Read Imperial Stars 1-The Stars at War for Free Online

welcomed that added fillip.
    "At your orders, Tjetlyned." Sath said. Demaris shot a look past him at the Overchief and saw that he was pointedly ignoring both of them.
    Ugh. He'd been daydreaming at the wrong time. He nodded quickly to Sath, and they slipped out the door together.
 
"Ah, we are the Agency's offspring,
The brood of a sinful old maid.
There isn't one chance that she'd sell us out—
Unless things were such that it paid."
(alternate chorus)
     

Chapter Five
    Three months later, Sath laid a fresh set of reports on Demaris' desk. "Here we are, Koil. Top sheet's the summary." He dropped down on the bench beside the desk and wearily dug a flask out of his belt. "Have some?" he offered, holding up the flask.
    Demaris twitched an ear negatively, and took his own brand out of a drawer. "Can't stand that gunk you use." He tilted the flask and touched his tongue to the mild stimulant. Recapping the flask, he yawned broadly. He looked at the report in disgust.
    "Same thing?"
    Sath nodded. "Yep. In the past fifteen days, our demolitions teams have immobilized such-and-such a tonnage of Geneiid naval vessels. Our infiltrators have immobilized this-and-that additional tonnage by misrouting supplies, disrupting communications, altering fleet orders, et cetera. We can truthfully report that our organization has been doing an excellent job, and that we are performing far above the expectations set down by Staff."
    Demaris grimaced. "And how far behind schedule is the push against Farla?"
    Sath coughed. "Well, if you plotted the curve of Staff's failure against our curve of success, they'd be almost superimposed."
    Demaris shook his head. "Still the same trouble?"
    "Yep. Seems like Genis has just as good an intelligence service as we do. Tit for tat, right down the line."
    Demaris clicked his fingertips against the surface of his desk. The situation stank. For every boat that shipped a team of saboteurs into Genis, a Geneiid boat dropped its cargo down on Marak's planets. Like two giants stabbing pins through each other's ganglia, Marak and Genis were immobilizing each other.
    War in space—war in terms of planetary englobements, massive landings, and blockades—was impossible. The problem of supply and reinforcement became insurmountable over interstellar distances. As the attacker's supply lines lengthened, the defender's shortened, until eventually the attrition on the attacker became too great. You could only stage a mass attack on a hopelessly weak foe—such as Farla. Otherwise, it was your infiltrators and demolitions men, crippling your enemy at home, who first had to weaken him. And if your sabotage was balanced by equally effective enemy action, then both of you slowly bled away, matching each other corpuscle for corpuscle, neither ever gaining a relative upper hand.
    Demaris wondered how long this could keep up. Agency men weren't supermen. Man for man, there was no reason why they should be any better than their opposite numbers. The Agency's selling point was the right man in the right place, at the right time.
    Well, so far he was holding his own. But how much longer would the Overchief be satisfied with that?
    Demaris grinned to himself, at himself. Face it. What galled him most was his inability to beat his Geneiid adversary. The Agency and its considerations were secondary.
    "So, anyway—" Sath was saying, "I just got a call from the Overchief. He wants to see us."
    Demaris inhaled slowly.
     
    The Overchief was showing the strain. Farla should have been penetrated and taken by now. Instead, the Marakian fleet lay hamstrung in its berths. That the Geneiids were racked by the same frustration was of little comfort to him.
    He waved them to benches with a nervous gesture of his arm. Demaris sat down carefully. For the first time since he'd landed on Marak, he became consciously aware of the weapon buried in his chest. Cautiously, he put a slight bit of pressure on his shoulder muscles, and held his breath.