Stark’s Crusade

by John G. Hemry

  “Don’t worry about it,” Stark waved away any further apology. “Your people did real good out there. Did you notice any problems with the operation?”

  Milheim hesitated, frowning in thought. “No. Nothing comes to mind. I will tell you it was nice not having that damned timeline blinking at us.”

  “Yeah. I don’t think we’re gonna use them much anymore. Not to govern individual movements, anyway. You gotta have a coordinated timeline when you’re working together, but having one just so people will jump through hoops when the planners wanted them to never did make all that much sense.”

  “That reminds me, speaking of the old days, it was also nice knowing our action wasn’t being broadcast as a vid entertainment. We were all sick of that.”

  “Damn right,” Stark agreed. When the Pentagon had needed to raise large sums of money to fund the lunar operation, some unsung SOB had realized they could use the audio and video feeds from soldiers’ command and control equipment to fashion almost-real-time programs for commercial broadcast. Programs that quickly became popular enough to earn a good chunk of advertising revenue. For a time, the need for high vid ratings had played at least as large a role in military operations as the desire for victory. “That’ll never happen again. Not if we have any say in it. What about us, though, back here? Were we on your shoulder too much? Was there something we shoulda been doin’ that we didn’t?”

  Milheim shrugged. “You seemed pretty transparent, truth to tell. I kept looking over my own shoulder wondering what was missing, and realizing I didn’t have some bozo back at headquarters telling me to take one step left instead of one step right. I liked you keeping an eye on the big picture. That was a good call focusing on the warehouses, and I appreciated being asked my opinion based on my feeling of the scene. No complaints, I guess.”

  Stark gazed at Milheim, chewing his lip while he chose the right words. “Look, no offense, but I don’t know you very well. Good reputation and all that, and you handle your unit real well. But I don’t know if you’re the kind of guy who’d tell me to my face if I’d screwed something up. Would you?”

  Milheim didn’t have to feign indignation. “I look out for my people. If you were doing something that’d mess them over, I’d let you know.”

  “Good. I knew you took care of your troops. That’s why they put you in charge of your battalion, right? Because they trusted you.”

  “Yeah. Lucky me. At least I didn’t get put in charge of the whole shebang like you did.”

  “Hey, it’s not so bad.” Stark grinned with obvious self-mockery. “Maybe someday you’ll take it over from me.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “I’ll buy you a beer.”

  Milheim laughed. “You couldn’t get me drunk enough to say yes to that proposition.”

  “Now, that sounds familiar. I think I’ve heard it on every date I’ve ever been on.”

  Another laugh. “I didn’t think you had to worry about dating. Everybody knows about you and Vic Reynolds.”

  Stark blew out his breath in exasperation. “Everybody but me and Reynolds, you mean. I wouldn’t have made her my second in command if we were involved like that. That’d just have been asking for trouble. And it wouldn’t have been right. We’re tight, Milheim, but not that way.”

  “Really? How come?”

  “I dunno. Just the way it works, I guess. You got a steady girl?”

  Milheim smiled. “Nope. My wife would frown on that. Wives get touchy about that sorta thing.”

  “I’d heard that. Kids?”

  “Yeah. They’re all up here, thanks to that swap we worked out, trading our old officers for our family members. Come by the quarters sometime and I’ll introduce you.”

  “How are those quarters, anyway?” With the arrival of military families, the Colony had voluntarily begun excavating a large bloc of new residential construction for the creation of an ad hoc ‘fort.’ “I haven’t had much time to check on ‘em, and I know they’re being built without much in the way of frills.”

  “They’re okay,” Milheim temporized. “It doesn’t take much to equal the sort of base housing we’re used to, does it? But the kids love the low gravity. They’re bouncing off the walls. Literally. Like I said, come by and see it sometime.”

  “Thanks. When I get the time, I’ll be sure to take you up on that.”

