"Not before this time tomorrow."
"All right. Are you in radio communication with Jonkvank now?"
"Full telecast, audio-visual," the girl replied. "Just a minute, general."
He put in his geek-speaker. Within a few minutes, a saurian Ullran face was looking out of it at him; a harsh-lined, elderly, face, with an old scar, quartz-crusted, along one side.
"Your Majesty," von Schlichten greeted him.
Jonkvank p.r.o.nounced something intended to correspond to von Schlichten"s name. "We have image-met under sad circ.u.mstances, general," he said.
"Sad for both of us, King Jonkvank; we must help one another. I am told that your soldiers in Krink have risen against you, and that your loyal troops are far from the city."
"Yes. That was the work of my War Minister, Hurkkirk, who was in the pay of King Firkked of Skilk, may Jeels devour him alive! I have Hurkkirk"s head here somewhere. I can have it found, if you want to see it."
"Dead-traitors" heads do not interest me, King Jonkvank," von Schlichten replied, in what he estimated that the Krinkan king would interpret as a tone of cold-blooded cruelty. "There are too many traitors" heads still on traitors" shoulders.... What regiments are loyal to you, and where are they now?"
Jonkvank began naming regiments and locating them, all at minor provincial towns at least a hundred miles from Krink.
"Hurkkirk did his work well; I"m afraid you killed him too mercifully," von Schlichten said. "Well, I"m sending the _Northern Star_ to Krink. She can only bring in one regiment at a trip, the way they"re scattered; which one do you want first?"
Jonkvank"s mouth, until now compressed grimly, parted in a gleaming smile. He made an exclamation of pleasure which sounded rather like a boy running along a picket fence with a stick.
"Good, general! Good!" he cried. "The first should be the regiment Murderers, at Furnk; they all have rifles like your soldiers. Have them brought to the Great Square, at the Palace here. And then, the regiment Fear-Makers, at Jeelznidd, and the regiment Corpse-Reapers, at...."
"Let that go until the Murderers are in," von Schlichten advised.
"They"re at Furnk, you say? I"ll send the _Northern Star_ there, directly."
"Oh, good, general! I will not soon forget this! And, as soon as the work is finished here, I will send soldiers to help you at Skilk.
There shall be a great pile of the heads of those who had part in this wickedness, both here and there!"
"Good. Now, if you will pardon me, I"ll go to give the necessary orders...."
As he left the booth, he saw Hideyoshi O"Leary in front of the situation-map, and hailed him.
"Harry and Ha.s.san are getting the car re-ammoed; they dropped me off here. Want to come up with us and see the show?" O"Leary asked, as he saw the general.
"No, I want you to go to Krink, as soon as Harry brings the car here again." He told O"Leary what he intended doing. "You"ll probably have to go around ahead of the _Star_ and alert these regiments. And as soon as things stabilize at Krink, prod Jonkvank into airlifting troops here. You"re authorized, in my name, to promise Jonkvank that he can a.s.sume political control at Skilk, after we"ve stuffed Firkked"s head in the dustbin."
Jules Keaveney, who always seemed to be where he wasn"t wanted, heard that and fairly screamed.
"General von Schlichten! That is a political decision! You have no authority to make promises like that; that is a matter for the Governor-General, at least!"
"Well, as of now, and until a successor to Sid Harrington can be sent here from Terra, I"m Governor-General," von Schlichten told him, mentally thanking Keaveney for reminding him of the necessity for such a step. "Captain Malavez! You will send out an all-station telecast, immediately: Military Commander-in-Chief Carlos von Schlichten, being informed of the deaths of both Governor-General Harrington and Lieutenant-Governor Blount, a.s.sumes the duties of Governor-General, as of 0001 today." He turned to Keaveney. "Does that satisfy you?" he asked.
"No, it doesn"t. You have no authority to a.s.sume a civil position of any sort, let alone the very highest position...."
Von Schlichten unb.u.t.toned his holster and took out his authority, letting Keaveney look in to the muzzle of it.
"Here it is," he said. "If you"re wise, don"t make me appeal to it."
Keaveney shrugged. "I can"t argue with that," he said. "But I don"t fancy the Ullr Company is going to be impressed by it."
"The Ullr Company," von Schlichten replied, "is six and a half pa.r.s.ecs away. It takes a ship six months to get from here to Terra, and another six months to get back. A radio message takes a little over twenty-one years, each way." He holstered the pistol again.
