intelligence service as we do. Tit for tat, right down the line."

  Demaris clicked his fingertips against the surface of his desk. The situation stank. For every boat that shipped a team of saboteurs into Genis, a Geneiid boat dropped its cargo down on Marak's planets. Like two giants stabbing pins through each other's ganglia, Marak and Genis were immobilizing each other.

  War in space—war in terms of planetary englobements, massive landings, and blockades—was impossible. The problem of supply and reinforcement became insurmountable over interstellar distances. As the attacker's supply lines lengthened, the defender's shortened, until eventually the attrition on the attacker became too great. You could only stage a mass attack on a hopelessly weak foe—such as Farla. Otherwise, it was your infiltrators and demolitions men, crippling your enemy at home, who first had to weaken him. And if your sabotage was balanced by equally effective enemy action, then both of you slowly bled away, matching each other corpuscle for corpuscle, neither ever gaining a relative upper hand.

  Demaris wondered how long this could keep up. Agency men weren't supermen. Man for man, there was no reason why they should be any better than their opposite numbers. The Agency's selling point was the right man in the right place, at the right time.

  Well, so far he was holding his own. But how much longer would the Overchief be satisfied with that?

  Demaris grinned to himself, at himself. Face it. What galled him most was his inability to beat his Geneiid adversary. The Agency and its considerations were secondary.

  "So, anyway—" Sath was saying, "I just got a call from the Overchief. He wants to see us."

  Demaris inhaled slowly.

  The Overchief was showing the strain. Farla should have been penetrated and taken by now. Instead, the Marakian fleet lay hamstrung in its berths. That the Geneiids were racked by the same frustration was of little comfort to him.

  He waved them to benches with a nervous gesture of his arm. Demaris sat down carefully. For the first time since he'd landed on Marak, he became consciously aware of the weapon buried in his chest. Cautiously, he put a slight bit of pressure on his shoulder muscles, and held his breath. He felt the weapon's barrels slip forward. Then he relaxed. No. If this was a showdown, here, he had no right to fight for his life. The manner of an Overchief's death would be too carefully investigated. If he were caught now, in these circumstances, the weapon's other characteristic was his own only escape. He'd have to detonate its charge.

  He realized his mind was making mountains out of molehills, and fought down his apprehension. The Overchief might find fault with Todren Koil, and Todren Koil would react accordingly. But the Overchief had no possible reason to think that Todren Koil had ever been a weak, pink-skinned monster whose only real weapon against the universe was the intricacy of his mind.

  The Overchief looked up from his desk. "Glad to see you, Todren, Faris. You're not here for reprimand."

  Demaris heard Sath's breathing deepen deside him. His own diaphragm relaxed.

  "If it wasn't for you," the Overchief went on, "we'd be in much worse trouble." He got up and began to stalk back and forth. "Genis, as we've found out, just happened to produce a good intelligence man of its own. We didn't expect it—we had no reason to. They're generally no luckier with their officers than we are." He slapped a thigh with an irritated hand. "We've got to remove that officer, or those officers, though the latter possibility gives Geneiid luck altogether too much credit. I want you two to lay out an operation that will accomplish the purpose. I shouldn't even have to say that any resource, short of a fleet action, is yours to call on. All right, I want a summary of your ideas by tomorrow. Faris, I'll speak further to Tjetlyned Todren alone."

  Sath inclined his head affirmatively, rose, and slipped out. Demaris looked inquiringly at the Overchief, who was standing with his back to him.

  The Overchief turned around. "Todren," he said softly, "this Geneiid intelligence officer—he seems to have popped up out of the ground. We have no dossier on him. Might he be some relative of yours?"

  Demaris had been expecting the question for a full minute. He looked steadily at the Overchief. "I have no relatives."

  The Overchief stared back, his eyes equally unwavering. Finally, he said: "Well, that is as it may be. I suggest that you devote all possible effort to clearing up the situation."

  "Yes, sir."

  He slipped out of the Overchief's room and joined Sath. They walked down the hall together.

  Just how far, he was wondering, did Old Man Sullivan go in his pursuit of a dollar?

  "We fight for the Agency's money—

  We draw out our pay with a smile.

