Solomon Family Warriors II

by Robert H. Cherny

  “Let us assume the declaration by Hamas that they wanted to purge the land of all Jews was in fact a declaration of war. Does the practice of targeting killings as implemented by the Israelis against them in the early twenty-first century constitute an act of war or a form of ethnic cleansing? Were the American attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq justified by the World Trade Center attack? What was the fatality ratio? Ten thousand to one? How can that be justified? Was it in fact a crusade against Islam as some of the contemporary critics claimed?”

  “All wars involve killing,” one man said. “Even the Promised Land had to be taken by force.”

  “At some point the killing must stop,” Greg said for the first time since the conversation started, offering an opinion.

  “How do we make it stop?” The Rabbi interrupted, “Before we tackle that, let me see if I can form some consensus from our discussion to this point. In the short term the form of the government is less significant than its actions. We are not talking about its long term stability, only its short term effect on its population and whether it deserves to be overthrown. Good government can come in many forms. So to answer Greg’s original question, it is not the fact that a government is a theocracy that is the issue. It is the actions of that government that determine whether it should be overthrown.”

  Avi had been listening to the conversation from the outside for a while when she said, “You men make this all so complicated. The only reason we want to kill Swordsmen is because if we didn’t kill them, they would kill us. If they weren’t so terrified of God clearing away all living beings in retaliation for mankind’s supposed sins and killing anyone who refused to conform, we wouldn’t care about them or how they treated their people. It’s just like pirates. If they didn’t take things that did not belong to them and kill people in the process, they could drink all the rum they wanted and sing their silly songs, and we would not care what they did.”

  Several of the men agreed.

  “The best solution is to figure out how to stop them from killing us. I think we would be perfectly happy to let them be as long as they left us alone,” Avi concluded.

  “Clearly one way to stop the killing,” Greg said, “is to deprive renegade governments of the weapons with which to make war.”

  “Or to make the punishment for the war so severe as to make it too painful to consider.”

  “That is the Federation’s strategy with the current Space Force build-up.”

  “Worked with the Pirates. Should work again.”

  “I’m not sure that’s true,” Greg interrupted. “The Federation Space Force had battled the Pirates to a stalemate. We killed the ones we found, but mostly they learned to stay out of our way. What took the organized Pirate bands out of action had more to do with a strategic mistake they made and the increased density of traffic on the travel lanes.”

  “What mistake was that?”

  “They got overconfident and attacked a Swordsman base.”

  “What happened?”

  “As nearly as I can tell, the Swordsmen wiped out the attacking Pirate force. As I understand it, the Pirates had been told that the Swordsmen were religious zealots with no fighting sense. They became overconfident. They expected to be able to walk in and take whatever plunder they wanted. It didn’t work. I stumbled into their abandoned base not long after that and rescued the survivors.”

  “Is that the frontier station that Davidson runs now? New St. Louis?”

  “Yes.”

  “That was you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you rescued all the women?”

  “I know what you’re thinking. Don’t go there. Half of those fifty women and many of their children died defending our planet. They died in the field of battle. They were great pilots and fierce warriors. Whatever else is true, they earned our eternal respect and gratitude for the casualties they inflicted on the Swordsmen.”

  “Amen.”

  “And you trained them?”

  “Avi, Myra and I did, with the help of the simulators.”

  “And you want to do that here.”

  “I don’t think I am supposed to discuss future plans,” Greg hedged.

  “Come on! Greg, we know why you’re here. We know the threat is real.”

  “Some of us don’t believe the threat is as real as others.”

  “It’s real.”

  “Why would they attack us?”

  Several men spoke at once, and the discussion disintegrated until the Rabbi held up his hand. “Gentlemen, let Greg offer his opinion.”

  “To tell you the truth, I don’t know if the threat is real or not. It doesn’t matter. The answer has to do with the consequences of being wrong. Hypothetically, let’s ask the question. What if I am wrong? If I say there is a threat and we build our defenses against an attack that never comes, we have expended resources we could have diverted to other uses. That’s painful but not life threatening. If I say there is no threat and we get attacked without defenses, previous experience would indicate that every person on this planet would be killed. Which course of action would you choose?”

  “Do you propose attacking them? A preemptive first strike can be an effective strategy.”

  “No. Then we are no better than them. We need to be defensive and not offensive. Offense is easier than defense, but we need to take the high road.”

  “How do we know when they will come?”

  “According to the information Admiral Davidson gave me, it will take three years for them to rebuild their forces to the point where they can resume their conquests. We have at least that long.”

  “Is that enough time?”

  “There is no such thing as enough time to build defenses.”

  “Amen.”

  “Before we leave this,” one of the men said. “Blood feuds have been known to go for so long that the participants have forgotten who started it or why. Remember that the current battles between Islamic factions started less than a generation after Mohammed’s death. I fear that we are at that point with the Swordsmen. Who is to say who is right?”

  “The answer is simple,” Greg said. “In every battle we let them fire first. They make their intentions clear. They may start it, but we will finish it.”

