The sun had set several hours before one of the junior officers tapped Cletus deferentially on the elbow and offered him the phone.
"Colonel Dupleine again, sir," the officer said.
Cletus took the phone and looked at the image of Dupleine. The face of the Alliance colonel looked haggard.
"Well, Colonel?" asked Cletus.
"Grahame - " began Dupleine, hoarsely, and then broke off. "Is anyone there with you?"
"Colonel Dodds of the Dorsais," answered Cletus.
"Could I... talk to you privately?" said Dupleine, his eyes searching around the periphery of the screen as though to discover Marc, who was standing back to one side out of line of sight from the phone. Marc raised his eyebrows and started to turn away. Cletus reached out a hand to stop him.
"Just a minute," he said. He turned and spoke directly into the phone. "I've asked Colonel Dodds to stay. I'm afraid I'd prefer having a witness to whatever you say to me, Colonel."
Dupleine's lips sagged. "All right," he said. "The word's probably spreading already. Grahame... General Traynor can't be located."
Cletus waited a second before answering. "Yes?" he said.
"Don't you understand?" Dupleine's voice started to rise. He stopped, visibly fought with himself and got his tones down to a reasonable level again. "Here the Neulanders have moved not just guerrillas, but regular troops, into the country. They're attacking Two Rivers - and now the general's dis... not available. This is an emergency, Grahame! You have to see the point in canceling any orders to move the Dorsai troops you have there, and coming over to talk with me, here."
"I'm afraid I don't," answered Cletus. "It's Friday evening. General Traynor may simply have gone somewhere for the weekend and forgotten to mention he'd be gone. My responsibility's to his original orders, and those leave me no alternative but to go ahead with the Dorsais in any way I think best."
"You can't believe he'd do a thing like that - " Dupleine interrupted himself, fury breaking through the self-control he had struggled to maintain up until this point. "You nearly got gunned down by guerrillas yourself, today, according to the reports on my desk! Didn't it mean anything to you that they were carrying energy weapons instead of sport rifles? You know the Neulander guerrillas always carry civilian-level weapons and tools so they can't be shot as saboteurs if they're captured! Doesn't the fact that three men with energy weapons tried to cut you down mean anything to you?"
"Only that whoever's giving the orders on the Neuland side," said Cletus, "would like to have me removed as commander of the Dorsai troops. Clearly, if they don't want me commanding, the best thing I can do for our side is to command."
Dupleine glared at him wearily from the phone screen. "I warn you, Grahame!" he said. "If anything's happened to Traynor, or if we don't find him in the next few hours, I'll take emergency command of the Alliance Forces here myself. And the first thing I'm going to do is to revoke Bat's order to you and put you under arrest!"
The tiny screen in the phone went dark, the voice connection went dead. A little wearily, Cletus put the phone down on the table-screen and rubbed his eyes. He turned to Marcus Dodds.
"All right, Marc," he said. "We won't delay any longer. Let's start moving our men back up to Two Rivers."
14
Cletus went in with the first wave of six transport craft, which circled eight miles upstream from Two Rivers and dropped their jump troops on both sides of the two river valleys. A reconnaissance aircraft, swinging low over the jungle in the darkness following moon-set, two hours before, had picked up the heat images of two large bodies of Neulander troops waiting for dawn in both the river valleys, five miles above the town. Another, smaller, reserve force was camped just below the mouth of Etter's Pass - but its numbers were slight enough so that the Dorsais could disregard any counterattack from that direction. Cletus watched the flares of the jets from the jump belts of the descending men, and then ordered the pilot of his transport ship to fly low above the river, heading downstream from the town.
A quarter mile below the town, the river curved to the right, and it was just around this curve that the response came from the M5's. The transport ship came down and hovered above the water, and the turret of one of the huge submarine dozers rose blackly from the dark waters.
Cletus went down an elevator sling to the turret, and the hatch in it opened. Wefer stepped out. Together they stood on the slight slope of the wet metal casing below the tower.
"Here we are, then," Wefer said. "Three of us, just like the doctor ordered." Under his black hair, his friendly, pugnacious face was excited in the dim light. "What do you want us to do?"
"The Neulander troops - and their regular troops," said Cletus, "are concentrated in the two river valleys a few miles above the town. They'll be pushing down those valleys and into the town along the flatland below the river bluffs. But I don't think they'll be trying to come at the town from this downriver side. So you ought to be able to work without being seen."
"Sure, sure," said Wefer, sniffing the chilly dawn air like a hunting dog. "But what do you want us to do?"
"Can you plow up the bottom of the river just below the town, to raise the water level in and above the town?"
"In this little trickle of a river?" answered Wefer. "No trouble at all. We'll simply raise an underwater ridge at some point where the river bluffs on either side come straight down to the water's edge. The water has to rise to get over it. How high a dam? How much do you want to raise the water level?"
"I want the water six feet deep, a mile above the town," Cletus said.
For the first time, Wefer frowned. "Six feet? A full fathom? You'll flood the town itself. That flat spot between the rivers that the town's built on can't be more than six or eight feet above water level on both sides. You'll have another four to six feet of running water in the streets. Do you want that?" "That's exactly what I want," said Cletus.
"Well... of course there's plenty of solid buildings there in the warehouse district for people to climb into," said Wefer. "I just don't want to get the Navy billed for flood damage - "
"It won't be," said Cletus. "I'm still under General Traynor's direct orders as commander here. I'll take the responsibility."
Wefer peered at Cletus in the growing light, shook his head and whistled admiringly. "We'll get right at it then," he said. You ought to have your fathom of water up above the city there in about four hours."
"Good," said Cletus. He stepped into the elevator sling and waved to the transport ship to pull him back in. "Good luck."
"Good luck to you and your Dorsais!" Wefer replied. "You'll need it more than we do. We're just going to be doing our daily jobs."
Once back inside the transport, Cletus ordered it to swing back up to within line of sight of Two Rivers itself. The sky was lightening rapidly now, and the individual buildings in Two Rivers were easily picked out. Cletus had a coherent light beam trained on the curved reception mirror on the roof of the warehouse building that the Dorsais had taken over as their Two River HQ during the week of jump practice. He sent a call down the light beam and got an immediate answer from Eachan.
"Colonel?" Eachan's voice was distant, clipped and unruffled. "Been expecting to hear from you. I haven't had any reports from my scouts out in the jungle for better than three hours now. They're all either captured or lying low. But I gather the Neulanders are clustered in both river valleys above town. I've got all strong points here manned and ready."