War World X: Takeover Read online

  Table of Contents

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  CODOMINIUM CHRONOLOGY

  TO WIN THE PEACE, Frank Gasperik and Leslie Fish

  THE RAID ON PURITY , William F. Wu

  MARCHING ON POLAND , Leslie Fish

  ENOUGH ROPE , E R Stewart

  MORE PRECIOUS THAN RUBIES , A.L. Brown

  THE COMING OF THE DINNEH , John Dalmas

  BUSINESS AS USUAL , John F. Carr

  POUND-FOOLISH , Charles E. Gannon

  POLITICS OF MELOS , Susan Shwartz

  ATALANTA , Don Hawthorne

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  EDITED BY

  JOHN F. CARR

  Created by Jerry E. Pournelle & John F. Carr

  WAR WORLD VOLUMES

  EDITED AND CREATED BY JOHN F. CARR AND JERRY POURNELLE

  War World I: The Burning Eye

  War World II: Death’s Head Rebellion

  War World III: Sauron Dominion

  War World IV: Invasion!

  CoDominium I: Revolt on War World

  WAR WORLD NOVELS

  Blood Feuds

  Blood Vengeance

  The Battle of Sauron

  New War World Volumes Edited by John F. Carr

  WAR WORLD: Discovery

  WAR WORLD: Takeover

  WAR WORLD: Jihad! (forthcoming)

  War World: The CoDominium Takeover

  A War World Anthology

  Printing History

  Two of the stories, Coming of the Dinneh and Politics of Melos, first appeared in CODOMINIUM: Revolt on War World, edited by Jerry E. Pournelle and John F. Carr, and published by Baen Books in 1992. The remaining eight stories were written especially for this volume and are new to the War World series.

  All Rights Reserved

  Copyright © 2011 by John F. Carr

  Original Cover Art—Copyright © 2011 by Alan Gutierrez

  This book may not be reproduced or transmitted in whole or in part, in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, scanning, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the authors and publisher.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First Printing 2011

  V 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ISBN: 978-0-937912-13-3

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Once again, thanks go to Jerry Pournelle for allowing me to expand and create new stories in the War World/Empire of Man future history. Secondly, I’d like to thank Don Hawthorne for all his support and enthusiasm for the War World series over the years.

  Special thanks go to Larry King, who also maintains a great CoDominium website, for keeping the CoDominium Time Line and for his continuity work on this volume. I’d also like to thank Stephen Shervais for all his help with the War World author’s bible. And, to Dennis Frank, Archivist at St. Bonaventure University.

  Also, I owe a debt of gratitude to Victoria Alexander for her editorial assistance and proof reading.

  I’d also like to give thanks to all the members of the Copyediting and Post-Proofing Team, Dennis Frank, Doug McElwain, and Larry Hopkins.

  A big thank you goes to Alan Gutierrez who, as always, did a wonderful job on the cover art.

  CODOMINIUM CHRONOLOGY

  1969 Neil Armstrong sets foot on Earth’s moon

  1990-2000 Series of treaties between the United States and the Soviet Union creates the CoDominium. Military research and development outlawed.

  1995 Nationalist movements intensify

  1996 French Foreign Legion forms the basic element of the CoDominium Armed Services.

  1998 The Church of New Universal Harmony founded.

  2004 Charles Castell is born.

  2010-2100 CoDominium Intelligence Services engage in serious effort to suppress all research into technologies with military applications. They are aided by zero-growth organizations.

  2010 Habitable planets discovered in other star systems. Commercial exploitation of new worlds begins.

  2020 First interstellar colonies are founded. The CoDominium Space Navy and Marines are created, absorbing the original CoDominium Armed Services.

  2020 Great Exodus period of colonization begins. First colonists are dissidents, malcontents and voluntary adventurers.

  2028 Creation of the Humanity League. Sponsored by the ACLU, Sierra Club and Zero Population groups.

  2032 Haven is discovered.

  2040 CoDominium Population Control under the aegis of the Bureau of Relocation and Bureau of Corrections begins mass out-system shipments of involuntary colonists.

  2041 Edwin Hamilton discovers the first shimmer stones on Haven.

  2042 Hamilton sells the location to Dover Mineral Development and is paid a fortune to keep secret the location of their planet of origin.

  2043 John Christian Falkenberg, III is born in Rome.

  2043 The 26th Marines, Company C, Third Battalion is dispatched to Haven to stop criminal gangs from taking over the colony.

  2052 The Shimmer Stone Rush. When the location of shimmer stones becomes public knowledge, it leads to a “rush” of shimmer stones miners.

