“Insurgency against a modern state requires powerful allies operating from sanctuary. The allies need not be of ‘superpower’ status; but they will require that one of the Superpowers, or both of them acting as the CoDominium, protect the sanctuary status of the supplying nation. Unfortunately, given supply of war material from a sanctuary, insurgency can be continued practically forever.”
General Slater looked directly at Prince Lysander, and said, “The strategic implications should be obvious.”
* * *
Afterwards, after sherry and coffee, after the questions and the congratulations, the audience filed out. They were all talking and joking, all but one.
Crown Prince Lysander Collins left the room alone, lost in thoughts no one wanted to interrupt.
Prince of Sparta
“A well-hidden secret of the principate had been revealed: it was possible, it seemed, for an emperor to be chosen outside Rome.”
—Tacitus, HISTORIES, I, 4:
CHAPTER ONE
The soldier stands alone. In the time when he must either succeed or encounter failure that will follow him beyond his grave, he has only a little time and only two considerations—his mission, and what strength he has within himself by which he may accomplish it. Whether he commands a million other men or only the weapon in his own hand, the soldier in the moment of decision is of all men most alone. Whatever of harmony he has achieved in his adjustment to the world as he knows it is the source of his strength. If he has adjusted himself only to chaos, it is in this time that he will dissolve and lose himself in its nothingness.
—Joseph Maxwell Cameron,
The Anatomy of Military Merit
* * *
The most important fact of the first half of the Twentieth Century is that the United States and England both speak English. The most important fact of the second half will be that the dominant race in both the United States and the Soviet Union is white.
—Herman Kahn, 1960
* * *
Crofton’s Encyclopedia of Contemporary History
and Social Issues (3rd Edition):
CoDominium: The first attempts by the United States to forge a CoDominium alliance were defeated by the failure of an attempted Communist Party coup and the consequent deposition of Gorbachev. The Soviet Union splintered along national and ethnic lines; but when the economic situations of both the former Soviet Union and the United States continued to deteriorate, many in both nations looked back on the Cold War with nostalgia. When a new series of military and political coups resurrected the USSR, the United States was quick to join its former enemy in an alliance that established the supremacy of the two dominant nations over the rest of the world. The alliance was one of convenience rather than genuine friendship. . . .
The Exodus 2015—2050: In the first generation after the perfection of the Alderson Drive in 2010 more than forty planetary colonies were founded, not counting closed-environment mining settlements and refueling stops in systems without Terresteroid planets. While the CoDominium did not encourage governments (other than the US or Soviet Union) to establish direct settlements, corporations or settlement associations clandestinely backed by governments were common. Private colonization ventures were typically either commercial (e.g. Hadley, q.v.) or religious-ethnic in nature; see Arrarat (q.v.), Dayan (q.v.), Friedland (q.v.) , Meiji, (q.v.), others, spp. During this phase, several million emigrants left the solar system, almost all voluntary—although both the CoDominium Powers offered increasingly strong “encouragement” to politically inconvenient individuals and groups. Thus there are now planets whose population is purely Mormon (Deseret), American Black Separatist (New Azania), Russian nationalist (St. Ekaterina), Finnish (Sisu), and even Eskimo/Innuit (Nuliajuk).
The second phase of interstellar colonization began with the extension of the Bureau of Relocation’s mandate to include involuntary transport of colonists (in addition to the already existing flow of convicts, many merely petty criminals). During this period (2040 to date) voluntary emigration has remained roughly stable, but involuntary has increased to levels exceeding fifteen million persons per year; at the same time, more than seventy new planetary colonies have been founded, many specifically by the Colonial Bureau as relocation settlements. Given the sometimes extremely marginal habitability of the planets concerned (see Haven, Frystaat) and the endemic shortage of capital in the outsystem colonies, casualties among the transportees are often heavy, with life expectancies averaging as little as three years in some cases.
* * *
Whump.
A globe of violet fire bloomed for an instant against the southern horizon, down in the lowlands, actinic brightness through the gathering dark and the light cold rain. Firefly streams of tracer began to stitch across the ground in long shallow arcs, and the reddish sparks of exploding munitions.
