Stark's Crusade (18 page)

His father waved the hand away, though his expression was uncertain. "I think I can manage. Try to keep your speed down, though."

"No problem." They moved past the sentry post, the sentries on duty snapping to attention and rendering salutes as Stark passed. He returned the salutes with unusual care. "He's with me," Stark assured the sentries.

They went a few paces in silence, then his father spoke. "Why did they do that?"

"Huh?" Stark glanced over at his father, puzzled. "Do what?"

"That jumping up and saluting stuff. Did they do that for you?"

"Sure. That's standard military courtesy."

"I see a lot of military people passing each other, and they aren't doing that."

"They did that with me because I'm their commander," Stark explained.

"The boss, you mean. So you're the boss here? Of how much?"

"Uh, everything." Stark gestured to take in the hallway. "This place. These people. Everybody and everything military that's defending the Colony."

"Everything?" His father looked around, an unreadable expression now on his face. "Well."

"Yeah."
I gotta get Vic. This is too clumsy. We don't know how to talk. But, then, we never did.
"Let me show you the command center first."

"Alright." His father followed obediently through the hallways, occasionally raising his eyebrows as a passing soldier saluted Stark.

Stark palmed the access to the command center, trying to avoid looking at the new metal of the door that remained a painful reminder of the raid on his headquarters that had cost a number of lives. "This is, uh, the command center."

"So you said." His father peered around. "Pretty impressive gear. Some of it looks like it's been damaged, though. Surely it's not secondhand?"

"Uh, no. There was an attack here. Right here. We had to fight it off behind these consoles. They've been repaired since then. Like the door."

"Oh." His father seemed momentarily at a loss for words. "I remember, now. We heard about it."

"Ethan." Vic came forward. "You have a visitor?"

"Yeah. This is my dad. Dad, this is Vic Reynolds. She's a real good friend. She's also second in command here and a real good tactical thinker."

"A pleasure," his father beamed, leaning slightly to look at Vic's shoulders where her stripes were displayed. "You are also an, uh, sergeant?"

"That's right."

"But you are my son's assistant?"

Stark flinched at the term but Vic merely smiled. "You might say that. My main job seems to be trying to keep him out of trouble. It's an endless task."

"I imagine so! You and I can probably swap some hair-raising tales about that. You sent Ethan's mother and I a letter once, didn't you?"

"I did." She smiled again, then hooked a thumb toward the door. "Why don't we go somewhere quiet to talk, Ethan?"

"Sure."
I don't believe it. Five seconds with him and she's got my dad talking like he's an old friend.
"After you."

Vic led the way to the rec room nearest Stark's quarters, getting coffee as the others sat. His father peered around at the small space and its rock walls. "This is where you work?"

"Sometimes," Stark admitted. "My room's just around the corner from here. It's about the same size."

"Really? As a boy, you always complained your room was too small. This is smaller than that."

Stark felt himself flushing at the memory. "I bitched a lot more than I should have. You and Mom did a helluva lot for me. And taught me a lot of important things."

"I guess we did, though I admit I can't recall just when we taught you to stage revolutions and overthrow governments."

Stark winced. "I can't blame that on you."

"Don't look at me," Vic added. "It's not my fault." She turned to Stark's father, face serious. "I'm sorry, sir, but I must ask you something directly. What brings you here? The government has banned unofficial travel up here, yet you arrived on the shuttle bringing an official negotiating party."

"I was wondering when someone would ask me that." He stared at the floor for a moment, his face reflecting anger. "To put it simply, I'm here to try to convince Ethan that he should give up. Surrender. Accept whatever offer he gets from the government before anyone else gets hurt."

"I see. You don't appear to be happy with that mission."

"I'm not. I happen to be very proud of what my son has done. I've had to spend my life kissing the butts of people who think they're better than me. My son has now kicked those butts nice and hard. And from all I've been able to tell, he didn't do it to get anything for himself, but just to help others."

