by Tom Kratman
We never knew if it was real or not. It was nerve-wracking. It was intended to be.
I’ve heard that this time Carrera and Parilla sent them a tacit ultimatum: stop this crap or we will fight.
They had to send them that ultimatum. If they’d just let it pass the troops would have taken matters into their own hands…unwisely. They’d grab some enemy female civilian, maybe rape her, maybe just rough her up. They’d shoot some civilian-clad enemy soldier while he was reconnoitering for a later attack. They’d take a potshot at any foreigner who happened to be passing by. It had happened that way before. And we’d been invaded before…and lost…badly. Carrera had already hanged some numbers of our own people who had engaged in just that sort of unofficial reprisal.
But, eventually the hangings would fail. One of our troops—sick of being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night and wanting to make someone pay for it—would do something really outrageous. Then, the enemy would have enough excuse to attack with popular support. Picture the headlines in the enemy’s press: “One of our boys killed while on pass!” Never mind that he was “on pass” making sketches or photographs of an area for use in a later attack.
Truth surely is the first casualty of war…or of preparation for war.
I can’t imagine why, but the enemy didn’t believe the ultimatum. They sent one maniple across the border. Carrera sent one cohort—if I remember correctly it was Second Cohort, Second Tercio…yes, Second of the Second, it was—to fix, fight and destroy them before they could get away. Although the television said the enemy had started the shooting, it really doesn’t make any difference who started it. They were merely peacefully provoking us when we had the temerity to provoke back. As a result, there was a god-awful battle between 2nd of the 2nd, that enemy company, and, later on, the rest of that enemy company’s battalion.
I’d studied that fight while I was in Centurion Candidate School; required reading, so to speak. If even half of what I was told 2nd of the 2nd went through is true, I’m so glad I wasn’t there. Those boys—good boys, they were—took over fifty percent casualties, a frightening number of dead. One of our platoons started the fight with seventy-seven men, including attachments. When it was over there were twelve, not all of these unhurt, who could even stand. It seems nobody on either side was all that interested in taking prisoners.
The enemy had it almost as bad and their dead were an even higher percentage of their casualties. They’d have had it a lot worse except that they had tanks we just couldn’t meet one on one. We destroyed a number of their tanks, mind you. It just cost too much to get them.
Our side would likely have been creamed except that Carrera informed the enemy commander early on that if he escalated hostilities beyond a certain point we would attack holding nothing back. Since we outnumbered them about twenty or thirty to one, in country, once our militia and reserves were called up—and we were calling them up fast—this was no idle threat. Even their air force didn’t interfere. Well, we did have about five hundred artillery pieces aimed at their main air base.
So it became, instead of a general war, a minor contest of wills and willingness to bleed. We won that contest.
Everything became unnaturally quiet for months after that incident. Sadly, the quiet didn’t last.
* * *
Why did they want to provoke us? Why did they want to fight? It was our system of government. Rather, it was the way they viewed our system of government. I suppose they were right, in a way. Our two systems were said to be incompatible, inherently hostile.
I ultimately came to believe that was true. One example: My government had the courage to raise a real regiment of women infantry. That was more courage than anyone anywhere else in the world had shown so far.
Still, beyond procedure, what was the difference? Maybe it wasn’t so much. They let everybody vote who wasn’t a criminal. When they exercised their draft, one could become a criminal by avoiding it, losing one’s vote. One could also become a legislator or even their chief executive if one could avoid a criminal prosecution for avoiding the draft. They’d always had generous provisions for legally doing so. That this was decidedly ungenerous to the poor slobs drafted didn’t seem to bother anybody who counted.
We sent everybody a draft notice, then didn’t do a damned thing to enforce it. It was a friendly reminder, nothing more. If you didn’t go, your political rights would be suspended, no vote, no election to public office, no power. But that’s pretty much it.
(Of course, later on, Balboa did have cause to take some hundreds of thousands of unwilling people as forced labor to dig fortifications. That service was creditable towards full citizenship…if those people then volunteered for training and finished their ten years, minus, of reserve or militia time. Some did, some didn’t)
A lot of countries do this, or something like it: Sachsen, Gaul, Zion, Helvetia, all those mostly frozen Southern Tauran states. The major difference is that with us there is no exemption for women. Even Zion only drafts unmarried women, and then only for really noncombat jobs.
The net effect of this was that we were not a liberal democracy. Our government wasn’t run by lawyers. Our electorate were all people who had given up some time, endured a little exposure to danger, and experienced a lot of misery. And not a one of them had had to. Or got all that much for doing so, certainly nothing like the price they had paid in otherwise avoidable misery.
Of course some people, including myself eventually, like the kind of life we had to go through before we earn political power. That’s half the trick to our system of government. The people who liked that crap tend to stay for a full twenty-five years, even more for some of them. By the time they’re discharged—assuming they’re not killed—they’re too old to vote or hold office for long. They… We couldn’t screw up much that way, or for long.
