“Yes, sir,” I said. I would sooner deal with reporters than kill innocent children again. The reporters, at least, couldn’t be shot. Regulations were such a nuisance at times. “Do you want me to supervise their activities on the planet?”
“Not at present,” the Captain said. “The Admiral’s staff are capable of controlling them and ensuring that they toe the line. You’ll be given some time to check in with them in a week or so, but unless they want to come back onboard, they’ll be out of your hair.”
I remembered just how secure Lazarus was and decided that the reporters would probably be happier filing lies from orbit, even with Heinlein starships jumping in, firing off a few volleys, and vanishing again. The battles in space had stalemated with no side able to claim an advantage. The UN held the local system, but isolated starships were easy prey for the Heinlein raiders. It was a toss-up if I were safer in space or on the ground.
“Thank you, sir,” I said.
“Good,” the Captain said. He gave me a paternal smile. “You are dismissed.”
I saluted, turned about-face, and marched out of the cabin, thinking hard.
Chapter Nineteen
The UN has free speech, in theory. It is a guaranteed right, provided that the speaker does not offend anyone. In practice, critical remarks of any kind are regarded as offensive, as are anti-UN propaganda, honest financial reports, violent images, nationalist tracts and anything else that attracts the eye of the UN censors. The UN bans the works of political writers – to be fair to the system, both Adam Smith and Karl Marx are banned – and even those who attempted to reform society. Charles Dickens and Jerry Pournelle, to name, but two, are among the thousands of writers whose books have been banned from the shelves. Copies now only exist in the Deep Internet and mere possession can send a person to the re-education camps.
-Thomas Anderson. An Unbiased Look at the UNPF. Baen Historical Press, 2500.
The war raged on.
Over the next six months, UN Ground Command declared Lazarus a secure city four times. Every time, something happened within a day of the announcement that put the lie to their words. Admiral Hoover would appear on the communications network, bragging about how the UN had finally secured the planet, only to end up dodging incoming mortar shells. On the third time, someone screwed up and the entire planet was able to see the shells barely miss the Admiral’s podium. It probably encouraged resistance no end.
I remained on the Devastator for most of the time, but I heard plenty from the communications networks – and the Brotherhood. The Infantry were seizing and sweeping through towns in vast numbers, but the insurgents were very good at slipping into the countryside and vanishing. The Infantry were mainly city boys and girls and knew little about the countryside. Heinlein had developed its own set of animals and some of them were very dangerous. Soldiers shied away from harmless snakes only to run into lethal creatures that killed, and were killed. At first, Ground Forces Command attempted to prevent the soldiers from killing the animals, only to discover that it was a set of orders that wouldn’t be obeyed. The soldiers might have been trained to obey orders, but it was amazing how quickly such orders were forgotten when it was their lives at stake. The animals also proved to be inedible – which didn’t stop hungry soldiers from trying to eat them when their supply trucks were hit and left as burned-out ruins.
We fired thousands of strikes against the planetary surface in just those six months. The Captain, at least, had had the foresight to order additional KEWs brought along from Earth in freighters, rather than count on supplies from the asteroid industrial plants. The native workers were determined not to knuckle under so quickly and had started to sabotage their own machines and equipment. I hadn’t understood what I was seeing, until Kitty pointed out that most of the guards had come from the inner cities and malls of Earth and knew less than I did about industrial equipment. The workers could probably run rings around them.
It wasn't much better in deep space. The Heinlein starships were still mounting their hit-and-run raids, each time trying to take out a cruiser or a troop transport starship. I had worked out the logistics behind that myself. If we lost troop transports in unacceptable numbers, we would have to start using freighters, or colonist-carriers. If we started losing those in significant numbers, the war would be on the verge of being lost, all over the Human Sphere. Without the freighters and heavy transports, the UN wouldn’t be able to hold what it had. It certainly couldn’t found new colonies further away from Earth.
“Bastards,” I heard Anna say, at one time. “They could just come out for a fight!”
“That would be stupid of them,” Konrad pointed out, in return. “All they have to do is keep going and they’ll drive us mad. Why should they waste themselves butting their heads against a stone wall when they can undermine it instead?”
The news from the planet seemed to range between the insanely optimistic and the extremely depressing. Another order was being passed banning all contact with Heinlein’s vast array of prostitutes – except they weren't prostitutes, but something else, something honourable in their society I never understood – after a prostitute somehow drugged and killed seven men. Other orders banned drinking in local bars, or eating local food, or even talking to local children. I didn’t understand the motivation behind all the orders, but I knew one thing. Morale was falling right through the deck.
“Perhaps the locals can help,” Anna said, tiredly. “They’re coming out in our favour, right?”