An awkward silence reigned for a moment. "Hell, Dad," Stark noted, "you never let people walk on you."

"Yes, I did! I'm doing it now by coming here! Not that I had much choice. Your mother's ill. I'm sorry. We hadn't told you. You have enough to worry about, and you'd probably think it was a government trick anyway. No, she's in pretty bad shape, but it can be treated successfully. High odds of remission, they say. If the treatment is approved. Do you know who has to approve the treatment, Ethan?"

"Let me guess."

"Correct. A government official. They'll do it, they say, but I was told it would certainly expedite any decision if I came up here and begged you to give up."

"Bastards." Stark slammed one fist against the wall, oblivious to the blood spotting his knuckles afterward. "I guess Mom's just one more little guy who doesn't count, except when the bosses can use them. Well, hell, tell the government you begged me on your knees and I refused to listen at all. I mean it. If they think they can get to me through Mom they might try some other games with her treatment."

"You're probably right," his father sighed, noticing his coffee for the first time and taking a drink, then twitching in involuntary reaction. "This stuff is awful. This is what you have to drink thanks to the blockade?"

"Nah. This is what the government always gives us. Standard military coffee."

"You ought to try the beer," Vic suggested. "It makes the coffee taste good by comparison."

"I'll take your word for it." Stark's father took another cautious sip, then shuddered. "Well, I've had my say, and I'm sure you want to get rid of me, now."

"No," Stark protested. "Dad, I know you've only got a little while, but you don't have to rush off."

"Thank you." He glanced around, puzzled. "Is it safe here? We've been told you're under siege, your defenses crumbling. But, none of you seem worried at all."

"We're worried. No one knows how things will work out in the end. But we're not crumbling. No way. We've taken everything the government's thrown at us so far and broken it into little pieces."

"There was a tremendous explosion on the Moon a few months ago. A lot of people saw it. The government said it was in the Colony, but there's a lot of people who claim the explosion was outside the Colony."

"It was. We caused it. Blew up a lot of ammunition the government had sent up here."

"You did?" His father laughed. "Serves them right. So, you're safe? You've defeated every attack?"

"I don't want to make it sound too cut and dried. We've been lucky a few times," Stark hedged. "Sometimes it's been pretty close. And we've lost people."

"Lost them? How?"

It took Stark a moment to realize his father truly didn't understand what the term 'lost' meant in the case of a soldier. "Killed, Dad. They've been killed fighting up here."

"Oh." Stark's father ducked his head to hide his embarrassment. "I'm . . . I'm sorry. I really didn't—"

"I know. That's okay."

"But you still seem confident, if I'm any judge of people. Everyone I've seen here seems confident."

Stark pondered the statement, then shrugged. "Yeah. That's right. Truth be told, I think we could grab a lot of extra territory if we wanted it."

"Extra territory?" Stark's father's eyebrows rose, then lowered into a frown. "But the military situation up here has been stalemated for years. That's what the government kept telling us. Were they lying?"

"No. Not about that. It's just the way we were fighting, the way they were telling us to fight, that kept us from breaking the stalemate. Everything was too rigid, too preplanned all to hell and gone, too much micromanagement of the guys with weapons from people way behind the front line. When we got rid of the people behind the front, and managed to survive long enough, we figured out how to do it better."

"I'm not sure I understand. You mean you can, what's the word, command better now?" His father leaned forward, intent on the question.

Stark rubbed his forehead, arranging his thoughts. "Everything's been top down in the past, Dad. You know, just like in civ, uh, civilian jobs. The big boss tells little bosses who tell littler bosses who tell somebody else until you finally get to the apes who do the actual job, and then they're expected to do exactly as told. Oh, there's always talk about letting the guys doing the job have a lot of input, but it never happens much because too few bosses want to share information or authority. It's been that way since forever, I guess, and maybe it had to work that way because only the big boss could collect all the data and maybe understand what was going down."

