I touched the new rank badge. “They’re sending me to a Monitor,” I said, bemused. “What did I do to deserve that?”
“Caught that shipload of information hoarders,” the Senior Chief said. “You have seen the newscasts, haven’t you?”
“I haven’t had the time,” I replied, crossly. I was sick of playing games, yet I was sure that any attempt to use my new authority would be futile. The Senior Chief had known me as a lowly Ensign, barely worth the oxygen needed to keep me alive. “What have they been saying?”
“You’re their golden boy,” the Senior Chief said. He grinned, humourlessly. “You’ve been their poster child for the face of the United Nations, you know. You’ve got the right attitude to make it ahead in the service too…”
“I didn’t mean to,” I protested. “Chief, I didn’t…”
“So you said,” the Senior Chief said. “And, as I keep telling you, reality is what they make it. By now, you – and every other young officer who did something like it themselves – has had their past rewritten to make you heroes. You’ll be whatever they want you to be. The media will see to that.”
“I don’t know what to do,” I admitted. I touched the silver bars on my shoulder. “Did I earn these?”
“You played the game their way, quite by accident,” the Senior Chief agreed. “You must have realised by now that your ignorance is one of their weapons.”
I nodded. “And, the Senior Chief continued, “if you have the rank, you’ll be well placed to help others in the same position. Years from now, perhaps, you’ll be consoling the younger generation of officers. They’re going to need you, aren’t they?”
“Yes,” I admitted, grimly. “Thank you for everything.”
“I haven’t finished,” the Senior Chief said. He reached into one pocket and pulled out a small golden badge, shaped like the Jacques Delors. “Do you know what this is?”
“An icon,” I said, puzzled. “Why…?”
“Here,” he said, passing it to me. “You may have noticed that the Peace Force doesn’t really care for traditions at all, but this one even the Political Officers can’t ban. A memento of your first starship…and perhaps something else.”
He held up the badge and showed me the tiny computer chip built into the underside. “There are those of us who try to keep the system from screwing up our lives and that of everyone else,” he said. I felt a numb burst of shock. “You wouldn’t be seeing this if I didn’t feel that you were trustworthy. The Brotherhood would kill the pair of us if they felt that they had a security breech. Take it.”
I took it, staring down at the golden shape. “Why…how?”
The Senior Chief grinned. “Take it to a terminal, one disconnected from the main starship’s computer, and use it,” he said. “You’ll find it very useful indeed. If you want to drop me a message…well, did you know that there’s a regulation that all electronic messages have to be a particular length?”
I understood. Anything could be hidden in the right place.
“Thank you,” I said, surprised. “I’ll be careful with it.”
“Make sure you are,” the Senior Chief warned. “Now…what are you going to be doing on your week of shore leave?”
“I’m going to go home,” I said, seriously. “It’s been three years since I set foot on Earth.”
The Senior Chief frowned. “Good luck,” he said. “Earth is not quite what it used to be.”
Chapter Nine
It is difficult for anyone to comprehend the state of Earth under the UN. The once-great cities are crumbling away into dust. The lives of the ordinary citizens are controlled by thousands of bureaucratic laws and regulations that attempt to dictate every aspect of their lives. Crime is permanently on the increase and law and order is a joke – indeed, the criminals have more rights than their victims. Unemployment, always the curse of history, stands at 70% and rising, worldwide. The tragic irony of the UN’s attempts to legislate a perfect state into existence is that it has, with the best will in the world, created a nightmare.
-Thomas Anderson. An Unbiased Look at the UNPF. Baen Historical Press, 2500.
I had forgotten what Earth felt like, but I was reminded the moment I stepped off the shuttle from Orbit Nine onto the North American Orbital Tower. The two security guards – armed with nothing more intimidating than stunners – insisted on frisking me twice before reluctantly allowing me passage to the surface. The orbital tower itself was showing signs of decay – it was over two hundred years old and the paint was fading away, along with most of the machinery – and I couldn’t understand why a team of engineers hadn’t been assigned to fixing it. If we had left the Wardroom in a comparable state, the Captain would have had us all on punishment duty for the next month, but here…no one seemed to care.
It wasn't a particularly reassuring thought, I realised, as I took my seat on the elevator. I had forgotten how much everything cost as well and I was immensely grateful for the foresight that had convinced me to bring my UNPF credit card as well as a handful of paper money. Very few people used paper money these days – the odds of being mugged and robbed were too high – but the bartender was glad to have it. I purchased a small sandwich and a drink and discovered, very quickly, that the meat in the sandwich had probably been slightly unhealthy. There was no point in complaining – the customer was never right – and I put the rest of it aside. My drink was flat, but at least it didn’t taste funny. The ride down the orbital tower took hours and I tried to sleep, but I couldn’t because of the music several of my fellow travellers were playing. I hadn’t caught up on the latest music since I had gone to the Academy and there was definitely nothing to recommend it; the undertones of rebellion in the music seemed to suggest a definitely hopeless slant. I couldn’t understand why the singer hadn’t been banned yet, but perhaps it was just another example of what the Senior Chief had called harmless rebellion.
