Picking Up The Pieces (Martial Law)
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“Yeah,” I said. “How is the Federation coming along?”
“Slowly,” John admitted. “Half of them think that Fleet intends to become an Empire, the other half are out for what they can get for themselves and hang the rest. It’s total bloody chaos, not helped by the fact that there are people in Fleet who think that we should become an Empire, just to keep the children in line. If what you found implicates Heinlein…that demand is only going to grow stronger. Heinlein is definitely one of our problem children.”
He shook his head. “That doesn’t matter for the moment,” he said. “Take your time; rest, recover, and prepare for your next deployment. Svergie is hardly the worst world out there, Andrew, and they all need fixing.”
I smiled. “Just call us the fixers,” I said. “It makes a change from breaking things in the name of the UN.”
The End
Svergie – A Short Guide
Svergie was originally discovered in 2206 by a UN survey team. The planet was rapidly assessed as a 95% - i.e. close to Earth, but lacking some vital components, including edible fauna – and the UN declared the planet open for bids in 2208. A consortium headed by the King of Scandinavia (a neo-federation of Sweden, Norway and Denmark) purchased settlement rights from the UN and major settlement began two years later. After considerable haggling between the various elected representatives, the planet was officially named by the Swedes, but the various cities were actually named by the other nationalities. A site near the ocean was selected as the location of Landing City, which was renamed New Copenhagen after Svergie officially gained self-government.
Owing to its distance from Earth – the Jump Drive was less efficient at that point – Svergie’s growth was surprisingly slow. This was a result of several factors, including a general feeling that development should be centred on small farming communities, rather than larger cities and orbital stations. The transit station established in orbit around Svergie was allowed to decay after the early settlement had been completed and – eventually – was decommissioned. Although there was a steady flow of immigrants from Earth – conditions were worsening on the planet as the UN took control – the planet’s population barely rose above the 10 million mark. It was generally regarded as a backwater and the population accepted that. They had no desire for galactic power.
This tranquillity was brought to an abrupt end when the UN Survey Team discovered the presence of vital minerals in the mountains and insisted on sending in ‘inspectors’ to assess the possibility of a mining operation. Correctly suspecting that the UN intended to claim the resources for themselves, the Svergie Government created a Mining Department that would mine a limited amount of ore and sell it to the UN. This didn’t please the UN bureaucrats sent to oversee the planet and, eventually, Svergie formally became a UN protectorate. A hundred years of independence had come to an end.
Originally, the UN presence was not onerous and it took a long time for resistance to form. Had the UN concentrated only on mining and ignored the rest of the planet, it is quite likely that real trouble would have been avoided for a long time. The bureaucrats, however, had other ideas and after an attempt to restructure local law to make it more ‘equitable’ proceeded with their own plans. As Svergie produced little that could be exploited, the bureaucrats attempted to make new opportunities…and, eventually, realised that new colonists could be dumped on the planet. At first, this was restricted to political exiles from Pan-Europe, but later this came to include refugee women from Indonesia and their children, a group that was socially and culturally very different to the original settlers. Matters were not helped by rumours that the newcomers carried diseases, or radical fundamentalist religious beliefs – and they certainly were not helped by the UN’s plan to feed them all. The bureaucrats intended to use the original settlers to feed the newcomers, without insisting that the newcomers worked for a living.
The first burst of resistance began with the Svergie Popular Front, which made a public protest to the UN Governor about the unsuitable settlers. Rather than being welcomed – protest was a right granted by the UN Regulations – they were arrested, charged with racism and hate speech, and locked up. Many died while trying to escape. Others served their terms and emerged driven by hatred for the UN. Armed resistance began soon afterwards and by 2467, the UN realised that it had a major insurgency on its hands. Svergie was not, however, important enough to rate major reinforcements and so the garrison hung on grimly, unable to retreat or counter-attack effectively.
Gustav Bergqvist, who later became the first President, formed the Liberty Party and managed to pull most of the resistance groups under his banner, earning himself a death sentence in absentia by the UN in the process. The differences between the various groups were pushed aside as they cooperated in launching more powerful attacks on the UN, yet neither side was able to actually win. The John Walker Coup, on Earth, ended the fighting and, after a brief set of negotiations, the UN withdrew from the planet.
Upon the eve of independence, Svergie possessed a population of 30 million, most of whom lived in the overcrowded four cities. The ethnic mix of the planet was badly scrambled by the UN, with the net result that the descendents of the original settlers live in the countryside and the later settlers live in the cities, where squalor and racism are rife. (To be fair, a number of later immigrants were accepted into the farming communities, generally as wives for younger sons.) It also possessed a small official militia, a dangerous political situation, and a location that made it important to the Human Sphere’s economy.