We are stagnant on Earth. In one hundred years, or maybe as few as twenty years if Peace's engineering officer is to be believed, the Novans will be able to launch ships and do to Earth what Earth did to Terra Nova; colonize it. The big difference being that TN wasn't occupied by people and Earth is. Our system couldn't resist and won't survive. I could nuke them now, we still have some capability. And that knocks Terra Nova back five hundred years so that when they come looking for us in five hundred and twenty they'll have blood in their eye. And this fleet won't be here to stop them because if I nuke Terra Nova the Federated States of Columbia will nuke this fleet to ash. But Earth's Consensus won't build another fleet to replace the one lost here. They won't even pay to keep up what we have; for that I am reduced to selling art and, sometimes, slaves.
Robinson sighed deeply and wearily. He had upon his shoulders the whole burden of protecting his civilization and the class, his own class, which ran it. It was a crushing load.
We sell art. We sell slaves, the refuse of Earth's sixth class. And that just to keep my ships running and my crews and their families fed, paid and clothed. Must I run drugs next?
I had hoped to wear down the hyperpower below with a series of costly and indecisive wars. The problem with that is that they appear to be winning. Who would have imagined a single nation-state with that kind of sheer . . . . ooomph? Formidable swine. What they lack themselves they can buy.
At the thought of the Federated States being able to buy what it needed, Robinson's thoughts turned to the soldiers the FSC had bought. Most were wretched, of course, or, if not, banned by their government from doing anything that might lead to casualties. The FSC paid for the upkeep and deployment costs of these, but nothing more. It got about what it paid for, or perhaps a bit less.
But then there are the others, those little brown Latin mercenaries. Those the FSC pays top drachma for and gets full value, too. I wonder how the war in Sumer would have turned out without that ruthless mercenary Legion. Better; of that much I am sure.
Robinson thought back on the extraordinarily clever scheme Captain Wallenstein had come up with whereby sympathetic citizens of Tauran states had given themselves up as hostages to force their governments to pay ransoms to the insurgents in Sumer. It had been clever, but it had ended when someone started kidnapping Taurans for ransom and then feeding them feet first into wood chippers for the nightly news, even after the ransoms had been paid. The supply of volunteers had dried up very quickly after that and even real hostages had not been bargained for anymore. He was reasonably certain that the mercenary Legion had been involved in all that.
But there's never any proof. Bastards.
And then there was the humiliation inflicted on the cosmopolitan progressives of Terra Nova by the Legion, from torture stings to simply ignoring the Kosmo press no matter how loudly it howled.
Never mind, I must think to the future.
"Computer, change display," Robinson commanded.
"To what, High Admiral?" the artificial, and vaguely feminine, voice had answered.
"World view. Show me incidents over the last thirty-five local days."
The image changed. Robinson studied.
Nice to see that things are taking a turn for the worse for the FSC in Pashtia. And the piracy along the western coast of Uruhu is encouraging . . .
"Computer, connect me with the intelligence office."
A male face appeared in one corner of the screen. A male voice answered. "Lieutenant Commander Khan here, High Admiral. Did you want me, sir, or my wife?" Iris Khan's husband meant, do you need another blow job or do you actually require intelligence support. He wasn't offended or judgmental about the matter, either way. The UE was very casual about both sex and marital relations. Moreover, it was considered bad form to use someone's wife for sex and not at the same time watch out for the husband's career.
"Khan, tell me about piracy on Terra Nova."
"Yes, High Admiral." Khan played with his computer to bring up some data. "Though piracy exists all over Terra Nova, there are four main nexus for piracy down below." One is the islands and coasts on both sides of the Republic of Balboa. This is mainly concerned with retail robbery of yachts and then reusing those yachts for drug smuggling, along with occasional kidnapping for ransom. A second is the eastern shore of Uhuru which, because of the nature of the trade there, tends to take entire ships and cargo. Ships plying that trade are smallish. A third is the Straits of Nicobar, which is not generally concerned with drug smuggling or theft of cargo but more with ship's safe robbery and kidnapping for ransom. There is some religious element to the Nicobar piracy, at least in the sense that a bare majority of the pirates are Islamic and seem to use Islam as a justification for piracy. They would still be pirates if they worshipped Odin. The last nexus is around the area of Xamar, on Uruhu's western coast. This is not new but has grown substantially over the last several years. Xamar piracy is also, officially, Islamic in intent though, once again, they would be pirates even if they were pagans."
Khan, the husband, pulled up more data from his screen. "Officially, piracy costs the economy down below about twelve to sixteen billion FSD annually. It is believed, however, that the actual incidence of piracy is understated by a factor of about twenty . . . though it is doubtful that the costs are quite that understated."
Robinson scratched his head. "Interesting. Thank you, Khan. Tell me, did your wife enjoy our session?"
"She says she did, Admiral, but wishes you had pinched her nipples more and come in her mouth rather than her throat. She likes that sort of thing."
"I'll remember that for next time. In the interim, I want both you and she to look into the long term potential for both squeezing funds from and ruining a large scale economy through unchecked piracy. Robinson, out."
5/10/466 AC, Xamar Coast, Western Uhuru
"This is becoming tedious, sayidi," said the Helvetian banker representing a Tauran shipping firm, the Red Star Line. The banker looked rather like a gnome, short and stout and bearded. It was his job to negotiate the release of a dozen merchant sailors taken from a Red Star Line refrigerator ship two weeks prior. The sailors, bound and filthy, lined one corner of the sparsely furnished office near the center of the city.
Within the office tea and dates were served by tall, slender women with amazingly large, dark eyes. The women, some of them slave girls, likewise set out a tray of thin bread made from the flour of the chorley, a non-Old Earth species that resembled a sunflower that grew just above ground level, accompanied by local shoug, a mix of ground peppers ranging from "Holy Shit" to "Joan of Arc," with a very small admixture of "Satan Triumphant."
Of the women, the eyes were all that could be seen, that, and the seductive swaying even their robes could not conceal. They didn't matter though; the gnome had little use for women.
"Indeed," agreed the formidable, even fierce, looking Hawiye tribe chief seated on a cushion opposite the banker. Like the women, the chief was tall and quite slender, despite his years. "As I have told you many times, retrieving your people from these thugs costs me. It costs in money; it costs in arms; it costs in favors and in influence. I would prefer to put our relationship on a more formal and regular basis. But you people . . . "