The purity plot, p.12
The Purity Plot, page 12
The d'Alemberts stood silently beside the demolished bus, looking first at it, and then at each other. Both of them were fully aware how bad their situation was; no words could have expressed the desperation. They were stranded on the surface of the galaxy's most hostile planet, three hundred kilometers from any occupied settlement. Their only means of transportation had been destroyed, and even if they could get back to the base, they would be shot on sight. If they tried to walk back to. the base across the blazing terrain, they would have to take into account the fact that they only had enough oxygen to last them four hours-and not even a DesPlainian could walk that fast!
Chapter 11
The Army of the Just
Pias and Yvette hovered leisurely above the town, looking down at the darkened streets. The groundcar driven by the fleeing gunmen was readily identifiable as a pair of headlights speeding along the road, the only motorized vehicle in the area. Groundcars, no matter how rapidly they were driven, were no match in a race with an aircar; Pias, in fact, had to hold down their air speed to a bare minimum to avoid overshooting their quarry. Other than that, he and his wife had little trouble keeping track of the men who had just tried to kill them.
If the fugitives knew they were being followed, they gave no indication. They traveled in the straightest possible course, with no attempt to elude possible pursuit. "Amateurs," Yvette remarked. "They know how to fire a blaster, but they don't know the first thing about real undercover work. One of the first things they teach at the academy is how to follow someone and how to know when you're being followed yourself. I really don't think we have much to worry about from their sort."
"There are a lot of them though, and they're well armed," Pias reminded her. "Their sheer force of numbers makes them dangerous."
"And they do have that robot on their side. That worries me most of all."
Below them, the groundcar had left the outskirts of the town and was fleeing now through open countryside. After half an hour's fast drive, it pulled up in front of a small farmhouse, kilometers away from its nearest neighbors.
"Looks so quiet and innocent down there, doesn't it?" Pias commented.
"We'd better move in fast, before they have a chance to report to their headquarters about their failure at the hall. The more confusion we can sow at HQ, the better off we'll be."
Obligingly, Pias dropped their vehicle silently to the ground, landing with a gentle bump, a hundred meters from the farmhouse. The two agents leaped out from either side of the craft and ran toward the quiet building, stun-guns drawn. At Yvette's whispered instructions, Pias ran around to the far side of the house, while Yvette took up a station beside a window on the nearside. She grabbed hold of the top of the window frame and waited for several seconds, giving her husband time to get into position. Then, pushing herself away momentarily, she swung back toward the window, feet first. She dropped into the room amid a crashing of glass and drew her stunner once again.
Her entry had been Pias's signal. On the other side of the house she could hear another crash as the male half of the team also forced his way into the farmhouse. Yvette raced toward the center, knowing Pias would be doing the same. They would catch their enemies somewhere in the middle-not an enviable position to be in when such a highly trained team of SOTE agents was on the move.
The room Yvette found herself in was dark and empty. She crossed it quickly and opened the door to the central hallway. She was just in time to catch sight of a figure fleeing from a room on the other side of the house. On sheer reflex Yvette fired and the man dropped. The SOTE agent continued on into the room her victim had just left.
Pias, she found, had everything under control in here. Four bodies--three male, one female--were lying unconscious on the floor, in undignified poses. They had been taken completely by surprise at the sudden entrance, and had no chance to reach for their own weapons before Pias downed them. Yvette's husband grinned as his wife raced into the room. "Simple target practice," he said. "Not even moving targets really, except for the one who ran out of the room. I presume you got him."
"What about the rest of the house?"
The grin wavered on Pias's face. "I haven't checked yet."
"Then don't be so cocky," Yvette lectured sternly. "Always check to make sure you've gotten everybody before you relax." She herself had made that mistake once, on a spaceliner en route to Vesa, and she still considered herself lucky to have survived it. If her voice sounded excessively harsh, it was because she loved her husband and did not want him killed because of some stupid blunder.
Pias looked hurt by Yvette's tone, but knew she was right. "Yes, ma'am," he said, saluting smartly.
The two agents separated once more and spread out to search the rest of the house. Yvette checked a couple of rooms and found them empty. The door to a room at the back was closed. Yvette hesitated for a moment, then kicked it in and backed off slightly. It was well that she did, as a blaster beam came sizzling through the air just centimeters in front of her nose.
Recovering her balance, she dived forward through the opened door, rolled, and fired her stunner in the direction from which the blaster bolts had come. Her opponent had moved slightly himself, and her shot just missed. The blaster beam came sweeping through the air in a deadly arc, as she squeezed off a second shot. This time she hit her mark and the man dropped to the floor-but not before the leading edge of the blaster beam had touched her left shoulder. Yvette cried out and fell backward, avoiding more serious injury from the beam. Her shoulder burned like fire itself, even though she knew intellectually that it was a minor wound.
