Christopher Nuttall - A Learning Experience

Steve shook his head, inwardly. As long as he had influence, he would make damn sure there were no political parties, no one voting the party line against their conscience. Maybe parties had an important role to play, but they eventually became more intent on ensuring their own survival than actually representing their people. And that was the death knell of democracy.

“I call this meeting to order,” he said, cheerfully. “Coffee’s in the processor, smoke them if you have them, etc, etc.”

There was a brief pause as the group found cups of coffee for themselves and Wilhelm lit up a rather large cigar. Steve, who had given up smoking years ago, watched it with some amusement. Now, with alien medical technology, smoking posed no health hazard at all. But it was still banned on the moon, outside the smoking room. The CO of Heinlein Colony wasn’t inclined to take chances with the rapidly expanding base.

“It’s been a week since we intervened in Afghanistan,” Steve said, once they were sitting again. “It’s been ten days since we came to a preliminary agreement with the United States Government. I believe, therefore, that this is a good time to take stock of our position and bring us all up to date. Kevin?”

“I get to go first, do I?” Kevin asked. He smiled, rather dryly, then sobered. “At the moment, both the Afghanistan and Pakistani Taliban are in disarray. Their senior leadership has been effectively wiped out, shattering their command and control structures. In some places, this may allow for local accommodations and even surrender talks, as the Pakistani Taliban absolutely refused to allow any form of compromise between the Coalition and insurgent fighters. We have successfully created a window of opportunity for the local government and the Coalition to re-establish their authority over the nation.

“However, we have not tackled the underlying conditions that brought the Taliban into existence and gave them so many supporters. Corruption in the government has not been brought under control, tribal issues remain untouched and there is still a growing humanitarian crisis in large parts of the country. In the long run, we may see a resurgence of the Taliban insurgency — or something else, something more local.

“A further problem is that we may have accidentally destabilised the Pakistani Government,” he added. “They had ties to the Taliban, despite our protests, fearful of what would happen after the inevitable American withdrawal. Now, several of those agents are dead and the Pakistani Taliban is unravelling. The government may take advantage of the situation to eradicate the last traces of the insurgency or it may become more inclined to host them, as the geopolitical realities have not changed.”

Steve sighed. Like most American officers, he had rapidly grown to distrust and despise the Pakistani Government during his service in Afghanistan. They had played a double game, helping NATO with one hand and protecting the Taliban with the other. Maybe they did have good reasons for acting in such an underhand manner — although it wasn’t something Steve would willingly have tolerated — but they also undermined American trust and support for their government. And there were far too many questions about just how Osama Bin Laden had remained in Pakistan without being discovered. Had he been hidden and protected by Pakistani intelligence?

“We are proceeding to track down Al Qaeda links from Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Middle East,” Kevin concluded. “As Langley warned, AQ has fragmented into several dozen franchises that are both cooperating and conflicting with one another. We can work out ways to identify most of them, but it’s going to be a long hard slog.”

Steve nodded, slowly. “Keep working on it,” he said. “What about the cooperation you’ve received from the government?”

Kevin smiled. “Which one?”

He went on before Steve could say a word. “I’ve got a team of analysts from NSA and Langley assisting with the intake,” he added. “Most of them are doing a wonderful job, although the sheer torrent of information is often overloading our capacity for analysing it, let alone turning it into actionable intelligence. Still, we have some advantages. For one thing, once we tag someone he stays tagged.”

Steve felt a chill running down his spine. Kevin had been right. The sheer potential for abuse was terrifying. As long as they held control, it wouldn’t happen… or would it? Would there come a time when he’d be tempted to use the technology to rid himself of political enemies? He thought of some of the politicians in Washington and gritted his teeth. Would he be able to resist the temptation?

“Good,” he said, finally. “Charles?”

Charles nodded and leaned forward. With Kevin detailed to intelligence, Charles had effectively taken over recruitment.

“Now that we can move more openly, we have around five thousand prospective candidates in mind,” Charles said. “Half of them are military veterans, some crippled, others are various civilians who may be able to assist us. Quite a number are research scientists on the cutting edge of technological development, several are theorists who can be added to Keith’s group. However, the wider we cast our net, the more likely it will be we pick up a spy.”

Steve nodded. The DHS had already put together a profile of the people Steve was recruiting, even if their imagination had failed to deduce the existence of the starship or Steve’s long-term plans. He had already confirmed that they wouldn’t try to recruit serving military personnel, but the government could probably find a likely candidate and try to brief him first. Who knew where that would lead?

“Run them all through the lie detector first,” Kevin said. “So far, no one has been able to fool it. If they turn out to be spies, we can either restrict their movements or tell them we’ll pick them up later.”

“That leads to another problem,” Charles said. “Two, actually; where do we draw the line?”

Steve lifted his eyebrows. “The line?”

“Ninety percent of our recruits, so far, are American,” Charles said. “The remainder are British, Canadian and a handful of others from NATO countries. I’m planning to expand operations in Britain once the British Government is briefed into our existence. But where do we draw the line?”

He leaned forward. “Once we go public, there will be millions of people wanting to immigrate,” he added. “Not all of them will come from the West. Do we refuse to take Muslims? Or Russians? Or Chinese?”

Steve looked down at his hands. America had been built on immigration, he knew, hundreds of thousands of immigrants forced into a melting pot that had produced a semi-united culture. But now immigration was often a threat, to both America and the West, when the immigrants refused to integrate and the government refused to force them to comply. One immigrant was hardly a problem, a whole community — often isolated, not always speaking English — was a major headache. He’d heard too much from the south to take the problem lightly.

“Let me see if this makes sense,” he said. “We take people who are willing to work — no handouts for anyone on the moon — who speak English and are prepared to follow our laws, such as they are.”

“That does require that we codify our laws,” Kevin said. “So far, all we have are a handful of regulations on the moon. We’ll need a constitution, we’ll need a civil code, we’ll need some form of police… hell, we probably need some form of the Pledge of Allegiance.”

“We’ll write one out,” Steve said. “It’s a problem we will have to tackle over the next few months, I suspect.”

He shrugged. “Markus?”