A Desert Called Peace-ARC

by Tom Kratman

  Too, Thomas had not wanted to appear indecisive or at the mercy of his JAG section. So he had kept mum, pending their review and approval. This had never actually come, as the JAG section itself was evenly split on the issue. Thomas had therefore bucked the decision up to Campos who had thrown a fit that the dictator wasn't already dead. "Awful shock" readily became "Awe shucks."

  It was then that Thomas moved up D-Day by twenty-four hours. This gave just enough time for his own troops in al Jahara to move to their assault positions and for his aircraft to send stealthy birds with two thousand pound GLS guided bombs winging their way towards the implicated palace.

  Unfortunately, it also gave time for the dictator to change palaces as was his habit.

  As unfortunately, or even more so, it did not give Parilla and Carrera time to call back the two Nabakov-23 Dodos carrying seventy-six airborne Cazadors before the planes went low behind a series of mountains and the Cazadors had jumped.

  Interlude

  Brussels, Belgium, 14 May, 2070

  Money was always tight in the EU and among its member states. The only place to find it was to raise taxes (and, with the various levels of government already confiscating over sixty percent of GDP, those were already onerous and rather unpopular) or to reduce military expenditures (and at less than one percent of GDP those were already anemic and still rather unpopular). Only if the construction of ships could be made in the guise of social welfare legislation would there be easy acquiescence.

  The United States helped quite a bit, if not with money then with free technology transfers. This was actually critical as, in this year-of-something-other-than-Our-Lord, 2070, Europe was a technological backwater. Even with the money found, or looted, the expertise simply didn't exist anymore. So many of the highly talented had left for other climes, most notably and infuriatingly for the United States, that the Old World had fallen far behind.

  Between the shunting of social welfare funds to starship construction and the technology transfers from the US, the EU did manage to put together a half a dozen ships. These were duly turned over to the United Nations in theory, though in practice they remained for the time being under absolute EU control.

  And then the screws began to tighten. With a means of getting rid of their undesirables in hand without at the same time strengthening the Unites States, EU bureaucrats and their police minions began identifying those who most needed to go, and those they least wanted to go to the United States. No one was forced out initially; that would have been inhumane. Instead, a letter would arrive in the mail stating that "pursuant to new austerity measures X and such, you and your family will no longer be receiving any support from the government and would you please consider subsidized emigration to the new world?"

  Riots ensued, of course, especially in Muslim majority or near majority states like France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain. This did nothing to keep the transfer payments to the indigent flowing. After all, what did hard working, tax paying Poland or Sweden care what happened to France or Belgium? If anything, the resulting destruction of infrastructure within the Muslim majority areas speeded up the rate at which Moslems proved willing to leave. (As an exception, Sweden did offer to make some tax transfers, but only on condition that their Muslims be among the first to go.)

  Young Europeans were an issue. They were valuable. How else was the social welfare state to be maintained without their tax receipts? On the other hand, how were they to be kept when the more politically and economically free states on Earth – the US, UK, Brazil, India, Australia and South Africa – acted as talent and willingness-to-work magnets?

  The answer to that was border and emigration control. Much as had the Soviet Union decades before and much as in Cuba, still, attempting to emigrate, except as permitted by the bureaucracy of the EU, became an anti-social crime with severe penalties, both formal and informal. The reduction of the Muslim populations, coupled with the gradual deIslamicization of Europe, helped there.

  Chapter Eighteen

  From our enemies we can defend ourselves but God save us from our friends.

  —Lenin

  UEPF Spirit of Peace, Earth Date 2 December, 2513

  High Admiral Robinson had never really anticipated the headaches that came now with increasing frequency and never seemed entirely to go away. He wondered, sometimes, if they were guilt driven. Certainly the images of the people jumping to their deaths stuck with him in much the same way as the headaches.

  And while Mustafa's people did the necessary reconnaissance and flew the airships, I was the one who did the structural analysis that said the buildings would fall once the fire weakened their steel supports. I just never imagined that I would actually see people die. It was harder than I would have thought even if I had considered it.

  That was one headache: guilt. He had others.

  I'd thought that once the FSC invaded Pashtia they'd end up in an endless, sticky quagmire, the same way the Volgans did twenty-two local years ago. Whoever would have suspected that they'd topple the place in under a month? Whoever would have thought that they'd do it so cheaply. I'd wanted a war that would tie them up and use up their wealth so they couldn't use it to get rid of us and later attack Earth. I'd wanted a failure that would undermine their nation-state system and leave useful idiots like Wiglan in charge. Instead, this affair has seen people like Unni marginalized and the nation-state, or at least the FSC, more powerful than ever.

  Did I make a mistake, helping Mustafa? Did I make an irreparable mistake?

