Conquistadors, p.28
Conquistadors!, page 28
“Bring up the civil affairs teams, and get them working on recruitment,” he added. The locals were stunned, but that wouldn’t last. There were too many guns – and supplies that could be turned into bombs – for resistance to be quelled in a hurry. “And then start working on the next set of operational plans.”
“Yes, sir.”
James felt his smile grow wider. The United States was reeling, on the verge of being knocked out once and for all ...
... And if they didn’t cooperate, the rest of the world would soon follow.
Interlude: Timeline A (Protectorate Homeworld)
It was a fundamental paradox of being an inner councillor, Protector Julianne Rigby had often thought, that one had a certain degree of freedom as well as obligation. You simply could not rise higher in the Protectorate, nor could you hold the position indefinitely. It allowed you to consider the long-term good of the Protectorate without worrying about your own career - or even, in a sense, the repercussions of your actions. It was a long-standing tradition that just about anything short of high treason would be forgiven, even if it was a potentially disastrous mistake. She couldn’t help thinking, as she looked at the report, that they needed to be very grateful for that tradition indeed.
The report made grim reading. Timeline F was a technological civilisation. It had been theoretically possible, of course, but the discovery of three low-tech civilisations had convinced the Protectorate it was unlikely they would ever encounter another technological civilisation. She had read very convincing studies that suggested advanced technology could only be developed in an innovative society, and such societies were very rare. The Protectorate had been lucky enough to develop into a meritocracy before it could be crushed, or the new elite developed the same bad habits as the old. No one else had been so lucky.
Not until now.
She had been astonished when the first reports had arrived. The Crosstime Transpositioner had launched Montrose into a technological civilisation, and dropped hundreds of that society’s members into the Protectorate. Flint - or the section of the town that had replaced the castle - was primitive by Protectorate standards, and its people very clearly degenerates, but it was still far more advanced than anything else they had ever encountered. The library they had captured and searched had been extremely and terrifyingly informative. It was one hell of an opportunity, but it was also a two-pronged threat: on one hand, Montrose would ascend to heights of glory undreamt of even by his famous ancestor; on the other, if he lost the war, the Protectorate would face an enemy civilisation that might be numerous enough to make up for the technological gap. The library had not been that clear on what sort of weapons the othertimers had, and it often contradicted itself, but what they learnt had been worrying. Montrose stood on the brink of apotheosis or nemesis. The entire Protectorate stood beside him.
“We don’t know what Montrose has done,” Protector John Hotham said. “He may have entered into negotiations with the locals.”
Julianne resisted the urge to snort. Montrose was hardly the type of man to shy away from a fight. The prospective rewards for conquering and incorporating a technological civilisation were just too high. So too were the risks of doing nothing. The enemy had nuclear weapons. They could have bombed the castle until the point defence was worn down and the PEF completely destroyed. Montrose would not surrender, yet even if his force was completely obliterated the enemy would still know that crosstime travel was possible. He certainly hadn’t detonated the Crosstime Transpositioner. That would have been detectable on the other side of the dimensional wall.
“He has embarked on a campaign of conquest,” she said, flatly. She knew Montrose too well to think otherwise. He was too determined to rise in the world. “Can he win?”
The words echoed in the silent chamber. The spooks had gone through all the data - and interrogated the prisoners – but the Council was dangerously short of hard information. Timeline F was not united, which meant that Montrose could conquer one country only to discover he was still at war with the rest of the world. It worked in his favour in some ways - the Protectorate would have no trouble finding allies - but in others it worked against him. There was no centre of power he could take to crush the opposition, nor was there a global government he could subvert. In other timelines, that hadn’t been a problem: here, it was likely to make the conquest incredibly difficult. They could not afford to ignore enemy countries that would be harmless on any other timeline.
“On one hand, he does have technological superiority,” Protector Horace Jarvis said. “On the other, he has a very hard task ahead of him - and his logistics are not the best.”
Julianne conceded the point with a nod. The PEF had a number of fabbers within the castle, capable of meeting all the projected requirements and quite a few others that had been considered uncomfortably paranoid, but they would barely be able to keep up with Montrose’s demand for missiles, vehicles, and trade goods. The othertimers would not be impressed by beads and rattles, or even simple painkillers and steel knives. It was possible Montrose could beg, borrow, or steal whatever he needed from the local nations, including troops, but they couldn’t offer anything that would meet modern standards. Worse, the othertimers could not be trusted. If Montrose looked weak, they would put a knife in his back.
“Montrose is a very capable officer,” Hotham said. “And their disunity will work in his favour.”
“So we are assured,” Julianne said.
“And if he wins,” Jarvis said, “he will have the chance to set himself up as a warlord in his own right.”
“Impossible,” Hotham said.
