Insignia (15 page)

Because yeah, they were laughing at him. They were laughing with him, too.

Tom had never stayed in one place long enough to make a friend before. But he began to understand suddenly what friends were for: they reminded you that things weren’t so bad after all. Reminded you never to stop laughing at yourself. He might’ve felt for a minute there like he’d turned back into Tom the Loser, but he hadn’t. This was never going to be Rosewood.

T
ACTICS WAS A
different beast from Programming. Located on the very top floor of the Spire, the MacArthur Hall was a vast planetarium. A screen curved over their heads, and the diagrams in Tom’s head informed him the roof and screen were capable of retracting. CamCo held postmission briefings here to analyze their battles and see where they went wrong.

Here the plebes got to analyze CamCo’s past battles, too.

Here they learned about real war.

Tom watched Major Cromwell assume the podium at the front of the room. “Sit down.”

Her hoarse voice flooded the room without her raising it. The last stragglers were in their seats before the ping could even say,
Afternoon classes have now commenced
.

“You’ve downloaded this information,” Cromwell said briskly, “so let’s make sure you understand it. We’ve been examining the evolution of combat, weaponry, and tactics. History has shown one simple fact: people are people. Period. All the technology and progress in the world can’t change the fundamentals of human nature. There will always be war as long as human beings are capable of envy, hatred, and fear.”

Cromwell typed something into a keyboard attached to her podium. An image of an oil painting depicting a bloody battle plastered itself across the vast screen. “Combat itself has taken new forms over time. In the ancient times, whole armies descended upon nations, fighting in the names of kings, of religions. Over the years, the scope of violence narrowed. Technology improved targeting to the point where we could destroy certain individuals rather than whole communities, attacking by air rather than by planting armies.”

Tom heard a rustling next to him. He looked over and saw Beamer slouching down in his seat. Greenish light flickered over his pale features, and Tom glanced back at the grainy image on the screen—a target locked on a flat, rectangular building from somewhere above it.

“Wars were fought over oil, over territory. And now, the last engagement on Earth thirty-three years ago saw us destroying people and leaving buildings and infrastructure intact, all on behalf of private business, in the name of patents. Your generation may take for granted that countries go to war on behalf of private rather than public interests, but this wasn’t always considered an acceptable reason for violent conflict. Let’s trace the changes that led to this.”

“Let’s not,” Beamer murmured.

Vik elbowed him but kept his dark gaze on the front screen.

“Early in the century,” she said, “globalization was uniting countries across the traditional bounds of cultures, languages, and borders. Old boundaries became virtually obsolete. As a result, a corporate class emerged, with executives who identified not with any nationality but rather with the business interests that bound companies to one another. Without national loyalties of their own, large businesses moved jobs from country to country whenever labor was more affordable. This depressed wages worldwide. Most businesses were left without a consumer base, and this led to the Great Global Collapse. The companies that survived were the ones with control over vital resources. There are two prominent examples. The first one is Dominion Agra.”

Tom stiffened. Dominion. Where his mother’s boyfriend, Dalton, worked.

“As you know, when a company creates life, they own the patent to it. Over the last century, Dominion Agra’s genetically engineered plants and animals cross-pollinated and crossbred with the natural food supply. There are no consumables today without some trace of Dominion’s patented genetic material. The dominance of their genetic strains led to their total ownership of the food supply. This leads to the other monopoly you’ve heard of: Harbinger Incorporated, with their patent on Nobriathene, an industrial by-product that, over time, leeched into the water supply all over the world. It’s completely nonreactive in a human body, but to this day, no one has developed an effective filter for it. If you drink water, use water, irrigate your crops with water, you’re making use of their patented chemical. That’s why your families pay a usage fee every year to Harbinger along with their water bills. Whatever the global situation, the elements of basic subsistence are always in demand. Dominion and Harbinger have both thrived in this post-Collapse world.”

Tom had heard all this from Neil. Even though they were on opposite sides of the World War III conflict, Dominion Agra backed Harbinger’s patent, and Harbinger backed Dominion Agra’s patent. It was only natural, his dad claimed. Dominion Agra could brush off criticisms of its monopoly on food by pointing to the other culprit—the company with a monopoly on water. They justified each other’s existences. And besides, it wasn’t like anyone in a position of power in the world actually wanted to break their monopolies. Every politician hoped to get a job in a Coalition company once they were through with public office.

“And now,” Cromwell said, “this brings us to what happened in the Middle East thirty-three years ago. This conflict had been coming for a long time. It was the last show of mass resistance against the centralization of global authority. As influence in the rest of the world became more concentrated in the hands of a worldwide business community, it went the opposite direction in the Middle East. Traditional authoritarian leaders were being replaced by representative governments. These societies resisted the idea of respecting the patents of either Dominion Agra or Harbinger. Because the resistance was at the street level—a societal refusal to play by the same rules as the rest of the world—it was determined that we would address the problem at the street level. With neutron bombs.”

Tom knew the rest. It was the last time United States and Chinese militaries worked together on anything. They carpet bombed most of the Middle East with neutron bombs, weapons of mass death that killed people but left buildings. Every regional resource remained intact, available, ready to be purchased on the free market. The Coalition companies had already divided the resources up among themselves. They cleared the 1.3 billion dead bodies ruining the view. Rumor had it, Dominion Agra and Harbinger were the first companies to open new offices in the region.

There were protests, Neil told him, but they simply were ignored or forcibly dispersed. And most people reacted to the genocide with a dull outrage that soon turned to apathy and finger pointing. Everyone blamed someone else. The few people in public office who suggested Dominion Agra and Harbinger had spurred their countries into committing a crime against humanity were quickly replaced by better-funded politicians willing to look the other way.

