Picking Up the Pieces

Chapter Twenty-Three

I had given some careful thought to my personal classroom. It wasn’t going to be a perfect school-like room, with desks for the kids and a bigger desk for the teacher, and it wasn’t going to be very informal. I wanted to speak to the kids — the young local officers — as a big brother, not as a commanding officer or as a mercenary. It wasn’t going to be easy. No one who had spent years in the military would not be aware of a person’s rank, and their status within the organisation. They would all see me as their temporary commanding officer, and, perhaps, as a mercenary who got paid more than they did. Would they regard themselves as superior? It was quite possible. I hadn’t thought highly of mercenaries when I’d been in the UN’s service.

In the end, I’d settled for a mild information room with a standardised drinks table — no alcohol — and a handful of comfy chairs. I saw their expressions as they filed in and smiled to myself. Whatever they had expected, it wasn’t what I’d presented to them and they had to be wondering just what I was doing. I had wanted to put them at their ease, but first, they had to realise that it wasn’t a trap, or an attempt to lure them into breaching regulations.

“Come on in,” I said, calmly. “Take a seat, any seat.”

I felt absurdly like an oversized nursery teacher as the young officers took their places and stared at me. They looked ridiculously young for the uniforms they wore, but there had been little choice, but to accept their promotions. Five of them had been promoted by the local authorities themselves, without consulting us, and the remainder had been picked out by my people. They weren’t seasoned yet and I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that some of them would get their men killed. I couldn’t stop that from happening, but at least I could try to warn them of the dangers, and the responsibilities, of their new rank. I also wanted to discuss the role of a proper military organisation and why it existed. I looked at them and wondered, privately, how many of them would actually understand the message.

“Close the door behind you,” I ordered, as the final officer-candidate, a young girl barely out of her teens, came in. “Take a seat and sit down. We have a lot to cover and very little time.” She sat down and eyed me nervously. “The first thing you all have to understand is that there are no ranks in this room. What does that mean?”

“That you’re going to be talking to us as equals?” Captain Jörgen Hellqvist guessed. He, at least, was someone I wasn’t so worried about. He’d done well in the recent fighting against the Communists. “Sir, I…”

“No ranks in this room,” I repeated. “There’s a reason for that and we will get to it in time, but for the moment, no ranks in the room.”

Jörgen took a breath. “Understood, sir,” he said. I rolled my eyes, but said nothing; clearly, some habits were hard to break. “What are you going to tell us?”

“On Earth, this was known as the Candidate’s Choice,” I said. “There’s a lot of history behind it, which I won’t burden you with, but the basics were that the officer-candidate would be tossed into a situation where he would have to make hard decisions about the lives and careers of his men, the men placed in his hands. It wasn’t an entirely fair test because a candidate could be denounced for political incorrectness and perhaps even nationalist thoughts rather than simply being an incompetent asshole, but it forced a young officer to come face to face with the harsh realities of their position. Some refused promotion and returned to the ranks, others preferred to transfer sideways into the supply department and other non-fighting sections of the Peace Force, leaving those who decided to go on to… well, go on.

“On Heinlein, it is referred to as the History and Moral Philosophy class,” I continued. “The candidates are given far harder problems to solve, but they don’t have to worry about pleasing their instructions politically. On the downside, they do have to pass the test to gain promotion, unless they gain a promotion under fire — stepping into dead men’s shoes, as we call it. You’ve all been through the fire far earlier than I expected, and you’ve all done well in drills and training exercises, but you all have one major handicap. What, pray tell, is it?”

“We’re all from this planet?” The girl — Captain Elsa Björkgren — hazarded. “We’re not part of your group of mercenaries?”

“No,” I said, with a half-smile. I had underestimated the resentment some of the locals felt, although it would have amused them to learn that we weren’t paid much more than they were. “Another guess, anyone?”

There was a long pause. “No guess?” I asked, finally. “It’s simple. You’re all very — very — inexperienced. If it had been entirely up to me, I would have sent your units officers culled from my men and used the additional time to bring you up to standard as quickly as I could. That was out of the question; therefore I have little choice, but to trust you with companies of men, knowing that your inexperience might get them killed. Do you understand me now?”

I went on before they could answer. “Tell me something,” I said, calmly. “What is the purpose of an army?”

“To defend the planet?” Jörgen asked. “That’s what we were doing against the Communists, wasn’t it?”

“In a manner of speaking,” I replied. “Anyone else?”

One of the Captains I didn’t know spoke into the silence. “To provide a useful place for those in society who will fight?”

