Jahandar: The Orion War

by Kali Altsoba

Now the Krevans are yelling blue bloody murder that the deal isn’t activated, with their homeworlds on fire or under siege and close blockade. Sanjay finally appreciates just how truly devious most politicians are. Robert Hoare had wisely understood that a secret alliance could be discarded with full deniability. He did exactly that when Aral tried to invoke its claim to aid.

  On to the next problem. ‘Wild voices clamor that something must be done, and so we host five refugee sanctuaries despite daily Grün protests. We refuse to hand over the bandit ships or return all KRA arriving on so-called Exodus fleets. Holding KRA troops on Harsa and the other sanctuaries is no longer enough. We must deport them to the Imperium, to avoid war. I’ll give that advice to the PM, who can take it direct to the cabinet. No point talking to Briand, he’ll just snort and criticize and demand forceful action, as always.’ Sanjay makes a note to make a note.

  He knows that the NCU can’t get large-scale aid through the Kaigun line, not even if the War Hawks prevail and orders to break the blockade go out. Not without starting a major naval war, and never in time to prevent defeat of Krevo. ‘If we can stretch the crisis until the inevitable fall of the last Krevan worlds, the issue will dissipate and this Union will avoid a useless war.’

  It’s an important point, one sure to appeal to the PM and ‘Peace Faction.’ For ever more Neutrals are frantically requesting aid: Helvetics, the Three Kingdoms, and other small star states with the grave misfortune to locate in central Orion, in so-called buffer zones that separate the three empires under terms of the old peace. Neutral ambassadors on Caspia and Kars are urgently petitioning the Union to declare full security guarantees, while Pyotr’s man darkly warns not to do it. The vast dread zone of Daura’s darkened stars stays silent and mysterious in this crisis.

  Hoare thinks: ‘That will be harder to block, with armies moving deeper into the Krevan Republic. Surely Pyotr knows that and will stop at Krevo? He says he has no more territorial claims, that he seeks only to recover his Lost Children. Why not let him? What has it to do with us? This is a quarrel over far away worlds of which we know little.’

  ***

  The PM decides to share his fears with the public, that extending security guarantees might provoke war with the Imperium instead of deterring it. He says in the Lok Sabha: “Our best course is to do nothing. The path to peace is restraint, confidant in our strength but not flexing military muscles like shirtless stable boys trying to impress the girls at a country fair.”

  He’s an urbane, sophisticated and highly-educated man. He doesn’t normally speak in such crude commonalities. He does it now because he thinks the simile is folksy and politically effective. “I’m not above stooping to conquer public opinion,” he boasts, when asked by a puzzled supporter.

  “All that peace requires to triumph is the right information in the right hands.” He affirms to the Great House: “The cause of all wars is misunderstanding. No one today wants war. War is the way of fools and madmen! We must talk out issues with Pyotr and the Imperium. We can find common ground. We can end the crisis, avoid war, assure that the Long Peace continues.”

  I know, I know, but he really believes it. Yes, I know he’s the prime minister. What? You don’t think a PM can be so awfully wrong about so very much that’s so very important? Turn the memex back on! Feel better listening to your representatives in the Lok Sabra? How about those cocky, expert talking heads? When did you get your advanced degree in Interstellar Security Studies? Oh, I see! You want to decide for yourself, do you? Don’t trust me, either? Fine!

  But did you see that smuggled vid of Gross Imperium division parading from its base camp at Kolno and onto shuttles going the gods-know-where? Do you wonder where the most elite fighting division in the Rikugun is headed? Did you see our spy drone vid of Genève? Yeah, the one that sneaked in-and-out to bring CIS those far-system shots of a smoke-enshrouded planet? Someone in the top floors at MoD must have leaked them on the memex. You don’t say, you vacationed on Genève once and hope to go back? Well, not this year.

  Robert Hoare believes in belief, and he believes in himself. He can’t conceive that the threat is real and pressing, that in the modern Age aggressors might still choose war, willingly, wantonly, recklessly. That they would hurtle the naked peoples of Orion against each other. That they and not he understand the fateful moment, so full of weak opposition and rising opportunity.

