God's Dogs

Part 3: Two years later

There is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of mind.

Virginia Woolfe

For two years, the Empire’s situation eroded. The League worlds it annexed rebelled and returned to League protection.

On Empire worlds, underground railroads shipped deserters, dissidents, and their families to League space. Refugee camps in League space offered two main choices: defect to a League world, which meant political and vocational education, or prepare to return to their own worlds, which meant political and vocational education. The League saw it as in their long-term best interests to educate these refugees.

The political education was a four-month college level course on the merits and short-comings of various governmental systems: constitutional monarchy, parliamentary democracy, representative democracy, constitutional republic, socialism, as well as plutocracy and oligarchy, and the corporate state that sparked the Corporate Wars. The different political philosophies were also examined: Libertarian, Liberalism, the various forms of Socialism, Progressivism, Democracy, Republicanism, Fascism, Communism, etc. The idea of checks and balances was defined. Furthermore, the question of what worked over time, and what didn't work, as well as why was fully explored.

For those seeking League citizenship, the class was a path to understanding their place – their rights and responsibilities as citizens. For those planning on returning to their home worlds, the class opened their eyes to the possibilities of what a government suited to their needs might look like.

After finishing the class, people from each world formed into brainstorming groups to start the process of hammering out a post-Empire governmental structure. After the first year, these groups became de facto governments-in-exile, and their home worlds learned about them.

For the League’s part, it required very little, politically, from member worlds: no force or fraud, and an honest election for world leaders. There was, however, a financial commitment to the League for its services. The commitment was based on Gross Solar System Product, a monetary figure arrived at through a variety of statistical measures. The most recognizable was the Gross Domestic Product, which was related to the hard data of production, retail and wholesale prices, and so on. The other measures used, however, looked at the soft data: sustainability, environmental impact, citizen well-being, life expectancy, social or cultural biases in the workplace, justice and employment equity, and so on. Furthermore, there was an acknowledgment that women were the core of economic life, in that women produced every producer and consumer, and nurtured them from birth to productive participation in the economy. The index for the feminine half of the population, the unpaid work of mothers and other caregivers, was captured in the soft inventories. That soft data was subtracted from the GDP figure so that the planet’s monetary commitment was less. It was financial coercion, to be sure, but it worked to balance the yin and yang of each world.

The League, at its inception, was fresh from the Corporate Wars. Lessons learned from failed corporate policy, primarily its greed-based incentives, were easy to implement. A holistic economic model was the result. Since early leaders knew better than to force this model on other worlds, the League wrote it into the cost of membership in the League. Further, it was League economists that gathered the data for the various indices on each world, hence insuring valid data. Then the results were published yearly so that there was an independent evaluation of each world's financial and social health. Planetary elections were won or lost on those evaluations.

Coyote teams were dispatched to Empire worlds during the second year. They integrated the resistance on each world, hooked them up with their respective governments-in-exile, and worked to contain the violence any revolution brought with it.

Pressing on the Empire’s puppet colonial governments were two determining factors: there was little help coming from the Empire as it slowly imploded, and the League’s promise not to invade and conquer any world that passed the necessary referendum.

In one sense, the Coyote teams were fighting a war that was already won, but that was how they approached conflict anyway.

Quinn’s team had lost Moss. He became a team leader as the teams doubled in size. Linda stayed on and became the team medic. Currently they were posted on an Empire core world, but it was on the outer edge of the core systems. Mannheim was a cool world, located in the far edge of the Goldilocks zone. Glaciers reached from each pole past the equivalent of the arctic and antarctic circles. The current ice age was over, and the ice was stable at its present location.

The world was 60% ocean surrounding a Pangaean continent that was slowly breaking apart. Fast moving ocean currents separated the five sub-continents making ocean travel among them hazardous. As such, the people developed five different economies based on what was available locally. Atmospheric flight among the sub-continents was available but not cheap. Work in space was encouraged as there was a substantial asteroid field beyond the two gas giants further out from Mannheim. An elevator stretched from the main sub-continent to the primary space station, which was the transfer point to the orbiting industry and entertainment stations.

Quinn’s team was on the main sub-continent. Dussel was the largest sub-continent and straddled the equator. Consequently, the climate was milder, and since it was surrounded by the other sub-continents, it didn’t experience the violent storms that came from the oceans.

The north and south began as tundra, glacier-squashed plains, and U-shaped valleys. Further in, heavy timber dominated across rounded mountains. At the equator, a semi-tropical series of higher mountains framed a broad river valley that ran east to west. Towns populated the valley, separated by substantial croplands. Near the center was a city of a few million people, the capital of the planetary government.

Quinn’s team was in the northern mountains. The resistance developed a network of bases for training, family housing, logistical centers, and garrisoned ready forces. The Empire troops lived in sprawling military complexes along the valley. Neither held the orbitals, so the battles were more conventional. Even so, the Empire avoided pitched battles, because the troops, made up primarily of locals, refused the wholesale destruction those battles would bring. Furthermore, they knew the best they could hope for was a military stalemate that the politicians would eventually resolve.

Quinn pondered this strategic dilemma in the cave network where the command team currently resided. The cafeteria he sat in could hold fifty people, but it was early morning. Quinn shared the space with only a few who were coming off the night shift.

River entered and poured herself coffee and joined him.

“So, what are we going to do to break this stalemate?”

Quinn shrugged. “It serves us pretty well.”

