I looked at the map. We’d been assigning too many soldiers to serve as police in New Copenhagen and the remains of Pitea, but what choice did we have? The Communists had broken the local police forces and we had to fill their shoes. It was just lucky that there hadn’t been any serious incidents, apart from a handful of looters being caught in the act and shot, but that could change at any moment. Were the farmers cold-blooded enough to provoke an incident that would tarnish our reputation in the eyes of the urban residents? Pitea was in ruins anyway. If chaos broke out there, it might well swell beyond our ability to deal with it.
“Yes, sir,” Ed said, finally. “I’ll be coming along as well, of course, with A Company.”
I knew when to give in. “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” I said. I glanced around the room. “Any other business?”
“I was just wondering if we shouldn’t provide an escort for the government agents,” Muna said. “It might deter someone from starting something stupid.”
“Or maybe underline the fact that they can’t trust the government anymore,” Robert injected. “They might even view it as a challenge, a gauntlet being thrown down that they have to pick up.”
“If we’re asked to provide one, we’ll consider it then,” I said, firmly. “Until then, you know your assignments, so…dismissed.”
Muna lingered behind when the others had left the room. “I was looking at the food distribution problem,” she said. “If I use the most pessimistic figures, the planet’s total store of food will be exhausted fairly quickly, if no more comes in from the farms. There are emergency stocks of MRE packs from the UN, but we used a number of those to feed refugees and not all of them are reliable.”
I nodded sourly. The people who’d packed the MRE – Meals Ready to Eat; three lies for the price of one – back on Earth had been low-paid and resentful of their status. They’d probably taken the opportunity to express their class anger – not that the UN admitted to having any such thing, of course – by damaging the packs in some way, or even putting unhealthy food in the package. I’d been on campaigns when it had been discovered that half the MREs were even more inedible than normal. There’d even been mutinies and riots over inedible MREs. The UN’s quality control was non-existent.
“I suspected as much,” I said, grimly. “How bad is it going to be?”
“It depends what assumptions we make,” Muna admitted. “If we go by the worst-case assumptions, the planet will be starving inside of three months, perhaps less. That’s with a total cut-off from the farms and a complete failure to seize and distribute seed corn from the farmers – which, incidentally, will prevent them from growing food for next year. The best-case assumption suggests that everything is going to be very rocky for the next five months before a steady decline sets in – I think this problem was already brewing well before the Communists started their uprising, let alone anything else.
“Overall, the planet needs to institute a harsh rationing scheme at once,” she concluded. “We need an accurate census of how many people are actually in the cities and how much they need to eat. We also need to start expanding farm capability as much as possible and that means rebuilding or dedicating the industrial factories to supporting the new farms.”
I scowled. I’d brought soldiers to Svergie. I hadn’t thought to bring any farmers. That oversight could have killed us all. “Get on to the personnel department and look for anyone we have with any farming experience,” I ordered, finally. “If you find anyone, tell them we need them to work out how we can quickly transform unsettled land into farms that can feed the population – by drafting new farmers from the cities, if necessary.”
“I’m not sure if that will settle all of the problems,” Muna said. “The Government would need to make life in the cities uncomfortable and that would be very…unpopular. At the moment, the urban residents have it pretty good and they don’t have many places to go anyway. A handful were able to get jobs and others did manage to go out to the farms, but they’re little more than a drop in a very big ocean. Worse, sir, the underclass are actually pumping out more children than the planet can support; we might have to suggest mandatory sterilisation of every woman who had a child, just to prevent the population from rising still further.”
Her face twisted. “I can’t have children myself,” she admitted, with a hint of pain in her voice, “but many women will be outraged by the suggestion. I can’t see the Progressive Party agreeing to it, yet they’re sitting on a time bomb, courtesy of the UN.”
“Thank you,” I said, finally. “I’ll do what I can.”
I made arrangements to meet with the Acting President – I had to keep reminding myself that she was the Acting President, not the President – and spent the rest of the day working on the paperwork I’d allowed to fall behind. It was one of the ironies of my job that I’d managed to cut down on the paperwork significantly – I saw no need for a UN-standard incident report on every little leaf that fell – but I still spent much of my time doing it. I’d promised myself that if I couldn’t justify a piece of paperwork to myself, I’d scrap it, but so much was clearly necessary. It was something that no one had ever managed to solve.
Two days later, the shit hit the fan.
Chapter Twenty-Six
It is a truism that large government cannot govern well, if by well we mean governing in a way that pleases the little people. A large government must – by the nature of the beast – concentrate on the bigger picture, and therefore irritate and alienate the little people who are, often quite unintentionally, ground up in the gears. This has three different outcomes depending on other factors; they abandon their work, they suffer in silence, or they rebel. All three have unpleasant consequences.
