Central Administration Complex, Prime City, Reisenburg, Sector W-7
February 3, 3400
“...and by the duties laid upon me as First Technarch, I call this meeting of the Council to order!”
The mood around the table was somber. The aftermath of the battles at Bannerman and Pendleton were near the front of everyone’s mind. Circumstances demanded a full meeting of the Council to review the Technocracy’s defense policy, and all the leading lights of the Umerian state needed to be on the same page for this, come what may.
Dr. Calvin Lanning, Second for Security, was first to speak. “If no one objects, I’d like to give a brief presentation of recent events, to review the problems we need to address.” There were, naturally, no objections; this had been planned in advance. Dr. O’Connell stood and moved his chair aside to allow the rest of the Council a clear view of the screen behind him; Lanning rose and walked over to the screen. The lights dimmed.
“First and most important, you are all aware of the attack by what Anglian naval intelligence believes to be a Collector Monolith on the Pendleton invasion fleet. None of our units were present to take direct observations, but the Anglians and some of the allied powers have provided us with their own footage; the NenAltKik have been especially forthcoming. Our attachés on the scene vouch for the essential accuracy of its contents, and the damage the Monolith inflicted on the fleet tends to confirm our analysis.”
A new image appeared on the screen, a matte black rectangular prism.
Lines and numbers started flowing across the screen. “For scale, this distance,” he indicated a line on the screen with a pocket laser, “is one kilometer.” There was a sharp intake of breath. “Moreover, even for its extraordinary volume and tonnage, the Monolith proved to have unusual firepower, greatly exceeding that of the combined Coalition fleet.” Brilliant emerald beams lanced away from the Monolith, carving at the shields of the Anglian battlecruisers. A series of brief clips from the battle proceeded in sequence.
“In addition to the Monolith’s attack, native Pendletonian ships were supported by smaller Collector ships in the cruiser and destroyer range- again, the Collectors showed exceptionally high firepower per ton. We learned a lot about their screen elements’ capabilities from a parasite craft attack on the Shepistani contingent, who-” the corner of his mouth twitched- “moved to the rear after the arrival of the Monolith ahead of the task force.” On screen, the battlestars
Baltimore, Annapolis, and Upper Marlboro faced a massed attack by Collector strike craft.
“These are older battlestar models, which means that combining what we got from the Anglians with our own naval intelligence, we have extremely good information on exactly what they’re capable of, which in turn is ideal for working out what the Collectors must have been capable of. The results are... somewhat alarming, but not entirely unexpected. Their light warships, again, somewhat alarming, but not out of line with what we could realistically expect to handle at reasonable odds.”
“What is
far more troublesome is the almost unbelievable firepower and durability exhibited by the Monolith itself. As we see here, the bulk of the Coalition forces, including the six Anglian battlecruisers and numerous cruiser and destroyer-weight units, directed their combined firepower against the Monolith for several minutes... achieving, so far as we can tell,
no lasting effect. It warmed up their shields, and there
might have been some systems damage underneath that we can’t see, especially if the Monolith has highly redundant systems, but there was no substantial drop in the Monolith’s firepower or sensor efficiency during the engagement.”
“Conversely, the Monolith inflicted heavy damage on almost every unit it engaged, however briefly. Had it not dispersed its fire across a large number of relatively agile targets, we feel confident that it would have easily destroyed any single ship in the fleet, possibly in a matter of moments. Even so, it managed to bring down several targets before-” on screen, the Monolith ceased fire and started receding from view- “it abruptly retreated for no readily apparent reason, having mission-killed one of the Anglian battlecruisers and heavily damaged two others, and having totally destroyed or disabled numerous smaller ships.”
“The key conclusion here is that at Pendleton, the Collectors have demonstrated willingness to support the scum of the galaxy, and the firepower to do so with vessels that make any other warship in human space look like a tug by comparison. They showed no compunction about attacking and destroying ships belonging to at least five different nations at once, an act that they could reasonably expect to place them at war with fleets fielding a combined tonnage not seen in action since the Chamarran Wars.”
Dr. Lanning took a deep breath “Before I move on to our recommendations, I’d like to ask if there are any questions.”