River disagreed. “A common, active enemy keeps factions from forming in the resistance.”

“Factions have been forming for years.”

“Along the rigid caste lines they grew up with. But hasn’t fighting together broken down some boundaries?”

“Maybe. And maybe the threat of a League invasion will force them to work together. We’re not going to pull it off. As you said, they’ve been organized for generations in a caste system.”

“You sure we can’t?” she pressed.

“No.” Quinn smiled. “I’ve been pondering it for the last few days, but I don’t see any leverage.”

“Well, what might work?”

“A charismatic leader doing something noble, or a common soldier rescuing civilians. Something that infuses a sense of unity to a common cause.” Quinn sighed at that. Racism or sexism or any of the '-isms' that created tribal sub-divisions in a population had been eradicated on Penglai for generations. He was stumped on what would break down the class barriers they currently confronted.

“So they need some kind of bonding experience,” River concluded.

“Yeah.”

“Rescue prisoners?”

“Too localized.”

River chewed on her lower lip and gazed off for a moment before saying, “Rescue all the prisoners?”

“Across the whole planet? Maybe.”

“It would be a tough op to set up.”

“Yeah. We’ll need a Coyote team on each sub-continent to organize it.”

“Okay. Jolene has a team now, and Moss, Wylie, and Rand. Pax and I can scout all the prisons while they set things up.”

“I’ll run it by Master Lu,” Quinn said, “and I’ll let him know it’s your idea.”

River frowned. “Don’t do that.”

“You don’t think you’re ready to have your own team?”

“Too much responsibility.”

Quinn laughed. “That’s what I said to Master Lu when he offered me a team. He said that was the main prerequisite for getting a team.”

“Crap,” River mumbled.

The plan was approved. Pax and River left to scout the prisons. Quinn and Linda stayed to brief the four teams coming to the party. Within a month, the plan was finalized.

The prisons targeted held political prisoners. Normal criminals were held in two penitentiaries, whereas political prisoners were in concentration camps, one on each continent.

The layout for each was similar. Prefab housing, central cafeteria, hospital, washrooms, and administration office surrounded by two layers of fencing with guard towers at fifty-yard intervals in the space between the fences. Guards were housed in a nearby series of reinforced barracks and bunkers. Close by was an airfield and more troops for quick reinforcement if needed.

The plan was to infiltrate the camp with a stealth shuttle. A strike team would take out the towers. The signal for that was a diversionary attack on the airbase, which if all went well would take out the airborne ready response force.

Then APCs (armored personnel carriers) loaded with troops would smash through the fences and set up a defensive perimeter so troop transports could evacuate the prisoners.

It was a simple plan not requiring critical timing to make it work. It did require overwhelming fire-power and surprise, especially since the only air asset available was an armed shuttle for each operation. The shuttle, after dropping off the infiltration team, needed to knock out the heavy armament at the guards’ barracks to even the odds for the attackers. If that goal was achieved, the rescuing force would have the sixty to ninety minutes it would take to complete the evacuation before enemy reinforcements would arrive.

Once into the surrounding forest, additional troops were deployed to deal with any pursuit.

Kickoff was scheduled for early morning. Since the sub-continents occupied a small geographic location, time-zone differences were only four hours. Conveniently, then, all the assaults would take place between midnight and 0400 local time.

Quinn’s team fast-roped from the shuttle to the roof of the admin building three hours before the main event. They wore light armor with the camo feature turned on. They carried a full combat load-out, plus the air pistols they would use to affix explosives to each guard tower. They hurried off to their assigned towers.

The charges were shotgun shell sized charges fired by airgun. Similar to tranquilizer darts in both shape and deployment, these high explosives adhered to any structure until triggered by a detonation signal.

River moved easily through the shadows to the inner fence. She lined up her shot on the corner of the four-sided tower. The pistol was a bulky, one-shot gun. It was quiet, just not all that accurate.

The high explosive round stuck to the corner she aimed for. A new icon appeared in her HUD. She armed the explosive and moved onto the next target.

Once all the towers were visited and the explosive shells planted, the team worked through the streets of the camp and placed breaching charges on all the doors. They avoided the few patrols of sleepy guards with ease.

Quinn checked the mission clock on his HUD, and then the folder with the icons of the armed explosives.

“It looks good,” he sent over the team channel. “Any reason to abort?”

“No,” the others answered.

“OK. I’m ready to trigger the charges when they attack the airfield in about two minutes. It’s time to get into position.”

They scurried off to their fighting stations. River found a rooftop nest as a sniper post, while the others arrayed to face the entrance to the enemy barracks.

Distant explosions sounded, and Quinn detonated the charges on the towers. A few moments later, he detonated the breaching charges on the dormitories. Their shuttle fired missiles at the guard barracks and the bunkers; then followed up with heavy cannon fire. The operation was on.

Soon the APCs rolled up, and Quinn’s team directed the troops to their firing positions. Troop transports began the evacuation, starting with the dormitories nearest the guard barracks. Three buildings were mostly emptied before the guards could mount a serious response.

The second level of buildings was cleared before the guards sallied from the barracks to counter-attack. Quinn’s soldiers forced a stalemate by the time the third level of buildings was cleared.

It was then that Quinn tried communicating with the enemy. Over his external speaker, he said, “Empire troops! We’re almost done here. You don’t want to die in a lost cause. Return to your barracks. We won’t fire on anyone retreating to the safety of the barracks. You have five minutes.”