Jase leered at me. I don’t know if he recognised me or not. “Here’s how it’s going to be,” he said, dramatically. The idiot was trying to pose, of all things! “You give us everything, including the clothes on your back, and we’ll let you off with a few broken bones. If not, we’ll take them from you and hang you to show them that the Bloody Blades are…”
I punched him, right in the nose. I’d been training with Marines, not ignorant thugs, and it showed. I would never have dared do anything like that to a Marine — I was woefully aware that I had telegraphed my own movement too clearly — but Jase was taken completely by surprise. He went over backwards, already out of it, and two other gang members stepped forward. They seemed to be moving in slow motion; one started to draw back his fist for a punch, while the other began to take his stick off his back, but they were already too late. I smacked the first right in the throat and sent him to the ground choking, and then kicked the second right in the groin. He folded up, screaming in pain, and I took the opportunity to relieve him of his stick. I turned to face the fourth gang member and was unsurprised to see him heading the other way as fast as he could. The gangs rarely had to fight someone who was willing and able to stand up to them and, like most cowards, they broke easily. For the first time since I set foot on Earth, I almost felt happy, even though the Master Sergeant would have torn me a new asshole for exposing myself like that. It almost took some of the pain of losing my family away.
“Run,” I said, to the kid. He was staring at me in stark terror. I could almost read his thoughts — his protectors and masters had been exposed as frauds and cowards — but I didn’t care. I could have broken his neck with ease and we both knew it. “Just run.”
He ran. I turned back to Jase and his two cronies. The one I’d kicked in the groin was still moaning and I brought the stick down on his head, knocking him out. After the kick, it probably came as something of a relief. The other two wouldn’t present any further problem, but I knocked them out anyway, before relieving them of their possessions. Let the police think that it had just been a mugging, although both they and I knew differently. It hardly mattered.
I strode away from the bodies and walked back into the crowd. I’d learned how to hide when I was very young and by the time I had reached the station I had made a handful of minor changes in my appearance, dumping my jumper and replacing it with a shirt. The cameras wouldn’t recognise me if they saw me, but just to be sure I blended with the crowds until I returned to the orbital tower and returned to orbit.
I would never set foot on Earth again.
From: The Never-Ending War. Stirling, SM. Underground Press, Earth.
To understand the scale of the problems facing the UN, it is necessary to know something of the background to the colonies. Put simply, the vast majority of colonies were founded by groups who were opposed, for various reasons, to the UN’s concept of a single government for humanity. These ranged from nationalist colonies to religious and social groups, all intent on building their own paradise. Although the groups were very different, they found common cause in opposition to the UN.
Very few of the colonies managed to construct their own space-based industry and shipyards before the UN decided to move in and effectively occupy all of the colonies. The net result was that resistance in space was minimal and tended to consist of what the UN was pleased to call piracy. To them, it seemed to signal a certain victory over the forces opposed to them. They were wrong.
To put it simply, and acknowledging in advance that the analogy is a limited one, the UNPF is engaged in a counter-insurgency campaign on a galactic scale. Of three hundred human-settled worlds, over two hundred and thirty have a major UNPF presence, ranging from a small garrison to a considerable fighting force. Despite Earth’s firm commitment to the war, they cannot claim to control more ground than they hold at any one time, and only the absolute control of orbital space surrounding many of the worlds prevents their total defeat. The UN, therefore, is trapped in a classic insurrection problem. They cannot win and they cannot be beaten.
An insurrection can be defeated by making political concessions, or reshaping the defeated nation, or even the complete extermination of the native population. The UN is incapable of using any method, simply because of the goals of the war. It is not enough to take and hold territory, but it must also put the colonies to work on behalf of Earth, a step that the colonists naturally find objectionable. (Not least, it should be added, because even if the UN managed to crush all resistance without further delay, it would only slow the inevitable decline and fall.) There are no political concessions that could be made without undermining the very basis of the war itself. The colonists would want a real say in their affairs, if not complete independence, and the UN would find that unacceptable. There is no hope of a negotiated peace.
Destroying the colonists, or altering their societies, would only ensure that the UN would be unable to exploit them for its own purposes.
This is not fully understood on Earth. The UN Media paints a constantly upbeat view of the war, claiming that vast tracts of land are taken and enemy forces are constantly decimated (a careful analysis would reveal that the UNPF had, according to the media, wiped out the entire colonist population several times over), which makes it difficult to accept that there is a serious problem. The forces garrisoning various worlds are often undermanned and short of supplies, something that the local rebels are very aware of, and frequently find themselves on the verge of defeat. Only orbital bombardment prevents the loss of many worlds to insurgent forces. The logistic problems inherent in servicing as many garrisons as the UN possesses only make the problems much worse. In short, the UN is unable to win and the insurgents are unable to push them off their worlds. The war has stalemated.
[Professor Stirling and a handful of his students were arrested for subversive activities two weeks after the above book was published, tried for spreading hate speech and anti-unionist propaganda and sentenced to a penal colony on Mars.]
Part II: Lieutenant
Chapter Ten
The UN is fond of claiming that it does not want to practice war, either against the colonists or anyone else, but the reality is different. While the vast majority of the UNPF starships are capable of civilian as well as military applications, a handful of starships have no purpose other than the military one. Those starships are generally concealed behind a façade of lies and misrepresentation, all of which conceals the fact that the UN, supposedly peaceful, requires the services of starships capable of destroying whole planets.
UNS Jacques Delors had been beautiful, even to an untrained eye. UNS Devastator was ugly as sin. I found myself staring at her through the docking tube and wondered just what the designer had been thinking. She looked blocky and dark, studded with sensors and weapons, a blunt instrument among shining knives. The designer had been in no doubt what the starship was actually designed to do and, in an unusual burst of honesty, had designed the starship to fit the role. I knew that if I lived on a planet, the last thing I would want to see was Devastator in my skies.