Chapter 24 - June 6th 2019

"You must have heard of the Boxer Rebellion?"

"What, sorry?"

"The Boxer Rebellion."

"What about it?"

"Just the historical parallels…its fascinating."

Dutton sighed. He looked around the conference room where attendees were still filing in. The PM would be making an appearance soon, having been dragged reluctantly away from his re-election campaign. The American delegation had arrived. After some discussion the Chinese had been invited as well, their ambassador sitting three seats down, conversing with an aide in low Mandarin. Dutton had found himself next to Kevin Rudd, the former Labor Prime Minister, and now liaison with the Chinese.

"It was in China yes?"

Rudd nodded. "In 1900."

"What's the parallel?"

"The siege of the legations, for starters" Rudd went on. "In Beijing. The Boxers were a militant anti-western movement, mostly peasants, not the ruling class. They started attacking any sort of foreign influence, including Chinese Christians. A few nasty murders escalated the whole thing, and before long tens of thousands of Boxers had surrounded the foreigner's section of Beijing. The Dowager Express Cixi wasn't sure whether to support them or not. She feared a confrontation with the Westerners, but she feared the Boxers a little more, so she decided to take their side. The Qing army and the Boxers then laid siege to the legations."

"How did it end?"

"Well there were nine hundred foreigners present, and a few thousand local Chinese Christians also taking refuge. They held out for 55 days before twenty thousand international troops, mostly Japanese, Russian, British, American…They landed on the coast at Tientsin, what's now Tianjin, and marched on the capital."

Dutton considered this. "Ok, I think I see what you mean."

"We have our very own little siege of the legations, yes. The scale is smaller though, only two embassies instead of eleven, and a hundred and twenty personnel surrounded instead of nine hundred."

"I suspect we're better equipped than they were too."

"Oh yes, no Predator drones circling overhead in 1900, and the Chinese at least had some guns and cannons of their own, if not quite the same quality. So the technological gap is much larger, that's fortunate."

The PM walked in at that moment. He thanked them all and took his seat. Dutton stood up. He would be giving the initial briefing. Thirty men and women were seated around the table in one of Parliament House's roomier conference rooms. Several screens on the wall showed digital attendees, including Fifield and Culvahouse, the two ambassadors in King's Landing. Behind Dutton several more screens showed aerial photographs and diagrams of the city.

"Thank you all for coming. We thought we should gather everyone today for an update on events through the Ring. There have been several developments in King's Landing in the last 24 hours that have particularly escalated the situation."

Dutton went on at some length, of Eddard's Stark's return to the city the day before. The confrontation with Janos Slynt, the struggle for control of the city watch, the mob assembling at the Great Sept, the disappearance of Lord Royce, the march on the embassies and the ensuing confrontation. Pictures of the aftermath went up on the screen. A street littered with bodies and bloody debris. When he had finished, the room looked universally glum.

"Were there no casualties among our own?" asked Marise Payne, the foreign minister.

"So far none, fortunately" Dutton reported. "It's a lot easier when the other side doesn't have guns. The embassies report frequent arrow fire however, from bows and crossbows. Some of them are flaming and need to be extinguished quickly before the fire spreads. I do stress however, an arrow can kill you almost as well as a bullet."

The Deputy PM spoke up. "Can I ask – what's the approximate range of a bow and arrow?"

Dutton frowned, he glanced at Lieutenant General Angus Campbell, the Chief of the Defence Force.

"That's a fair question. We've been brushing up on our medieval warfare techniques." The general sifted through some papers on the table before him. "Obviously bows are a lot less accurate and their range is greatly inferior to guns. We reckon, for accurate firing, probably not much more than fifty meters. For volley fire however it can be a lot longer, perhaps in excess of three hundred meters."

"Yes, and that's what they're doing at the moment" Dutton went on. "If anything it gives them one advantage. The arrows fly in a curved arc. Bullets are a lot straighter. So they can sit in a nearby street and pepper us with arrows and we can't even see them from the ground, unless we start responding with airstrikes."

"Ok" said the Prime Minister. "So the conclusion here seems to be that, while the positions of the embassies are a bit precarious, to be sure, they are more than capable of defending themselves."

"Certainly" Dutton agreed. "But being surrounded like this is not some walk in the park. Eventually a lucky arrow or something else will hit a few of our men and women. If this goes on long enough we must except some casualties, and the more Westerosi that end up killed, the easier it is to generate propaganda against us."

"Yes I can agree with that."