-Army Manual, Heinlein
I hadn’t been too impressed with Frida’s ‘government agents’ when I’d first seen them and I hadn’t seen anything to change my mind afterwards. She had intended to train up a new class of bureaucrats who could carry out her orders and create a detailed census of the farmers and their property, but she’d ended up having to raid the remains of the UN bureaucracy for personnel and instructors. I was surprised that she trusted them that far, but like most bureaucrats, they were loyal to the people paying the bills and that was Frida. She sent them in groups of five to the nearest farms with orders to carry out a census and collect the names of every farmer in the area. Three days after the first ones had been sent out, the shit finally hit the fan.
They hadn’t had a very comfortable journey as they drove towards the farms. It seemed that word of their coming had passed through the planetary grapevine – they didn’t have a full-scale datanet, but evidently they didn’t need one – and their reception had not been polite. They’d expected to stay at some of the smaller farms and holdings – there weren’t many hotels in the rural areas – but apparently none of the farmers was willing to put them up for a night. The farmers were generally hospitable to visitors, but apparently they weren't willing to share their home with lechers and moochers – their exact words – regardless of how much money they were offered. They’d ended up sleeping in their cars, cursing the farmers as they struggled to find comfort on the seats, before washing in a cold river and carrying on towards their destination. They were probably starving by that time as well; they somehow hadn’t thought to bring any food with them, either!
That problem was only solved when they reached a small village and found a shop whose owner was willing to sell them some bread and cheese, which they munched as they made their way towards the core group of farms. Frida had chosen it as their first destination because it was a political hub – insofar as the farmers had a political hub – and if they could be induced to knuckle down, the remainder of the farmers might fall in line. They drove into the village and hunted for the elected representatives. It took them nearly two hours to establish that the elected representatives were on their farms – something they should have expected from the start, seeing that they were farme
rs – and then they spent another hour trying to find the farm! One farm looked pretty much like all the others to city-born eyes…and they weren't helped by misleading instructions from people they encountered along the way. When they finally reached the farm, they were in a vile mode.
We only learned the remainder of the story from the recorder in their vehicle, which survived the brief encounter. The five government agents reached the farm’s gate and demanded admittance. The farmer came out instead and talked to them over the gate, demanding to know who they were and why they were bothering him. The representatives informed him that they were there to take a census. The farmer replied that he wasn't going to allow them on his land. The representatives said that they had permission from the government to arrest anyone who tried to bar their way and tried to grab the farmer. A handful of shots rang out and they stumbled to the ground, dead. The farmers took the bodies, dumped them in their car, drove it some distance from the farm and torched it. That was the signal for a general uprising; the remainder of the government agents scattered over the area were swiftly wiped out, their bodies dumped in their vehicles and burned, or buried in unmarked graves.
We received the emergency call from the government an hour after the shit hit the fan. The farmers had intended, I suspect, to ensure that no one knew what had happened in their territory until it was far too late. As it was, one of the agents managed to get off an emergency signal and alerted the government, which tried to raise the remaining agents and discovered that they were all off the air. The government’s links to local law enforcement units – mainly farmers or relatives of farmers – failed as well and it became clear that something was seriously wrong.
“Andrew, something has happened to the agents,” Frida said, when she called. I’d hit the emergency alert as soon as the board lit up, but we couldn’t have gotten anyone out to the farms in time to save any of their lives. Robert had been right, of course; we didn’t want to save any of their lives. “They’ve all gone off the air.”
“It could be a communications breakdown,” I said, thinking fast. It was clutching at straws and I knew it, but Frida might not know it. Coordinated action on such a scale meant carefully laid plans, icy determination…and an infrastructure capable of pulling off such attacks. I pulled up the images from the William Tell and searched for the final locations of the missing agents. The burning vehicles were easy to spot from orbit, even if their attackers were indistinguishable from everyone else. “What would you like us to do about it?”
“Rescue them,” Frida snapped, angrily. I looked at the orbital images again and decided that rescue was probably out of the question. The burning vehicles might have taken the dead bodies with them, as a message to the farmers’ enemies, or they might have been dumped elsewhere. I doubted that they’d bother taking prisoners. They probably believed that it was war to the knife. “Do what you’re paid for and get some of your men out there and rescue the poor bastards before they’re all killed!”
“Yes, Councillor,” I said, icily, and broke the connection. It was tempting – very tempting – to just abandon them, but I had my orders – besides, trouble like that had to be nipped in the bud, if possible. We’d barely started looking at long-term programs to avoid disaster, regardless of who won the war that had just begun. I keyed my earpiece and waited for Erica to respond.