The system was plainly skewed towards people who tended—and it was possibly no more than a tendency—to think of the whole country first.
The tendency, though, was enough. You see, liberal democracy almost works. It’s a great system of government provided that the people with power—voters, in other words—won’t just vote their narrow self interest and narrower emotions, won’t balkanize into selfishly competing factions. Eventually, though, they will do just that. Then all elections go to whoever promises to rape the treasury and the other taxpayers of the largest amount of money for the greatest number of people or gain the most in extra rights for the most interest groups, future be damned. Being more or less good looking seems to help a lot too.
Looks didn’t matter much in our elections, though the decorations a candidate wore on the lapel or around his or her throat counted for something. And, while our electorate is capable of looting the treasury, it is just that much more likely to balk at something that’s good for them personally but not so good for the country. They’d also be ashamed to vote that way, in public as we do, with no secret ballot. It isn’t perfect, but it seems to be enough to work…a little better…enough better.
What damned us most in the enemy’s eyes, or at least his propaganda, were the effects of this on women. I, personally, would have found this funny if it hadn’t been so damned tragic.
Women in Balboa only went into the service in about one sixth the numbers that men did (though we obtained a disproportionately large number of foreign volunteers, mostly from other Latin states). This changed our politics radically from what was the democratic norm around the world. As I said, we were not a liberal democracy.
Of course, no woman with a father, brothers, husband or sons can be said to be entirely voteless. That would be as silly as saying that children don’t get a vote. But how else does one explain the growing concern with children’s issues around the world except by the vicarious representation of children by adults, and especially by women? So, as long as they love some woman, and even men of the Tercio Gorgidas had mothers, men won’t let anything too terrible happen to us politically, no matter what the
appearances of the political process. That’s how we got the vote in the first place.
If men were the terrible creatures portrayed by some, we not only wouldn’t have the vote, we wouldn’t have shoes.
It makes one wonder, though. If we not only have our votes, but men’s votes as well, do men even get a vote? Maybe it’s true what that Old Earther said, that women have so much natural power men can’t afford to let us have more.
Still, without the compassion—sometimes misplaced—that results from a huge number of women’s votes, my country spent hardly a cent taking care of the unfortunate, though we spent a fair amount helping the unfortunate to change their fortunes. In practice, that meant taking them into the legion…if they just had the heart to make it, even to try hard. Some places the handicapped are shut out of sight and away, objects of pity. In my country they serve in the armed forces in somewhat higher proportion than the national norm. And, because of that, they get all the respect and benefits that go with it, job training, education…care from a government and people that are grateful for what they’ve done.
We even have a few pacifists in the legion. And the legion tries to assign them to noncombatant duties. However, the preference for the pacifists is to assign them to rather life-threatening duties as combat medics. Or, say, Explosive Ordnance Disposal. In any case, we don’t let pacifism be a cover for cowardice or weakness or indifference to the nation.
Those whose religious and moral views don’t permit them to serve in any capacity are simply shut out. And they are completely incapable of doing anything about it. Revolution within the legion and the veterans remains a possibility, though our election processes make it absurdly improbable. Revolution by outsiders, successful revolution anyway, is impossible. But, as their last military duty before discharge, to ensure that they know how to revolt if they ever have to, the veterans go to a month long course in conducting revolutionary warfare before getting their walking papers. And they keep their weapons. Yes, even the machine guns.
Our criminal code? Don’t commit a crime in my country! If you’re caught and convicted, punishment will likely be quick in coming and severe. Drugs? Death, often by drowning. Armed robbery? Death, usually by shooting or hanging. Extortion, corruption, grand larceny? Death on a rope, with a long drop. Rape? There’s a sharp upright stick waiting for you. Espionage? Slow death on a rope…or wire, no drop. Treason, murder, or kidnapping? You don’t even want to hear about that degrading and painful a death. It tends to involve nails.
Actually, rape is a strange case. We impale or hang people for it, true; and even if, in the victim’s choice, hanging will do, it’s a slow, choking hanging where the culprit takes maybe fifteen minutes to die. But, because the penalty is so severe, we also require real proof. Someone swearing “so and so raped me,” without physical evidence that says “rape” very strongly—generally in the form of black eyes, or broken bones and teeth—or without other eyewitnesses, is unlikely to result in a conviction provided the defendant denies it. One person’s word against another does not constitute proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The simple presence of semen in a vagina is not considered adequate physical evidence on its own.
On the other hand, it is very likely that even without that evidence the woman’s husband, father, or brothers will hunt down the guilty party, give him the chop, then take their not-too-bad chances that a jury will find it to have been justifiable homicide. Doing society a favor, I’ve heard it called.
The victim might do it herself, for that matter. If the victim is an Amazona, she and her squad mates are very likely to hunt down and eliminate the guilty party, once she gets out of the hospital. I say that because no Amazona has ever been raped without putting up such a fight that the rapist or rapists had to beat her unconscious first. Though, even then, she’s more likely to have her throat cut afterwards.