At first there was no response. Even those on the Council inexperienced with military affairs knew that this was a potential game-changer. After a few seconds, Dr. Fidanzo, Second for Finance, raised a finger into the air to draw people’s eyes to him. Then he spoke, breaking the silence with confidence. His Standard was slightly accented from his birth community, a group settled on Reisenburg since the days of the New Princeton diaspora, and originally hailing from the American province of New Jersey on old Earth.
“Cal, what are the odds these things will be coming our way? Is there a reason to expect the Collectors to attack us? We’re a long way from their usual territory. And if so, how many of these things are we liable to see? If they only send one or two that’s one thing; if these are their equivalent of battleships and they send half a dozen, we’re in a lot more trouble.”
“My people have consulted extensively with MiniDat and MiniFor to address that question as part of the report. In short, what this implies about the Collectors’ stance is unclear. It is unclear whether they consider themselves to be at war with the Coalition powers, and whether that includes us. It is unclear just how many of these Monoliths they have; estimates range from at least three to, quite possibly, as many as twenty.
“Three is the largest number of confirmed Monolith sightings found in different places at the same time, allowing for transit time and bearing in mind that Collector hyperdrives appear to be slower than the galactic norm outside of the shoals around their core worlds. Twenty is based on the number of unique hull-feature patterns sighted throughout the galaxy. It’s possible that the ships have been modified over the years, in which case there could be less than twenty- possibly only the three I mentioned for all we know. It’s equally possible that there are many more Monoliths lurking deep in their space that have never been sighted.”
Fidanzo grimaced. “So, we don’t know how many of them there are, or what they’re going to do.” He said no more; this meeting was too serious for even him to play contrarian. Gadfly, yes; contrarian, no.
“Exactly.”
From the far end of the table, Dr. Susan Warren-Marshall, Second for Ecology, looked up. As was her habit during meetings, she’d brought a pad of scratch paper and commenced to doodling almost immediately. In almost anyone else, that would be a sign of inattention, but for Warren-Marshall it meant something else entirely. She was the only active esper on the Council, albeit with very limited projective abilities. Doodling was usually a sign that she was using her own specialized abilities, pushing the intelligence-enhancing metacognitive faculties that had made her respected as an intuitionist even in areas well outside her field of specialization. The scribbles were an outlet, a way for her to keep her mind focused on the field in question.
At her end of the table, Dr. Gerber, Third for Research, looked across the table at what she’d been drawing... a series of giant black boxes next to what looked like one of their own dreadnoughts, with question marks over the biggest one.
“I was wondering, what if they have ships bigger than this? I mean, maybe these Monoliths are just their idea of a cruiser or something, and their real battleships are even heavier than that. We wouldn’t really know, would we?”
Dr. Lanning's eyes flashed; that was certainly possible, and it was something no one in MiniSec really enjoyed thinking about. “Good question, Susie. I wish I had a better answer- as a preface to what I’m about to say, we really
can’t rule that out.”
“Even so, we’re... cautiously optimistic that the Collectors have no ships larger than these Monoliths. Design Directorate believes that the sheer tonnage of those things approaches a number of theoretical limits in hyperdrive design, even allowing for the unusual techniques we speculate they use for shoal-space propulsion. To do much better than that they’d need to reach a whole new level of performance in high energy density engineering... in which case their firepower per ton ought to be even higher than it already is. Though that is, of course, speculation on our part, we do not expect to see anything larger than these Monoliths in known space- though it’s conceivable that they have heavier system defense platforms in their own space, much as the NenAltKik home system’s defense monitor outmasses any of their other capital ships by a great margin.”
First Technarch O’Connell stretched, linking his arms behind his head and cracking his knuckles, easing tension around the table by keeping any hint of it from creeping into his mild brogue. “Well, I don't think we need to worry about the Collectors' home system defenses coming after us. What are the study group’s recommendations?”
“For one, looking at the interaction between the Anglian ships’ fire and the Monolith’s shields, we believe that they
can be killed by a sufficient concentration of fleet units.” Most of the Council looked relieved at that- it wasn’t unexpected, but the words broke the spell that had been set by the earlier footage of the battle. “Beyond that, the Collectors appear to have one very significant weakness. From MiniDat’s analysis, their drive designs appear to be
slower in normal space than conventional hyperdrive. Certainly in lanes they have trouble getting a grip.”
