Artifice (Special Forces: FJ One Book 2)

by Adam Vance

  Their blazing red uniforms soon filled the streets of the capital, as they swarmed up the steps of the palace, knocking aside the heralds who’d been prepared to receive them with formality and dignity. Their commander stomped into the palace with all the tact of a barbarian sacking Rome.

  The residents of the city, who’d come out to greet them, not all of whom were as convinced as Orlov had been that they didn’t come in peace, were given a rude awakening. One of their officers stood at the top of the palace steps and flicked a translation device on at his throat.

  “You are conquered in the name of His Supreme Highness the RhalVai of Rhalbazan! You will submit and obey!”

  Orlov braced himself then for the riot. But it didn’t come. The Hierarch had prepared his elites well, and they immediately fell to the ground, submitting, purring like house cats, ready to rub against the legs of their new masters to get something out of them.

  And now, he received a master class, a perfect example of absolutely everything a conqueror could do wrong. If he survived this, he would have one hell of a book to write.

  There were three precepts of counterinsurgency and successful occupation of a foreign territory.

  The more you protect your force, the less secure you are. The Rhal had centralized their forces in and around the Palace, occupying the mansions of the elite and fortifying a defensive position. Tiamatans who had business with the Rhal had to go through secure checkpoints, after a sufficient amount of degradation and humiliation had been imposed.

  “Green zones” were absolutely verboten under 6C principles. Isolating yourself from the occupied peoples made you an invasive species, a weed, a virus. To set yourself up in an adversarial environment was to ensure your adversarial status on an inescapable psychological level.

  The Rhal had booted the Hierarch out of his own palace, and had thus degraded the status not only of the nation’s leader, but all those beneath him who fell in status accordingly. And nothing pisses off a kitty cat like someone else taking the highest perch in the house.

  The more force you use, the less effective you are. This was the classic problem when armies built to destroy were put in charge of the peace. Armies are designed to kill, to punish, to advance, not to maintain a balance. It was the classic Maslow’s Hammer theory – “when your only tool is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail.” This was why Civil Affairs departments had been created in the first place – the need for armies to have someone with a different toolset to come in to the picture after the war was won.

  The Rhal were fond of the lash. And Tiamatan nature being what it was, they could only take so much submission before their sharp claws struck out at the occasional Rhal soldier who’d trashed their house, or their store, or threatened their children. The Rhal answer to a pushback on their violent occupation was…more violence. Which of course in turn only created the angry energy required for more pushback.

  He could see the faces of the Rhal soldiers at the public whippings of insubordinate Tiamatans. It was what you’d see in the faces of religious terrorists of old – the pornographic excitement of men whose culture had repressed their sexual outlets and channeled that energy into violence. There was clearly no Civil Affairs department in the Rhal military.

  Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction. That was out of the question for the Rhal. The lesson was simple – don’t be provoked into action by a demonstration or a declaration. Let the natives have their moment, and let the fire burn itself out. Interfere in that moment, however, and you turn a demonstration into a riot, or a riot into an insurgency.

  The Rhal had as much of a dominance-expressing culture as the Tiamatans, but no sense of subtlety. Tiamatans were great on ceremony, especially funerals, and the Rhal were sure that these funerals, especially for those who’d been whipped to death, were demonstrations by “rebellious elements” and they were broken up with…yep. More of the lash.

  Captain Orlov was glad that Captain Chen had promoted him before leaving. Everyone in 6C and the FJ forces knew the classic David Kilcullen motto – “Rank is nothing; talent is everything.” A detachment of sergeants who knew what they were doing, who knew the culture and the history and the language and the key players, were more effective than a general with a battalion.

  Orlov thought of a funny story about the American occupation of Afghanistan. When the Pentagon generals saw pictures of the Special Forces members who’d successfully penetrated the country, sporting beards as they posed triumphantly with their native allies, their first reaction had been…to issue frantic orders that the soldiers shave their beards.

