James’s Dispatch

“Evil, James, is all in the eye of the beholder,” Eric said, busy with his tiered plants.

“So to you the ends, no matter the cost, justify the means?” I replied

“I’m a pragmatist.  Simply that.  If I can see which horse is going to win in the race, I bet on him.  I don’t go down on the track and carry the horse to the finish.  Think of it.  If you could trade 14 million dead for 7 million, wouldn’t you?  Simple military arithmetic.”

“I would like to think that I would make a choice I thought was right and stick with it,” I answered.

“Fair enough.”  Eric gently held the leaf of one of his plants.  “I’ve had this conversation before, but with a different James.  He had the same response.”

“Tell me,” I said, knowing Eric was in a sharing mood.

“It was at the end.  Just before he and Meng sacrificed themselves.  Come to think of it, that was the last time I talked to him in person.  He was arguing that sustaining the Terran government was worth our work and effort.  I was arguing that we should have formed our own government instead of propping up a weakened and ineffectual one.  In his death, I decided to abide by James’s wishes.”

“Was that hard for you?” I asked.

“What, to do what he thought was right?  No.  To go against my instincts, yes.  We could have prevented the strife that followed the Insurrection when the Government was still in disarray.  Not only that, but we could also have helped rebuild it quicker and better.”

“Rebuild what?” I pressed.

“Everything.  But I let James’s legacy be the Terran Government that’s still in place today.  The same one that decided our presence was ‘disruptive’ and ‘harmful to the public good.’”  He turned, then, to look at me.  “There was a lot of suffering in those days, James.”

“I learned about it in my research, yes.” I replied.

“Nothing like living through it, though,” he said back.

“If it was James’s plan that you were following at the end, then how things turned out really wasn’t your fault.”

“I disagree, but go on,” Eric said.

“Were James still around at the end, during the downfall of the TDF, he would have led your forces to the same place in history.  The difference would have been only the person, not the events,” I said.

“Wherever choice exists, there lies another reality,” Eric replied.

“So you think things would have turned out differently had it been James rather than you?”

“I don’t honestly know.  What I do know,” he said, sitting, “Is that what happened was my fault.  The responsibility of action ultimately falls on the leader.  That was me.  I cannot avoid that burden.”

“That I can understand.  How did James feel about it?  That sort of responsibility.”

“Hrm,” Eric mused, a smile on his face.  “Best way to describe his feelings toward the mantle of leadership would be to share the conversation I had with him.”

“No, James, I don’t agree. You were forced into the choice.”

“How?! How was I forced?”

 “Really,” I said to him in disbelief.  “Think about what that mob was doing at the embassy!  It was practically the US leaving Vietnam out there!”

“That’s no excuse,” James retorted.

“James, if you hadn’t taken action we’d be in a worse way right now.”

“I’ve talked to Meng.  Politically it’d be the same,” he replied.

“Damn it, I’m not talking politically!  That mob would have hostages and then we would have been forced to go in anyway.  You know as well as I do that means civilian casualties, probably hostages KIA.  That’d be worse.”

“Eric,” James said, finally looking up at me, “in all but that way it’s just as bad.  While we try to fight against this growing violence, public opinion of us just continues to slide.  All of us here know that the people we’ve been facing aren’t leaving us any choice but to act.  They’re in it to the hilt!  That doesn’t change how we’re being portrayed.  And there’s no one to argue our case but us.  I’ve gotta tell you,” he said, staring back downward, “it’s a losing battle.”

“That’s not a constructive attitude, man.”

“To hell with constructive attitudes!  You’ve seen the opinion polls.  The general population is turning against us even as we win this war for them and their government,” James scoffed.

 “We both know exactly what Chaos would do with this world. We’re doing the right thing.”

“I know.  It just gets hard sometimes to remember it.  And the leaders of nations we liberated from his group calling us monsters doesn’t help,” James said, disparagingly.

“So to hell with ‘em,” I said.

“Yeah, forget ‘em,” James said half-heartedly.

