A Future Caskett
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: You know this by now, right? Rating: K Time: See below.
Kate went rigid at once. "Castle, don't ever say that again!"
"Kate! What's wrong? You must know…."
"No! I don't want to hear it. You of all people know what monstrous snobs the Elite are. A good number of them no longer believe I'm some princess and I think a few know I'm just some CrimPo out of Junktown. No one minds if you take some non-Elite for your mistress. God knows why some of your Elite friends think that anyone believes the teenagers they bring to some parties are actually their "nieces", but the other Elites go along with it. But if you start telling people you love me, your Elite friends will drop you like a ball of lava. And it won't stop there. People will complain to the Ministry of Culture and you could lose your contract with them. If you can't think of yourself, think of Alexis. Her friends will drop her. Her chances of getting into a good college, any college at all, will disappear. Castle, you can't love me. I won't let you. If you ever say that word again, I swear I'll leave you. Even if Montgomery breaks me down to a uniform and has me pulling long dead bodies out of the river, I'll leave you. I'm serious."
"Okay. Okay. I'll never say it again. Now just relax and get some sleep. You had a long, hard day today."
Kate relaxed and was soon asleep. Rick smiled to himself. If Kate was willing to give up everything she'd worked so hard for, he knew that she loved him as much as he loved her. Now he just had wait for the moment that he very much feared was coming and coming soon.
The next event that would change their lives began with a simple invitation.
"Dad, what did Gina want that you had to rush out of here?" Alexis demanded as her father came through the door. "Kate and I were worried you wouldn't make it home in time for dinner."
Rick inhaled the smells coming from the kitchen. "No worries there. I wouldn't dream of missing a meal prepared by my two favorite chefs. As far as the meeting with Gina, Kate and I are invited to a party."
"She had to have you go to the Ministry just to invite us to a party? That's odd." Kate said.
"The odd part is that the only excuse for not showing up seems to be that we're both dead. And even then, our lifeless bodies should be sent to the party anyway."
"What kind of a party is this?" Kate asked, not feeling at all happy about the strange party invitation.
"The Ministry of External Affairs is holding it at the Palace of Nations."
"What's that?"
"It's a huge tasteless building that the Ministry of External Affairs uses to hold banquets and balls for visiting dignitaries. Most of them think it's an honor for some reason."
As soon as dinner was over and Alexis had gone off to do her homework, Kate cornered Castle in his office. "Do you think that they've found out that I'm not an Imperial Princess and they're going to tell everyone at this thing?"
Castle smiled at her and kissed the top of her head. "No. For one, Gina told me that everyone has been told to be there or else. Secondly, announcing that someone wasn't an Imperial Princess would be a horrible breach of protocol. The Empire would never forgive the Protectorate. Thirdly, the Elite way is to stab you in the back privately, not in public."
"You're sure?"
"Absolutely. Now, start planning what you're going to wear. The party is this Saturday."
When Saturday arrived, Kate was there dressed to kill. She wore a high necked, full length black gown that showed most of her back almost to her ass. In addition, she had borrowed some of the late Martha Rodgers' best jewelry. She had a full set of blood red ruby jewelry on: Earrings, necklace, bracelet and an ankle bracelet. She might not be a Princess, but she'd damn well look like one tonight.
They had luckily met Dr. Paul Whittaker and his wife Ann.
"This place is huge." Ann said, looking around her.
"It's big enough for three fastball pitches with room left over for a half a dozen tennis courts. It's so big they have to use carts to serve champagne to everyone. If they left it to waiters with little trays, they'd need hundreds of waiters." Castle grabbed four champagnes off of a cart as he spoke.
"The Ministers are out in force tonight. "Paul said quietly. "There's the Minister of Health. I recognize him."
Castle took over. "We have the Minister of External Affairs, the Minister of State Security, the Minister of National Defense, the Minister of Information, the Minister of Culture, the Minister of Heavy Industry….And we have some military. That's Field Marshall Morgan, the Chief of the Combined Staffs. I don't know the other two, but one is Navy and the other is Air Force."
"They have giant TV screens on the walls and hanging from the ceiling so everyone can see." Kate said.
"Do you suppose Lord Protector Bracken will be here?" Paul asked.
Castle shook his head. "There's always a military band to play Hail, the Lord Protector when he's here. No band, no Lord Protector."