  Greg was not accustomed to being able to discuss serious issues in this type of free ranging conversation. Once he got used to the idea, he enjoyed it. The remainder of the afternoon was spent in discussion of a wide range of topics. They discussed the ethics of using pornography as propaganda. They wrestled that to a stalemate and gave up. They discussed the role of women in combat. They agreed that men might make better foot soldiers, but in sophisticated systems like aircraft or ships, the differences had more to do with personality than physical strength. Men and women should be equally capable as flight crews. There was a long discussion on the psychological effects of having men and women fighting together. They agreed that the benefits outweighed the significant problems.

  The longest discussion of the afternoon centered around the Rabbi’s desire to create a Rabbinical seminary on the planet to serve a Jewish population that was becoming further and further dispersed. As Greg listened to the conversation, he wondered if such a seminary would be the magnet that would draw a Swordsman attack. If it was, he needed to be ready.

  Greg zoned out on the conversation for a while thinking about what defending this system would involve. When he mentally returned he realized that the Rabbi had moved from his seminary idea to a much grander vision. The Rabbi was detailing a plan to make education an export product. The system had already attracted enough retired university faculty to create a high level academic community. Many of these career educators were finding that retirement lacked a certain amount of involvement and challenge that they missed. Additionally, there was concern that the Jewish students that had been left behind on Earth to finish their educations were being exposed to unnecessary risk. The newly settled planets would need doctors, engineers, attorneys and
a wide variety of professionals to support their economies. Earth’s university structure was stretched beyond its limits. As he saw it, since Jews believed in education in a way that few other cultures did, it only made sense to develop what he called a “Boston in space” here on Eretz.

  Greg thought the idea made sense, but he wondered if colleges made money, after all, every college he ever heard of was always out fund raising. He asked, “Rabbi, is this financially viable?”

  “Initially, no. It will take a generation before it pays for itself.”

  “That’s a long time.”

  “Yes, and to make matters worse, I propose that we not charge tuition up front, but rather have the students take out loans that they would pay out of their future earnings. While they are in school, their tuition, lab fees, books, room and board would be covered. Once they start working, they would pay the loan off. Those going into the military have an extra advantage in that they immediately start getting a salary and don’t have the start up costs of opening their own practice. The Federation is always looking for good officers so finding a position in the military should not be that difficult.”

  The four Jewish settlements on the planet were divided along ideological lines, but from the other participants in the conversation, it appeared as if the Rabbi’s idea was well accepted, and “New Boston” might come to fruition. Greg thought there was something poetic about the Jews developing education as an export product. It was poetic, and it felt right. He smiled each time he thought about it.

  After the evening services ending the Sabbath, the Solomon family, and the Abrams family went to Admiral Sherman’s for dinner. The Shermans had three children. Faye Anne was the oldest. Esther was Wendy’s age, and there was a boy Mimi’s age. Dinner was formal and well disciplined. The discussion was polite and centered on the children’s progress at school. The Math Competition and Rachel’s conflict with David were hot topics. Reuben’s description of the expressions on the competing team’s faces when he presented the winning answer brought waves of laughter, and he appreciated being the center of attention.

  After dinner, the adults retired to the living room. The children, including the Sherman children, Wendy, Rachel, Reuben, Rashi and Mimi did the dishes. Once that was done, Mimi and the youngest of the Sherman children promptly disappeared into the bedroom dragging Rose with them. Esther took Wendy and Rashi to the study and demanded to be shown the cheats on the latest version of Pirate.

  Admiral Sherman and Abraham discussed the question of whether the gravic fields between the galaxies were different from the gravic fields within the galaxies and the impact that would have on the function of hyper drive. They discussed recent observations made in the areas between the arms of the galaxy as possible guidance. Lacking specific information, they speculated as to what information they would need to make the determination and how to go about getting it. Greg and Avi got lost half way through the conversation, but the three eldest teenagers seemed to follow most of the discussion even if they did not understand all of it.

  Admiral Sherman opened a discussion of how to defend the system against another attack like the one in which the Swordsmen had been so soundly defeated.

  Rachel interrupted. “Sir, with all due respect, I don’t think we will see an attack like that again.” Admiral Sherman turned to her, “Why not?”

  “Actually it was something Reuben said. When I told him what the Swordsmen did to Homestead, he told me he wanted to take one of the P I’s and lob nukes into their spaceport and leave them grounded.”

  “I think we all want to do that,” Greg commented.

  “Yes, and that brings up the question if we want to do that, what if they want to do that too? How do we defend against it? A hyper capable ship can drop into the middle of our system, throw a couple of missiles and get away before we even know it’s been here. How do we defend against that?”

  “A kind of hit and run strategy,” Avi said.

  “Yes, like the one the Irish Republican Army used on the British for a century,” Reuben added.

  “Very difficult,” Greg agreed.

  “Decoy’s don’t work, because they aren’t looking for hard targets like battleships. They’re looking for soft targets like freight depots and population centers,” Rachel continued.

