by Aer-ki Jyr
That had virtually eliminated starvation from the planet, save for remote or lawless areas within the mega cities covering most of Earth’s landmasses. That was something Star Force couldn’t fix on its own, for they didn’t administer those areas, but they did keep an eye out for them and gently nudged the nation in question to fix the problem with the unnecessary threat of repercussions if they didn’t always hanging over their heads.
Still, the people suffering in those areas still had a chance if they could get themselves to a Star Force facility, whether it be a spaceport, recruitment center, food kiosk, etc. Likewise people could come to Star Force with medical problems and be aided without cost. Some nations, still greedy and unscrupulous, allowed Star Force small tracts of land to establish hospitals to service their populations in advanced medical cases, which Davis readily agreed to. While it was extremely unusual for a regenerator to have to be used, for they were still a closely guarded secret, as were all things pyramid-based, Star Force had reverse engineered enough medical tech that they could now regrow lost limbs and organs with the aid of other devices of their own manufacture.
Star Force didn’t sell those devices, but they used them to treat people that couldn’t be treated elsewhere, and given that those sorts of cases were very expensive in the local healthcare markets, the nations were more than pleased to have Star Force come in and foot the bill for them. They thought they were using Star Force, but in reality Davis was infiltrating their nations and uplifting their populations. Over time those people would come to forget the ‘old ways’ and grow used to some standards of living that would be difficult to reverse.
Money was no longer an issue for Davis, not that it had ever been important for him, but now that Star Force directly controlled 3/4ths of the Human population and his army of logistical personnel kept their supply levels optimal, currency was now no longer needed for sustenance, and had been reduced to a voluntary means of acquiring luxuries or raising your personal ownership and influence within society.
That was less true in the nations on Earth, but monetary classes had virtually disappeared in Star Force colonies. Everyone knew the echelons in Star Force were based on merit, with those at the top having to work their asses off for centuries to get there. Politicians were a joke, for the idea of choosing one’s leaders by a popularity contest simply didn’t exist within Star Force’s overly efficient empire. Some of the nations had followed their example, hybridizing their governmental structures into republics rather than democracies, but there were still some that operated off of ‘the will of the masses,’ but behind closed doors they knew that Star Force and Davis were subsidizing their foolishness.
Most nations no longer fielded militaries, for they knew Star Force would protect them if they were in the right. The ones who weren’t blacklisted used Star Force’s transportation network and resource markets to sustain their populations, without which their lack of self-sufficiency would be their undoing. Little by little over the decades since its inception, Davis had been changing Earth without conquering it, which would have been a much faster resolution to its problems.
And that had long bothered him. Should he have taken action sooner to save people he knew were suffering by taking out the governments that were allowing the suffering? He hadn’t, rather undercutting the problem by getting to some of the individuals and supplying them with what they needed or evacuating them to Star Force territory, but there had always been others he couldn’t get to unless he went in and overthrew the bad nations that were allowing and/or encouraging the suffering in the name of sovereignty…something that Davis had reinforced often.
Nowadays it was a moot point, for the most part. Many nations still sucked, but the level of depravity was nowhere what it once was, and so long as the people maintained the option of leaving and going someplace better, those that chose to stay where they were had a choice, which was enough to satisfy the sovereignty of the individual.
But Davis knew that a legal code and reality on the ground were often two separate things, so even with the wholesale improvements he’d leveraged on Earth he knew there were still people out there who were getting screwed in some way, often unseen by the media and his own intelligence division.
It was that underlying problem which had always left his dealings with the nations of Earth a bit strained. Colonies off Earth were another story, for they were all in artificial structures that demanded a different way of living, but Earth was open air and the origination point of this Human exodus out to the stars…meaning the old was still buried there, whereas a colony on Mars had to have everything built brand new.
And those nations that Davis didn’t deem worthy didn’t have colonies off Earth anymore, for his pull in the Solar System was far greater than it was on Earth, and those that had done a bad job of managing their colonies had seen those colonies confiscated, either through secession or being taken over directly by Star Force…leaving only the nations on Earth as the lingering taint on Humanity’s growing empire.
Davis had been tolerant of them, though they would have vehemently attested to the contrary, choosing to work with or through them to achieve his goals and helping those in need, whereas the Archon approach was simply to go in and take out the bad guys directly. A part of Davis had always been tempted to do that…no, not tempted. That was the wrong word. His logic had been leaning him in that direction while his past assertions had been holding him back.
He’d made promises and assurances to the nations, stating what was and was not acceptable behavior, so how could he go back on his word and seize nations that had gotten rid of all their red flags? His own logic said because people were still suffering in one form or another and Star Force could eliminate it.
