For a few seconds, Tully studied the general’s gray eyes. Just as calm as they always seemed. Kralik was pretty unflappable.
“What’s this all about, sir?”
“I don’t know, to be honest. But things are starting to change, I think. The day might come when I need to get in touch with somebody who pulls some weight in the Resistance. If so, I could trust Rob Wiley.”
He chuckled, seeing the expression on Tully’s face. “No, I’m not likely to defect, no matters what happens. My own grudge against you bastards is pretty well faded away, by now, since I know damn well the guys who killed my father and brother and sister-in-law were just common crooks. But what you’re doing has no point anymore. You don’t have a cold chance in hell, Tully. Leaving aside Jao control of space, you don’t have any of the other prerequisites for a successful guerrilla movement. Just start with the fact that you’ve got no secure base area to work from, not even any neutral territory. That’s why you’re still such a political mess, twenty years after the conquest. How many Resistance groups are there, anyway? With nothing uniting them—neither program nor structure—beyond ‘Jao Go Home.’ That’s because you can’t even hold an authoritative congress anywhere to bring sensible order to yourselves. Where would you assemble it, and be secure? It’d take you years just to organize the thing, as scattered and divided as you are.”
Tully’s eyes moved away from the general’s. He’d heard Wiley complain about exactly the same things.
“Face it, Tully. I did, long ago. There’s no getting rid of the Jao. Give the Resistance twenty more years, and they’ll be nothing left of any of them but outright bandits. Somehow or other, we’re going to have to make an accommodation with the Jao, whether we like it or not.”
Tully stared stubbornly at nothing in particular. He heard Kralik chuckle softly.
“Never mind. I’m really not in the political conversion business. And I’ve rested enough. I’d better go over there and see what the Subcommandant’s up to.”
The general rose and Tully looked up at him. Now, Kralik’s eyes had the look of winter seas.
“Just give my regards to Colonel Wiley, if and when you see him. And tell him that I’d really just as soon never have to do to him what I’m going to do to these trigger-happy idiots in Salem tomorrow. But I will, if I have to. And if I’m running it instead of some Jao appointed by Oppuk, I’ll dig Rob out of his hole in the mountains. They don’t know how to do it, but I do.”
He turned and walked away, heading for Aille. After a moment, Tully rose and followed him.
* * *
“I have been consulting with Wrot krinnu Hemm vau Wathnak, who is a veteran of the original conquest of this world,” the Subcommandant said to Kralik, when he and Tully came up. “He agrees fully with your assessment of the current military action. We Jao are ill equipped for this engagement.”
Wrot’s ears waggled. “The natives have a saying for it, like they do for so many things. ‘Bitten off more than you can chew.’ ” He said it with an air of almost human cheer. “Before I retired, we found ourselves in similar situations many times. In my experience, it is always a mistake to fight humans in the midst of their cities, if it can possibly be avoided. They are infernally clever about ambush and sabotage, and their weapons are ideally suited for such terrain and tactics.”
Tully stared, wondering where they’d dug this one up.
Aille’s stance changed subtly, so that he looked somehow more confident, more in charge. “Yes, I have come to the same conclusion. I will therefore hand the campaign over to you, General Kralik, and your Pacific Division. Launch the attack as soon as you are ready.”
Kralik’s eyes glittered. “Yes, sir.” He began to turn away.
“One moment, General,” said Aille. He was looking toward his command center. The structure Aille had had poured for himself was much smaller than the one nearby erected by Governor Oppuk. Yaut was emerging from it, holding something in his hand. One of those short, sticklike things the Jao called a “bau,” Tully thought. Except this one, like the one Aille carried, looked to be made out of some kind of bone or shell instead of wood.