Cui Bono (who benefits)? -Cicero
UEPF Spirit of Peace, 27 April, 2511
The trip back from Atlantis Base had not been uneventful. One hundred and sixty-seven kilometers out from the docking bay a short had developed. Robinson had been the first to notice the distinctive stink in the recycled air. He'd wondered, later, if that had been because the flight crew had simply grown used to such smells.
In any case, it had been he who had first noticed and sounded the alarm. It was a damned good thing he had, too. A short in the lights was one thing, and likely survivable. A short in life support that turned into a fire was something else again.
The pilot, copilot and high admiral managed to scramble into EV suits in time. Sadly, the steward, while even quicker, had a faulty suit and suffocated before Robinson's eyes as the cabin filled with smoke and the pilot broke seal to cut off the fire.
It was that, the image of a man dying slowly and miserably in front of him, far more than the fanatical glare in Mustafa's eyes, that decided Robinson to think further on the wild Salafi's scheme.
To start a war, the high admiral mused back in his cabin aboard the Spirit of Peace. He laughed slightly at the thought. That wasn't exactly in my portfolio, now was it?
On the other hand, he reasoned, there wasn't anything in my orders about not starting a war. And there was that section about securing the blessings of peace for the Earth. I can hardly do that with my fleet crumbling around me, now can I?
Robinson turned his bolted-down swivel chair towards his desk, laying his two elbows down and leaning forward to rest his nose lightly on his two middle fingers.
Difficult, difficult. I'll have to keep it almost all to myself, do it almost all myself. Some of the things Mustafa had in mind? My crews would balk, most of them, and I can hardly afford a mutiny in the fleet.
But the benefits? If we can break the FSC, who on Terra Nova could resist a rising progressive tide? The TU? They're the model for progressivism on that planet. The other, continental, supranationals? They aspire to become like the TU. Bharat? Nationalist in some ways, yes, but such a hodgepodge of ethnicities they could be broken up with little more than a nudge to some of the separatist groups. Zhong Guo? Almost as badly mixed as Bharat. They could be handled.
Then, too, this could be exciting and I'm bloody bored.
"Computer?" Robinson demanded of the Earth-tech model sitting atop his desk.
"Yes, High Admiral."
"Create a file. Label it… mmm… 'Pax 2511.' Restrict it to my voice only, both additions and access."
"Done, High Admiral."
Robinson paused, organizing his thoughts.
"Computer, add to the file all that is known to us about the Terra Novan World League and the Tauran Union. In particular I want profiles of all the major players. Then I want you to find whatever is known about the Salafi Ikhwan. Get me everything available on the subjects of guerilla warfare and terrorism. Lastly, for now, I want an economic analysis of the Federated States of Columbia, Terra Nova. Emphasis is on vulnerabilities. After you are done, erase all traces of your search, except for what remains in the file, Pax 2511. Work."
"Working, High Admiral."
UEPF Spirit of Peace, 28 May, 2511
"Mustafa hasn't the slightest idea of what he's about," said Robinson aloud in the privacy of his quarters. His eyes had grown a bit tired from reading the material he had had collected and which was on display on the Novan-built view sceen mounted on the wall. He looked away, resting them on a painting he had kept for himself out of the recently auctioned Vatican collection.
"He really thinks this god of his-which does not and cannot exist-will do all the heavy thinking and lifting. He really believes that if he and his followers will only sacrifice and fight, then everything else will work out by divine will. Do I really want to entrust the future of my fleet, my planet and my class to a lunatic like that? I think not," the high admiral scoffed.
For over a month Robinson had been studying the problem. In that month he had come no nearer to a solution than he had been when he had last visited Atlantis Base. The FSC, with its three hundred million people, its industry and economy that dominated the planet, its matchless armed forces, was simply too tough to break under the limited attacks Mustafa had in mind. Add in that it was quite capable, albeit at a terrible cost, of swatting the Peace Fleet from space and…
"Not a chance," Robinson said to himself. "And not a chance I will give him the nukes to make his attacks more effective. Simple analysis would tell the Feds where they had come from; they've already got plenty of material to compare them to from the remains of the two cities we leveled in their Great Global War. And they would retaliate; there's no question about that. They couldn't then, with no way to loft a warhead into space, but now they could and they would.
"Tough problem."
He stood and began to pace.
"Should I have the bio people transfer some form of disease to Mustafa? No… no, I don't think so. There are some things that even I can't contemplate doing. Bio war is one of them."
Robinson turned his eyes back to his view screen and continued reading.
UEPF Spirit of Peace, 29 May, 2511
The conference room had been paneled in rare, iridescent Terra Novan silverwood by one of Robinson's predecessors. It lent the room a warmth that was sadly lacking in most of the ship's areas. The table was likewise from below, as were the chairs that now held some nine members of Robinson's staff.
There'd been nothing for it but to bring some of his staff in for some small parts. Not that Robinson had told them anything important or ever intended to; far from it. But there were questions he didn't have time to answer and which the computer was simply unable to bring the required creativity of thought to bear upon. He needed human help.
"First question," Robinson began. "What can we consider to be progressive forces and organizations on Terra Nova?"
"Assuming by 'progressive' you mean the kind of forces which brought peace to Earth and prominence to our ancestors," answered his sociology officer, Lieutenant Commander Khan, a very white and blonde atheist who happened to have one prominent and progressive ancestor from old Pakistan, "then the answer is fairly simple. Progressive forces include the supranationals like the World League and the Tauran Union, the entertainment industry, the news industry, the humanitarian industry, the legal industry-especially that part of it devoted to international law-and those elements of the economy, like Oak Tree Computing, that are detached from any given nation state and benefit from the global economy the Terra Novans have developed in the last ten or twelve years."
"Humanitarian industry?" queried Robinson.
"It's an industry like any other," answered Khan evenly. "What they manufacture is guilt and good feelings. The good feelings they sell at a high premium to those who need to feel good about themselves. They're no different from a company that makes cold remedies, except they are dealing with the relief of guilty emotions rather than sniffles. That, and that those who manufacture cold remedies are not also in the business of making colds."
"I'd always thought of those as existing to do good," the high admiral objected.
Khan, the realist, smiled. "They manage to do pretty well by doing good, Admiral. And it is highly questionable whether they do any real good, at least of the kinds they claim and probably even think they do. Do they feed the hungry? Surely. And they will keep feeding the hungry, as long as the hungry look pitiable enough to collect money for doing so. But the net result of feeding the hungry tends to be the destruction of local agriculture, which ensures a continuing supply of the hungry, a continuing supply of poster children, and a continuing supply of donations to assuage guilt.