“Yes, sir?” She said, from where she was preparing the helicopters for action. “We’re ready to move on your command.”
I wanted to board one of the helicopters and fly with them, but Peter and my other subordinates – hah – would never allow it. “Launch a quick reaction force to the following coordinates,” I said, and recited the coordinates of the first burning vehicle. “I’m dispatching a UAV to recon the area first. Get a platoon there and examine the vehicles if it seems safe, but watch out for ambushes.”
“Yes, sir,” Erica said. Her tone told me not to tell her how to do her job. “We’re launching the QRF now!”
I heard the noise of the helicopters rising up into the air as I came out of my quarters and headed towards the command centre. I paused to watch as the heavily-loaded assault helicopters lumbered down the runway and lifted off into the air, while the transport helicopters hovered directly into the air. I watched them go with a sense of growing unease. A single farmer with a SAM missile launcher could inflict serious losses on our helicopter capability at a very fair return. The UAV would lead the way and their flight path would keep them away from any known habitations, but anyone could be out there, waiting for them.
The command centre was on full alert when I stepped in and received salutes from the sentries at the door. The main display was showing where hundreds of government agents had made their last reports before vanishing from human ken – which probably meant that they were dead. Other reports suggested that there were people moving in the cities, although no one was sure what they were doing, or if it were a legitimate protest or something else. We’d put the soldiers on high alert, but there was nothing else we could do until someone started shooting.
I sat down in my chair and watched the live feed from the UAV as it coasted to the farmer’s hub. It really was beautiful countryside, with golden fields giving way to blue rivers and lakes, but I saw it as a place where any number of ambushes could be carried out at will. A person who knew the territory would be able to set traps for my men and force us to spread our forces thin to try to keep the peace – although I suspected that it was already too late for that. The peace had vanished the moment Frida had started her measures to save the population from starving. After that, it had only been an illusion.
“We’re coming up on the target coordinates now,” the UAV pilot said. He'd been a UN pilot before joining us and had rapidly become a great fan of how I ran my organisation, where he didn’t have to sign off on every little risk. “There’s little sign of obvious threats, but there wouldn’t be at this point anyway.”
I nodded as I glued my eyes to the screen. The UAV was covered in a stealth coating that should have rendered it invisible to radar – although the farmers didn’t seem to have radar – and was almost completely silent. They might be able to spot it with binoculars, but it blended well against the blue of the skies. Even if they did spot it, bringing it down would have been difficult – although we’d lost UAVs on Heinlein. If the Freedom League was really involved with the farmers, what might they have given them to play with?
And, for that matter, what had they given the miners to play with?
“Contact the government and tell them to check what’s happening at the mines,” I ordered, leaning over to Peter. The government kept observers at the mines and they’d stayed in place, despite the political unrest – brave men or fools, I hadn’t decided. “Ten gets you twenty that this has spread there as well.”
“No bet,” Peter muttered back, but he went to carry out my orders. A moment later, he returned. “They’re overdue for their standard check-in, sir.”
“Dead or prisoners,” I said. The William Tell was out of position to observe the mountains. I made a mental calculation and realised it would be hours before we could get any live feed from the starship. “The crisis will have spread there as well.”
“Fighting in the mountains against the Mountain Men,” Peter said. “This isn’t going to end well, sir.”
“No,” I agreed. “We just have to hold on long enough to stabilise the planet and then we can leave.”
“No sign of enemy activity,” the pilot reported. “No, wait; there are possible enemy combatants, moving around and armed with rifles. No other weapons detected.”
“That proves nothing,” Peter commented, grimly. “They could be hunters or farmers for all we know.”
I looked at the image of the burned-out vehicle. “They either were involved or they know what happened,” I said, sourly. “Estimated time of arrival for the helicopters?”
“Twenty minutes,” the pilot said, as he pushed the UAV into a holding patt
ern high overhead. “I’m picking up low-level power sources, cause unknown, and numerous heat signatures inside the houses. I estimate around fifteen people inside the house, but the readings could be misleading.”
“Of course,” Peter growled. We shared a long look. We’d both been misled before by simple countermeasures on Heinlein. “There’s no point in bombing them on suspicion.”
I clicked back to the life feed from the helicopters and watched as they swept towards their destination in full combat formation. Their course was erratic, but I knew that the enemy would probably be able to guess their destination anyway. There weren't many other places they could be going in that general direction, unless they headed towards Fort Galloway. I’d be leading a convoy there tomorrow, according to the plan, but I was already rethinking that plan. Open hostilities meant revising the ROE and placing other forces on alert.
Picking Up The Pieces (Martial Law) Page 26
