GENERAL J. STORMBEL did not make mistakes, and he was not accustomed to being held responsible for the mistakes of others; people under him tended to find out early on that they did not make mistakes. Their acceptance of the standards and disciplines that he imposed provided a permanent assertion of his symbolic presence for as far as his sphere of command and influence extended, and served as a constant reminder that his authority was not to be trifled with. Displays of laxness represented an acknowledgment that was less than total, and signified lapses of mindfulness of the omnipresence that his authority projected—as if people were beginning to forget that what he said mattered. Stormbel didn’t like that. He didn’t like people acting as if he didn’t matter.
The bureaucrats who had mismanaged the sprawling politico military machine that had come to dominate the North American continent had been unable or unwilling to recognize his worth and dedication while they heaped honors and favors on Sons of spineless sycophants and generals’ blue-eyed proteges groomed to the movie image at West Point, and he felt no compassion for them now as the laser link from Earth brought news of nuclear devastation across the length and breadth of Africa, and of titanic clashes between armies in Central Asia. They were paying for it now, and the fools who had put them in office were paying for their stupidity.
Wellesley and the Congress had tried to perpetuate the same injustices by eclipsing him with Borftein because he hadn’t graduated from the right places or possessed the right credentials. They had tried to fob him off with the command of what they had seen as a proficient but small and unimportant corps of specialists. They had all paid too. Now they all knew who he was and where they stood. He had no regrets about Ramisson’s death; it underlined the lesson more forcefully than any words could have done. He was only sorry he hadn’t made a cleaner sweep by shooting them all.
Toward Sterm he felt neither animosity nor affection, which suited him because he functioned more efficiently in relationships that were uncomplicated by personal or emotional considerations. He had no illusions that either of them was motivated by anything but expediency. Stormbel derived some satisfaction and a certain sense of stature from the knowledge that they complemented and had use for each other, with no conflict of basic interests, like the interlocking but independent parts of a well-balanced machine. Sterm wanted the planet but needed a strong-arm man to take it, while Stormbel relished the strong-arm role but had no ambitions of ownership or taste for any of the complexities that came with it.
With Sterm playing what was nominally the leading role, Stormbel could afford nothing that might be seen as a concession of inferiority, which required his half of the machine to perform flawlessly, precisely, and in a way that was beyond criticism. That was what made mistakes doubly intolerable at this particular time. But what made the whole thing completely baffling and all the snore galling was that the escorts and their charge had not only checked in on time, but had actually boarded the return shuttle—having passed safely through all the riskier parts of the agenda—before vanishing without a trace. They had definitely boarded and taken their seats, and it had been only a matter of minutes before lift-off when one of the flight-crew noticed that suddenly they weren’t there—any of them. The SD guards at the boarding gate had all known what Celia Kalens looked liked, and they had been under special instructions to watch for her, but none of them had seen her when the escorts came out of the shuttle after somehow losing her; and shortly after that, the escorts had disappeared into the base and were never seen again. Nobody remembered seeing them around the base later; nobody had seen them at the perimeter; nobody had flown them out; and an intensive search carried on all through the night had failed to locate them anywhere. It was impossible, but it had happened.
Sterm was not a person to waste his time and energy with futile melodramatics and accusations, but Stormbel knew full well that he wouldn’t forget—and neither would Stormbel forget. The Chironians were behind it, he was certain, just as they had been behind the subversion of the Army and even of some of Stormbel’s own troopers. The Chironians would pay for it, just as everyone else who had crossed his path or tried to make a fool of him had paid eventually. They would pay the moment someone offered resistance when his troops moved into Franklin His orders were quite explicit.
“The build-up at Canaveral is proceeding on schedule and will be completed before midnight,” he informed Sterm at a midday staff meeting in the Columbia District’s Government Center. “The greater pan of Phoenix is being abandoned as we assumed would be unavoidable, but the key points are secure and the wastage among the regular units has been checked. Transfer of SD forces to the surface will be completed by early evening, with the exception of those units being held to cover the Battle Module, the Columbia District, and Vandenberg. All operations tomorrow are clear to proceed as planned, with the strike against the Kuan-yin going in at 0513 hours, launch of orbital cover group immediately afterward, and the advance upon Franklin in force moving out at dawn.”
Sterm nodded slowly as he ticked off the points one by one in his mind, looking at Stormbel coolly, then turned to Gaulitz, one of the senior scientists, who was sitting with some advisers to one side of the room. “Let us be certain about the Kuan-yin,” he said. “The success of the entire operation is at stake. You are quite sure?”
Gaulitz nodded emphatically. “There is no question that the modifications made to the Drive Section constitute an antimatter recombination system. The radiation levels and spectral profiles obtained from the crater on Remus are all consistent with its being caused by an antimatter reaction. The evidence of gamma-induced transmutations, the distribution of neutron-activated isotopes, the pattern of residual—“
Sterm held up a hand. “Yes, yes, we have been through all that.”
Gaulitz nodded hastily and touched a control to bring a view of the Kuan-yin onto the room’s main display screen. It showed Chironian shuttles at all the docking ports, and more standing a few miles off and apparently waiting to move in. “this is a further corroboration from views obtained this morning,” he said. “All indications are that the Chironians have evacuated the vessel, which supports the contention of its being cleared for action,”
Sterm studied the view in silence. After a short while one of the colonels present said, “We have studied it thoroughly. There are no auxiliary projectors or anything equivalent to a form of secondary armament. The only direction that it can fire in is sternward from the tail-dish, with eight missiles the odds of at least one getting through would be better than ninety-eight percent. With sixteen the chances of failure are about as near zero as you can get.”
The Kuan-yin’s lower orbit put it out of synchronism with the Mayflower II and resulted in the two vessels being shielded from each other by Chiron’s mass for a period of thirty-two minutes every three-and-a-quarter hours. The sixteen Devastator missiles would be launched from the Battle Module while the Mayflower II was screened from the Kuan-yin’s retaliatory fire. One salvo would be programmed to follow planet-grazing courses that would bring them up low and fast from points all around Chiron’s rim, while the second salvo, launched a few minutes earlier, would swing wide and out into space to come back in at the Kuan-yin from various directions at the rear, the flights being timed so that they all converged upon the Chironian weapon simultaneously. A mass the size of the Kuan-yin could not maneuver rapidly, and the worst-case simulations run on the computers had shown an overwhelming margin in favor of the attack, whatever defensive tactics might be employed.
“The calculations and simulations have been verified?” Sterm said, looking at Gaulitz.
“Thoroughly and repeatedly. There is no risk that the Mayflower II might be exposed at any time,” Gaulitz answered.
There were no more major points to discuss. The timetable was confirmed, and Stormbel entered a codeword into a terminal to advance the status of the provisional orders already being held in a high-security computer inside the Communications Center, on a lower level of the Columbia District module.
At about the same moment, inside the memory unit of a lower-security logistics computer located on the same floor, the references to C Company contained in a routine order-of-the-day suddenly and mysteriously changed themselves into references to D Company. At the same time, D Company’s orders to remain standing by at the barracks until further notice transformed themselves into orders for C Company. Ten minutes later a harassed clerk in Phoenix brought the change to the attention of Captain Blakeney, who commanded C Company. Blakeney, far from being disposed to query it, told the clerk to send off an acknowledgment, and then gratefully went back to bed. Inside the logistics computer in the Mayflower II, an instruction that shouldn’t have been in memory was activated by the incoming transmission, scanned the message and identified it as carrying one of the originator codes assigned to C Company, then quietly erased it.