The Prince by Jerry Pournelle and S.M. Stirling

“Until it’s too late,” Whitlock said. “Yeah, I reckon that’s the size of it. She figures when it’s over she’ll be in charge with Croser to help her, and he reckons the same thing only reversed.”

“They really do intend to become the government,” David mused. “They want to govern.”

“No, Sire, they don’t want to govern. They want to rule,” Caldwell Whitlock said. “Not quite the same thing. And as General Owensford’s report shows, they’ve made a fair bit of headway.”

Alexander shook his head in wonder. “How could people like that put together an army, an army capable of fighting real troops, right under our noses?”

“Careful plannin’,” Whitlock said. “An eye for conditions. And a lot of help from off-planet. Conditions first. I was just remarking to General Owensford here, this isn’t the sort of war he’s used to. It’s revolutionary war, the type they had on Earth a hundred, hundred and fifty years ago. You see, you’re the victims of your own success. Oppression and despair don’t produce revolution; there’s been exactly one successful slave revolt in all of recorded history. No, what produces revolutions is hope—combined with a certain amount of social disorganization. Defeat in war will do it but BuReloc’s given you the equivalent—and frustrated ambitions. The underclasses may furnish the troops, but it’s people on the make who lead them.

“Places like Meiji or Churchill, they’re too homogenous and stable for this kind of war. They’d have to be outright invaded. Frystaat, say, or Diego are quite effectively oppressive. They’d have shot your Croser years ago. You, I’m afraid, are stuck right in the middle. In most places civilization is a thin crust on a sea of barbarism; Rome had her Goths and Saxons, Earth bred ’em in its own guts. Still, the system’s had a certain stability. The masses never get to see the rulers, mostly they’re left to rot while dangerous ones are shipped out, or recruited fo’ the Marines and the Fleet; the productive workin’ minority is kept in line by the threat of the—pardon me, usin’ Earth terminology—Citizen hordes. An’ the tiny oligarchy that runs things is secure. Except from itself, which is where the system’s breakin’ down there, a lot like old Rome.

“Now,” he went on, drawing on his cigar, “out here, you’ve got problems from the bottom up, instead. Y’all understand, you’ve got an unusual rulin’ class here. A full third of the population, and visible. Then the CD sends you Earth’s barbarians. And what do you do? You give them a chance. You give them no excuses. None. You make it plain, their failures are their own fault, and you rub it in by making the rewards of success visible and believable.

“That worked fine so long as you didn’t get overwhelmed. Lots of them made good, you’ve achieved a remarkable and admirable social mobility. But a lot just don’t make good. Too many generations of failure, too long away from even suspecting what citizenship is. They see you as rich slavemasters, and they get told all they got to do is take what’s coming to them. Okay, you can handle that if you don’t lose your nerve, but nobody ever said it was going to be easy.”

“We give them every opportunity to get ahead. Become Citizens, or, more likely, their children will,” Lord Yamaga said. “My grandfather was a transportee!”

“Yessir, but don’t forget how things change. First generation transportees got here into a working society, lots of opportunity. No opposition to speak of. Now you get floods of these barbarians. Most raised in cesspits ruled by two-legged rats. Example, Skida Thibodeau, of Belize. Only difference there between the street gangs and the gov’mint is firepower. Miz Thibodeau grew up in an environment where there’s no law nor morals either; she’s got enormous ability, and the moral outlook of a hammerhead shark.” Another meditative puff.

“Of course, the demographic mix here doesn’t help. The surplus of males, that is. Big concentration of young, socially alienated and sexually frustrated males with no prospects of startin’ a family is a recipe for trouble. Recruitin’ them into an army and sending them offworld was a good idea, only too late. Because of the next factor: who’s taking advantage of the conditions.”

“Croser,” someone said; they made the word sound like a curse.

“True. Typical in Utopian settlements to get a rebellious element in the second generation. Your bad luck to get one who’s perversely brilliant, with a childhood grudge against your whole social system: Knows history, knows the weak points of your society—I’ve read some of his papers from his university days. Also a charismatic leader who can win loyalty, not afraid to delegate, and he knows how to pick able people.

