Picking Up the Pieces

Chapter Twenty-Five

The first week went surprisingly quietly. Too quietly. I’d expected a major explosion within hours of the public announcement of the Frida Holmqvist Recovery Plan — Frida had named it after herself, as politicians were wont to do — but nothing took place, at least on the surface. A and B Company, injured as they were, took turns patrolling around the spaceport and becoming more familiar with the terrain they’d be expected to operate upon if the balloon went up. The Svergie Army kept a watchful eye on developments and waited for the opening rounds. The farmers… didn’t seem to be doing anything at all.

“We picked up more transmissions over the last few days,” TechnoMage said, when I buttonholed him on the subject. It hadn’t been easy to arrange for him to be monitoring unusual wavebands for transmissions, but I’d had little choice. It was a shame I couldn’t share the truth about our mission with him, but someone with such a shady past might well use it against us. “They were just brief burst transmissions and we haven’t managed to unlock them at all.”

Nor has the William Tell, I thought, grimly. I had scrutinised their orbital images carefully, but they’d picked up little of use. The limitations of orbital surveillance were well known and anyone who had survived the Occupation would be well aware of how to circumvent such observation. They might not know that we were looking at the take from the orbiting destroyer, but they’d certainly be watching for our UAV spies.

“Which means that there are still some of them in the city,” I concluded, slowly. They could be anything from spies to political agents to terrorists. They were no way to know what they were until we could unlock the code and it didn’t look as if we would unlock the code. The decryption section was still working on it, but neither they nor Daniel Webster were hopeful. “And we’ve seen no sign of trouble?”

“Unless you could the occasional bar fight,” Ed said, from his position studying the map. “The recovery crews repairing the damage from the last war have been drinking heavily in the evenings after finding bodies that had been buried under vast piles of rubble and some of the bars had had nasty bar fights. I don’t think that they’re the work of the farmers, or the miners, or even us.”

I smiled thinly. I’d cancelled the regular leave schedule, but unless trouble broke out soon I would have to reinstate it. The Legionnaires were used to such treatment, but the locals would gripe and complain about not seeing their families. The new recruits could be kept on the spaceport indefinitely, but not so the trained soldiers. Some of them needed a period of leave before they went on deployment up towards the farms, which the farmers would see as a hostile act.

“Probably not, no,” I agreed, silently cursing Frida under my breath. Her scheme sounded good, in the abstract, but applied to real life the results would be disastrous. There’s no such thing as objectivity when humans find their own interests involved and the farmers and miners would regard it — they did regard it — as a direct assault on their livelihoods. I’d seen it before on a dozen worlds. The UN set price caps, trying to feed the poor, only to discover that the farmers went out of business and food supplies dwindled. “Keep A Company on Quick Reaction Alert anyway. I think we’re going to need them sooner rather than later.”

I looked down at the map and winced inwardly. There was no single capital to take out in the countryside, no place where pressure could be brought to bear to defeat the enemy, just endless farms, small villages and a handful of towns. The farmers were tough and independent characters; they’d harassed the UN infantry with a mixture of determination, heavy weapons and sheer bloody-mindedness. I doubted our men would do much better if it came down to a counter-insurgency war; we couldn’t offer the farmers much more than the UN could offer them. Frida had managed to burn that particular set of bridges quite nicely.

No soldier liked counter-insurgency warfare, with good reason. The enemy could be hiding among scores of innocent civilians, often indistinguishable from them until they opened fire. If they were losing, they just faded back into a population that generally either supported them or was too scared to assist the soldiers in tracking them down and exterminating them. It was a delicate balancing act, but one that insurgent forces — living among the people as they were — had to master; failure to keep the people on their side meant certain extermination. We lacked the insight into the rural areas and their way of life — all of our local soldiers came from the urban cities — and picking out the guilty from the innocent would not be easy. And, if they were defending their livelihood, they’d feel that they had a cause and refuse to surrender easily, unless they got what they wanted.

I ran my eyes over the map and scowled. No one was quite sure how many farmers and miners there were, but general estimates said around two to three million at most, spread out over a vast area. The vast majority of the planet’s population was concentrated in the cities — the work of the UN and its plan to dump surplus populations here — and wouldn’t have the slightest idea what to do if dropped in the countryside and told to work or starve. It was something we could work on — it wasn’t as if there was a shortage of unclaimed land that could be turned into farms — but that would take time, time we didn’t have. I was morbidly certain that the explosion was already on the way.

