Road to nowhere, Arc 4 of "Gone with the Sun"
Chapter 42 Good Cop
A Little Wing and a Prayer
Councilor Tevos was accompanied by Admiral Hackett. It turned out the apartment's VI knew them both; they were already walking in by the time Cortez got there. He lost no time telling both of the name choice, and listened with some interest as Hackett brought the Councilor up to speed.
"First things first, Dr T'Soni, have you notified the registry?"
"Yes Councilor."
"Then loading of personnel and supplies can proceed. Please get in touch with Lemaes." So while Liara was off on a rather lengthy video briefing, Hackett and Shepard were able to fill Tevos in on the background of the conflict which gave Pegasus, Normandy, and Overlord their names.
"They had to hold against an armored division just over the hill. The commanders led from the front and paid the price, but saved their men. Exclusively men, in those days only the soviet empire had female combat pilots or troops."
"I see." Anthropocentric bunch of dicks.
"Anyway, the Pegasus bridge was the scene of the opening shots of Operation Overlord. A combined-arms battle to take Europe back. A raid from glider transports called 'Horsa' would you believe. They dispersed the enemy garrison, seized Pegasus bridge and held against all comers including tanks and a gunboat coming down the river – until relief arrived."
"Sounds like something Shepard would do."
"More finely calculated, but the same doctrine. Surprise, stealth, precision application of great force from an unassailable or invisible position."
"Really? How, exactly?"
"Well, with the gunboat they shot the command bridge to pieces with a primitive spring gun, would you believe, firing shaped-charge grenades, and the gunboat grounded. A similar weapon took out the lead tank advancing in a counter-attack at night. A detail hid in the ditch and fired from twenty metres. It wasn't a rocket, so the infantry and tanks behind had no idea where the fire had come from – the projector was noiseless – nor that they were facing just two platoons. They backed off."
"Comprehensible."
"The regiment in question used a stylized Pegasus as their unit badge after that."
"I can see why T'Soni wants the name and the logo. I'll agree to it. But now I've got a bone to pick with you about the conduct of the military expeditions. They're too expensive."
War. What is it good for?
"Councilor, I'm aware of the First Irune Trust report on the economy, but this is now a planned economy. If you want to understand why I'm spending so much treasure on infrastructure, it's because I fear what happens if some Reapers were shielded in some way. We have to have several strings to our bow."
"Isn't there a mini-crucible being developed?"
"Yes, but we still don't know precisely how it works, not quantitatively, so scaling it is a nightmare. I'm having trouble staving off the Russian and Chinese factions as it is. Together they outweigh the nations I represent on the Alliance admiralty. If they didn't trust me more than each other, you would be speaking to someone else."
"Admiral, I don't see how that makes a difference. We could use the ships to repair the Citadel."
"Do the conduit chains first, or the Citadel will trap you. Again. On that the Russians, the Asians, and me all agree."
Hannah nodded. "It's the product of lessons learned in that war which produced the Normandy battles. If we can't do the low-casualty high-tech western way of war, the Russians and Asians will do their own thing, and against the Reapers I don't think that will end well."
"These Russians. I've met them, and the Chinese president. They don't seem so different. Were they on the side of the angels or the… others, in that war, Admiral?"
"Well… part of an international coalition against a centralized axis."
Hackett looked thoughtful; "Like the Reaper conflict, actually."
"As it turned out, yes, but the Reapers were a sudden blow. World War Two grew out of a series of smaller wars. They eventually merged into one global conflagration, but it started with a set of régimes who believed there was only room for themselves in Europe and Asia, partly because the soviet empire of the time wanted to make an end of them."
"Admiral, how many died?"
The Councilor was clearly becoming upset. Cortez quietly moved to get a hot chocolate for her, and strained to listen.
"In the global conflict?"
Hannah Shepard consulted the extranet terminal again.
"Not less than sixty million, about evenly split between the European and Asian theatres of war. More if you count the indirect deaths, by famine say. About four percent of the world population at the time. Fairly typical for human wars."
"Typical?!"
Hackett took up the baton, at this point: "A thousand years ago, during the Mongol conquests, around half that many died over a century or so, but the world population was much, much smaller so that was a comparable death rate. The Mongols actually depopulated central Asia. The Chinese had a few so-called 'rebellions' with truly astonishing death rates, like the Chimei, ten million dead in a nation of a hundred million souls, in the space of a little more than a decade."