“Been plannin’ this for the better part of two decades, I’d say. Accumulatin’ funds—does it shock you if I say he controls more money than Freiherr von Alderheim here?”

The industrialist did look shocked.

“Lot of debts,” Whitlock said. “But lots of power, too.”

“Where did he get it?” van Alderheim demanded.

“Lots from off-planet,” Whitlock said. “Easy to guess the source.”

“So Bronson has bought him? Why? What does Bronson want with us?” Alexander demanded.

“Regiments. Same thing Lermontov wanted,” Whitlock said. “You set out to build a regiment factory. That was fine by Bronson. He’d figured on Croser doing that anyway, you might as well get a good start. Then two things happened. Ms. Skilly got anxious to start things movin’—don’t know why, maybe she’s beginning to feel her age—and you brought in Falkenberg’s Legion to train these troops. That was enough to get Bronson’s attention.”

“Because he hates Falkenberg,” David said.

“Well, Sire, that’s a piece of it, but if you bet on Grand Senator Adrian Bronson gettin’ carried off by his emotions, you’ll lose every time. Not that he minds indulging his grudges when he can, he’s got a hell of a streak of mean, but think on it. If you’d built normal mercenary regiments for use off-planet, who’d they be loyal to?”

“The paymaster, I presume,” Lysander said quietly.

“Exactly. But Your Highness was with Falkenberg’s Legion on Tanith. Who are they loyal to?”

“Falkenberg. I see,” Lysander said. “Suddenly what Bronson saw as an asset—mercenary regiments he could subvert—became a possible threat.”

“That’s about the size of it,” Whitlock said. “Before that, his support for Croser was nominal, the kind of thing he does lots of places for insurance, a way to keep his hand in. Sparta didn’t look like having any special ties to Falkenberg and Lermontov. Then all of a sudden, Prince Lysander here goes to Tanith, where Falkenberg and one of the Blaines are in cahoots to mess up Bronson’s plans to get more control over the Fleet. Crown Prince Lysander becomes Mr. Cornet Prince, and that right there would be enough to take notice of.”

“Why?” David asked.

“Reckon you never met Falkenberg,” Whitlock said. “If you had, you wouldn’t ask. Anyway, pretty soon he don’t have to guess whether Prince Lysander’s going to choose the Lermontov side in the upcoming struggles, ’cause Mr. Cornet Prince goes and ruins Bronson’s whole operation for him.”

“Game. You said game,” Lysander said.

“Up to not long ago that’s what it was,” Whitlock said. “Bronson didn’t want Croser to win and consolidate his position, but he didn’t want him to lose, neither. So he sends just enough to keep him going. But that all changed last year. Now it’s all out.”

“And so he sent the technoninjas,” Slater said. “And stepped up his off-world support by a lot.”

“So what will happen now?” Lysander asked.

“Not to get ahead of ourselves,” Whitlock said. “First look at what you’re facing. For twenty years Croser’s been laying a political framework without much opposition. After all, it didn’t occur to anyone that organizin’ the non-Citizens was anything but an exercise in futility. Developin’ an ideology: I mentioned this was an archaic sort of place? Well, you’ve got something really old-fashioned here. A real, honest-to-god Leninist-Maoist vanguard party that believes in itself. Oh, not strictly Marxist—elements of that—more like National Socialism, really. Then he started buildin’ up an army. The brigadier here knows more about the ways that might be done.”

Owensford nodded. “We’ve put together something of a picture from the prisoner interrogations,” he said.

“You’d start small, with some committed partisans. Get them military educations, and bring in small parties of people with training—there are plenty of good officers and NCOs on the beach on Earth, and the NCOs would be more valuable than the officers, at first. Not all that many who’d be willing to link up with this gang, but enough. Send others off to enlist in merc units on other worlds, which would get you combat-experienced men. Use all those to train selected local recruits who’re committed to your cause. It would start small, but once you got well started expansion could be geometric. We’ve also determined that they—presumably Croser—started stockpiling weapons and equipment, in the Dales and elsewhere, a full decade ago. Skimming export shipments, mostly. Croser’s companies would get export orders, over-order enough to cover the five or ten percent they’d take, then use the profits on the real sale to cover the excess. Complicated, but workable, and you wouldn’t have to have many people in the know.”