"So how do we resolve the situation?" asked one of the American representatives. "I have to admit, I'm surprised its come to this violence. From what I've seen we've done nothing but treat these people with honesty and respect. We've done nothing but help them and already there's a mob marching against us? Calling us the devil incarnate?"

Dutton nodded. "It's a fair question. How did this happen? Its true, we've been nothing but honest and helpful, but helpful to whom? And honest about what? It seems on at least one specific occasion we were helpful but in a way that directly interfered with someone else's plans, and that's how we started making enemies."

"What occasion?" the PM asked.

Dutton sighed. "The decision to save king Robert's life."

The PM looked confused. "How did that interfere with someone's plans?"

"Because he was meant to die."

There was a moment of silence in the room.

"I thought he was gored by a pig" the Deputy PM said "a hunting accident."

"A boar yes" Dutton agreed. "That's what we assumed, but it seems he was being given copious amounts of wine at the time, by his squire, a boy named Lancel Lannister, the queen's cousin."

"So when we authorized the medevac…"

"King Robert would certainly have died without it. His injuries were very serious. I talked to the surgeons myself. They say it was a near thing, and he will still take months to recover."

"So we foiled the queen's assassination attempt."

"Against her own husband?" said the foreign minister, sounding aghast.

Dutton shrugged. "Its unfortunate, but this is how things were in our world five hundred or a thousand years ago. There are no leadership spills in Westeros. They don't call for a nice show of hands like we do. Stabbing someone in the back to get their job is a literal thing there."

"Well…shit" the PM said. "They only told me it was an accident. What were we supposed to do, let the man die?"

"I'm not saying it was the wrong decision. Even now it might now be. From what I can tell, this conflict in Westeros was already brewing before we turned up." Dutton went on about his discussions with Lords Stark and Renly. Fifield, listening via the video link, added his own points. Between them they covered the entire sequence of events from the parentage of the royal children to the attempted murder on Bran Stark.

"I see" said the PM finally. "So if we hadn't been here, and king Robert had died…"

"That doesn't mean it would have averted a war, no. It seems it was already set to break out, if that's any consolation." Dutton brought up another map on screen, a diagram they'd drawn up of the whole Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. He started pointing out the major players. Two Lannister armies were marching into the Riverlands. Renly had flown back to his seat at 'Storm's End' four days earlier and was now summoning his bannerman. In the North, they had passed on Lord Stark's instructions to his son Robb to do the same.

"So this man…Tywin Lannister, he has marched on the Riverlands as a response to the kidnapping, or arrest or whatever, of his son Tyrion, the dwarf, by Catelyn Stark for the alleged murder attempt on her son."

"Yes."

"Where is this Tyrion then?" someone asked.

"We weren't sure at first. Lord Stark told us he wrote letters to his wife to release him. We're not sure if she got them either. We thought she was returning to Winterfell, but then it seems they turned up in the Eyrie…that's a castle about here" Dutton pointed on the map. "Her sister's seat, the Lady Lysa Arryn of the Vale. He was imprisoned for a while, but then demanded a trial by combat."

As Dutton had expected, this report raised a small chorus of derisive voices.

"Really?"

"An actual trial by combat?"

"With swords?"

"Yes, trial by combat" Dutton explained. "Its just what it sounds like apparently. Two people have a dispute, they put on armor, grab a sword and fight each other to resolve the issue."

"To the death, is it?"

"Uh, perhaps. Death or yield I think. Its not always to the death."

"And the dwarf won?"

"He picked a champion. He fought for him and he won, apparently killed Lysa Arryn's champion."

"Where is he now then?"

"We got news that he left the Eyrie at least a week ago, heading back west to the Riverlands, here."

"So then…he's not under arrest anymore? Then what's the point of the war?"

There was another moment's silence.

"Sheer dumb bloody honor I suppose" Dutton suggested. "If someone kidnapped one of our leaders, or their children, would we let it fly? Even if they were returned safe and sound?"

"So what will Tywin Lannister do? Burn the Riverlands to the ground?"

"We're told that this man has exactly that sort of reputation. Lords who've defied him…he's wiped out entire families before. There's even a song about it…"

"So to sum this up" the PM said after a while. "By saving king Robert's life, from what we thought was a simple hunting accident, we actually foiled an assassination attempt. The queen has likely cuckolded Robert his entire marriage. His 'children' are all bastards borne of incest and thus no true heirs by Westerosi law. The previous um…Hand of the King, was close to working this out, so the queen had him killed. His replacement, Lord Stark, was also working it out. When he finally did he offered mercy to the queen, we even helped facilitate that offer, but instead she tried to have the king killed and probably wants Stark to be next.