  “So what do you suggest?” Admiral Sherman asked.

  “We deploy as many sensors and remote weapons as we can. We deploy as many small patrol craft as we can and keep them combing the system for intruders. We don’t need big ships. We need lots of heavily armed small ones. We shoot first, and ask questions later.”

  “That makes sense,” Abraham offered, “especially since we can detect a ship in hyper.”

  Avi’s expression immediately betrayed her skepticism. “Assuming that we know a ship in hyper has passed one of our sensors, how do we get the information to where we can use it?”

  Avi asked. “The ship is moving faster than the signals.”

  “We have to equip each sensor pod with courier missiles,” Rachel suggested. “The intruder will be decelerating. The courier missiles do not have the limitations imposed by having a human crew. The courier can travel at ten or even twenty G. That will give us a short window of opportunity in which to hyper jump to the intruders’ intended destination and blast him when he arrives.”

  “That still calls for lots of patrol ships,” the Admiral thought out loud.

  “Based on the numbers and location of the current fixed installations and a close-in strategy. I guess we need thirty ships, and two hundred sensor stations,” Reuben offered. “If we wish to establish our perimeter further out, which we really should do, we need exponentially more ships we don’t have.”

  Greg addressed the issue. “We have the ships for the close-in strategy or will have them soon. The question is whether we can deploy them quickly enough. They could field a couple of destroyers fairly quickly, and we would not be ready.”

  “Actually Dad, it’s not the destroyers that concern me,” Rachel said. “It’s the P I’s. A full sized destroyer in our space would be a sitting duck against our P I’s. We demonstrated that the last time we faced them. Other P I’s in the hands of skilled crews could be devastating. Do we know if they have any P I’s? They didn’t last time, but that was then and this is now.”

  “I think,” Greg said, “we have to assume that the two missing P I’s that are short jump capable are in Swordsman hands. I think we also have to assume that the pilots are former Federation Space Force and will know what they are doing.”

  The discussion raged for a while on how to deal with hit and run tactics until they finally beat it into the ground. After a break in the conversation Rachel asked, “When we entered Immigration we were told that everyone between the ages of three and twenty-one needed to be in school. Why are there no students in the school older than eighteen?”

  “Because they’re off-planet,” Abraham said. “They’re either in the service of the Federation, mostly in the Space Force, or in colleges in the central system, mostly on Earth.”

  “Which is partly why we find ourselves short of pilots. The most likely flight crew candidates are in training somewhere else,” Admiral Sherman added.

  “Isn’t that dangerous?” Avi asked.

  “Yes, but there are places where the Swordsmen influence is not as strong as others. Our students understand the risks, but they are trained to melt into the local society and not attract attention while at the same time learning everything they can from their teachers,” Abraham explained.

  Admiral Sherman continued “When we left the central system, we arranged for our students who were then sixteen or older to stay and go to school or enter the military. A few of them have graduated or finished their enlistments and returned. They have brought us news of the others. We have lost a few, but the majority seem to be doing well. We look forward to them coming home to us, but in the meantime we are short handed, and I fear we may not have enough of them returning
soon enough to fend off what we now believe to be an imminent threat. We were naturally thrilled when Admiral Davidson suggested that he could persuade you to join us.”

  “Davidson? What does he have to do with this?” Greg asked.

  “He is one of us. So is his aide,” Admiral Sherman said smugly. “Didn’t know, did you?”

  “Never would have guessed. I always thought he was a Presbyterian.”

  “One of his wives was. He went to church with her to keep her happy, but he is one of us.”

  “I always wondered what was up with his aide,” Avi said. “Even with those two ex-wives hanging around I wondered if the two of them had something going on.”

  Admiral Sherman laughed. “Commodore Dankese is the opposite number there. She refuses to get married because she thinks it will hurt her chances for promotion. She could well be right.”

  “So, Admiral Davidson’s comment about sending his aide to the intelligence service is some kind of in joke?” Avi said incredulously.

  “Yes, and they think it is hysterically funny.”

  “Are you expecting us to head to the central system when we are eighteen?” Rachel asked.

  “There’s a tough question. I think a lot will depend on our defensive position at the time. We will have to wait and see.”

  They discussed the impact of having such a large segment of the population gone for such an extended period of time. Sarah was especially concerned about its effect on the younger children in the families who saw their older siblings suddenly gone out of their lives with no certainty they would ever return. Rose commented that most young adults leave home at about the same age and younger siblings adjusted the changes without undue stress. As the conversations progressed that evening, Rose’s sense of perspective calmed many of Sarah’s concerns.

  By the time the conversation wound down, Mimi and the youngest of the Sherman children had fallen asleep on the floor in the bedroom. Everyone was getting ready to leave when Admiral Sherman said, “Oh I almost forgot! I have a ship and pilot for you at 1500 hours tomorrow, Sunday, to take you to your ship. You can all go, and you don’t need flight suits. Meet me at the flight ops briefing room at 1400 hours.”