by Kali Altsoba
Seizure of property starts, and deportation for the smallest of crimes. Proven or not. One rumor says deportees are being sent to hard-labor camps far off-world. That one’s true.
A sign of injustices to come is a blanket amnesty issued to any Grün soldier accused by Calmari civilians of crimes ranging up to rape and murder. They’re released on Pyotr’s order, set free from military jails where “they were wrongfully charged under courts-martial law by a few overzealous and misinformed officers.” Any idealistic RIK junior officer who brings charges, who still believes in honor and military justice, is slapped down hard. Some are shot as traitors.
Rapes and beatings, casual murders are pardoned on world after occupied world, wiped off the slate of each accused soldier. The killings are judged by magistrates to be the “sour fruit of understandable bitterness over terrible mistreatment of innocent RIK comrades by criminal partisans, or by civilian sympathizers with bandits.” The blanket amnesty applies whether any ‘bandits’ are active or not. Calmaris are stunned by the changes. They don’t know how to act.
Imperium bureaucrats arrive next, like migrating mallards in noisy green flocks. They flap into cities and over the countryside reorganizing everything and everyone, preening and primping, quacking and categorizing and reordering perfectly orderly things.
In the chaos and mess of invaded worlds that overnight become combat zones, children disappear, sending frantic parents pleading outside RIK HQs and SAC offices and shuttered Kempeitai barracks and stations. The wildest rumors concern the missing children.
“All non-Grün children on occupied worlds are to be tested and screened by SAC.”
“Why would they want to do that?”
“It’s the new biopolitics. Grün geneticists will test to decide whether your child has what they call ‘pure original genes.’ If your kid’s got ‘em, it’s bye bye birdie. Off-world they go.”
“That can’t be. No one would steal my children. It’s monstrous!”
“I tell you, they’re taking away any child under ten who meets Purity criteria. They call them ‘Lost Children or something. They say they’re Grün by blood and they want them back.”
They’re mistaking Pyotr’s domestic propaganda and the vagaries they’ve heard about ‘Purity’ ideology for some kind of sinister genetist plot. It isn’t true.
“Surely it isn’t true? Is it?”
“I heard it too, ‘Verloren Kinder.’ Anyone who matches will be separated from parents and grandparents, taken away to be raised as ‘true Grünen,’ by those awful men in mousy gray.”
So says the worst rumor. Although no one can prove anything, everyone says they know someone who knows somebody, who for sure knows something. It sends the parents of missing children into mad panics. It really isn’t true. Well, it’s not clear what’s happening to the children.
It is true that all ACU and NCU prisoners are transported off-world to forced-labor camps, and that anyone even accused of waging partisan war is summarily executed, no evidence or trial needed or wanted. Yet all that’s as most people expect and accept. The normal consequences of losing a war, people say. They adopt a phrase from Krevans, who delivered it many times over the prior months of war with a characteristic shoulder shrug and head tilt. “Just get on with it.”
What no one anticipates is that hospitals are cleared by RIK by mass-shootings of wounded ACU soldiers, to make way for wounded RIK. After that, they fill with upper-caste Grün civis who arrive like more flocking mallards, eager for superior Union medical care paid for by some occupied population or another. They're fat, they're old, they're given all the beds.
What truly astonishes Calmari used to mocking their own government for inefficiency is the astonishing ineptitude of Imperium Occupation Authorities. The wasteful disorder, the near-anarchy that stands in contrast to a cultivated image of efficiency. Administrators argue all the time over shared jurisdiction and divided responsibility. Economic confusion and then paralysis results everywhere, belying all claims of Purity to ruthless modernism or superior civilization.
Calmari are learning too late just how advanced they really are and how coarse and vile are their new overlords. It’s worse on planets taken over by the Daurans. Shishi murders, krasno abusers, theft and incompetence, mass deportations to the horrors of the Drapchi moons. People can’t imagine it, can’t fathom its causes or purpose or its end. Even as they’re living through it.
