Fleet literally begins to fall apart."
17 "Beautiful" cried North. "You are your father's son! You have every
bit of his cunning. If we help it along a little bit by attacking the
shipyards that
aren't making Glukan hulls, destroy and capture as many of their
non-Glukan ships as possiible, when their ships DO start to go, they'll
be helpless. They won't know what's happening. They'll figure ALL their
Glukan ships are defective and may abandon them. All right! We do it!
Make the arrangements! When we're not attacking their Glukan ships,
avoiding them, they'll think we're afraid of them, and push their
production even more."
18 The plan was an even greater success than anyone had ever imagined.
The Goddens took the bait and reacted EXACTLY as North predicted,
casting hulls as fast as they could. North's Agents kept track of every
ship. They knew the exact date of their casting, and could predict
almost to the hour, when they'd start to break up.
19 By the time the failures started, sixty-five per cent of the Godden
ships were Glukan. North began to press the system heavily where the
first built ships were. When the ships began to fail in battle, hatches
blew out, engine pods came off, ships broke in two. The
Goddens thought The Republic had some secret new weapon that effected
only Glukan hulls, but as other ships began to fail elsewhere, they
began to get an inkling of the truth.
20 North's raiders found ships abandoned everywhere, some stlll in
perfectly good shape which they simply boarded and used until the hulls
gave out. Finally The Goddens could do nothing else. The new Lord God
signaled North. "What," he asked, "are your demands?"
21 "All hostilities," snarled North, "will cease. What territory we now
occupy will remain ours. You may keep your Government and all systems
you now hold. But, you will allow free and open communication. We will
not interfere