by Jerry
* * *
“Am I surrounded by total incompetents?” Captain Cheng wanted to know. He let his eyes travel around his assembled officers. “Let me refresh your memories as to why we’re here at the arse end of the galaxy. We’re here because the Empire needs this planet’s yttrium.”
We’re here, thought Lee, because the Empire is going broke and getting desperate.
The Magellanic Wars had drained the coffers. It was only a matter of time, of course, before the Empire would crush the brave consortium of planets that opposed it. Meanwhile they needed fleets of battleships, fuel and materials for the munitions factories, food and supplies for the largest army mankind had ever assembled, bribes for the petty kings who might otherwise give their support to the enemy, and on and on. Some of the technologies the Empire relied on to wage war in space depended on rare and precious elements which were in short supply.
Then someone had remembered the old Federation colonization program. Before the Federation had broken up into a myriad, squabbling territories, it had sent out thousands of cheap ships with volunteers to found colonies on unexplored worlds. No one knew now what had happened to most of them since the Federation’s records were destroyed before the Empire arose and brought order back to the galaxy. But a team of archaeologists had stumbled upon the details.
Among these ancient records had been the cursory planetary surveys they had done before sending off the colonists. Some of these surveys had revealed deposits of the very materials the Empire now desperately needed. Wouldn’t it be nice, the bright chaps at Court had said, if these worlds, rich in essential minerals, had been successfully colonized and therefore had a ready-made workforce for extracting and processing them? Then all we’d have to do is pay them a visit and set them to work. After all, the Empire is the natural successor to the Federation and it is only fair that these long-lost colonies be brought back into the fold.
So the reabsorption of the colonies had begun. Humans being such a tenacious lifeform, a surprising number of mineral-rich planets had been found to have surviving, even thriving colonies. By the time the Resolution had arrived at Colony FC3098-BS4, over fifty others had been processed. The reabsorption procedure had become almost routine, and that is why Captain Cheng was becoming so anxious about this one. A failure in such a simple task would certainly be the end of his career in the Fleet.
“You all know what a shambles this mission has been so far. Well, I want reports and recommendations from each of you right now—and they had better be good. Let’s start with you, Lieutenant.”
Wang, put on the spot though he was, didn’t miss a beat. “We have a total comms block on the whole planet, sir. If they’re planning anything, they’re doing it by carrier pigeon. Monitoring shows pretty much normal activity—given the comms blackout—except in the local area. Commercial flights have just about stopped. Shipping’s still OK. No signs of mobilization or any military activity at all, anywhere. They seem to be coping as best they can and waiting for our next move.”
“And what should that move be, Lieutenant Wang?”
Here even the smooth lieutenant paused before he answered. “Round them up into slave gangs and set them to work mining the yttrium, sir.”
Cheng appeared to consider it for a moment. “I think you have failed totally to grasp the situation, Lieutenant. I have been watching the recordings of the unfortunate Colonel McGregor’s little attempt at bullying. He wasn’t very successful, was he?”
“No sir but . . .”
“Silence!” The sudden shout made everybody jump. “Major Dubois. Your report and recommendations, please.”
Dubois did not have Wang’s self-confidence and stammered and fumbled his way through a report on the deployment and status of their defences and their considerable offensive capability.
“And your recommendation is?” asked Cheng when the major had finally stumbled to a halt.
“I don’t have one, sir. That is, I thought we should do what the Lieutenant said.”
Cheng just looked at him in silence for several long seconds before he turned to the secret police officer. “You see I am in desperate need, Mr. Lee. My officers seem to believe that reciting tactics from their first-year academy courses will do instead of thinking. What am I to do? Do you have a solution?”
Lee smiled, apparently in a good mood. “Wouldn’t you like to hear my report first?”
“Yes, of course. Please continue.”
Lee took a breath and began. “This is a world where people are good to one another. They work hard, they feel a sense of responsibility to themselves, their families and their communities. They don’t lie or cheat, they strive to be fair, and they literally do not know the meaning of the word ‘exploitation.’ They have no wars, no armies and, since they have almost no crime, no police either.
“It’s an unbelievable society. One that exists nowhere else in the whole galaxy. I’ve no idea how it came about but it may be something to do with the way the population died back almost to nothing when the initial settlement failed. The handful of people who built this society may have had strange views or even stranger genes. They believe that individual freedom and an individual’s personal morality are the most sacred of all things. Not that they have any organized religions of any kind—another first—but they believe that an individual’s relationship to society is . . .”
“OK. We get the picture. It’s Shangri-fucking-La. Now tell me what to do about it.”
Lee was clearly a little put out by Cheng’s interruption but he brought his smile back and went on. “I believe you have two options. Either you convince these people that it is for their good that they mine their planet to exhaustion in two years and give the entire product to the Empire, or you give up and go home.”
He waited for Cheng to react and, when he didn’t, he went on. “Clearly, it is impossible to force these people to do anything. I believe that, if we had enough time—a decade or two, say—we could corrupt and destabilize them enough to use standard techniques for gaining their cooperation. If we try any rough stuff now, all we’ll get is passive resistance and avoidance. Threatening their lives just doesn’t work. They believe that surrendering their right to decide their own actions is worse than death.