“So in shoals they have a major advantage in maneuverability. That was a problem for the invasion fleet at Pendleton, but it won’t affect us. That gives us a speed advantage over them, which makes it easier to concentrate fleet units against them. And given how far we are from their home space, it also means we’ll have plenty of warning- again, they’re slow; they don’t seem to be able to get a grip into the lanes, which hurts them when it comes to strategic maneuverability. We’ll be able to meet force with force.”
“The question, then, is how much. We’re fairly confident of the limits of their shielding, assuming they use the same basic technological palette we do. Trying to do it with beam fire alone, we’d need... something like twenty to twenty-five dreadnoughts.” There was an intake of breath; that was most of the Umerian capital ship force. “In practice it wouldn’t be that bad; the screen elements count for something, especially if the carriers go to Protocol Omega. Factoring in screen, I’d be confident taking a fleet against a lone Monolith, the force we saw at Pendleton, with about half the battle line. Seven battleship divisions at a minimum, preferably eight, or their equivalent in battlecruiser units. We could make do with fewer heavies pulling elements out of the system control groups in the threatened sectors and concentrating them- thickening the screen's torpedo attack in support of the capital ships.”
Dr. Takuulda, Second for Research, cleared her throat with a rumbling sound and began speaking with the hollow accent typical of Phosako speaking a human language. "How will the new ion cannon ships affect this estimate?"
"Favorably. The Mark Fifteen is greatly superior to anything the Coalition fleet had to throw at the Monolith, approaching some of the more massive heavy hitters in known space such as Byzantine warp cannon. We expect it to have significantly greater effect against Monolith-level shielding than the Mark Fourteen on our current ships... but a Monolith's firepower would still allow it to destroy any single capital ship quickly, ion cannon or not. We'd still be looking at the need to concentrate a large task force, but... factoring in screen, I would feel fairly confident engaging one with no more than ten to twelve dreadnoughts of the
Vindicator class, as opposed to fourteen to sixteen ships of the current generation. And that's in part because the performance of the
Vindicators is limited by what their escorts can handle; once upgraded screening elements are available under Phase Two of the Fleet 3410 Initiative, that figure will decline further."
The alien master scientist nodded. "Thank you, Dr. Lanning."
“In any case, ladies and gentlemen, we have the doctrine and the capability; we just need the ops plans to concentrate large fleets on short notice. That’s already underway. The recommendation is that we move the fleet bases, putting more capital divisions in fewer locations, to assist with that. But in essence, we can handle the threat of an individual Monolith without any major changes in doctrine, given advance warning of its approach. Our ships are
designed to engage single heavy targets; we’d just need more of them in place to handle a Monolith than most other threats we’ve considered. One Monolith is roughly equal to a large fleet of capital ships, but they’re a manageable threat, much like enemy fleets. It’s unwise to let the fact that all that firepower is concentrated in a single vessel alarm us unduly.”
“Facing several Monoliths would be... very different. But unless the Collectors have near the higher end of the force estimates we’ve heard, and unless they go after us specifically, we’ll have time to deal with the threat of a general Collector offensive against human space as it comes. A war like that would probably bring in many powers, and we could hope for support from other fleets aiming to stop their fleets before they penetrated to their own space- Tianguo in particular, maybe even Shepistan. Conversely, we’d need to be prepared to fight in Altacar, the Empire, or the League to stop the attack short of our rown borders.”
“We have the plans, but honestly, MiniSec believes that the Collector threat is not a primary concern for the Technocracy at this time. A Collector attack by less than four Monoliths we can handle out of our own resources. A larger one is likely to draw in other powers in our defense, and an attack large enough to overwhelm us even with allied support... well, at that point we’d be looking at the end of civilization as we know it, because-” he grimaced- “if they’re
that powerful even after fighting their way through everything between us and them, they’ll conquer everyone else whatever we do.”
Dr. Rashid Ansary, Second for Simulations, raised a hand. “It sounds like the plans you’re talking about all involve our neighbors. What about fighting them further to rimward, closer to their own space?”
“In that case we’d be looking at fleet-sized long range expeditionary forces. A lot of powers have that capability- just look at how the Centralists managed to move such a big chunk of their fleet into position out Pendleton way. We... well, we could do it, but it would involve large-scale conscription among the merchant marine. We just don’t have the organic long range logistics to support formations big enough for Monolith-busting beyond the territory of our immediate neighbors. With an ally at the end of the route it would probably be possible, but we’d have to make a very serious commitment well ahead of time to set it up. Still, something to look at, and we do have teams considering it.”