  “When you get the time? I guess it’ll be a while, then, won’t it?” Milheim sobered abruptly, his mouth tight. “Damn.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Talking about family. It reminded me, I got to write some letters. You know. To the families of the soldiers we lost on the raid.” Milheim closed his eyes for a moment. “One of them had her family up here. Guess I got to tell them personally.”

  “We got chaplains for that.”

  “I’ve still gotta go.”

  “I know, but you go along with a chaplain.” Stark lowered his voice pitch slightly to emphasize his words. “That’s an order. You don’t need to take that kind of burden all on yourself.”

  “Umm, okay. Thanks.”

  “Don’t thank me. I gave the orders that sent those soldiers on the raid. I oughta talk to a chaplain, too.” But I won’t, because there’s nobody to order me to do it, and I’m too damn stubborn. “How about your wounded? Where’re they located in medical?” Stark didn’t bother asking if Milheim knew the locations of his casualties, or whether he’d already visited them. He already knew enough about the man to be certain of both items.

  “They’re in a couple of different bays. Eight Charlie and Ten Delta. Most of them got patched up and sent to their quarters already.”

  “Good. I’ll drop by, too. You need any time off?”

  “No. No. I’ll do better if I’m working. Besides, I oughta be used to this by now, huh?”

  “Milheim, I hope to God neither one of us ever gets used to it.”

  Colony Manager James Campbell and his executive director, Cheryl Sarafina, were already waiting when Stark and Reynolds arrived at the manager’s office. Burrowed out of the lunar surface, like so much else of the Colony, it offered the comforting presence of solid rock walls on all sides and a very thick covering of metal, rock, and dust for a roof. On one wall, a vid screen displayed the view Campbell’s office might have had were it located on the surface—black shadow, gray rock, and white light running off to a too-close horizon that gave way to the unending lunar night sky. Campbell had been frugal enough or politically astute enough to equip his office with standard lunar fixtures, lightweight metal desks, tables, and chairs. The office offered no luxury and, at the moment, little comfort for its occupants. “Thank you for coming here for this meeting,” Campbell began. “I needed to stay close to the office today.”

  “That’s okay,” Stark replied. “Besides, it wouldn’t be right for the civ bosses to come to the mil leaders all the time, would it? I work for you.”

  “Yes.” Campbell shook his head, then laughed. “You hold the power to control this Colony, Sergeant. Tell me again why you work for me.”

  Stark looked offended. “Sir. You’re the elected representative of the people here. I work for the people. So I work for you. That’s how it’s supposed to work.”

  “So it is. Speaking of which…” Campbell nodded in the general direction of the enemy landing field Stark’s troops had raided. “I assume the seismic event the Colony recently felt was related to the attack you had previously forewarned me of?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m afraid that seismic event caught us by surprise. We weren’t expecting anything of that magnitude.”

  “Neither were we. They had more ammunition stockpiled there than we thought. A lot more.”

  Sarafina frowned. “Are you certain, Sergeant Stark, given the size of the explosive event, that it only involved conventional weaponry? Could any other weapons have been stored there?”

  Stark frowned in turn, glancing at Vic, who shrugged as she answered. “I’d
seriously doubt it. Mainly because the American authorities wouldn’t be eager to leave weapons of mass destruction under the control of a foreign power. But it doesn’t hurt to check.” She hauled out her comm pad. “Command Center, this is Sergeant Reynolds. Have we done any analysis of the debris from the explosion we triggered?”

  “The big one?” a watchstander replied. “Yes, Sergeant. That’s standard procedure.”

  “Are there any indications anything other than conventional explosives were involved?”

  “No. There’s no fallout registering. We’d have been able to spot the presence of extraneous nuclear material if it’d been blown up with everything else. No null-particle transients detected, either. Everything’s consistent with standard explosive and weapons composition, mixed in with a lot of pulverized lunar material, of course.”

  “Thanks.” Reynolds pocketed the device. “Just standard explosives. Bad enough if you’re close, but nothing worse than that.”

