Stark's War

by John G. Hemry

  "That's insane. Even if they'd succeeded, all they'd have accomplished is stripping the colony of its defenses."

  "Maybe. I'm not claiming they were thinking straight, but they tried. Right now they're mad as hell, but we've got them locked down. I'm not seeing any officer call-ins, either. I think you've got it all." I've got it all.

  "Ethan," Vic urged, "tell people what to do."

  "Okay." What do I tell them? I don't want everyone calling me asking for orders. But if I don't give some orders, who will? No officers left, thanks to something I started. Yeah, I started it. So it's my responsibility, at least for now. "Units still recovering Third Division personnel send support requests to neighboring units and Sergeant Grace at Divisional Artillery. Everybody else fall back into our defensive positions. Units without bunker assignments return to barracks and hold in reserve."

  "What about the officers?"

  "Make sure they're disarmed and put them under arrest. We'll load as many as possible in the stockade and improvise for the rest." A sudden alarming thought arose. "Is there anybody at the spaceport?"

  "Yeah, Stark. Right here."

  "The ground-based anti-orbital defenses. Who's got those?"

  "We do. I sent my people in to make sure we owned them. The AO troops weren't too sure whose side they wanted to be on, so we removed the option for them."

  "Thanks. Good job."

  "Headquarters here," the female Sergeant chimed in again. "What do you want us to do with the vid feed?"

  "It's still going out?"

  "Yeah, on the link back to Earth. I don't know if anybody back there has figured out what's going on yet."

  I'm not even sure what's going on. "Can you keep the vid going without letting anyone know the officers are offline?"

  "I think so. We'll just send them a stream of vid from units recovering Third Division casualties."

  "Good. That'll buy us some time. Do it."

  "Stark," another Sergeant demanded, "what if the enemy counterattacks? What do we do?"

  "We let them," Stark declared. "We let them try all they want, and we blow them to hell when they get within range."

  "Sounds like a plan. We'll hold in reserve then, like you said, until we get new orders from you."

  New orders from me? "Vic, what's happened here?"

  "Congratulations, Ethan," Vic stated dryly. "You've got an army."

  "I don't want a damn army."

  "Well, you've got one. Better figure out what you're going to do with it."

  Headquarters, again. The same overwide corridors, the same careful attention to every detail of construction, but feeling abandoned without those corridors filled with senior officers looking and acting important. A few enlisted soldiers stood around, some apparently on sentry duty and some obviously unemployed. One group of the unemployed grinned in a goofy fashion at Stark and received a hard enough glare in return to stiffen every one of them back into military posture.

  The headquarters Sergeant greeted Stark outside a plain but reinforced door. "Welcome back."

  "Thanks. What the hell is your name, anyway?"

  "Tanaka," she said with a grin. "Jill Tanaka. The General's inside," she added with a gesture toward the door. "This is the holding cell for people Fernandez fingered. I figured it'd be an apt place to lock up Meecham."

  "Guess so." Stark grunted. "Jill, I don't want to tell you your job, but things feel pretty loose around here."

  Tanaka's grin faded. "I know. The junior enlisted are a little giddy. Especially here. There were so many senior officers playing master of the universe around headquarters that the enlisted really built up a head of frustration. Now they figure they're in charge."

  "They're not. We are."

  "Hmmm." Tanaka thought a moment, then nodded. "Right. They were supposed to do what I said before, and they'll damn well do the same now, right?"

  "Right. Now I guess I ought to see General Meathead."

  Tanaka waved a security pass to open the lock, and Stark pushed through. In notable contrast to the rest of the headquarters complex, the holding cell hadn't been designed with comfort in mind. General Meecham, his heavily beribboned uniform noticeably wrinkled, stared grimly toward Stark from the bare metal chair that served as the sole furnishing of the tiny room. Guess Tanaka had some frustrations built up, too, since she stuck Meecham in here instead of in the stockade. At least they've got bunks in the cells there. "You wanted to see me, General?" Stark stated flatly.

  "I wanted to see the traitor who has irrevocably stained the honor of the U.S. military, yes," Meecham declared.

  "Fine. You've seen me. Anything else, General?"

  "I should have had you shot a long time ago."

  "General, you are one stupid son of a bitch, you know that?" Stark found himself smiling. "I guess I've wanted to say something like that for a long time. Anyway, you're stupid. Real stupid. You wasted the lives of thousands of good soldiers, and now you're dumb enough to threaten somebody who could have you shot. You got any other smart things to say?"

  "Wait." Meecham made an all-too-obvious struggle to compose himself, then smiled in firm and apparently friendly fashion. "Sergeant, everyone makes mistakes. In the heat of action, with a temporary setback distorting judgment, even the best soldier can act perhaps too hastily, in a way they'd regret." Stark stared back, silent. "We can still put a lid on all this. Nobody wants a mutiny to go forward, right? Officially, nothing has happened, yet. Officially, nothing has to happen."