“People need to let off steam from time to time,” he’d explained, during one of our long discussions. “The UN is very good at identifying something they can do without causing real problems for the state.”
I studied my fellow travellers with some interest, although most of them were minding their own business with an intensity that surprised me. We’d been taught to help out our fellow Ensigns if they needed help, but few people on Earth would lift a finger to help someone else unless there was something in it for them. The vast majority of them seemed to be businessmen with interests in space, but others seemed to be nothing more than thugs, or perhaps even a handful of colonists visiting the mother world. Somehow, I suspected that when they got home, they’d be telling them how much better Terra Nova was than Earth…and they might even be right. It had been too long since I’d set foot on the planet.
A group of young women were chattering away and I eyed them with interest. Spacers developed new standards of beauty after a year away from accessible women and they were beautiful by any standard I cared to name, but the giggles! They giggled about everything, from the worlds they’d visited on the Grand Sneer – whatever that was – to the servants they had tormented down on the ground. I couldn’t understand why they were on the orbital tower at first, and then it dawned on me. The girls were slumming it with the rest of the population. The dank smell of urine touched my nostrils and I grimaced, but the girls only giggled louder. They were touching real life, but not in any way that could get them hurt. Even the most unpleasant gang of thugs would think twice about hurting girls from the upper class. It wasn't as if they were just common or garden citizens. There would be consequences if they were harmed in any way.
The capsule finally hit the ground and I allowed myself a sign of relief. It really wasn’t that different from an elevator. It could have drawn thousands of tourists who wanted to see outside, but there were safety regulations that prevented the capsules from having any viewing ports. I didn’t understand it. Modern materials could keep the passengers safe and people didn’t have to look out if they
didn’t want to, but the beauecrats had triumphed again. I was on the verge of composing a letter explaining just how foolish this was – and how much money could be made from selling the ride as a tourist attraction - but I knew it was pointless. Safety came first. It was something that had been hammered into our heads from early life.
“This way to the exit, please,” someone was shouting. The doors were hissing open and I caught my first whiff of Earth. It stank even worse than I remembered, the sour smell of automobiles, machinery and thousands upon thousands of human beings. The population of Earth, according to official figures, was dropping every year, but the Senior Chief said otherwise and I believed him. The Welfare State provided food for each new child that came along and there had been a massive population explosion. “Follow me to the exit.”
They didn’t just let us out onto the planet, of course. That would have been efficient. Instead, there was a long passage through a handful of overworked security guards – I was searched again, not particularly well – before we were allowed out onto the concourse. I looked back at the orbital tower, stretching away into the sky, and felt a moment of dizziness that I tried hard to suppress. I had seen more impressive sights out in space, but the tower was something special. It had been built in a very different age.
I wanted to take a taxi, but I knew better than to make any conspicuous display of wealth, so I walked down to the railroad station and boarded a train to my home city. I had been brought up in Albuquerque since I had been very young and I hadn’t seen anything of the rest of the planet. I’d seen more of Terra Nova than I had of Earth. The UN kept telling us all about the fantastic improvements it had made in defending the Earth’s biosphere, but if that were the case, why was the air so polluted? I didn’t want to think about what was powering the train, but it seemed to move all right, even though it was packed. I dreaded to imagine what would happen if I had been a pregnant woman. No one cared on Earth.
It wasn't easy, but I pushed the thought aside and thought about my family instead. I’d sent several messages to my parents, telling them that I would be coming home for a visit, but they hadn’t replied. I found that worrying, but Mom had never been one to learn how to use a communications terminal properly. She knew nothing – and I had known nothing, until I boarded the Jacques Delors – about how the terminal really worked. It was quite possible that one of the many computer filters built in to prevent the spread of hate speech had eaten her messages, although I hoped not. Sending more than a handful of hateful messages – as defined by the filters – meant a mandatory class on avoiding hate speech. One of my friends from school had had to sit through one and he’d never been quite the same since.
I didn’t dare sleep on the train – too many of my fellow passengers looked desperate enough to steal what little I had on me – and so I watched as the massive habitation malls of Albuquerque came into view. They’d been built at least a hundred years ago, I’d been told, each one capable of housing thousands of people in reasonable comfort at the time. They weren't now. The vast majority of them were effectively governed by petty criminals and corrupt policemen. No wonder that the people wanted to escape the cesspool, whatever it took. It had taken me to Luna Base and the Academy.
It looks worse than I remember, I thought, as I stepped off the train. The railroad station had actually been linked to the underground system for reasons that I’m sure had made sense at the time, but now no one with any brains would go into them for fear of his life. When I’d been younger, we had used to run through them on a dare, before being exposed to more adult pleasures like drugs and girls. A handful of my female classmates had become prostates before even reaching the legal Age of Consent, just to keep their boyfriends (and pimps) happy. Others had cheerfully rolled their clients for money. I was tempted to walk through the tunnels anyway, for old time’s sake, but it wouldn’t have been wise. I walked through the streets instead.
My family had always lived in Harrison Ford Mall, named for someone who had otherwise been removed from history. I’d looked him up once on the Internet and found nothing, although the deeper levels of the net had suggested a movie career. It towered ahead of me as I walked through the grin streets, noting with disapproval how much litter had simply been dumped there, but as I drew closer, it became apparent that something was seriously wrong. Half of the Mall was a burned out ruin, populated only by louts and drunkards. The remainder looked deserted.