I doubted it. I’d only seen videos of the Heinlein Front for Progressive Unity, but they didn’t strike me as impressive. Their spokesmen talked about the benefits of UN rule, parroting back UN propaganda to the point where I was sure that everyone knew that they were just talking heads. There were real collaborators down on the surface, but some of them ended up dead after their security had slipped – just once – and others had proved to be working for the other side. An arms dump of captured weapons had been betrayed to the insurgents by a collaborator, who’d vanished into the night with his new friends. The war knew no end and the death toll – on both sides – was mounting rapidly. We’d lost over ten thousand, mainly infantry. God alone knew how many they’d lost.
“You’re going to have to check in on the reporters,” the Captain ordered, one day. It was something of a relief. I might not have participated in any more bombardments, but I knew that the day was coming. The Captain had had to sent two of his Lieutenants and three Ensigns to the cruiser Susan Sontag after several of the crew were caught in a rigged asteroid and killed in a massive explosion. Several Captains had just started blasting suspect asteroids from long range, despite official orders against it. “Take some leave after it and check out Lazarus. I want a full report when you return.”
I saluted and took the next shuttle down to the surface. The only change was that this time we were greeted with several SAM weapons, instead of just one. The Heinlein Resistance had obviously been stockpiling them for the invasion and distributed them widely. We lost several helicopters a week, and at least seven heavy shuttles had been shot down. I was lucky – again – and escaped serious injury, although the pilot kept swearing all the time until we hit the surface. I should have written him up for losing his cool under fire, but he had landed us safely, despite that. I doubt I could have done as well.
Heinlein really was a beautiful place, I reflected, as I joined a military convoy leading into Lazarus. It was marred by burned out towns and villages – the Infantry had cleared away every place near the roads leading to the city – but even so, it was beautiful. Earth no longer looked like that, as far as I knew. The planet was so heavily polluted that it was growing increasingly hazardous to life and limb. It was no wonder that the inhabitants were willing to defend it and, judging by the twitchy demeanour of the soldiers, were doing so successfully. None of the Infantry had signed up for an all-out war.
“We found the remains of the last patrol in this area,” the Infantry Captain t
old me, after I asked. “They’d cut off their balls and stuffed them in their mouths. The girls had knives rammed up their cunts. It’s growing harder to patrol so close to the city and it’s giving them time to bring up new weapons and resupply their people.”
The city looked like a war zone. The vast majority of civilians were now gone, replaced by UN Infantry and endless convoys of supplies being shipped to distant outposts. Even so, the city kept fighting – I heard the sounds of several IEDs as we drove into the expanded secure zone – and it was far from secure. A handful of arrested girls were being raped by a group of Infantry, their screams echoing for miles…and I turned my head and looked away. There was nothing I could do.
“The men need to blow off steam,” the Captain said, seeing my expression. “It doesn’t matter. The bastards will kill us all in the end.”
I should have reported the defeatism, but again, I just couldn’t be bothered. The secure zone looked more like a fortress than ever, covered with gun emplacements and heavy roadblocks. A line of armoured tanks seemed to follow us with their machine guns as we drove past them. It was almost a relief to see Frank Wong and the rest of the reporters. They’d lost weight, I noticed, and they were pale and trembling. The compound, it seemed, was shelled daily. The locals could set up a mortar, fire a few rounds, and then vanish before the Infantry could locate them.
“You have to get us out of here,” Frank insisted, desperately. I was tempted to twit him about his endlessly optimistic statements, but it wasn't the right time. “It won’t be long before they break in and kill us all.”
I looked back at the defences. “I don’t think its that bad,” I said, unable to resist the temptation. He had been a major pain in my ass. “They’re not going to lose so quickly, are they?”
“They broke in last week,” Frank said, seriously. “They killed seven of the officers before they were hunted down by the Infantry. You have to get us out of here.”
I smiled as another flight of helicopters raced overhead, their stubby wings crammed with weapons and sensors, hunting human prey. “I’ll do my best,” I murmured. “I’ll see to it as soon as possible.”
Frank left, heading back towards the bunkers, while I pulled out my terminal and issued the necessary orders. There were plenty of empty shuttles going back to the Devastator, so they could just hitch a lift. I had just finished when another round of shells came crashing into the compound, but only two of them avoided the counter-battery fire and hit the ground. I smiled as the sounds died away and started to walk. The Captain had insisted on a report from the ground, hadn’t he? He'd get his money’s worth.
I wasn't sure where I was going, but I finally encountered what had to be a library. Out of curiosity, I went inside, wondering if there was an insurgent in the library waiting to put an end to me. The lights came on as I entered and my hand fell to my pistol, but nothing leapt out at me. It was an automated system. No one would use anything like it on an Earth city, not when it might put someone else out of work. I looked at the books, lying on the shelves, and felt an eagerness I hadn’t known since Kitty and I had made love for the first time. I’d never set foot in a library until I’d gone to school. There just weren't any back in my hometown.