“Ed, Russell, draw up a training schedule for rural conflict and have all of the local units run through it,” I ordered, finally. The rules were very different to urban conflict, but at least it was something that we’d had in mind for the last few months, unlike the war against the Communists. “I want them all refreshed and pushed right to the limit. Add in everything we know about the enemy, but also give them advanced weapons and tactics, just in case.”

Russell nodded once. “Hard training, easy mission,” he quoted. “Easy training, hard mission.”

“Good,” I said. “That leaves us with a single problem. Should we push ahead of occupy Fort Galloway now or abandon it completely?”

There was a long pause. Fort Galloway had been built by the UN in the early days of their occupation and existed roughly midway between New Copenhagen and the mountains — and the Mountain Men. The UN had intended to use it as a base for rapid deployment forces, but the shortage of UN Infantry had always limited the base’s usefulness. They’d only kept a Company there during the later years of the war, which had contented itself with firing back at attacking forces and otherwise keeping their heads down.

“If we occupy the base, it may be taken as a provocative act,” Muna said, from her chair. She sounded more like her normal self now, but she was being worked off her feet running between factories that might be rebuilt and factories that were being overworked and risking self-inflicted damage. It didn’t help that employers had cracked down hard on union movements after the Communist Uprising and industrial unrest was growing. I half-expected Frida to pass legislation to deal with that, but it was a minor issue compared to the farmers. “We could occupy the base, no problem, but it might kick-start the war.”

“And yet, if we do not occupy the base, we will be forced to fall back on garrisons near the cities,” Ed pointed out, reasonably. “That would limit our ability to react to attacks on governmental forces and agents.”

I scowled. Frida’s latest brainwave involved thousands of ‘government inspectors’ who would go out to the farms, take the long-overdue census, and then give them their quotas for the year. It might have given people jobs, but the farmers would resent being told what to do by men and women who wouldn’t even know what part of a cow gave milk, let alone anything more useful. There was good value in actually taking a census, but everything else would just cause trouble. I saw their presence as being the spark that ignited the gunpowder. The other job opportunities she’d announced weren’t much better.

Robert snorted. “Do we want to react to attacks on such people?”

“We wouldn’t have a choice,” I said. “We’ve assumed a role here and we have to play it out to the bitter end.”

Robert shrugged. “I respectfully point out, sir, that if this goes belly-up — and it will — the reputation of the Legion will be severely damaged,” he said. “Our task here was to train the local boys and turn them into soldiers. We were meant, at most, to provide training, support, back-up and specialised assistance for the locals, not spearheading a counter-insurgency campaign. The local government has dug itself a hole and we can’t get them out of it.”

“I thought that that was what soldiers were for,” Russell said, dryly. “Doesn’t this prove that there is value in a system that only lets ex-soldiers vote and stand for government office?”

“We could not impose such a system here,” Muna said, crossly. “We could not even limit the franchise to natives — what is a native anyway?”

“And Heinlein only worked because the founders were all veterans who knew what they intended to create,” Ed added, dryly. He’d served on Heinlein at the same time as Russell, although they’d been on different sides of the fence. I wondered, absently, if they had faced each other in battle. “If we limited the franchise to veterans here, there wouldn’t be many voters. Even if we expanded it to everyone currently serving in the military, they’d have only… three hundred thousand? Perhaps a few more?”

Robert scowled. “That doesn’t change the issue at hand,” he said. “We did not sign up to become so deeply involved in the local politics. If we do become further involved, what happens to the Legion’s reputation?”

“Our contract specifics that we will handle combat missions at the discretion of the local government,” I said, firmly. It wasn’t an uninteresting argument, but Robert wasn’t one of those aware of the real mission. I hated leaving him in the dark, but the more people who knew, the greater the chance of a leak further down the line. Besides, politics had no place in planning sessions — well, at least my planning sessions. “We’re committed to supporting them unless they choose to order us out or insist that we break the ROE in their favour.”

I looked around the table and saw them all straighten to attention. “Ed,” I said, “after the training preparations have been completed, I want you to make preparations to escort a couple of local companies up to Fort Galloway to occupy it permanently. We’ll move up some of the attack helicopters as well, along with enough supplies to keep them active even if we get cut off from the Fort. We won’t go expecting a battle, but if we should happen to encounter resistance, we’ll deal with it.”

Ed frowned. “We, sir?”

“I’m going to be leading it,” I said, firmly. “I have to see the ground first-hand, so I’m going to command the escort force. If nothing else, that should prevent any pissing contests over who’s in charge. We’ll aim to set off in two days, although we may have to put the convoy back a few days if trouble breaks out here.”

