James Hogan - Giant's Star

Wylott was looking uncertain. "How can we be sure?" he objected. "JEVEX says first one thing and then another. How do we know what is true?"

"So, do we do nothing?" Broghuilio asked him. "Would you just sit there and hope that the Terran assault force doesn’t exist? What would it take to convince you-a hundred thousand of them coming for your throat? And what would you do then? Imbecile!" Wylott fell silent. The others around the War Room looked at one another with apprehension.

Broghuilio clasped his hands behind his back and began pacing slowly. "We still have a card up our sleeve," he said after a few seconds. "We have decoded their top-level secure communications, and we know their plans. We may have fewer weapons, but we are immeasurably ahead of Earth technically. We command a vastly superior firepower." He looked up, and his eyes began to gleam. "You heard those primitives-the main advantage they were counting on was surprise. Well, they no longer have that advantage. So, Verikoff calls us a rabble, does he? Let him send in his horde of Terran primitives. We will be waiting for them. He will find out who are the rabble when they come up against Jevlenese weapons."

Broghuilio turned back to face Wylott. "The operation at Thurien must be suspended for the time being," he declared. "Recall our forces at once and redeploy them for defense of Jevlen. This is not a time to be concerned about upsetting orbits at Gistar. Project the transfer ports in to where the ships are now, and get them back here as soon as possible. I want them in position by this time tomorrow."

New orders went out to the commanders of the task force at Thurien, who prepared their vessels for immediate transfer back. But they were in VISAR-controlled space, and JEVEX reported that its attempts to project entry ports into that region were being jammed; the ships could not be brought back without getting clear of Gistar first. Broghuilio had no choice but to extend his deadline by an extra day and order his force to get away under its own power. An hour later it was streaming in full flight back toward the edge of the Thurien planetary system.

"Phase One completed successfully," Caldwell announced with satisfaction from Thurios as he watched the data displays being presented inside the Government Center. "We’ve got the bastards on the run. Now let’s make sure we keep things going that way."

The transfer ports were ready and waiting outside the system of Gistar as arranged, and the Jevlenese warships peeled out of formation to enter them in relays with crisp, disciplined, military precision. What they didn’t know was that by then VISAR was controlling the transfer system, not JEVEX, and such were VISAR’s manipulations of JEVEX’s internal functions that JEVEX didn’t know it, either. Upon exiting back into normal space, one squadron found itself at Sirius, another at Aldebaran, and another near Canopus, while the rest reappeared strewn in ones and twos across Arcturus, Procyon, Castor, Polaris, Rigel, and assorted other stars in between. Thus they were out of harm’s way for the time being and could be rounded up later. That completed Caldwell’s Phase Two.

With a cigarette in one hand and a cup of black coffee in the other, Hunt stood on the patio outside Sverenssen’s house, watching a protesting group of people in brightly colored garb being herded into an Air Force personnel carrier by the pool while a vigilant semicircle of Special Forces troopers looked on from a short distance back. The most recent captives had arrived at Sverenssen’s expecting a party, but had found the CIA waiting instead. With VISAR controlling the surveillance there was no longer any need to conceal the activity around the house from orbital observation, but Clifford Benson had decided to maintain a low profile all the same, mainly to take advantage of just this kind of opportunity to extend further his suspect list of Sverenssen’s acquaintances. But that was really just a precaution to identify any collaborators that might have been recruited locally. VISAR had found included among JEVEX’s records a complete organizational chart of the Jevlenese operation on Earth, and with that information now in Benson’s and Sobroskin’s hands, the rest of the network would soon be mopped up.

A concentration of Ganymean spacecraft had been building up on the periphery of the Jevlenese planetary system, and at that point it would have been possible for VISAR to shut off all of JEVEX’s services from the Jevlenese in the same way that it had done with the Jevlenese element across the Thurien-administered worlds. The problem, however, was that the Jevlenese had clearly been preparing for a war situation for some time, and there was no way of telling what other stand-alone and backup systems they might possess that were capable of operating without JEVEX. Hunt and Caldwell therefore decided that simply pulling the plug, sending in the Ganymeans, and hoping for the best was not the way to go. Instead they opted to continue applying pressure until either they obtained the unconditional surrender that Verikoff had demanded, or the Jevlenese operation somehow fell apart from the inside. Also they hoped that the reactions they observed inside the Jevlenese War Room would reveal whether or not, and if so to what degree, the Jevlenese could in fact carry on without JEVEX.

Behind Hunt, a flap opened in the plastic sheeting with which the back of the house had been temporarily repaired, and Lyn stepped out through what had been a glass-panel wall of the corner room. She moved over to where he was standing and slipped an arm lightly through his. "I guess this place is off the list for the party rounds from now on," she said, looking across at the VTOL down by the pool.

"Just my luck," Hunt murmured. "As soon as some of the girls I’ve been hearing about show up, they take ’em away again. Who ever deserved a life like this?"

"Is that all you were worried about?" she asked. Her eyes were twinkling, and there was an elusive, playfully challenging note in her voice.

"And to see pal Sverenssen off on his way, of course. What else?"

"Oh, really," Lyn said softly and mockingly. "That wasn’t exactly the way I heard it from Gregg."

"Oh." Hunt frowned for a moment. "He, er . . . he told you about that, huh?"

"Gregg and I work pretty well together. You should know that." She wriggled her arm more tightly inside his. "It sounded to me like somebody was pretty upset."

"Principles," Hunt said stiffly after a pause. "Fancy me being stuck up in a place like McClusky while somebody else was down here in the sun, getting all that action. It was the principle of it. I have very strong principles."

"Oh, you idiot," Lyn said with a sigh.

They walked back into the house. Sobroskin was standing nearby with a couple of his officers, and Verikoff was sitting on a couch on the far side of the room, talking with Benson and a mix of CIA officials and more Soviets. Norman Pacey was nowhere in sight; probably he was still in the communications room where Hunt had left him a while earlier. Hunt caught Sobroskin’s eye and inclined his head slightly in Verikoff’s direction. "That guy’s done a good job, and he’s trying hard," he muttered in a low voice. "I hope he gets a big remission."

"We’ll see what we can do," Sobroskin said. His tone was noncommittal, but there was something deep down in it that Hunt found reassuring.

"WHAT?" A voice that sounded like Broghuilio’s shrieked distantly from the direction of the passageway that led through to the communications room.. "YOU’VE MANAGED TO LOCATE THEM WHERE?"

"Oh-oh. I think somebody’s just found his fleet," Hunt said, grinning. "Come on. Let’s go and watch the fun." They moved across toward the passageway, and all around the room figures began standing up and converging behind them. Nobody, it seemed, wanted to miss the excitement.