The Rods and the Axe

by Tom Kratman

  “I say,” said Sister Mary Magdalene, short-skirted and thin-shirted, “I don’t think I like the sound of that. You would think they’d be pleased we’ve come to protect them.”

  “They’re probably just concerned with the prospect that we have spies among our ranks, Sister,” said Father Segundo; Leonardo Jon Oscar Segundo, in full, a steel-haired and seam-faced pastor of an old school, if not the traditional old school.

  “But we . . .” The nun looked properly scandalized.

  “No, of course not, Sister,” the priest assured her. “But they can’t know that, can they?”

  “I suppose not, Father,” agreed the short-skirted nun.

  Pity, thought Puente-Pequeño, looking over the bare concrete floors of the Herrera International terminal, that there wasn’t time to set up tents. On the other hand, good thing we got the bloody carpets up.

  “Bloody,” in this case, wasn’t a minor Anglian vulgarity. Between the maniple of the Balboan Corps of Cadets that had been stationed here and the Gallic paras who had, finally, pretty much exterminated them, the old carpets had been soaked with blood. The other downside to using the terminal was lack of power for air conditioning. On the other hand, with the bulk of the windows blown out during the assaults of a couple of months prior, there was at least some breeze, sufficient to reduce the heat inside from impossible to merely miserable. That most of that heat came from just this side of melting tarmac of the runways and taxiways didn’t help.

  Walking across the bare concrete to a shattered window, Puente-Pequeño looked out at the five lines of mostly Taurans passing through some hastily set up “customs” check points, none of which actually cared in the slightest about routine tax collection or smuggling prevention. No, these agents were actually police detectives and they were gathering evidence: “Where is your citizenship? Is that where you vote? Is that where you pay taxes? What is your purpose in coming to Balboa? So you were aware that there is a war on, albeit under a temporary truce, between your home country and the alliance of which it is a part, and the Timocratic Republic of Balboa?”

  The brief interviews were being taped, Which should, thought the staff judge advocate, save some time. A little more time was saved by separating out the eight hundred and ninety-nine peace activists into three groups: Taurans, who made up—by far—the biggest, citizens of the Federated States, and everyone else. From the furtive glances of the Taurans—Well, from all of them, but especially the Taurans—Puente-Pequeño had the impression that the fact of being separated and segregated was making them nervous.

  Perfectly understandable it is, too, he thought.

  As the lawyer watched, armed legionaries boarded the airship, to make sure it didn’t go anywhere until released.

  Father Leonardo Jon Oscar Segundo was neither unholy nor a hypocrite. Other Catholics in Pax Vobiscum may have been nominal; not he. He’d read the scripture diligently from boyhood, and from that early age he’d read in it things that seemed to completely pass by most of this fellow clergy and nearly all of those they served. He took seriously the admonition, “Put away your swords.” He believed that the miracle of the loaves and fishes was more about sharing than about multiplication. And, while he truly believed in the life hereafter, he didn’t think that absolved anyone from trying to make life in this world more just.

  And he knew—he didn’t delude himself about the matter—that most of the activists with him were more concerned with their perks and prestige than with anything else. Even Sister Mary Magdalene, who was better than most, had a streak of excessive concern with her own position.

  Okay, so maybe bricks without straw are not of the best, but they’re better than no bricks at all.

  When the guards came and ordered the priest to follow them, he’d taken it in stride. Excessive militarism was hardly unique to Balboa, after all. He was a little more concerned when he found himself standing before a panel of three judges, was presented with a uniformed man, Warrant Officer Bonadies, who, the priest was informed, was his defense counsel, and then heard read off a criminal complaint charging him with treason.

  Treason? Treason against their enemies? These people are charging me with treason against the Tauran Union and my own Tuscany? That’s . . .

  “How do you plead, Father Segundo?”

  “ . . . preposterous,” the priest said, thinking aloud. “I mean . . .”

