by Tom Kratman
Did I make a mistake, helping Mustafa? Did I make an irreparable mistake?
Robinson thought about that one for a bit. Finally, he came to the conclusion, No. It wasn't a mistake. Mustafa would have gone ahead anyway. And the result would have been the same. All I could have done was warn the FSC of what was coming and that I could never do.
Never.
The high admiral stood and began to pace the close confines of his office, still lost in his thoughts.
I simply overestimated the ability of Mustafa's people and his allies to confront the FSC. That, and I apparently badly underestimated the ability of the FSC to impose its will through force. They're even more dangerous than I had thought they were. So, no, it wasn't a mistake to start down this road. It had to be done. What was a mistake was to think I could start down it without going all the way. The FSC must be involved in a wider war, one that disenchants its allies, dries up its treasure, kills its soldiers and demoralizes its people.
Now what do I have to do to make that happen?
Robinson ceased his pacing and resumed his chair.
"Computer, view screen on. Show me a map of Terra Nova, one annotated with population density, industrialization and resources."
The Kurosawa came to life. Not for the first time, Robinson wondered if the difference in the quality of the picture was the result of wear and tear on the ancient, Earth-produced, screens or if—awful thought—the Terra Novans had actually exceeded Earth's technology in this one field.
It really is an excellent picture, though, he thought. Pity that the map tells me little.
"Computer, add major historical events for the last sixty years."
Still nothing; too crowded.
"Computer, reduce detail to show major conflicts."
"Ah, there it is," Robinson said aloud. "Before I arrived to assume command. The Petro War."
"Computer, get me all pertinent data on the FSC-Republic of Sumer War of local year 447 plus developments in that region since then."
Atlantis Base, Earth Year 7 December, 2513
The high admiral met the Tauran Union's commissioner for culture in a little used but meticulously maintained garden not far from the island base's single major river. The garden itself was kept up by the same crew of proles brought in from Earth as servants to the families of the Class Ones, Twos and Threes that made up the bulk of the fleet's crew and the base personnel. Wiglan never saw the proles, of course. It was part of their job to be as little seen, as little noticed, as possible.
"So good of you to come, Unni, and on such short notice."
"Always a pleasure," answered Wiglan sincerely. Then, seeing the worried look on Robinson's face, she announced, "There is something troubling you."
"Yes. Yes there is, my dear. Silly of me to think I could hide it from you."
Silly of me to think I had to make an effort to look worried.
"Well, what is it then, Martin?"
"The war, of course. Terrible thing. All those poor civilians caught up in the FSC's imperialist games."
Never mind that previously they were caught up in bloodthirsty and fanatical Salafi and Fascist games.
"Oh, I know," Unni fumed. "By what right does the FSC think it can impose its will on others. Only the World League and United Earth have that kind of moral authority."
"Exactly, Love. I knew you would understand." Nothing. "Tell me, is the TU going to go through with providing forces for this venture?"
"I've argued against it, Martin. All of us right thinking people have. But the TU still hasn't quite extirpated national sovereignty even in Taurus. And some of the new member states especially, the ones that think the FSC was somehow responsible for liberating them from the Volgans, are going to go along. Even Gaul and Sachsen are planning on sending some troops, though we hope to limit their rules of engagement so that they are ineffective. And," she finished with a disgusted sigh, "the Anglian lackeys of the FSC will give their full support, almost as if they were a state of the Federals themselves."
I don't suppose it would ever occur to you, Unni, that Anglia's permitting the FSC to set its foreign policy, to the extent it does, is not in principle different from any state of the TU allowing the TU to set foreign policy? You cannot logically, in principle, complain about a state giving a portion of its sovereignty to another entity and then insist that it should give it to you instead.
But then, logic is not your strong suit, is it?
"What's done is done, Unni. No sense crying over it or wishing to undo it. What concerns me more is the FSC's next step."
"You really think they won't be content with knocking out Pashtia, Martin?" The commissioner looked rather horrified.
"I am certain they won't," Robinson answered. "When you have a rogue state running free there is no limit to the damage it can do."
Wiglan agreed, her head nodding slowly, sadly and silently. "And they simply refuse to take us as their equal, either," she added.
"Unni, I am not sure that the FSC considers even the UE to be quite their equal."
And there's another repetitive thought to give me indigestion; three hundred highly militarized million of the FSC lording it over half a billion sheep on Earth and the fifty million in Class Three or higher reduced to penury or worse.
While Unni knew it was likely true that the FSC held even the UE in contempt, she was sickened to hear a major figure from the mighty UE admit to it openly. She gave a gasp of horror, her hand flying to her mouth of its own accord.
"That's . . . that's terrible. How can they . . ."
"They can because they have us stymied, Commissioner. We can't do anything to them because they would do the same or worse right back to us. I'd be willing to sacrifice my fleet and, of course, myself in the cause of peace but when I consider the environmental damage . . ." He meant, of course, "nuclear winter." It's amazing how the local progressives can accept the concepts of humanocentric planetary warming and nuclear winter at the same time.