  "Meaning what?"

  Meecham leaned forward, eyes intense. "Meaning we can still pull back from this. Release me and the other officers, Stark. Let us reestablish discipline. There won't be any adverse consequences if this all gets called off, now."

  "Why should I believe that?"

  "Because it's in your best interest, Sergeant, just as it is in mine. What are you going to do now? You need supplies. You need ammunition. You need a way to pay your troops."

  Stark kept his face impassive. "We can get all that."

  "Can you? What about the enemy? Will they sit back and let you reorganize, or will they hit you as hard as they can when they realize you're isolated now? What about the civilians in the colony? How will you control them? And don't forgot the corporations, Sergeant. They run things. That's how the country works these days. You've just seized all their assets on the Moon, and blocked their chances of getting their hands on more. They'll make sure they get it back, no matter what it takes. What happens when the corporations make sure America retaliates, sending a punitive force to regain control?"

  "I don't have answers to all that, yet," Stark admitted. "They're tough questions, but they're something we can handle."

  "'We'?" Meecham questioned. "Is there a 'we'? Or is it you giving the orders now?"

  "So far, it's me."

  Meecham smiled, a fierce baring of teeth. "Fernandez gave you a clean evaluation. I should have him shot, not you. No, Sergeant Stark, you're too good a soldier, too important an asset to waste."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "We can make a deal, Stark. I need people on my staff who can make things happen. People who are good leaders. That's you. You can be an officer. A senior officer. I can always use another Major, or better yet, another Colonel. Sound attractive?"

  Stark laughed. "So I hand the troops back over to you, become an officer, and everything's fine, huh? You think nobody would ever find out what happened up here?"

  Meecham nodded. "As I said, you're a smart soldier. Okay, maybe we'll need a scapegoat. Maybe two or three. It doesn't have to be you. You can come out of this smelling like a rose."

  "What about those scapegoats? What'd happen to them?"

  Meecham smiled once more, this time in a comradely fashion. "I'm sure you have enemies, Stark, people who you'd rather not have around anymore, people who've hurt you in the past. They can take the fall. Every way you look at it, you win."

  "And why should you do all this for me?" Stark inqu
ired in a soft voice.

  "Because I'll win, too. That's how deals get made, Stark. Once you're a Colonel I'll take you under my wing, teach you what you need to know to make General yourself someday."

  "Sure."

  "Is that an agreement?" Meecham demanded, perhaps a little too eagerly.

  "An agreement?" Stark shook his head, no longer hiding his disgust. "I guess you figured everybody has to be like you, huh? Out for themselves. Sorry. No deal. I didn't do this for myself."

  Meecham reddened with anger, dropping all pretense of friendship. "You'll regret those words."

  "I doubt it. There's a helluva lot I may end up regretting about today, but not those words."

  General Meecham finally stood, nose elevated as if he were trying to look down on Stark. "You'll die a traitor's death. Loyal soldiers will come here and suppress this rebellion, wipe out this blot on the record of the military."

  Stark laughed again, this time harsh and mocking. "General, you killed off all those loyal troops. Or didn't you notice back in your nice, safe headquarters?"

  Meecham shook his head. "That's the price of victory, the burden of command, something people like you will never understand."

  Stark clenched a fist, then lowered it slowly with an expression of contempt. "That's enough. Save your speeches for the civs on Earth."

  "Speeches?" Meecham favored Stark with a special look, as if ostentatiously memorizing his face. "What is it you want me to tell the citizens of the United States, Sergeant?"

  "I don't know. I'm no politician."

  "Neither am I! I'm a soldier, one who still believes in honor, in loyalty, in—"

  "Shut up!" Stark took a step closer, so his face was only inches from the General's. He felt his body shaking with repressed rage and fought it down. "You're no soldier. You're a politician, one who just happens to wear stars instead of a civ suit. You're loyal to nothing except your own career. What do you think the military's about? Lording it over us like you think you're some damn god whose decisions can't ever be wrong, let alone questioned? Playing games with other officers to see who can get the commands with the most prestige and impress the civ politicians? Talking about your big responsibilities but always blaming someone else whenever something goes wrong? Collecting medals for all the places you've been and not for anything special, let alone courageous, you've ever done? Treating the soldiers under your command like we're nothing but symbols on your worthless command-and-control systems?" Stark spun on his heel to walk out. "I'd kill you myself, right now, but you're not worth the trouble."

  "You'd better be prepared for trouble," Meecham declared, flushing purple with rage. "You'd better be prepared to fight for yourselves, even if you're willing to disregard your oaths to fight for others!"