At that point, the televisions came on to show the face of the Minister of External Affairs. "Good evening to the ambassadors of friendly nations, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. The Protectorate has asked you all here tonight to dispel some worrying rumors that have been flying about, both in the Protectorate and elsewhere."
"As you know, what has been called the To-AAn-Union Shadow War is over. To-AAn seems to have collapsed into five warring entities. I can now confirm that the To-Aan fleet was ordered to sea for one last desperate strike at the Union Fleet, but the crews mutinied at what they saw as a suicide mission and surrendered the whole fleet to the Union."
"That was big news six months ago." Castle whispered.
"Shh!" Kate said, annoyed. She rarely watched the news and knew little about what the minister was saying.
The Minister continued. "To begin with, I'd like to cover some recent history and some geography before I get to the meat of our presentation."
"History and geography?" Muttered Paul. "Does he think he's addressing children?"
Castle leaned over and whispered in Paul's ear. "Word is that the good minister loves nothing so much as the sound of his own voice."
"When the Shadow War began some forty plus years ago, the Commonwealth generously offered to protect what was then the Union province of Marlborough. After all, the To-AAn were quite close and the rest of the Union was far away. To our great shock, our offer was declined. Having no desire to have the To-AAn as close neighbors, the Commonwealth sent peacekeeping troops to forestall a To-AAn invasion. While there were no Regular Union troops here, their Militia did fight our peacekeepers. Even after the Militia was defeated, the Unionist continued to defy us, demonstrating, protesting, striking, even resorting to sabotage and attacking our peacekeeping troops. Eventually, enough was enough and we were forced to deport all Union citizens back to the Union. Citizens of the Commonwealth flocked here to take over businesses, homes, farms and estates left behind by the Unionists."
"Now they're the Elite." Castle whispered to Kate. "Forty years ago, they were the quickest to get here and grab something."
"Now, of course, the Protectorate is a full and free member of the Commonwealth. We have our own government, armed forces, taxes and all the trappings of an independent nation. We do of course still maintain the strongest ties of blood and kinship with the other nations of the Commonwealth. However, in spite of all of our efforts to resolve things peacefully with the Union, they have refused to accept that we are no longer their province. They insist they'll have it back."
On the TVs, the face of the Minister was replaced by a map.
The Minister's voice continued. "The area in green is the Protectorate. The Protectorate is some five hundred miles from west to east and runs from some two hundred miles deep in the west to some fifty miles in the east. To our west is the Great World Ocean. South, across the River Tee is the Imperial Province of New South Hibernia. Happily, for us, the Empire, the wealthiest and most powerful nation on the planet, is our friend. To the north is Apilla which is both dirt poor and the most xenophobic nation on our planet. They have no relations with any nation. They have no trade or diplomatic relations with anyone. Any foreigner who accidentally enters their country is executed. To the east we have Pirenna d'Cor, not a powerful nation at all, but one that has always been friendly to the Union."
The TV screen again showed the Minister's face. "Now I'll turn things over to the Honorable Martin Boyd, Minister of National Defense."
"Thank you, Minister Davies. If you will look at the map now on the screen, you will see our world. You will note that the Union is physically twice the size of To-AAn, but has a population a fourth the size of their late enemy. And make no mistake about one thing, this was a war, the term Shadow War notwithstanding. The Union has a much larger economy than To-AAn, and is decades ahead of them in technology. You will note also that the Union has no common border with To-AAn, so most of the war was fought in the air or the sea. There have been campaigns on land as the campaigns on the Canto Plain and the Dead Steppe will attest."
"The Union made the logical decision to use their limited population base to their best advantage by using technology. For instance, a tank platoon consists of four tanks, each with four crewmen, hence a tank platoon is sixteen men. An infantry platoon has more than twice that number and has perhaps one tenth the firepower, if that. In contrast, a To-AAn division has nine infantry battalions of nine hundred men each, with no more than a dozen light artillery pieces. A Union division has seven or eight tank battalions, of 350 to 400 tanks, an armored infantry battalion of some five hundred men and three or four batteries of self-propelled artillery pieces, say eighteen to twenty-four guns."
"The Union has a powerful air force that is technologically far ahead of the To-AAn. We tried to help balance that out the disparity by selling To-AAn anti-aircraft missiles, and other equipment at friendship prices, but eventually, the Union wore them down."
"Now, I will turn things over to Air Marshall Grey to start the discussion of our defenses."
Grey was a tall, slim man who looked very much like a fighter pilot, or at least the public's image of one from movies and TV.
