“He’s putting together an army. A real army.” Jameson spread his hands outward for emphasis. “Thousands of men. He’s recruiting them from the locals. They’ve got four shuttles landing supplies and weapons almost every day now: lasers, trucks, heavy stuff.”
“Thousands of men? Four shuttles?”
With a grim nod, Jameson answered, “The Council’s decided that the only way to get the fissionables is to smash Douglas once and for all. So they’re giving Kobol everything he wants. There must be more able-bodied lunar men in Florida now than there are left in the settlement.”
“Everything he wants?” Alec echoed. “Kobol’s not in command; I am!”
“You might find that point a little difficult to get across. The official verdict was that you were killed or captured. The rumor was that you’d joined Douglas.”
“They’re both wrong,” Alec insisted. “I was named commander of this mission and I’ve never been relieved of command, no matter what Kobol says or thinks.”
“He’s not going to be pleasant about that,” Jameson warned.
Alec looked at him, thought a moment, then said, “All right, there’s no sense arguing about it here and now. We’ll have to settle it between us when he gets here.”
Jameson looked unconvinced, even slightly amused.
“I assume Kobol has some plan worked out for getting his thousands of troops here?”
“Indeed he does,” Jameson said. “He’s been studying terrestrial meteorology and he’s come up with the irrefutable observation that it’s warmer in the southern areas—where he is—than it is up here in the north.”
“So?”
“So his plan is to follow the advance of springtime right up the countryside. He’s already started to move northward, out of Florida and into some lovely swamplands the natives call Georgia. As the warm weather advances northward, Kobol plans to advance his men along with it, adding new recruits along the way.”
“More men?”
“That’s right,” Jameson said. “He says that nothing succeeds like excess.”
“He stole that. It’s a quotation from history.”
Jameson’s stem face showed surprise. “Really? He’s been strutting around like he thought of it himself. But no matter who said it first, I think he’s right. The more men we have, the more raiders and barbarians will want to join us. And the bigger the army we have to face Douglas, the easier it’ll be to beat him.”
Alec scuffed a toe on the snowbank where they stood. “It won’t be easy to keep an army like that together. Those people aren’t going to march more than a thousand klicks and maintain discipline. Why should they?”
“Some of them will. Maybe a lot of them will. Kobol’s promised them all the loot and women they can carry, once they’ve beaten Douglas.”
Alec finally understood. And thought of Angela.
“So we can expect Kobol’s army to reach here just about the time the spring mud’s dried and it’s easy to move across country,” Alec summarized.
“That’s his plan.”
“The timing’s going to be important. He’s got to arrive here just as the travelling turns good again. We’ve been able to survive so far because it’s been more trouble for Douglas to hunt us down than we’re worth to him. But when the travelling gets easy again, I don’t think we can last very long. If Kobol waits a week or so too long, we could be dead when he gets here.”
“I know.”
Alec asked, “But does he?”
For a moment Jameson did not answer. His bird-of-prey expression was as emotionless as he could make it. Finally he said, slowly, “He understands your situation, and he’ll get here in time. He wants to marry your mother and gain full control of the Council through her. He won’t let you get killed. Not that way, at least.”
Strangely, his words neither surprised Alec nor upset him. He hasn’t told me anything I didn’t already suspect.
“All right,” Alec said quietly. “It’s vital that Kobol and I meet face to face before his troops get here. I’ve got a nearly complete picture of Douglas’s defenses. In another two weeks I’ll fill in the few gaps in the information. Even with a big army, he’ll need that intelligence.”
“I know,” Jameson said, a bit stiffly. “He sent me to get that information from you.”
Alec shook his head. “No. I’ll talk to Kobol and no one else.”
Jameson said nothing, gave no hint of what he felt.
“It’s more than relaying information on the defenses,” Alec tried to explain. “There’s the entire question of strategy... how we’re going to attack Douglas. If you carry back the data I’ve amassed, Kobol will set up his battle plan before he gets here. That could be disastrous.”
“Should I tell him that?”
Alec grinned. “Tell him whatever you like. But I must see him before his army reaches this far north. I’ll leave it to you to arrange a time and place.”
Jameson looked away from Alec, out across the snowy landscape, the bare patches of ground, the brilliant blue sky. “He won’t try to kill you,” he said softly, almost to himself. “But he might try to keep you under his eye... a prisoner.”
“You mean that a meeting with him might be a trap?”
Jameson said, “It could be.”
“Can I depend on you to prevent that from happening?”
Swinging around to fix his hawk-like gaze on Alec, Jameson replied, “I’m only one man. He’ll have plenty of others with him.”
“I know,” Alec said. “But if it comes to trouble, will you stand with me?”