  Never mind that (a fact of which of course the high command was completely ignorant) the men were in a country where the absence of facial hair was seen as unmanly; all that mattered to the generals was that the soldiers weren’t compliant with regulations about their grooming. Those in command had absolutely not the first idea about the country they were conquering…

  This was the genius of HM and her organization – the Fallschirmjäger was lean, mean, self-policing for incompetence and inadequacy. There was no thick rank of majors and colonels and generals. Sergeants reported to captains, who reported to HM. Pragmatism was the only General Order – what works, where? If it doesn’t work somewhere else, change it. Adapt to your world, respect the natives, work with them not against them when at all possible.

  But his promotion had come in handy, for that very reason. The Tiamatans were rank-obsessed. They’d treated him like shit on their heels when he was a Lieutenant, once they understood the human ranking system. But hey presto, when Captain Chen, a respected leader, promoted him to equivalent rank, the Tiamatans were ready to listen to him, work with him, and now, follow his lead. In this case, rank was relevant, and so the FJ adapted.

  Now he was doing what he’d told the Hierarch to do – watch and wait. Follow the Norwegian Resistance protocol in World War II: Lie low, go slow.

  And once he knew that the High Tiamatans had taken just about all they could take, that they were this close to “Point FTS,” as it was known in 6C lingo, he was ready to take the next step, before the natives at last said “fuck this shit” and started a useless insurrection.

  It was risky, leaving his lair to meet with Hierarch Gabari. But also unthinkable that His Majesty would enter…slave quarters, for any reason. He didn’t have a mask fabber that would have let him pass on the streets as a Tiamatan, so instead he was sewn into a light linen corpse bag and laid out on a stretcher.

  Through the thin fabric, he could see that the city of Rumbra already looked different. The Rhal had their own ideas about public décor, clearly. The pastel colors that had made the capital’s banks and temples and palaces so reminiscent of ancient Greece had been whitewashed, so as not to clash with the massive banners hung from the rooftops, a white four-petal flower on a red background. Fascist optics, Orlov thought with a grimace, were the same all across the galaxy.

  The Rhal security detachment at the Great Gate wasn’t concerned with outgoing traffic, and the clearly Low Tiamatan litter bearers with their repulsive burden were quickly waved out of the city. Once outside the range of sight of the city, the Tiamatans tore him out of the shroud.

  “My apologies, Captain,” said the Low Tiamatan, Bracalac. “I will atone for my offense…”

  “I absolve you,” Orlov said. His status was equivalent to that of a High Tiamatan, which left him little choice but to act like one, as both High and Low would expect it. Although he hoped his meeting with the Hierarch was about to change the order of their society forever...

  “Are your people ready?” Orlov asked Bracalac.

  Bracalac purred. “Everything Captain Chen and his team left us is in shipping shape.”

  Orlov nodded, not bothering to correct him on the “ship shape” bit. “Good. Let’s hope the Hierarch is ready for a change.”

  They took a ferry across the river to the Low side, where the buildings were wood and mud rather than marble a
nd stone, though they were just as brightly painted with the local lichen extracts. The Rhal hadn’t even bothered to occupy the Low side of the river – they’d only come across to declare their victory, and to let the Lows know that they were now subject to the Rhal and not to the High. Other than that, their miserable lives had gone on as before, save that they now kept more of their agricultural produce, and less of their livestock as it was “requisitioned” for the carnivorous Rhal dining tables.

  To his dismay, the High Tiamatans had displaced the Low from their better structures, leaving the Low to sleep in the barns now empty of the local version of cattle.

  There were no trumpets to welcome the Captain to the Hierarch’s new Palace, no red carpet up marble stairs. Only a creaky wooden door opened by a herald in dirty livery, into what had been the Low temple.

  They had managed to recreate as much pomp as possible, building an elevated wooden platform for the throne, itself hastily constructed of stone blocks, with a sufficient number of steps on which to throw oneself in submission.