  For our gold, we've been told,

  We should barter ourselves

  In truly professional style."

  Chapter Six

  It did not take a fleet action. Not quite. It took a combined operation of all infiltrators and demolitions teams on Genis itself, and the services of a fast cruiser.

  The infiltrators pin-pointed the Geneiid intelligence director and cut him off from communication with possible help. The demolitions men blew their way into his headquarters. A Pira boat shuttled him up to the cruiser, and the cruiser, ultimately, delivered him to Demaris. The maneuver completely disrupted the normal schedule of activities against Genis, but Demaris, looking
across the room at the captured Geneiid, calculated that it was cheap at the price.

  "Well, there he is," Sath commented.

  "So he is," Demaris agreed, looking dispassionately at the drugged Geneiid. For the life of him, he could see no trace of Make-up's scalpels on that leathery hide—but then, where were his own scars?

  "What now?" Sath asked.

  "I'd suggest we put our program back into shape as quickly as possible—and make sure Genis doesn't try to pull on us what we did to them."

  "I've already set up defenses against that kind of stunt. You're right—I'll get us straightened out while you handle this beastie." Sath went over to his own desk and got to work. Half the organization had been lost or compromised in the kidnapping. He had to reassemble and reinforce what was left. But it was downhill work, now. Marak had her edge.

  Demaris jerked his head at the medical technicians. One of them jammed a hypodermic through the Geneiid's skin and shot in a neutralizer. Demaris stood idly by, whistling between his teeth.

  It was a touch-and-go business. He'd tried to put himself in the Geneiid's place, and he'd decided that if he were suddenly kidnapped, he wouldn't use his Agency weapon, until it became completely obvious that there was no other resort.

  So far, so good. The Geneiid—he was a Geneiid—was still alive, and he'd been taken with no more trouble than you'd expect. But the man might revive in a panic.

  He whistled a bit more loudly.

  "Oh, we are the Agency's bravos—

  We peddle the wealth of one skill—"

  The Geneiid's eyelids fluttered upward. It seemed to Demaris that the man looked at him with an intensity peculiar for even these circumstances.

  "Ah, we are the Agency's offspring,

  the brood of a sinful old maid—

  The Geneiid sat up and stared malevolently at Demaris. "How did this happen?" he asked in passable Marakian. The technicians giggled, Sath, looking up from his desk, grinned coldly. Demaris smiled without humor.

  ". . . Unless things were such that it paid."

  The Geneiid looked around the office in dawning comprehension that meant one thing to everyone else and something quite different to Demaris. "I see—" he said slowly. "What now?"

  Demaris reflected that there was the best question he'd heard in a long time. He wondered if the other man thought Demaris was in on a deliberate double-cross. If he did, almost anything might happen. He had no idea how he'd react in similar circumstances.

  "I fear, my friend," Demaris said in passable Geneiian, "that the Fates, which might just as easily have conspired against me, have seen fit to trip you up, instead." It wasn't a bad start. From an observer's point of view it was the kind of dialogue you might expect from two opposed professional men in the apparent circumstances.

  Well, it was, Lord knew—it was. No matter what your concept of the circumstances might be.

  The Geneiid looked at the floor in glum anger. Demaris could understand that. It was only by the grace of making the first move that he himself was not sitting in a Geneiian office somewhere, slowly digesting the fact that he was one of two ends being played against Old Man Sullivan's middle.

  "All right," Demaris said. He turned to Sath. "Think there's anything we need to know from him right now?"

  Sath shook his head negatively. "Not immediately. I suggest we save him for later. We've got lots of work to do."

  Demaris gestured to a couple of armed guards. "Put him away where he'll keep." He looked the Geneiid in the eyes. "I'll be talking to you later."

  The man lifted his eyes off the floor, agreeing wordlessly. Rising, he went with his guards.

  Demaris plunged into the work of shaping the battered organization for the final, crippling blow. He entertained no thoughts of not completing his job. Mr. Sullivan would not be handed the weapon of a broken contract to wield when Demaris returned to New York and his revenge.