“On top of that, we also recommend that we try to learn as much about the Collectors and their habits as possible, to assess how exactly how likely an attack is, what form it might take, and what the capabilities backing it up are. That’s mostly going to be a MiniDat operation, and Qiao has plans for that, but that’s a subject for another meeting. There are other significant issues to consider here, which I would also like to address.”
“Probably the most urgent of those issues is related to Shepistan.”
Down at the far end of the table, the Second for Ecology’s face started twitching. It always did; Dr. Warren-Marshall had reasons of her own to be furious with the nation of her birth.
“Granted this isn’t exactly a new problem, but my people have been looking at the combat footage from Pendleton, and it’s sobering watching them in action. The Anglians were very cooperative, so we have quite a bit of footage and copies of the after-action reports. We even managed to decrypt a lot of the Shepistani transmissions: the encryption hardware on the older battlestars is sub-par, and it looks like the Shepistani commander picked an easily guessable encryption key- practically the equivalent of setting your password to “password.”
“To summarize: After the Monolith withdrew, the Shepistani battlestars broke formation and launched small craft to the planetary surface, apparently to extract some kind of agent. During the launch phase they also fired railgun strikes from orbit to support the agent. Their Vipers flew close air support for some time, then a dropship arrived to pick them up... at which point the Pendletonians must have got mixed up and lobbed some SAMs at the shuttle. The Shepistanis replied with nuclear carpet bombing of the general area the SAMs were fired from, launching something like four to five hundred megatons into an area of roughly a hundred thousand square kilometers.” The Council collectively hissed.
The Third for Research leaned over again to see what Susie was scribbling. The doodles had turned violent- a stick figure being bludgeoned with one of its own severed limbs, dinosaurs that he supposed were supposed to be kipakt marines from the Union of Four Stars tearing into a fairly good rendition of a Freedom Prime-class killbot, with missile launchers... he worried about her sometimes. But Cal was still talking.
“In any case, MiniDat has provided us with decrypts of the Shepistani transmissions picked up during the battle. Audio only... but the audio is sobering enough.” Dr. Lanning cut in the room’s sound system.
“
Annapolis this is Cheney actual. Meeting light AA fire, over.”
“Copy that, Cheney, vectoring in two fighters to provide cover fire. Over.”
“Thanks mang, over.”
Lanning interrupted. “Now we switch to the fighters’ internal communications; again, we would
not normally be able to decrypt this, but we got lucky.”
There was a shrill scream of delight from a female pilot, then a low-pitched shuddering hum, probably the Vipers firing bursts of gunfire.
A male pilot laughed. “Damn we’re good. There’s another triple-A battery on top of that church.”
“Fapollo, quit jerking off, I see one on top of that daycare center.” That was the female pilot. She sounded... bubbly. Not cheerful-bubbly either; foaming at the mouth bubbly.
“Let’s split off and blow both up!” The female pilot giggled maniacally. Over the radio her gunfire could be heard again, and the giggles rose to berserk laughter. A calmer voice (not that that was hard) interrupted them.
“Starfuck, Fapollo, proceed to the following coordinates to provide aerospace support to withdrawing ground elements.”
“
WHAT ground elements?!”
“The Elements Yosemite, mang!”
“Oh, right.” She sounded indifferent to the actual mission... more interested in shooting up daycare centers?
“I can’t believe you forgot. That’s what you were sent down here for.”
“Cram it, Gayeta, before I rape you with my dick!” That was, unbelievably,
still the madwoman. Her wingman cut in.
“Man, I feel so jealous.”
“Of who?”
“I don’t know!”
The controller broke in again. “Cut the chatter. Tight doesn’t want you filling the airwaves with obscenities and screams, damn it.” He had a point.
The female lead pilot screamed back. “Tell Tightwad to shove a cork in his bottle!”
There was silence for a minute.
“Starfuck, Fapollo, continue providing aerospace support to Element Yosemite. Be advised, danger-close nuke strike incoming.”
“WHAT?! They want us to give CAS while they nuke the goddamn place? Fucking fuck! YOU BUNCH OF FUCKERRS!”
“Goddamn it, suck it up and do your goddamn job you filthy whore!” Lanning cut the recording for a moment, narrating.