  Stark stopped, then turned to face General Meecham again, shaking his head. "Our oaths? General, we'd fight for our oaths, to defend the Constitution of the United States. We'd even fight to defend the people of the United States, the civs who let us be sent to fight but won't pay the necessary costs, and so get to watch us die in places they'd never go. We'd even fight to protect the spineless politicians who give speeches about our noble sacrifices but never show any real desire to share those sacrifices. Maybe, maybe we'd even fight for the corporations who think having us fight and die is just one more way to increase profits. Yeah, we'd fight for all that, and die for it all, if we had to, because that's who we are. But you know what, General? We're sick and tired of fighting and dying for the likes of you." Stark exited, slamming the door behind him.

  "Didn't go well, huh?" Vic Reynolds sketched a smile.

  Stark glared, trying to get his emotions back under control. "What the hell are you doing here?"

  "Trying to help you." She nodded toward the door of the holding cell. "Good job in there. I didn't know you could speak that well."

  "What are you talking about? How do you know what I said in there?"

  Vic sighed in resignation. "Ethan, a certain amount of naiveté is touching, but get a grip. That's a security cell. It's bugged."

  "Oh." Stark slapped his forehead. "I should've realized that. So why'd you listen in?"

  "Me and every other Sergeant, you mean?"

  This time Stark's jaw dropped. "Every . . . ?"

  Jill Tanaka came up beside Stark and patted his shoulder. "People wanted to see how you handled Meecham."

  "The hell. They didn't trust me, did they? They thought I'd cut a deal."

  Vic took Stark's other arm, shaking her head. "Very few thought that, but everyone figured Meecham would make a try and we wanted to see what you did, to prove a point to everyone."

  "Right." Stark started walking away. "I'm tired."

  "Can't rest yet," Vic advised, holding on. "We got a meeting."

  "Who's got a meeting?"

  "All the Sergeants. There's something important to decide." She pulled Stark along as Tanaka led the way into corridors even more elaborate than the standard at headquarters, walls lined with art and display cases.

  "Hey, Vic," Stark asked as they walked, "Meecham must have known that cell was bugged. Why'd he make his offer knowing everyone could listen?"

  She shrugged. "Maybe he figured you wouldn't turn it down right off and it'd sow mistrust. Or maybe he thought you'd deactivate the bug before seeing him."

  "Oh." Stark scratched behind one ear. "I wouldn't have thought of that."

  "No, you wouldn't have, Ethan." Tanaka reached an ornate door that automatically slid open at their approach, revealing a large, plush room beyond, a room dominated by a large table made not of cheap lunar metal or polished stone but of hideously expensive wood brought up from Earth. More wood paneled the walls, gleaming soft gold under polish. Most of the seats around the table were already occupied by other Sergeants, many of whom Stark knew by name or by sight. Vic led Stark to one of the last empty chairs, near the head of the table, then sat beside him.

  "We've got two issues that won't wait," Reynolds announced. "Every Sergeant who isn't physically here is linked in so we can make decisions, and we've got to make them."

  "So what are these issues?" someone demanded over the link.

  "Number one," Vic stated calmly, "what do we do with the officers?"

  "Shoot 'em," a voice in the room called. "Stand them up against a wall and shoot every one of the bastards." A rumble of agreement immediately erupted.

  "No!" Stark's voice boomed through the room, cutting off the buzz of conversation. "Think about that. You're soldiers, right? Think about that," he repeated, pitching his voice lower so that the other Sergeants had to concentrate to hear him. "You wanna shoot defenseless people? We could do that. Then what?"

  "What's your point, Stark?" Stacey Yurivan demanded from her seat.

  "First of all, some of them don't deserve it." Stark hunched forward slightly to stare at the others, swiveling his gaze around the table like a turret-mounted main gun. "A lot of officers went forward with Third Division. Some officers have gone into battle alongside us. Sure, that's the junior officers, but where are you going to draw the line if you start killing them in cold blood? You shoot all of them and you're no better than the worst of them are."

  Stark took a deep breath, feeling the hostility in the room and somehow that of the linked-in Sergeants as well. "More importantly, much more importantly, if you decide to purge our officers, you're heading straight to hell. I promise. A military needs officers, needs people in charge. Just because the ones we've got locked up are worthless doesn't mean we don't need better ones. Shoot these, and anybody else who's in charge will always know they could get the same treatment, even if it's you and me. They'll be scared, and wondering constantly when they'll be purged for whatever reason. You want untrustworthy officers? You want units running around without anyone in authority to keep things under control? You want to establish a precedent that enlisted can kill their superiors just because they don't like them? Think about it. Don't create something worse than we had. Don't start a
cycle of terror. It'll eat us all before it runs its course."

  His words hit home. Anger dissolved into uncertainty as Sergeants exchanged glances. "Very good points, but there's another factor," Vic noted in the silence.

  "What's that?"

  "A lot of the soldiers up here have people back home. Family. Right now, they're hostages for the authorities on Earth. But if we have a lot of hostages of our own to trade for them, we might get all those families up here safe."