The Prince by Jerry Pournelle and S.M. Stirling

A picture sprang out, an overhead shot taken from an aircraft, of the smoldering ruins of a big two-story house amid undamaged outbuildings. The screen blinked down to a ground level receptor with the slight jiggle of a helmet-mounted camera, and men in khaki battledress and nemourlon body-armor moved against the same background. A row of blanket-shrouded shapes lay beside trestle tables. Hands reached into the line of sight and lifted one covering. The corpse was that of a woman, and it was obvious how she had died. The soldiers leaned forward with a rustle of coiled tension, and one of the civilians retched.

“That’s Eleanor Velysen,” the policeman continued, in a voice taut with suppressed anger. “The other woman’s her sister.” He paused. “None of the remaining women on the ranch were molested; Arthur Velysen was shot, and his foreman and two other Citizens, and the place was pretty effectively stripped. Not much vandalism, and the Velysen children weren’t harmed.” The camera panned again, to a wall where HELOTS RULE OK had been spray-painted in letters three meters high.

“Terrorism,” Owensford said softly. “Not bandits, terrorists. Helots?”

“What the terrorists call themselves these days. The same graffiti has gone up here in the city. They’re effective terrorists, though,” Desjaidins said with a grim nod. “Over the past year, more than two dozen attacks fitting this pattern. Sixteen in the last two months alone, from south of Clemens to north of Olynthos, and as far west as the upper Meneander. Plus dozens of reports of intimidation, demands for protection money, pamphlets . . . and some of the ranchers and mine owners are paying these Helots off, I swear it.”

One of the bureaucrats stirred. “If the RSMP were more active—”

Desjardins’s fist hit the table. “Madam Minister—with respect—I’ve got three thousand police, that’s counting the clerks and forensics people and the ones who maintain the navigation buoys and the technicians and the training cadre. I’ve got a grand total of ten tiltrotors, and thirty helicopters, so when we get to road’s end everyone walks or rides or takes a steamboat or blimp. If I split the five hundred or so Mobile Force personnel up, the Helots will eat them alive! This gang that attacked the Velysens’s place, there were sixty of them—they blew the satellite dish and cut the landlink to the Torrey estate and had an ambush force emplaced to block the road in.”

“Classic,” Ace Barton said.

“Seems so,” Owensford said.

“You’ve faced this kind of thing?” General Desjardins asked.

“Oh, yes,” Peter said. He nodded to Barton.

“So far it’s late Phase One guerrilla ops,” Barton said. “To stop it, you can’t sit and wait for guerrillas to come to you. They’ll destroy you in detail. You have to be more mobile, and let militia do the positional defense.”

Desjardins laughed without humor. “That’s what the Velysens thought,” he said. “They had a dozen armed guards and electrified wire. My forensics people are pretty sure the six guards who died were killed by their buddies, and the sabotage was an inside job too.”

Owensford and Barton exchanged a glance and a thought: so much for a peaceful training command.

Alexander spoke. “So you see, gentlemen, we need the Legion more than ever, which is one reason we kept the rest of it on retainer. Unfortunately, we’re less able to pay for it than ever, as well.”

Catherine Alana looked up from her notes. “Your Majesty—sir—surely this hasn’t reduced your revenue that much?”

“Not yet,” his co-monarch answered; the Freedmans had been economists, holders of the professorships at Columbia and the CoDominium University in Rome. “But Captain, the economic justification behind the Field Force—yes, I know the strategic arguments, Alexander, but we have to cut our coat to fit the cloth—the economic rationale is that it will help our foreign currency situation.”

Peter nodded agreement. Many of the newly independent planets defrayed the costs of their national armies by hiring them out, with a little low-budget imperialism on the side. For some like Covenant and Friedland, it was their major industry. Sparta had planned to get into the game. Foreign exchange aside, it was necessary in order to develop and maintain the kind of military force that would make it obvious to the likes of Friedland that here was no easy prey.

David sighed. “Ideologically, we’re free traders here, Major Owensford; bureaucracy and regulation were what our parents came here to avoid, after all. But—’Needs must when the devil drives.’ All foreign currency is allocated through the Ministry of Trade, and luxury imports—anything but capital equipment—are highly taxed. It’s one of the slogans the NCLF use to whip up the non-Citizens, they say they want imported luxuries and more welfare.”

