He stood, confident and impressive in his chameleon battle-dress, with the fingertips of his right hand resting on the gently domed surface of the mapviewer before him.

“If you’ll gather around the viewer, here—” he said. The five Force-Leaders moved in until all six men stood thickly clustered around the meter-square area of the viewer. The illumination from the blackout shell enclosing them beat down and met the internal upward illumination of the viewer, so that Donal, glancing around at his fellow-officers, was irresistibly reminded of men caught between wrath and wrath, in some small package section of that hell their First Dissident Church Liaison-Elder had been so eloquent about, only a few hours since at the before-battle service.

“. . . Our position is here,” Hugh was saying. “As your commandant I make you the customary assurance that it is a perfectly tenable position and that the contemplated advance in no way violates the Mercenaries Code. Now—” he went on more briskly, “as you can see, we occupy an area five kilometers in front and three kilometers in depth, between these two ridges. Second Command of Battle Unit 176 to our right, Fourth Command of Battles to our left.

“The contemplated action calls for the Second and Fourth Commands to hold fast in full strength on both our flanks, while we move forward at sixty per cent of strength and capture a small town called Faith Will Succour, which is here—”

His index finger stabbed down and rested upon the domed image of the map.

“. . . At approximately four kilometers of distance from our present position. We will use three of our five Forces, Skuak’s White’s and Graeme’s; and each Force will make its separate way to the objective. You will each have your individual maps. There are woods for the first twelve hundred meters. After that, you will have to cross the river, which is about forty meters in width, but which Intelligence assures us is fordable at the present time with a maximum depth of a hundred and twenty centimeters. On the other side it will be woods again, thinning out gradually right up to the edge of the town. We leave in twenty minutes. It’ll be dawn in an hour and I want all three Forces across that river before full daylight. Any questions?”

“What about enemy activity in the area?” asked Skuak. He was a short, stocky Cassidan, who looked Mongoloid, but was actually Eskimo in ancestry. “What kind of opposition can we expect?”

“Intelligence says nothing but patrols. Possibly a small Force holding the town, itself. Nothing more.” Hugh looked around the circle of faces. “This should be bread and butter. Any more questions?”

“Yes,” said Donal. He had been studying the map. ‘‘What sort of military incompetent decided to send us out at only sixty per cent of strength?”

The atmosphere in the shell froze suddenly and sharply. Donal looked up to find Hugh Killien’s eyes on his across the viewer.