***
It’s a year since the Imperium invasion of Krevo, and the Fourth Orion War is going badly for an Alliance that’s reeling from defeat after defeat after defeat. There have been five months of all-out battle in the eastern Calmari systems. Most have been lost by the Alliance.
A very bad idea to change the war’s momentum and win it fast worms into thinking in the Joint Cabinet, despite strong warnings from MoD that it could lead to a military disaster.
“We need to force Pyotr to pull back his forward armies and fleets to homeworld defense, make him retrench. Let’s send pincers above and below his penetrations of our space. His forces now occupy a bulge across our frontiers. It’s a great pulsing hernia. Let’s rupture it! Daurans can wait. We’ll deal with them later. They’re a risible enemy. Brutish, but not an existential threat.”
So say civilian advisers in CIS and SGR, undeterred by their long record of prewar error and failed predictions. It might just work, too, this proposed strategic strike to cut-off the blood supply from Pyotr’s bulging hernia of occupied systems. If hubris doesn’t take too hard a hold of Alliance leaders and operational planners. But of course, it does.
Instead of a single, violating slice into the herniated gut of the Imperium, two counter-offensives are ordered. Because, well, that’s what pincers are. You need two to really pinch.
Each thrust is therefore weaker than it could be or should be. Each will attack over 60 bohrs-deep across the old borders. One knife will slice through 37 systems in south Orion, while a second scalpel cuts into 25 to the north. Then the pincers will join, closing over 100 worlds inside a lethal grip, isolating all Grün forces in Krevan space and in the eastern Calmari systems. After that, it will be just a matter of dictating final terms to Pyotr on Kestino. The code name for this war-winning, twin-thrust strategy to win quickly and all at once is Operation Roundup.
Analysts in the Hornet’s Nest warn Briand and Maçon that twin assaults are premature. They caution that fleets and armies needed to sustain two mighty drives deep into enemy space will strip too many frontier systems of defensive flotillas and garrisons. Others say it’s unwise to divide Alliance forces into two thrusts with a third front already active along the Dauran border.
One voice in the wilderness on Kars asks in a Max Secret memo: “Where is our world so strong that it can afford not to cover its surface with troops for home defense? If a million enemy descend on each stripped-down homeworld, what force shall repel them? We could lose it all.”
No one listens to her, except Briand and Maçon. They dissent in Cabinet. “We’re going worlds too far, too soon, prime minister. We must plan for a much longer and harder war, a dirty and protracted war of attrition and endurance. This fight won’t be won in a month or in a year.”
The PM hates war. He wants it all over as quickly as possible. So he dismisses their objection. Like all those who think of themselves as men of peace, he believes he understands war better than the generals, better than those for whom war is both a career and lifelong study.
“No one wants that, Georges,” the military dilettante says. “We must win fast, not slow. We need to limit the terrible damage done by this foolish, appalling and destructive war.”
As if no one else is morally appalled. As if those whose professional business it is to make war don’t hate it even more, when they try to sleep at night having that day sent young men and women to die on some foreign field. As if everyone loves peace less than Robert Hoare.
The War Cabinet is an inner body that rules the Joint Cabinet and is the
real government, now that war is here. It splits badly. Those who backed Briand before the war, the War Hawks, advise caution and strategic patience, prefer a methodical strategy of slow build-up and attrition over trying for quick annihilation of the enemy in a series of ‘decisive battles’ in one campaign.
Maçon argues the case, hoping to take some heat off Briand. “The first-born of war is the hope to annihilate the enemy, but war’s among empires like ours are too large for that. We must fight a series of linked campaigns. Battles may yet win this war, but we must prepare otherwise. An un-fought battle or campaign can be decisive. I fear trying too much all at once in Roundup.”