“At this point, Anglian sensors report that the Shepistanis initiated a fifty kiloton airburst over a refugee column fleeing the city of Dogadishu along one of the city’s main highways. Past that point we don’t have much in the way of visuals, but we do still have audio. Their agent on the ground said something, broadcasting in the clear- though with the EM clutter from the nuclear strikes, it was very hard to make out his voice. Even with the best signal processing Qiao's people could do on the data, there's still enough distortion that we're sure we're not getting an accurate voice-print. A pity, but there's nothing for it. In any case:
The agent’s voice was distorted into a deep inhuman growl, odd in some indefinable way, but with obvious horror and anguish. “That McNamara’s! Sniper fire coming from it! Request immediate air support! NOW!”
“What the fuck! Is this Element Yosemite? There’s no fucking sniper fire or shit from that goddamn place! Get your eyes checked! Better yet, try some crystal meth! Starfuck, over.” Most of those around the table blinked incredulously.
Crystal meth? Granted the woman was a maniac, and granted the Sheppos made much heavier use of combat drugs than almost anyone else in known space, but...
methamphetamines? Most countries at least
tried to pick combat stims that wouldn’t cause devastating addictions and side effects.
“NO!” The agent roared, desperate with grief that was clear even over the distortion of the radio. “DESTROY THAT MCNAMARA’S!!”
Lanning cut in again. “By this point, of course, the Shepistani bombardment had already incinerated or flattened about half the city. There was a pause, and then the ground agent placed another call for fire support. The response to this one was... particularly damning, I have to say.” He waved his hand; the computer fast-forwarded the recording to a preset point.
The male pilot, the wingman, was first to speak. “Starfuck, that building looks like it’s got a SAM battery on it!”
“Which building? The Pendleton Widows and Orphans building? I see it, moving to engage!”
“Wait, what orphanage? There’s an orphanage?! Fuck you, Starfuck, that’s mine!” Faces around the table were shocked... but the Sheppo pilots' descent into mad, blood-crazed butchery had just begun. The Second for Ecology’s eyes were closed. She could guess what was coming next; she knew the pattern.
The female pilot responded to her wingman. “Up your worn out ass, Fapollo! You shot down the Shroomlympic Carrier without me! I had to settle for just shooting the ones who got out on parachutes!”
“Well, you fucked up that daycare center! It didn’t even have any triple-A’s on it!”
She was screaming again. “I saw a goddamn gun on the building you little sniveling daddy’s bitchboy son of a bitch! I saw it with my own two eyes! THE METH DON’T LIE!”
“But it’s my turn!” He was whining...
begging for the chance to strafe and bomb an orphanage. “You even shot that ambulance! I wanted to shoot the ambulance! and the firetruck! And you set the whole field hospital on fire!”
Now the flight lead’s screams had turned to berserk laughter. “That’s because you can’t keep it hard enough long enough! HAHAAHAH!”
The wingman just kept screaming “WHORE!” into the radio over and over... the transmission ended. Lanning’s voice, still level and dry despite what they’d just heard, broke the shocked silence.
“At this point, there was an exchange between Commander Hushy, in charge of the Shepistani task force, and the pilots on the ground. It was... of a piece with what you’ve just heard, though Hushy at least
sounded less like an escaped mental patient. The orbiting ships engaged with a salvo of solid shot, vaporizing the Pendleton Widows and Orphans building and leaving a crater at least a hundred meters deep.”
“Shortly thereafter, the Sheppoes landed a dropship and dusted off in short order, presumably having picked up their man. The Pendletonian defenses in the area were badly disrupted by the massed nuclear attack on and around Dogadishu, totaling at least 100 to 150 kilotons by this point, probably more. The defenders lit the shuttle up with fire control radars; a few man-portable AA missiles were launched by outlying sites, probably confused ones who had lost contact with central control. Going by what the Anglians pieced together in the post-battle analysis, we estimate that they had roughly a 0.2% chance of engaging the shuttle successfully, though the heavier vehicle-mounted missiles could have done better. “
“The Shepistanis, in turn, retaliated with nuclear area bombing averaging roughly four kilotons per square kilometer of the entire area within about 150 kilometers of the drop point. While major urban areas aside from Dogadishu were not specifically targeted, the combination of fallout and fires started by the blasts left roughly three million dead by our last report. This total is expected to rise to roughly five or six million within the next two months.”