They should see that, even if true, the one is the cure for the other. Oh, well, not my job to educate them.
"Oh, my brave and selfless High Admiral, I know you would," Wiglan nearly swooned.
Robinson made a minor show of looking very brave and very selfless.
"This is especially bad," Robinson continued, "in that I am certain that the FSC intends once again to attack Sumer. I do so hope, Unni, that you and right thinking people like you will be able to keep the Tauran Union's hands clean in this filthy business."
"Many will participate no matter what the TU says," Wiglan muttered. And I feel so terrible about it, too.
"Then, Unni, you must do whatever it takes, not just you but your colleagues as well, to ensure that such participation is minimal and that whatever there may be along those lines turns out to be more albatross than ally."
High Admiral's Conference Room, UEPF Spirit of Freedom, Earth Date 5 January, 2514
"All told, Admiral Robinson, the FSC can muster nearly twenty- four divisions' worth of troops. That's counting their militia organizations, which are considerably better trained, organized and led than the usual militia down below, their Regular Army and the Federated States Marine Corps."
Robinson regarded his strategic intelligence officer, a Class Two named Henkin, bleakly. All of Earth could not muster half of that, and those would be underequipped and badly trained. His own few battalions' worth of security troops hardly counted on that scale.
Seeing the admiral's bleak look, the strategic intelligence analyst hastened to add, "But not all of those are useable, few can be logistically supported in the theater of war you believe the Federated States is contemplating, and almost forty percent are part time militia, not particularly suitable for either a short and intense war or a long drawn-out, low-intensity one."
"That hardly matters, Henkin," answered the fleet's tactical intelligence officer, Commander Spiro, as he tapped a pen on the table. "The Sumeris are rotten, even more rotten—and far less
well equipped—than they were the last time. Four divisions of FSC troops—five, tops—plus maybe one from Anglia, would be more than enough to knock them over. I think they could do it with three, myself."
"I don't disagree about needing only three or four divisions for a successful invasion," Henkin admitted. "We could quibble over the number but why bother? It is afterwards that they'll need more troops, not just to wreck and defeat a fairly worthless army but to control a fairly numerous people. And there is where they'll have problems. Those roughly twenty-four divisions you mentioned are the equivalent of fifteen regular and nine militia. The fifteen regular can be counted on to sustain at most five divisions fighting. The militia's nine might give one division's worth, or perhaps one and a half, on continuous deployment. That's a total of six to six and a half useable divisions. Of those, one will continue to be needed in Pashtia. And Spiro, Admiral . . . five will not be enough."
"So you think, then, that the FSC will not invade, Henkin?" Robinson asked.
Henkin's face was set and sure. "They have the same data I do, Admiral. Perhaps they have better data. I don't see how they would unless they somehow felt they absolutely had to. Yes, I say this even though a lodgment in Sumer gives them access to major oil fields in every direction. The risk is simply too great."
"I wonder what would make them feel they absolutely had to," wondered the Admiral, idly.
Atlantis Base, Earth Date 17 May, 2514
"It's the only way I can see, Unni, to prevent this war. The FSC must be convinced that the Republic of Sumer has nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Otherwise, the Federals are certain to invade."
"But do they have those weapons, Martin?"
"My people think they might," Robinson answered, truthfully. Indeed, the Republic of Sumer might also have time travel and the fountain of youth, though both seemed about as unlikely. There was no reason to burden the commissioner with doubts, however, or none that the high admiral could see.
"They might," he repeated, "and the dangers of letting that particular genie out of the bottle are too great not to do everything in our power to prevent even what 'might' happen."
"I see that," Wiglan agreed, though she really didn't. "But what can I do? I'm just the commissioner for culture; I'm not in one of the military or intelligence branches of the TU."
"You know many people who are in those branches though, don't you, Unni? You have access to them, and through them to national intelligence services."
"Yes," she agreed. "I know them . . . at least slightly, I do. You understand that we in the . . . softer services have as little to do with the military and intelligence as possible."
"Yes, Unni," Robinson answered, "and that is, normally, proper. But in this one case—"
"I'll do it," she burst out. "For you and peace and the eventual creation of true global governance, I'll do it."
Excursus
From Baen's Encyclopedia of New and Old Earth, Old Earth Edition of 2497 (442 AC)
Freedom of Speech: This entry has been declared unfit for human knowledge by the United Earth Council for the Suppression of Hate Speech.
Freedom of Religion: This entry had been declared unfit for human knowledge by the United Earth Plenary Committee for the Advancement of Human Knowledge. See, instead, the entries on Marxism, Islam, Environmentalism, Druidism, Pan-Gaeaism . . .
Nation: This entry has been ordered expunged by decree of the International Criminal Court and legislatively confirmed by the General Assembly of United Earth. Further, this word has been declared obsolete and ordered removed and expunged from all public references, dictionaries, encyclopediae, textbooks, literary works, monuments, buildings, archeological sites, public records . . .
Weapons: This entry had been restricted to members of the UE Peace Force and holders of informational clearances above the Deputy Assistant Directorial level.
