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worlds called the Friendlies, "are outrageous."
James Arm-of-the-Lord was a small, frail, middle-aged man with sparse gray
hair looking even smaller and more frail than he might otherwise in the tight
black jumper and trousers that were the common dress of those belonging to the
fanatical sects that had colonized, and later divided and multiplied, on the
surfaces of Harmony and Association. At first sight, he seemed a harmless
little man, but a glance from his dark eyes or even a few words spoken aloud
by him were enough to destroy that illusion. Plainly he was one of those rare
people who burn with an inner fire but the inner fire that never failed in
James Arm-of-the-Lord was a brand of woe and a torch of terror to the
Unrighteous. Nor was it lessened by the fact that the ranks of the
Unrighteous, in James' estimation, included all those whose opinions in any
way differed from his own. He sat now in his office at Government Center on
Harmony, gazing across the desk's bare, unpolished surface at Cletus, who sat
opposite.
"I know we're priced beyond your means," said Cletus. "I didn't come by to
suggest that you hire some of our Dorsais. I was going to suggest that
possibly we might want to hire some of your young men."
"Hire out our church members to spend their blood and lives in the sinful wars
of the Churchless and the Unbelievers?" said James. "Unthinkable!"
"None of your colonies on Harmony or Association have anything to speak of in
the way of technology," said Cletus. "Your Militant Church may contain the
largest population of any of the churches on these two worlds, but you're
still starving for real credit of the kind you can use in interworld trading
to set up the production machinery your people need. You could earn that
credit from us, as I say, by hiring out some of your young men to us."
James' eyes glittered like the eyes of a coiled snake in reflective light.
"How much?" he snapped.
"The standard wages for conventional mercenary soldiers," replied Cletus.
"Why, that's barely a third of what you asked for each of your Dorsais!"
James' voice rose. "You'd sell to us at one price, and buy from us at
another?"
"It's a matter of selling and buying two different products," answered Cletus,
unmoved. "The Dorsais are worth what I ask for them because of their training
and because by now they've established a reputation for earning their money.
Your men have no such training, and no reputation. They're worth only what I'm
willing to pay for them. On the other hand, not a great deal would be demanded
of them.
They'd be used mainly as diversionary forces like our jump troops in our
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recent capture of Margaretha, on Freiland."
The taking over of Margaretha on Freiland had been the latest of a series of
successful engagements fought by the new-trained Dorsai mercenaries under
Cletus' command. Over a year had gone by since the capture of the stibnite
mines on Newton, and in that time they had conducted campaigns leading to
clear-cut and almost bloodless victories on the worlds of Newton's sister
planet of Cassida, St. Marie, a smaller world under the Procyon sun with Mara
and Kultis, and most recently on Freiland, which, with
New Earth, were the inhabited planets under the star of Sirius.
Margaretha was a large, ocean-girt island some three hundred miles off the
northeastern shore of the main continental mass of Freiland. It had been
invaded and captured by the nearest colony adjoining it on the mainland mass.
The island's government in exile had raised the funds to hire the Dorsais to
recapture their homeland from the invaders.
Cletus had feinted with an apparent jump-belt troop drop of untrained Dorsais
over Margaretha's main city. But meanwhile he had sent several thousand
trained troops into the island by having them swim ashore at night at
innumerable points around the coastline of the island. These infiltrators had
taken charge of and coordinated the hundreds of spontaneous uprisings that had
been triggered off among the island's population by word of the jump-troop
drop.
Faced with uprisings from within and evident attack from without, the mainland
troops that had seized the island chose discretion as the better part of valor
and abandoned the island for their home colony.
They reached home only to discover how few had been the troops that had
actually driven them out, and turned swiftly about to return to Margaretha.
When they reached the island this second time, however, they found watch fires
burning on all the beaches, and the population aroused, armed and this time
ready to die between the tide marks rather than let a single mainlander
invader ashore.
As with Cletus' other military successes, it had been a victory achieved
through a careful blending of imagination and psychology with what was now
beginning to be regarded, on the other colony worlds, as the almost superhuman
abilities of the trained Dorsai soldiers. Clearly, for all his apparent
unwillingness to listen to Cletus' offer, James was not unaware of the hard
facts and advantages of the proposition. It was typical of elders such as
James that they were either pro or con, but never admitted to indecision.
Cletus took his leave, accordingly, having planted the seed of an idea in a
Friendly mind, and being content to bide his time and let it grow.
He took a spaceship to New Earth, that sister planet of Freiland, where his
command of Dorsais and a new military campaign were waiting for him. Marcus
Dodds, Eachan's old second-in-command, met him at the Dorsai camp just outside
of Adonyer, the main city of Breatha Colony, their employers on
New Earth. In spite of the two new stars on each of his shoulder tabs, marking
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