It’s the prewar ‘peace faction’ led by Robert Hoare that champs to spit-the-bit and seek righteous vengeance in swift punishment of the invaders. So the PM stands tall at the great teak podium in the Lok Sabha and calls for “swift and utter destruction of all enemy forces. Jahandar sends against us hordes of Hermit Empire soldiers while Pyotr Shaka sends his gray and green legions. They shall not prevail! We’ll drive all grasping foes from the temples of our democracy. Tyranny’s day is done.” It’s way over the top rhetorically, but it plays well on all civy memexes.
Others who will stay safe on Kars take up the theme. “We must reach right into the lair of the Beast on Kestino. We shall hang the Tennō from his own Linden Tree!” That’s one of the milder boasts made by a newly vigorous Minister of Children’s Culture, a plump and pleasant woman who before the war voted against every single military appropriation as an utter waste.
“Be careful, minister,” the Blue Hammer cautions her in private afterward. “Everything in war is quite simple, yet everything one tries to do in war is hard.”
“Is that a threat, Admiral Maçon?”
“Certainly not, minister. It’s a…”
“Wait, I know! It’s a paradox? I know it is! Umm, but what does it mean?”
“Friction, as the problem is known, slows all things. Uncertainty and mishap abrade plans and intentions. Risk is in everything you try, raising the scope for chance. It’s hard to foresee a coming battle or plan out a winning campaign. Impossible to foresee the end of war before it comes. The enemy moves, too. She’s intelligent, too. He is also thinking, adjusting, adapting.”
“We have more intelligent and better generals on our side! Surely that must be true. We are a democracy, after all. We’ll win because we’re smarter!”
“Perhaps. Except intelligence isn’t always superior to courage and other virtues that may count more. Grünen and Daurans show great courage in battle, if little mercy or quarter. Even to their own, in the case of the popovs. Endurance and a capacity to absorb suffering count most.”
“But we have better leaders, because the people choose them!”
“The people do not always choose wisely.” Before she can splutter a protest, he adds: “In any case, leadership is not enough. Not even brilliant generalship is enough. One might be a Scipio or a Yu Fong, even the Jade Eye, but if you are also a general of a little army facing a Great Power, it probably won’t matter. Generals may win battles but alone they don’t win wars.”
The rotund Minister of Children’s Culture bridles like a prideful show pony. “But we’re in the right! They attacked us! Can’t you see that our cause is just, therefore they must lose?”
“It’s not the moral right but the strategic right that counts. Morality is one part of war, the smaller part, important at the start and at the end, but not when fighting is underway. Seeing war whole and true requires gifts that even most professional soldiers and strategists don’t have.”
“Are you saying I’m stupid?” she asks, stupidly.
“No minster. I’m saying that anyone who rolls the iron dice of war should fear which face will be up when the hard rolling stops. Each bet made on swift victory also chances ruin.”
She waddles off unhappily to complain to the prime minister, who assuages her worst prejudices. He brushes away all objections from MoD. He tells her that the double-thrust plan to remove ‘The Hernia,’ as the bulge is officially called on the GovNeb, is now his policy.
A slim majority in the War Cabinet concur with him and vote to go ahead with Operation Roundup. Briand is not popular, the war even less so. Losing will do that, even to a great people.
The politicians still don’t get it. They say the Imperium can be stopped without a drawn-out war of attrition. All that’s needed is a strong double thrust, a skillful pincer envelopment that will win and end all war in a single, obvious campaign. Even the prime minister finds a steel inner strategist lurking beneath the plastic exoskeleton of his piety and pacifism. “It’s brilliant,” he enthuses, fixing on the short-war promise rather than the risks. It’s the lesser of so many evils.
The next day Robert Hoare stands regally tall and announces to the Lok Sabha that “an enemy so spiteful of peace as the Dual Powers must be taught to respect borders and the moral might of the Calmar Union and Grand Alliance.” It’s a long speech, redolent with grand phrases.