Illiberal? We have a criminal law on the books called “Linguistic Matricide.” This is defined as, “(1) the conscious attempt, by someone in a position of state or state-sponsored authority, to reduce human freedom of thought by forcing those subject to that authority to acquiesce or participate in the artificial manipulation of the language for a social, political or philosophical end or (2) the attempt to hide or distort truths to alter the perception of reality by the same state or state-sponsored parties.” Conviction carried up to fifty lashes, a hefty fine, and two years at hard labor. I’m not sure of the last time someone in my country tried to substitute a value-laden, multisyllabic bit of nonsense for good, plain Spanish. It was either a law professor who tried to make his class ignore the fact that Spanish words have masculine and feminine genders, or that time some government spokesman attempted to call a battle a “limited objective exercise in the application of military force.”
Somewhat similarly, we had a “Truth in Taxation” amendment to our constitution which required that no taxes that were actually paid by the common people be hidden under misleading labels and concepts like social security, “cost sharing”—where there was no real sharing, corporate income tax, or inflation. Every wage and earnings statement in Balboa shows as exactly as possible what the wage earner really pays in taxation. That’s why we have no corporate income tax and social security has been changed from an eleventh annual payment allegedly paid by an employer to the government to a seven percent flat tax taken right from salaries.
That also explains, maybe, why social security taxes and benefits have remained unchanged for these many years gone past.
My country was decidedly illiberal in foreign policy, too. Years before some Santandern drug lords had tried to terrorize us into acquiescing in the passage of drugs through our land and waters. They thought better of it shortly after we attacked those men’s homes in Santander, killed their workers, guards, and most of their relatives, then brought the main culprits back here for torture and a really, really bad death. (Nails.) Same thing when some of our troops on peacekeeping duty in Uhuru were shelled and sniped at. A number were killed. Our troops took the hill the artillery fire was being directed from, and sniper fire coming from, and they killed every living thing on it, no prisoners.
But we had no street crime to speak of. We’d pretty much ended corruption in public office. (Rope; no drop.) Our schools were safe and disciplined. Our economy was thriving despite official embargoes. Our urban literacy rate was rather higher than our antagonist’s. And we thought we were strong enough to resist outside attack.
I think even the Taurans would have agreed that much of this was good. Perhaps if we’d somehow been able to package the whole deal in an aesthetically pleasing way they wouldn’t have tried to interfere. Aesthetics, however, were not our strong point.
Human rights were the big issue to the enemy, so they said. We were ruled by a military dictatorship, so they said. (“Bullshit,” say I.) We were a threat to world peace and world trade…so they said.
Maybe they were right to have feared us. In fact, in time we could have become a threat to them. Actually, by now, we and our confederates and allies have become something like the threat they’d feared. Of course, we wouldn’t have those confederates and allies if it hadn’t been for the war. A self-fulfilling prophecy?
Our system worked pretty well. There were already grumblings in some other Latin states to imitate us. From the enemy point of view, several hundred million Latins, with the ability to raise a mass army of fifty or sixty million soldiers, or a much higher quality army of twenty million of so, was just too big a potential menace to let stand. We had to go.
Of course, we claimed that, like Santa Josefina, we didn’t even have a real army. This wasn’t quite true, though. We were nothing like Santa Josefina. We were more like Helvetia, or Zion, which also don’t have armies. We, and Helvetia, and Zion, didn’t have an army because each country was an army.
* * *
I got home from the alert much later that evening, just in time to catch the news on the television. It seemed some foreign women, Taurans, four o
f them, had been kidnapped, raped and murdered by some men wearing our uniforms. Then whoever did it had released a tape of the whole nasty, horrible mess to the news stations.
I wasn’t looking forward to what might happen the next day or two.
Interlude
The Curia was subdued. There were at least a dozen spots that were vacant now, senators the Taurans had tried to arrest in their homes and who decided not to go gently, or others who, ignoring their years, had grabbed a rifle or machine gun and gone to find the regiments that had elevated them. Carrera wasn’t back yet. He was somewhere in the Transitway Zone, more specifically at Fort Muddville, watching a cohort burn out the last Tauran defenders of Building 59.
That didn’t matter; he and Parilla were long agreed that the war could not be permitted to turn into one of those interminable Zion-Arab things that just went on and on. No, this would be fought to a finish, either the destruction of the Revolution in Balboa, and the legion that had brought it about, or the discrediting, humiliation, and casting off of the new hereditary aristocracy of the Tauran Union…and with it, United Earth.
A screen on the wall of the Curia showed a long tongue of flame lick out to splash against the brick wall before finding its way through a blasted out window. Smoke began to pour from all the other windows at that end of the building. The hundred and eleven senators so far assembled watched the scene with grim satisfaction.
The senators stood in front of Parilla’s dais and curule chair, rather than in their wonted marble benches. They’d had to vacate the space; those benches were now full of people in formal dress, mostly, though a few wore the battle dress of the legion. Further down, towards the great bronze doors, still others in similar clothing held musical instruments.