  Orlov did exactly that, and waited for Hierarch Gabari to speak before he rose.

  Instead, the Hierarch merely sighed, no doubt reminded how far he’d fallen from the last time he’d seen the human.

  “Well, now, Captain,” Gabari said with a slightly wheezy voice, clearly plagued with some feline respiratory problem. “We’ve saved you, we’ve watched and waited, we’ve been…degraded in our stations. And for what?”

  Orlov raised his head. “Majesty, I have a plan. But it will require cooperation, between High and Low. On an equal footing.”

  Hisses and snarls erupted from around him, the displaced nobility already infuriated with their very presence here on the “wrong side of the river.”

  Orlov went on. “When Captain Chen was here, he worked with the Low Tiamatans. He taught them many skills, including the use of a number of mechanical devices.”

  “This is an outrage!” one of the nobles hissed. Orlov had been expecting Bigbard to object. His own family was rumored to have once been Low, so of course he was the most elitist and status-obsessed of all the High.

  “We were informed that the Low were the ‘working class’ of Tiamat. We notified His Majesty that we would be equipping the Low to do their work more efficiently. There was no objection.”

  Bigbard had to retreat – the Hierarch had approved it, so there was nothing to debate.

  Orlov took a breath. He thought of another concept of Empire, “Networks of domination.” An Empire works best when the social ties between the occupier and the elite of the conquered are strong. And Orlov had strong ties on both sides of the river.

  “In the face of attack,” he began, “local populations are weak when divided. It’s the function of an evil Empire to keep them that way. Keep their ire pointed at each other, and away from the real enemy.

  “The Low are the same species as you are, and there is no difference biologically, other than the caste system into which they have been born. They have provided you with servants, scribes, warriors, masons. They have had to work harder than the High. They have had to become faster, craftier, quicker to learn. And they have learned.”

  With that, Bracalac and a handful of his people entered the palace, carrying projectile weapons. At least, the most advanced projectile weapons the Captain could fab up with what had been left for them, along with what he could “transfer” from the colony before the Rhal arrived. Another aphorism Orlov treasured – amateurs talked tactics, professionals talked logistics. Before any plan could be made, he had to know what sort of arms he could bring to the table.

  “It’s time for the Tiamatans to unite, as one,” he said, while the shock of seeing Lows walking so straight, so proud, and so well-armed was still keeping the Highs quiet.

  “The Eastern Tiamatans and the Western Tiamatans must come together to repel the invader.”

  The Hierarch was silent. “Eastern and Western, you say…would you have us rename ourselves? Overthrow our civilization, our culture, our social order?” Murmurs and nods from the nobility greeted his questions.

  “Your Majesty, with all due respect, the Rhal have already overthrown your social order.”

  Orlov knew that it would take time for the “High” to accommodate the mental transition, and he’d planned accordingly.

  “There will be two roles to play, one in the country and one in the city. The Eastern Tiamatans are ready to practice what we humans call ‘guerrilla warfare.’ They will spread out, hide out, pick off foraging parties, sneak into the human colony and disrupt the occupiers.”

  “Disrupt…violently, I presume.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “And your fellow humans?”

  Orlov shook his head. “I’ve had no contact with them since the occupation. Now that I’m out of the city, though, I have some freedom of motion, and I’ll be feeling them out. The Rhal may be treating them better than your people, if only to placate humans back on Earth. But somehow I doubt it.” If the Rhal had descended without bothering to put on their soft, friendly avatars, they probably didn’t give a shit what Earth thought anymore.

  “And the role of the…so called Westerners in this?”

  “Passive resistance, sabotage, espionage. Appear to be cooperative, ‘rub the leg,’” he said, using the local term for sucking up. “Create obstacles to their food supply, disrupt their routines, start fires, whatever keeps them off balance, but always discreetly – don’t get caught, make it appear as if ‘these things happen.’ Coordinate with the Easterners so that resistance activities are timed to be as effective as possible.”