“I see two emperors in their nakedness and the sight inspires me, for I see that it is their weakness not their strength, their fear of freedom, that makes them lash out. I see our free people girded for war but wanting war to end, and my chest swells. All our occupied systems cry out for quick liberation. And so we shall come in arms to restore their freedom.” There’s great applause. He really is a very effective politician, leading from behind by speaking what the people want to hear instead of what they need to learn and fear to know. Effective in peacetime, that is.
The plump Minister of Children’s Culture pops to her feet with surprising agility for one so very round, cheering lustily and looking daggers at the Blue Hammer seated in the gallery. As does the Minister of Advanced Education, the Minister of Transfers, and every other minister tending to a minor or primarily domestic portfolio. As do most MPs, of all parties, on all sides. The government is committed. So too the Great Parliament. So too are hundreds of worlds of the great Calmar Union. Not the highest sea wall could hold back this rising tide of righteousness.
Briand grows more sour as he listens to thundering applause and sees excitement for war on civilian faces all around the Lok Sabha. ‘Robert’s rhetoric deteriorates into sentimental mush and strategic claptrap in inverse proportion to its popularity. Our peoples have forgotten war. They don’t remember how hard the last war was or understand how long this new one will be.’
Two Alliance armadas assemble and the counterattacks commence, striking across the Imperium frontier. The first penetrations are deep, landings take place on world after world.
“We’re attacking into enemy space rapidly, viciously, wantonly, without rest. However tired and hungry our troops and sailors are, I assure you that the enemy is more tired, more hungry, more afraid. We’ll keep punching and surely we’ll soon land a knock-out blow. Give me ships and fighters and I’ll give you victory. The road to triumph is forward, never looking back.”
They’re the words of a minor general in charge of a single ACU army assaulting a Grün outpost, spoken to his troops in a vid he deliberately leaks to the civilian memex. He declaims on grand strategy as if he’s in top command on Kars and Caspia, as if running an immense war is as easy as commanding one army on one planet.
It’s a fool’s bravado, but he catches the public mood. He’s hailed as a great hero of the Union’s righteous war, and its clearest moral and military voice. Until he's killed leading his much reduced and battered army in a pell-mell retreat from a Grün moon as the twin Roundup incursions slow, stop, then collapse into military calamity.
Wounded
Private Susannah Page of ACU 7th Assault Division is a pert, 22-year old brunette with brilliant flashing eyes the exact color of pale-green shoots of the first spring plants. Not jade and jewel-cold like the Oetkerts. Younger, more hopeful. Full of promise of life, not threats of death.
She’s from Argos City and known and liked throughout 2nd Company for her quick gay laugh and go
od-if-fairly-conventional sense of humor. She’s pretty and popular and likeable and full of joie de vivre natural to her age cohort. Or she was, until 15 seconds ago.
She never sees or hears the thing that kills her. Not the glint of clear-diamond barrel and metal housing that catches a ray of late afternoon glare 200 meters ahead and to the right, as the bot’s luminance though not its huff-duff camo briefly slips as it takes aim. Not the soft click-hum of a magnetic chamber charging as the killer locates, locks-in, and shoots a plasma ball the size of a longan fruit. Never sees the unblinking dragon’s eye seeking her with lethal fire.
She doesn’t see an intense arc-light ball of blue plasma hurtling into her chest. She feels its impact, though, even as her reactive-armor weaves repel much of the blast. Imparted energy takes her breath away, roils her carbyne-ceramic armored weaves, pitches her two meters into the air to fall flat on her back on packed sand. A hard landing expels nearly all gases from her lungs.
The plasma parts her weaves and passes right through a 900˚ Celsius thermal-barrier gel-suit she wears beneath. It burns away most of her left breast and makes a 4cm hole through two ribs, penetrating to singe the muscle of her heart, which instantly goes ectopic and threatens total failure. The torn organ beats erratically but just often enough to keep her alive and conscious, so that she feels every searing pain impulse it sends urgently to her brain. It’s like nothing Susannah ever experienced before. She knows it means she’s leaving the world. She hears her own chilling screams begin as she refills her lungs with air and her brain explodes it outward into raw sound.