  “The good father pleads not guilty,” said the man assigned to his defense, Bonadies.

  Thereafter the trial went very quickly, from the video recording of the reading of the activists’ rights, to their admission that they were citizens of a country at war with Balboa. Bonadies made his objections here and there, but they were all obviously pretty pro forma.

  It didn’t really sink in with Father Segundo just how much trouble he was in until the three judges conferred for all of five minutes, without ever leaving the room, and the center one of the three, Judge Achurra, said, “And, so, however reluctantly, Father Segundo, this court finds you to be a citizen of Tuscany and of the Tauran Union, with which polities the Timocratic Republic finds itself at war. We have further examined the prospect that, you might, as a priest, have claimed extraterritoriality, even though you did not. Sadly, as your church, which is also ours, is based in Tuscany, and since Tuscany is also at war with us, a claim of extraterritoriality will not stand.

  “We further find that, in coming here to interfere with the Tauran Union’s war effort, you have attempted to give aid to it and Tuscany’s enemies, those being ourselves. This is treason under our laws, which do not define treason only in regards to Balboa, but as a human phenomenon, applicable anywhere in the world and to almost any human being who holds citizenship somewhere, and over which we claim universal jurisdiction.

  “Father, before you faint dead away, consider that if a Tauran court can claim jurisdiction over crimes against human rights, as they have, and if human rights, on the one hand, mean an obligation to respect those rights, on the other, this recognizes human obligations as a universal legal reality. There is no principled reason to restrict universal legal realities to merely the obligation to respect human rights. Among other obligations is also an obligation to be true to one’s country.

  “In other words, Father Segundo, your polity has claimed universal jurisdiction over human rights, hence of human obligations, while we claim universal jurisdiction over human obligations, which implicate human rights, the right of your fellow citizens not to have you betray them by betraying your common country.”

  The judge’s voice grew very somber than as he said, “Thus this court has no recourse but to sentence you to death for treason to your country. And that doesn’t even begin to address how we feel about the mortal insult directed toward our country by the implication that we can only be defended by hiding behind you and yours.

  “Oh, and may God have mercy on your soul.”

  Father Segundo sat behind barbed wire, in what had probably been the luggage handling area of the terminal in a more peaceful and happier day. The parting words of his defense counsel, Bonadies, hadn’t been a lot of comfort: “The sentence has to be approved by the president, who is a fair man. Thank God it doesn’t have to be approved by Carrera, who is not a fair man. I think I can probably get you off with hanging, or maybe even firing squad, rather than crucifixion. Fortunately, no one tried to put on any evidence that this was not a first offense or it would be the cross for sure.”

  Almost as if they were worry beads, the priest’s rosary beads made a soft clicking sound as he manipulated them. They’d have been reduced to worry beads, too, but for the “Ave Marias” and “Pater Nosters.”

  “When?” the priest had asked. “When will they execute me?”

  Bonadies had shrugged, somewhat embarrassed. “Under normal civil criminal procedures, it would be a month or so. But this is wartime and there’s not a lot of care being paid to the niceties. There are three courts set up. Each trial is taking about half an hour, w
ith breaks. Thus, eighty or a hundred or so a day. Figure you have a week to ten days. Is there anyone you would like me to notify?”

  Based on his attorney’s perfunctory performance, Father Segundo was by no means certain that he would not be crucified. He, more than most outside of Balboa, had reason to know this would be the hardest possible death. As the wired-in area filled up with his fellow condemned, thus filled up with a load of shocked silly, weeping, screaming, and begging persons, the priest found himself praying less for his deliverance than for theirs.

  Segundo spent a fair amount of time counseling the condemned. But when he wasn’t doing that, or eating, or sleeping, he tried to puzzle through the justification the judge had given. If nothing else, it took his mind off the prospect of the mass crucifixion impending.