Pias was at her side in an instant. He had finished checking out his side of the house when he heard the crackling sound that he knew meant trouble. He kept his eyes scanning for any further ambushers, but there were none. "Evie," he said, kneeling beside his wife, "are you badly hurt?"
"I'll be smooth," she said, trying to give him a smile of confidence. "You should see the other guy."
Pias smiled back at her. "Yeah, it takes more than a blaster to down a tough old battle-ax like you."
"Is the house secure?"
"All smooth. I checked, this time."
"Bon. Then help me to my feet. We've still got work to do and, pleasant though it is, I can't afford to just lie here in your arms all night."
Yvette winced at the pain as Pias helped her up, but she made no sounds of protest. The old d'Alembert stoicism was coming to the fore, and she was certainly not going to let a little flesh wound prevent her from doing her job. She insisted on performing an equal share of the load as she and Pias hauled their captives all together into the first room and tied them up. By this time, the number three stuns the people had received were starting to wear off, and it was time to do some stern questioning.
This was Yvette's specialty. She had been trained in every form of the esoteric art of interrogation: verbal persuasion, psychological pressures, torture (which she preferred to call "physical inducement"), and drugs. She was a skilled practical psychologist, able to tell after only a few minutes which methods would be most effective on a given individual.
It was not hard to discover which of the captives was the leader. The others kept looking at the man named Hoyden whenever Yvette asked them anything, as though they were checking his reaction. None of them said much, which was about what Yvette had been expecting.
"They're all fanatics," Yvette explained to Pias, rubbing her painful shoulder all the while. "There's nothing worse than trying to break one of them. You can tear their bodies apart joint by joint and it only makes them feel more noble. Given plenty of time and the proper milieu I could work them down, but time is obviously limited. We want to strike further before Clunard realizes her plans against us have failed. I'll have to resort to the quick and dirty techniques."
Pias knew exactly what she meant: nitrobarb. It was the only drug ever developed under which any subject was compelled to tell the complete truth, which would have made it an invaluable tool except for its side effects. Unfortunately, the drug had a fifty percent mortality rate, and this had led to its being banned throughout the Empire. Mere possession of it was a capital offense. But that did not stop people on both sides of the law from using it.
Yvette removed the tiny hyposprayer and vial of nitrobarb from the secret compartments in the heels of her shoes and administered the drug to Hoyden. Within half an hour he was powerless to resist her questioning, and told her everything she needed to know about the location and organization of the Army of the Just.
The army itself was encamped halfway around the world, on another continent altogether. The base was in a deep valley, heavily overgrown with vegetation, so that it could not be spotted from space or from the air. All the recruits lived in a series of stark, wooden barracks, under conditions that would have made the ancient Spartans seem profligate. They practiced discipline and various techniques of combat and had at least two prayer sessions every day. They had a well-stocked arsenal built on one of the hillsides that surrounded the camp. Although they used all the latest advances in weaponry, they eschewed technology in general. From the way Hoyden talked, their fighting seemed to be on the level of the old Viking berserkers.
"They hardly seem like much of a threat to the Empire," Pias remarked privately to Yvette. "It would seem that a few well-trained battalions of the Imperial Marines could wipe them out in under an hour."
"Perhaps," Yvette mused. "But remember, you raised the question of-their sheer numbers. Then too, they're all heavy-grav natives, far faster and stronger than most of the marines. ln a face-to-face confrontation, it's true that some strategically placed high-
powered blasters could simply sweep across their ranks and decimate them. But remember,-Lady A and her people will be planning their strategy, and I don't think they're stupid enough to put this army into an open confrontation. The troops are more likely to be used in spot fighting, where there aren't many marines at the moment. An army like this could land at a chosen spot, devastate a city and lift off for their next destination before the Empire could react. I suspect that's what the Head's worried about, and I know the thought bothers me."
"Khorosho, then what do we do from here? Now that we know the location of the base, we can simply bomb the army into the ground.'
Yvette shook her head. "The simplest solution isn't always the best. If the Clunard robot doesn't happen to be at the camp when we do the bombing, she'll just go on and start the whole process over again. We have to remember that she's the real enemy, not the members of the army. Most of them are honest people who've been misled by a clever traitor. I hate to kill them without reason. If we can eliminate the cause, the rest of the movement will wither away of its own accord."
"Do we try tackling the army ourselves?" Pias asked. "I admit we're a pretty good team, but even so I don't like the odds of several thousand against two."
"We should reconnoiter at least, look the army over for ourselves. Maybe then some idea will occur to us. And of course we'll have some backup. We can notify the local office exactly where the army is located, so that if anything happens to us they won't have to start from scratch again."
"We'll have to do better than that," Pias said. "We'll be sure they have a team standing by, ready to blast in there and help if we get into any trouble."
Yvette smiled. "I always thought you were the brash, confident gambler. Has married life softened you, made you lose your nerve?"
"Not at all," her husband smiled back. "The smart gambler knows that you do everything possible to increase the odds in your favor before you even start playing the game. A successful gambler only bets on a sure thing."