Dr. Lanning looked very somber, and the burden of his role at the head of the Technocracy’s defense forces loomed behind him like a crushing weight. “It is at times like this that I fully appreciate the reason why our nation has been spending an average of three percent of annual GDP on the construction of deep planetary bomb shelters for the past six centuries.” He shook his head.
“This incident, so far as we can determine, represents an unusual breakdown of combat discipline even by Shepistani standards, but the bombardment plan was very much as per doctrine for them. In light of that, the Ministry of Security formally recommends a full round of civil defense drills some time in the next few months. We have the plans, we’ve passed out the instructions and updated them regularly, we’ve maintained the shelters... but it’s been too long since we last actually did a dry run of the evacuation plan.”
The Second Technarchs for Finance and Industry winced as one, then looked at each other. Fidanzo nodded to his opposite number across the table, Dr. James Borrego, who spoke. “Ah, that would involve effectively shutting down the national economy during the drills. Key industries follow regs well, so I don’t think the hit will be
too bad, but... you’re not proposing a no-warning drill?”
“How much warning would we have in the event of a Shepistani surprise attack?”
“From when they crossed the border? ...I see what you mean.”
Dr. Lanning smiled grimly. “I didn’t mean it that way. I think we could expect at least a few weeks’ warning that an attack was imminent, if nothing else from our good friends at the Shepistani Desk alerting us to fleet concentrations on the border. On the other hand, part of the point would be to test our readiness and see who needs to be better prepared. We recommend that the drills be preceded by nothing more than routine public service announcements reminding people to stay updated on their evacuation plans. We’ll learn more that way.”
The Second for Finance looked uncertain. “Calvin, you’re talking about one hell of an expensive experiment here. The lost productivity is going to be up... well, there are a lot of factors, but I’d guess around a hundred terastarbucks.”
“I know. But look at what you just saw, what you just
heard, and tell me we can afford
not to keep up readiness. Besides, the Sheppoes aren’t our only problem- that would make life too easy. We can revisit the civil defense drill proposal later, but I want to discuss the Volksland annexation. I’ll defer to Maxim for the opening statement.”
Dr. Maxim Chernov, Second for Foreign Affairs, stood and walked to the head of the table. The presentation screen, which had faded to black, came alive again. “The Prussians blame Volksland for the recent round of terrorist attacks on Königstadt; they’re calling them “Black Sunday.” In retaliation, they jumped in with something like a third of their total capital ship strength in a surprise attack- one star system.” An order of battle appeared; the Volkslanders were badly outnumbered, and each of their few tiny ships was paired off against a Prussian vessel of far greater tonnage.
“The League blew through the system defenses in about ten minutes, and started bombing from orbit. Our casualty estimates for the capital city alone are in the hundreds of thousands, possibly into the millions: the city was almost entirely leveled by the bombardment:”
“This treatment was repeated at a number of other sites around the planet; the League showed a... I can only call it homicidal indifference to civilian casualties, of a sort we rarely see in the Spinward Expanse except from Shepistan. Extremely liberal use of high-energy weapons in the opening bombardment, attacks that caused collateral damage on a scale so large that MiniSec feels sure they were deliberate...” He sighed.
“That was only the beginning. Volksland-B rebelled in favor of the League without being attacked; the Prussians moved in very quickly to “restore order” on both planets. The League military set up a provisional government to oversee distribution of aid supplies.”
“Shortly after we received word of the invasion, I composed a note to Neu Preussen, checked it with Mike, and sent it off. No one’s going to miss Volksland’s old government very much, even given the massively destructive way the Prussians removed it from power. But the system lies within a few light-years of the edge of the Grand Coreward Trunk. In Volkslander hands its position was irrelevant; in the League’s hands it would be ideally placed to interdict commerce along the Trunk. So we needed to know- was this a punitive expedition, a regime change operation, or a war of annexation? Do they plan to put naval bases there, to patrol the surrounding space? I thought we’d need to know. Basically just asking for clarification, you see.” Dr. Chernov smiled sadly.
“The reply came back very quickly, suggesting minimal turnaround time for consideration on New Preussen. The Government assured us that this was a purely isolated incident, that they had no general aggressive aims, and that Volksland was not to be annexed. Five days later, we got word that the Reichstag had voted to annex Volksland.”
