Freehold (38 page)

"I'm not aware of any violations, sir. I think I'll have to insist on formal charges," Wayland replied. He sounded a lot meeker, his voice thinner and less sure.

Naumann spoke without looking up. "Pacelli."

"Sir."

"You can provide documentation of Sergeant Wayland's actions?" It wasn't really a question.

"Yes, sir!" she agreed. She was enjoying seeing him nail the jerk. A grin kept trying to cross her face.

Naumann continued to his victim, "I can easily support charges of conduct prejudicial to good order, conduct unbecoming an NCO, abuse of authority for personal gain, provocative speech or actions, sexual harassment . . ." He glanced at Kendra and Jackson. Yes, they'd been jokes, and the Freehold gave much more leeway along those lines, but the intent of them was to establish control. That made them technically actionable. Kendra wondered how he'd heard? Or was he assuming based on available evidence? " . . . Violation of safety regulations in a hazardous environment for your stunts in orbit and your platoon leader's report of your inability to accomplish assigned tasks in a timely manner."

Wayland opened his mouth, but Naumann continued, more loudly, "All of which are utter bullshit charges. Which is no reflection on the charges. It is a reflection on you. I prefer not to smear the unit with that kind of crap, which is why I want your resignation. I don't give a damn about you. You've abused my good graces."

Wayland's eyes were actually damp. Clearly he'd never been called out before. His whole mock-friendly manner and size intimidated people into giving him what he asked for or charmed then into willingly going along with his schemes. "Yes, sir," he whispered. He looked stunned.

Naumann flipped his comm open and said, "Security."

"Yes, Commander Naumann?" came the reply.

"Mister Wayland is to be escorted from the base. All his personal effects and he are to be out the gate by five. And I need an escort for him now."

"Yes, Commander," was the acknowledgment.

There was a pregnant silence for the long seconds until a private from security jogged over. Naumann said, "Escort Mister Wayland to the orderly room to resign. Observe but do not help as he gathers his personal gear and see him out the gate by five. And get him out of that uniform." He didn't bother to wait for acknowledgment.

Finally turning to the others, he said, "Private Jackson."

"Yes, sir!" Jackson snapped. He might be cocky, but Kendra had to admit he was earnest.

"Did you use inappropriate language to an NCO?" He stared levelly at the young man.

"Yes, sir," Jackson admitted.

"You will serve three divs extra duty this week. Since Corporal Pacelli has to cover additional work, you can do whatever grunt labor she has. In future, address complaints through your chain of command."

"Yes, sir," he agreed, obviously relieved.

Naumann continued, "Pacelli."

"Yes, sir?" she asked.

"We do not have another NCO lined up for that slot. You have been doing the NCO's work. I will be asking Warrant Sirkot to move you into that slot. That's an additional pay grade," he said.

"Yes, sir," she acknowledged. That was fast. She was now the number two person in the logistics front office.

"You will not be coming on the search exercise," he said. "I will be sending you to NCOLS. Don't screw up. I need you back here ASAP. We'll borrow a reservist or two for the time being."

"Yes, sir!" she agreed.

"The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war."

—old military proverb

The Freehold Military Forces Noncommissioned Officer Leadership School was known informally as "Tac Tech." Kendra had been surprised to find technical mathematics a prerequisite. She heard talk of "Tactical Calculus" around her unit and it had taken a while to realize it was an actual subject. Not only that, but it was heavily stressed for the entire four weeks of the course.

She caught a commercial flight on a ballistic shuttle. It was quick, jolting from high gees to emgee to maneuvers and landing. She was picked up by the base taxi and taken to billeting. This time, she had an NCO's room to herself, with standard hotel housekeeping service. She handed over the chip with her orders and her military credcard and checked in.

She arrived at class and was grateful to find coffee. Not instant, either. That boded well. Her class had barely ten students and they exchanged assessing looks. There was curiosity about her UN medal and questions for the lone soldier from Special Warfare, who looked far too meek to be a professional killer.