  Robinson thought about that one for a bit. Finally, he came to the conclusion, No. It wasn't a mistake. Mustafa would have gone ahead anyway. And the result would have been the same. All I could have done was warn the FSC of what was coming and that I could never do.

  Never.

  The High Admiral stood and began to pace the close confines of his office, still lost in his thoughts.

  I simply overestimated the ability of Mustafa's people and his allies to confront the FSC. That, and I apparently badly underestimated the ability of the FSC to impose its will through force. They're even more dangerous than I had thought they were. So, no, it wasn't a mistake to start down this road. It had to be done. What was a mistake was to think I could start down it without going all the way. The FSC must be involved in a wider war, one that disenchants its allies, dries up its treasure, kills its soldiers and demoralizes its people.

  Now what do I have to do to make that happen?

  Robinson ceased his pacing and resumed his chair.

  "Computer, view screen on. Show me a map of Terra Nova, one annotated with population density, industrialization and resources."

  The Kurosawa came to life. Not for the first time, Robinson wondered if the difference in the quality of the picture was the result of wear and tear on the ancient, Earth-produced, screens or if – awful thought – the Terra Novans had actually exceeded Earth's technology in this one field.

  It really is an excellent picture, though, he thought. Pity that the map tells me little.

  "Computer, add major historical events for the last sixty years."

  Still nothing; too crowded.

  "Computer, reduce detail to show major conflicts."

  "Ah, there it is," Robinson said aloud. "Before I arrived to assume command. The Petro War."

  "Computer, get me all pertinent data on the FSC-Republic of Sumer War of local year 447 plus developments in that region since then."

  Atlantis Base, Earth Year 7 December, 2513

  The High Admiral met the Tauran Union's Commissioner for Culture in a little used but meticulously maintained garden not far from the island base's single major river. The garden itself was kept up by the same crew of proles brought in from Earth as servants to the families of the Class Ones, Twos and Threes that made up the bulk of the fleet's crew and the base personnel. Wiglan never saw the proles, of course. It was part of their job to be as little seen, as little noticed, as possible.

  "So good
of you to come, Unni, and on such short notice."

  "Always a pleasure," answered Wiglan, sincerely. Then, seeing the worried look on Robinson's face, she announced, "There is something troubling you."

  "Yes. Yes there is, my dear. Silly of me to think I could hide it from you."

  Silly of me to think I had to make an effort to look worried.

  "Well, what is it then, Martin?"

  "The war, of course. Terrible thing. All those poor civilians caught up in the FSC's imperialist games."

  Never mind that previously they were caught up in bloodthirsty and fanatical Salafi and Fascist games.

  "Oh, I know," Unni fumed. "By what right does the FSC think it can impose its will on others. Only the World League and United Earth have that kind of moral authority."

  "Exactly, Love. I knew you would understand." Nothing. "Tell me, is the TU going to go through with providing forces for this venture?"

  "I've argued against it, Martin. All of us right thinking people have. But the TU still hasn't quite extirpated national sovereignty even in Taurus. And some of the new member states especially, the ones that think the FSC was somehow responsible for liberating them from the Volgans, are going to go along. Even Gaul and Sachsen are planning on sending some troops, though we hope to limit their rules of engagement so that they are ineffective. And," she finished with a disgusted sigh, "the Anglian lackeys of the FSC will give their full support, almost as if they were a state of the Federals themselves."

  I don't suppose it would ever occur to you, Unni, that Anglia's permitting the FSC to set its foreign policy, to the extent it does, is not in principle different from any state of the TU allowing the TU to set foreign policy? You cannot logically, in principle, complain about a state giving a portion of its sovereignty to another entity and then insist that it should give it to you instead.

  But then, logic is not your strong suit, is it?

  "What's done is done, Unni. No sense crying over it or wishing to undo it. What concerns me more is the FSC's next step."

  "You really think they won't be content with knocking out Pashtia, Martin?" The commissioner looked rather horrified.

  "I am certain they won't," Robinson answered. "When you have a rogue state running free there is no limit to the damage it can do."

  Wiglan agreed, her head nodding slowly, sadly and silently. "And they simply refuse to take us as their equal, either," she added.

  "Unni, I am not sure that the FSC considers even the UE to be quite their equal."

  And there's another repetitive thought to give me indigestion; three hundred highly militarized million of the FSC lording it over half a billion sheep on Earth and the fifty million in Class Three or higher reduced to penury or worse.

  While Unni knew it was likely true that the FSC held even the UE in contempt, she was sickened to hear a major figure from the mighty UE admit to it openly. She gave a gasp of horror, her hand flying to her mouth of its own accord.

  "That's . . . that's terrible. How can they . . . "

  "They can because they have us stymied, Commissioner. We can't do anything to them because they would do the same or worse right back to us. I'd be willing to sacrifice my fleet and, of course, myself in the cause of peace but when I consider the environmental damage . . . " He meant, of course, "nuclear winter." It's amazing how the local progressives can accept the concepts of humanocentric planetary warming and nuclear winter at the same time.