  Only gods and television audiences see the pattern of human events. What he did in his office touched on the histories of four races, but, for Demaris, the movement of men and armed forces translated itself into the shifting of reports from IN to HOLD to OUT, and the roar of rockets became the rattle and ping of bookkeeping machines.

  For two days, he and Sath reassigned, regrouped, deployed, redeployed, canceled, substituted, implemented, and supplied. Only the games-like transposition of figures from one table of organization to another furnished its own synthetic excitement.

  Demaris wondered, in a few brief snatches of stolen relaxation, whether he hated Mr. Sullivan most for double-crossing him or for placing him in a position where the outcome of the battle became a foregone conclusion, now that his personal opponent was prematurely taken. From a strategist, he had descended to a clerk. It was war, but it was not magnificent.

  Well, at least it was over at the end of the second day. Between them, he and Sath had shaped Marak's intelligence service into the means for completely hamstringing Genis, now that her own expert was gone.

  Certainly, her own expert. As much as Demaris was Marak's own.

  He felt his mouth curl sardonically.

  Sath dropped the last order into his OUT box, pushed his bench away from his desk, and stretched. Demaris rubbed a hand across his tired eyes.

  "It's done," Sath said with relieved finality. "All over."

  Demaris growled agreement with his Second's mood. Blinking, he peered around at the office. Half the subordinate staff was asleep on cots pushed into dimmer corners. The other shift half-slumped over its desks. No one had left the office since the Geneiid's capture. Given enough breathing space, Genis might have been able to throw out a desperate taskforce to intercept the Marakian fleet, which had set out for Farla the moment the Geneiian saboteurs lost direction and purpose.

  "Call up the Overchief and let him know, will you?" Demaris said to Sath. He felt washed-out. The job was done, and soon he'd be back on Earth.

  And this time, after he got through with Mr. Sullivan—provided he could dig him out of this sanctum—there might not even be any more Agency jobs.

  Hunting? Police work of some kind? Demaris didn't know. Uselessness was a bitter strain in his throat.

  Sath put his phone back on his desk and looked puzzledly at Demaris. "Something's wrong," he said. "I told the Overchief we were set. He just mumbled perfunctory thanks. Then he said it wasn't our fault, but we weren't going into Farla. He wants to see us."

  Demaris sucked in his lower lip and scowled. Possibly he was becoming a monomaniac, but he nevertheless wondered what Old Man Sullivan had done now.

  "There's something that's cute in the Agency—

  Some sweet little winning appeal.

  For its dough it will go

  Through your pockets at night,

  And what's not glued in it will steal."

  Chapter Seven

  The Overchief sat behind his desk, half facing the boarded-up window shattered in night-before-last's abortive Geneiid attempt to get their man back.

  He moved his hands in an unsettled gesture. "I don't understand how they knew." he repeated, and dropped his hands into his lap.

  Demaris, mystified, stared across the room at Resvik, the contact, who had been there when he and Sath came in. Beside him, Sath was also frowning, trying to make sense out of the situation. Resvik was impassive.

  The Overchief seemed not to realize that Demaris and Sath had no idea of what he meant. He rambled on.

  "Almost exactly to the moment. As soon as we and Genis became preoccupied with each other."

  Sath cleared his throat and ventured the question. "Sir—I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I'm a bit fagged out. May I ask you to repeat what's happened?"

  The Overchief turned toward Sath. His gaze was weak and unsteady. He squinted across the room. "What? Oh, Sath— Yes. It's Stain. I just got word. Their ships have been in Farla for the past month." He gestured again, his palms slapping down on his thighs. "There is no more Farla."

  Demaris felt his fac
ial muscles twitch in an uncontrollable surprise reaction. Then he became expressionless. Beside him, Sath was breathing erratically.

  Demaris looked at Resvik with careful deliberation. They were both in immediate, pressing danger. The Overchief's previous line of speculation about him had been very close to truth. But the contact seemed unconcerned.

  "They moved in against almost no opposition," the Overchief was continuing. "What they did meet was hopelessly indecisive, unorganized, and lacked any initiative whatsoever. They moved in rapidly, set up bases, and are now completely consolidated. It would take years to undermine them to the point where we could hope to engage them successfully."