“The Admiral is…well, call him my Uncle,” Roger said. “He chose me specifically for the post on his ship, even promised me a bump-up to First Lieutenant as soon as it could be done…and he talks to me. There’s so much I didn’t know back at the Academy, but the Admiral… he knows it all.”
He paused. “You must have seen Heinlein’s asteroid mining operation and the orbital industries?” He asked. I nodded. I’d seen them on the display as Devastator had passed them to take up position to bombard the planet. “I’ve seen the reports on them. Heinlein, with a smaller industry, was actually on the verge of matching — even exceeding — the entire production levels of Earth.”
“Impossible,” I said. Earth — the solar system — was the most heavily industrialised location in known space. The factories on Earth, Luna, Mars, Jupiter’s moons and hundreds upon hundreds of asteroids… how could Heinlein hope to match and exceed them in barely two hundred years? “Roger…”
“I’ve seen their systems and I’ve seen ours,” Roger said. “They use heavy automation and vastly more advanced technology. Those ships they used against us didn’t come out of nowhere. If they’d had ten more years, perhaps less, they would have been dictating terms to us instead. The Admiral made that clear to me. Their system and ours cannot co-exist. One of us must destroy the other.”
I winced. “Is that why we’re here?”
Roger nodded. “If we can break them down into good little UN citizens, well and good,” he said. “Even if not…we can still prevent them from becoming a major threat to us, just by maintaining an occupation force on their surface and in the high orbitals. Their industry can be used to boost ours. Their people can help us maintain Earth’s systems…”
“Earth’s crumbling systems,” I commented, angrily. “Wouldn’t it be better to train up new engineers of our own?”
“I said that to the Admiral,” Roger said. He shook his head. “My family likes to think that it has influence, even control, but our powers are far more limited than you might think. How can we solve Earth’s problems? If we try to fix them in any other way, we will merely be replaced ourselves. We don’t control the system — no one controls the system.”
I opened my mouth and then bit down hard on what I’d been about to say. “Like I said, don’t go mouthing off,” Roger concluded, standing up. “You have a long career ahead of you. Why waste it for the people on this worthless planet?”
He left, leaving me alone, thinking about what I’d almost said. If the system is broken, or beyond repair, why not destroy the system? Roger would have had to report that, wouldn’t he? As it was, he thought he’d done me a favour.
The hell of it was that I didn’t even know if he was right.
Chapter Seventeen
The UN, despite its claims to be inclusive, multicultural and non-judgemental, must not permit any other system to develop, independent of itself. A successful system based on other principles would stand as an example to the UN’s citizens of a society that worked better than the UN…and force them to ask, if they understood it, why the United Nations could not work so well. It is that line of questioning that the UN must prevent, at all costs. A rebellion on any of the colony worlds could be handled. A rebellion on Earth itself would be lethal.
I met the Specials the next morning.
According to Master Sergeant Erwin Herzog, back on the old Jacques Delors, there were four levels of soldiers in the United Nations. There were the police and their counter-terror units, the infantrymen, the Marines… and the Specials. The Specials, he’d explained, fell somewhere between the Marines — who were trained to operate in space, rather than on the ground — and the infantry. They weren’t as incompetent as the infantry — his words — but they were also utterly ruthless. They were trained to defeat the enemy or die trying.
“You must be Walker,” their leader growled. He was as large as Herzog, a giant of a man, covered in tattoos that were strictly non-regulation, but I doubted that anyone dared to complain. I was intimidated already. “I’m Jock. This is Charlie” — a smaller man, carrying a rifle that was larger than he was — “Judy” — a woman who had saved her head, apart from a tiny strip of hair surrounding her dome — “and Dan” — another giant of a man, but clearly oriental in origin, despite the name — “and you’ve been assigned to us. Can you shoot?”
“Yes,” I said, confidently. The Marines had hammered that into me on the Jacques Delors. “I’m qualified with pistol, rifle and laser pistol.”
“Really?” Jock said, managing to express his disbelief without — quite — being offensive. “The last officer who was assigned to us wet himself when we thrust a gun into his hands and died because he didn’t shoot the wanker attacking us in time. Perhaps you’ll last longer… follow me.”
He led us around a set of buildings, forcing me to walk faster to keep up with him, and I was breathing heavily at the end. The four team members didn’t seem to be bothered in the slightest by the pace, bastards. The infantry had set up a shooting range in a large field. It was populated by seven officers, all staff punks in clean uniforms, who stared at us in disbelief when we arrived. Jock marched right up to them, glared into the largest officer’s face, and told them to piss off. I’d never seen headquarters soldiers moving so fast.
“They’ll be still wetting themselves this time tomorrow,” Jock predicted cheerfully. He unslung his rifle and passed to me with one hand, pointing down towards the targets in the distance. “Hit that, now!”
I almost stumbled, but managed to bring the rifle up and fire a single round. The target rang like a bell when I hit it, sending the bullet bouncing off somewhere into the distance. Jock frowned at me and nodded to Dan, who unslung his rifle and fired a shot so quickly that it was a blur. He’d hit the target dead centre.
“Again,” Jock barked. I moved faster this time, somehow. “Again!”
It was an hour later when I’d finally reached something Jock considered barely acceptable. I’d fired off more ammunition than I’d ever used before, even back with the Marines, learning how to use the rifle properly. The Specials had made their point quite well. I’d also had to listen to Jock’s rants on the subject of the infantry and their poor shooting habits. It was a window into a world I didn’t know existed.
“The officers are given a budget for training and they’re also rewarded for spending as little as possible,” he’d explained, angrily. “There are soldiers on the ground here who are firing shots for the first time in their lives. Laser training simulations can’t tell you everything about the weapons, can they? No — but the stupid morons keep getting their men killed because it looks better on the report.”
He turned to lead us out again. “Ah, sir,” I said, “What about…”
“My name is Jock,” Jock snapped. “We’re fighting men, not headquarters morons with shit in their brains. What is it?”
I hesitated. “Shouldn’t we fill out a report…?”
“On the shooting, hell no,” Jock thundered. The others laughed, but I didn’t see the joke. “That’s the other reason officers are so poor. They spend most of their time filling out paperwork and not working with their men. They can’t even rely on the Sergeants to do it because they have to do paperwork as well and its easier not to train at all. I bet you half your wages for this year that half the occupation force will not live to see their wives, girlfriends and whores again.”