THERE WAS nothing to distinguish this room from more than a dozen identical rooms on worlds scattered around the star systems of the Terran Cluster controlled by the Accord of Free Worlds. As always, even the name of the planet on which the room was located was classified.
The circular chamber and its furnishings were a uniform pearl-gray, giving the place a nebulous quality in soft lighting. The junctions of walls, ceiling, and floor were hard to distinguish. In the center of the room there was a large circular conference table, with each place having its own compsole and monitor. The space above the center of the table normally displayed a spherical star-field projection, three meters in diameter. Now, however, it displayed a planetary globe. The half-dozen men in the room were standing together on one side of the globe.
Only one of those men could have identified, the world on display at a glance prior to the start of this briefing. There was nothing particularly remarkable about the world that could be seen on a projection of this scale. There were two continental landmasses remarkably similar in outline (rather like a pair of lima beans) on opposite sides of the world: Each continent had one end extending just across the equator; one from the northern hemisphere, the other from the southern. The “convex” side of each “bean” was to the northwest. The other extremes of the continents were both near 80 degrees of latitude, north and south respectively. A “bridge” of islands seemed to connect the tropical ends of the two continents, a loose chain extending across the 2900 kilometers separating their nearest points–more than 1200 small islands in three main archipelagoes. The distances between islands varied from less than one kilometer to more than 300. The islands varied in size from less than a single square kilometer to areas slightly over 8000 square kilometers.
“The world is Tamkailo,” Encho Mizatle, the Accord’s minister for defense, started. He took a couple of steps away from the other men in the room, to the side and slightly closer to the globe. The projection was rotating so that Tamkailo went through a complete “day” in four minutes. Encho stared at the world for a moment, until a whisper behind him caught his attention, He half turned toward the others again.
“Yes,” he said, “a Schlinal world.” He paused long enough for two deliberate blinks. In between, his eyes ranged across the faces of the other five men. “An important Schlinal world.” He took a deep breath and turned to stare at the image of Tamkailo again.
“‘A fair approximation of Hell, in human terms,” he said. “To put it in terms some of you might be able to relate to, think of it as Venus about twelve hundred years into the terraforming project there.” That would have been about two thousand years before this meeting. Mizatle had been an academic before gravitating toward politics: His field had been the history of mankind’s expansion away from Earth, primarily the esoterica of the earliest period. It tickled his vanity to know things that perhaps no more than a hundred people in all the settled reaches of the galaxy might even guess . . . or care about. “The chain of islands between the two continents gives a misleading impression. The tropical zone is, to date, virtually impossible for humans. At least without extensive protective gear and support services that are beyond the reach of a field army on campaign.” He stopped the globe’s rotation so that the chain of islands was in the center of the side facing the group.
“The average daily high temperature in the tropic zone is forty-seven degrees Celsius, with extremes of fifty-eight known. The actual record is almost certainly several degrees above that. Combined with Tamkailo’s atmosphere, it makes the tropics off limits to humans without special gear except at night, when the temperatures do occasionally drop near normal human body temperature. Briefly.”
“Too much carbon dioxide and too little oxygen, isn’t it?” Major General Kleffer Dacik asked.
Mizatle nodded. “The nitrogen component of Tamkailo’s atmosphere is almost identical with Earth’s, but the percentage of oxygen is one point three percent less, and most of that is carbon dioxide. Additionally, the normal surface air pressure is moderately high in comparison to most settled worlds. In the more temperate zones of Tamkailo the atmospheric differences are marginally acceptable. But not in what are, for humans, superheated conditions. Especially if those humans must be active. Even the Hegemony has, mostly, left the tropics and subtropics alone, doing no more than establishing minimal communications relay facilities there.”
Mizatle’s cough was affectation.
“Obviously, Tamkailo would not be a very inviting world for most settlers. The native life forms are of no use to humans, and the plants and animals we are accustomed to do not, as a rule, thrive on the world. Tamkailo does have an abundance of certain metal ores which lend themselves to industrial exploitation. The Hegemony has always used Tamkailo for that, and for some minor industrial purposes. A minimal population, drawn from penal exiles and their families, provides a continuing labor pool. Now, however, the Schlinal warlords have found another use for the habitable zones of the northern and southern extremities. They have turned the world into an arsenal. In fact, certain Schlinal communiques have taken to referring to the world as Arsenal, capital A. Intelligence has taken six months to confirm that Arsenal and Tamkailo are, indeed, the same world.” He did not say anything about how military intelligence had managed to intercept and decode enough Schlinal communications to analyze, and none of the men in the room were incautious enough to ask.
“It has become a collection point for military materiel, munitions and other equipment. There has always been a military garrison on the world, but that has been dramatically increased of late. We suspect that the new troops are staging on Tamkailo for another offensive against the Accord.” Mizatle permitted himself a sour chuckle. “Even before the recent arrivals, the number of Hegemony troops outnumbered the, ah, civilian population by a factor of three to two.”
“We’re going after this world?” General Dacik asked when Mizatle did not continue immediately. It seemed a safe guess.
Mizatle nodded absentmindedly. “The buildup has been slow,” he said. “We think that is because they are having difficulties putting together the men and matériel for a new push into Accord space. Fighting both us and the Dogel Worlds has proved trying for the Hegemony.” None of the others saw Mizatle’s thin smile. He was staring at the projection of Tamkailo again. “I think they have always made the mistake of dismissing our potential. And now the Schlinal industrial sector is having great difficulty avoiding shortages. If we can take Tamkailo, or at least destroy the bulk of the munitions there, we will buy the Accord a lot of time. It might even be enough to make the Hegemons seek peace with us, so that they can concentrate on what they see as the greater threat to their security; the Dogel Worlds. That would give us a chance to liberate the Accord worlds that the Doges have taken.”
While Mizatle was. talking, General Dacik had taken out a pocket compsole and entered a request for data on Tamkailo. He scanned the first screens quickly, with growing dismay. When he looked up from his compsole, he found that the defense minister had turned around again and was staring at him.
“A difficult objective, Minister,” Dacik said.
Mizatle nodded again. “P and I have been working on this for several months, General.” P and I: Planning and Intelligence. “They have come up with several possibilities. You will be commander in chief for this mission. The final selection will be left to you. We’re not so much interested in capturing the world as we are in destroying munitions and military assets. Tamkailo is too far inside Schlinal space, and far too marginal a world, for us to covet the real estate.”
“We have a military briefing set up for you, Kleffer,” General Hobarth, the chief of Accord P&I, said. “My staff is at your disposal.”
Dacik looked around. Everyone was staring at him now.
“We’ll give it our best,” he said. He had very little choice.