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Strategos (A Great Captain Roberts Tale!!)
Chapter 18 - Spit on our hands[]
"Governments often…
…do reprehensible things, Amanda." Larry explained. "Pretty much all of them do, some are more open than others about it, but when you get that much power concentrated. It attracts a certain sort of person, and those sorts of people devise projects like this."
He was reviewing the notes from the bunker with her.
"All governments?"
"Someday, I'll tell you about the time in my grandfather's day, when the First Prince authorized them to brainwash a little boy into being the heir to the Free Worlds League." he looked up, "It started a war, and probably the collapse of the Federated Commonwealth Alliance for real. Kicked off a civil war right in the middle of an invasion, but that wasn't the intention-it was the natural consequences."
"The intention here was evil." She asserted.
"No doubt, but to somebody in the Star League bureaucracy. It was either seen as a long-term good, or as a lesser evil-because even the real monsters out there think they're right, think what they're doing is, if not good, then less bad than the alternative." He turned to face her with the display on 'pause'. "Whoever set this up told themselves it was for the colonists own good…and believed it was also good for the Star League to be doing it."
"WHy hide it then?"
"Because they knew people like you exist." He said, "I wasn't JUST cashiered, Amanda. Technically the Armed Forces of the Federated Suns was right to kick me out, would've even been right to imprison me for what I said and did. If we'd gotten away with it, the Suns would've been at war the next day."
"With who?"
"The Republic of the Sphere." He stated. "I wouldn't turn a blind eye, so I had to go. The evidence I gathered was used against me, they let me resign before I could be court-martialed."
"It burned you up."
He nodded. "It did. In a way, you saved me in more ways than you know…now, this? This is data, sure, the results mean this world's going to be an easy one for the Snow Ravens to swallow up-the locals aren't going to resist their social engineering because they're already prepped to accept it. Round peg, round hole…but we shouldn't leave the data here, because that might encourage them to do it again to someone else."
"But?"
"But doing that means you're making choices for other people you don't have a right to make." he said, "that's why you had me come down from the ship and have a look, aside from Giles you haven't shown anyone else, have you?"
"No."
"Not even the locals?"
She shook her head.
"Do they have a right to know what was done to them?" he asked, "that's the first question, the second question, is what knowing will do to them. That's why you asked me to have a look, isn't it?"
"Your ideals are in conflict, what does logic suggest?" he asked her. "We know what the law is, and it's silent on this, so what's going to get the best return on your effort? What will accomplish the goals in YOUR mind?"
"All of us are free, or none are free, there can be no exception to this." she said.
"Freedom is risky, Amanda. Are you sure?"
"No."
"Then you'll make the best choice you can. This isn't going to start a war, but it also doesn't help these people to know what some agency was doing to them three centuries ago. You know what WILL help?"
She shook her head.
"The surveillance nets they set up, thank Terran Hegemony tech, they're still intact, and most of the systems work. That's the basis of a civil defense grid. The garrison can use this to protect them from criminals, especially if it's linked to a larger defense net."
"So…pass it up the chain?"
"If I'd done it, I would probably have made Admiral by now." He agreed. "I didn't, so they gave me the option of resigning my commission or being convicted in a tribunal for treason."
The signal from…
…Johnson arrived at Base Echo just in time for her bath. Basileus Cameron reviewed the announcement after finishing her bathing.
"It's a trap." Lord Commodore Halford said, "It's an obvious trap."
"Indeed it is. Winston's people were maintaining the harvest world of Johnson." she noted, and spared a glance at the second and third heads on her bookshelf. "What kind of assets are lost if we don't respond?"
"Some of the better labor drafts come from there. Around five percent of the grain stocks, and a strategic position for harvesting in the region." he said, "Which can have longer term impacts, especially with your longer term plans."
"So we can afford to lose the Johnson site, but we need to make at least a cosmetic play to keep it." she judged.
"That would be my assessment. What do you have in mind?"
"We can't risk losing our anchors in the Outworlds, not yet." She said, "Last time, during my grandfather's reign, we withdrew to avoid confronting the Federated Suns. This time it's not the Federated Suns or a Davion puppet state. it's a growing local power-we can handle one of those if we're careful about it."
She sighed, and frowned. "Open conscription on Bannerhoft, and start activating our mothballed equipment on the remaining anchor-worlds, send Bart Inslee with the Lynnwood and a battalion to retake Johnson and turn that 'trap' into a burial mound. Tell Seth Winston to start mobilizing to retake Tresspass and Joan's post. We're going to nee to make a show of force, to stop these incursions."
"What's the over-all strategy?" Halford felt dread.
"Diplomacy. We're going to force them to the table for talks. We have two hundred years worth of preparing for this and we should have gone in when the Ministry was divided. But Mother was too…cautious. Activate the reserves and begin drills and planning. Dismissed."