  “Give me the right information and I will use my humble powers of persuasion. I will use sweet reason with those you say are our enemies, and make them if not our friends then at least not our foes. I will rely, as Calmaris may all rely, on the unquestioned rock of ages, the moral power and guarantees of the Peace of Orion. The great peace will stand against all those who would turn to violence to resolve ordinary political disputes, whether they are farfolk gathering armies or some sitting here in this chamber.”

  It’s a cheap shot at the War Hawks, but it works. Another preparedness vote is defeated, this one to increase spending on anti-phantom warfare.

  He believes he can sway the moral actions of even such a gloried thug as Pyotr with an appeal to reasonableness. He’s not thinking about Jahandar at all. No one is. The Hermit Empire doesn’t start wars. Jahandar and Daura have been silent for over 50 years. The threat is Kestino, and he can reason with Pyotr.

  Then more Krevan worlds fall. Stories of atrocities spread from the occupied worlds, of random mass shootings of civilians on Lwów, burned-out forests and ‘death roads’ on Genève. Krevan diplomats are behind the stories, helped by sympathizers residing atop the Hornet’s Nest on Caspia.

  Admirable reason such as the PM hopes to practice is losing out. All the Govnebs stir their local publics against Pyotr and his war. They fill up with indignant Neutral ambassadors and with heartfelt interviews with wan refugees telling tales, some taller than others, of terrible acts on the fallen worlds. Stories and rumint about indiscriminate massacres, of shootings and rape, of burning up folk in Life Temples, of killing Krevan babies pulled from incubators.

  Sanjay thinks it’s all lies. Well, mostly lies. ‘Emotional clap-trap put about by Krevan and Neutral agents of influence, meant to pull Calmaris into someone else’s war. I won’t have it!’ He vows it manfully to himself for the hundredth time. ‘Neither will the prime minister, thank the gods.’

  “The problem,” he confides to a chosen underling, who’s actually spying on him for Admiral Gaétan Maçon, “is that half-madman Briand. He wants even more severe sanctions. He wants our NCU escorts to run the blockade with arms for Aral, and to give direct aid to resisters already making hit-and-run raids on Kaigun convoys and outposts from the so-called sanctuaries. He wants money to repair Krevan warships and to pay fighters in the five sanctuaries. Imagine!”

  “We must beat back the locust swarm,” Briand warned darkly in the Lok Sabha a week earlier, receiving rounds of loud boos but also more smattering applause than he ever got before.

  “We mustn’t feed the innocent Neutrals one-by-one to these voracious swarms, hoping only that they’ll come to consume our fields last.” More boos, more applause. The Union is deeply divided about what to do. “After Pyotr takes down the little states he’ll come for us, too.”

  Sanjay is taken aback by the minister’s use of “locusts,” a vulgar pejorative for Grünen. His own minister, in charge of MoD! Imagine! ‘The term is catching on with our public, too.’

  Some days he can’t believe that a man like Briand sits in the Joint Cabinet. He despises the brash and vulgar bully for personal things as well. Such as puffing on a plain wooden pipe instead of fine, inlaid luxury one, or a jeweled type. ‘Just like he’s a backwater village elder. It’s a populist pose for billions of watching plebs. Rather filthy too, no self-cleaning bowl.’

  He despises it more because it’s working. Briand has real and growing popularity across the systems. Sanjay is right about another thing. Briand puffs away pretending to ordinariness but smokes only the most expensive, exquisite perfumed tobaccos.
He drinks Baku scotch, too.

  ‘Thank Vishnu that the cabinet is not so ready for war, and the prime minister has a level head determined on keeping the Long Peace. If only he’d sack Briand! I would suggest it, but it might bring down the government and really make ‘the mockmeat sizzle on the skillet,’ as they say in the barrios. Best to trim Briand back first, slice off the fat of his support before grilling.’

  Sanjay turns to the backchannel option, personally playing to the PM. First lay down the ante: “Briand must be slowed, even if he can’t be stopped. Before he provokes confrontation or war with the Imperium. Pyotr can be reasoned with by you. Briand cannot. He’s stirring public opinion in truly dangerous ways. Dangerous to peace, Prime Minister. Dangerous also to you.”

