Here we stand, p.62
Support this site by clicking ads, thank you!

Here We Stand, page 62

 

Here We Stand
Select Voice:
Brian (uk)
Emma (uk)  
Amy (uk)
Eric (us)
Ivy (us)
Joey (us)
Salli (us)  
Justin (us)
Jennifer (us)  
Kimberly (us)  
Kendra (us)
Russell (au)
Nicole (au)


Larger Font   Reset Font Size   Smaller Font  

  Marty climbed back into the tanker without a word, restored to his normal polite self. It wasn’t the time to argue with Liam about pouring petrol on a house fire.

  “Go ahead,” Chris said. “Sol, open up, please.”

  “Certainly,” Solomon said. “I have some thoughts about today’s procedures, but I’ll save them for later.”

  “Very wise,” Chris said. “I’m not in a teachable moment right now.”

  He hated coming down off these aggressive highs. It was like falling down a lift shaft and lying twitching at the bottom. He’d come to a dead stop but it went on hurting.

  Trinder jogged up to him. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Punch in the face. Wounded pride.”

  “Been there.”

  “What happened? We kind of skipped the please disperse or else stage and went straight to you’re busted.”

  “Three different groups airing their grievances with each other, plus guns, equals clusterfuck. But nobody died. Could have been worse”

  “And now we’ve got to live with them.”

  “I’m not expecting any dinner invites.”

  “Which is why I said to stay out of it.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “What do we do with them now? We haven’t got a legal system, lawyers, courts, or even a jail. And I’m not marching into Kill Line to make farmers hand over food.”

  “We’re putting the miscreants in the gym until the medics have checked them over and they calm down,” Trinder said, looking dejected. “Or at least the guys who weren’t involved are, because it’ll just start up again if any of us go in there.”

  “This is where the difficult stuff starts.”

  “Marc thinks we should withdraw firearms from everyone who took part in it today, even if they didn’t get pissy and violent.”

  “Agreed. Y’know, I told Matt I’d bust myself down to private and hand over to Jared if I got the policy wrong. And I did.”

  “You didn’t get it wrong, Chris. They’re just not ready for that level of discipline and they’re still thinking like civvies. Conscious incompetence probably saved a few lives, to be honest.”

  Marc showed up looking like nothing had happened, except for a few marks on his face.

  “No wash-up today,” he said. “Ingram thinks we all need to go to our rooms and think very hard about what we’ve done. Then we can meet tomorrow, a day older and wiser, and watch Solomon’s replay like a football team that had its arse handed to it.”

  Chris felt his temper start to get the better of him. “Are you saying we’re suspended from duty? Seriously?”

  “No, nothing like that.” Marc did his exasperated look. “She said we should literally write off today and come back with clearer heads, her included.”

  “My head’s pretty clear right now, thanks.”

  “Okay, call it time to come up with a better idea to stop it happening again. Luce has secured the firearms and Alex is going to send everyone home later and ask Sol to make sure they don’t leave their homes until the morning.”

  “That’s what we philosophers call a curfew, Marc. Sol will have to call us to enforce it.”

  “It all depends on your tone and how you suggest it to them.”

  “This is what happens when you don’t have rules that everyone understands and agrees to follow,” Trinder said. “The guy who can punch the hardest always takes charge. That’s never going to change.”

  “We’ve got to stop you reading those books, Dan.” Marc took a small packet from his vest and handed it to Chris. “Tev says you’ll feel better if you have this. Anyway, as long as you two are okay, I’ve going to slope off and have a beer with him and stay out of Boadicea’s way for a while.”

  “Had a row?” Trinder asked.

  “Not really. But you’re right. Rules. Most people here don’t know what’s expected of them beyond their daily jobs. We’re civvies who think we’re still in uniform and the civvies don’t know when they’re supposed to be militia and what that entails. Or that they don’t get their own way just because they’re experts in Applied Whateverology. See you later, lads.”

