“Who was this resistance?” asked Kunstler.
The lieutenant shifted uncomfortably. “We think it was outsiders.”
“Outside of where?” asked Deloitte. “Of Jasper, or the country?”
“We are engaging our sources in the town. If there’s someone there, someone new, we will find out who and from where.”
“Could it be an infiltrator?” pressed Kunstler.
“That’s what I’d send, if I was in the red,” said Deloitte. “Send outsiders to organize and mobilize and make Southern Indiana a headache for us.”
“We’re going to find them and arrest them,” promised Lieutenant Kessler.
“Maybe,” said Deloitte. “If they screw up you might get lucky and get them. But if they did come from the red, then they’re trained and they know how to evade you. I know, because I probably trained them.”
“Well, then what do we do?” asked Kunstler.
“Do? If you’re smart, you do nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing. You stop pushing. You stop provoking. Let things cool off and calm down. You’ve already spilled blood. Now the locals are angry.”
“A bunch of farmers and bourgeois cis-hets!” said Kessler.
“Who do you think drove out the British? Communications majors? Baristas? Diversity coaches?” said Deloitte. “The goal of insurgents is to mobilize the people against the government. One classic way to do that is to draw down a heavy-handed response from the counter-insurgents and drive the uncommitted to take the rebels’ side.”
“What specifically do you suggest, Colonel?” asked Kunstler.
“First, you keep these bums” – he pointed towards the People’s Volunteer commander – “the hell out of town.”
“Fuck you, man!” shouted Franco X, rising from his chair.
“Tell me ‘fuck you’ again, punk, and you’re going to have the worst day of your life,” Deloitte said evenly. Franco X sat back down.
“Enough,” said Kunstler. “Elaborate, Colonel.”
“You can only push people so far. You’re not leaving them an out. Most people just want to get by, live their lives, and avoid conflict. You want them to be able to do that. But if you get in their faces and you keep pushing, eventually they’re going to push back.”
“With what?” said Clemens. “We took their weapons.”
“Yeah, I have your confiscation numbers. When the weapon seizures went down, you gathered up…,” Deloitte consulted his S2’s report. “It looks like you collected 12,312 weapons in all of the Military District of Southern Indiana. There are probably city blocks in Indianapolis that have more than 12,312 weapons. You take a shovel, walk out to the woods and plunge it into the dirt, and you’re going to hit a buried rifle.”
Clemens fumed; Kunstler’s face was stone.
“People don’t want to rebel,” Deloitte continued. “Most people just want to live their own lives being left alone. That’s why to start an insurrection in a place like Southern Indiana – before you started pushing – you would need to send cadre in, to train and motivate the indigenous population to fight. But you don’t need cadre if you provoke them enough. If you push and push and push, they’re eventually going to fight back.”
“This is ridiculous,” Clement said. “I know how to handle these kinds of racists, these religious nuts. We did it on campus when the fascists tried to speak. You punish them. You crush them. You make them understand that things are different now, that they aren’t in control anymore, that they no longer have privilege and that they are accountable to all the people they shit on before the Split.”
“Who again were the regular folks in Southern Indiana oppressing ten years ago?” asked Deloitte, disgusted. “I know the area, and I have yet to see much privilege.”
“They were Trump voters and before that they were for Romney,” Xeno said. “They’ve always resisted progressive change, and they’re never going to change. They have to be broken.”
“What we need to do is increase our forces in the Jasper area,” said Lieutenant Kessler. “I’ve got an extra twenty PSF officers now and give me maybe twenty more and some detectives from the PBI. Plus some PV support. We will root the infection out.”
“You’re not hearing me,” Deloitte warned. “And you’re going to force me to come in and clean up your mess with my soldiers.”
“I think for the time being that this is a civilian matter that we can handle on a civilian basis,” Kunstler said. “But let’s not make any mistake. The region is vital. Tell them why, Xeno.”
Xeno licked xis lips, nervous. “There are border negotiations coming up, and we believe that this area is going to be one of the regions that the red is going to seek to recover. We don’t want that. We need its agriculture. We need its road network. We have to make it secure so it looks loyal, so they don’t want it. We have to remain in control.”
“I’m telling you, I’ve done this before,” said Deloitte. “If you want to keep control, give it up. Leave them alone. They don’t want to fight. But they will if you force them to.”
“My people can handle a few hicks with deer rifles,” Lieutenant Kessler said confidently. “Maybe with a little PBI and PV support, but we can stomp this out before it gets out of control.”
“With this guy’s untrained flunkies, and your thugs with badges? Five half-competent hicks with deer rifles could shut down your entire operation. How many bodies do you have, anyway? How many can Chief Clements here give you? Get you up to maybe 200? Let’s assume 100 of them are going to be logistics, admin, and command and control, and that you’ve achieved a 50% tooth-to-tail support ratio, which is unheard of in modern warfare. And make no mistake, we’re talking warfare. So, you got maybe 100 actual bodies to patrol and secure thousands of square miles. They have to retrain, refit, eat, sleep, shit, shower, and shave, so maybe you have 25% on duty at once. That’s what? Twenty-five bodies at any given moment? For four or five counties? You can’t guard every inch of road. You can’t guard every piece of vital infrastructure. You can’t guard every target for assassination.”
Clement spoke up. “We will find the leaders and arrest them! Cut the head off the snake, destroy their network.”
“You don’t get it. There’s no network. There’s no organization. They’re going to decentralize. They’re going to operate on a cell basis. We’re not just seeing it around Jasper. We’ve seen these problems all through Southern Illinois and Ohio too. You need to understand that you don’t have a good kinetic solution to what you’re facing.”
Franco X was baffled by the word “kinetic.” It seemed to puzzle Xeno too; xe scratched xis head before speaking.
“Well, if the PSF can’t handle it then we’ll call you in to save the day,” said Xeno.
“Let’s say I give up my mission to deter and defeat red invaders and focus on counter-insurgency. I have two battalions, plus support – about 3,000 troops. You think I can control the Military District of Southern Indiana with a two-maneuver battalion brigade? I can defeat any grouping of rebels should they be dumb enough to let me catch them concentrated in one area, but if this thing blows up – if you light a fuse that makes this thing blow up – there’s not much I can do to stop it. And if you tell me to do it anyway, you’ll need to authorize me to do things that even you don’t want me to do.”
“If we have to scorch the earth, Colonel, we will scorch the earth,” said Xeno. “We are not giving up Southern Indiana. And it doesn’t matter how many racist knuckle draggers have to die to keep it that way.”