A Desert Called Peace (52 page)

"Send in the Cazador long-range recon teams anyway, tonight around midnight. They'll need that much time to get to their positions behind the Sumeri lines."

"And if D-Day is moved up? Or delayed? How do we get them out?" Parilla asked.

"I swear to God I'll start the war on my own if it's delayed. And if it's moved up without them telling us, I just might shoot that son of a bitch down in al Jahara."

Robles still didn't like it. But there were the two stealth-modified Dodos, waiting with engines idling not one hundred meters from the terminal. There, lined up by the terminal door were the chutes for each man who would jump tonight. Standing by that door was the century commander and there, in his hand, were the orders to go.

The men were singing as they lined up to chute up. Ordinarily, Robles enjoyed the singing before a jump. Now it just irritated him, especially when the song came to the lines:

 
Thundering motors leave each man alone.
He thinks one more time of his loved ones back home.
Then come, mis compadres, to spring on command
To jump and to die for our people and land . . . 

Chingada.
Bunch of morbid bastards. Why the fuck did I ever sign up for this?

And then they were at the aircraft, the crew chiefs and their assistants helping the pack-mule-laden, barely mobile men to climb the ladders and shuffle up the ramps and then walking the lines to make sure everyone was buckled in.

The engines began to thunder in truth now as the Dodos rolled down the runway. The airfield was high where the air would normally be thin. Even so, in the dead of winter the air was cold and dense enough for lift. Robles felt the plane lurch upward, leaving the runway behind. There was a winding, grinding sound followed by a pair of
thumps
as the landing gear raised and stowed away. Then the planes veered eastward towards an area where reconnaissance showed little in the way of Sumeri troops to observe—or Sumeri air defense to engage—the aircraft as they passed.

 
En los aviones! Los aviones!
Nunca volveremos compadres . . . 
Fuckers!

They'd found out, so they believed, where the dictator of Sumer was hiding. Thomas had delayed going after him immediately, pending legal review by his judge advocate general. This had taken long hours as the lawyers had argued back and forth about the propriety and legality of assassination, the strategic implications, the public relations aspects. What did lawyers have to do with strategy and PR? In the Federated States Army there was
nothing
that lawyers were not intimately involved with.

Too, Thomas had not wanted to appear indecisive or at the mercy of his JAG section. So he had kept mum, pending their review and approval. This had never actually come, as the JAG section itself was evenly split on the issue. Thomas had therefore bucked the decision up to Campos who had thrown a fit that the dictator wasn't already dead. "Awful shock" readily became "Awe shucks."

It was then that Thomas moved up D-Day by twenty-four hours. This gave just enough time for his own troops in al Jahara to move to their assault positions and for his aircraft to send stealthy birds with two thousand pound GLS guided bombs winging their way towards the implicated palace.

Unfortunately, it also gave time for the dictator to change palaces as was his habit.

As unfortunately, or even more so, it did not give Parilla and Carrera time to call back the two Nabakov-23 Dodos carrying seventy- six airborne Cazadors before the planes went low behind a series of mountains and the Cazadors had jumped.

Money was always tight in the EU and among its member states. The only place to find it was to raise taxes (and, with the various levels of government already confiscating over sixty percent of GDP, those were already onerous and rather unpopular) or to reduce military expenditures (and at less than one percent of GDP those were already anemic and
still
rather unpopular). Only if the construction of ships could be made in the guise of social welfare legislation would there be easy acquiescence.

The United States helped quite a bit, if not with money then with free technology transfers. This was actually critical as, in this year-of- something-other-than-Our-Lord, 2070, Europe was a technological backwater. Even with the money found, or looted, the expertise simply didn't exist anymore. So many of the highly talented had left for other climes, most notably and infuriatingly for the United States, that the Old World had fallen far behind.

Between the shunting of social welfare funds to starship construction and the technology transfers from the U.S., the EU did manage to put together a half a dozen ships. These were duly turned over to the United Nations in theory, though in practice they remained for the time being under absolute EU control.

And then the screws began to tighten. With a means of getting rid of their undesirables in hand without at the same time strengthening the Unites States, EU bureaucrats and their police minions began identifying those who most needed to go, and those they least wanted to go to the United States. No one was forced out initially; that would have been inhumane. Instead, a letter would arrive in the mail stating that "pursuant to new austerity measures X and such, you and your family will no longer be receiving any support from the government and would you please consider subsidized emigration to the new world?"

Riots ensued, of course, especially in Muslim majority or near majority states like France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain. This did nothing to keep the transfer payments to the indigent flowing. After all, what did hard-working, tax-paying Poland or Sweden care what happened to France or Belgium? If anything, the resulting destruction of infrastructure within the Muslim majority areas speeded up the rate at which Moslems proved willing to leave. (As an exception, Sweden did offer to make some tax transfers, but only on condition that
their
Muslims be among the first to go.)

Young Europeans were an issue. They were valuable. How else was the social welfare state to be maintained without their tax receipts? On the other hand, how were they to be kept when the more politically and economically free states on Earth—the U.S., UK, Brazil, India, Australia and South Africa—acted as talent and willingness- to-work magnets?

The answer to that was border and emigration control. Much as had the Soviet Union decades before and much as in Cuba, still, attempting to emigrate, except as permitted by the bureaucracy of the EU, became an antisocial crime with severe penalties, both formal and informal.
The reduction of the Muslim populations, coupled with the gradual deIslamicization of Europe, helped there.

From our enemies we can defend ourselves but God save us from our friends.

