Confederation -- 24

Chapter 24

Whistle and I took the smaller shuttle down to Earth. For a change, Jake wasn't at his stadium headquarters. We found him at a large encampment of his soldiers out near the eastern border of Colorado. It was located near a small town named 'Joes.'

The place was a little over a hundred miles from the Denver metro area, situated along highway 36, about twenty or thirty miles from the Kansas-Colorado border. I read the name from an old atlas we'd been using for navigation. The shuttles didn't have anything like our old GPS systems. If they had, it probably wouldn't have worked. Even if the GPS satellites were still operational, the Sunnys had no more concept of how humans mapped their planet than Jefferson.

When I told Whistle the town's name, he looked at me, puzzled, and asked, "Dis place belong to Joe?"

"No. It's just a name. Maybe it belonged to someone named Joe who lived here a long time ago. I don't know," I answered.

He seemed bemused for a bit and then commented, "Dat's nice. Place keep memory of human alive. Sunnys never think of this. All our places are named their own names, not related to Sunnys."

I smiled, "We come from different cultures. It would be strange if we did things the same way."

He was busy adjusting the shuttle for landing for a moment but then said, "Peoples all be different. You, me, Sim-tigers, even Pugs have their own way of doing things. Maybe no one way is right. Maybe every people got their own reasons for what they do. Who is going to say?"

That was a good observation. I added, "The only ones that have no set way are the Pug-bears. They just act like animals and do whatever they want."

"Yes, Dec. You know they are animals, only some of dem have the big brains and are smart. If we can get rid of the thing that causes their brains to grow, maybe they won't be problem any longer. We just have to keep them out of space. You crashed their space station. I thought that was bad. Now I understand that sometimes breaking things and being violent prevents more trouble later." He returned to his landing preparation.

I was speechless for a moment. It seemed that he was somehow overcoming the Sunny bias against violence. Previously, he hadn't been able to see that sometimes force applied at the right time and place can prevent having to apply more force later.

We had been traveling over a mile up. I'd thought it best to keep some air beneath us in case someone decided to take a shot at our shuttle. The things were heavily armored, but having had the engine knocked out before made me nervous and disinclined to take any chances.

The area surrounding Joes had been an agricultural center. From a high altitude, there were what looked like large polka-dots scattered around all over the place. The polka-dots were all that remained of what once were irrigated fields. The irrigation systems were hooked to artesian wells and had rotated around the wellhead, spraying water on the crops. Each of the dots was perhaps two thousand feet in diameter. The wells had either dried up, or more likely, the equipment had worn out and not been repaired. For comparison, you could probably have dropped two towns the size of Joes on one of the spots and had room left over.

We landed next to Jake's shuttle in a field behind the post office. A group of men came over to the shuttle to greet us and then escort us to Jake's location. He was sitting in the old community building about two hundred or so yards down the street from where we'd landed. There was a rag-tag group of officers gathered around him in a planning session.

As we came in, I heard the crackle of a short-wave radio system. Jake turned from his map at the sound and saw me.

"Just in time, Dec!" he said. "We're trying to get hold of the Motherland's main leader. I believe he calls himself the President." He smiled sardonically.

The radio crackled again, and then the operator got it tuned in so we could talk. It took some time to convince the Motherland people to get their leader on the line.

Finally, a man's voice came through clearly, "This is President Bashir. Who am I talking at?"

Jake introduced himself, using better grammar than the alleged President. The conversation shortly degenerated into a series of demands on the part of the President. I don't know if he really understood the idea of negotiation. It didn't seem like he did; his demands were all one way – his.

"I want you to retreat back to your city. We own all of the lands up to your city borders. You must pay us an annual tribute of either gold or slaves. If you don't, we'll attack your city, and the next time, we'll take it and kill everyone who opposes us," he said.

After that, his demands became even more outrageous. His following words were, "I require you to turn over all flying machines to me, including the rocket or spaceship that shoots at my men. The commander of the spaceship must be turned over to me alive. He must suffer torture for what he did to my forces. In addition, you must turn over all of his crew. They are all sentenced to death."

Jake looked at me as if to say, "See what we're dealing with?"

I didn't say anything. Instead, I stepped over to the set and held out my hand for the microphone. The operator handed it to me.

I paused, composing myself. The guy's demands had gotten on my nerves, and I was just about ready to tell him something that was very undiplomatic.

I shook my head to clear it and then said, "Your force is not powerful enough to take the front-range territory. Even if you could take it, you couldn't keep it. The tribute is out of the question, and so is the spaceship. We will also keep our shuttles. You may find that their armament is almost as potent as that of our spaceships."

I looked at Jake. He was grinning, and then he made a pushing motion, indicating that I should tell them to retreat farther.

I had held the mike button down, so the channel was still mine. I added, "We've told you to retreat one hundred miles from our territory. We've decided that isn't enough. Our territory now extends to the Mississippi River. Stay on the eastern side or risk attack."

