Because it may as well be true. And because no one would ever really know either way.
But now the Republic was on life support. Deage knew that. Moreover, he knew that saying the Republic was on life support was a way for him to comfort himself. It wasn’t on life support. It was stone-dead and lying half buried in the grave. Article Nineteen was something the Republic Army had been training for—in strict secrecy—for years. There was still an R-A special forces unit attached to the 305th for that reason—though most of them had gone AWOL and caught transports off Kublar in the aftermath of what happened to the House of Reason and Goth Sullus.
Desertion had become a significant problem. Once the soldiers got it in their heads that there was no longer a Republic to fight for, his officers had a hell of a time keeping them inside the Green Zone. It seemed like every week somebody slipped off and begged, borrowed, or stole their way onto a transport. Colonel Deage had signed orders to execute anyone caught in an attempt to desert.
He’d only done that once though, to the first soldier they caught. A private that cried so much before the firing squad that she damn near soaked through the blindfold she’d been given. But it only served to slow deserters. To make them more cautious about who they were willing to trust and talk to. Deage quietly ordered that anyone else caught be incarcerated. Vanished without a trace.
The soldiers left assumed the execution was just done out of sight. And that was fine, because what Colonel Deage needed right now were bodies. Because Kublar, specifically the Soob, was on the verge of toppling. A paramilitary force had entered the city right under their noses and supplied weapons to disgruntled natives to use against the zhee—about the only ally Colonel Deage could count on to help him achieve his mission of protecting the local Republic government.
The zhee, despite all their roughshod violence across the city, discreetly avoided attacking any Republic assets. All that had been worked out. The Republic would not interfere with the zhee if they left the inner circle of the Green Zone—where all Repub assets were held and protected—free from harm. But the zhee had been soundly defeated by the marginal hangers-on of the propped up Pashta’k tribe. The lowest caste of the Republic’s chosen winner of the Kublaren Civil War, cast aside by the Pashta’k chieftain and his tribal select.
And that compounded a problem that the planetary governor and her cabinet expected Colonel Deage to solve. As he walked through the cool, air-conditioned marble halls of the domed Republic capitol building, Deage weighed his options.
All those soldiers killed in orbit over Utopion. Damn, what I wouldn’t give for a full three companies.
“Sir?”
Colonel Deage halted at the sound of Major Dorenz’s voice. He wheeled around and saw the major standing at a pair of heavy wooden doors that went from floor to ceiling. They were carved from the ironwood trees native to Kublar and inlaid with silvene that seemed to flash and surge with the light as though it were delivering nutrients to the wood itself on a cellular level.
“We’re here, sir.”
Deage nodded and walked to the door. “Lost in my thoughts, Hal.”
“Yes, sir.”
Major Dorenz swung the door open and Deage walked in on the seated assembly. Governor Pressfield was seeking to referee an argument between the Pashta’k chieftain, Looma, and a zhee the colonel had never seen before. The rest of the ruling council was split into small bunches of Republic bureaucracy, paper tigers who had no bite left now that the House of Reason was unable to back up their legislative decisions with its military.
The room quieted, except for the zhee and Kublaren. They shouted at one another, each using his own native tongue and with no translator bot in sight. Talking past each other and not seeming to care. Deage would have laughed if it weren’t all so serious.
“Colonel Deage,” Governor Pressfield said, commanding a quiet, even over the bickering aliens with her digitally amplified voice. It rang off the polished stone through micro-speakers throughout the chamber. “Did you receive word of the Legion’s intentions?”
“I did, ma’am,” Deage said, his own voice now amplified, a tiny mic’d bot floating near his mouth like a curious gnat. “The Legion has declined the invitation to get involved in Kublar and is advising that the former Republic government—their words—negotiate with the Kublaren forces being aided by Black Leaf.”
A council member was quick to give an opinion on the colonel’s report. “That’s not fair! This is a Republic world.”
“All due respect,” Colonel Deage said, “but it’s not. Not to the Legion. The Republic government of Kublar did not acknowledge or support Article Nineteen—”
“Because the House of Reason declared it illegal!” interrupted another irate council member, though the edge of fear betrayed her intentions.
“Be that as it may, the Legion acting in agreement with the planets who did throw in to see Article Nineteen come to completion no longer recognize this council as a valid Republic government and won’t be sending aid. We’re on our own here. This is being viewed as a matter of Kublaren planetary sovereignty.”
“Damn,” muttered Governor Pressfield. She rubbed the great crescent that was the council table, a half-circle that faced the gallery Colonel Deage stood in, where all the planetary council and its allies sat with her at the head. “I had hoped that, given his history on Kublar, the Legion Commander would have been eager to return violence to the planet.”
Chieftain Looma licked his eye at this.
“Yes, ma’am,” Deage said, not really having an opinion on the matter. Let the spooks and armchair psychologists do the psychoanalysis.
The way he figured it, even if the Legion was itching for a fight on Kublar, this situation had to be brought under control in the next twenty-four hours or the damage would be irrevocably done
