Picking Up the Pieces

Chapter Six

One month before the election, I called a Council of War.

“It’s been five months,” I said, as soon as coffee was served and the room checked for bugs. I was fairly certain that none of the factions on Svergie had a hope of slipping a bug through our detectors, but neglecting precautions tended to lead to disaster. It was a bad habit to develop. “In one month, Svergie goes to the polls to elect a new government, at which point we may find ourselves thrown into combat. We have to be ready.”

My gaze swept the room. “Russell?”

I smiled as Russell adjusted his uniform before speaking. Councils of War were common back in the United Nations Peace Force, with every officer trying to cover his ass if the operation went badly wrong — victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan, as the saying goes — but much rarer on Heinlein. Russell would probably have preferred to give a straight report and return to drilling the new recruits, but I needed his input. It didn’t help that only four of us knew the true purpose of the mission. I didn’t dare let that slip out into the open.

“We have absorbed nearly six thousand recruits with what I may as well term superhuman efforts and contributions from every department,” Russell said, flatly. “I have a feeling that we’re stretching ourselves to the limit, but overall I’m fairly pleased with progress — not that I’d tell them that, of course.” He smiled. “We graduated the first few classes, branded them as soldiers rather than recruits, and started to give them harder training exercises. They’ve developed unit pride and cohesion, at least in the exercises, but the real test will come when they go to war.”

He paused, considering his next words. “We’ve had seven fatal training accidents and thirty-two injuries that range from modest to severe,” he continued. “This course is wimpy compared to some of the courses I went through back home” — there were some good-natured chuckles; Russell’s original plans for the training would have killed half the recruits — “but it definitely makes men out of them. The dead recruits were graduated posthumously and we held full funeral ceremonies for them. Their families insisted on reclaiming the bodies and we saw to it they were given a proper send-off. The injured were put on light duties if they could handle it; the seriously injured were given medical discharges, although two of them want to continue to serve in any capacity. I’ve sent them to train as clerks, although one of them will remain permanently wheelchair bound.

“The majority of the recruits have mastered the basic skills and have definitely learned to shoot,” he concluded. “We’re lucky that this place doesn’t have what is laughably called a martial tradition; we were able to break them of the few bad habits they’d picked up from the videos the UN used to show. We’ve burned through hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition, but I feel that it was a fair price to pay…”

“Speak for yourself,” Muna muttered.

“…For the many benefits of having soldiers who actually know what it’s like to fire a weapon. We moved from assault rifles and pistols to heavy weapons and antitank systems and hammered those into their heads. We’re short on SHORAD units, it should be noted, but we trained on portable SAM missiles anyway. They might be required. Overall, by Election Day, we should have three to four thousand qualified soldiers ready and waiting.”

I smiled. “What about local commanders?”

Russell smiled. “We’ve identified several promising commanders and sergeants within the recruits,” he said. “In a month, we should have some local lieutenants, maybe even Captains, although that’s really pushing it too fast. The officers they tried to foster on us are utterly unprepared for the position and need to go through Basic Training before they can be trusted with anything. I have a feeling that the real local officers will rise from the ranks rather than being imposed on the soldiers from above.”

“Good,” I said. “Ed?”

“The three Companies are at readiness and we’re rotating through the duty areas and leave,” Ed said, sipping his own coffee. He was more at ease in the Council than Russell; like me, he’d escaped from the UNPF. He also had a simpler task. “It’s annoying to lose people to the demands of the training cadre, but we have enough reserves to cover our current duties. There have been no attempts to attack the spaceport or Camp Currie, but there have been several attempts to sneak into the secure locations, mainly by local reporters. I’d have preferred to shoot them, but as you ordered we’ve simply tossed them out stark naked. It seemed to deter them.”

“Not that much of a hardship in this weather,” I observed, thoughtfully. It was moving towards high summer and the temperature was rising steadily. “And what about the bar fights?”

Ed smiled, before remembering that he should look properly regretful. “The fights are always provoked by local gangs,” he said, confirming what I’d believed. “My men have given a pretty good impression of themselves and have sent several hundred thugs to the hospital. It seems that the local police can’t decide if they love us or hate us; one soldier rescued a woman from being raped and beat her attacker into a bloody mass. The Sergeants have been riding hard on the drinking and have prevented anyone from drinking too much, or using drugs while we’re here.”

I nodded. It wasn’t against regulations to drink, but being unfit for duty was a serious offence and I wouldn’t hesitate to order anyone foolish enough to report for duty drunk to run the gauntlet. It was something that people decried as barbaric, but discipline had to be maintained. There had to be both regulation and the demonstrated willingness to punish breaches of the regulations.

“We’re probably going to start losing our edge soon,” he concluded. “I’d be happier if we had someone to fight.”