Jake exclaimed in surprise, "Oh! Are you sure that we can enforce that boundary? We don't have enough men to do it."

"I know, but he's pissing me off. We can always back down a bit, but maybe it would be a good idea to have a no man's land as a buffer between us," I responded.

The President called back. He was sputtering in rage and somewhat incoherent. He finally said, "This means war! We will gather a force that is so great that it will be like a shadow over the land. You will have no chance, and we will give no mercy. Any survivors will be implanted with controllers, and they will be our slaves forever."

That was interesting. I looked meaningfully at Jake. We had discussed the implant that I'd found in the sniper. This was an indication that they had more and were probably using them on anyone whose loyalty was suspect. I wondered where they got the nasty things. Manufacturing mainly was still impossible, especially high-tech things, like the implants.

I went back on the radio and said, "In the interest of cooperation, we'll allow you to have the land up to the eastern border of Kansas. We can keep Kansas clear as a buffer between our territories. Any incursion into that territory will be met with extreme force. You haven't seen even the beginning of what we can do. I assure you that you won't like the results of angering us."

The radio was silent. I thought that the President was considering the expense of waging a long-distance war that his forces might lose. He came back on and said, "That will be acceptable for now, but you cannot withstand our might forever. We will give you three months in peace, and then we'll speak about this again."

There was a distinct click as the Motherland radio went off the air. I turned to Jake with a wry grin and said, "Sorry that I kind of took over."

He grinned back and said, "You did okay. I would have cussed him out." He glanced around and then added, "I'm a pretty good poker player when I set my mind to it. I'm positive he was bluffing. He needs time to regroup and gather more men."

I said, "I think you're right. He'll probably need more than three months to rebuild his forces."

I was still feeling guilty for taking the lead. He had been gracious about it, but Jake was Jake. He had to maintain his prestige. I added, "Listen, maybe I made some threats that you wouldn't have, but I want you to know that we're committed to helping you. I'll leave a force here through the whole thing, reinforcing your position. Oh, one thing, I wasn't exaggerating. We can do some things that they won't care for at all."

Jake asked, "What do you mean? I thought the anti-matter weapons were about the ultimate thing you have."

"They are, but we can also resort to a low-tech weapon that is potentially so powerful, it can destroy their entire territory," I answered.

He looked puzzled, and I continued, "We can easily drop KEWs on their positions, and a big one will have the power of many atomic bombs."

"Dec, slow down," Jake shook his head. "What's a KEW, and why haven't you told me about this thing before?"

"It's an acronym for 'Kinetic Energy Weapon' – a fancy term for throwing rocks," I started to explain more, but he interrupted.

"Quit kidding around! Throwing rocks, what –"

I continued, "We can easily capture some asteroids and cut off various sized chunks. When we drop one from orbit, it will gain an amazing amount of energy during its fall. We could even drop an entire asteroid on one of their cities. We do have to be careful, though; a big enough rock would kill all life on Earth."

His mouth dropped open, "Now I know you're exaggerating."

I replied, "No, I'm not. Our spaceships are powerful enough to drag a huge rock here from the asteroid belt. Do you know what killed the dinosaurs?"

"What?

Oh, dinosaurs – didn't a meteor – Oh! Now I see what you mean. You can do that? How accurate would it be?" he asked, jumping ahead to a critical part of the idea.

"Honestly, we haven't tested, but Frazzle tells me that we can drop a small rock within a hundred yards of any target on Earth. It will come in at thousands of miles per hour, and the impact will be of nuclear size," I answered.

"I like that idea," he shouted gleefully, pumping his fist in the air. "Let's call them back and insult that idiot some more!"

"Best to let sleeping dogs lie for now," said one of his commanders.

Jake gave him a stern look but conceded the point and nodded in agreement. He turned back to me and said, "I'm going to have to beg you for that spaceship. I need something more powerful than a shuttle to gather asteroids."

I grinned and said, "I've got a ship for you, but you have to promise to listen to the Sunny pilot. I don't want to return from my next voyage to find that the Earth is a dead world."

"I promise," he said solemnly. "When can I get my spaceship? Oh, and where are you going now?"

"The spaceship is in orbit," I answered, thinking of the older, smallest ship. It would be quite powerful enough for his purposes. "It's armed with anti-matter cannons also. You can probably defeat them with it alone."

"Great!" he answered.

I added, "I've got to go rescue the other five Sunny planets. They're still under the Pug-bears' control. We've got to save them."

"Won't you ever get rid of those blasted things?" he asked.

"I think that Ian's idea to dump brewer's yeast on them will work. We have to put it to the test, and if it works, they'll be out of the picture," I answered.

We finished by taking shots from a dusty bottle of scotch whiskey that someone had found in the remains of Jo's Liquor store across the street from the Post Office. The place had been looted, but this one bottle had somehow survived. It was far better than I remembered.