“I never thought about it,” Frida admitted, finally. I followed her gaze towards where a team of young men were pulling a makeshift plough. We’d given priority to farming tools in the factories, but it would be a while before they produced anything useful. The mining embargo didn’t just cover minerals that could be shipped off-world. We might have to start melting down cars and other metal items to produce the raw materials. “How long until you have proper farms?”
Jack smiled. “In ten years,” he assured her, “this area will be covered with farmland.”
I escorted Frida through a long tour of the area before we boarded the light aircraft to return to the spaceport. We took a detour over the ocean to avoid the threat of enemy SAM attacks and I watched as dolphin-analogue creatures swam in the blue waters below the aircraft. They looked so enchanting that I wanted to swim with them, but Frida wanted me — when I admitted to that desire — that the Jaws had sharp teeth and a great dislike of humanity. No one was quite sure why; their flesh was inedible and they were generally regarded as nuisances. No one even bothered to hunt them for oil.
“They take a handful of children every year,” Frida added, after a moment. “Parents are warned not to let their children swim alone, but every so often a few children get bitten and killed by the monsters. Some idiots look at them, think they’re safe and sweet like real Dolphins, and try to swim with them. It never lasts long.”
“I see,” I said, finally. There was a moral in that, somewhere. “I shall remember never to swim with them.”
Frida smiled. “Not if you value your nuts,” she said, dryly. I hoped she was joking. “They’ve been known to bite them off and eat them.”
A day after I returned from the farms, I was summoned to the main control room. “Sir, there’s been a development with the UAV flight,” the pilot informed me. “As you know, UAV-3 was orbiting over the mountains, watching for evidence of enemy activity.”
I frowned. “Was?”
“Was,” the pilot confirmed. “The UAV has been shot down.”
I stared at him. “Shot down?” I repeated. It should have been impossible. There was little on the planet that could detect the UAV, let alone shoot it down. “How?”
“I’m not sure,” the pilot said. “Judging from the telemetry, it was probably an electronic weapon of some kind; I suspect a directed EMP cannon. The signal blinked out completely, along with both backups. They may just have gotten lucky, or they might have obtained hyper-sensitive sensing gear from somewhere more advanced than this dump. Fleet-issue sensors, or stuff from Heinlein or Williamson’s World, could probably track the UAV from orbit. It was emitting a tiny signal, after all.”
“I see,” I said. I couldn’t help, but regard that as ominous. The William Tell wouldn’t be over the area for another few hours. A lot could happen in that time. “Get me a report on what it was seeing just before it was shot down.”
“Yes, sir,” the pilot said. “We could route UAV-5 over the general area.”
“And lose that as well?” I asked, dryly. “Or… wait; we could simply deactivate the transmitter, couldn’t we?”
“Yes, assuming that that was how they detected it,” the pilot said. I understood what he meant. If the enemy had an advanced radar system… but we’d have detected active sensors, and passive sensors wouldn’t have been able to locate the UAV, apart from tracking its transmissions. “These things are expensive, sir.”
“I know,” I said, sourly. “Keep the UAV back for the moment. I’ll have to discuss the matter with Ed.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
There are several different types of protest march, depending upon the government in question. Some are genuine marches of protest, others are whistled up at will by political figures to demand support for their actions, or to intimidate their opponents. Regardless of their origins, it is clear that any protest march can go badly wrong very quickly. The army may be required to end the resulting riot as quickly as possible.
“There’s going to be a protest march today,” Suki said, as we drove into New Copenhagen. There was a definite feel of tension in the air. “It was on the news; the Revolutionary Front Against Forced Contraception intends to march up to the government buildings and back down to the schools to claim that there is no public support for the emergency contraception legislation.”
I shrugged. I had known that it wouldn’t be popular and it had apparently cost most of Frida’s political capital to get the measure through, even with emergency powers. The government paid mothers to have kids — that wasn’t how it was presented to the public, but that’s how it was — and mothers wanted kids to get that money. They didn’t want to be told that the price for receiving government-issue rations and even benefits was having a contraceptive shot that would prevent them from having any more kids for at least two years. In their place, I’d probably have been unhappy too… or maybe I’d have got on my bike and looked for work. If the UN had done something like it on Earth, perhaps the entire system wouldn’t have fallen apart when they lost their ability to hold the Colonies.
“They don’t have a choice,” Muna said, harshly. She’d come with me to brief Frida on our logistics problems, but she seemed to have little sympathy for the protestors. “There are thousands of orphan kids on the streets. Let them adopt them if they want children and bring them up properly. They don’t have to have a kid of their own body.”
Suki gave her a surprised look, but I understood. Muna couldn’t have children herself any longer and, to all intents and purposes, the Legion was her family. She would see the entire issue in terms of costs and benefits and would understand that the more urban children, the greater the strain on the planet’s resources. I agreed with her, but it was a worrying development; so far, we’d avoided yet another outbreak of urban terrorism. This could be the issue that set off another round of bitter fighting.
“I used to think that I’d have twenty kids,” Suki said, finally. “Is that really so bad?”
“Every single kid in a city is a non-productive leech,” Muna said. Her voice was very cold and bitter. “The earliest they can do reasonable amounts of work is fourteen, or thereabouts, and this planet forbids them from working until they’re sixteen. That’s sixteen years of food, drink and resources being drained away, for nothing. It may not get any better after they turn sixteen; they’ve never been taught anything useful, anything that might give them a profession. That leaves them good for nothing, but brute labour, which this planet already has a surplus of.”
Her voice hardened. “And while they’re drinking to forget their sorrows and taking drugs to dull the pain, they’re knocking up girls and starting the whole cycle of hopelessness all over again,” she snapped. “If it isn’t nipped in the bud, it will consume everything until the city collapses in on itself.”
I nodded when Suki looked at me. The same pattern had repeated itself on Earth, where the UN had rewarded being unemployed… and, in any case, unemployment rates had hovered around eighty percent even before John Walker’s coup. The cities had been occupied by gangs of thugs who fought wars amongst themselves and terrorised the local population, while the police had stood by and watched. I had escaped it by the skin of my teeth and countless others hadn’t been so lucky.