It was another thing everybody seemed to feel angry about, but no one lifted a finger to act upon. His dad used to bring it up in his angry rants at the morning commuter crowd, usually while people scurried past him and tried to avoid him. Tom wondered suddenly where Neil had been sleeping this last month or whether he’d managed to win a few games in the last weeks. It occurred to him suddenly, for the first time, that he really had no way of finding out.

“We’re not here to discuss ethics,” Major Cromwell went on. “That’s not our job here. We’re discussing tactics, and I ask you to examine the bombing in purely tactical terms: the resistance came from the ordinary people, and neutron bombs targeted ordinary people. The weapons were suited to the nature of the conflict, and they destroyed none of the infrastructure that would hinder the repopulation of the region. One of the founding goals of the Coalition of Multinationals, in fact, was to see the Middle East revived as a region.”

Tom slouched down in his seat. All he knew was, the Coalition of Multinationals—the twelve most powerful companies in the world, including Dominion Agra and Harbinger—united their power after the neutron bombing campaign. They did it, or so they claimed, to serve as a “privatized” version of the UN and prevent more neutron bomb–type incidents. But Neil always said they really did it because they’d just gotten away with something so horrendous, it convinced them they could get away with almost anything, as long as they united their power and held financial sway over every major government in the world. Together, the twelve multinationals had the money and the influence to do just that. Between them, they could buy and sell every country on the planet.

“After that bombing campaign, the Coalition assumed a foremost role in global governance,” Cromwell said, “which lasted until the famous splintering of their alliance. One lingering consequence of the Global Collapse was the devaluation of currencies worldwide. Precious metals soared in value, and the Earth’s reserves had been mined to near exhaustion. Nobridis Incorporated was the first company to turn eyes toward space. They wanted official backing from our government so they could receive taxpayer funding, so they petitioned our Congress for the first bid to the territory. This insulted the Chinese, who argued that the United States didn’t possess the unilateral authority to grant a claim to a territory in space. When our Congress granted Nobridis that claim, China retaliated by awarding the exact same territory to Stronghold Energy. It was a symbolic gesture, but it started everything.”

She flipped to an image of the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars. It was relatively close to Earth and one of the most potent, resource-laden areas of the solar system, which meant it was the most fiercely contested. Tom had seen so many news clips of skirmishes in the asteroid belt that they all blurred together.

“Various companies in the Coalition sided with Nobridis and the United States, while others sided with Stronghold and China. Soon the Coalition itself was split down the middle, every company on one side or another of the Nobridis-Stronghold conflict. Whereas before, these multinational conglomerates spread their influence throughout the world, a new trend arose when they began concentrating on holding financial sway over certain governments and not others. Our allied multinationals stopped sending funds to China or Russia and concentrated instead on sending them to India and America. The other half of the Coalition did the reverse. In this way, a fight between Nobridis and Stronghold turned first into a struggle between two halves of the Coalition and then into a new space race between the Indo-American and Russo-Chinese alliances—and soon into World War III.”

She flipped to an image of a shipyard in space. “Within a decade, territory was claimed throughout the solar system when one side or the other established a physical presence. Establishing ‘a presence’ means introducing a mining facility, a shipyard, sometimes just a single satellite. But the conflict mounted when the Chinese seized an Indo-American–affiliated platinum mine in the asteroid belt. After this, the conflict evolved into a true war. Not a war in any classical sense, of course. There are no civilian casualties, no bombs, no deaths. Authority over our planet isn’t even in dispute, since the warring companies of the Coalition still work together to shape the global agenda for governments worldwide. But out in space, all bets are off.”

She flipped to an image of a traditional pilot boarding a jet plane. “The first fighters were pilots in the Air Force who remotely controlled the ships in space. They couldn’t keep up with the preprogrammed maneuvers of the Russo-Chinese machines, so they were phased out. Many believed combat had evolved beyond the participation of human soldiers. Both sides switched to fully automated attack fleets. These automated arsenals waged the war until the first Intrasolar Combatants appeared on the Russo-Chinese side. With the advent of neural processors, human beings could finally hold their own against mechanized forces. The presence of human fighters had another benefit, because they added a personal element to the war, and this was exactly what the American public needed to remain invested in the fight.”

Tom thought of all the cereal boxes with Elliot’s face and the way all the girls at Rosewood loved him so much. He wasn’t sure if those girls really supported the fight. They definitely supported Elliot, though.

“For most of the public,” Cromwell said, “this war is a spectator sport. The average American knows they are helping to finance this, but they also know they’re not seeing the winnings. Their only reward is the entertainment they receive from following the battles, and in the last three years of Combatant-driven combat, a sense of national pride when an American wins new territory. It’s important you never take public support for granted. There’s a reason we’re always sending Elliot Ramirez out there for the cameras. He gives the war a face. If exposure weren’t a safety issue, all the Combatants would be public figures just like him. A Combatant is a PR asset, a means of personalizing the war for the general public. People form attachments, even if a Combatant is known only by his or her call sign. One of a Combatant’s most vital roles is to keep the public on our side. But that’s not your most important duty.”

Tom sat up straighter in his seat, sensing that she was about to get into the fighting itself.

“America has only had Intrasolar Combatants in the field for three years. That means those of you in this room destined to advance to Camelot Company may be the tactical pioneers in this new era. Every age has seen a transformation of the ideal soldier. Basil Liddell Hart said, ‘Loss of hope, rather than loss of life, is the factor that decides wars, battles, and even the smallest combats.’ And what destroys an enemy’s hope? In ages long past, the mighty Achilles was the most fearsome warrior in the world. His very presence made armies tremble. In subsequent ages, the famous generals took the glory. And now? What is the name that destroys hope in our time? Who is the greatest Intrasolar Combatant? Who is this moment’s Achilles?”