“So I sent off a second note, asking again for clarification. Gottlieb’s reply was... well, deliberately ingratiating, I think.” The screen flashed the first portion of the text of the note:
You must understand, Chernov, that the Prussian Star League promises, deeply, hand-on-heart, to respect the neutrality of the Grand Trunk. As you can see, the Reichstag is not likely to annex or colonise any more territories in the Grand Trunk Region. This policy will remain stable, as a simple matter of necessity, as if we do not, it is likely that we will come under attack...
Again, I must inform you - the League swears solemnly never again to intervene in Sector T-10, and most definitely not in the Grand Coreward Trunk. I assure you that this is a stable solution to the incident, and that we will never annex a territory in the vicinity of the Grand Coreward Trunk again, and that we will uphold its neutrality.
”This would reassure me more if I were more confident of the Reichstag’s grip on the strategic realities. As it stands, we have no idea what gambles they might be driven to take next,, and we can hardly assume that Herr Gottlieb speaks for the Reichstag in light of recent events. Indeed, our analysts are unsure who, if anyone, does.”
“This is a bit worrying if we are to carry on further communications. We can deal with a democratic government, but it’s hard to be sure
how to deal with them if we can’t find anyone with the power to make binding agreements.” He smiled broadly. “Nancy here-” he gestured in the direction of his immediate subordinate, the Third for Foreign Affairs, “came up with the idea of beaming our next note in a broadcast to the entire star system, headed ‘to whom it may concern.’” There was a chuckle around the table.
“Of course that would be impractical, but it’s certainly tempting. We’re still not sure who in their government is competent to give us assurances we can take at face value; if their foreign secretary isn’t, it’s quite possible that no one is. Which places us in the difficult position of having to reconsider any other assurances they may give us on that basis- one of my staffers put it rather memorably, promises from Foreign Secretary Gottlieb are now shown to be written in the wind.”
“Combine that with the remaining text of his note, the middle paragraph, and our projections of Prussians’ intentions are cast in a very different light...” Another block of text appeared on the screen.
It is simply that the people of Volksland are facing a humanitarian crisis, and we simply cannot help them that much if we do not annex them. There are also the matters of de-fascistification of Volksland, which is looking to be hard if we do not engender a sense of 'Prussianism' in the population, which will be rather hard without annexing them. And then there are the potential security ramifcations - suppose fascists take power in Volksland again? This is a risk we can not afford, so for the moment, Volksland will become Prussian.
The Second for Ecology’s eyes snapped open. She laid down her pen, which had been tracing small circles on the paper before her. “The Volksland annexation is unsettling. Almost like they had this planned way in advance...”
Dr. Lanning looked a question at her. “You mean, as in they had an invasion plan? That’s fairly normal.” He gave her some breathing room, then. Once in a while the Second for Ecology would come up with something truly useful- not an oracle, but at least a more reliable guide to the truth than chance would indicate.
“No. I mean like they had a plan for the occupation. In detail. Does anyone know if they’ve already started new construction, renaming landmarks, things like that? Are they already trying to... assimilate the system?”
Dr. Qiao Tian, Second for Data Collection, cleared her throat. “Actually... we just got word from an agent today that they’ve settled on a new name for the
whole system. They’re calling it “Neu Lothringen.”
A chill passed round the table. Again, no one would miss the old Volksland government and its ideology of
Führerprinzip, but the sheer speed with which the Prussians were moving to “Prussianize” their new conquest was astounding. Even granting that the Volkslanders had been a Prussian offshoot to begin with, some splinter party in the distant past drawn from the same basic cultural template of old Earth’s Germany, this was a very rapid campaign of annexation. And so the Technarchs found themselves asking: who else do they have this kind of lightning war planned for? Who else are they ready to overrun at a moment’s notice? What happens if they try to direct the same crushing surprise attack that took down Volksland at our own border?
Dr. Lanning broke the silence. “Ladies and gentlemen, I think it’s fair to say that those are the three greatest strategic problems we face at this time. The sudden revelation of the Collector threat, to spinward, the Shepistani threat, and to rimward, the massive question mark of the Star League’s intentions for the future. Particularly the last two of those issues.”
“Dr. O’Connell, I propose that we break for lunch and resume our discussion of this afterwards.”
The Umerian head of state ran a hand through thick, short-cropped silvery hair and nodded. “Yes. After lunch.”