Seconds later, their instructor arrived.

"Communications is the key to modern warfare," Senior Sergeant Instructor Hugh Oleg announced as he strode into the room. "When I say,
'Room, ten shut!'
you all know what I mean. As you were," he said, releasing them from their instantaneous reactive brace. They resumed their seats.

"You'd probably understand it delivered in any language in this environment. If, however, I'd used, say, Russian to order everyone to stand on one foot, it's doubtful you'd understand it in this context."

He handed out three cards. Kendra got the second one. "Turn around and face the back wall," he ordered them. After they did, he said, "Mr. Langston, please stand at the board. You will be advised to draw the images the other students are holding. They will not be able to see your work for feedback. You may not speak. Ms Anderson, please begin."

Corporal Jenny Anderson hesitated only a moment then said, "This image is an equilateral right triangle, with sides at right and below as I look at them. The sides are approximately twelve centimeters long by estimation." Langston easily drew what she described.

It seemed simple enough to Kendra. Oleg was not satisfied. "What about this break in the line?" he asked her.

"I thought that was just a smudge. Sorry, sir."

" 'Sorry' won't save lives. Every detail is important. Mr. Dubois, you're next."

Dubois began, "Langston, the image in front of me is a square constructed of translucent panels. We are going to rearrange them to form the shape of a capital T, sans serif," he said. There were a couple of snickers at the detail. "Place the red triangle at upper right. Immediately to its right, place the yellow triangle, below the corner and with the hypotenuses facing." There were giggles and chuckles at this point, because the instructions were not clear. "To the left place the blue rectangle, horizontal and aligned with the upper edge . . ." He went on and the laughs turned into hysterical guffaws.

After several segs, Oleg halted the proceedings. "Ms Pacelli, let's see if you can unravel this."

She turned her own card over and stared at it. It was the same problem, but the instructions Dubois had given made no sense. Then everything snapped into place. "Langston, ignore all colors. The large triangle goes at upper right, one side horizontal, hypotenuse to the right and underneath. The smaller triangle aligns hypotenuse to hypotenuse and at the right edge to create the right bight of the T's cross. The smaller of the two rectangles aligns with the figure so far and is horizontal to create the left bight . . ."

In seconds she was done and when she turned, Langston had it correct. He had one set of colors for his components, Dubois another and she a third. "Color blindness," she said aloud.

"That's one consideration," Oleg said. "Or the parts may actually be painted different colors from different generations of production. Each culture has its own assumptions regarding color, too. Lack of feedback can be due to either technical problems or because of assumptions that mean the mistake is overlooked until much later . . ."

It was a busy first morning. The afternoon was spent on tactical calculus. " 'It is impossible to predict all factors, but maximum accurate appraisal of the ones available will minimize errors.' That's what the book says. Now let's see where we go." It was fascinating, and there was a definite irony to reducing people to numbers for calculating battles. Kendra bogged down at first, but then caught on suddenly.

Oleg was flashing loads of data across their screens. "General terrain is represented by this algorithm and by entering grid coordinates of features here, their shapes and heights here, you can get a fair assessment of where to place your troops for a given objective. Then, plug in the relative numerical strengths of the units and enter any support weapons known. Now this is important," he paused to drive the point home. "You must
honestly
rate the estimated skill and training of the engaged units. If you lie to yourself about how great you are, you'll get killed that much faster. Too low and your attrition rate can suffer or you may fail the objective by not moving fast enough. Now, desired time to completion goes here . . ."

It did not, Kendra discovered, make command decisions any less complex. It created additional problems of finding the best data possible from all sources. They ran through numerous practice problems. They were reminded that this was simply introductory and that they'd be expected to practice further, with and without a comm, to improve their skills. "Wait until Senior NCO Academy," Oleg promised.

The day was a solid four divs long, eleven Earth hours, she thought, still converting occasionally. Kendra was exhausted, collapsed at once, and was barely conscious in time for the second day. As she sat moping into her coffee, Oleg strode into the room. "Logistics is the key to modern warfare," he said to begin the second lecture.

