The stream was, perhaps, a little too perfectly picturesque to be natural. It tumbled down a short hillside formed from rocky outcroppings to spill into a nicely ornamental pond, and then wandered away across the grounds along a shallow, meandering channel with grassy banks. Ferns sprouted from the rocks beside the little waterfall, fish idled in the pond below, insects buzzed in the air above. It was hard to decide exactly what gave it away, except that perhaps it was trying too hard.<\/p>\n
Warren Armstrong, until recently commander of the Terran Offworld Force, wondered why that bothered him. It wasn\u2019t as if the planet below had any shortage of similar faux-natural landscaping in its office parks and campuses\u2014 including its military bases. So what was it about this one that made him uneasy? Ground Level on the base had plenty of athletic fields, training and parade grounds. He could see one a short way away, where a group of crewmen were at drills under the eyes of a sergeant. This bit of decoration in among the Admin buildings didn\u2019t get in the way of anything.<\/p>\n
Why did<\/em> it bother him so much?<\/p>\n Armstrong was born in Star City, but since joining the military had spent most of his adult life down on the planet. He\u2019d never felt any particular attachment to the Colonies, and he felt no particular reluctance to obey his orders when he was assigned to make them shut down. He thought the order misguided and the Born To The Earth party\u2019s claims nonsensical, but Monroe was legally in power, and so orders were orders.<\/p>\n When he finally received an order he could not<\/em> obey, it wasn\u2019t loyalty to the Colonies that stopped him. He wondered if Charles Safreth understood that. Armstrong knew why the so-called Interim President of the United Offworld Colonies had asked for this meeting. Safreth would be disappointed.<\/p>\n He was here. Safreth and his escort appeared around the corner of the \u201cbuilding\u201d\u2014 actually just the top floor of a section of offices mostly on the decks below\u2014 a short distance away<\/p>\n Two Star City police officers in uniform accompanied Safreth, along with the two MPs Armstrong had assigned to escort him from the entry gate. Armstrong supposed that Safreth had a security detail at all times now, given his new title. As the small party approached, Armstrong rose from the park bench where he\u2019d been waiting. He did not salute.<\/p>\n \u201cGovernor Safreth,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Safreth did not react to his choice of address. \u201cCommander Armstrong. It\u2019s good to see you again.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not a commander any more,\u201d Armstrong said. \u201cI resigned my commission after the events in May.\u201d<\/p>\n He waited for Safreth to reply that he wasn\u2019t a governor any more either, but Safreth still did not rise to the bait. \u201cAnd yet you still seem to be in command here.\u201d He nodded in the direction of the open field and its troop of crewmen.<\/p>\n \u201cMostly just going through the motions. It seemed best to keep up a standard of training and organization, at least until you decide to let my officers and crewmen leave the base to find new jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow about returning to your old jobs?\u201d<\/p>\n There it was, the question Armstrong had expected. He shook his head. \u201cNo. If any of my people want to join some rebel military, I don\u2019t suppose I have any legal authority left to stop them. But not me. I didn\u2019t stand down in May because I sided with your revolution.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhy did you?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBecause President Monroe ordered me to use force against civilians, in words that in military language meant \u2018open fire,\u2019 and he gave that order when there was a nonviolent option available. I believed that was an illegal order.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI took the trouble to look up the rules before coming over here. The MLC I think you call it\u2014 Military Law Code. It\u2019s right there in plain language that an officer may not obey an order he knows to be illegal.\u201d<\/p>\n Armstrong nodded. \u201cThat\u2019s in there for good reason. Too many officers in history have said \u2018I only followed orders.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut it also says that an officer invoking that rule has to then justify it in an automatic court martial, and it mentions a range of penalties a good deal stiffer than ordinary insubordination. Which makes sense, you can\u2019t have a chain of command if everyone\u2019s playing lawyer over any order they don\u2019t like, you\u2019ve got to make sure no one does it on a whim.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s right.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd yet you didn\u2019t return to Earth to face that court martial. Neither did any of the people who sided with you back in May. Why not, if you really believe the order was illegal?\u201d<\/p>\n Armstrong turned away, and studied the stream as it splashed over its landscaped waterfall.<\/p>\n Safreth persisted. \u201cYour plan to smash the algae tanks would have worked, by the way. We hadn\u2019t thought of it, there\u2019d have been nothing in the way of your sabotage teams. I don\u2019t mind admitting that to you\u2014 you can rest assured there\u2019s plenty of security around them now. If if you really believe you did the right thing according to the MLC, why not follow the procedure that same MLC specifies?\u201d<\/p>\n Armstrong still did not answer. There was nothing to gain by getting into a debate.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s because you knew whatever court martial happened would be no more legal than the order you refused, isn\u2019t it?\u201d Safreth said. \u201cIt\u2019s because you know you have a madman to deal with. He wanted violence for its own sake. Some of my advisors think he wants casualty lists on the newsnets so he can blame us, boost his propaganda, but you\u2019ve talked to him. You know better. He\u2019s insane and he just wants blood.\u201d<\/p>\n Suddenly, Armstrong understood. Safreth wasn\u2019t here on general principles, just to set up a military for the UOC. He turned back to face him. \u201cSomething has happened.