Free The Invaders Plan by Ron Hubbard Page B

"In the first place, a combat engineer is in the Fleet. The Exterior Division – and I still think you're from the 'drunks' – is an entirely different division of the government. When you say you want him transferred, you're saying that he would have to resign from the Fleet, make application for commission in the Exterior Division, come up through their ranks . . . it would take years! I'm sure you don't have years. And you have not brought his resignation from the Fleet. So it can't be done." For a moment I wondered if Heller had known all this – that he had known it was this complicated and was using a cunning out. Maybe he was cleverer than I had given him credit for. (Looking back on it now, I wish he had been!) But the best authorities on bureaucracy are the bureaucrats. So I myself got clever. "If you had this problem I've got," I said, "how would you handle it?" That was a lot better than going back to the Apparatus and finding some blackmail on this fellow – there always is some and if it doesn't exist, one makes it up and "documents" it. But an order illegally obtained by coercion might, itself, be illegal. It was much more clever to do it straight. Novel, but it might work.
    He thought for a while, really being helpful. He brightened. "Ah! I could just give you a standard set of orders for a combat engineer." And (bleep) him, he simply pushed some buttons and a couple seconds later a form came out of a slot. He handed it to me. It said: FLEET ORDER M-93872654-MM-93872655-CE REFERENCE: GRAND COUNCIL ORDER 938362537-451BP3 KNOW ALL JETTERO HELLER GRADE X COMBAT ENGINEER SERIAL E555MXP IS HEREBY AND HEREWITH AS OF THIS DATE ORDERED TO INDEPENDENT DUTY ON HIS OWN COGNIZANCE TERMINATING ON HIS OWN COGNIZANCE.
    ENDORSEMENT: SEE REFERENCE.
    ISSUED, AUTHENTICATED AND VERIFIED BY THE FLEET PERSONNEL OFFICER Brightly, he said, "That all right?"
    "Kind of sweeping," I said.
    "Oh," he said, "combat engineers are always ordered out that way: mostly blasting away behind enemy lines, you know; who can tell how long it will take them. That's why they have to be such reliable people. They almost always, unless they're killed, carry through whatever you set them at. Their corps motto, you know, is 'Whatever the odds, to Hells with them, get the job done.' Remarkable people. Will those orders do? They're a standard combat engineer form, you know." I was shaken, both by the idiot simplicity of the orders and by what he had just said. Had Lombar known any of this? I doubted it. What were we biting off? Could we chew it?
    Jettero Heller had known what the orders would say. He must have received dozens of them. He must have known that this would really put him outside the control of the Exterior Division and the Apparatus. By the evil Gods, I was going to have to work like mad to keep him on a leash! I began to doubt I could execute my orders and make the mission fail.
    I got a grip on myself. It's one thing to go blasting in with the burners wide open and blow up an enemy town. But it was quite another to operate in the dark and secret world of espionage. I thought of the ease with which we'd kidnapped him, I remembered his total stupidity that morning, I thought of his fatal notions of sportsmanship.
    "Yes," I said. "They're fine. By all means sign it." I handed over my own identoplate so he could authenticate it and feed his hungry machines. "I'd like some extra copies." He punched and scribbled away. "I think Jet's Academy track record still stands. Great athlete. Nice fellow, too, they say." And finally, "Here's his orders. Wish him good luck." I got out of there. It felt odd to have done a straight, legal piece of work, no twists. The honest world is a strange place for a member of the Apparatus. It leaves one feeling confused. Unfamiliar territory!
    And then, clear of the oppressive environment of the Fleet, I felt a belated surge of triumph. By the wording of these orders, Jettero Heller could be wiped forever from