"In the conflict we're concerned with, the second world war, those casualties were over an eight-year period," added Hannah. "The percentage deaths varied wildly by countries. Some were more victimized. Some were more prepared."
"Some were more rational, I hope. Asari 'wars' were nothing like this."
"Well yes. The top leadership of the soviet empire at the start, and especially the axis nations at the end, weren't entirely sane."
"Also, they may have been uniquely evil but their world view was warped by a science which had only just discovered genetics and evolution by natural selection, confusing "fitness" with selection of domestic animals. Scientists quite improperly applied those to cultural evolution, thinking there was one people – their own, of course – more fit to survive than others."
"But Admiral Shepard, culture has no genes. Fitness depends on the environment, which changes. And you can all interbreed, you're all one species."
"No-one knew enough about genes, the environment seemed stable, and the unity of the species was denied. So if the dictators couldn't use a population they didn't like, they'd kill them on the spot, march them to their deaths or pack them in transports and take them to death camps, thinking themselves scientifically justified. "
"So a bit like the Reapers, the Collector base and their plans for the Citadel."
"A fair analogy. The Japanese co-belligerents waged biological warfare, just for starters. The Soviets exiled whole peoples several thousand kilometres from home."
"What about your own people? The western allies?"
"The capitalist West, with the 'invisible hand' theory, thought you can't tell who's fittest in advance. But no-one came out of that story smelling sweet. The British did nothing while a famine raged in India, to be fair the war cut grain supplies to the region so there wasn't a lot they could do. But they didn't even do that, they needed the shipping for the war. They and the Americans developed a superweapon, fission bombs. The Americans actually used it. To be fair there's a case that its use cut casualties in Operation Downfall by an order of magnitude. Except the British would have let the Soviets take the casualties, I suspect, instead."
"Idiots."
"The Americans or the British?"
"Yes. I'll bet it solved nothing."
Cortez didn't dare speak. Hannah did: "That's… a point of view. The bomb poisoned the next fifty years. But if we confine ourselves to the Normandy war?"
Hackett agreed: "The so-called Second World War. Boris and Pyotr would call it the Great Patriotic War."
"That's because the soviet empire alone lost at least fifteen percent of the population. That's the current historical estimate."
"Goddess." The Councilor didn't look well.
"It's hard to be sure because of political bickering and the possibility that a lot of them died during internal purges, which were industrialized, with work quotas. For example, the chief executioner of the Lubyanka, the main Moscow political prison, typically set himself a personal daily work quota amounting to one execution every three minutes. About seven thousand Polish victims in one continuous three-day away mission, still a record for mass murders by one individual."
Cortez wasn't too happy himself. This wasn't normally covered in school. Hannah quietly intervened. "Cortez, is that for the Councilor?" He had the hot chocolate in his hand, and hastily passed it over.
"Thank you, Lieutenant. Councilor, do be circumspect talking to the Mikhailoviches about this."
"It's still sensitive for them?"
"We suspect so. Their people had labor camps and death squads every bit as bad as the axis. Just less… efficient. The Germans and Japanese made better Stakhanovites."
"Is all that normal for human wars?"
"No. But there have been some shocking outliers. The Mongols, the Spanish in South America. The Japanese in particular hardly ever surrendered till almost the end, so their troops generally had to be slaughtered. Civilians killed themselves to the last woman jumping over a cliff with her baby. The worst is probably the Chaco war a century before, which killed off about ninety percent of the male population of one belligerent nation."
"Goddess. What about Operation Overlord?"
"That was the western theatre of operations. A technological war. Comparatively few civilians died, perhaps two to three percent of military."
"Still bad, but sane. And that's typical?"
"Yes. The invading western alliance, including the British whose troops took Pegasus bridge, fought a rational war with rational tactics from strong defensive positions – at least after the first shock of being attacked. After a fairly prolonged series of air and sea battles they had more or less denied the oceans and sky to the axis, and they never really lost that technical edge, so their industries and populations couldn't be significantly touched. At that point they took the offensive."
"More or less what you're planning to do to the Reapers."
"I could not possibly comment," responded Hannah Shepard virtuously and with a complete lack of conviction. "Remember, though, Mikhailovich's people had a different experience."