  Is it really true, wondered Father Segundo, does it really follow, that a claim of universal jurisdiction in defense of human rights also supports a claim of universal jurisdiction to defend human obligations? This may be the first time in my life I wished I’d become a Jesuit, and taken up the law, as some of them do.

  But even without that training, I, I myself, have always held that people had a right to certain things: food, shelter, clothing, education, medical care. And, yes, surely, the judge was right in claiming that if someone has a right to something, then someone else has the obligation to provide that something. So, okay, there’s a correlation between rights and obligations.

  But there I stop. Countries are bullshit. No one has obligation one to any of them. So I feel. So I believe.

  Ah, but what about those who believe differently? There are those who do not believe in the universal human right to food, shelter, clothing, education, and medical care. But I insist that they honor my belief in those rights. Am I being arrogant, unreasoning, and unfair in demanding others honor my beliefs and refusing to honor theirs, myself? What if I am? What if I am?

  And if I am, and if I have accepted the principle of universal jurisdiction to support my beliefs, how can I deny them the principle of universal jurisdiction to support theirs? How can I, in principle, deny them that principle?

  And if we have two opposed principles, how can I say which is right? Mine, just because it is mine? That’s not a principle. Damn.

  Palacio de las Trixies, Ciudad Balboa,

  Republic of Balboa, Terra Nova

  The planes hadn’t been hitting the city much, lately. Instead, the bulk of the bombing effort seemed to be directed at more purely military targets outside the capital’s political and practical boundaries. And even there, the presence of so many thousands of Tauran POWs in little camps, indistinguishable from so many other facilities, had had a considerable dampening effect on how freely they were willing to bomb.

  Thus, President Parilla could feel more or less comfortable in his own home. He’d still sent his wife away from the palace, just in case.

  “I’m a superstitious man,” he explained to Mrs. Parilla. “Worse, all my life I’ve had the feeling that the Almighty’s sense of humor was perverse.”

  She hadn’t gone with good grace, but she had gone.

  So now Parilla had the place to himself and his staff. As a younger man—not necessarily that much younger, either—he’d probably have used the opportunity for some casual dalliance with one or two of the cuter maids. Now? Too fucking old for that shit.

  “What was that, Mr. President?” asked Carrera.

  “What? Was I thinking out loud?”

  “Something about ‘too fucking old,’ ” Carrera confirmed.

  “Then I am getting to be too fucking old,” the president said.

  “Everyone does,” said Puente-Pequeño. Then, taking off his glasses to polish and thinking about blood-stained carpets now gone from the terminal, he thought, sadly, Well . . . no . . . not everyone does.

  “Anyway,” Carrera continued, not wanting to make too much of the old man’s slip, “we wrote the law as an oversight, as much as anything.”

  “The same way we ended up giving medals for valor to Sada’s men in Sumer?” Parilla asked.

  “Yes, Mr. President,” said Carrera, “pretty much. Though that was an oversight that had a happy ending. This one, unless you do something, won’t.”

  “Note, sir,” said Puente-Pequeño, “that no lawyer had a hand in crafting this law. Your veterans did that on their own. And you have to expect a certain amount of legal idiocy when you permit that.”

  Carrera and Parilla both shrugged, indifferently, which caused the lawyer to roll his eyes.

  “So anyway,” asked the president, “how are these different from the Castilians?”

  “Two ways, Mr. President,” said Puente-Pequeño. “In the first place, the Castilians joined us and became our troops at a time when we were not at war with the TU, and after the TU’s leadership here, the Gauls, had attacked their commander. That cut off any obligations between Muñoz-Infantes’s unit and the TU. Second, we are not at war with Castile, which has limited itself to medical aid and such.”

  “Okay, and the individual immigrants from Taurus?”

  “They’re all pre-war. By joining us they went through formal renunciation of rights and obligation vis a vis their former countries.”

  Parilla wondered about that. Every time you introduce a lawyer, he thought, things get complicated and the truth flees.

  Still, he couldn’t see where the lawyer was precisely wrong, so, “What do you want me to do?”