The next hour passed quickly as I browsed, wonderingly. There were books that shocked me – a sex manual for group orgies and detailed instructions on how to produce a nuclear bomb – and some that surprised me. One discussed, at length, the history of the United Nations and explained many things I hadn’t understood. There had been no grand unification, no final coming-together of the human race, but something far darker. As the colonists had fled to the stars, the UN had quietly taken over Earth and transformed itself into a vast bureaucracy that controlled every aspect of human life. It was a version of history I’d never heard at home…and that, too, was not surprising. The book explained how the UN censored everything, all from the purest of motives, until the human race had no past. There were nations, and people, I’d never heard of in the past, building humanity’s future, a future that had turned sour.
I pushed the book aside, finally, and looked for others. Some of them were fictional stories set in worlds that couldn’t exist, although the UN had always rather approved of fantasy novels. I don’t know why, but everyone knew that dragons, goblins and werewolves didn’t exist. Others were set in dreams of the future, ones created before the tawdry reality of real interstellar logistics and the Jump Drive had settled in. Several hinted at war with intelligent aliens, but we had never even seen signs of alien ruins, let alone massive cube-shaped starships. I doubted that anyone could build a wormhole generator large enough to transport a ship that size. The UN had been looking at a wormhole large enough to take an entire planet, but the power requirements would be literally astronomical.
And there were so many wonders in the library…
Something moved behind me. I spun around, my hand dropping to my pistol. “Can I help you, Citizen?”
I stared. I was looking at a walking mannequin, shaped like a nude woman with astonishingly large breasts. It was almost flawless. Only the eyes gave its real nature away. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I’d never seen anything like it before. It looked so realistic that I wondered if young men ever tried to have sex with it.
“Ah,” I said, finally. “What are you?”
“I am a Susan Calvin Corporation Mark XII Automated Drone,” she – I couldn’t think of her as an ‘it’, somehow – said. “I am the librarian of this library. Can I help you, sir?”
I couldn’t grasp the implications at first, and then I felt pure rage. While the UN kept its people in crumbling cities and helplessness, the Planet of Heinlein was so rich that they could afford robot librarians! The UN distrusted AI for all kinds of reasons and I wasn't sure that they were wrong, but surely…why couldn’t we have robots too? Or access to this treasure trove of information, or even political freedom? Why did we have to have Political Officers looking over our shoulder all the time? Earth starved, simply because the farms couldn’t produce enough food to feed the planet, while Heinlein…I would guess that life as a beggar on Heinlein was better than life in the inner circle on Earth.
“Yes,” I said, shaking my head. In the darkness, I would have mistaken her for a real woman. I wondered, with a near-giggle, if anyone got electrocuted trying to have sex with her. “Can you show me a good general history of Heinlein?”
“Of course, sir,” the robot said. She walked past me – I was captivated by the swaying of her ass, despite the growing sense of unreality surrounding me – and took a book off the shelves. “Here you are, sir. Is there anything else?”
I hesitated, and then took the plunge. “Do you do electronic texts as well?” I asked. “Something I can use on a UN-standard terminal?”
“Of course,” the robot assured me. “How many different formats would you like?”
I reeled again. The UNPF Academy used electronic texts as a matter of course, but they were so heavily protected that they could only be accessed on the library computers, apparently to prevent someone from copying them and distributing them on the deep Internet. The endless regulations had killed electronic books back on Earth, but here…she could fit an entire library on one terminal.
“UN-standard,” I said, finally. I knew that that would work on an isolated terminal and I doubted that I’d be allowed to take a Heinlein-grade personal computer, or would I? “Do you have electronic readers here?”
“Yes, sir,” the robot said. She leaned forward and this time I couldn’t resist. I reached out and touched her breast. It felt far too real. Her voice sounded real as well. “Please don’t do that, sir.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, absurdly. “Please could you fetch me the reader?”
“Yes, sir,” the robot said. I was astonished. I’d expected a demand for payment, but instead…I was just getting it for free! “What would you like to have loaded onto the reader?”
“Everything you can,” I said
. Even a UN-grade terminal had thousands of terabytes worth of data storage capability. I had a feeling that Heinlein would be capable of producing something more capable than the UN. “How much can you fit on?”
“The entire contents of the library database,” the robot said. There was a long moment as she returned behind her desk and pulled out a small reader, before passing it to me. “Enjoy, sir.”
I rolled my eyes and opened the book on Heinlein. It was harder to read than the prior book, simply because I lacked some of the background information that the book’s writer assumed I would have. I still didn’t know who Heinlein had actually been – the book sang his praises, but didn’t say much about him – but it did provide a brief overview of Heinlein itself. The planet had been founded by people who’d believed in Heinlein’s vision – I wasn't sure if they’d been contemporaries of Heinlein or if they’d come later – and had made it come true. It hadn’t all been wine and roses, but if the book was to be believed, it had worked better than the UN.
“Thank you,” I said, finally, and pocketed the reader. It was smaller than anything the UN had produced, which suggested worrying things about their military capabilities, and I could hide it easily. I thought about pointing others towards the library – I didn’t understand why it had been left alone, even – but I knew better. That would eventually bring security down on my head. “I have a lot of reading to do.”
Martial Law 1: Patriotic Treason Page 19
