The Long Road Home (A Learning Experience Book 4)

by Christopher Nuttall

  Indeed, if the rules were different - if an election could be won by individual votes - both candidates would have campaigned differently. Neither of them did because they both knew the rules.

  This was neatly summed up by a cartoon in which a chess player, having been checkmated by his opponent, insisted that he should be the winner because he had more pieces left than his opponent. No chess player ever born would consider that a valid argument. In order to win a game of chess, you have to checkmate your opponent. It doesn't matter which player has the most pieces when the game ends. A player can lose a game without losing any pieces - I’ve seen it happen - or win with only a handful of pieces remaining. And a player can seem to have an advantage ... right up to the moment his defence slips and his opponent manages to turn the tables. I’ve seen that happen too.

  (Yes, I love chess. Sue me.)

  The point here is that the people involved - the political candidates as well as chess players and everything else in-between - must have a shared understanding of the rules. If you go into a game of chess without that agreement, you’re likely to run into arguments about legal moves or sensible tactics. Is your opponent being an idiot or do they have a different idea about how the rules actually work? And if he does have a different idea ... what happens when your view and his collide?

  In chess, the rules exist to allow two players to share a game without disputes; in politics, electoral rules exist to determine who actually wins and why. They impose order on a chaotic system. Breaking the rules - either by sweeping the pieces off the board or by trying to redefine the victory condition when you’re losing - should be punished. Why? Because if one side shows no respect for the rules, and if there is no punishment, why should the other side follow the rules? And if neither side is willing to follow the rules, we have chaos.

  This is problematic. Breaking the rules is sometimes seen as a good thing - Captain Kirk, for example. You can certainly put forward an argument that the rules need to be broken, that the rules are weighted against one side - and if you can put forward a coherent argument, you can convince people to discard some (all?) of the rules. But constantly breaking the rules - and doing so for tactical advantage, such as Obama changing his tune on accepting the election results after Trump won - only weakens them. And the weaker the rules, the less respect anyone has for them.

  I was taught to debate in school. We would often be told to attack or defend a particular position, without regard to how we actually felt about it. There were rules, which we were expected to follow. We liked winning - and we knew that victory went to the person who convinced most of the audience to agree with him, not the one who shouted the loudest or broke the rules. And the debate helped us to understand other points of view.

  The problem today is that the rules are being broken, smashed to rubble, by people on both sides. People are gaining tactical victories at the expense of long-term victory (and even stability.) Everything is permissible as long as it is in a good cause! Liberals might cheer when conservative speakers are chased from campuses by angry mobs, for example, but the long-term effect is a growing upswing of demand for more repression. Those who do not choose to follow the rules cannot complain when their opponents do the same.

  This is potentially disastrous.

  On the micro scale, I’ve seen internet forums and discussion boards implode because the moderators either make the rules worthless by selective enforcement or simply not having any rules. This sort of process inevitably turns once-promising internet forums into wretched hives of scum and villainy. But on the macro scale, this rips apart social trust and throws us back into our human tribes. Greater principles - the nation, for example - are forgotten when tribalism is the only key to survival.

  Among the many absurdities proclaimed over the last few years is the concept of ‘punching up/punching down.’ Put simply, stripped of the gibberish, it asserts that the difference between a good act and a bad one is defined by the perpetrator. A poor man who stabs a rich man is punching up, while a rich man who stabs a poor man is punching down. Though some mumbo-jumbo, this somehow translates into the poor stabber being excused for his crimes while the rich stabber is a murderer.

  Such an argument makes no sense. A murderer is a murderer, regardless of any other details. Yet people will try to argue that the murderer can be excused because his victim was higher up the social scale (or lower down the victimhood scale) than himself. This is, in many ways, merely a continuation of the kind of thinking that pervaded Nazi Germany and Apartheid South Africa. If the victim is lower class, who cares?

  I do. And so should you.

  If the rules can be twisted until justice is forgotten, if the rules are abused until people no longer respect them, if the rules can be bent until they are broken, then we don’t have a society. We have anarchy.

  And in an anarchic state, the strong rule.

  Many years ago, I wrote a short story for one of the Ring of Fire compilations. It didn't get picked up, probably because it was more of an insight piece than anything else. It really presented a small exchange between John Simpson and Rebecca Stearns, back during the first political campaign in 1632. John Simpson was campaigning on a platform that called for restricting the franchise, while Mike Stearns (Rebecca’s husband) was arguing for opening up the franchise as much as possible. (It’s a little more complex than that, but I think that’s the basic idea.)

  Simpson comes across as a jerk in the first book - with reason. (He gets a lot better in 1633 onwards, kudos to Flint and Weber.) And yet, he has a point.