I looked at the map. We’d been assigning too many soldiers to serve as police in New Copenhagen and the remains of Pitea, but what choice did we have? The Communists had broken the local police forces and we had to fill their shoes. It was just lucky that there hadn’t been any serious incidents, apart from a handful of looters being caught in the act and shot, but that could change at any moment. Were the farmers cold-blooded enough to provoke an incident that would tarnish our reputation in the eyes of the urban residents? Pitea was in ruins anyway. If chaos broke out there, it might well swell beyond our ability to deal with it.

“Yes, sir,” Ed said, finally. “I’ll be coming along as well, of course, with A Company.”

I knew when to give in. “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” I said. I glanced around the room. “Any other business?”

“I was just wondering if we shouldn’t provide an escort for the government agents,” Muna said. “It might deter someone from starting something stupid.”

“Or maybe underline the fact that they can’t trust the government anymore,” Robert injected. “They might even view it as a challenge, a gauntlet being thrown down that they have to pick up.”

“If we’re asked to provide one, we’ll consider it then,” I said, firmly. “Until then, you know your assignments, so… dismissed.”

Muna lingered behind when the others had left the room. “I was looking at the food distribution problem,” she said. “If I use the most pessimistic figures, the planet’s total store of food will be exhausted fairly quickly, if no more comes in from the farms. There are emergency stocks of MRE packs from the UN, but we used a number of those to feed refugees and not all of them are reliable.”

I nodded sourly. The people who’d packed the MRE — Meals Ready to Eat; three lies for the price of one — back on Earth had been low-paid and resentful of their status. They’d probably taken the opportunity to express their class anger — not that the UN admitted to having any such thing, of course — by damaging the packs in some way, or even putting unhealthy food in the package. I’d been on campaigns when it had been discovered that half the MREs were even more inedible than normal. There’d even been mutinies and riots over inedible MREs. The UN’s quality control was non-existent.

“I suspected as much,” I said, grimly. “How bad is it going to be?”

“It depends what assumptions we make,” Muna admitted. “If we go by the worst-case assumptions, the planet will be starving inside of three months, perhaps less. That’s with a total cut-off from the farms and a complete failure to seize and distribute seed corn from the farmers — which, incidentally, will prevent them from growing food for next year. The best-case assumption suggests that everything is going to be very rocky for the next five months before a steady decline sets in — I think this problem was already brewing well before the Communists started their uprising, let alone anything else.

“Overall, the planet needs to institute a harsh rationing scheme at once,” she concluded. “We need an accurate census of how many people are actually in the cities and how much they need to eat. We also need to start expanding farm capability as much as possible and that means rebuilding or dedicating the industrial factories to supporting the new farms.”

I scowled. I’d brought soldiers to Svergie. I hadn’t thought to bring any farmers. That oversight could have killed us all. “Get on to the personnel department and look for anyone we have with any farming experience,” I ordered, finally. “If you find anyone, tell them we need them to work out how we can quickly transform unsettled land into farms that can feed the population — by drafting new farmers from the cities, if necessary.”

“I’m not sure if that will settle all of the problems,” Muna said. “The Government would need to make life in the cities uncomfortable and that would be very… unpopular. At the moment, the urban residents have it pretty good and they don’t have many places to go anyway. A handful were able to get jobs and others did manage to go out to the farms, but they’re little more than a drop in a very big ocean. Worse, sir, the underclass are actually pumping out more children than the planet can support; we might have to suggest mandatory sterilisation of every woman who had a child, just to prevent the population from rising still further.”

Her face twisted. “I can’t have children myself,” she admitted, with a hint of pain in her voice, “but many women will be outraged by the suggestion. I can’t see the Progressive Party agreeing to it, yet they’re sitting on a time bomb, courtesy of the UN.”

“Thank you,” I said, finally. “I’ll do what I can.”

I made arrangements to meet with the Acting President — I had to keep reminding myself that she was the Acting President, not the President — and spent the rest of the day working on the paperwork I’d allowed to fall behind. It was one of the ironies of my job that I’d managed to cut down on the paperwork significantly — I saw no need for a UN-standard incident report on every little leaf that fell — but I still spent much of my time doing it. I’d promised myself that if I couldn’t justify a piece of paperwork to myself, I’d scrap it, but so much was clearly necessary. It was something that no one had ever managed to solve.

Two days later, the shit hit the fan.