“That sounds like the UN definition,” I commented, dryly. “The UN created an army that was a massive — and largely useless — blunt instrument. The Peace Force was so badly hobbled by their superior officers that it wasn’t even remotely capable of keeping the peace. Although the UN would prefer to believe otherwise, most people will fight if they feel that there is no choice, but to fight or die. You might take the other fellow with you, if nothing else.”

There were a handful of chuckles. “So,” I said. “One final guess?”

Elsa smiled. “To protect the people?”

“Again, in a manner of speaking,” I said. “I’ll save you the effort of thinking and toss in an answer. An army exists to defend society. Discuss.”

Jörgen frowned. “But that was what I said,” he protested. “I said that an army exists to protect and defend the planet.”

I smiled. “But what planet?” I asked. “Svergie was settled by a small group, then it was a UN-occupied world, and then finally it became independent again. If the Communists had won and created a Communist world, there would have been yet another Svergie society. If someone declared themselves King of the World and somehow managed to make the title stick, they’d have created a fifth society. Which one does the Army exist to defend?”

They chewed on that for a moment. “The answer is fairly simple,” I said. “The army exists to defend society.”

“But that’s what you said,” Elsa said, puzzled. “They’re all societies, so the army…”

She broke off. “The army here exists to defend our society, right?”

“As good an answer as you will probably get, for the moment,” I said, and leaned back in my chair. “Throughout history, force — normally expressed through an army, although some nations used navies instead — has served as the ultimate guarantee of a state’s existence. An army that is incapable, or unwilling, to uphold the state is something that will ensure that the state will not last long. The vast majority of states that… were terminated by the UN had rotted away from the inside a long time before the UN was anything more than a debating shop.

“But even that is an incomplete answer,” I continued, “and we need to look at different types of state to understand the role of their armies. A leader state depends on a single leader and the army may swear personal loyalty to him — or her. A bureaucratic state is run by the bureaucrats and the army may be loyal to them, or to the symbol of state, or it may have no loyalties at all. A democratic state, one where the people choose their own government, generally has the army swearing loyalty to the system, rather than to the current leader.

“On Svergie, you would call that the Constitution. It provides the guidelines for the system that elects and rejects new rulers. It provides the means for the people’s will to be felt and leaders to be exchanged. It even provides the means for change within itself without the need for a violent and bloody revolution. The Communists didn’t step beyond the pale for being Communists, but for their wanton attack on society and their attempt to destroy the glue binding it together. Your oath, the one I wrote with the President’s input, swore loyalty to that Constitution. Was that a wise choice?”

They hesitated, perhaps suspecting a trap. “I think so,” Elsa said, finally. “If we weren’t loyal to the system, we’d be… just another militia.”

“Quite right,” I agreed. “In a leader state, the army enforces the will of the leader. In a bureaucratic state, the army enforces the will of the bureaucrats. In a democratic state, the army upholds the system that keeps it democratic. You — all of you — have sworn to uphold the Constitution to the best of your ability. Would you serve a tyrant?”

“No,” Jörgen said, flatly. “I don’t want to… bully people just because someone tells me I should.”

“But if the orders are legal,” another Captain asked, “should they not be obeyed?”

“If they’re illegal orders,” a third asked, “who is to blame for following them?”

I smiled. “It’s good to see that you are beginning to think,” I said. I pointed a long finger at Jörgen. “Jörgen, I don’t like Elsa. Rape her.”

There was a long chilling silence. “Sir…” Jörgen stammered, finally. “Sir, I can’t do that because…”

His voice trailed off. “The proper response would be ‘sir, that is an illegal order’ and to protect — not to hurt, to protect — Elsa, with deadly force, if necessary,” I said, firmly. “We read out the regulations to you every week now and you should be able to cite them chapter and verse. An order to abuse prisoners is illegal and must not be obeyed.”

I leaned back in my chair. “And let us pretend, for the moment, that you had followed my order,” I continued. “Who would have been to blame?”

“You both would have been,” Elsa said. She sounded uncomfortable and I didn’t blame her. “You would have been to blame for issuing the order in the first place and he would have been to blame for following the order. There’s no defence that allows him to claim that he was only following orders. He knew full well that the orders were utterly illegal and following them would have made him compliant in your crime.”

“Quite right,” I agreed. I held up a hand before anyone else could speak. “You also know that it is illegal to torture prisoners, yet there are exceptions built in for terrorists and insurgents. Why are those exceptions there? What makes them separate from normal soldiers?”