  Carrera replied, “We need all the condemned to get a conditional pardon, Raul. Just that.”

  “The condition being that they go away and never return?”

  “On pain of death,” answered Carrera. “We’ve held over but not refueled their airship. They can reach Santa Josefina, where we fully expect them to salve their pride by doing what we refused to permit them doing here.”

  “And we don’t mind this?” the president asked.

  “Not a bit,” answered Carrera, smiling wickedly. “After all, officially the rebellion in Santa Josefina cannot be our war.”

  “So we get all the moral advantages of refusing to hide behind foreigners, and the Taurans over in Santa Josefina still get all the disadvantages of having their enemies able to hide behind their own traitors?”

  “Evil, Mr. President, is it not?” asked the JAG.

  “A little, yes,” said Parilla, raising a frown on the lawyer’s face. “But . . . well, yes, I’ll do it.” Turning his attention back to Carrera he asked, “Now what are we going to do to humiliate the enemy about their bullshit announcement of ‘air supremacy’? Swear to God, I am surprised they didn’t put anyone’s eye out, what with all the flying champagne corks.”

  “I think,” said Carrera, “that they’ve had long enough to become complacent and that now a little humiliation is in order; that, and some disillusionment.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Surprise is the master-key of war.

  —B.H. Liddell Hart, Thoughts on War

  Santa Cruz, Balboa, Terra Nova

  Every day Tribune Ordoñez took a walk down to Arnold field, to check on the status of the damage. It wasn’t all that far, after all, nor did he have anything better to do. The six truck-mounted aircraft in his flight already checked out as ready to go, while the solid fuel rockets underneath were so simple they were presumed to be wholly reliable.

  At the airfield, the story on the surface never changed. The charred skeleton of the burned airship still sat, the rags of its singed fabric flapping in the breeze. The airfield itself had been well cut by the Oliphants; rough-field-capable or not, no Mosaics would be coming down along its roughly one-mile length without repairs, either to the airfield, beforehand, or to the plane, afterwards.

  That said, there were Sixteenth Legion ground crews with dump trucks full of gravel and sections of perforated steel planking just waiting for the word to make some temporary repairs. Moreover, while the main runway was still cut, then Taurans hadn’t paid a lot of attention to either the taxi
ways nor the parking lots nor the roads. Between those, there were no fewer than seven strips on Arnold Air Base, alone, of sufficient length and quality to recover aircraft. There were two more adequate lengths at Herrera International, plus another one at Brookings, though that last one was tricky, and slated to be used only as a last resort.

  Even so, every day Ordoñez took his walk and consulted with the centurion in charge of the runway repair crews. “Less than two hours, Tribune,” was the centurion’s learned judgment, “provided you keep the enemy air off my back. I’ve had my boys rehearsing this for weeks now. We can blast away the rippled concrete and push it off line, fill every hole with gravel, and cover them with steel planking, in about eighty-seven minutes.”

  And it might just be, thought Ordoñez, that all you will do is attract their fires, so that we can land on the alternate strips. But we’ll still hope for the best and we will give you all the cover we can.

  For now, we await the word. I can’t say anything, but I think it’s coming soon, in the next couple of days.

  Despite sneers from Carrera, the declaration of “air supremacy” on the part of the Taurans had definite and serious operational implications well over and above the televised mass popping of champagne corks on the part of generals, admirals, and bureaucrats . . . to the extent those differed. These implications were distinct, but synergetic.

  In the first place, for so long as the Taurans perceived a credible air-to-air threat—not strong, just credible, it being such a potentially humiliating prospect to lose a hundred million Tauran airplanes to an obsolete aircraft costing less than a tenth of a percent of that—they had to carry a certain amount of air-to-air ordnance, both on aircraft dedicated to the aerial combat mission, and on others dedicated to the bombing campaign. That cut into ordnance carried for the campaign that mattered, bombing the upstart Balboans into the stone age.