Christopher Nuttall - Picking Up the Pieces

“You’ll have to leave your weapons here,” a guard said. I shook my head firmly. I don’t leave my weapons anywhere, not for anything. “Sir, I…”

“Let him through,” our escort said. “He’s not going to be going very far.”

The interior of the building was suspiciously ornate, not entirely to my surprise. The UN bureaucrats loved luxury and good-living, as long as someone else was paying the bill, and they’d shown surprising taste. It still seemed overdone to my eyes, but everyone says that I have no taste at all. I can’t think why. They’d hung a series of portraits on one wall and I took a moment to study them. They were all of nude girls in interesting poses.

“The Church wants to take those down,” our guide explained, “but this building is living history. Once the new Council Chamber is built, this place will become a museum.”

“Wise of you,” I said, calmly. “Whoever fails to learn from history is condemned to repeat it.”

He nodded and showed us into a smaller conference room, although it was nearly identical to the one that Daniel had used. The UN bureaucrats had probably just copied the design for all of their buildings. It wasn’t as if that had required much imagination. There were six people in the room; two women and four men, who rose to their feet as I entered. The President, at least, was obvious. I’d seen his image on the UN’s files, marked with dire warnings about how dangerous he was. He could command loyalty, a dangerous trait in someone opposed to the UN.

“Mr President,” I said, and held out a hand. “Thank you for your initiation.”

“You’re welcome,” the President said. His voice was surprisingly firm and charismatic. The UN hadn’t understated the case. Now that I had a chance to take a good look at him, I could see that he was underweight and probably under heavy stress, but healthy enough. He also looked relieved to see me. “I trust that you encountered no problems on your flight here?”

“No, Mr President,” I said, calmly. If he wanted to make small talk, that was fine by me. “I imagine that the William Tell will wish to inspect us before we land, but that won’t affect our deployment.”

“Of course, of course,” the President agreed. “I’m neglecting my manners. Please take a seat, all of you.” He waved from person to person. “Councillor Tindra Elmersson, Liberty Party, Councillor Albin Arvidsson, Conservatives and Farmers Party, Councillor Frida Holmqvist, Progressive Party, Police Chief Arne Johansson and General Lennart Fredriksson, Militia Commander. We are, to all intents and purposes, the government of the planet, gathered together in this room.”

I winced, but said nothing. I’d seen nothing to impress me with their security so far and a determined fanatic could have smuggled a bomb inside without any problems. The two women were both stunningly good looking, but Frida had a nasty scar running down her face. The Progressive Party representative eyed me in a manner that suggested she didn’t like my face, but I refused to show her any response. The Police Chief and the General looked more impressive, but the former was beaten down and the latter was coldly furious at something. Us, perhaps?

The President sat back and looked at me. “I understand that you brought your entire unit along,” he said. It wasn’t a question. “We had to be a little vague about why we’d hired you, but rest assured that it won’t get you into hot water with Fleet. There were… issues involved that made it hard to be frank with you, yet we needed you here as quickly as possible.”

“I understand,” I said, hiding my annoyance. If we weren’t being paid well for this, I’d have taken my ship and men elsewhere. I’d had enough of vague orders and politically-correct directives while I’d been in the UNPF. “I assume that this room is secure…?”

“It is,” the President confirmed. “We have something of a political crisis on our hands, one that has been developing since the UN pulled back into their bases and allowed us to regain control of the planet. There are factions within our planet that want to break away from the remainder of the planet and others that want to break down our system completely. Every faction is arming to the teeth, ah…”

“Call me Andrew,” I suggested.

“And there’s a lot of talk about armed opposition to the government,” the President continued. “We don’t have much of an army here and the police are unprepared to deal with political agitation.”

“If certain parties would stop trying to impose stupid policies on the farmers and miners,” the Police Chief said, “we would have less agitation.”

“If the farmers would charge prices that the public can afford,” Frida snapped back, “we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

The President held up a hand. I felt a moment of sympathy for him. Whatever he wanted from the situation, it was neglected by having to preside over a Council that was divided against itself. I knew little about how the government worked, but I was already seeing the chaos. When there were two parties and neither dared back down, the results was a war. When there were more than two parties… the results were normally chaos.

“As it is, we have no creditable deterrence to groups attempting to secede or take control by force,” the President said. “We hired you to build an army for us and take control of the spaceport. If it does come down to civil war, we will need you to lead your people and the soldiers you will have trained against the rebels.”

“I see,” I said. Securing the spaceport would be easy, unless Fleet decided to object. Training an army would be simple enough, although I suspected that the various councillors would make it harder. Leading an offensive… that might be tricky. “What sort of opposition are we looking at?”

“There has never been a full census of the Mountain Men up north,” the President admitted. “They had ties to the resistance, of course, but at the end of the war they refused to be disarmed. They weren’t alone in that, of course. We do know, however, that they overran two UN FOB installations in the area and took all of the supplies. They’re heavily armed enough to take the war to us if we give them a chance.”

“Perhaps,” I said unhappily, recalling the map I’d seen before. If the Mountain Men lived in the mountains, digging them out wasn’t going to be easy, yet the mountains were far too close to the mines, Svergie’s only source of outside currency. If they had taken an intact FOB, they’d have tanks and armoured cars — perhaps even helicopters — and the fuel to operate them. Crushing them wasn’t going to be easy… and then there were the farmers, and the potential for urban insurrection.

“There are other issues,” the President said. “If you can strengthen the state, it might allow us a chance to work out the political issues without a civil war. Can you build an army for us?”

I understood what he was saying and what he carefully wasn’t saying. Daniel had warned that the Communists — who didn’t seem to be represented at the meeting — were building their own armed forces. The same was probably true of the others. It wouldn’t take long for one of them to think about a strike at the government and launch a coup. An intact and loyal army could deter them from trying that, yet they would understand that as well — perhaps better — than I did. They might move before my troops were on the surface and ready to operate.

“Yes,” I said, wondering what kind of snake pit we’d dropped into. “We can build you an army. I assume that you will allow us to handle our own recruiting?”

“Absolutely out of the question,” Frida thundered, furiously. It did interesting things to her jumper. “You have to take the people we send you for training.”