  “Good.” Sarafina pointed upward. “Our spaceport tracked a great deal of activity during your… your… action. Warships and shuttles. We weren’t expecting that.”

  Stark shifted in discomfort. “Yeah, well, that was part of our plan, but we didn’t want to brief that part because if anything had gotten out, well…”

  Campbell shook his head, his face stern. “I’m sorry, Sergeant, but in the future you must let us know that kind of detail. My civilians run the spaceport. I won’t share anything with them that you tell me to hold in confidence, but I need to know what’s happening when they report unusual activity so I can keep them from doing the wrong thing. Do you see that?”

  “Yes. Yessir, I do. That makes sense.”

  “I understand why you didn’t trust us with that information, Sergeant, but we need to overcome that legacy of distrust.”

  Even as Stark was nodding, Vic spoke up. “Speaking of distrust, our soldiers are wondering what the civilians in the Colony intend to do. We know sentiment is very much against the authorities back on Earth, but what are you planning on doing about it?”

  Campbell sighed. “It increasingly appears we may have no alternative but to declare our independence. Make a clean break of it and establish our own country.”

  “As one of our soldiers asked, what kind of country?”

  Campbell and Sarafina looked at each other, obviously startled by the question. “Why… I suppose the kind of country the United States is meant to be. A democracy. Freedom for individuals. And enough limits on sources of power, public and private, to ensure we retain freedom.”

  “So you’re planning on adopting the U.S. Constitution as your governing document?”

  “Ah…” Campbell glanced helplessly toward Sarafina, who spread her hands in an equally distressed gesture. “I suppose that would be the model. We might want to tinker with it, but, uh, to be perfectly honest, I don’t think anyone’s given much thought to that question as of yet.”

  “We have,” Stark advised. “You’re talking about the reason for us fighting. I’ll tell you honestly, my people won’t support a dictatorship, no matter how it’s dressed up. They might accept a government built around the Constitution, but they’re still not thrilled about it.”

  Campbell stared back as if now perplexed. “Then what do they want?”

  Stark exhaled a brief, humorless laugh. “They want things the way they’re supposed to be, with us taking orders from the Pentagon, which takes orders from the government, which takes orders from the people. But they know with the way things are, that’s probably not going to happen.”

  “I see.” Campbell held up a hand as Stark began to continue. “I do. Quite honestly. It was easy to think about and talk about independence when the concept was far off in time and practicality. But the closer we’ve come to being able to form our own country, the less happy I am. We ought to have an alternative, for heaven’s sake. We ought to have a means to have our problems addressed by our government instead of being on the receiving end of constant threats and orders to do what we’re told, or else.”

  “I take it negotiations aren’t going well?” Vic asked.

  Campbell made a face, using one hand to indicate Sarafina, as she shook her head. “No progress at all. We’ve been in almost constant touch, sent out a lot of feelers for different ways to resolve the issues in dispute, and host regular parties of official negotiators, but we’re getting no meaningful replies.”

  Stark shook his head in turn, not trying to hide his disgust. “The government still won’t talk to us?”

  “Oh, they’ll talk. They’ll talk until the sun goes nova. But, as I said, they offer nothing except the standard orders to submit to lawful authority this instant if not sooner.”

  Sarafina gestured toward the ceiling. “There’s no question our parent corporations on Earth are very much behind this. They’re insisting that the politicians they paid for make every effort to recover their property up here, and they’re backing up those demands with what they call ‘patriotic contributions’ to help pay for the military options being employed against the Colony.”

  “You’re kidding. The same corporations that avoided paying taxes to support us when we were protecting them are willing to pony up extra bucks to attack us? Am I the only one who thinks that’s dumber than dirt?”

  “It makes sense up to point. The point at which projected losses begin to exceed projected gains. The corporations would not fund this sort of activity forever given that profit-loss equation, but they also must factor in some noneconomic issues in their decisions.”