Captain Jesus Alana smiled thinly; he was a dark man, a few inches shorter than his red-haired wife, with a trimmed black mustache. “There was much the same on Hadley. Your opposition will be the . . . Non-Citizens’ Liberation Front?” he said. “Mr. Dion Croser?”

“Citizen Dion Croser, and that’s half the problem,” Desjardins said. “And a son of one of the Founders, which is even worse. Sir, I’m morally certain he’s in this up to his well-bred neck. Just let me pull him in, and—”

Alexander made a sharp gesture. “No. Not without evidence linking him to these Helots. Which I don’t believe; Dion Croser’s misguided, but he is Anthony’s son, after all. ‘Liberty under Law,’ General Desjardins.” He turned to the soldiers. “Croser’s got some following here in Sparta City, mostly among the recent immigrants and unskilled workers; and a few at the University.” A wry smile. “Our founders were political scientists and sociologists, but they underestimated the effect of an underemployed intelligentsia when they founded our higher educational system.”

“Layabouts,” David snorted. “Hanging around the campus and complaining they aren’t allowed to mind other people’s business in the civil service. Major, our government has only a few thousand employees and contracts most of its limited functions out—” He stopped his impulse to lecture with a visible effort. “The fact remains, that to fully equip the Field Force regiments we must expend hard currency, and that’s hard to come by. We need more export earnings. If we have soldiers employed off-world and we collect their pay in Dayan shekels or Friedlander marks, that is one thing. If they have to stay here and fight . . .” He shrugged.

” ‘Opulence must take second place to defense,’ ” Owensford recited; the Freedman king looked mildly surprised to hear a mercenary quoting Adam Smith. You’d be surprised what Christian Johnny gets us to do, Owensford thought. His father was a history professor after all. “You have indigenous munitions manufacturing.”

“Small arms and mortars, nemourlon under license from DuPont; weapons are one of our main processed exports, along with intermediate-technology equipment for planets even less industrialized than we are. We can make armored cars and tanks, but there won’t be a lot of output. No electronics to speak of; we’ve been negotiating with Xanadu and Meiji for chip fabricators, but . . .” He shrugged again; everyone knew the prices were kept artificially high. “We have the people and the knowledge, energy and resources and opportunity, all the classic requirements, but we’re at the tools-to-make-the-tools-to-make-the-machines stage.

“We need time.”

“Which is one commodity we can buy you,” Owensford said. “Soldiers do a lot of that. Well, the bright side is that if you don’t have much in the way of electronics, neither will the enemy. Jesus, I’d be grateful if you’d see to increased security on all the Regiment’s equipment. Some of our advanced gear will be very much on the rebel want list.”

“Yes, sir.” Alana scrawled a note on his pocket computer.

“We are going to need air transport,” Peter said. “You can’t send aviation into a battle area, but it’s very often the key to making battles happen where you want them, rather than where the enemy wants them. I’ll ask you to do what you can to ramp up production of helicopters. They needn’t be fancy.”

“Ja,” Baron von Alderheim said.

“And not just in the one firm,” Peter said. “Aviation is too important to be a point failure source—uh, for there to be only one supplier.”

“I see,” von Alderheim said. “You wish me to help my competition?”

“I’m afraid that’s exactly what I wish,” Peter said. “Understand, we don’t need to make everything ourselves, but it sure helps if we’re self-sufficient in big ticket items.”

“That makes a great deal of sense,” the Minister of War said. “If Baron von Alderheim will agree—”

“Oh, I agree,” von Alderheim said. “Civic duty and all that. Besides, if Major Owensford is successful, there will be plenty of orders for military equipment, and hard currency as well.”

“That is certainly the goal,” David I said.

“A goal the enemy may have made easier,” Peter said.

“Ah?” Sir Alfred looked puzzled.

“One difficulty in expanding a military force is leadership,” Peter said. “Many of our first wave of recruits will have to rather quickly become noncoms and junior officers for the second group. Combat experience, even in a low-intensity war like this, will help a lot.”