“Be careful what you wish for,” I said. “Muna. You’re up.”

Muna nodded tightly. “I’ve been conducting an industrial and economic survey of Svergie,” she said, tapping the map I’d placed on the window with one dark finger. “The results have been interesting and I’ve placed a full report in the computers, but for now I’ll just give you the highlights. Svergie is not a modern economy, but roughly at 1985-2020 levels. That’s not uncommon for a colony world, but there are some odd points. As I believe I noted earlier, the fuel here is largely oil-based, rather than hydrogen or fusion power cells. I think, reading between the lines, that the first oil company slipped some UN inspector a pretty hefty bribe; the UN’s figures bare only a passing resemblance to reality. Overall…

“The factories here can produce tanks, armoured vehicles and helicopters for us,” she continued. “I doubt that Svergie will be looking at a major arms-exporting industry anytime soon, but they should be able to meet local needs. The problem lies with the workplace disputes that have been growing more frequent as memories of the occupation start to fade. Basically, the highly-trained workers want more wages while the unskilled workers want equal pay, while there are very clear limits on just how much the owners can afford to pay. Svergie has discovered unions, but they haven’t yet learned how to use them. My best guess is that the situation is going to worsen before it gets better, sir; there’s almost no investment in local industries at all, just because of the political stalemate. What’s the point of investing when the Progressives or the Communists might take it all away from you?

“We need to encourage them to start prospecting for more oil,” she concluded. “That’s the single greatest weakness…”

“Neat,” Russell said. He scowled down at the table. “What about convincing them to switch to hydrogen?”

“They can’t,” Muna said. “They can extract hydrogen from seawater or from the gas giant. They don’t have the infrastructure to do either, nor do they have the technology to develop it quickly. They’d need to build up their space-based industries in any case, yet they would first need to bootstrap a new space capability; they only have a handful of shuttles, all ex-UN issue. They’d need to purchase the equipment from off-world and they don’t have much to offer in return.”

I frowned. “Can’t they ask Fleet for help?”

Muna’s face flickered, just for a second. “Fleet is unlikely to be able to spare the resources,” she said. “They’d insist on a fuelling facility that Fleet starships could use, rather than just a simple cloud-scoop. I doubt that they’d consider it worth their while. Some of the big interstellar corporations might disagree, but they’d insist on a stiff price tag or even direct control. Svergie probably wouldn’t be interested.

“More importantly, the oil workers would object, strongly,” she concluded. “If hydrogen was to be brought into the system, they’d feel the pinch and protest. It might be hard to convince the Government to accept it when they faced losing so many votes. The same could be said about too many other parts of the economy. They’re heading towards a spending crisis, yet any attempt to deter that spending crisis would result in disaster.”

“Neat,” Peter observed. “Civil war, here we come.”

“Yes, sergeant,” Muna agreed. “TechnoMage?”

TechnoMage nodded. He’d come into my service after discovering that his hacking exploits had made his homeworld too hot for him. He’d once reprogrammed a UN orbital weapon to fire on UN forces on the ground, which had killed over seven hundred soldiers. I didn’t bear a grudge, but I’d advised him to keep it to himself. He also served as my chief spy, hence the name. Even I didn’t know what he was originally called.

“I’ll be brief,” he said. He’d watched the recordings of my meetings with the politicians. I should have told them that they were being recorded, but people are normally much more talkative when they think they’re not on the record. “I may be wrong — polls are not an actual science, no matter what the UN claims — but the Progressive Party is almost certainly going to win the coming election. It took several weeks to parse out how the system works, but overall the votes going to them will have more… weight than the votes going to the other parties. That is just as obvious to them as it is to us — perhaps more so — and they’re going to react badly.”

He paused. “The Communist Party is already talking revolution,” he said, to my surprise. “They’re officially viewing the Progressives as fellow travellers, but their leadership seems to believe that the Progressives are not… ah, progressive enough for their tastes, or that they’re planning a purge of the Communists after the election. Their counter-surveillance tech is worse than the UN’s tech, but they’ve been very careful not to say anything too incriminating out loud. I have a feeling, however, that they’re definitely planning something bad for after the election.

“The same can be said for the farmers and miners,” he continued. “The irony is that Svergie’s economy is too interdependent, but…”

I held up a hand. “Explain,” I ordered. I hadn’t spent long enough studying the local economy, obviously. “How interdependent are they?”

“I’m going to have to lecture,” TechnoMage explained. I rolled my eyes. He loved lecturing us. No matter what he’d said, I’d never heard a concise briefing from him — ever. “Svergie can — this is a generalisation, of course — be said to have four sectors; the cities, the industries, the mines and the farms. The majority of the population lives in the cities and is largely unproductive from an economic point of view. This is reflected in their voting system, where seventeen of the voting districts are within the cities. Basically, the cities and the industries co-exist, while buying food from the farms and mined ores from the mines.”