Those two differing points had been bouncing around in the back of his head, lightly, for many years as he helped the nations past their own stupidity, teaching them how to do things differently and having many grow because of it…though in truth those non-allies, and even some of his allies, only did it to ingratiate themselves with Star Force rather than out of an understanding of what he was teaching/coercing them to do.
And now there was this. As he read through David’s report the names of the six nations burned into his eyes and the centuries of patience he’d been granting them, coupled with this blatant ingratitude, fueled an anger in him that he had not felt since World War III.
Before he finished reading the report he mentally set it aside and stood up, beginning to pace the circumference of his 360 degree window as he thought. Part of him was kicking himself for not doing something sooner, and he came to the realization that he had partially created his own problem.
Conditions had been so bad on Earth in the beginning that even a partial improvement seemed to be a huge accomplishment…but now, looking back on those days, he knew he hadn’t done enough. He’d been hesitant to take on the nations of Earth because of a misplaced idea of sovereignty that he had created in order to get Star Force established.
He had created the idea that Earth operated on different rules than space, that it was somehow immune to responsibility. Yes, the combatants in WWIII had lost their colonies, but they hadn’t lost their territory on Earth. At the time Davis didn’t have the resources to fight a war on Earth, at least not a clean war, and take out the bad guys directly…Archon style, he reminded himself…so he punished them instead, and used that punishment as a tool to gain traction and influence with the others. That had, in turn, allowed him to begin some of the planet-changing trends that had worked so effectively.
He hadn’t made the wrong decision back then, but it was a decision that had negative consequences that he was only now fully seeing. He had been starving corruption to death rather than killing it quickly, because killing it quickly hadn’t been an option back then in Star Force’s infancy. Now though, was an entirely different matter, and had been for years.
By the fourth lap around his office everything had become crystal clear. He’d become s
o focused on working the problem that he hadn’t bothered to take a step back, clear his mind, and look at the playing field. His face was down in the dirt, fighting the battles that needed to be fought…and because of that he hadn’t even noticed the game change.
That was his mistake, and he was mentally kicking himself for the duration of the fifth lap, at the end of which he sat down and opened a personnel map that detailed the location of every single person in Star Force’s employ, in this case the Archons. He refined the map down to the 100 trailblazers, seeing that none of them were in Sol at present. He zoomed out to the nearest star systems, seeing that there were a handful nearby that could be recalled within weeks rather than months.
He went through the current mission assignments, trying to pick the one that he would inconvenience the least, eventually settling on Kent-076.
He typed out a brief recall order and set it off through the network, which would quickly get it transmitted through their interstellar relays out to the adjacent Dasher System…faster than a courier ship, anyway. The signal would still take days to reach the target, but that was considerably faster than the weeks it used to take him to get messages out to his people.
With nothing else to do on the matter, Davis went back to reading David’s report. When he finished it he set the interrogation information aside and moved on to a list of 183 medium priority items he had flagged on his current docket, with his staff adding things to it throughout the day.
10
April 17, 2451
Solar System
Earth
“What’s up?” Kent asked calmly as he leapt up the circular staircase and walked into Davis’s office.
Davis smiled. “I get to see you guys so rarely nowadays. What level are you up to now?”
“Ranger 82,” the trailblazer said as he pulled up a chair and sat down.
“Have you chosen a name for the next tier yet?”
“We’re batting around a few ideas, but last I heard Morgan was still 6 levels away, so we’ve still got some time to decide.”
“It’s not like you guys to have trouble naming things.”
Kent smirked. “No, we’ve just got too many good ideas and haven’t been able to nail them down yet.”
“Any new projects you guys are working on that I need to know about?”
Kent shrugged. “We’ve always got ideas kicking around.”
“Well, I’ve got one that I need your help with,” Davis said, abandoning his desk and standing up so he could look directly out the section of window behind his desk.
“Something big, I take it,” Kent said with a slight frown as he likewise stood and walked up beside Davis with both men staring out at the Atlantis cityscape as the sun was almost directly overhead, leaving no shadows to speak of.
“We’ve captured The Word leadership, which I assume you heard.”
“Yes.”
“We’ve learned from the Primarch how the organization began. Six nations created it in order to strike at us, then severed all ties to preserve deniability. I doubt the current governments even know their own history, but they’re going to pay the penalty regardless.”
“Which is?”
“They forfeit their sovereignty.”
Kent was silent for a moment. “What six?”
“France, China, the UK, Caribbean, Turkey, and the US.”
The trailblazer whistled.
Davis nodded. “Your thoughts?”
“Just them?”
The Director sighed. “Go ahead and say ‘I told you so.’”
“I don’t recall my ever saying anything.”
“No you didn’t. You let me handle Earth while you handled everything else, and you’ve done a better job of it.”