“No.  I mean it.  Why not use the power we have and give these people the government they deserve?”

“And which would that be?” he asked.

“A fair one.  A secure one.  One where war doesn’t exist.  One where,” James cut me off.

“Where we’re in control and dictate the law.  A police state.  And what?  Have a civilian board to rubber stamp what we say?  No, Eric.  You know that wouldn’t work.  These people, humanity, are already questioning our use.  The best thing we can do for ourselves now and for them is to support the legitimate Terran Government and then retreat to the shadows for a while once this is all over.”

“Isolation.  That’s basically what you’re saying,” I replied.

“It’s just…we’re becoming too much, dude.”  He looked at me with weary eyes, ones heavy from unpalatable decisions.  “This is never what we set out for.  Meng?  Maybe.  Even he agrees, though, that we’re growing too big and influential for our own good.  And I just have a bad feeling about this.  As if no matter what we do here we’ll wind up the losers in the end.  I know we can’t isolate ourselves.  We’re too much part of the political fabric of Earth now.  I also know that this war is making people question the governments they fought for.  It’s financially devastated everyone so much that rebuilding just isn’t happening.  They’re getting fed up with the very ineffectual global government that supports our actions.  And meanwhile we can’t help matters because we’re fighting what’s left of Chaos’s forces on one hand and killing what appears to be innocent protestors on the other.  When Terran citizens go to the polls next they’ll vote out the politicians who support us baby-killers.”

“Don’t even waste your breath on repeating that rubbish,” I said indignantly.  “You know that we’re doing is necessary and important.”

“Do the ends justify the means, Eric?” James asked me then.

“Our means are dictated us by the nature of the conflict.  When they won’t surrender what choice do we have but a massacre?” I replied, stating facts.

“The US found a way around that with the Japanese,” James said, leaning back and staring at the ceiling.

“You really willing to go the nuclear route?  Because you and I both know that’s what ended that war,” I replied.

“All options open to us right now are equally bad.  If we could get all of Chaos’s forces in one spot, at least a nuke would finish the job,” James said, disheartened.

“You know that’s not an acceptable option anymore.  Not after WWII.  Even Chaos isn’t that crazy.”

“He’s almost desperate enough,” James said, rubbing his face with both hands.  “He knows it’s over.  It would be a Battle of the Bulge-type of move for him.  One aimed at turning public opinion against us.  ‘Look what they’ve made me do,’ he’d say.”

“Hrmph,” I mumbled noncommittally.  This was the first time in a long time that James and I had had the chance to sit down and talk.  At the height of the war we had been trying to direct whole fronts, shifting forces at times halfway around the world to keep from losing even one inch to Chaos.  Even after we took the momentum out of his uprising, James became consumed with being the political figurehead of the TDF while I continued conducting the combat ops.  I wondered what had happened to the two innocent boys who used to watch movies and talk about girls.  Here we were trying to forget about our worries, even for a minute, while bringing them up constantly.  We lost something of ourselves, our youthful innocence, I think, at the Project.  We lost something else the minute we signed on with the Government to assume tactical responsibility for this counter-insurrection.  The global government was corrupt and had been for some time.  That’s how Chaos was able to build such global support.  For us to sign on to buttress a government that taxed the poor into even worse poverty just to keep the opulence of government intact…it left me with a bad stomach.  But what were we to do?

Meng had glimpsed two roads at the start of this.  Down one lay Chaos as a sadistic, power-crazed dictator worse even than the thieves who ran the currently crumbling government.  Down the other lay uncertainty.  There wasn’t much of a choice.  Either let Chaos have the reigns or fight him for the future.  He saw himself as a new Che Guevera, fighting the good fight for the people.  Too bad he was really Joseph Stalin.

We sat like that for a while, James and I, letting things figure themselves out for at least a few moments.  Amazingly the world didn’t end.  It was glorious.

“So what are we going to do, then?” I asked, breaking the silence.

“About what?” James asked while resting his head on the back of the couch.