"That brings up another question, general," one of Keaveney"s subordinates said. "Can we hold out long enough for help to get here from Terra?"
"By the time help could reach us from Terra," von Schlichten replied, "we"ll either have this revolt crushed, or there won"t be a live Terran left on Ullr." He felt a brief s.a.d.i.s.tic pleasure as he watched Keaveney"s face sag in horror. "On this planet, there"s not more than a three months" supply of any sort of food a human can eat. And the ships that"ll be coming in until word of our plight can get to Terra won"t bring enough to keep us going. We need the farms and livestock and the animal-tissue culture plant at Konkrook, and the farms at Krink and on the plateau back of Skilk, and we need peace and native labor to work them."
n.o.body seemed to have anything to say after that, for awhile. Then Keaveney suggested that the next ship was due in from Niflheim in three months, and that it could be used to evacuate all the Terrans on Ullr.
"And I"ll personally shoot any able-bodied Terran who tries to board that ship," von Schlichten promised. "Get this through your heads, all of you. We are going to break this rebellion, and we are going to hold Ullr for the Company and the Terran Federation." He looked around him.
"Now, get back to work, all of you," he told the group that had formed around him and Keaveney. "Miss Quinton, you just heard me order my adjutant, Colonel O"Leary, on detached duty to Krink. I want you to take over for him. You"ll have rank and authority as colonel for the duration of this war."
She was thunderstruck. "But I know absolutely nothing about military matters. There must be a hundred people here who are better qualified than I am...."
"There are, and they all have jobs, and I"d have to find replacements for them, and replacements for the replacements. You won"t leave any vacancy to be filled. And you"ll learn, fast enough." He went over to the situation-map again, and looked at the arrangements of pink and white pills. "First of all, I want you to call Jarman, at the military airport, and have an airjeep and driver sent around here for me. I"m going up and have a look around. Barney, keep the show going while I"m out, and tell Colonel Quinton what it"s all about."
VII
He looked at his watch, as the light airjeep let down into the street.
Oh-one-fifteen--two hours and a half since the mutiny at the native-troops barracks had broken out. The Company reservation was still ablaze with lights, and over the roof of the hospital and dispensary and test-lab he could see the glare of the burning barracks. There was more fire-glare to the south, in the direction of the mine-equipment park and the mine-labor camp, and from that direction the bulk of the firing was to be heard.
The driver, a young lieutenant, slid back the duragla.s.s canopy for him to climb in, then snapped it into place when he had strapped himself into his seat, and hit the controls.
They lifted up, the driver turning the nose of the airjeep in the direction of the flames and explosions and magnesium-lights to the south and tapping his booster-b.u.t.ton gently. The vehicle shot forward and came floating in over the scene of the fighting. The situation-map at the improvised headquarters had shown a mixture of pink and white pills in the mine-equipment park; something was going to have to be done about the lag in correcting it, for the area was entirely in the hands of loyal Company troops, and the mob of laborers and mutinous soldiers had been pushed back into the temporary camp where the workers had been gathered to await transportation to the Arctic. As he had feared, the rioting workers, many of whom were trained to handle contragravity equipment, had managed to lift up a number of dump-trucks and power-shovels and bulldozers, intending to use them as improvised air-tanks, but Jarman"s combat-cars had gotten on the job promptly and all of these had been shot down and were lying in wreckage, mostly among the rows of parked mining-equipment.
From the labor-camp, a surprising volume of fire was being directed against the attack which had already started from the retaken equipment-park.
Hovering above the fighting, aloof from it, he saw six long troop-carriers land and disgorge Kragan Rifles who had been released by the liquidation of resistance at the native-troops barracks. A little later, two air-tanks floated in, and then two more, going off contragravity and lumbering forward on treads to fire their 90-mm.
rifles. At the same time, combat-cars swooped in, banging away with their lighter auto-cannon and launching rockets. The t.i.tanium prefab-huts, set up to house the laborers and intended to be taken north with them for their stay on the polar desert, were simply wiped away. Among the wreckage, resistance was being blown out like the lights of a candelabrum.
He took up the hand-phone and called HQ.
"Von Schlichten; what"s the wavelength of the officer in command at the equipment-park?"
A voice at the telecast station furnished it; he punched it out.