  They should see that, even if true, the one is the cure for the other. Oh, well, not my job to educate them.

  "Oh, my brave and selfless High Admiral, I know you would," Wiglan nearly swooned.

  Robinson made a minor show of looking very brave and very selfless.

  "This is especially bad," Robinson continued, "in that I am certain that the FSC intends once again to attack Sumer. I do so hope, Unni, that you and right thinking people like you will be able to keep the Tauran Union's hands clean in this filthy business."

  "Many will participate no matter what the TU says," Wiglan muttered. And I feel so terrible about it, too.

  "Then, Unni, you must do whatever it takes, not just you but your colleagues as well, to ensure that such participation is minimal and that whatever there may be along those lines turns out to be more albatross than ally."

  High Admiral's Conference Room, UEPF Spirit of Freedom, Earth Date 5 January, 2514

  "All told, Admiral Robinson, the FSC can muster nearly twenty-four divisions' worth of troops. That's counting their militia organizations, which are considerably better trained, organized and led than the usual militia down below, their Regular Army and the Federated States Marine Corps."

  Robinson regarded his strategic intelligence officer, a Class Two named Henkin, bleakly. All of Earth could not muster half of that, and those would be underequipped and badly trained. His own few battalions' worth of security troops hardly counted on that scale.

  Seeing the admiral's bleak look, the strategic intelligence analyst hastened to add, "But not all of those are useable, few can be logistically supported in the theater of war you believe the Federated States is contemplating, and almost forty percent are part time militia, not particularly suitable for either a short and intense war or a long drawn-out, low-intensity one."

  "That hardly matters, Henkin," answered the fleet's tactical intelligence officer, Commander Spiro, as he tapped a pen on the table. "The Sumeris are rotten, even more rotten – and far less well equipped – than they were the last time. Four divisions of FSC troops – five, tops – plus maybe one from Anglia, would be more than enough to knock them over. I think they could do it with three, myself."

  "I don't disagree about needing only three or four divisions for a successful invasion," Henkin admitted. "We could quibble over the number but why bother? It is afterwards that they'll need more troops, not just to wreck and defeat a fairly worthless army but to control a fairly numerous people. And there is where they'll have problems. Those roughly twenty-four divisions you mentioned are the equivalent of fifteen regular and nine militia. The fifteen regular can be counted on to sustain at most five divisions fighting. The militia's nine might give one division's worth, or perhaps one and a half, on continuous deployment. That's a total of six to six and a half useable divisions. Of those, one will continue to be needed in Pashtia. And Spiro, Admiral . . . five will not be enough."

  "So you think, then, that the FSC will not invade, Henkin?" Robinson asked.

  Henkin's face was set and sure. "They have the same data I do, Admiral. Perhaps they have better data. I don't see how they would unless they somehow felt they absolutely had to. Yes, I say this even though a lodgment in Sumer gives them access to major oil fields in every direction. The risk is simply too great."

  "I wonder what would make them feel they absolutely had to," wondered the Admiral, idly.

  Atlantis Base, Earth Date 17 May, 2514

  "It's the only way I can see, Unni, to prevent this war. The FSC must be convinced that the Republic of Sumer has nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. Otherwise, the Federals are certain to invade."

  "But do they have those weapons, Martin?"

  "My people think they might," Robinson answered, truthfully. Indeed, the Republic of Sumer might also have time travel and the fountain of youth, though both seemed about as unlikely. There was no reason to burden the Commissioner with doubts, however, or none that the High Admiral could see.

  "They might," he repeated, "and the dangers of letting that particular genie out of the bottle are too great not to do everything in our power to prevent even what 'might' happen."

  "I see that," Wiglan agreed, though she really didn't. "But what can I do? I'm just the Commissioner for Culture; I'm not in one of the military or intelligence branches of the TU."

  "You know many people who are in those branches though, don't you, Unni? You have access to them, and through them to national intelligence services."

  "Yes," she agreed. "I know them . . . at least
slightly, I do. You understand that we in the . . . .softer services have as little to do with the military and intelligence as possible."

  "Yes, Unni," Robinson answered, "and that is, normally, proper. But in this one case . . . "

  "I'll do it," she burst out. "For you and peace and the eventual creation of true global governance, I'll do it."

  Interlude

  From Baen's Encyclopedia of New and Old Earth, Old Earth Edition of 2497 (442 AC)

  Freedom of Speech: This entry has been declared unfit for human knowledge by the United Earth Council for the Suppression of Hate Speech.

  Freedom of Religion: This entry had been declared unfit for human knowledge by the United Earth Plenary Committee for the Advancement of Human Knowledge. See, instead, the entries on Marxism, Islam, Environmentalism, Druidism, Pan-Gaeaism...