They were all listening to him—some a little puzzled, others doubtfully, as if they expected all of what he was saying to turn suddenly into some joke to relieve the tension. Only Ian was phlegmatic and aborbing.

“Over the past few years, this force, which we officer, has developed the wherewithal—some of it carried over from previous forces, some of recent development. Your men know the techniques, although they have never been told in what way they were going to apply them. Ian, here, has produced through rigorous training the highly specialized small unit of the field forces—the Group, which under ordinary battle conditions numbers fifty men, but which we have streamlined to a number of thirty men. These Groups have been trained to take entirely independent action and survive by themselves for considerable periods of time. This same streamlining has gone up through the ranks—extending even to your fleet exercises, which have also been ordered, with a particular sort of action in mind.”

He paused.

“What all this boils down to, gentlemen,” he said, “is that we are all about to prove that old truism wrong —and take a civilized world, lock, stock, and barrel. We will do it with the men and ships we have at hand right here, and who have been picked and trained for this specific job—as the planet we are about to take has been picked and thoroughly intelligenced.” He smiled at them. They were all sitting on the edges of their floats now.

“That world,”—he pressed the stud that had been under his finger all this time; the wall behind him vanished to reveal the three-dimensional representation of a large, green planet— “is the heart of our enemy’s power and strength. His home base—Ceta!”

It was too much—even for senior officers. A babble of voice burst out around the table all at once. Donal paid no attention. He had opened a drawer at his end of the table and produced a thick sheaf of documents, which he tossed on the table before him.

“We will take over Ceta, gentlemen,” he said. “By, in a twenty-four hour period, replacing all her local troops, all her police, all her garrisons and militia and law enforcement bodies and arms, with our own men.”

He pointed to the sheaf of documents.

“We will take them over piecemeal, independently, and simultaneously. So that when the populace wakes up the following morning they will find themselves guarded, policed and held, not by their own authorities, but by us. The details as to targets and assignments are in this stack, gentlemen. Shall we go to work?”