Robert, having survived, now vows that he will kill every Lannister he can find. Tywin Lannister also probably wants to do the same to the Tully family because Eddard Stark's wife, who was a Tully, kidnapped Tywin's son on suspicion of trying to kill Bran Stark. That's why the Riverlands are burning. That attempt was made because Bran accidently happened to see the queen fucking her brother at Winterfell, who's actually the father of the royal children, and they pushed him out a window, except he survived." He paused. "Do I have all that right?"

"That's about it yeah."

"Well…shit" the PM repeated. "I mean, we had no idea what was with this portal when it opened up, but did anymore guess it would land us in an Agatha Christie novel meets Lord of the Rings?"

There was a smattering of nervous laughter. Dutton merely frowned again. "Be that as it may. The portal has been there for over two months now. We don't think its going away anytime soon. This other world, whatever it is, it's right on our doorstep now. This conflict continues to escalate and it seems we've already unwittingly begun to take a side."

"How do we know it won't disappear any moment now?" a Chinese representative asked.

Dutton looked over at the head of the CSIRO, who nodded, stood up and came to the front of the room. He fiddled with the laptop at the end of the table and brought up his own PowerPoint.

"Ok so, obviously, as a phenomenon, this portal, this Ring is totally unprecedented. One could call it miraculous. Who put it there? Is it a God? Or an advanced alien species? For what purpose? How long will it last? Is it a unique phenomenon or could bridges like this be built to link up many different worlds? Will more than one appear here? Lots of questions, not many answers though. We've had to resort to a sort of basic logic to come to any sort of conclusions."

"What conclusions then?" the PM asked.

"There are several reasons to believe the placement of the portal is not random, its planned. Its also planned in a way that considers the long term. What I mean is this." He brought up several diagrams of the Ring. "With its placement here on Earth, consider its elevation. It's at a point about two hundred and six meters above sea level. Then on um…Planetos, this other world, it's a little higher, about three hundred and eighty meters. Now, the difference between the two is obvious – atmospheric pressure.

The Planetosi atmosphere is just slightly thicker than ours, by about two percent. If you didn't take this into account, the difference in air pressure would cause massive winds to come through the moment the portal was opened. Take a very intense, say, category five cyclone. The air pressure in the eye can be ten to fifteen percent lower than normal at sea level, which will generate winds of up to three hundred kilometers an hour. So if you placed both of them at each world's respective sea levels, intense winds would blow through. We calculate the wind speed would be about 200km/h, a stiff hurricane. The air would actually flow from Planetos to our world. This would continue until the pressures equalized."

"How long would that take?"

"About a hundred years, more or less."

"I see."

"The atmosphere is very large, even given the scale of the portal. But this is all pretty obvious. The next question though is, why not put one portal at sea level, and the other two hundred meters up? Why are they both some way inland? Now we're just speculating here, but the issue is to do with fluctuations in sea levels. Even before taking anthropogenic climate change into consideration, sea levels do change naturally. Twenty thousand years ago, at the peak of the last glacial period, or 'ice age' the seas were a hundred and twenty meters lower than today. On the other hand, if all the ice on Earth melted, it would rise by about seventy to eighty meters."

"But you said two hundred and six?"

"Yes."

"So where's the extra hundred and thirty come from?"

"Well the portal doesn't just sit with its tip just touching the ground. Its embedded slightly in the Earth. We've done some digging, it extends further down all the way, forming a perfect circle. We've measured it at nine hundred and eighty point oh two meters across."

"Why?" the PM asked innocently.

"Well its evidently more convenient for ground transport. By embedding its base in the Earth, yes part of it is blocked, but you get a breadth of about seven hundred meters at ground level, perfect for building whatever roads or railways you want, and you've still got another eight hundred and fifty meters above your head for air transport. The downside is that below ground level, there's an area that's kinda 'dead weight' unless you started digging trenches and tunnels."

"And that area…"

"Extends for a hundred and thirty meters below ground."

There was a moment of silence as everyone absorbed this news.

"That's…that's very clever. You guys worked this out?"

"We've been doing the math. It seems to check out."

"So they built this thing taking into account possible future sea level fluctuations…Christ, how long would that take?"

"Thousands of years, even if we keep burning all the fossil fuels we wanted."

"So this is what you mean by evidence of long term planning?"