Liberty, Human concepts of: This entry has been ordered expunged as redundant. See instead the entries on Freedom from Want and Freedom from Fear.
Electricity Production: This entry has been ordered restricted to members of the United Earth Organization, Class Three and above.
Artificial Intelligence and Computers: The entry has been ordered restricted to members of the United Earth Organization, Class Three and above.
Ownership and property, concepts of: This entry has been declared obsolete and ordered expunged. See instead the entry on "Socialism and Justice."
Sovereignty: The entry has been ordered expunged by the High Commission for Semantics and Decency.
Taxation: This entry has become obsolete with the passage of the Act for the Creation of a Rational Economy, also known as the Collectivization Act of 2257.
Great Global War (Also known as "the Long Night"), History of:
An eleven year (399-410 AC) world conflict on the planet of Terra Nova that began with the use of extensive formations of horse cavalry and ended with significant usage of nuclear weapons.
By the year 399 AC, Terra Novan military technology, along with broader industrialization, corresponded roughly to that of Old Earth in the years 1920-1929. With industrialization came considerable social turmoil, along with hardship as older, more established states found themselves in mercantile competition with newer, more aggressive powers.
There was no one spark that can definitively be said to have begun the GGW. Fighting among the powers of that world, especially those of the continent of Taurus, had been endemic since at least the beginning of the 3rd century, AC. While naval conflict had spread across the planet by roughly the middle of that century, in the 4th century, ground combat moved from the continent of Taurus, itself, out to the colonies, spheres of influence, and trading blocks that had been established across the world by the Taurans, the Yamato, the Zhong Guo and the Federated States of Columbia. Thus, when the Gallic Republic declared war on Sachsen in 399, it was merely the last step in a series of smaller conflicts and battles that had been waged between these two from approximately 250 AC onwards.
What made the war such a bloodbath—indeed total deaths from all causes approached the two hundred million mark before the war closed—were the systems of alliances, some of them secret and a few mutually exclusive and contradictory, which the major Tauran powers had bound themselves to in the preceding fifty years. Hence, in initiating its abortive invasion of Sachsen in 399, the Gallic Republic also immediately found itself at war with the Kingdom of Anglia. This relieved pressure on the Sachsens, but at the cost of the Gauls invoking their treaty with the Volgan Empire, which set in motion a Volgan invasion of Sachsen and its ally, Karinthia. Yamato, at that time an ally of the Volgans, likewise launched an attack in conjunction with Gaul upon the Sachsen and Anglian enclaves along the Zhong coast.
This early, strategically and tactically mobile, phase ended within two months as a combination of defensive technology—ranging from shovels and barbed wire at one end to artillery and machine guns on the other—combined with limitations in offensive technology, such as communications and transportation, and severe limits in logistics, bogged virtually every major combatant down in what would eventually become very extensive systems of field fortifications. Of course, as the fortifications became more extensive, the logistic requirements of breaking them grew still further. Moreover, those requirements grew much faster, initially, than did the means of meeting them. This phase lasted approximately two years.
The next phase, also lasting two years, found the Gauls defeated and occupied by a combination of Anglian naval blockade and amphibious invasion with Sachsen ground attack. This left Sachsen to turn its land power against the Volgans while the Kingdom of Anglia moved at sea against Yamato.
Both the Volgans and the Imperial Yamato Fleet proved much tougher customers than had been expected. The first Anglian Fleet met, and was essentially destroyed by, the IYN in the Battle of the Shujimo Straits in 403. The Sachsens, on the other hand, while initially successful against Volga, soon found that the sheer st
rategic depth of that empire was more than their slender logistic arrangements could well deal with. Worse, as a Sachsen general of the day observed, "What matter that we kill three or four Volgans for one of ours when there are five Volgans for every one of ours?" By 405 the Sachsens were stymied and Volga on the counterattack.
It was at this time that Tsar Vladimir Ilyich III dusted off an old and discredited political and economic philosophy from Earth and imposed it on his people in the interests of furthering the war effort. Peasants, previously freed by the tsar's grandfather, found themselves once again bound to the land as de facto serfs. Industrial workers likewise were organized and a vast array of repressive measures, backed up by an extensive secret police apparatus, were imposed.
The destruction of the Anglian power at Shujimo Straits had the side effect of radically transforming the balance of naval power in the Mar Furioso. Moreover, with both the Gallic and Anglian fleets out of business the Federated States was able to gather its not inconsiderable fleet in from the two oceans into which it had previously been split and concentrate it to face Yamato. This was eased by the possession, on the part of the FSC, of the Balboa Transitway, which linked the two oceans and allowed rapid redeployment. Potential threat led to tensions; tensions led to war between Yamato and the Federated States.
In this Yamato was initially frightfully successful, dealing as harshly with the FSN as they had earlier with the Anglians. Where Yamato miscalculated, however, was in confusing another island state, Anglia, which could not readily replace its fleet, with a continent-spanning empire like the FSC, which could. By 406 the Federated States was on the attack as much as were the Volgans.