"Yes, sir," said Arvid, "the loudspeaker horn and the singleton mines are tucked away out of sight in duffle packs. I couldn't get the rifle into a pack, but it's with the packs, clipped onto the electric horse you asked for."
"And the horse, itself?"
"I've got it in the back of a courier car, outside... " Arvid hesitated. "I asked to go with you, sir, but the orders just called for you and the field officer in charge of the company. I want to tell you about him. They've given you a first lieutenant named Bill Athyer."
"And this Bill Athyer is no good, is that it?" asked Cletus, cheerfully, picking up his communications helmet and leading the way out of the room.
"How did you know?" Arvid stared down at Cletus, following him as they went out down the long center aisle of the BOQ.
Cletus smiled back at him, limping along, but delayed his answer until they had stepped out the front door into the misty, predawn darkness where the courier car waited for Cletus. They got in, Arvid behind the controls. As the big young lieutenant sent the vehicle sliding off on its air cushion, Cletus went on:
"I rather thought the general'd be giving me someone like that. Don't worry about it, Arv. You're going to have your hands full enough today, as it is. I want you to find office space for me and line me up a staff - a warrant officer, if you can get one for office manager, a couple of clerical tech fives and a file clerk tech two with a research specialty. Can you get right to work on that?"
"Yes, sir," answered Arvid. "But I didn't know we had authority for something like that - "
"We don't, yet," said Cletus. "But I'll get it for you. You just find the premises and the people, so we know where to lay hands on them as soon as we have authorization."
"Yes, sir," said Arvid.
Having arrived at the transport area, Cletus found his company under the command of First Lieutenant William Athyer, standing at east in ranks, equipped, armed and apparently ready to take off. Cletus assumed that the men had had breakfast - not being the field officer in command of them, it was not up to him to see that they had; and asking Athyer about it would be impolitic, not to say insulting. Cletus descended a little stiffly from the courier car and watched as Arvid unloaded the electric horse, with its equipment.
"Colonel Grahame?" a voice said behind him. "I'm Lieutenant Athyer, in command of this company. We're ready to take off... "
Cletus turned. Athyer was a short, dark, fairly slim man, in his mid-thirties, with a beak-like nose. A vaguely sour expression sat on his features, as if habit had made it permanent there. His speech was abrupt, even aggressive, but the words at the end of each speech tended to thin out into a whine.
"Now that you're finally here, sir," he added.
The extra, unnecessary statement verged on impertinence. But Cletus ignored it, looking past Athyer's shoulder at the men behind the lieutenant. Their tanned skin and the mixture of old and new equipment and clothing about them suggested experience. But they were more silent than they should be; and Cletus had little doubt about the reason for this. To be put back under weapons and flown off into combat in the middle of Rest and Retraining was not likely to make soldiers happy. He looked back at Athyer.
"I imagine we'll start loading right away, then. Won't we, Lieutenant?" he said pleasantly. "Let me know where you want me."
"We're taking two atmosphere support ships for transport," growled Athyer. "I've got my top sergeant in the second. You'd better ride with me in the first, Colonel - "
He broke off to stare at the electric horse, as its overhead vanes whined into movement. Arvid had just switched its satchel turbine on, and the single-person vehicle had lifted into the air so that it could be moved easily under its own power to the support ship. Evidently, Athyer had not connected the horse with Cletus until this moment. In truth, it was an unlikely little contraption for such an outing - designed for spaceport inspection work, mainly, and looking like a wheel-less bicycle frame suspended fore and aft from metal rods leading down from a side-by-side pair of counter-rotating ducted vanes driven by a nuclear-pack, satchel turbine just below them. Cletus' cone rifle and duffle bags were hung before its saddle on the crossbar.
It was not pretty, but that was no reason for Athyer to scowl at it as he was doing.
"What's this?" he demanded.
"It's for me, Lieutenant," said Cletus, cheerfully. "My left knee's half-prosthetic, you know. I didn't want to hold you and your men up if it came to moving someplace along the ground in a hurry."
"Oh? Well... " Athyer went on scowling. But the fact that the sentence he had begun trailed off was evidence enough that his imagination was failing him in its search for a valid excuse to forbid taking the electric horse. Cletus was, after all, a lieutenant-colonel. Athyer turned, snapping at Arvid. "Get it on board, then! Quick, Lieutenant!"
He turned away to the business of getting the company of perhaps eighty men into the two atmosphere support ships waiting on the transport area pad some fifty feet distant.
The boarding of the ships went smoothly and easily. Within twenty minutes they were skimming northward over the tops of the jungle trees toward Etter's Pass - and the sky beyond the distant mountain range was beginning to grow pale with the dawn.
"What're your plans, Lieutenant?" began Cletus, as he and Athyer sat facing each other in the small, forward passengers' compartment of the ship.
"I'll get the map," said Athyer, ducking away resentfully from Cletus' gaze. He dug into the metal command case on the floor between his boots and came up with a terrain map of the Exotic side of the mountains around Etter's Pass. He spread the map out on the combined knees of himself and Cletus.
"I'll set up a picket line like this," Athyer said, his finger tracing an arc through the jungle on the mountain slopes below the pass, "about three hundred yards down. Also, place a couple of reserve groups high up, behind the picket line on either side of the pass mouth. When the Neulanders get through the pass and far enough down the trail to hit the lower curve of the picket line, the reserve groups can move in behind them and we'll have them surrounded... That is, if any guerrillas do come through the pass."
Cletus ignored the concluding statement of the lieutenant's explanation. "What if the guerrillas don't come straight down the trail?" Cletus asked. "What if they turn either right or left directly into the jungle the minute that they're on this side of the mountains?"
Athyer stared at Cletus at first blankly, and then resentfully, like a student who has been asked an exam question he considers unfair.
"My support groups can fall back ahead of them," he said at last, ungraciously, "alerting the rest of the picket line as they go. The other men can still close in behind them. Anyway, we've got them enclosed."
"What's visibility in the jungle around there, Lieutenant?" asked Cletus.
"Fifteen - twenty meters," Athyer answered.
"Then the rest of your picket line is going to have some trouble keeping position and moving upslope at an angle to enclose guerrillas who're probably already beginning to split up into groups of two and three and spread out for their trek to the coast. Don't you think?"
"We'll just have to do the best we can," said Athyer, sullenly.
"But there're other possibilities," said Cletus. He pointed to the map. "The guerrillas have the Whey River to their right as they come out of the pass, and the Blue River to their left, and both those rivers meet down at Two Rivers Town , below. Which means that any way the Neulanders turn, they've got to cross water. Look at the map. There're only three good crossing spots above the town on the Blue River , and only two on the Whey - unless they'd want to go right through the town itself, which they wouldn't. So, any or all of those five crossings could be used."