“If we occupy the base, it may be taken as a provocative act,” Muna said, from her chair. She sounded more like her normal self now, but she was being worked off her feet running between factories that might be rebuilt and factories that were being overworked and risking self-inflicted damage. It didn’t help that employers had cracked down hard on union movements after the Communist Uprising and industrial unrest was growing. I half-expected Frida to pass legislation to deal with that, but it was a minor issue compared to the farmers. “We could occupy the base, no problem, but it might kick-start the war.”
“And yet, if we do not occupy the base, we will be forced to fall back on garrisons near the cities,” Ed pointed out, reasonably. “That would limit our ability to react to attacks on governmental forces and agents.”
I scowled. Frida’s latest brainwave involved thousands of ‘government inspectors’ who would go out to the farms, take the long-overdue census, and then give them their quotas for the year. It might have given people jobs, but the farmers would resent being told what to do by men and women who wouldn’t even know what part of a cow gave milk, let alone anything more useful. There was good value in actually taking a census, but everything else would just cause trouble. I saw their presence as being the spark that ignited the gunpowder. The other job opportunities she’d announced weren’t much better.
Robert snorted. “Do we want to react to attacks on such people?”
“We wouldn’t have a choice,” I said. “We’ve assumed a role here and we have to play it out to the bitter end.”
Robert shrugged. “I respectfully point out, sir, that if this goes belly-up — and it will — the reputation of the Legion will be severely damaged,” he said. “Our task here was to train the local boys and turn them into soldiers. We were meant, at most, to provide training, support, back-up and specialised assistance for the locals, not spearheading a counter-insurgency campaign. The local government has dug itself a hole and we can’t get them out of it.”
“I thought that that was what soldiers were for,” Russell said, dryly. “Doesn’t this prove that there is value in a system that only lets ex-soldiers vote and stand for government office?”
“We could not impose such a system here,” Muna said, crossly. “We could not even limit the franchise to natives — what is a native anyway?”
“And Heinlein only worked because the founders were all veterans who knew what they intended to create,” Ed added, dryly. He’d served on Heinlein at the same time as Russell, although they’d been on different sides of the fence. I wondered, absently, if they had faced each other in battle. “If we limited the franchise to veterans here, there wouldn’t be many voters. Even if we expanded it to everyone currently serving in the military, they’d have only… three hundred thousand? Perhaps a few more?”
Robert scowled. “That doesn’t change the issue at hand,” he said. “We did not sign up to become so deeply involved in the local politics. If we do become further involved, what happens to the Legion’s reputation?”
“Our contract specifics that we will handle combat missions at the discretion of the local government,” I said, firmly. It wasn’t an uninteresting argument, but Robert wasn’t one of those aware of the real mission. I hated leaving him in the dark, but the more people who knew, the greater the chance of a leak further down the line. Besides, politics had no place in planning sessions — well, at least my planning sessions. “We’re committed to supporting them unless they choose to order us out or insist that we break the ROE in their favour.”
I looked around the table and saw them all straighten to attention. “Ed,” I said, “after the training preparations have been completed, I want you to make preparations to escort a couple of local companies up to Fort Galloway to occupy it permanently. We’ll move up some of the attack helicopters as well, along with enough supplies to keep them active even if we get cut off from the Fort. We won’t go expecting a battle, but if we should happen to encounter resistance, we’ll deal with it.”
Ed frowned. “We, sir?”
“I’m going to be leading it,” I said, firmly. “I have to see the ground first-hand, so I’m going to command the escort force. If nothing else, that should prevent any pissing contests over who’s in charge. We’ll aim to set off in two days, although we may have to put the convoy back a few days if trouble breaks out here.”
I looked at the map. We’d been assigning too many soldiers to serve as police in New Copenhagen and the remains of Pitea, but what choice did we have? The Communists had broken the local police forces and we had to fill their shoes. It was just lucky that there hadn’t been any serious incidents, apart from a handful of looters being caught in the act and shot, but that could change at any moment. Were the farmers cold-blooded enough to provoke an incident that would tarnish our reputation in the eyes of the urban residents? Pitea was in ruins anyway. If chaos broke out there, it might well swell beyond our ability to deal with it.
“Yes, sir,” Ed said, finally. “I’ll be coming along as well, of course, with A Company.”
I knew when to give in. “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” I said. I glanced around the room. “Any other business?”
“I was just wondering if we shouldn’t provide an escort for the government agents,” Muna said. “It might deter someone from starting something stupid.”
“Or maybe underline the fact that they can’t trust the government anymore,” Robert injected. “They might even view it as a challenge, a gauntlet being thrown down that they have to pick up.”
“If we’re asked to provide one, we’ll consider it then,” I said, firmly. “Until then, you know your assignments, so… dismissed.”
Muna lingered behind when the others had left the room. “I was looking at the food distribution problem,” she said. “If I use the most pessimistic figures, the planet’s total store of food will be exhausted fairly quickly, if no more comes in from the farms. There are emergency stocks of MRE packs from the UN, but we used a number of those to feed refugees and not all of them are reliable.”
I nodded sourly. The people who’d packed the MRE — Meals Ready to Eat; three lies for the price of one — back on Earth had been low-paid and resentful of their status. They’d probably taken the opportunity to express their class anger — not that the UN admitted to having any such thing, of course — by damaging the packs in some way, or even putting unhealthy food in the package. I’d been on campaigns when it had been discovered that half the MREs were even more inedible than normal. There’d even been mutinies and riots over inedible MREs. The UN’s quality control was non-existent.
“I suspected as much,” I said, grimly. “How bad is it going to be?”
“It depends what assumptions we make,” Muna admitted. “If we go by the worst-case assumptions, the planet will be starving inside of three months, perhaps less. That’s with a total cut-off from the farms and a complete failure to seize and distribute seed corn from the farmers — which, incidentally, will prevent them from growing food for next year. The best-case assumption suggests that everything is going to be very rocky for the next five months before a steady decline sets in — I think this problem was already brewing well before the Communists started their uprising, let alone anything else.