  Chris examined the packet Tev had sent him. He knew what the ashy powder was and he felt like braving it again. “If we’re officially goofing off while the uninvolved pick up the pieces, I’m going home,” he said. “But the patrols stay in place until we know things have settled down.”

  “I’m keeping an eye on the situation, Chris,” Solomon said. “I haven’t interfered with any decisions today, but I will intervene if I need to.”

  “They won’t like that any better.”

  “I don’t care. And please put some ice on that bruise, Chris.”

  Chris made himself walk away. He should have been sorting things out with his guys, but maybe Ingram had a point. Until they came up with a plan for dealing with disputes in the longer term, all anyone could do was patch up injuries and keep all the hotheads apart. It was another one of those situations where he could see the other side’s point of view but he wasn’t going to change his position because of it. The boffins felt that they didn’t have a say in anything — true, and also true under Erskine’s regime — and when he tried to imagine how he’d react if the transit camp personnel had been the ones in cryo, he knew he’d have felt just as strongly. He got their anger about Fiji and how they didn’t believe nobody had planned to give Britain exclusive access to teerik FTL. He’d probably have thought the same.

  He’d have made a better job of holding the base to ransom, though. These bougie types had no idea how to revolt. But he had to give that Lundahl guy points for having the balls to hit him.

  He took a shower and flopped onto the sofa, still too wired to think about anything else but the botched protest. Yeah, the rules were the problem — riot control and public order in the SDF were relatively straightforward, us and them, and the only outcomes were break it up or get broken up yourself. Now he had to take account of factions within groups and people who saw themselves as civvies expecting people who saw themselves as troops to treat them with kid gloves because those had been the rules in some but not all countries on Earth. It held him back. If he’d been his old self, he’d have moved Ingram out of the way and got the place cleared, but he’d tried to be diplomatic with her. Next time — because there was bound to be one — he probably needed to hang back and see what she did without the hired muscle.

  “I’m not even hired,” he muttered, and went into the kitchen to try mixing the kava powder the way he’d seen Tev do it. It didn’t look any more appetising. He gulped down half a glass like it was a hangover cure and went back to the sofa. But it took him the rest of the glass and some of a second one to start to feel more relaxed.

  He thought about the night in the transit camp bar when he and Jared had sat drinking with Marc, Tev, and Trinder, discussing what their military role would be on Opis when they woke up in forty-five years’ time and had to fit into a Nomad run by a second and even third generation of Opis-born humans who had their own way of doing things. They’d have a role more like cops, not soldiers, they decided. Now he knew they had to be both. He didn’t like the idea. But he was blissfully sleepy now and he couldn’t keep his eyes open.

  “Chris? Are you okay?” Ash was leaning over him, looking worried. She zeroed in on his jaw and touched it gingerly. “Who hit you? Have you seen a doctor?”

  Chris managed to sit up and check the time on the wall. He’d been asleep for a couple of hours.

  “Wow, sorry, I nodded off.” He reached for his screen on the coffee table and checked for urgent messages, although he was sure Sol or someone else would have come around to wake him if anything serious had happened. “It was Frank the nuke guy for some reason. Don’t worry, I got him back. My manly honour’s intact.”

  Ash shook her head and started fussing. Chris secretly liked that. He let her put some ointment on the bruise while she grumbled about what she was going to do to Frank with her giant wrench for laying hands on her beloved.

  “Don’t worry, you’re still pretty,” she said. “Does it hurt?”

  “Yes. Is it all quiet out there?”

  “Yeah, like a western when the street’s deserted before the gunslingers show up.” She picked up the glass of kava from the table and wrinkled her nose. “What’s this? Are you actually drinking this stuff? It looks like the contents of the drain I was inspecting this morning.”

  “Kava. Fijian feel-good powder.” Chris braced himself to take another gulp. “A present from Tev.”

  “Okay, rumours are going around. I need to hear it from you. Why didn’t Ingram kick Paul Cotton and his hench-boffins up the arse right away? It’s not like her to go soft.”