  “Hmm.” Gabari thoroughly licked his fur for a good five minutes, a sign that he was giving this decision the momentous thought it required. Orlov tried not to hold his breath. If the High refused to stop being “High” and work with the “Low” rather than order them around… Well, then he’d have to find his way into the human colony and start over.

  “If I may offer a thought from one of our finer thinkers on warfare,” Orlov said. “His name was Krepinevich. He created the ‘law of conservation of enemies.’ Which is to say, never make more enemies than you need to have at once. If the Tiamatans are each other’s enemies, and the Rhal are the enemies of both…”

  Orlov felt a buzzing in his pocket that made him jump. He’d deactivated his earcomm, his contacts, and his vocalizer when the Rhal had landed. He’d wondered if he should just destroy them, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it, to let go of his last hope of help from 6C.

  Now they had activated themselves. He warily extracted the earcomm and inserted it. If the Rhal had discovered him, then the damage was done. If not…

  “Captain Orlov, are you there?”

  “Holy shit,” Orlov cried out. “Is that you, Sergeant Archambault? Have I got news for you…”

  “Captain Orlov,” said Dieter Chen.

  “Captain Chen! I was sure you were dead. Are the units…”

  “Later. Where are you now?”

  “I’m with the Hierarch. Captain, the Rhal have landed here, and they’re not the little green men. They’re some kind of reptilian…”

  “We know.”

  “And they’re here as conquerors, Captain, none of the friendly visitor stuff we got on Earth.” He clenched his jaw to open the speaker on the earcomm so the Tiamatans could hear.

  “FYI, it’s General Chen now. By unanimous accord of the FJ, I’m afraid.”

  Chen smiled, hearing the cap…general’s disdain for the trappings of rank. But he could see the point – optics, again, especially back on Earth. A captain would lead an illegitimate coup d’état; a general would lead a legitimate army.

  “General Chen,” the Hierarch said. “It’s good to hear your voice. Are you approving the actions the Captain suggests?”

  “Probably. What have you been up to, Captain?”

  “I’ve been training the Eastern Tiamatans and arming them as well as I can for insurgency in
the mountains. The Western Tiamatans are weighing whether they will take a sabotage and espionage role, in and out of the city.” He wanted to be sure that Chen knew he was trying to remodel the society into a more cooperative resistance, even if it meant accelerating the sociological timetable for eliminating the caste system.

  “I see. And the imperial model the Rhal are following?”

  “Brutalist, sir. Enslavement, strip mining, uncompensated requisition of foodstuffs, capital and corporal punishment…the works.”

  “And you’ve been busy, I can tell.”

  “Yes, sir. Sort of a one-man FJ unit.” He couldn’t help but brag about it.

  “That you are. Your Majesty, I hereby Elevate Captain Orlov to Colonel Orlov, two jumps in rank. In all matters, he speaks for me.”

  The court rustled. Chen was respected, admired, and the granting of more of his status to Orlov could tip the balance.

  “General,” the Hierarch said after another pause. “I approve of this plan. The…Eastern and…Western peoples will work together to repel the invader. If, that is, we are not alone in this. Our resistance could be easily crushed without some…outside assistance.”

  “That, Your Majesty, is something we have acquired. We’ll be in touch soon with more information but yes, you are not alone. And when it comes to the Rhal, remember, as your people say – the biggest cat is not always the fastest cat. Chen out.”

  Colonel Orlov looked at the Hierarch. The Hierarch narrowed his eyes at him.

  “Well? What are you standing there for? Get to work.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN – THE BEES AND THE WASPS

  Diplomacy, HM reflected, could be hazardous to your health. She had been brought to Rhalbazan as a hostage, as a prop, and to neutralize her as an obstacle on Earth. But like any Empire, the Rhal was not a monolithic entity with a single will. There were other factions in play – factions that wanted to see Vai Kotta fail, factions that wanted to see him win because they believed in his strategy, factions that wanted him to win because their own status was tied up with his…