  The American mindset - held by every one of the time-displaced Americans - is that the election will determine the winner. None of them, including Simpson, will resort to violence to change the outcome. (Indeed, Simpson serves with honour in the later books.) But the same cannot be said of the natives, the Germans of 1632. They don’t have the mindset to accept the results. What happens when there is a major political disagreement?

  We see Simpson as being wrong, mainly for promoting an unpopular (and un-American) view. Rebecca is sweet reason, and she’s presented as being in the right, but she’s also sheltered and naive. The extremism shown by Gretchen (certainly by local standards) is horrifically dangerous, if it goes sour. Simpson is right to be concerned.

  What happens when people decide the rules are no longer working for them?

  What happens when people decide that the time has come to smash the board?

  Our world is not perfect. And sometimes the rules do need to be changed. But it is something that has to be done slowly and carefully ... not out of disappointment, spite or simple ambition.

  Christopher G. Nuttall

  Edinburgh, 2017

  And now, check out Legion, by Leo Champion:

  The desperate. The underfunded. The completely expendable.

  The United States Foreign Legion was created as a disposable force to deal with America’s colonial conflicts. Paul Mullins was an American citizen with a successful career in advertising. Until one drunken night when a barroom acquaintance convinced him that you could back out of a Legion enlistment.

  He’s going to spend his next five years alongside a bunch of opportunists, felons, lunatics and screwups, in the dirtiest parts of America’s interstellar empire. The other military branches despise the Legion. The government considers them expendable. Secessionists, aliens and Earth’s other powers loathe them. The colonial business community grudgingly appreciates them, but that isn’t worth much.

  Mullins has a cheap uniform and sixty pounds of lowest-bidder equipment. He has an obsolete twentieth-century rifle and a vindictive enemy who outranks him. He’s about to find strength in himself that he never knew existed.

  And to survive one thousand, eight hundred and twenty-six days in the Legion, he’s going to need every bit of it.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Lieutenant!” came the shout as F Company was boarding the train.

  Croft turned. A furious-looking Army majo
r, accompanied by a captain and four MPs, was striding towards them.

  “Yessir?” he asked. Worried.

  Sergeant Alonzo was up to something last night. It may or may not have anything to do with the alarms. I hope it had nothing to do with this.

  “Hold that train!” the senior MP, a first lieutenant, shouted. He gestured two of his men, a sergeant and a private, towards the engine.

  “What the hell’s going on?” demanded a civilian passenger, leaning out the window. “Terrorist attack?”

  “Worse,” the major said.

  “What is it, sir?” Croft asked. He drew himself to attention and saluted.

  The F Company men ignored the officers and MPs, aside from a few curious glances. They continued boarding the train, getting into the three third-class carriages that’d been added for them.

  “Lieutenant, you spent the night in the terminal with these men, right?” the major asked.

  “Yessir.”

  “Did you happen to see any Marines anywhere? Looking around, maybe checking out security?”

  Oh, thank God.

  Croft shook his head.

  “No sir.”

  “Because somebody pilfered over four million dollars worth of Army property from a transhipment point last night,” the major snapped. “Not to mention repeatedly shocked two of my men, and almost ran down a third as they got away.”

  “Sir, was that the alert?”

  “Yes.”

  “It might not have necessarily been Marines,” said the MP captain. He gave Croft what might have been a cynical squint. “Anyone can shout ‘semper fi’, and anyone with a computer can put USMC insignia on a clipboard.”

  “Are you implying something, sir?”

  “Yes,” said the captain, “I am. Your company stayed overnight in the terminal. Can you account for the whereabouts of all your men, Lieutenant, during that time?”

  Croft gulped. Hoped his nerves weren’t showing.

  When Alonzo and that working party came back, some of them had very self-satisfied looks on their faces. I’ve never seen anyone looking self-satisfied because they did a good job unloading a shuttle.

  On the other hand, he was Legion. If the orientation training on Chauncy had taught him anything, it was that the USFL’s unofficial motto was something to the effect of ‘We take care of our own because nobody else gives a damn.’

  Alonzo could not possibly have taken those men, somehow gotten into a highly-secure Army depot, and stolen – how much?

  “Well, Lieutenant?” the MP captain demanded.

  “Sir,” said Croft, heart in his throat. “I can absolutely vouch for the whereabouts of all of these men. When they were not under my immediate supervision, they were under the care of trusted NCOs.”

  “Sir, their First Div and its First Brigade’re both HQed in this town,” one of the MPs reminded the lieutenant.

  The MP lieutenant nodded. He and the major exchanged glances.