Communication, logistics, air power, intel, artillery, engineers, forward support, special warfare and other force multipliers. Every day another subject was thrown at them. Every evening, they read books from their required lists, while hyped on stims to improve their comprehension rate. It was a grueling, mind-numbing course and they had little time off even on the weekends. Twenty days of intense cramming was harder on the body than starvation and confinement. Kendra found herself eagerly looking forward to the mandatory exercise times, simply to work the knots out.

It was the second week that all the classes then in session, from first day to graduation, were gathered in the auditorium to hear a guest lecturer on strategy and politics. The lecturer was Naumann. He displayed an amazing breadth of knowledge of history and psychology, and Kendra was impressed by the sheer brilliance of his deductions and connection of such diverse subjects. She recorded and watched with interest as he finalized the talk with a summation of its relevancy to them.

"The basic flaw with the UN system is that it is based not on trust, but on force. Rather than a cooperative peace mission, it is an attempt to impose order from outside.

"Peace at the muzzle of a rifle is not peace, but imperialism and slavery. The UN points to its two hundred and sixty-three engagements as proof that the system is working, when in fact, it proves the opposite. From a military viewpoint, Sun Tzu teaches us that 'Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.'

"So obviously, the resident states of the UN are
not
sufficiently intimidated by the 'Peace' Force. They continue to rebel. The force is insufficient and unwelcome, yet they continue to attempt to impose it on each other.

"For comparison, the Freehold's government is a tiny fraction of a percentage. The residents are more numerous than and equivalently armed to the military. They are the defacto military. Power in a society lies with the military and who it will follow, rules. At any time, the residents could eliminate the government through revolution and demand or create a new one. The fact that they don't indicates a true willingness to make our system work. The basis of the system is maximum individual freedom and mutual trust between governors and governed. The UN is an authoritarian system, assuming ill intentions of all and holding the threat of punitive action as a means of control.

"This is why the UN
cannot
allow the existence of the Freehold. It is inevitable that some individuals will look to us as an example to aspire to or worse and more likely, with jealousy for our benefits. By not preventing it, the UN is giving tacit consent to our existence. Their governed will eventually ask 'why?' and there will not be a good answer the rulers can give. So they will inevitably attempt to destroy us.

"They have made diplomatic gestures of providing us with the 'systems' we lack, such as state-sponsored pensions and education. There is no way of bridging the difference in mindset, of explaining that any government-supported system is by definition government controlled and therefore authoritative and subject to abuse without possibility of objection. They cannot understand our rejection of what they perceive as generous offers.

"Their following offers were based on the assumption that such systems would need to be different, given the distance from Earth. They cannot see that our sociological assumption is that such systems must not be allowed to exist, no matter the real or perceived benefits. They are continuing to attempt to fix what we consider unfixable and have abandoned.

"Then force was applied, first politically and economically. With no restrictions on trade, our economy will—and has—shifted to other areas where necessary. The effect will be minor from a systemic viewpoint. Since there is no effective way for an authoritarian system to control the free market of a foreign power, we will suffer negligibly, while the member nations of the UN will find themselves losing essential luxuries that keep the population in check. We will be blamed for the loss. Once seen as offenders, it will be increasingly easy to use us as a scapegoat for
any
domestic problems, by inference and allegation. Such accusations will have the barest truth to them, but from such are the greatest lies knit.

"Physical force will ensue, probably after several engineered incidents to show us as oppressors of the individual. To an authoritarian, oppression of an individual translates as 'middle class oppressing the poor.' It is axiomatic that the ruling class truly cares for the peasants and is protecting the have-nots from the hated haves. The UN system is composed of 'equal' members, with some having the necessary inevitable privileges of the ruling class. To quote Orwell, 'All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.' " Kendra had not until now been familiar with Orwell. His works, unavailable on Earth, were required reading for this school.