Christopher Nuttall - Picking Up the Pieces

“Oh joy,” I said. It was honestly something I hadn’t thought about, but the UN had a long history of limiting the use of oil-drilling equipment on the Colonies, in the name of protecting the environment. Other worlds used hydrogen-powered vehicles and never felt the lack. “Get in touch with the local oil concerns and see if you can find us enough, all right? The last thing we need is to be permanently short of fuel.”

The first two weeks of training went surprisingly well. I’d been expecting that we’d have some incidents, but the few we had were swiftly squashed by the Drill Sergeants. A handful of recruits were rejected for medical conditions, a handful more were reluctantly allowed to quit when they discovered they couldn’t tolerate military life, but on the whole events went surprisingly well. I watched from a distance — half of running a military unit is knowing when to stand back and give your subordinates their head — as the recruits advanced towards becoming soldiers.

“They’re going to be riflemen,” Peter predicted, one evening. “They’re not going to become specialists until we can set up training schools for specialists. There might be a sniper or two among them, but…”

I nodded. “We’re not interested in building up specialist units yet,” I agreed. We’d have to hold off on building an armoured force until we’d solved the fuel shortage problem. I still wasn’t sure how that had been allowed to develop in the first place, but knowing the UN someone had paid a vast amount of money to have the planet develop like that. “We just need an infantry force so far.”

“So far,” Peter said, reminding me about the Mountain Men, and the farmers, and the various political militia groups, and all of the other problems we would face. The planet might succeed in developing a stable political base, and even an interstellar-level economy, but only if it survived its growing pains. I assigned officers to monitor the situation and held frequent conferences with Commander Webster. Fleet’s view of the situation was similar to our own. The planet was heading towards a very rocky patch. “So, how many of the recruits came from a particular political faction?”

I had my first inkling of the answer to that question two months after we arrived. The officer at the gate called my office and informed me that I had a visitor; Councillor Frida Holmqvist. I wasn’t particularly surprised. The political parties had been sniffing around our offices in town for weeks and had even tried to send inspectors into the spaceport, although I had deterred that as best as I could. I could give someone without military experience a completely useless tour and they’d never know what they’d missed, but I didn’t want to know how they would misinterpret what they saw. Suki’s reactions were interesting enough.

“I see,” I said, when they informed me. I hadn’t expected the Progressives to make the first move. I’d been betting on the Conservatives being the first to ask to talk to me privately. “Please have her shown into my office.”

I’d arranged procedures for handling visitors just after we’d taken over the spaceport. Frida wouldn’t be allowed to wander off on her own, or bring other people into the inner complex. I’d have preferred to strip search her, just in case, but the general level of technology on the planet precluded anything that could be smuggled past our defences. I wasn’t pleased about it — they could have purchased something more advanced and dangerous from Heinlein — but there was little choice. Stripping her naked and carrying out a full search, including a cavity search, would probably have annoyed her. I didn’t need additional enemies.

Frida looked as beautiful as ever, a real Nordic goddess, her appearance barely marred by her scar. I found myself studying her as I rose to greet her and made a mental note not to underestimate her. She had a mind like a steel trap. She wore a very traditional long skirt and a scarf in her hair, although it didn’t seem to serve any religious purpose. Her outfit also seemed to diminish her breasts.

“Welcome to Camp Currie,” I said. We’d put our suggestions for names in a hat and someone — I suspected Russell — had won. I’d wanted something a great deal more sarcastic. “How may I be of service?”

Frida smiled, but it didn’t quite touch her eyes. “You can explain why you rejected the officers we sent you,” she said, firmly. I tried my best to look as if her words meant nothing to me, but I knew what she was talking about, unfortunately. I was a little surprised to discover that she was being this blatant about it. “They all had good careers in the resistance and sound backers.”

“I’m sure they did,” I agreed, calmly. “I must say, Councillor…”

“You chose to order them to leave your camp,” Frida said, all trace of humour gone. “Why did you refuse to accept them?”

I took a breath. “The problems of running an actual army and a resistance group are very different,” I explained, wondering if she would understand. “The resistance group must operate, if you’ll pardon my metaphor, as fish in the sea of the people. There is little discipline and no respect for the rules of war. The leader must operate by personal example and, if he is killed, the group may fall apart.

“An army, by contrast, operates as part of a larger structure,” I added. “The problems of running an army include maintaining strict discipline, uniformity and strict respect for the rules of war. The kind of people who specialise in one set of skills may not translate well into the other set.”

I paused. “And there is another issue. Back when I was in the UN, the kind of officers who got promoted were the officers who kept up with their paperwork and pleased their superiors, not the warriors who went out and got their hands dirty. The results tended to have incompetent officers placed in command of units and, if they were lucky, breaking them. If they were unlucky, they racked up huge death tolls. I will not commission any officer who hasn’t come up from the ranks and gained actual experience in military operations. He would merely get a lot of good men killed.”

Frida scowled at me. “And yet they’re trusted by the government,” she pointed out. I don’t know how she managed to say that with a straight face. “What would you do if we chose to commission them anyway?”

“I would refuse them,” I said, flatly. She looked as if she were about to explode, so I hastened to explain. “I was hired to build this planet a professional army. An army that becomes led by paper-pushers and clerks is not a proper army. The only qualification for advancement that I will accept is experience in combat, or experience in heavy training.”

“They had experience in the resistance,” Frida said, coldly. “Or doesn’t that count?”

“No,” I said. “As I said, the problems are different. Your resistance didn’t even come close to pushing the UN off your planet. You barely managed to annoy them; they certainly never committed millions of troops to holding you down. You won your war when Admiral Walker” — my close personal friend , I carefully didn’t add — “took the UN out of commission. As far as I’m concerned, your resistance men haven’t seen the elephant.”