  “Such as?” Vic asked.

  “Such as the fact that the corporations have invested heavily in the current occupants of the Congress and the White House. As we have discussed before, loss of the Moon Colony prior to the upcoming election might well result in loss of control of the government by those politicians in the pay of the corporations. Obviously, this would create any number of negative consequences for the corporations.”

  Campbell pointed vaguely upward, toward Earth, as well. “Don’t forget the politicians have their own motivations. At the very least, they have to spin whatever happens as a victory to the electorate. The economy back home continues to sink deeper into recession, apparently due to a combination of the shock of losing the corporate assets up here and the results of all the money being diverted to the effort to defeat this Colony. Or rather to defeat your forces, to give credit where it’s due. The government is making a mighty effort to limit information about us to whatever the government wants people to know, but it isn’t working.”

  He stopped speaking for a moment, pondering his next words. “People will put up with a great deal as long as they think the people running things know what they’re doing. If they lose that confidence, they start asking awkward questions about many things. There have been demonstrations. Large ones. Officially, those demonstrations involve some sort of un-American radical fringe. Our own information indicates they have consisted primarily of middle-class and blue-collar workers who are, to put it bluntly, fed up.”

  Vic sketched a small smile. “I’m afraid Ethan Stark appears to have a nasty habit of triggering revolutions.”

  “It doesn’t appear to be heading toward revolution. Certainly not armed revolution. It may all fizzle out, especially if the economy improves a little. But the government has to produce a significant victory up here to have any hopes of justifying its policies toward us to date. If anything, the corporations are more likely to cry uncle when the bottom line suffers enough. Changes of policy are no big deal to them. But the government is another story.”

  Stark nodded, this time wearily. “They won’t quit trying to win, no matter how much it costs everybody else. Will the election back home come in time to make a difference?”

  “It’s hard to say,” Sarafina admitted. “More to the point, there’s increasing pressure within the Colony to hold a referendum on independence as soon as possible, and if the sentiment for independence prevails, to
announce the result immediately, without waiting any longer in the hope that the national election will make a difference. People are tired of waiting.”

  “And we’re tired of fighting. So what’s the time frame here? When would this referendum be held?”

  Campbell and Sarafina exchanged looks again. “Potentially within a few weeks,” the Colony manager stated. “Any longer than that would require me to actively stall the measure, and quite frankly I’ve had it up to here with our government.”

  “You’re not alone in that. My old man was fed up with ‘em years ago.”

  “One additional thing concerns us,” Sarafina added. “So far the military attacks on us have been… what is the right word?”

  “Conventional?”

  “Yes. That’s it. No weapons of mass destruction. There have been software intrusion attempts to destroy our automated infrastructure, but they have all been frustrated. We worry, however, what the response will be if we declare independence? What weapons might the authorities use against us then?”

  “They’re not going to use nukes or null bombs,” Vic advised. “Too much fallout, in every sense of the word. Besides, destroying what’s here would defeat us, but wouldn’t be a victory for the authorities. They’d have lost the Colony and everything associated with it. That said…” She looked over at Stark. “We’re a bit worried about what might be coming, too.”

  “That’s right,” Stark agreed. “The basic situation when this started hasn’t changed. Thanks to a long period of downsizing, and generals and admirals who constantly cut force levels to pay for their latest pet weapons, the military doesn’t have enough war-fighters. We were stretched to the max prior to all this, but since then the Pentagon has lost Third Division to sheer stupidity and our First Division up here. That only leaves Second Division to keep our enemies in line, as well as our ‘friends’ and ‘allies’, and protect the U.S. from any kind of ground incursion. That doesn’t leave any soldiers to try to pry us out of here.”

  “So, they’ve been hiring mercenaries and cutting deals with foreign forces,” Vic continued. “That hasn’t worked. Sooner or later, they’ll try something else, and we don’t know what that might be.”