Julianne was not so sure. The other timelines had had no technological base for prospective warlords to turn against their former masters back in the Protectorate. It would take decades, even by the most optimistic estimate, for a modern tech base to be built from scratch on one of the other timelines, particularly when the locals thought modern technology was nothing more than magic and didn’t have the slightest grasp of the scientific method. There had been no risk in sending an invasion force into the other timelines. The commanders had known they could not set up a kingdom of their own. But Montrose? If he took control of the local countries, and started improving their technological base, he might have no trouble keeping the Protectorate out. It wouldn’t be that hard.
Hotham tapped the table. “Not all of his officers will go along with a bid for independent power.”
“Some will,” Jarvis countered. “He chose most of them himself.”
“We cannot recall him,” Julianne pointed out. “It will be at least a fortnight before the next Crosstime Transpositioner is ready to transport the reinforcements into Timeline F, and longer before the gates are set up. We also may be jumping at shadows. He cannot be relieved unless he is clearly committing treason. So far, all we have is paranoid speculation.”
“Montrose is ambitious,” Jarvis growled. “Do you think he will resist temptation?”
Julianne had to admit she didn’t know. Montrose was insanely ambitious. He was climbing the ladder with a skill and determination she could only admire, gambling everything on an invasion that could carry him right to the top or see him plunging all the way to the very bottom, his story becoming a cautionary tale for his successors. The ladder was the only way to climb ... no, it had been the only way. Montrose had other options now. And if he could convince his people to follow him ...
“We need to take steps,” Hotham said. “We also need to ensure we are not seen to act out of panic, or jealousy.”
“Particularly if he is not actually plotting to make himself a warlord,” Julianne agreed.
Jarvis glowered at them. “What do you have in mind?”
“We intend to send reinforcements,” Hotham said. He keyed his terminal, bringing up the political map of the other world. Timeline F was just bizarre, by Protectorate standards. Half the political boundaries made no sense at all, while others seem to have been drawn by people who didn’t know or care about the facts on the grounds. She didn’t understand why the bigger nations hadn’t eaten the smaller ones long ago. “I propose we send them somewhere else.”
“Montrose will howl,” Jarvis predicted.
“Montrose may already be dead,” Hotham reminded them. “The enemy has nuclear weapons and good reason to use them. We have no way to know what is happening on the other side of the dimensional divide. I think it is reasonable for us to take steps to ensure we maintain a foothold in the other timeline, even if the first expeditionary force has been destroyed. It would also make it harder for Montrose to claim the entire world, even if he insists he is remaining within our strictures rather than violating them openly. If he is loyal, he cannot take offence at our decision; if he is planning to be disloyal, our steps will make it harder for him to put his plans into action and perhaps even deter him from trying his luck.”
He looked from Julianne to Jarvis and back again. “This is an unprecedented situation. We always knew it was theoretically possible for us to encounter another advanced society, but we never really believed it. These people may be degenerates, and many of the interrogations suggest they have real problems with primals, yet they are still technologically advanced and potentially incredibly dangerous. They know we’re out here, they know we intend to conquer their society, and they know they must defeat us or be defeated themselves. They may well develop crosstime technology of their own, given time.
“We dare not let them have that time.”
His words hung in the air for a long cold moment. “Montrose has already started the war,” he added. “Nothing short of a peer power would have deterred him. And that means we have to finish the war, both for our own sake and for the Protectorate itself. I move we send the reinforcements to a different location in Timeline F. Is there any disagreement?”
Julianne shook her head. Jarvis followed suit a moment later.
“Then let it be done,” Hotham said. “If Montrose is behaving himself, he will welcome our decision. If not, we will be in a far better position to deal with it. Won’t we?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Washington DC, North America, Timeline F (OTL)
“We need to nuke them,” Felix said, quietly.
The sheer scale of the disaster was difficult, almost impossible, to comprehend. He knew now how FDR must have felt, when the first reports of Pearl Harbour had reached the White House, or George W. Bush when the 9/11 hijackers had steered their aircraft into the Twin Towers. Or Lincoln, when he’d first heard about what had happened at Fort Sumter. The only upside was that the enemy cyber-attacks hadn’t been anywhere near as effective the second time around, but even that wasn't a good thing. They saw the disaster unfold in real time, but couldn’t stop it.
“And how many Americans will we sentence to death?” The President sounded broken. “How many do you want to kill?”
Felix took a breath. Politically speaking, the decision to deploy nuclear weapons would mean the end of their careers...
To hell with their careers! The country had been invaded! He might have been more relaxed if they were facing a conventional enemy, one following an understandable path ... years ago, he’d read a book in which the Chinese had landed in Florida and marched north to Washington. He’d recalled thinking it was absurd ... now, he almost wished they were facing the author’s super-China instead. The super-Chinese hadn’t been able to leapfrog hundreds of miles and take a major city, scattering the defences, capturing the governor and forcing what remained of the army to retreat. Again. It was just a matter of time, now, before the rest of Texas fell.