Hackett continued: "Until quite late in their history they barely had a navy at all, because their sea ports are blockaded by ice for half the year. The soviets, later the Russians and their clients, were at heart a land power like the Chinese. For both, traditional doctrine was to overwhelm an enemy through weight of numbers. If the soviet empire had got to Japan first there could easily have been ten million dead."
"So Mikhailovich doesn't agree with the celebrated Hackett circumspection?"
"That's what we're trying to tell you, and his influence in the Alliance command is considerable. But the Russians had to be more flexible than the Chinese, because their population balance and circumstances changed more."
"Dr T'Soni gave me the impression they built a navy and advanced tech because their enemies were the high-tech nations Hackett represents."
"Not quite. There were such threats, but it came specifically from common-boundary nations like the Swedes, Germans, Poles and Japanese –"
"I know of them. They were much smaller. Who was threatening who?"
"Both," said Hannah. "Each saw the others as a threat, which they were, but the way the game played out each side made it worse."
"But not Hackett's nations."
"More or less. Even when things were most tense, nations with sea boundaries were never actually silly enough to fight the Russians, and vice versa. Especially the English-speaking powers. Partly because they never claimed each others territory, partly because they traded, rather than fought – except by proxy; or on other people's soil, like the Crimean war; also, the anglophones actually outnumbered the russophones and were at least as victorious in war, but didn't care for the casualties. Most importantly, neither side's propaganda succeeded in completely dehumanizing the other."
"That sounds too sane to be true."
"It's a fact. Yes, they jostled for influence, but overall neither was a clear and present danger to the other. On the contrary, for example, three centuries ago the old USA wanted part of the North American continent, so they made a money offer for the Russian territories."
"The offer was accepted?"
"Right. The tsar had plenty of land versus not enough money. Later, they sold hydrocarbons, furs, steel, and ore for corn and finished goods. Over time, the anglos and slavs both noticed that despite trading insults along with goods, they tended to wind up on the same side in battles. And other nations, like the hispanics and Indians, traded too."
"Odd that. So Mikhailovich and Hackett aren't actually enemies."
"No, but there are disagreements. It's only Steven Hackett's success so far that has allowed him to prevail. You realise what would have happened after Shanxi, now, if you hadn't brokered the deal? We owe you a debt. So do the Turians."
"The Turians would have slain you all."
"Bet on it not. Remember, Earth's population was twice that of Palaven, most of it Asian. Russian or Chinese commanders would swarm whatever's left of the Reapers with hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of troops. I don't think that would work. But it might have worked against Palaven, given the edge in nuclear weapons."
"The Turians had nuclear weapons, too."
"No, Councilor, with respect, they do not and did not. We have yet to find a race which has the depth of knowledge and experience we have with them. Most technical civilisations have some form of world government by the time they figure out fission."
"The Krogan didn't."
"Look at Tuchanka. The Turian hierarchy never achieved advanced fusion weapons like we perfected two centuries ago, certainly not before space flight promoted kinetic strikes as alternatives. Palaven could have been Tuchanka, in spades. So could Earth."
"But it wasn't."
"We got lucky. It staggered me when I heard that the Illium matriarchs had spent billions on acquiring fission weapons. The first thing a western commander would do is use the cores to make two- or three-stage fusion weapons."
"What's a stage? And fusion? That's barely worth the extra manufacturing. You get a bigger bang burning a bit of deuterium or tritium, but barely twice the yield."
By this time Liara was back from sorting the supplies on Pegasus.
"Councilor, that was what I told you two weeks ago. I've since had to change my mind. Hannah is talking about an upgrade three orders of magnitude more powerful. That's just what the human superpowers were building two centuries ago."
"Goddess! Did the Turians ever do that? Did we? Did the Protheans?"
"No, no, and Javik says no. We still don't know how it was done, but that they did it is indisputable. The craters in the Pacific alone are still there. We know the name of the design and broad principles of its construction, but Garrus thinks it would take not less than three years and a major diversion of industry to replicate, because the humans keep certain tricks of that trade a deep, dark secret."
Tevos shivered. So did Cortez. He poured himself a chocolate, too.
"These armies against the Reapers. Mostly Krogan?"
"Please Goddess, no. I don't think so – some finesse is indicated. Mikhailov has a hundred million troopers in cold sleep right now, and if what I've heard is true, he'll only use humans. Though I don't know much about their training or equipment."
Next chapter: #43, "Night flight"
Sunday, July 26, 2015