  Chris thought about it and the comment Ingram had made to Paul. He wasn’t sure how Ash would take a criticism of her CO, but he wanted to answer the question, if only to hear her tell him if he was wrong about Ingram.

  “She wasn’t being soft at all,” he said. “She was being devious. It’s her technique.”

  “What is?”

  “She manoeuvres others to do the dirty work she wants done so she can step in as the voice of reason and use them as the bogeymen to scare folks into line. ‘I’ll try to keep the attack dogs off you, so do what I ask.’ I’ve seen her do it before. She admitted it to Marc.”

  Ash shrugged. “I’ve never seen that side of her, but then I’ve never been head to head with her like you have.”

  “I can’t have this conversation with Marc.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m not saying she’s a bad CO, I’m just saying I’m pissed at her for using me. She treats us as weapons to be deployed. Okay, we are, but not like that.”

  “But you did your own thing anyway. Which was the right response, by the way.”

  “She wanted the Ainatio guys scared shitless and she knew we’d do it. Like terminating Gan-Pamas. She didn’t want to be seen to make that decision and left it to us.”

  Ash dabbed at his bruise again. “But now you know that, you won’t get taken in again, will you?”

  Chris would have done the same again if Ingram hadn’t been there, only sooner. “Maybe. If she’d told me in advance, I’d have played along with it. It’s her thinking I’m a dumb grunt who’s fooled by it that annoys me.”

  “You could always tell her that and see what happens.”

  “Yeah. She can’t stand me anyway, so I’m not going to make matters worse.”

  Ash tried the kava and pulled a face. “There’s going to be a lot of bad blood about this, though. Just remember the alternative was letting well-meaning idiots overrule our supplies chief and the captain. If they had their way, they’d start arguing the toss over every single decision.”

  “Applied Whateverology.” Chris retrieved his kava and gulped it down. “That’s what Marc calls it. They think they know best about everything because they’re experts in a narrow field.”

  “Twats, you mean. That’s the scientific term for it.”

  Ash could always make him laugh. She was right about the consequences of letting random professors call the shots, but that didn’t erase the image of all those scared scientists on their knees like PoWs being disarmed and processed. Yeah, they’d asked for it, and pissing off neighbours never helped a cause. They’d upset the farmers too, and those guys were now well aware how much power they could wield in an isolated outpost, so that was another delicate situation he’d have to keep an eye on. But he realised he was now the thing he’d once despised. He was authority, enforcement, the Man.

  He was also one of Ingram’s weapons. He’d come full circle to be an enforcer again.

  12

  To all Nomad residents.

  The disturbances outside Supply Warehouse 4 yesterday have left us with a number of challenges this community wasn’t prepared for but now has to address. We can’t excuse antisocial behaviour. But considering the appropriate course of action has highlighted our current lack of a common legal framework. It’s a difficult topic to discuss in a new settlement because it’s an acceptance that sooner or later, people we know and work with will behave badly enough to warrant formal penalties. But it will be inevitable as Nomad grows. We’re human. We’re not a species of saints.

  As things stand, we’ve decided it would be unfair and impractical for the time being to impose penalties on those who were detained. We have no general laws, regulations, or criminal justice infrastructure yet, and although people should reasonably expect disruptive or aggressive behaviour to be punished, with or without a formal law, we can’t decide what represents an appropriate penalty or how to impose one. There are no fines because we have no currency. There’s no jail sentence because we don’t have a prison block, although work on one has now begun.

  The code the mission has operated under so far has been a military one by consent. When there’s no consent to that law or even an agreed definition of military or civilian personnel, offenders could reasonably argue that it’s not appropriate to impose military penalties. Making up sentences on the hoof isn’t the answer either. While we explore that further and integrate it into the wider discussion about the governance of this settlement, we’ve agreed on the following measures:

  * No penalties will be imposed at the moment, but anyone detained yesterday who engages in further disruptive, antisocial, dishonest, or violent behaviour, as informally defined by the society we left, will face immediate detention in Cabot.