They notified the local SOTE office of the army's whereabouts and told them that they planned to conduct a little spying mission. The planetary chief assured them he would have the local forces standing by; at a prearranged signal the two could broadcast over their aircar's radio, his people would come in with blasters blazing, if necessary, to rescue these special agents. He also assured Yvette he would dispatch a team to the farmhouse to pick up the prisoners and hold them far further questioning.
With those details squared away, the Bavols took off on their long flight. If they'd had a spaceship available to them they could have made the journey in a single suborbital trip of only an hour or so; but Purity was a large planet and, despite their aircar's speed, it took them better than fourteen hours to reach their destination on the other side of the globe. They had to land carefully, a good distance away from the valley where the Army of the Just was camped, so their vehicle would not be spotted. From that point they continued on foot up the hillside to a spot overlooking the valley.
It was early in the morning, local time, just a few hours before sunrise. There was a light snow on the ground, barely more than frost. Peering down into the gloom, the agents had to compliment Clunard on her plans. The camouflage was so perfect that, even knowing the base was there, they had a hard time spotting it. There was just the tiniest glimmering of light through the underbrush to indicate where the watch fires were burning.
"We'll have to move in closer," Yvette said, rubbing her shoulder as she'd been doing frequently since they left the farmhouse. The burning pain had all but disappeared, to be replaced by a dull, throbbing ache that was almost as bad. "We can't see anything significant from here."
Pias nodded in the darkness and the two moved forward down the hill. The defenses around this camp were not as stringent as those Yvette's family had encountered around the terrorist camp on Glasseye, partly because the Army of the Just had done nothing overtly illegal yet and were not afraid of being hunted. Also, their numbers were sufficiently strong that they feared no local force. There were no metal detectors here, just routine sentry patrols that the Bavols easily evaded. Even so, the hill was steep and slippery with snow, and the climb was difficult, particularly for Yvette with her sore arm. It was almost sunrise as they reached the floor of the valley.
They decided this time to stay together rather than to split up. They could only cover half as much territory this way, but in the event of trouble they would be able to fight as a team and thus have a better chance.
The valley floor was almost as thickly wooded as the hills surrounding it. There were no parade fields, no exercise grounds, no large open areas for combat maneuvers: nothing, in short, that would allow the camp to be spotted from the air. This army was not being trained according to traditional methods of combat anyway; when they attacked, it would be with wide-angle blaster fire that did not require accurate aim or coordinated action. This was to be an army held together by the discipline and righteousness of its faith, an army of fanatics like a relentless, brutal machine, smashing all before it that did not agree with its stern principles.
The barracks were lined up in two rows down the center of the camp. They were of unpainted wood with crude, thatched roofs, emphasizing the stark severity of Clunard's philosophy. Each building was thirty meters long and ten wide, and there must have been at least fifty of them stretching off to the far side of the valley. According to the instructions posted on them, the barracks were strictly segregated according to sex. Pias mused that this was one of the few armies in human history without camp followers, racy language or drunken, bawdy songs. Pias privately doubted whether such an army would be able to withstand a long, drawn-out campaign. But, as Yvette had pointed out, they could do immense damage in the short period of time they would actually be used.
They sneaked up alongside one of the buildings and peered in through a window at the sleeping figures. Both of them were aghast at the living conditions inside. Bunks were piled four high to the ceiling, with but the narrowest of aisles between one stack and the next. There was no room for privacy, no room for comfort of any sort.
"I've seen fancier flophouses," Yvette whispered as they backed away into the underbrush once more. "They must have at least two hundred men crowded in there. That would mean something like ten thousand in the entire camp."
"It probably gets them in the proper mood," Pias observed. "If I had to live under conditions like that, I know I'd be fighting mad."
They checked a few of the other buildings at random and found conditions similar to the first. The sky was beginning to lighten now, though the sun itself had yet to climb over the tall hills. Realizing that they had to hurry before they were caught in full daylight, the two SOTE agents quickened their pace of observation. They gave the armory a quick check. This was another crude building of the same style as the barracks but considerably bigger. It was built right against the side of one hill, and three guards were standing duty out front.
There were the beginnings of movement through the camp now as the cooking personnel prepared the daily breakfast. Pias and Yvette had to move extra carefully to avoid detection. Soon the entire army would be awake and bustling about on their daily chores, and the SOTE team's spying would be curtailed. They had to make the most of their few remaining minutes.
"Let's see if we can find the administration building," Yvette suggested. "Anything we can get there is bound to be some help."
They slipped around the perimeter of the compound, two more moving shadows in the emerging dawn. They passed the mess hall and the prayer hall before finally reaching the building they were seeking. Like all the other structures in the camp, this was merely a crude, wooden shack, unpainted except for the stenciled letters identifying its function.
There were two women standing guard out in front of the building, but the back windows were totally unsecured. After checking one room to make sure it was empty, Pias pried open the window and the two agents slipped inside to continue their investigation.