—Lenin

UEPF
Spirit of Peace
, Earth Date 2 December, 2513

High Admiral Robinson had never really anticipated the headaches that came now with increasing frequency and never seemed entirely to go away. He wondered, sometimes, if they were guilt driven. Certainly the images of the people jumping to their deaths stuck with him in much the same way as the headaches.

And while Mustafa's people did the necessary reconnaissance and flew the airships, I was the one who did the structural analysis that said the buildings would fall once the fire weakened their steel supports. I just never imagined that I would actually see people die. It was harder than I would have thought even if I had considered it.

That was one headache: guilt. He had others.

I'd thought that once the FSC invaded Pashtia they'd end up in an endless, sticky quagmire, the same way the Volgans did twenty-two local years ago. Whoever would have suspected that they'd topple the place in under a month? Whoever would have thought that they'd do it so cheaply. I'd wanted a war that would tie them up and use up their wealth so they couldn't use it to get rid of us and later attack Earth. I'd wanted a failure that would undermine their nation-state system and leave useful idiots like Wiglan in charge. Instead, this affair has seen people like Unni marginalized and the nation-state, or at least the FSC, more powerful than ever.

Did I make a mistake, helping Mustafa? Did I make an
irreparable
mistake?

Robinson thought about that one for a bit. Finally, he came to the conclusion,
No. It wasn't a mistake. Mustafa would have gone ahead anyway. And the result would have been the same. All I could have done was warn the FSC of what was coming and that I could never do.

Never.

The high admiral stood and began to pace the close confines of his office, still lost in his thoughts.

I simply overestimated the ability of Mustafa's people and his allies to confront the FSC. That, and I apparently badly
under
estimated the ability of the FSC to impose its will through force. They're even more dangerous than I had thought they were. So, no, it wasn't a mistake to start down this road. It
had
to be done. What was a mistake was to think I could start down it without going all the way. The FSC must be involved in a wider war, one that disenchants its allies, dries up its treasure, kills its soldiers and demoralizes its people.

Now what do I have to do to make
that
happen?

Robinson ceased his pacing and resumed his chair.

"Computer, view screen on. Show me a map of Terra Nova, one annotated with population density, industrialization and resources."

The Kurosawa came to life. Not for the first time, Robinson wondered if the difference in the quality of the picture was the result of wear and tear on the ancient, Earth-produced, screens or if—awful thought—the Terra Novans had actually exceeded Earth's technology in this one field.

It really is an excellent picture, though,
he thought.
Pity that the map tells me little.

"Computer, add major historical events for the last sixty years."

Still nothing; too crowded.

"Computer, reduce detail to show major conflicts."

"Ah, there it is," Robinson said aloud. "Before I arrived to assume command. The Petro War."

"Computer, get me all pertinent data on the FSC-Republic of Sumer War of local year 447 plus developments in that region since then."

The high admiral met the Tauran Union's commissioner for culture in a little used but meticulously maintained garden not far from the island base's single major river. The garden itself was kept up by the same crew of proles brought in from Earth as servants to the families of the Class Ones, Twos and Threes that made up the bulk of the fleet's crew and the base personnel. Wiglan never saw the proles, of course. It was part of their job to be as little seen, as little noticed, as possible.

"So good of you to come, Unni, and on such short notice."

"Always a pleasure," answered Wiglan sincerely. Then, seeing the worried look on Robinson's face, she announced, "There is something troubling you."

"Yes. Yes there is, my dear. Silly of me to think I could hide it from
you
."

Silly of me to think I had to make an effort to look worried.

"Well, what is it then, Martin?"

"The war, of course. Terrible thing. All those poor civilians caught up in the FSC's imperialist games."

Never mind that previously they were caught up in bloodthirsty and fanatical Salafi and Fascist games.

"Oh, I
know
," Unni fumed. "By what right does the FSC think it can impose its will on others. Only the World League and United Earth have that kind of moral authority."

"Exactly, Love. I knew you would understand."
Nothing
. "Tell me, is the TU going to go through with providing forces for this venture?"

"I've argued against it, Martin. All of us right thinking people have. But the TU still hasn't quite extirpated national sovereignty even in Taurus. And some of the new member states especially, the ones that think the FSC was somehow responsible for liberating them from the Volgans, are going to go along. Even Gaul and Sachsen are planning on sending some troops, though we hope to limit their rules of engagement so that they are ineffective. And," she finished with a disgusted sigh, "the Anglian lackeys of the FSC will give their full support, almost as if they were a state of the Federals themselves."

I don't suppose it would ever occur to you, Unni, that Anglia's permitting the FSC to set its foreign policy, to the extent it does, is not in principle different from any state of the TU allowing the TU to set foreign policy? You cannot logically, in principle, complain about a state giving a portion of its sovereignty to another entity and then insist that it should give it to you instead.

But then, logic is not your strong suit, is it?

"What's done is done, Unni. No sense crying over it or wishing to undo it. What concerns me more is the FSC's next step."

"You really think they won't be content with knocking out Pashtia, Martin?" The commissioner looked rather horrified.

"I am certain they won't," Robinson answered. "When you have a rogue state running free there is no limit to the damage it can do."

Wiglan agreed, her head nodding slowly, sadly and silently. "And they simply refuse to take us as their equal, either," she added.

"Unni, I am not sure that the FSC considers even the UE to be quite their equal."

And there's another repetitive thought to give me indigestion; three hundred highly militarized million of the FSC lording it over half a billion sheep on Earth and the fifty million in Class Three or higher reduced to penury or worse.