“So we could try trading with them. They might go for some high tech stuff, some new food strains, or whatever, but they’re pretty rational and they know it’s not worth the price of wrecking their whole economy and lifestyle for faster computers or cheaper rice. To be honest, I doubt there’s much that we have that they want.”
He stopped talking and sat back. Captain Cheng swivelled his eyes to look at him. “So?”
“So we pack up and go on to the next colony.”
“That is not an acceptable option, Mr. Lee.”
In the tense silence that followed, Lieutenant Wang cleared his throat. “Why not exterminate the indigenous population and bring in mining crews from the homeworlds?”
Cheng turned away with an angry “Tcha!” and Lee took it upon himself to explain. “That would work, of course,” he told the alarmed young lieutenant, “but it would be too expensive. There are plenty of uninhabited worlds out there that could be mined but we don’t want to go to the cost of flying shiploads of highly-paid miners and heavy equipment out and building them houses and feeding them and so on when we could get it all for free by bullying a few unlucky colonies. Geddit?”
Wang was embarrassed. “Er, yes sir.” Despite Lee’s cover, everybody on board except the captain called him sir.
Cheng stood up abruptly. “This is a waste of time,” he told the room. “I’ll be in my office. I want the colonist Gerol there in five minutes.” Then he left the room.
“Well, that was fun, wasn’t it?” said Lee, rising. The others said nothing but looked at each other anxiously.
* * *
Gerol and Anya sat together in the little cell. “What did he say?” Anya asked. Gerol was still confused after his interview with Captain C
heng.
“He wanted me to rule the planet,” he told her. “He said the Empire would back me, that they would take care of any opposition and that I could have anything I wanted. I think he said I could have women too, but that can’t be right. I told him all I wanted was for him and his people to go away and to stop hurting us. Then he raged and shouted for a while. He hit me. Here.” He pointed to the livid bruise on his left cheek, but he and Anya had many bruises and it was not an especially bad one.
“I think they must want something from us,” Anya said “It’s the only way I can make sense of this. They want something but they are embarrassed or afraid to ask. So they’re trying to force us to give it to them.” She looked into Gerol’s eyes. “But how can we give it to them if they won’t tell us what it is?”
Gerol’s nostrils flared in disgust. “Oh, I know what it is they want!”
“So I was right! What is it?”
“Yttrium.” Gerol almost spat the word.
“But what is it? Who has it?”
“It’s a mineral. Very rare. Apparently there are huge deposits of it here on Beasphor.”
“But why do they want it?”
Gerol smiled a bitter smile. “That’s exactly what I asked him. He said it was to help the Empire wage war against another group of planets. I asked him why the Empire wanted to wage war. He said many incomprehensible things about honor and pride, incursions, disputed territories, raids, massacres, atrocities . . . Oh it was awful. I asked him why they couldn’t just talk it over and agree to cooperate. But he just laughed and said it was like talking to a stupid child.
“I asked him why Beasphor should help the Empire and pointed out that we might be more sympathetic to these other people if we heard their side of the story. He just went off shouting again and said we would all die if we didn’t help them. Then he had me brought here again.”
They sat in silence for a moment and then Anya moved to sit close beside Gerol. “Hold me please. I’m so frightened.” He put his arm around her, careful not to squeeze any of her bruises, and they sat in that gentle embrace for a minute or so.
“What’s really scary,” said Gerol, “is that there are whole worlds, perhaps hundreds of worlds, full of insane people like these.”
“They are mad, aren’t they? It’s not just that I can’t understand them, is it? I mean, I’ve tried and tried but nothing they do makes any sense. And their horrible violence . . .” She shuddered.
“No. They’re insane all right, but it’s a kind of cultural insanity, a sickness that has invaded their whole society.”
Anya pressed closer to him. “Oh Gerol, do you think we could become infected?”
Gerol said nothing but silently he thought, “I would rather be dead than mad like they are.”
* * *
They were still holding each other in silent misery when the guards came to take Gerol back to the city. “The woman will stay here as a guarantee of your cooperation,” Cheng told them. He had been watching them on the monitor and felt he had a solid bargaining chip at last.
They took him in one of the landers to the Council building. The Earth officers, surrounded by armed marines, marched Gerol into the building. They went straight to the debating chamber, marched across the floor, ignoring the shouts of protest from the councillors assembled there, and stopped beside the mediator. Two soldiers grabbed the mediator and dragged her from her chair. She struggled and shouted but, fortunately, did not try to get back to her seat when they threw her to the ground. Cheng himself led Gerol gently to the mediator’s chair. “Please sit down,” he said very quietly, unheard amid the shouting, complaining councillors. Amazed at what was happening, Gerol let himself be seated. Immediately, Cheng and Lee took up positions beside the chair and the troops formed up around it.
Cheng lifted his arms and called for silence. If anything, the angry babble grew louder. At a signal, two marines raised their weapons and fired into the air, smashing the beautifully painted ceiling. In the stunned silence that followed, Cheng stepped forward and spoke.