"Well yes. Why take this into account if the portal's only gonna be here for five minutes? Or five years? They could have put it at our sea level and it would have made things quite a bit simpler. It would also have made transport a lot easier. Sea transport is the most economical way of carrying large cargoes over long distances if speed isn't a major factor. We might yet want to build a canal up through the portal if we think its there for the long term."

"Alright, but aside from elevation, why the placement where is it?"

"Well there's further speculation on that. Melbourne is thirty eight degrees south of the equator. The weather, I mean, that can shift pretty quick, they say Melbourne can have four seasons in a day, but the overall climate is actually quite stable. We're too far south to have major cyclones and too far north for snow to occur regularly. Its quite temperate, matching up quite well with King's Landing, which is also a similar extent from the Planetosi equator, best as we've calculated it so far. But there's many other places on Earth with a Mediterranean climate, we're not sure what's special about this particular spot."

There was some further discussion on the matter, with the general conclusion that it was a simple mystery. The CSIRO head had one more thing to add however.

"One other thing I should mention. Even without doing anything further, there's one way the appearance of this Ring has dramatically improved our circumstances already."

"What's that?"

"Our atmospheres are mixing. Like I said the pressure difference is minimal because of the Ring's placement, but the air is still mixing. Our oxygen-nitrogen ratio is fortunately almost exactly the same, within a tenth of one percent. After that you've got argon but that's inert. Next is uh..carbon dioxide. Pre-industrial Earth we had two eighty parts per million. Recently we passed four hundred and fifteen."

"What's there's?"

"A bit less than ours, only two fifty parts per million. Combined with slightly greater stellar irradiance it might go some way towards explaining why their seasons are a bit more extreme. The air has started to mix however."

"So the two will equalize?"

"Well they would eventually. Like I said, it would take centuries. If our levels stayed stable, which they won't, but if they did, we'd meet in the middle at about three thirty."

"So our presence alone…its causing their world to heat up?"

"The impact so far is small, negligible, but that factor would eventually raise temperatures by…maybe a couple of degrees? In the next century or so. The good news for us is…well, however worried we were about climate change before, dealing with the problem might have just got a whole lot easier."

"The poison and corruption of the flying men spreads further…" Dutton murmured.

"What?" asked Kevin Rudd next to him.

"Nothing." Dutton cleared his throat and tried to steer the conversation back to the immediate situation. "So, the question remains, what's our next move? Stay or go? If we evacuate the embassies now, it would get our people out of harm's way. It might even calm things down for a while, but it would also signal a retreat, perhaps showing weakness to the queen and her supporters. It would be abandoning any short-term attempts to re-establish relations with the Westerosi. All the trade deals and economic development plans we've drawn up, that would be shelved for now."

The discussion soon grew lively.

"We could withdraw until king Robert recovers" the Foreign Minister suggested. "By then his brother should have raised his banners. He would have the numbers to storm the city by force if need be and re-establish the king's authority."

"Tywin Lannister will probably have reached the city long before then, and his own numbers may be greater" General Campbell pointed out.

"Won't he be fighting against the Baratheons, the Tullys, the Arryns and the Starks? From the figure's you've shown us, they should outnumber him at least two to one."

"Well that's assuming those figures turn out to be accurate. We don't know what the real numbers could be, boots on the ground. It's a feudal system, lesser lords pledging loyalty to greater lords, who then pledge it to greater ones in turn, all the way up to the king. Its not a neat mobilization with predictable numbers like a modern military. We don't know which lords will choose what side. There's too many variables."

"So the Lannisters could actually win?"

"They are said to be the most powerful single family in Westeros, certainly the wealthiest. They've won at least one battle already. They could win, or the fighting could last years at least."

"This all seems a bit silly doesn't it?" an American delegate said. "In a world of swords, the man with the rifle is king. A company of marines could take the Red Keep in an hour, with minimal casualties I expect. Capture the queen, remove her from the picture, put Lord Stark back on the Iron Throne as the King's Hand until Robert returns. Resolve the situation in a day."

"Sure, its an option" Dutton conceded. "It could restore the status quo. The embassies stay and we resume our peaceful relations, get things started for real like we'd planned, but the queen's propaganda has been clever, I'll give her that much. She claims her enemies are our puppets, that Lord Stark in particular, or anyone else who has passed through the Ring, has been influenced by us to be our servants. We put him back on the throne by force, it might prove her point. The people then might never except Stark, or Robert either even if he returns. They say…they say we brought him back from the dead."

"They…what?" the PM spluttered.

