'Read your hull, sir,' Lex said. He activated and deactivated the grapple, causing
'I am sitting on your plates, Lord Kal, with fifty pounds of expand. In case you are not familiar with Texican expand, it has, in fifty pounds, almost one kiloton of explosive power.'
He waited.
'I am in a small, mobile vehicle which can penetrate your screen from the inside, as you must know. I can be off and away before detonation. I do not want to destroy you. I offer you terms, terms which are quite lenient. Surrender. Fly your ship to Texican space on my direction and you will be treated as a prisoner of war.'
'You, sir,' said Lord Kal, 'are a madman.'
'Must I kill to demonstrate that I am capable of destroying ten thousand of your ships?'
'On the contrary,' said Lord Kal, 'I must kill you. Granted, you are in contact with my ship, but you are in the center of a million Empire ships. Even if you can destroy a limited number of my command, you cannot escape.'
'But you'll be dead,' Lex said. 'You and all the men in your headquarters fleet. Do you desire that?'
Silence. Then, 'I have alerted the fleet, Texican. Within minutes you will be surrounded by a million ships. Now I ask you to surrender.'
'Would you, then, like to choose which of your ships, those nearest you, will be the first to die?'
'Lord Kal,' Arden Wal's voice came, 'I beg of you. Don't force us to kill. I am Arden Wal, former Fleet Captain in the Emperor's service, now in the service of Texas.'
'You are a traitor, then.' No, a free man,' Wal said, 'with your thought monitor removed from my brain.' Silence. Then Wal, on the Empire frequency, speaking passionately. 'To each of you, each officer of
rank in the Empire's fleet, I offer this. I am authorized to tell you that Texas offers you your freedom. From personal knowledge I can tell you that each of you is a slave to the Empire. You think, perhaps, that you have been trusted officers of the Emperor, while, all along, inside your brain is a device which reads your very thoughts, invades the most private of your personal feelings. You have been used. Now your commander is asking that you die for an Empire which values you less than it values one old Vandy. Surrender. Come with us to Texas and discover freedom.'
'This is your commander,' Lord Kal broadcast. 'If any ship moves, the guns of the fleet will be used on her.' 'General Wal,' Lex said, 'we have to do it.' There was a sadness in his voice.
'Yes,' Wal answered. 'Lord Kal,' Lex sent, 'train your instruments on the new Rearguard on your port quarter at an inclination of thirty-five degrees.'
He had established, during Wal's oration, that Blant Jakkes was locked onto that particular Rearguard. In a quick conversation on the Texican wavelength, he had prepared Jakkes, and he knew that it would be a severe test of the man. To kill a thousand men was not a simple matter.
'Jak?' he asked. 'Ready, Lex.' 'Well, we have to do it.' He saw the blink as Jakkes left the Rearguard, then shielded his eyes, opening them only after the
Rearguard had exploded into a small star of fire.
Two thousand men. He felt his stomach go sour. But all of Texas would meet a similar fate at the hands of the Empire. There was no choice. Darwinism. The survival of the fittest. '
outer plates of his flagship to dislodge the intruder only to have them swept off the hull by the mounted weapon on
'I will do as you ask,' Lord Kal said in a broken voice. 'Flagship-directed blink,' Lex said, giving coordinates. 'First, however, signal the remaining groups of the fleet that should they follow, all the ships of your groups will be destroyed.'
Lord Kal obeyed.
The trip home was mercifully short. Short blinks were necessary until the scattered stars of the galaxy's edge were behind them, and then it was long blinks, the Empire fleet in perfect, tight formation, the airorses still in place on the hulls of two thousand of them, until, in the big emptiness, Lex signaled ahead.
'For Texas and Zed. General Arden Wal's Expeditionary Force reports capture of ten thousand Empire
ships of the line, asks sanctuary for officers and crew and requests escort to landing zones in the desert.'
It went smoothly. Ten thousand ships was a lot of ships, but the Texas desert was big enough to absorb ten billion ships. They landed in orderly ranks, crews stepped down to be taken into custody. Tired, bent young men lifted their airorses to the sands and breathed the air of Texas, their hearts laboring after a month of nul-gravity, receiving medical attention, trying to unbend twisted legs and arms, hunched like the apes of old Earth from their thirty days in the seat of an airors. There were, however, no deaths.
Lex, trying to straighten his back, in pain, gasping at the pull of normal gravity, grinned at his father.
'Zed's balls,' Murichon growled, 'every time you go off the planet you bring home more Empireites.
What are you trying to do, repopulate Texas with aliens?'
'I'm just trying to stay alive, Dad,' Lex said, just before he collapsed into the sand.
He woke in the San Ann hospital with Riddent looking down at him through happy tears.
'I'm back,' he said.
'Yes.'
'You all right?'
'Sure, you?'
'I'm fine. Now.'
'He kicked,' she said.
'You're kidding.'
'Here, you can feel.'
He put his hand on her stomach and his son obliged. He felt life under his palm and he grinned. But the
grin faded. He was remembering the five ships which had blossomed into deadly fire out there in space.
Chapter Ten
He was older. On the outside he still looked as if some teenage boy had stolen his older brother's uniform, but inside he was old and sad. He was in a place called the Alamo Bar, a new establishment on the outskirts of Dallas City where servicemen gathered to forget the boredom of patrol after a tour of duty. He wore the insignia of a full colonel. The medal, which he didn't wear, had been pinned onto his blouse by Belle Resall herself. The men with him could have worn the same medal, Jakkes, Form, Arden Wal, Billy Bob Blink.
They had been screening volunteers from the captured Empire forces. Texas had ten thousand new ships, but it needed trained men to man them. Even now the hospital at San Ann was working overtime to remove the thought monitors from the skulls of the top officers, many of whom had expressed an interest in joining the Texican fleet. It was an old custom for lower grades to defect to the other side upon capture, so there were some seven thousand enlisted men undergoing indoctrination and training now for the purpose of joining the Texicans. It had been decided to give the ex-Cassies among the Empire fleet almost immediate status in the Texican forces, for in a fight against Empire, the Cassies would, it was felt, be loyal to anyone lighting their traditional enemy.
The planet was, more than ever, on a wartime footing, for the capture of a battle group and a top Overlord of the Empire fleet had sent vibrations throughout Empire, all the way to the old man who sat his throne on the planet called Earth. Spies reported renewed activity among the gathering attack fleet, rigid security measures throughout the Empire. There would be no more sneak attacks, for once aroused, the Empire was a fearsome military machine. Arden Wal estimated, for the high Texas brass, that it would take a mere three months for the empire ship works to replace the ten thousand ships lost to Texas.
Billy Bob was also advanced in rank after the airors raid and was in charge of rearming the captured Empire ships. Already more than half of the new ships had been outfitted with Darlenes and were on the line, ready to fight the last battle for Texas.
The mood of the planet was good. Had they not emerged victorious from two major battles without the loss of a single man? The problem, in fact, was not in preparing the Texican people for war but in impressing upon them