“We had a clean slate to work with,” Kent said, understanding that by ‘you’ he meant the trailblazers.
“Not on Kirit.”
“Earth owes you a big THANK YOU, not condemnation.”
“It’s not about them, it’s about what I could have done and failed to do.”
“Randy didn’t save everyone on Kirit,” Kent reminded him. “That really bothered him, and Tom especially. Eventually they realized they had to stop reworking past problems and focus on the current ones, but the idea that you didn’t save someone you could have isn’t something that should sit well with you.”
“Ignoring those that were lost feels like a betrayal.”
“Don’t ignore them. Keep the anger and a list, then when you come across a time traveling Delorean you can go back and save them.”
Davis kept his eyes on the cityscape, but a smirk curled up the right side of his face.
“Stop considering yourself to be responsible for the fate of others,” Kent advised. “Star Force is your family and your responsibility, and as such it has responsibilities to you. Others do not, and the blame for their fate isn’t on you at all. If you deny them responsibility for themselves, then they have no sovereignty. If they do, then they are responsible for themselves. Randy didn’t cause the Kiritas to have problems, he was the solution…and you have to make certain you don’t blur the two together.”
“But to stand by and watch while people suffer when you have the ability to stop it…”
“Tom said the same thing. He didn’t have enough foodstuffs to feed everyone, so he had to prioritize. If he reduced rations to some he could have saved others, but then how far should he have gone? He needed a section of the population healthy and working to increase their foodstuff production. There were people right in front of him who were starving to death that he could have shared his own foodstuffs with and didn’t. Why didn’t he?”
“He had to keep training.”
“Why?”
“That’s a dumb question, especially for an Archon.”
“Is training more important than someone’s life?”
“He shouldn’t have to suffer for someone else’s problems.”
“You didn’t answer the question,” Kent pointed out.
“My gut says both answers are wrong. You don’t ignore the person when you have the ability to save them, but at the same time you don’t compromise yourself.”
“So what do you do?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
“They didn’t either for a long time, but eventually they figured it out.”
“Please share,” Davis prompted.
“They’re Archons. They’re going to help someone if they’re in need, period, so the question is a trick of fate that seems designed to try and get the Archon to choose to not be himself. Or as Paul would put it, choose to turn to the darkside.”
“That’s exactly what it feels like.”
“But like all trick questions, the solution lies in understanding the error in the way the question is stated. Randy and Tom felt responsible for the Kiritas, but they weren’t. So long as they weren’t causing the suffering, they could stand by and watch without interfering if they chose. They didn’t have to save anyone. Now, they couldn’t live with themselves if they stood by and did nothing when they had the power to do something, but everything they did from the point they got there was bonus points. They couldn’t go negative, because the lives of the Kiritas weren’t their responsibility.”
“I see the distinction, but it still doesn’t sit well.”
“No it doesn’t. Randy and Tom wouldn’t be satisfied unless they saved everyone, which was why they had to force themselves to keep their own rations separate from the Kiritas, else they would have scrimped and diminished themselves to save as many as they could, all the while kicking themselves for not saving more. It was driving them crazy, and after a while they just had to shut it out and focus on one piece of the problem. That wasn’t betraying the others, just acknowledging that they couldn’t help them…and if they couldn’t help them, there was no need for them to watch.”
“Turn a blind eye?”
“To the emotions that serve no purpose, yes. You will never tolerate suff
ering. It will always bother you if you’re a good person.”
“But I could have done something different. I wasn’t limited by supplies.”
“Such as?”
“Take over Earth.”
“Why didn’t we?”
Davis sighed. “Because I outlined a basic code of conduct for the nations that was far better than their previous behavior, but not good enough. And now that they’re in compliance with my own demands, how do I justify punishing them for that compliance?”
“Do you expect a rookie to do the work of a veteran?”
“No.”
“At some point the rookie becomes the veteran. When do the expectations change?”
Davis closed his eyes and leaned forward, banging his head against the clear window in a ‘doh’ moment.
“How do you guys get so smart?”
“We bounce ideas off each other, and there are 100 of us…but there’s only one of you.”
“Unfortunately,” Davis said, pulling his head away from the glass.
“What do you want me to do?” Kent asked, finally looking over at the slightly shorter, but equally trim man.
“The Word killed a lot of our people, and as such the nations that created it struck against us in a way they thought would insulate them from reprisal. They thought wrong. Take them out, annex their territories.”
“Surprise or forewarned?”
“How much trouble is forewarned going to be for you?”
“If you give me time to set things up beforehand, it won’t be a problem. If you need to berate them immediately I can still make it work.”
“Can you make it bloodless?”
“On our part, yes. But I can’t guarantee anything against their stupidity.”
“Their countries must suffer responsibility for their actions…not the present day individuals.”