Jörgen looked down at the ground. “The manual says that insurgents forfeit their protections by operating from within a helpless population,” he said, “but that would mean that… they couldn’t stand up and face us in open battle. We’d wipe them out and go looking for more. What choice do they have?”

“That’s something that people have been arguing for hundreds of years without ever resolving,” I explained. “Let me start by giving you some history.

“Originally, wars were fought between nations on Earth,” I started. “By the time the industrial age began, the nations had evolved various codes of conduct for wars, even the most savage. There were few significant terrorist groups in those days and they lacked the ability to make a real impact. As nationalism evolved, occupying armies discovered that they were harassed from behind their lines by civilians and reacted harshly. The civilian insurgent wore no uniform. He blended into the population and only emerged from his cloak when the fighting began. He was, in short, a nightmare.

“And so it became legal to shoot insurgents on sight,” I continued. “There might have been laws to protect soldiers who were captured — although not all of them were honoured — but insurgents received no legal protection. This actually became more of an issue during the early Space Age, when insurgents who operated on a global scale waged war against the various nations and later the United Nations. The insurgents hid in nations that provided shelter, forcing their enemies to invade or bomb those nations, causing massive civilian casualties. One reason why the laws are so merciless towards insurgents is that their actions always cause innocents to die.

“And yet, as you say, they have little choice,” I said. “So, what is the difference between a resistance fighter on Heinlein, or here, fighting against the UN… and one of the Communists who you just fought?”

“The UN forces were the bad guys?” Elsa asked. “We’re the good guys?”

There were some chuckles. “That’s not a complete answer,” I said. “You’re right — we were the good guys, yet they didn’t agree with that. The Communists thought that we were all out to crush and oppress the working class. What makes their answer any less valid than yours?”

“We won,” Jörgen said.

I smiled. “It’s true that any question of what is legal or not is commonly settled by the victor, who gets to write the history books,” I said. “However, the real answer is more fundamental than yours.”

“They could have voted the government out of power,” one of the Captains said, slowly. “They could have attempted to get elected into power, yet they choose to rise up against the government instead. They didn’t act within the constitution.”

“Bingo,” I said. “They had the ability to get their people elected; hell, Daniel Singh was elected to the last Council. They could have tried to convince people to vote for them, but instead they chose to rise up and overthrow the government by force. There was no choice, but to slap them down as hard as possible.

“On Heinlein, by contrast, the UN had removed the government and was ruling the planet directly,” I added. “It had closed businesses and shops, harassed people in the streets and generally caused vast damage even without the ongoing insurgency. Heinlein couldn’t — wouldn’t — give the UN what it wanted to loot from the planet. There was no choice left, but to resist.

“Answer me another question,” I continued. “Three hundred years ago, the Government of the United States of America faded away and handed over effective power to the United Nations. During the final years of American independence, with tens of thousands fleeing the planet for New Washington, Kennedy and Austin Star — the American-ethnic worlds — some of their army leaders considered a coup to remove a government they regarded as corrupt and treacherous. Later events proved them right, but they didn’t move. Were they right?

“On one hand, there was the fact that they were sworn to uphold the American constitution, yet they were seeing their country falling apart right in front of them. The brain drain was taking all of the Americans who might have rebuilt the country’s infrastructure and moving them to other planets, rioting was spreading through the cities, soldiers and policemen were being attacked in the streets, money was worthless and no one believed in America any longer.

“On the other hand, they were sworn to uphold the Constitution and the government in power had been legally elected according to the rules. There were no legal grounds for removing the government, even though it was treacherous, corrupt and far worse. The only thing they could have done would have been to send troops to the White House and Congress, arrest the Congressmen and assume power for themselves, yet their forces might not obey such blatantly illegal orders. If they tried and succeeded, they’d have to fix the mess; if they failed, they’d disgrace their institutions.

“They did nothing, and America fell. Did they do the right thing?”

I held up a hand before any of them could answer. “I won’t expect you to answer that question now,” I said. “I will expect each of you to think about the issue I raised, read round the subject — after all, you can’t trust what I told you — and then present me with an answer next week, when we next meet. You may want to bear in mind that no one knew for sure what was coming, or why. They lacked the hindsight we have hundreds of years in the future.

“Any questions?”

“Something I was wondering about,” Elsa said. “Why is it permitted to drink, but not to take drugs?”

I smiled. “An interesting change in subject,” I said. “It’s quite simple. If someone renders themselves unfit for duty they also render themselves a stay in the guardhouse. A man can drink some alcohol without affecting his judgement, but hard drugs are something different… and, in a combat situation, even alcohol would be banned.

“I hope to see some interesting answers next week,” I added. “Dismissed!”