I stopped and stared, helplessly. Where were they? I wanted to run forward and search the entire mall, but even as I moved forward I knew it was a fool’s errand. The whole mall should have been torn down and rebuilt, but instead…it had just been abandoned. What had happened, I asked myself desperately; where was my family? What had happened…?
I felt two fingers sneaking into my pockets and caught them, hard enough to hurt. I turned to see a young boy, barely nine years old if that, staring up at me. He might have been handsome under other circumstances, but one of his eyes was missing, replaced by a cloth patch. He opened his mouth to scream and I squeezed harder. I wasn’t going to let him off lightly.
“All right,” I said, picking him up effortlessly. He weighed barely anything. I knew how his life would go in the future. He’d die, soon enough, or be sold to a pimp to satisfy the really unpleasant set of customers. “If you scream, I’ll snap your neck, understand?” He nodded, terrified. No one would have stood up to him before. The odds were that he was giving some of his loot to a more senior gang. “What happened to this place?”
He stared at me. “I don’t know,” he said. I started to squeeze harder. “There was a fire and the place burned down and everyone was killed…”
“That’s impossible,” I said, shocked. There had been tens of thousands of people in the mall. There were also fire-suppressing systems and…
I cursed. What was I thinking? This wasn't the Jacques Delors, with Captain Harriman and the Senior Chief and the Engineer and the rest of the crew. This was Albuquerque, a city in the Pan-American Union, controlled by people who didn’t care what happened to their citizens. The brightly-coloured posters on the wall advertising the wonders and glories of the People’s Progressive Party, the National Socialist Workers Party and the Communist League of Freedom meant nothing. The real rulers of the city were not chosen in anything so droll as an election…
The little thief wiggled free and ran. I let him go, knowing what it must have been like for anyone caught in the blaze. If I’d stayed, maybe…no, that was foolish. Once the fire had started, it would have spread quickly, particularly if the systems had failed completely. If I had been there, I would have died with the others of my family…
The bastards didn’t bother to even tell me, I thought, angrily. There had been some updates from Earth, but none of them had been addressed to me, nor had they discussed disasters like a fire that killed tens of thousands. The media wouldn’t have mentioned it at all. No one on Earth, apart from those in Albuquerque, would have known about the fire; they certainly wouldn’t have realised that it could have been prevented, if proper maintenance had been undertaken. Suddenly, everything fell into perspective; the men and women I’d recovered from the freighter were needed here, because Earth no longer produced competent minds! I hadn’t understood just what the Senior Chief had meant, until now.
“There he is,” someone shouted. I turned slightly to see the little thief. He wasn't alone either. “I told you he was here.”
A gang, I realised. There were only four of them, but they swaggered along as if they owned the place, and, in many ways, they did. They wore red shirts, the better to mark themselves as members of the Bloody Blades, and carried metal sticks on their backs. They wouldn’t have any firearms, of course, or energy weapons, but they were quite intimidating enough to the average citizen. I knew what I was meant to do; run, throwing my wallet on the ground behind me, but somehow I no longer cared. I watched them swaggering closer and I realised, with a flicker of delighted amusement, that they d
idn’t have the slightest idea of what they were doing.
And then I recognised one of them. “Hello, Jase,” I said, calmly. He’d been a bully back at school, despite the best attempts of the teachers, and somehow I wasn't surprised to discover that he’d joined a Gang. There were thousands upon thousands of kids like him; too under-qualified to get a job or go to the Academy, too smart or cowardly to be attracted to the Infantry, and otherwise without prospects. They wandered the streets, extorting what they could and dealing in drugs and prostitutes. My family were dead…and he had survived? “Journey’s end in lovers meetings, as they say?”
Jase leered at me. I don’t know if he recognised me or not. “Here’s how it’s going to be,” he said, dramatically. The idiot was trying to pose, of all things! “You give us everything, including the clothes on your back, and we’ll let you off with a few broken bones. If not, we’ll take them from you and hang you to show them that the Bloody Blades are…”
I punched him, right in the nose. I’d been training with Marines, not ignorant thugs, and it showed. I would never have dared do anything like that to a Marine – I was woefully aware that I had telegraphed my own movement too clearly – but Jase was taken completely by surprise. He went over backwards, already out of it, and two other gang members stepped forward. They seemed to be moving in slow motion; one started to draw back his fist for a punch, while the other began to take his stick off his back, but they were already too late. I smacked the first right in the throat and sent him to the ground choking, and then kicked the second right in the groin. He folded up, screaming in pain, and I took the opportunity to relieve him of his stick. I turned to face the fourth gang member and was unsurprised to see him heading the other way as fast as he could. The gangs rarely had to fight someone who was willing and able to stand up to them and, like most cowards, they broke easily. For the first time since I set foot on Earth, I almost felt happy, even though the Master Sergeant would have torn me a new asshole for exposing myself like that. It almost took some of the pain of losing my family away.
Martial Law 1: Patriotic Treason Page 9