\u201d<\/p>\n Safreth nodded. \u201cA week ago we asserted jurisdiction over the industrial platforms in Earth orbit. We offered the corporations a slew of ridiculously favorable incentives to get them to support our claim. Going along with that, we have to prove we can take over law enforcement, protect the factories.\u201d<\/p>\n Organized crime cartels, sponsoring piracy and smuggling, were the reason a Terran military still existed. Many got their start as defiant remnants of the governments defeated in the Unification War, and presented a threat beyond the capacity of civilian police.<\/p>\n Armstrong could work out the scenario easily enough: the cartels would see the UOC\u2019s move as an opportunity, and if they started raiding the platforms, the Terran military had only to stand down and let the world see the Colonies couldn\u2019t defend their claim. \u201cSo you need a Navy before the cartels start raiding,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Safreth shook his head. \u201cNo. This morning six platforms were attacked, all in the low-Earth orbital corridor. Four have been occupied. One of those managed to get a distress call off. The remaining two heard the call and managed to stop the raiding ships from docking. The raiders were all disguised as automated freighters bringing up raw materials from the planet. Monroe hasn\u2019t stopped those shipments, he\u2019s kept the factories running even while cutting off our lifesystem supplies.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOccupied?\u201d Armstrong frowned. \u201cWhat do you mean occupied? Raiders would drop in, steal as much as they could load, and get out. Even if they figured the military wouldn\u2019t lift a finger, they\u2019ve got no reason to stay.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut they have,\u201d said Safreth. \u201cAt first, they tried to send out messages to sound like everything was normal, it seems their plan was for us not to realize anything had happened. But once they realized that one distress signal got out and we weren\u2019t buying it, they went dark. Four factory platforms are now in control of the raiders and maintaining com silence. And according to that one call, the raiders weren\u2019t cartel pirates\u2014 they were Terran military.\u201d<\/p>\n Armstrong thought that over. \u201cIt almost makes sense. Establish Terran law enforcement jurisdiction by force, regardless of what your Colonies try to claim. But they should announce it, not go dark… unless the plan was to try and grab a lot more platforms before you noticed. Even then, now they know the secret\u2019s out they should announce the seizure.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYeah it would be a major blow to the Colonies, if they took the factory platforms away from us. My people say we can\u2019t function without them, our whole economy is built around servicing the offworld industries. If the Terrans grab them up, they can strangle us economically. It would be a neat, tidy, and nonviolent<\/em> way to put an end to our independence. So then, do you think that\u2019s the plan President Monroe approved?\u201d<\/p>\n Armstrong felt himself stiffen, as if wires up and down his back had suddenly tightened until near breaking.<\/p>\n \u201cNeither do I,\u201d Safreth said, as if Armstrong had answered out loud. \u201cI don\u2019t know what plan they do have. Maybe you can figure it out. But we both know what kind of plan it\u2019s got to be, if Monroe approved it. You refused to carry out Monroe\u2019s massacre for him. The question you\u2019ve got to answer now is, will you stand by while someone else does it?\u201d<\/p>\n He turned and started to walk away before Armstrong could respond, calling over his shoulder, \u201cThank it over. I\u2019ll be waiting for your answer.\u201d<\/p>\n Armstrong watched him and his escort go until they vanished back around the same corner where they\u2019d appeared. After a few minutes, he sat back down on the park bench by the stream, feeling very tired.<\/p>\n He suddenly noticed a dragonfly darting above the surface of the water, pausing briefly to hover before flashing away, and he thought, Someone decided that should be there.<\/em><\/p>\n The days were long past when spacecraft launched from carefully sterilized clean rooms, and no doubt plenty of insects and other small creatures had made their way to the Colonies over the decades. He doubted that dragonflies were among them. Some biosystems expert, somewhere in the past, had worked out that it was a needed species.<\/p>\n He raised his eyes from the stream to look at the terraces and buildings mounting up in curved array on the inside of Star City\u2019s sunward dome. Every horizontal surface showed green. The algae tanks might be the prime source of the Colony\u2019s oxygen, but every bit of photosynthesis helped and offworld engineers had learned over the last century that species diversity improved stability in their lifesystems. Somewhere in this Colony and all the others were not just farms but parks and \u201cnature preserves,\u201d richly filled with carefully calculated arrays of species. The Colonies were on a decades-long, slow buildup in their biosystems, not yet complete, and at some point during those years someone had decided, We need this species of dragonfly.<\/em><\/p>\n The level of detail, the careful thought and work behind the Colonies, that began with the engineering of the structures themselves but continued on, and on, and on into so many decisions, so many mistakes and corrections, so much research and new insights… it was almost beyond comprehension, an achievement beyond anything human civilization had attempted before.<\/p>\n And now he knew why looking at that decorative stream on the military base bothered him so much. It was just one detail among millions, but it stood for all the rest. For all that he, Warren Armstrong, would have destroyed without hesitation if Monroe had approved his original plan. Sure the human population would have had time to evacuate, but what would lie behind, abandoned, all its time and effort and life wasted? And what would that make him?<\/p>\n Warren Armstrong, Destroyer of Worlds.<\/p>\n Will you stand by while someone else does it?<\/em> Safreth\u2019s question repeated, over and over, in his mind.<\/p>\n He knew the answer.<\/p>\n To Be Continued<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Military Base, Star City Sunward Dome The stream was, perhaps, a little too perfectly picturesque to be natural. It tumbled down a short hillside formed from rocky outcroppings to spill into a nicely ornamental pond, and then wandered away across…<\/p>\n