The mercenary sergeant smiled in satisfaction at the picture his facescreen showed. He turned in his foxhole, away from the action to the south and toward the valley below the ridge where his men lay concealed. The twelve-man SAS section was dug in on the low crest, invisible in their spider-holes under chameleon tarps. Only the thread-thin tip of the fiber-optic periscope showed above the sergeant’s camouflage.
It was dark, Cytheria was just a sliver on the horizon, but that was no problem with nightsight. The enemy column was spread out down the wooded vale beneath them, winding through the tall grass and eucalyptus trees; the slope was in reddish-brown native scrub and shamboo. Men and mules halted at the sound of the explosion, then scattered to shouted orders.
“Now,” Sergeant Taras Miscowsky said into the throat-mike. Not what the bastards expected, he thought with a hard grin in the private darkness of the hole.
A heavy droning whistle came through the low clouds overhead. Then: crump . . . crump . . . crump. Points of red fire flashed over the valley, proximity-fused 160mm mortar rounds bursting at ten meters up. Circles of vegetation bent away, crushed by blast and flayed by the steel-wire shrapnel. Men and animals screamed or writhed or lay still under the iron flail; faint bitter scent of explosive joined the smells of wet earth and grass. Another salvo came in, and another, the air whistling continuously. The observers called fire on the clumps of guerrillas forming around officers and noncoms, throwing men into panic flight and chopping into dog-meat any attempt to rally.
“That’s doing it to them, Captain,” Miscowsky said as he threw back the tarpaulin. Then more formally, “Sir, they’re taking heavy casualties. I estimate thirty percent casualties on a full company. Better than half the mules are down, too. They’re moving, one six five degrees true.”
“Roger that. Tracking. We’ll get the blocking group in fast.”
“Sir. We’ll lose most of them if we don’t act fast.”
“Right. Thank you, Sergeant.”
Some of the enemy troops were moving straight west up the slope toward his position; the hill was gentle, and there was good cover. Mortar shells landed closer, probing for them as they moved up toward the ridge. The SAS unit was well dug-in, but they were infiltration scouts, not a line unit, and there were only a dozen of them. Miscowsky flashed a ranging laser at the center of the enemy group.
“Fire mission. Personnel, not armored. Five-fifty-six meters, bearing one hundred seventeen degrees.”
“On the way,” his commander’s voice sounded in the helmet mike. Seconds later Corporal Washington spoke:
“Getting troop movement noise to our rear, Sarge. Multiples, light vehicles and infantry.”
“Roger. Cap’n, the Royals are coming in from my west.”
“Roger that, Miscowsky; the other side of the trap’s moving in from the southeast around now.”
Miscowsky turned his head in that direction and switched his facemask to IR sensors. There was a hell of a firefight going on down there a couple of klicks away, at the works the guerrillas had been planning to attack. Small arms, mortars . . . and the lance-shaped blossom of a Cataphract light tank’s 76mm cannon. Several of those, coming toward him fast; he could see the faint waver of heat from their engines. Relayed sound-sensor data gave him the push from behind the SAS position. Boots thudding on turf, and a quiet whine from fuel-cell electrics. Then a louder shoop-wonk as their mortars opened up, lighter 8lmm’s and 120mm mediums.
He tapped at the side of his helmet to switch to the Royalist unit’s push.
“Miscowsky, Falkenberg’s Legion,” he said.
A dark machine shape came bounding up the low reverse slope behind him. A cycle, boxy body slung between two wheels that were balls of Charbonneau alloy monomolecular thread. It braked to a stop and a figure in bulky Nemourlon combat armor jumped down.
“Captain Lewis, 2nd Royals,” the man said.
Others in the same camouflage uniforms and armor were swarming up the ridge; teams set up machine guns as the riflemen fanned out and opened fire. Behind them light four-wheel vehicles like skeletal jeeps hauled ammunition and heavy weapons, recoilless rifles and rocket-launchers.
Miscowsky straightened and threw a formal salute. “Sir. Falkenberg’s Legion presents one enemy column, badly used,” he said.