"That's the story they're telling. They say they have witnesses that Robert was already dead, that he had stopped breathing, before we medevac'd him."

"That's ridiculous"

"Yes but…it was enough to stir up the mob, apparently. How do you think the queen whipped up their religious leaders against us so quick?"

It took Dutton a while to explain the propaganda that had been spreading about them. The PM just shook his head in disbelief.

"So they try to kill the man, we foil them, so they say he was already dead and we resurrected him as our, what, zombie puppet leader? And people are believing this?"

"It Westeros, sir. They haven't had a scientific revolution yet. We used to burn witches at the stake hundreds of years ago. Some parts of the world might still do it today."

"So even if Robert comes back…"

"They'll say he's still our puppet, tainted by his time in our custody, when we may or may not have performed necromancy on him."

"Ridiculous" the PM repeated.

"Of course, it's an outrageous lie. It's a desperate attempt to remove Robert's legitimacy to rule, and really, that's what this is all about - a question of legitimacy. Who will the people, and lords, of Westeros accept as their ruler? As far as we can tell, Robert and Lord Stark are the rightful rulers and the queen is the cause of this whole mess, but the rest of Westeros doesn't really know that, and they're probably not going to believe it coming from us. They might think the queen is innocent of any wrongdoing and that her lies are truth, which discredits us and anyone we back. Again, it's quite clever."

"Why do we care what anyone else thinks though? With our backing any leader would be unstoppable."

"Well sure, as long as we continued our support. But what's the long term plan? We prop them up forever? Governments without popular support, kept alive purely by the power of a foreign backer, well, they don't tend to last long do they? I'm just thinking of South Vietnam, or Cuba, or the Shah of Iran, or Afghanistan."

"So you're saying we want a government that's legitimate and thus stable, on its own merits?"

"Ideally, yes. Anything less and you're asking for trouble in the long run."

"Was Robert's government stable? We believed it was."

"Yes we did. There hadn't been any major wars in Westeros for fifteen years or so. The 'Greyjoy Rebellion' was the last big one they talked about."

"If his wife could try and kill him, and almost succeed, how stable could it have been? And from what you've said about Westeros, I mean, isn't it a society where might basically makes right? Robert just took the throne by killing the last guy who had it. If the queen does the same thing to him, why is her rule any less legitimate?"

"Ok, ok" the PM said, raising a hand to quell the argument. "I think I see what you're saying. We need to figure out who we back for the throne to try and establish a government that is stable, legitimate and Westerosi, and isn't hostile to us and to opening up Westeros economically, which is of course what we want, right?"

There was a general chorus of agreement.

"But in the meantime, do we stay or do we go? I want to go round the table."

Most of those present expressed regret at the whole situation, but the general consensus was for a withdrawal 'until the situation in the city is stabilized'. When it came to Dutton's turn, he had to insert a qualifier. "I agree that a withdrawal could be prudent, but there is a further complication. Lord Stark in particular, he was cooperated with us so far. He seems, all things considered, an honorable man. He rallied what men he could to defend the embassies from the queen's mob. He's quite literally bled for us now. If we withdraw, it would leave him and his supporters in the city high and dry."

"Well they can come with us if they like. Maybe not through the portal, but we can help them leave the city and withdraw somewhere safe, until their allies arrive."

"Yes, but its even more complicated than that."

Dutton explained about Lord Stark's household, the seventy-odd retainers still holed up in the Tower of the Hand in the Red Keep.

"Lord Stark will never abandon them. We got his daughters away, but the job is only half done. They also make very useful hostages for the queen."

The PM was nodding. He looked over the General Campbell and asked him what he thought.

"An extraction from the Red Keep? Black Hawks can take about ten passengers at a time, so we're talking six or seven minimum, plus escort. If the enemy had guns I would strongly recommend against it, it would be close to suicidal, but since they don't…"

"Fifield?" the PM asked.

Over on the video screen, the ambassador was nodding as well. "I'll talk to Lord Stark. It sounds like a plan. We extract his household, then evacuate them and the embassies somewhere safe. It surrenders King's Landing to the queen for now. Assuming we don't want to intervene directly in this whole mess, we would need to help build up a Baratheon-Stark led alliance in the meantime. They can serve as our proxies to retake the city later and restore Robert on his throne once he recovers. We then re-establish the embassies and things can get back on track."

"Well those are our next priorities. For this extraction plan, how long to get it organized General?"

"We already have the troops standing by. Give me 24 hours."

"Ok then, let's get it done."