“I was told that,” Muna said, seriously. “Do you wish someone else to take the position?”
I shook my head. “My First Lieutenant is leaving the ship, along with four of my Ensigns,” I explained. “You’ll be starting afresh really, so unless you don’t want to be in that position…?”
“I can handle it, sir,” Muna assured me. I trusted her judgement. Indeed, I wondered if I should bring her into the conspiracy, but dismissed the thought for the moment. There would be time enough to bring her in later, if I decided she needed to know ahead of time. The Heinlein files had been very clear on who should — and who shouldn’t — know in advance. We already had too many people in on the secret. “I did wonder about Sally, though…”
“Political problems,” I said, coldly. “Be kind to her, understand?”
Muna nodded. I shouldn’t have worried — she wasn’t the kind of person to use superior rank to bully someone — but I wanted to make the warning clear. The last thing I needed was Sally becoming so embittered that she lashed out before the time was right. I could use her for my plan…if she remained alive that long. I was more worried about her than I could admit to anyone, even Muna.
“I will,” she promised. “Do we have orders yet?”
I shook my head. “Nothing apart from take a week’s shore leave,” I explained. “I’m not going to go down to the surface myself, or even Luna City, for a few days, but if you want to take some leave yourself…?”
“I had plenty of time at Luna Base for leave,” Muna said. “I’d sooner get to work.”
I nodded, pleased. “Good,” I said. The intercom chimed and interrupted me. “Yes?”
“Captain, this is Crewman Stanley down at the main airlock,” a voice said. “The Political Officer has arrived.”
“Thank you,” I said. I hadn’t been looking forward to this. “Please show her up at once.”
It was nearly ten minutes before the hatch opened and the Political Officer strode in. I took one look at her and I just knew that we weren’t going to get along. She was tall, with bushy red hair, but her face looked as if she were permanently sucking a sour lemon, perhaps with extra iodine. I decided her nickname would probably be Iodine by the day’s end and hoped that none of the crew used it in her hearing.
“I am Political Officer Deborah Tyler,” she announced, in a voice that was too high and sharp for my tastes. She reminded me a little of a teacher I’d once had before she’d been fired for excessive competence. “Why were you not waiting at the airlock to greet me?”
I refused to scowl at her, or show anything other than a bland smile. “You didn’t give me any notice of your arrival,” I pointed out, calmly. It would probably do no good pointing out command regulations to her. The Captain did not come to meet someone unless they were of superior rank. “Had you done so, I would have been there to greet you.”
“Doubtless,” Deborah sneered. She cast a glance over Muna, with a flicker of her eyes that suggested she didn’t care for people with black skin, and then looked back at me. “I trust that you have all the files in order?”
“Of course,” I said, seriously. She’d go through all the personnel files with a fine-toothed comb. I wished her well of them. It should take her hours to even read the summaries. “Do you wish to begin inspecting them now?”
The next few days didn’t improve her. She insisted on interrogating some of the crew about Captain Harriman’s death and his previous career, before turning the questions around and focusing on me. Muna reported that she was already intensely disliked by almost everyone onboard. I was pretty sure that that was a record. She sent two crewmen for punishment duties after catching them with a stash of porn, and a third for Captain’s Mast after discovering his still.
All in all, it was a relief when Captain Shalenko, my former commanding officer, summoned us to Devastator.
From: The Never-Ending War. Stirling, SM. Underground Press, Earth.
Back on Old Earth, long before the UN evolved from a transnational talking shop to become the oppressive government of Earth, a new system for governing international relationships arose. It was referred to, not without reason, as MAD — Mutually Assured Destruction. Put simply, it stated that if the United Soviet Socialist Republic (a prisoner state now held up as an example of an proto-UN state) launched a massive nuclear strike against the United States of America, the Americans could detect the launch and launch their own nuclear weapons in response. No side could launch a nuclear assault without guaranteeing their own destruction.
As the USSR collapsed, this taboo lost its power, with the eventual use of nuclear weapons in a war zone — India against Pakistan — and two terrorist nukes, Marseilles and Stalingrad. The UN, therefore, was keen to remove the remaining nuclear stockpiles from Earth as quickly as possible and, as national governments collapsed into the overreaching transnational authority, this became possible. It also led to the creation of a security state that, intended to prevent a third nuclear terrorist attack, was used to create the modern-day UN. The threat of terrorists (now including patriots and independence-seeking factions) was, as always, a useful excuse for clamping down on freedom and personal liberties.
The MAD dynamic continued to hold power when the UN went to war against the colonies, some of which had their own nukes, or the ability to produce them. It rapidly became clear that nukes could be used against UN forces on the ground, but that it would provoke immediate retaliation against the civilian population of the colony world. This was not particularly welcome in some sections of the UN — they needed the colonies and their population to mend their economy — but it was accepted, on the grounds that nukes would make it impossible to hold down the colonies. The moral issues surrounding the use of nuclear weapons were ignored.
This assumed a degree of willingness on the part of the colonists to abide by the UN’s rule. In the later stages of the war, this willingness was severely tested. The UN itself was considering the use of WMD.
Part IV: Captain
Chapter Thirty-Four
Computer programmers talk in terms of GIGO — Garbage In, Garbage Out. The reasoning is simple enough. If a computer — which is not capable of independent judgement — is programmed to believe that black is white, it will believe that black is white. This also applies to life support systems on starships, which is why they are heavily monitored by the crew and secondary systems. A starship’s computer, convinced that oxygen was poison to humans, would quite happily kill the entire crew.
Something of the same can be said for political indoctrination. If a child is taught that the UN is the finest system in the known universe from birth, they will find it hard to understand that it is nothing of the kind. They will be ready to believe anything of the UN’s enemies and to cast them as darkest villains. It should come as no surprise that political officers all have a certain inflexibility of mind when they start their careers, and few succeed in overcoming it. Those who do will often end up being arrested by their fellows, if they are unwise enough to share their doubts with anyone.