  “If these men stole the equipment,” the major pointed out, “then it’s probably on this train somewhere.”

  In addition to six passenger cars, the train – pulled by a heavy steam locomotive – had a cargo element as well. Behind the sixth passenger car were four closed boxcars, three unloaded flatcars, and several empty gondola cars, which were essentially open steel shoeboxes on wheels.

  “It’d be in one of the boxcars,” said the captain. “Lieutenant, I want your men to search them.”

  Oh shit, thought Croft.

  “The hell you’re delaying my train any further,” snapped a middle-aged man in a white dress uniform. The slightly frayed seams of his coat were trimmed with gold, and there was a single silver eagle on each side of his high collar. His brown riding boots had smears of dirt on them.

  “Who the hell are you?” the major demanded, turning. “Colonel. Sir.”

  “I’m the commander of security and operations at this goddamn railyard, is who I am,” said the – obviously Colonial Guard – colonel. “This train is already fifteen minutes past schedule, thanks in part to your goddamned shenanigans, and I’ll be damned if you’ll make it half an hour. We’ve already had to delay a freight today.”

  “Sir, we have reason to believe that stolen military property may be aboard this train,” said the MP officer. “In one of these boxcars.”

  “My men,” snapped the colonel, “loaded those boxcars. I can assure you that they would have noticed a tank – or was it perhaps an artillery piece?”

  “No, sir,” said the major. “Crates. Of– ”

  “Do these men look like Marines to you?” the colonel demanded. “The guard lieutenant at my barracks clearly reported a shout of ‘Semper fi’ as the perpetrators left. My barracks is right next door to your facility, Major.”

  “Sir, there’s no evidence of any Marines within three hundred miles,” said the major desperately. “Whereas these men–”

  “I think this lieutenant knows something, sir,” said the MP lieutenant. “He looks like he’s hiding something.”

  Oh, shit, fuck, shit, thought Croft. He wanted to close his eyes and pray, or fall to his knees and beg. Cashiered on my very first day of active duty. How proud would Father be of me for that.

  “He looks,” the Colonial Guard colonel said, “like any poor young lieutenant would look if he was being accused of larceny by three superior officers – from outside his chain of command. And speaking of chains, this man has a train to catch.”

  The CG colonel glared at each of the three officers in turn.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Croft noticed Gonzalez get out of the front passenger car.

  “Major, Captain, Lieutenant, I strongly suggest – in fact, I order you – to get the hell out of my depot. And stop delaying my train. You are not going to search it and if you have a problem, you are more than free to appeal to Governor Harris.”

  “Sir–”

  “Write an email to Richmond, major! And get the hell out of my damn depot.”

  The major, the captain and the MPs turned around.

  The colonel turned to Croft and Gonzalez with a smirk on his face.

  “Army motherfuckers,” he said. “I hate them almost as much as you Legion boys do, Lieutenant.”

  He nodded at Gonzalez.

  “Sergeant, too.”

  Gonzalez belatedly saluted.

  What do I say to that? Croft thought.

  “Seems to me that someone might owe someone a favor,” the colonel said. Winking broadly.

  Yes. I do owe you, Croft reluctantly agreed.

  “Sir, if there’s anything I can do for you–” Croft began.

  The colonel extended his right hand slightly, unobtrusively, and ran his thumb across the palm.

  What? I’m mistaking this gesture. This man cannot seriously be asking me for money.

  It has to be some colonial idiosyncrasy.

  I’m not being asked for a bribe. Not by a full colonel. An O-6. I must be misreading this.

  Gonzalez coughed loudly.

  “Sir, it looks as though your boots could use a shining,” the sergeant said to the colonel.

  “Shoe-shines aren’t cheap in this town,” the colonel pointed out.

  “No, sir. I don’t think they are. And – it’s the tenth, isn’t it? Almost a month until payday. Perhaps, sir, you’d accept a small cash loan from my lieutenant here, sir.”

  Oh my God, he was asking for a bribe, Gonzalez knows it – and he expects me to give him one?

  That had to contravene so many regulations that it wasn’t funny.

  As though hiding the obviously stolen military property in whichever boxcar it’s in, isn’t contravening regulations?

  He was in it up to his neck already. Reluctantly he took out his wallet.

  “Sergeant,” he asked, “about how much would a quality shoe-shine cost around here?”

  “Can’t get one for less than five hundred,” said the colonel. “Although” – he eyed Croft’s watch – “sometimes
they take goods of comparable value.”

  Croft took out five hundred-dollar bills and folded them over a couple of times, planning to palm them and transfer the money through a handshake. Then a brainwave struck.