"The Union has a powerful air force." The Air Marshall said. "They have bombers, fighter bombers, fighters, transports, aerial refuelers, reconnaissance aircraft, maritime patrol aircraft…."
As he talked, Kate looked up at photos of a dizzying array of different kinds of aircraft on the screen. She could hardly tell one from another.
"However", the officer continued, "all we have to do is defend ourselves. In the past twenty years or more we've built a nearly impenetrable defense. I say nearly because no defense is perfect. However, we can defend the industrial heartland of the Protectorate with over a thousand anti-aircraft missile batteries that combine low altitude, medium altitude and high-altitude missiles connected to hundreds of radars that provide overlapping coverage for the Protectorate's vitals. In addition, we have literally thousands of anti-aircraft guns also tied into those same radar systems, all connected by a very robust communications system. There is a similar, if smaller system covering the east of the country on the border with Pirenna d'Cor." He chuckled. "The middle of the country is left out, of course, but I suppose the Protectorate can stand the loss of some peasant villages." That brought a laugh from the assembled Elite. "In addition to our ground-based defenses, we have a fine, if small Air Force. Our aircraft are small, fast and maneuverable, unlike the aircraft that might attack us which will be heavily loaded with bombs. I can't guarantee that no bombs will ever fall on our homeland, but I can say that any attacker will be shredded. I would now like to turn things over to Grand Admiral Ferris of our Navy."
Kate wondered about Captain Slaughter's comment that the Air Force was useless because of the poor training of the pilots.
Ferris smiled at his audience. "I know that we've all heard that the Union has aircraft carriers, what they call a battle cruiser, guided missile cruisers, guided missile destroyers, guided missile frigates, submarines, amphibious ships and all the rest. They have Maritime Commando battalions that have staged pin-prick raids against To-AAn targets. But their offensive power is concentrated in their aircraft carriers, and Air Marshall Grey has explained what will happen to those aircraft. As for their various missile carrying ships, those missiles are to protect their carriers from aircraft and submarines with a few relatively short ranged anti-ship missiles. Those missiles have a range of about seventy miles. We have long range anti-ship missiles dug in along our coasts that far outrange their missiles."
"Now let me show you what your navy has." The TV screens showed a small warship with eight tubes of some sort mounted on it. 'These are our guided missile fast attack boats. They're small so they have a small radar signature, they're very fast and they carry eight long range missiles. Each of these missiles has a one ton warhead. A hit by one missile will either destroy or render combat ineffective any enemy ship. A hit by two missiles will destroy any enemy ship. And we have fifty-four such craft. In addition, we have, "the screen changed again to show a video of a group of submarines submerging. "We have fourteen submarines. Admittedly, they're not as large as the fleet boats used by the Union, but they're designed to operate in the waters off the Protectorate. I think you'll agree we have nothing to fear from the Union Navy. Now, I'd like to turn this over to Field Marshal Morgan of the Army."
Morgan thanked his predecessor and said he was very pleased with the efforts of the other services. "Now I can tell you what the Army has planned. The only place that the Union can attack us is from their friends Pirenna d'Cor to our east. They have been friendly with the Union for a very long time and have recently signed a treaty of alliance with them." A map of the eastern part of the Protectorate and parts of Pirenna d'Cor came on the TV screens. "The border between us and Pirenna d'Cor runs along the crest of the Toconos Mountains. However, our defenses aren't set up along the mountains. The Toconos drop suddenly to the open plains that run all the way to the Great World Ocean. We start our defenses on the plains with a belt of anti-tank and anti-personnel mines. Behind that we have, "the TV screen showed an armored six-wheel drive vehicle with a large tube on top.", several thousand anti-tank missile systems. Watch one fire at one of our own obsolete tanks from a distance of five thousand yards. "The TV screen showed a blast of fire and smoke and then a shot of the tank, nearly invisible at that range. Then there was a closeup of the tank and a missile moving in slow motion followed by a blast that blew the tank's turret completely off. "Behind our line of mines and missiles are several of our own divisions that are prepared to destroy any small units that somehow manage to penetrate our defenses."
The screens turned back to Minister of National Defense Davies. "I think that after this, you'll all agree that if the Union is foolish enough to attack us, they'll suffer a bloody defeat. Thank you and please stay and enjoy the party."
Neither Rick and Kate nor Paul and Ann wanted to stay.