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relieve the tension. Only Ian was phlegmatic and absorbing.
Over the past few years, this force, which we officer, has developed the
wherewithal some of it carried over from previous forces, some of recent
development. Your men know the techniques, although they have never been told
in what way they were going to apply them. Ian, here, has produced through
rigorous training the highly specialized small unit of the field forces the
Group, which under ordinary battle conditions numbers fifty men, but which we
have streamlined to a number of thirty men. These Groups have been trained to
take entirely independent action and survive by themselves for considerable
periods of time. This same streamlining has gone up through the
ranks extending even to your fleet exercises, which have also been ordered,
with a particular sort of action in mind.
He paused.
What all this boils down to, gentlemen, he said, is that we are all about
to prove that old truism wrong and take a civilized world, lock, stock, and
barrel. We will do it with the men and ships we have at hand right here, and
who have been picked and trained for this specific job as the planet we are
about to take has been picked and thoroughly intelligenced. He smiled at
them. They were all sitting on the edges of their floats now.
That world, he pressed the stud that had been under his finger all this
time; the wall behind him vanished to reveal the three-dimensional
representation of a large, green planet is the heart of our enemy s power and
strength. His home base Ceta!
It was too much even for senior officers. A babble of voice burst out around
the table all at once. Donal paid no attention. He had opened a drawer at his
end of the table and produced a thick sheaf of documents, which he tossed on
the table before him.
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We will take over Ceta, gentlemen, he said. By, in a twenty-four hour
period, replacing all her local troops, all her police, all her garrisons and
militia and law enforcement bodies and arms, with our own men.
He pointed to the sheaf of documents.
We will take them over piecemeal, independently, and simultaneously. So that
when the populace wakes up the following morning they will find themselves
guarded, policed and held, not by their own authorities, but by us. The
details as to targets and assignments are in this stack, gentlemen. Shall we
go to work?
They went to work. Ceta, large, low-gravity planet that it was, had huge
virgin areas. Its civilized part could be broken down into thirty-eight major
cities, and intervening agricultural and residential areas. There were so many
military installations, so many police stations, so many armories, so many
garrisons of troops the details fell apart like the parts of a well-engineered
mechanism, and were fitted together again with corresponding units of the
military force under Donal s command. It was a masterpiece of combat
preplanning.
Now, said Donal, when they were done. Go out and brief your troops.
He watched them all leave the conference room all, with the exception of Ian,
whom he had detained; and Lee, for whom he had just rung. When the others were
gone, he turned to the two still with him.
Lee, he said, in six hours every man in the fleet will know what we intend
to do. I want you to go out and find a man not one of the officers who doesn t
think it ll work. Ian he looked over at his uncle when Lee finds such a man
and reports to you, I want you to see that the man is sent up to see me, right
away. Is that clear?
The other two nodded; and went out, to do each his own job in his own
fashion. So it was that a disgruntled Groupman from a particular landing force
had a surprising meeting and surprisingly cordial chat with his commander in
chief, and that they went out together, half an hour later, arm-in-arm, to the
control room of the flagship, where Donal requested, and got, a
voice-and-picture hookup to all ships.
All of you, Donal said, smiling at them out of their screens after he had
been connected, have by this time been informed about the impending action.
It s the result of a number of years of top-level planning and the best
intelligence service we have been lucky enough to have. However, one of you
has come to me with the natural fear that we may be biting off more than we
can chew. Therefore, since this is an entirely new type of operation and
because I believe firmly in the rights of the individual professional soldier
not to be mishandled, I m taking the unprecedented step of putting the coming
assault on Ceta to a vote. You will vote as ships, and the results will be
forwarded by your captain, as for or against, to the Flagship here.
Gentlemen Donal reached out an arm and brought the man Lee had discovered
into the screen area with him I want you to meet Groupman Theiss, who had the
courage to stand up like a free man and ask questions.
Caught unawares, and dazzled by the sudden limelight into which he had been
thrust, the Groupman licked his lips and grinned a little foolishly.
I leave the decision to all of you, added Donal, and signaled for the
viewing eyes to be cut off.
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Three hours later, Groupman Theiss was back on his own ship, astounding his
fellow soldiers with an account of what had happened to him; and the votes
were in.
Almost unanimous, reported Lludrow, in favor of the attack. Only three
ships none of the first line, and none troop carriers voting against.
I want those three ships held out of the attack, said Donal. And a note
made of their names and captains. Remind me about that after this is over. All
right. He got up from the float where he had been sitting in the Flagship
Lounge. Give the necessary orders, commander. We re going in.
They went in. Ceta had never taken the thought of enemy attack too seriously.
Isolated in her position as the single inhabitable planet, as yet largely
unexplored and unexploited, that circled her G8 type sun of Tau Ceti; and
secure in the midst of an interstellar maze of commitments that made every
other planetary government to some extent dependent upon her good will, she
had only a few ships in permanent defensive orbit about her.
These ships, their position and movement fully scouted by Donal s
intelligence service, were boxed and destroyed by Donal s emerging fleet
almost before they could give warning. And what warning they did give fell on
flabbergasted and hardly-believing ears.
But by that time the assault troops were falling planetward, dropping down on
city and military installation and police station behind the curtain of night
as it swung around the big, but swiftly-turning world.
They came down in most cases almost on top of their targets, for the ships
that had sowed them in the sky above had not been hampered in that action by
enemy harassment. And the reaction of those on the ground was largely what
might have been expected, when veteran troops, fully armed and armored, move
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