  Next, the action card played with flattery: “Only you, Prime Minister, show the foresight and understanding to search patiently and faithfully for compromise with Pyotr. You know that choices by statesmen are never between good and evil, black and white. Fuses of too many wars are lit by firebrands!” As he expects, the PM enjoys the defamatory pun on his rival’s name.

  Then pull out the trump card. Play to political jealousy, the assassin card of a bureaucrat, held close by a minor Machiavelli who knows to invoke insecurity in a political master so that he makes the draw himself, thinking it’s the kill card he wanted all along and that his own brilliance pulled it just in time to win the game.

  “You know your business best, Prime Minister. Yet if I may say, sir, Briand doesn’t strike me as a man who’ll let a good interstellar crisis go to waste. Not when it can advance his career. It’s rumored that he has high ambitions, sir, that he doesn’t want to stay forever at MoD.”

  “What have you heard?”

  “Nothing specific, Prime Minister. Only whispers by his aides about growing support inside the Party, and among some of your backbenchers.”

  “He wants to replace me? He wants to lead the government?”

  “That’s not for me to say. I deal in facts, not in rumors. I’m an analyst.”

  “The man’s mad for war. Doesn’t he understand that we must put an end to war or war will put an end to us? We must stop this terrible conflict before it spills over our borders, too. Since the quickest way to end a war is to lose it, I shall send no help to failing, fading Krevo.” Sanjay’s impressed. There’s iron in the prime minister yet. Briand is going to get a real fight.

  Hoare speaks in the Lok Sabha the next day. It’s a rare, shocking public rebuke of a senior minister in his own government. “War might yet come to our quiet worlds, but it’s crucial not to stumble into it.” He looks straight at Georges Briand. He may as well paint “warmonger” in red letters on his defense minister’s forehead. “Engagement isn’t appeasement. Diplomacy isn’t surrender. This is a time for cool words and cooler heads. There’ll be time enough for war.”

  Instant polling shows a 12% jump in the PM’s personal approval numbers. Over 20% in the critical “strong leader” category. Briand’s personal approval falls 5%, which is less of a hit than the PM hoped for or intended to inflict. ‘The man has real and broad public support, more than I credited before now. He’s indeed as dangerous to me and to peace as Mr. Pradip says.’

  Sanjay sends the PM a private holo expressing how eloquent and persuasive he is, and how terribly sour Briand’s face looked during the speech. Prime Minister Hoare calls Sanjay to see him in person the next day, to thank him for his warning and urge him to keep coms open.

  “What I need to know,” he tells Sanjay over hot tea served in cold china, which is not at all to Pradip’s style or taste, “is not CIS estimates of raw numbers of Grün ships and divisions. I need to know what’s happening inside Pyotr’s court.”

  “Prime minister?”

  “Who’s advising him? Where are the lines of power and fractures? What’s his next move? Can I trust him to keep his word, as I have given mine? On these hinges of judgment and character swing the gates of war and peace.”

  “Yes, I see that, sir.” Sanjay gulps some hot tea. It’s quite good, but he misses his eager little teacup that’s always rewarming itself even as he sips.

  “I have a plan for peace in our time, but I must know before I start down so dangerous a path what Pyotr is truly thinking. I fear his ignorance more than I fear his arrogance. I shall seek to repair his ignorance with an offer of trust and diplomacy. Can you help me do this?”

  “Yes, prime minister. We have special agents on Kestino. Even at the Jade Court. I shall review all reports and make inquiries. I should advise you privately on this matter?”

  “Yes. We conspire, you and I, but not for war. We are the men of iron will for peace. We must act decisively.”

  Sanjay considers coming into MoD even earlier than his new start time, to better locate information the PM needs. Mrs. Pradip won’t hear of it, or of staying late instead. So he’ll catch his regular ‘looper’ home tonight as he always has, and each night to follow. His dear wife will have aromatic tea and a coconut curry waiting, garnished with fresh raisins. Or perhaps a slice of roast mockmeat? ‘That would be a nice change.’ Sanjay likes a plain slice of roasted mockbeef, with a side of cubed potatoes, of course. More than he likes Mrs. Pradip’s too regular curries.