If you’d fucking listened to me when I told you to nuke them when they first arrived ...
He cut down on that thought, hard. There was no point crying over spilt milk, not when he could rely on thousands of Washington insiders doing it for him. Backbiting and second-guessing were practically the city’s sports, with people who had no power and even less responsibility content to lecture those who did on their failings ... unwilling or unable to admit, at least in public, that ideal solutions always came up short when measured against reality. Sure, a policy might look good on paper, but in the real world it could easily be worse than useless.
“They just punched their way into Austin,” he said, sharply. Governor Carrera was an old friend ... and now she was a captive, broadcasting orders to the state’s defence force to surrender. Felix could only hope most would disobey that order. “What’s to stop them doing the same to Washington?”
The President stared at him. “They’re your people?”
“And I wouldn’t be advising you to nuke the enemy positions if I thought there was any other option,” Felix said. “They have to be stopped.”
He glowered at the map, showing known enemy positions and vast swathes of territory that were effectively under enemy control. Red icons showed enemy missile strikes right across the country ... he tried to tell himself that the enemy didn’t control everything, that the missiles had struck targets that were largely evacuated, but it wasn’t reassuring. The enemy was steadily grinding the US down, breaking the bonds that held the country together. They didn’t need to occupy every last millimetre of American territory to secure their positions. They just needed to make sure concentrated resistance was no longer possible.
“General,” the President said. “Can we stop them? Or counterattack?”
General Grey looked impassive. “The situation is fluid,” he said. “We’ve lost touch with many units between the original exclusion zone and Austin. We have some contingency plans for communications being disrupted, and we have reason to believe the enemy hasn’t smashed everything we have in the area, but it will take some time to get everyone back in touch. They really must be pushing their logistics to the limit.”
And we need emergency legislation to punish collaborators, Felix thought, coldly. Giving aid and comfort to the enemy was already illegal, but it would probably help to ram the point home. We also need to draw the line between willing collaborators and people forced to serve the invaders at gunpoint.
The President looked down. “And if we use nukes? Can you target them – and them alone?”
Grey spoke with grim certainty. “There are places – possible targets – where there are relatively few American citizens,” he said. “There are no targets, as far as we can tell, where there are none.”
“I see.” The President stared at his hands. “And ... can we even hit them with nukes?”
“Their point defence is very good, better than ours,” Grey said. “Ballistic missiles will be spotted, tracked and destroyed before they get close enough to do any real damage. Backpack nukes might work, and we have volunteers to sneak into occupied territory, but we have no idea what sort of detection systems they possess. They may be capable of detecting a nuke when we try to slip it through ...”
Felix glanced at him. “I thought the border was porous.”
“There’s no hard border,” Grey confirmed. “They haven’t walled off the occupied territory from the rest of the states. But I suspect they’re being very careful about who’s allowed to get close to their main base. They’d be foolish not to assume we couldn’t get a backpack nuke up to their walls if we were desperate.”
“We are,” Felix said.
The President cleared his throat. “What do you recommend?”
“Hypersonic cruise missiles,” Grey said. “The USAF can deploy a handful of nuclear-tipped missiles, fired into the occupied zone at incredible speed. They’re programmed to fly very low, hugging the ground as much as possible. The enemy should have only limited time to spot the incoming missiles and shoot them down before it is too late.”
“Should?” The President sounded unconvinced. “And if you’re wrong?”
Grey showed no hint of irritation. “There’s no guarantee of success,” he cautioned. “It would be difficult for one of our point defence systems to shoot down a hypersonic missile, but the enemy point defence is a great deal better. We’ve seen them shoot down incoming missiles before. We’d minimise their interception window as much as possible, but it is impossible to do it completely.”
The President stood. “We have to try,” he said. “Felix?”
Felix nodded, curtly. It was a gamble, but one they had to take. If they could devastate enemy-held territory, they could mop up after the explosions had died away and hopefully secure enough enemy technology – and prisoners – to help them prepare for the next invasion. He was too cynical to believe there wouldn’t be a second invasion. The enemy commander had insisted they’d arrived by accident, but Felix would sooner believe the moon landings had been faked. No, they’d arrived loaded for bear. There was no way in hell it was an accident.
And if this fails, he asked himself, what then?
***
Catherine Lacy kept a safe distance from the protestors outside the barricades, watching the clashes between popular factions that made very little sense to her. One group wanted the President to drop the bomb, as if nuclear weapons were magical; another insisted nukes should never be used, no matter what. The remainder were a strange mixture of political activists and outright trouble-causers, screaming at the barricades and the men behind them as if they had no fear. The locals were astonishingly restrained, Catherine had decided long ago. If the protesters had done this back home, they’d have been marched off to the work camps by now. A year or two of backbreaking labour would teach them something about actually working for a living.