  * Any act that compromises food production and distribution, utilities, the defence of the base, or generally threatens the lives and well-being of residents, will incur detention in Cabot and, depending on the harm caused, a return to cryogenic suspension.

  * Those who took part in yesterday’s protest while armed will cease to have access to firearms and ammunition until further notice.

  * The aim of this mission was to eventually hand over governance to a civilian administration, and we’ll continue with that goal in mind.

  However normal and Earth-like Opis appears, it’s not. We’re a small colony at the extreme limit of human space exploration, without backup. We have a very real chance of coming under attack from alien forces and our food supply is vulnerable. Effectively. we’re on a war footing. No country at war can afford the luxury of tolerating attacks by its own people. You can say whatever you like or even set up your own alternative settlement if Nomad Base is too restrictive, but if you do anything that harms your neighbour or reduces this base’s chances of survival, we have to act, and we will.

  Signed by:

  Douglas Brandt, Mayor of Kill Line

  Marc Gallagher

  Alex Gorko, legacy Ainatio representative

  Captain Bridget Ingram

  Sergeant Chris Montello

  Major Dan Trinder

  * * *

  OFFICE OF THE GOVERNMENT OF JATT IN EXILE,

  CLERICS’ QUARTER, ROUVELE, SOUTHERN VIILOR, ESMOS.

  Nir-Tenbiku’s doubts began to close in on him the moment he tied the seal on his bag.

  It wasn’t about getting killed. It was about leaving Eb-Lan Cudik or Shus-Wita Olis to take his place and lead the liberation of Jatt. He trusted both of them to carry it out, but he didn’t trust them not to fight over the implementation, and there could be only one Primary. Cudik was right. Nobody else had a distinguished ancestral name as a rallying point for the people.

  Nir-Tenbiku would just have to make sure he didn’t end up dead, then. He hadn’t been able to think of a suitable diplomatic gift for the humans as a mark of respect because it was impossible to know what might offend them, but perhaps he wouldn’t survive to worry about that.

  “Are you going now, Excellency?” Bas stepped into his path, a little hesitant. “Is there anything else I can do for you? May I attend you? I’m not afraid.”

  “It’s safer for you to remain here,” Nir-Tenbiku said. “Safer for Jatt, that is. Imagine how lost the Halu-Masset will be if you’re not there to guide them through proper procedure. I’m a figurehead. Figureheads can be replaced. Expertise can’t.”

  “With respect, Excellency, I don’t believe a word of that, but you might need that expertise with you.”

  “I refuse to give your mother bad news.”

  “I haven’t had any contact with my family since I came here. She still thinks I’m in cloistered training at a monastery.”

  “Then she can believe that until the day I tell her what a selfless patriot she has for a son.” Nir-Tenbiku didn’t want to deny Bas his chance to be a true Jattan, but there’d be plenty of opportunities for him to fulfil his duty when they returned to Jatt. “Don’t worry about me. I believe what happened to Gan-Pamas was a terrible misunderstanding because of his teerik’s behaviour. That won’t happen this time.”

  “Is it true you’re going unarmed?”

  “Yes. How else can I show I’m not hostile?”

  Bas looked horrified. Nir-Tenbiku saw the skin on his face tighten. “Excellency, we have no idea what their customs are. You might provoke them further by doing that. And you can’t protect yourself.”

  Nir-Tenbiku sometimes wondered if he was losing his sanity and everybody was too afraid to tell him. He’d never known any other purpose in life except the restoration of Jatt’s independence, and he’d never questioned whether it was a good idea. He just accepted it was simply something that had to be done, and so had everyone around him. There was nobody in his life who said otherwise. Perhaps he was wrong. His gut told him he wasn’t, but would he really know?

  “I haven’t survived this long by misjudging aliens, Bas,” he said. “I appreciate your concern. But I know this will work out.”

 
Add Fast Bookmark
Load Fast Bookmark
Turn Navi On
Turn Navi On
Turn Navi On
Scroll Up
Turn Navi On
Scroll
Turn Navi On
216