Carnifex

10/3/467 AC, UEPF Spirit of Peace

I love it when a plan comes together, thought High Admiral Robinson, as he watched a distant image of Xamari pirates in half a dozen boats swarm, engage and board a Balboan registry freighter.

It hadn't been all that easy for Robinson, setting things up as he had. It had helped, though, that nearly half of Terra Nova's global shipping was registered with the Republic of Balboa and most of the rest was with an otherwise insignificant country in Uhuru. The Balboan Government needed merely to be reminded of the World League's discountenancing of privately armed merchant vessels and that, with a large, uncontrolled and potential hostile army inside its borders the government needed whatever friends it could get . . . or should we arrange to pull out the TU troops that are there to safeguard you, Señor Presidente?

Robertsonia, the other large flag of convenience registry on Terra Nova had needed a bribe that was so low it was pitiful. The Tauran Union had, of course, begun to enforce the World League's edicts. The rest of down below, except for the Zhong, didn't much matter. And to the Zhong, every non Zhong ship seized by the pirates was all to the good.

While the currently in-power Progressive Party in the FSC also frowned on armed merchant ships, it had a large and powerful surface navy, more powerful in fact than all the other navies combined, to protect its own shipping. A task force of this had been sent off to suppress the piratical scourge along the Xamar coast. It was signally failing to do so. In part this was because Robinson was passing to Abdulahi which ships could be attacked without risking engagement with the FSN; in part because the FSN's Rules of Engagement, or ROE, forbade taking any seriously deterrent action even if they happened to be in a position to engage. The Progressive Party's domestic "mandate" was not so strong that it could afford to alienate any of it constituencies, progressive, pacifist, racial, environmental, or other.

Neither the World League nor the other—marginally—significant naval powers on the planet were taking any significant action to suppress the pirates.

Even better; Mustafa's man among the Nicobars is gradually bringing the other pirates under his control.