“By the power invested in me by her Imperial Majesty Empress Hui Chui Yi, I decree that this man, Gerol, is the first imperial governor of Colony FC3098-BS4. As representatives of Her Majesty’s armed forces, we will serve the governor to enforce any and all of his commands.”
The noise was rising again as the amazed councillors asked each other what was going on and what any of it meant. Cheng raised his voice a little and went on. “The governor’s first command is that the crowd around our landing craft shall disperse immediately. Secondly, all mining operations on the planet will be required to donate machinery and personnel to a new project to be commenced at once. Finally, this building will now be known as the Governor’s Palace. A new government will be selected by Governor Gerol and his military advisers over the next few days.”
Cheng looked around to see how his announcements had gone down. There was confusion and many angry faces, but nothing his troops couldn’t handle. He bent to Gerol and whispered, “Say something to your subjects, governor. Not too much. Just say that they should do what I told them to do and then get them out of here.” He didn’t like the look of stupid incomprehension on Gerol’s face and turned away angrily to dismiss them himself. Before he could speak, someone stepped forward through the crowd. It was a fat woman and, the way people were patting her and urging her on, he could see she was their spokeswoman. She walked up to him and the Council fell silent behind her. She addressed herself to Gerol. This irritated Cheng, but he had just appointed the fool governor, had he not?
“Gerol,” she said, “I don’t know what you think you’re doing here but we’re trying to have a Council meeting. I think you and all these Earth people should go and do this somewhere else, don’t you?”
For a moment, Cheng was so stunned by this that he allowed Gerol to reply. “I don’t know what they’re doing either, Marga, but they are very violent and dangerous. I think it best that everyone just avoids them until they go away.”
“Silence!” Cheng’s bellow shook the room. He glowered at the councillors, looking for something other than idiocy in their faces. “Bring him!” he snapped, nodding his head towards Gerol, and marched out of the room, pushing several people over as he went.
* * *
Two hours later, a second lander joined the one outside the Council building. Ten marines marched out and rounded up about a hundred of the people who happened to be there. They dragged and pushed their struggling prisoners into a compound they made from the same electric fence posts they had erected around the first landing site. Many people, inside and outside were badly hurt by the charged beams before they finally gave up struggling against their imprisonment. A team of rescuers who arrived in insulated clothing were shot dead by the guards and another team that turned up with a tunnel wrapped in coils of wire were also shot as they tried to push it through the charged laser beams. Gradually, activity around the compound ceased.
Then Cheng appeared and spoke with an amplified voice that no one could shout over. “Colonists, I have a hundred of your fellows imprisoned. In thirty minutes, I will kill ten of them. In thirty more minutes, I will kill another ten, and so on until they are all dead.” There was a long pause while Cheng let them digest the news. “To stop this killing, all you have to do is to send me someone who has authority to speak for you and who can ensure that my demands are met. That is all.” The communications officer cut the circuit and Cheng went back into his lander. Lee was there.
“You know they don’t have anybody,” the secret service man said.
“They’ll find somebody.”
“They won’t. They can’t. They just don’t have anybody like that.”
“They’ll find somebody!” Cheng growled and left the room.
Thirty minutes later, they executed ten of the prisoners. A great howl of anguish and rage went up from the crowds that now surrounded the landers. The Beasphorans, despite all they had seen or heard, had not
really believed that such a monstrous thing could really be done by human beings. Now they believed. The crowd surged towards the compound. The guards, watched in horror as hundreds of people threw themselves at the faintly glowing lines of deadly charge. Too late they began firing on the advancing crowd. But the posts were down and the power was off. Yelling and cavorting in triumph, the crowd and the prisoners fled the green.
Inside the command lander, the lights flickered and dimmed as the colonists fried on the electric fence, then the power was steady again and Cheng could watch the cheering crowd rushing out of the green by every possible street, leaving scores of dead behind them. He turned in shock and disbelief to Lee Ping Ya but the man just shook his head and looked away.
Cheng imagined how Lee must be gloating at his failure. He supposed the secret policeman must be composing his report in his head, a report full of well-deserved scorn and contempt. As Cheng left the control room, he felt alone and betrayed, sickened by his own impotence. Behind him, Lee was not thinking about his report at all but about the smoking remains of the dead colonists heaped along the line of the ruined fence.
* * *
Captain Cheng was shaken and pale as he faced Gerol and Anya in their cell. The recording of the self destruction that had just happened outside was playing on a wall screen at Cheng’s command. Gerol and Anya watched with tears running down their cheeks. Finally, the last escapees left the green with the guards picking off the stragglers.
“Why did they do that?” Cheng growled. Anya shook her head. Gerol made no reply. “Why did they kill themselves like that?”
Gerol looked at Cheng. The captain was a big man, a strong man, and Gerol wondered if he would hit them again. “What else could they do?” he asked.
“They could have done what I asked.”
“No,” said Gerol, sadly.
Cheng said, “Then they could at least have saved themselves.”