“I don’t know,” I said absently.  “About any of it.  Chaos.  The government.  The demonstrations.”

“Deal with them one at a time,” he said calmly.  “We defeat Chaos and allow things to stabilize.  We help the government rebuild so that confidence in it goes back up.  And hopefully that will quell the protests.”

“Do we really want them quelled?” I asked.

“Hell, I don’t know.”  He kept his head back, but his eyes now tried to guess the future through projections.  “Ya gotta figure that Chaos is training civilian agents to carry on the fight in the political arena after he’s gone.”

“You think he’ll be killed before this is all over?” I asked, hopeful.

“I think he’s going to face that, making himself a martyr to his cause.  And he’ll take out whomever of us he can in the process.  And I can’t say I blame him.  Not after what we did both with and to him.”  None of us could argue that point.  “Without a functioning government things are going to get worse for longer before they start to turn around.  The best way we can help stabilize this world in a post-Chaos future is to maintain the government as it stands.  Would it be better in the long term if the protesters got their way?  Maybe.  But there’s a nexus in time beyond which Meng can’t see.  Knowing that, I’d rather deal with the devil I know than the one I don’t.”

“And what about us, James?  What happens to us after all this is settled?” I asked.

“Oh, I plan on retiring to an island somewhere with white sandy beaches, soft waves in the background and,” James began, the comm.-line interrupting him.

“Go ahead,” James said at it, hitting the connect button with his heel.

“James, you need to see this.”  It was Melinda.  While we had slipped away she had taken command of the war room.

“We’ll be right out.”  Had Melinda just wanted James she could have called him mentally.  Using the comm- meant it would concern me, too. Leaving the privacy of the ready room we saw Chaos displayed on the main screen mid-speech.  “And I tell you also that this government has betrayed you all.  It has given in to the Dogs of War led by James Christopher and Meng Thao.  They are your true enemy, not me.”

“He managed to grab another news satellite?” James asked.

“No,” Melinda said.  “All of them.”  The implication was obvious.  The capability to hack that many satellites at once would require Chaos to centralize such an effort.  The only place he would allow such activity was right under his nose.  Wherever he was originating his signal, that’s where he was.  Not only that, but he would certainly know that we could track down the signal.  That meant only one thing: he intended this to be his last message.

“Fellow citizens, the cost of this war falls on the shoulders of the TDF.  Do not blame your government for the atrocities that have been wrought upon you!  Who protects, that is controls, the means of transport?  Who enforces the status quo?  It is James, Meng and their loyal wretches!  Blame them for your suffering and for your misery!  The government, even now, is prevented from helping you because of them.  They said that they opposed me to keep a regime out of power.  But what do you call militarily enforced rule but a regime?”

“He’s trying to turn the public against us,” I said.

“But bolstering the government,” James finished.  “That’s where he’ll make his true final stand.  In the government itself.”

“We got it,” Melinda broke in.  “We got his location.  But you’re not going to like it.”

“Soon, these petulant gods will seek to strike me down.  Even now they sit lofty in their Olympus planning their final assault on my liberation forces.  Do not forget this warning I give you my brothers and sisters!  It is the TDF you must now oppose.  It is their tyranny you must now fear.  It is their brand of propaganda against which you must now fight.  I will soon be dead, but their lies will live on.  Fight them as I have on your behalf, my brothers and sisters!  Vive la resistance!”  With that Chaos ended his message.

Melinda passed the infopad to James, his eyes wide.  “Not good,” he said.  “We’re going to need our absolute best to finish this.  He means to take us all out in the process.  Rouse all the Progenitors and Senior Elites.  We go to end this.”

“And that was the last time I talked to James before the final battle.  Within three hours my oldest friend would be gone so completely not even a body remained to mourn.  Meng, Adam, D’Andre, Jessica and Claire would all be gone.  And the Earth itself would change.  Fitting, I suppose, that all this happened in front of the home of Athena Nike.”

Next Chapter: A Report