Martial Law 1: Patriotic Treason (44 page)

“Devastator is certainly capable of destroying the city,” Shalenko said, dispassionately. I wanted to scream at him to stop, but it would only have destroyed my career for nothing. “I do not understand, however, why you require Devastator. Any cruiser or even a gunboat could destroy a whole city.”

“Devastator has something of a reputation on Heinlein,” the grey man said. “Besides, there are other considerations. The use of nuclear weapons is strongly prohibited on a planet’s surface without direct orders from the General Assembly and other starships might have problems overriding the safety systems built into their missiles. A monitor is designed for planetary bombardment.”

He stood up. “I trust that no one has any questions?” He asked. I was too stunned to speak. “You are cleared to depart Sol this evening and return as soon as you have completed your mission.”

“Thank you, sir,” Shalenko said. The grey man swept out of the hatch, which hissed closed behind him. “As Commodore, I will be commander of the mission. The George Robertson will provide our forward escort and scout, while the Jacques Delors will bring up the rear. We can expect the Heinlein Resistance to go all-out to stop us if they suspect our purpose, so we will maintain strict silence on our goals until we enter Heinlein orbit.”

“I protest,” Hardwick said. “I’m sure that none of my crew have links to Heinlein.”

“I merely wish to prevent any leaks before we have completed the mission,” Shalenko said. His words were so calm and composed that I almost forgot the horror lurking behind them. We were going to butcher the population of an entire city. We were going to slaughter hundreds of thousands of innocents who had done nothing to deserve to die. We were even going to be killing UN Infantry who were trying to secure the city. I would have bet good money that they wouldn’t be warned in advance. “We will depart at 2200 precisely. Dismissed!”

He held up a hand as we turned to leave. “John, I want a word with you,” he added, before I could escape. “Remain behind.”

“I should be here too,” Deborah protested. “My orders clearly state…”

“And my orders clearly state that I am in complete control of every aspect of this mission,” Shalenko barked, so loudly that Deborah jumped. “My First Lieutenant will escort you to the mess, where you may eat if you wish, or to the airlock if you wish to return to the Jacques Delors ahead of its Captain. Leave.”

Deborah threw him a glance that could have killed and stalked out, head held high. I doubted that she’d gone very far – she was probably lurking outside the hatch, waiting for me and trying to listen through the solid metal – but at least she was gone.

“Political officers are always such a bore,” Shalenko commented, when we were alone together. I remembered the rumours that he and his political officer were lovers, but I didn’t believe them. The thought of Ellen Nakamura having anything to do with love…the mind couldn’t stand it. “I imagine that you have concerns, John?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, grimly. “We’re considering mass murder!”

“We’ve done more that consider it,” Shalenko said. “I checked that man’s credentials very carefully. He’s not just a messenger boy, John, but someone with very strong links right to the top. The message he passed on might have been signed by the General Assembly, but everyone who’s anyone in power agreed to it first. They knew the risks and accepted them for everyone else.”

I stared at him. “But, sir…”

He held up a hand. “There’s no more time, John,” he said. There was a finality in his tone that quelled protests more than even a royal chewing-out. “I prevented you from throwing your career away over this before, but this situation is different. The UN itself is in desperate waters and needs time to recover before the war is truly lost. I believe that there were even groups calling for nothing less than the complete eradication of Heinlein…and not a few other planets into the bargain.”

His eyes bored into mine. “If you insist on protesting this decision, I won’t be able to protect you any longer,” he added. “No one, not even Admiral Rutherford himself, will be able to prevent you from being summarily tried, convicted, stripped of rank and executed. They’re desperate, John. If you protest, you’ll lose everything and it will happen anyway!”

I looked at him. “Do they deserve it?”

“Does anyone?” Shalenko asked. “All I know is that if something doesn’t happen to break the logjam soon, the entire United Nations will come crashing down. The good we do will vanish along with the bad. The colonies will rebuild and seek to wage war on Earth, or maybe even on each other. The rule of law will be completely destroyed. We need to end the war on terms we can accept, or we all lose.”

I wanted to protest anyway, but he was right. I had to remain silent and wait for the right time to move. I wanted to move now, but we weren't ready. A failure, with so many ships left untouched, would mean our swift annihilation. We needed more time. That time would be bought at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives.

“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.

-Thomas Anderson. An Unbiased Look at the UNPF. Baen Historical Press, 2500.

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.

And none of it had mattered. The rich had paid vast bribes to be left alone, or had integrated themselves into the developing society. The poor had found that their cities were crumbling away anyway, no matter how much they were told that their lives had improved. And the bureaucrats? They’d discovered that under the system they had created, however accidentally, they had more power than they had ever dreamed possible. Something had to break.

I silently toasted Heinlein with my wine glass. Deborah smiled. She thought I was toasting her.

An hour before we entered the Heinlein System, I ordered the Jacques Delors to yellow alert and inspected every inch of the starship, again. If the UN was ready to tell us that the situation was so bad, the odds were that it was actually much worse. I’d already had drills running throughout the trip, but now I ran through a final set of drills and then ordered everyone to get something to eat. We might be emerging into the midst of a battlefield.