  He’ll come back to the stack of reports. First, he must activate a deeper backchannel in behalf of the PM. This one will draw on all his years and contacts in CIS and beyond. It’s the mission of his lifetime. ‘I’ll put a stop to Briand. The PM will reward me handsomely for this.’

  The atomic clocks are ticking down all over Orion. Soon everyone will meet an anointed role, find a part to play amidst the sound and fury of hate and war. Some parts will be larger than others, more portentous and consequential. Men and women will rise to meet their key moment, or fail. Nothing is written. Only that their moment is coming in the downstreaming of rushing Time.

  Sanjay Pradip is on the cusp of his greatest personal moment. Will he pass or fail? Who will be there to judge? He’s one of the critical players of the looming and appointed hour, with influence beyond his ego or ken or desire. Far beyond all of that. Yet he doesn’t know the time.

  ‘Is it time to stay or go? The sun is blue and low. Mrs. Pradip will have tea and biscuits waiting. It’s good to know everything is in its rightful place and in its proper order. There’ll be time, there’s always time...’

  As he hurries from the base of the Hornet’s Nest to the last maglev of the day Mrs. Pradip awaits his return to her wearing a prim print dress. She has no tea or biscuits ready. She has made another one of her splendid curries.

  Tick, tock.

  Arrow

  A week later Sanjay travels in secret to meet the prime minister on Kars. He tells him: “Pyotr is a man and a mature leader whom you can trust to understand his limits. He’ll not reach past the Krevan worlds with his armies and fleets. He has no further territorial ambitions in Orion.”

  “You’re certain of this conclusion?”

  “Yes, prime minister. All my best sources confirm it. He dissembles about supporting Purity only to rule the Purists, who aren’t without influence at the Jade Court, I must admit. The Tennō is not one of them, sir.”

  “So what is he, in his core?”

  “He’s a proud Oetkert and Shaka, an arrogant son of dynastic lines over a millennium old, and on his maternal side, much older than that. He’s not an upstart radical with the latest new theory and in a great hurry for change. Pyotr Shaka Oetkert III is a conservative monarch, sir, to his toes he’s a traditionalist.”

  “Very good! That’s what I needed to know. Most helpful. Thank you, Mr. Pradip. Please keep looking into this matter. Move everything else off your desk. This has top priority.”

  “And my minister? What if Georges Briand objects?”

  “He’s my minister before he’s yours. You leave Briand to me. I’ll deal with him. I have only one more thing to ask of you.”

  “Anything, prime minister. I am your humble and loyal servant.”<
br />
  “I want you to contact … ”

  Now it’s Hoare’s turn to employ Ultra Secret backchannels, to reach out boldly to grasp peace in behalf of all Humanity. He gives his most trusted aide the name of the double agent on Kestino that Sanjay whispers in his ear.

  This is Robert Hoare’s moment in the wild gale pushing Time’s Arrow forward, in a hurricane of trillions of little decisions. He sets in motion a causal chain that will decide his legacy, and change the course of all history in Orion.

  Some of us just count more than others. Sorry, but it’s true. Thought we should get that cleared up, between us at least. Though I hasten to add, the powerful never count quite as much as they think. Not even fucking close.

  ***

  Another day, another week, another curry. Sanjay Pradip is back on Caspia, suffering from doubt. Grave doubt, about what he’s done. He’s reading more agent field reports in his alcove, working on Very Deep Background on the Imperium in anticipation of being asked about a range of pressing issues.

  Actually playing the great game of policy and politics, rather than daydreaming about making history with LaSalle Five, is proving harder than he thought. He’s used to the easier role of enlightened technocrat facing darkling daemons alone in his study, where he wrestles them to the parquet floor with brilliantly composed memoranda, stabbing them with his witticisms, sharply worded notes and grand allusions. Sanjay has the soul of a professor of literature.