James Hogan - Giant's Star

"You have until twenty-four hours from now to discuss the revisions with your staff. I shall expect you at the Directorate of Strategic Planning on Jevlen at that time to report. I will not expect to hear lame excuses. Do I make myself understood?"

"Yes, Excellency," Turl mumbled.

Subvocally Broghuilio instructed JEVEX to remind him later in the day to review possible candidates for Turl’s replacement at Uttan, then turned his eyes contemptuously toward Sverenssen. "And it appears that my ‘able lieutenant’ who was supposed to have had the situation on Earth ‘well under control’ is equally incompetent," he sneered. "Well, what have you been able to find out? How did the Thuriens manage to communicate with Terrans right under your noses? Where is their facility located? What is your plan to eliminate it? How did they penetrate your operation? Who has been betraying it? I hope you have good answers, Sverenssen."

"I must protest," Sverenssen said in a shocked voice. "Yes, I admit that the Thuriens did establish a link somehow. But the accusation that we have allowed our operation to be penetrated is without foundation. There is no evidence to-"

"Then you are either blind or stupid!" Broghuilio spat. "I was there, in Thurios. You were not. I tell you they knew everything. The Terrans must have turned half the imbeciles in your organization and had them working against us for years. How long have they had a link on Earth direct into VISAR?"

"We. . . . have not been able to ascertain that yet, Excellency," Sverenssen admitted.

"Obviously since long before they started anything on Farside," Broghuilio said. "The whole Bruno operation was a faзade to fool you and keep you occupied, and you swallowed every inch of it." He screwed up his face and mimicked a fawning tone. "‘We have gained complete control, Excellency,’ I was told. Pah!" Broghuilio slammed a fist into his other palm. "Control! They were manipulating you like a puppet. They probably have been for years. Overlord of Earth? You’d be a laughingstock trying to govern a kindergarten." Sverenssen paled, and his jaw strained, but he said nothing.

Broghuilio raised his arms in front of the rest of the company as if inviting them to witness his predicament. "You see what I have to contend with-imbecile engineers and imbecile agents. And what of you? Clearly the enemy will not sit idly by and do nothing while we complete our preparations. But we are told that it will take two years. Thus we have a problem situation that demands some form of action now, while we retain the initiative. What are your plans?"

Some of the generals looked uncertainly at one another. Eventually Wylott replied hesitantly, "We are still analyzing the latest developments. The situation calls for a complete revision of every-"

"Never mind your academic analyses and evaluations. Do you have firm plans drawn up for offensive action, now , to secure our position while the quadriflexor program is being completed?"

"No, but we’ve never-"

"The general does not have a plan," Broghuilio told the rest of them. "You see-on all sides I have to deal with imbeciles. But fortunately for all of us, I do have a plan. Our weapons production program here at Uttan has begun showing results, has it not? We have ships, armaments, and sufficient generating capacity to transfer them to Gistar at once, while the Thuriens have nothing. It is a time for boldness."

Wylott seemed worried. "That is not the way we have always intended," he said. "Our plans have never included launching an unprovoked assault on Thurien. The weapons were to be used against the Cerians. We would find it hard to justify such an action to the people. It would not be popular."

"Did I say anything about attacking Thurien?" Broghuillo asked. "Can you conceive of no methods other than brute force and clumsiness? Have you no sense of subtlety?" He turned his head to address all present. "War is as much a matter of psychology as it is of weapons, and in particular of understanding the psychology of one’s enemy. Study the history of Earth, or even of Minerva. Many great victories have been won by seizing an opportune psychological moment And such a moment presents itself to us now."

"What are you proposing?" Estordu asked uneasily. "That we might intimidate Thurien into submission?"

Broghuilio looked at him in surprise and with unconcealed approval. "For a scientist you are thinking quickly for once," he said. He raised his voice. "You hear? The scientist is thinking more like a general than any of you. The Thuriens have no taste for war, nor even any concept of it. At this moment they believe that we have retreated into a shell and will not trouble them for a long time to come. They feel secure for the time being, and that is why they are vulnerable."

He strode slowly to one side of the dome and stared out at the distant ball of Uttan for a few seconds. Then he came back to the center and resumed, "I will tell you what the Thuriens are thinking at this moment. They realize that we present a threat which they do not have the stomach to face, but which the Terrans do. On the other hand they possess the technology necessary to counter that threat, whereas the Terrans do not. So what will be their obvious strategy?"

Wylott was beginning to nod slowly. "To arm and equip the Terrans as proxy troops," he said. "Thurien will enlist Earth to fight on its behalf."

"Exactly!" Broghuilio exclaimed. "But Earth is demilitarized and not competent to match us technically anyway, and at this moment the Thuriens have nothing to arm them with." He looked around with a triumphant glint in his eyes. "In other words their solution will require time. But we do not need time because right now we have something, and they have nothing. Our forces might be small compared to what they will be in times to come, but that situation gives us a ratio of something to zero, which equates to infinite superiority. That advantage will not exist indefinitely, and it will never again be in our favor to the extent that it is now. And that is why the time to act is now , and not later."

Wylott’s eyes gleamed as he began to see what Broghuillo was driving at. "With self-powered ships we can send a task force in and issue an ultimatum to the Thuriens to place VISAR under our control," he said. "Being Ganymeans, they will have no choice. Then they’d be helpless, and we would assume full control of the combined empires of JEVEX and VISAR."

"And the Terrans will be deprived of their armorers," Broghullb completed. "In two years they could never hope to match us without the Thuriens. Thus we will have bought the time we need to complete our preparations for dealing with Earth, and for neutralizing Thurien permanently." He turned to confront Wylott squarely, folded his arms across his chest, and stuck out his chin. "That, General, is the plan- my plan."

"A stroke of genius," Wylott declared. A chorus of murmurs from the ranks behind endorsed the statement. "We will commence detailed preparations at once."

"See to it," Broghuilio ordered. He turned and glowered at Sverenssen. "And you, if you think you have the ability to redeem yourself, go back to Earth. I want every one of the traitors in your organization uncovered, tracked down, and dealt with. All except Rank B2 and above. Those are to be held while we arrange a landing to bring them back to Jevlen. I will deal with them personally." His voice fell to an ominous growl, and his eyes smoldered. "And if you fail in this, Sverenssen, you will certainly be brought back, even if I have to come physically to Earth myself to do it."

Several days went by without news from the Shapieron. VISAR analyzed all the available data on the design of JEVEX and gave ZORAC a five-percent chance of electronically lock-picking its way through the layers of security checks and access restrictions protecting the enemy system. The problem was that JEVEX’s Ganymean-designed molecular circuits worked at subnanosecond speeds, enabling an enormous amount of self-checking to be interleaved with its regular operations. The odds were overwhelming that any chink in JEVEX’s armor that ZORAC managed to slip a wedge into would be detected and closed before VISAR could be brought in to drive the wedge home. In other words JEVEX could scan its own internal processes too rapidly, or as Hunt put it to Caldwell, "It’s got too much instant-to-instant awareness of what’s going on inside itself. If we could distract its attention somehow, even for a few seconds at the speeds those machines work at, ZORAC might be able to neutralize the jamming system and let VISAR in." But how could they distract JEVEX when the only channel they had to it was through ZORAC, and ZORAC couldn’t get in until JEVEX had been distracted?