“I understand, sir,” I said, finally.
“Good,” Shalenko said. He smiled, softly. “Captain Harriman would be proud of you.”
“He wouldn’t,” I said, bitterly. I knew it was the truth. Captain Harriman had never bullied any of the grey colonies, or even acted like he was the lord of the universe around the colonists. He would never have agreed to kill thousands of innocents just because the unnecessary war was being lost. “He’d spit on me if he were here.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Although no one would have admitted it, after the failure to crush Heinlein’s resistance in three years of fighting, the UN was in a desperate position. They could not supply the troops on the ground with everything they needed, while they were unable to prevent the insurgents from using their (seemingly limitless) stockpiles of weapons to take the offensive and hit the Infantry hard enough to force them to back off. As a new year dawned, the UN Generals realised that they were on the verge of losing the war.
As soon as I returned to my ship, and escaped Deborah’s incessant demands to know what I had been discussing with my former commander, I held a meeting with the Senior Chief and the Master Sergeant. I broke several different regulations — at this rate, the UN was going to have problems deciding exactly what they were going to shoot me for — and explained exactly what we’d been ordered to do. I had hoped that either or both of them would be able to suggest a way out, but neither of them could think of anything. We hadn’t made contact with all the Marine units yet and if we failed to take the starships, our plan would probably fail. A battle in Earth orbit might be disastrous.
“I know how you feel,” the Senior Chief said, “but there’s no choice. All you can do is avenge them later.”
I found myself considering all kinds of drastic actions, but nothing seemed likely to work. I checked through the communications my fellow plotters had sent, looking for signs of hope, but the only optimistic thing I saw came, ironically, from the plan to invade Williamson’s World. The UN was scraping the barrel to draw up so many starships, but it allowed us a chance to get our own people onboard before the official launch date for the invasion. I couldn’t understand why, if things were so bad, the UN was launching another invasion, let alone announcing the ETA in advance. I wondered if they’d done that for Heinlein and if that explained the reception we’d had, but in the end it didn’t matter. The invasion was not going to be launched if I had anything to say about it.
My dark mood found expression in inspecting the starship before we departed Earth and opened the wormhole. I inspected everywhere a First Lieutenant might be expected to cut corners and found, much to my relief, that Muna had been doing a good job. We were fit for exploration, or a battle, or even murdering hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. Muna was also handling the training of the Ensigns and I watched through the surveillance systems as she and the Senior Chief put them through the retch gas treatment. Their faces looked pale and wan when they emerged and I hoped they drew the right lesson from their experience. They couldn’t trust anything on the starship, even something as simple as a spacesuit. It made me wonder what we’d do if a new Ensign was smart enough to check the telltales first. Probably give them a dose of the gas anyway.
I took my command chair on the bridge — it felt like mine now, rather that something I’d stolen from its rightful owner — and watched as we opened a wormhole and fled into the pocket dimension. It was tempting to decide to turn renegade now, but we were so close to launching our coup that there was little point. Captain — Commodore — Shalenko had been right. The population of Valentine were going to die anyway. I could at least make sure that they didn’t die in vain.
“Wormhole sealed, Captain,” the Pilot reported. System Command had offered me a new Pilot, but I’d decided to stick with the one I’d inherited. He knew the Jacques Delors and how it handled and a newcomer would have had to relearn everything. “Jump Drive powering down now.”
“Thank you,” I said, tapping my console to check the readouts. We were sliding down a long tube heading towards our destination — or at least that was how I envisaged it — and now there was no turning back. No starship had ever tried to leave the wormhole early and lived to tell the tale. “First Lieutenant, you have the bridge.”
I spent the next three weeks studying my own starship, obsessing over each and every detail. The Engineer shared my obsession and tolerated my intrusions into his domain, watching over his shoulder as he checked each of the replacement spare parts carefully, just in case there was another bout of sabotage. I was particularly worried about the sealed components and encouraged the Engineer to reject any that didn’t meet his high standards, but some of them couldn’t be tested until they were locked in place. It was yet another illustration of how far the rot had settled into the system. The UN couldn’t even punish the workers too harshly, for fear they’d commit suicide or try to escape. The non-conscript workers weren’t much better. They had no real incentive to perform well.
And, unfortunately, I had to endure Deborah’s presence. She seemed to feel that she should eat dinner with me at least once a week and kept inviting herself to my cabin. I had wondered, as absurd as it seemed, if she were making a play for me, but if she intended any seduction it was a political one, rather than a personal one. I hadn’t realised just how deeply she believed in the entire concept of the United Nations, yet she was still able to justify mass murder to herself. I wasn’t going to allow her to realise that I meant the UN great harm, but still… I wanted to strangle her physically. It was less than she deserved.
“The traitors who set up Heinlein were trying to prevent their sons and daughters from being enfolded in the tender arms of the United Nations and its commitment to ensure that all enjoyed an above-average style of living,” she informed me, one day. I hadn’t realised until I’d worked on logistics how impossible an ‘above average’ style of living for everyone was. “They refused to pay their dues to society and chose, instead, to steal from the patrimony of The People.”
I could just hear the capital letters thudding into place. I was never sure how seriously she took the shit she was sprouting, but I knew that far too many people believed every word. I’d also seen worlds that worked differently to the UN. Even Terra Nova, with its endless ongoing civil war, had a higher standard of living than most of Earth. That might change if the war raged on and the UN pulled out, but for the moment… I remembered my last visit home, back before I’d boarded Devastator, and shuddered. In hindsight…
The UN had promised people the world. It had promised desperate people that if the UN took control of every aspect of their lives, it would create a paradise on Earth. It had promised to soak the rich to feed the poor, but no matter how much they’d leeched away, it had never been enough. They had taxed businesses out of existence, throwing thousands more unemployed onto the streets, who then had to go on welfare themselves. If that wasn’t enough, they created regulation after regulation, and used that as an excuse to throw more people out of work…they’d even defined objecting to the system as a sign of mental illness and sent anyone who complained to hospital, preventively. Soon, no one dared to object, even in private. Anyone could be a police spy.