He smiled. “The cities need the food to survive and they need the ores because it’s about the only thing that Svergie can export,” he said. “They therefore need them both as cheaply as possible, but the producers are… objecting to their treatment by the government. This sends unrest down into the industries, which the farms and mines need to produce their equipment, and sparks off more unrest. The Government isn’t helping by insisting on trying to pass laws that affect the farmers and miners without giving them anything in return, or even listening to their concerns. There was a law being passed that forbids the use of child labour…”

“I don’t understand,” Peter said. “What’s wrong… ah.”

“The farmer children are brought up to help with the farm,” TechnoMage confirmed. “The law would have prohibited the farmers from allowing their children to work on the farm, even in the most minor jobs. It sounded good, but it was so poorly worded that the farmers ended up refusing to tolerate it. The Government backed down on that issue, but continued to spout out an endless series of laws and regulations that annoyed and then outraged the farmers. Worse, they’re driving up farm prices at the same time they need to drive them down… and yet, they cannot force the farmers to lower their prices, now. In a month…”

I followed his logic. “They’ll be able to pass whatever laws they want,” I said, sourly. “I see your point.”

“I don’t get it,” Ed snapped. “Why can’t they move those bastard street children up to the farms and teach them something about working for a living?”

“They’ve tried on a small scale,” TechnoMage commented. “It was largely a failure. The youths who were sent up to the farms were hardly volunteers and didn’t want to be there. Some deserted almost at once and managed to get back to the cities. Two stole from their hosts and were arrested and charged with theft. One raped a farmer’s daughter and was shot by an outraged farmer. That farmer, by the way, was charged with manslaughter and is currently an outlaw, somewhere up in the mountains.”

He shrugged. “The program, worst of all, cost the government votes,” he concluded. “There’s always some damn fool telling the people that they can have something for nothing and… well, it’s an easy thing to believe.”

“Understood,” I said. I looked down at the map for a long moment. “And your final conclusion?”

“Svergie is heading for a disaster,” TechnoMage said. There was no dissent. “If the Progressives win the election, the farmers and miners will almost certainly revolt, as will the Communists. If the President attempts to stop them… well, they’d have the votes in Council to remove them. If the Progressives lose the election, they’ll still have plenty of influence and probably also a violent option of their own.”

“And they see us as mercenaries,” Peter commented, in a vaguely insulted tone. “Do you think they see us doing their dirty work?”

“As far as they know, we are mercenaries,” I pointed out, dryly. “TechnoMage, could we rig the election?”

TechnoMage looked uncomfortable. “Probably not,” he said. “The voting districts have been carefully studied by all of the major parties. I doubt we could deliver a convincing result that didn’t give the Progressives a victory. Even if we prevented them forming a government, they would still be able to ally with the Communists and form an impregnable voting bloc. We couldn’t give the Conservatives or the Liberty Party a victory without rigging the election in such a way as to ensure that it would be noticed.”

“And we’re not here to rig their elections,” Russell added, firmly. “The best thing we can do for Svergie is build them the army they need.”

“The one that will be used against the rebels after the election,” TechnoMage commented, dryly.

“We’re not here to judge,” Russell snapped. “We’re here to do a job.”

“Enough,” I said, before they could start a fight. “Unless there is any other business, I am declaring this meeting closed.”

Peter, Muna and TechnoMage remained behind after the others had filed out the door. “We probably couldn’t rig the election anyway,” TechnoMage said, once the door had closed. “This planet… well, it’s primitive in many ways. Their computers are junk even compared to the UN’s crappy scrap heaps, so they use humans to record and count the votes. We’d have to stuff the ballot boxes and it is pretty likely that we’d be caught at it.”

“Oh, my god,” Peter intoned. “The dead have risen and they’re voting Conservative.”

“Quite,” TechnoMage agreed. “Sir, unless you want to launch an open assault on the government now, we’re going to have to just… watch and see what happens.”

“I see,” I said, coldly. Fleet would almost certainly step in if we intervened that openly. Besides, taking New Copenhagen would be easy, but keeping it would be hard. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”

I looked over at Muna. “Work out a plan for investing in their industrial base and see if we can improve it,” I ordered. “TechnoMage, keep working on penetrating their datanet and see if you can locate anything we can use for leverage. Peter, you’re with me. I feel an urge to spar.”

“Yes, sir,” Peter said.

“Remind me of something,” I added. “Next week, the President is coming here, right?”

“Yes, sir,” Peter said. “It’s the graduation day for the current lead class.”

“Good,” I said. “I think I want to have a few words with him after the ceremony.”