His father frowned again, this time thoughtfully, then nodded. "Of course. Every system I've seen functions the same way. They collect information and funnel it to what you call the boss, which is whoever is allowed to make decisions. Then the boss uses the same system in reverse to tell everyone what to do."

"But why does some guy at the top have to decide everything?" Stark stood, pacing back and forth as he spoke, the long, low lunar-gravity steps carrying him almost across the room with every stride. "Maybe in the old days, yeah, that had to happen. But now every grunt can know as much as the guy at the top. They've got access to the same data, even though the bosses are usually trying to block them from seeing it because they claim low-level guys can't understand things. We're mushrooms, right? Keep us in the dark and feed us crap."

His father laughed. "I hadn't heard that one before."

"But you know," Stark continued, "maybe now a low-level guy like you or me can understand some or all of that information better, because we're right there where things are happening, not somewhere way behind the front where you can't feel stuff."

"Feel stuff?"

"Yeah. You know. It's not what you're being told, or what your sensors say, it's how the troops feel, how the enemy's reacting, how the ground feels to you right there. And you can't get that through a data stream. No way." Stark paused, his hands moving as if forming his words in the air before him. "So we tried it different. We've let the guys on the scene call the shots. Change the plan if they want. Go for what seems best."

"But. . . I thought the purpose of a plan was to achieve a desired end."

"It should be! But the plan always turns into the be-all and end-all. A little thing like the objective gets lost in all the planning, and everybody ends up worrying about jumping through every hoop in the plan. You can plan something to death, Dad. Until you've got everything every person has to do spelled out, right down to the times when they get a latrine break. Then you ask them what they're trying to accomplish, and all they can do is point to the plan. "

"Hmmm." His father looked toward Vic for her opinion.

"It may sound crazy," she assured him, "but it works. The whole historical basis for military action has been massing defending forces against whatever point the enemy is attacking. If the attacking force is moving forward as dozens or hundreds of autonomously operating units, yet thanks to our technology is able to still coordinate the actions of each one of those units when necessary, it makes it almost impossible to identify the main attack. It's like trying to stop water with your hands."

"Right. Because there isn't a main attack," Stark elaborated. "We tried this in its purest form during an, uh, recent problem up here. Put a bunch of troops into a building held by hostile forces and let them just run where they liked. The bad guys tried to organize a response but couldn't figure out where to react."

"I see," Stark's father replied, though his tone remained doubtful. "I take it you're saying you can now defeat any other military force?"

"I think so. Yeah. If we wanted to."

His father looked even unhappier. "And your primary enemy now is the U.S. government."

"I guess so."

"Then I suppose you're planning to attack that, aren't you?"

The question caught Stark by surprise. He was sure his reaction showed on his face, but he denied it verbally anyway. "I ain't doing that. I'm not launching any attacks on the U.S."

"If he did," Vic added, "I wouldn't help him."

His father pursed his lips, eyes searching Stark's face. "You know you can't win that way. I may not be some military hotshot, but I know sports, at least. If all you do is let the other guy try to win while you only try to stop him, sooner or later that other guy
will
win."

"Dad, sometimes winning ain't worth the price you'd pay for victory. Those people, the civs back in America, they depend on us to protect them. They've done one lousy job of saying 'thanks' in the past, but that don't matter. I'm not gonna win this war if it means hitting them. Or if it means hitting the government that they're still supporting. It sucks, but that's all there is to it. Pardon my language."

"We're all adults here, son. What about your people, then, Ethan? What about all the soldiers who are following you? You realize you're possibly condemning them to an endless and ultimately losing war?"

"Yeah." Stark stared back stubbornly. "I've always kept the faith with the people I'm responsible for. In this case, that means I can't lead these apes into an attack on our home and feel I've done what's right. And we're all responsible for keeping the faith with those civs, to protect them. Nothing we've done so far really hurts the Constitution, and that's what we're sworn to uphold. If we go in to physically take down the government, we've ripped up that piece of paper. I won't do it, and I won't lead other soldiers to do it. If they don't like it, they can choose another boss."