  2055 The ConDominium Bureau of Intelligence orchestrates a revolt by a band of imported criminals, which ends in disaster when their attack on Jamesport fails and their leader, Jumo, is killed.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  CODOMINIUM CHRONOLOGY

  TO WIN THE PEACE, Frank Gasperik and Leslie Fish

  THE RAID ON PURITY, William F. Wu

  MARCHING ON POLAND, Leslie Fish

  ENOUGH ROPE, E R Stewart

  MORE PRECIOUS THAN RUBIES, A.L. Brown

  THE COMING OF THE DINNEH, John Dalmas

  BUSINESS AS USUAL, John F. Carr

  POUND-FOOLISH, Charles E. Gannon

  POLITICS OF MELOS, Susan Shwartz

  ATALANTA, Don Hawthorne

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  From Stephen Ulrich’s An Informal History of the CoDominium Marines: the Good, the Bad and the Unbelievable. New Washington Press, 2088.

  26th CoDominium Marine Regiment

  (Garrison, Provisional)

  In the early CoDominium the Marines were an integral part of the CoDominium Armed Services (CAS). They played an important role in keeping peace both on Earth and off-world. The Marines owed their allegiance not to the CoDominium, a vague political entity on distant Terra, but to their Regiment and band of brothers. The CD Marines were the linchpin, along with the CD Navy in keeping the peace on far-flung worlds, as well as at home. For the Line Marines the predominant organization is the regiment, while for the Garrison Marines it’s the battalion. “The Fleet is our Fatherland” and “No politics in the Fleet” are the mottoes of the Line Marines.

  At the top rung of the CoDominium Marine Corps are the Fleet Marines. Next come the Line Marines and under them the Garrison Marines. The latter come in descending flavors including pure constabulary or police units such as are kept in reserve for use on Earth. However the bottom rung are the Provisional Regiments also known as Transport Units. The nomenclature comes from the French. An ad hoc unit was called a unit du marche. In theory they were supposed to be groupings of recruits and replacements formed into temporary units to shepherd them to the front. During war time, higher command would often grab these provisional units as units to meet some pressing emergency. Such units existed for months or at most a few years. Some would find themselves permanently on the order of battle (OOB).

  The 26th Marine Regiment took its color and unit’s lineage from one such famous French example5Régiment de marche du
Thad (RMT, “Ad hoc Regiment of Chad”). It was a proud regiment with a noble history. The same could not be said of the 26th. Regimental HQ is a few aging officers and senior NCO’s getting the last few years for their pension on Luna Base. They do the personnel and accounting work for the scattered companies.

  The company for the world Haven was formed by this process. The 26th was tasked by Fleet HQ to provide a garrison for Haven. As was usual this was done in response to political pressure with no prior planning and no addition to the Fleet budget for the expense. Sufficient cadre was found by the usual expedients. First officers and NCO’s of the appropriate ranks were culled from men between assignments, to minimize transport costs these were men either already on Luna or at Wayforth Station.

  Major Lassitre was at the station in transit to a court martial on Luna. The conduct unbecoming charge was silly on its face. Even if he had done everything his commander accused him of it at worst merited administrative punishment. However service politics had no way of protecting a mere major without higher ranking patrons from a colonel’s wrath. A company was too small a command for a major in a service with as few officer billets as the Marines but then Lassitre was scarcely in a position to turn it down.

  Lieutenant Frasier’s crime was even simpler. He was on Luna without assignment and a second officer was needed. Had he been on assignment to anything, however menial, some other soul’s life would have been wrecked. Instead he became the other officer for the “company”. This was not unusual. The Marine Corps was short of officers both by policy, a high tooth to tail ratio and low percentage of officer slots was part of the mandate of the service, and budget, where units were perpetually under funded with officer slots often going unfilled as an ‘economy’ move.

  Two officers are quite less than a company’s worth but then what was sent was only nominally a company. Two officers, some similarly unlucky NCO’s and a bit over a platoon’s worth of men would be sufficient cadre for something that could be called a company in bad light. The NCO’s and men would be warm body requisitions (hit a unit in Luna with a request for two sergeants and two rankers, then live with them sending you the worst troublemakers they had even if they had to pull them off punishment detail to post them).

  Over time more cadre would arrive via the same sort of warm body requisitions. There would be permanent requests at Luna and Wayforth from regimental HQ (The battalions of a regiment such as this are purely notional. They have neither commanders nor staff—instead the companies send their reports and receive their orders directly from regimental HQ on Luna for those infrequent occasions where higher command remembers the companies exist at all). These would go into a roster of similar permanent requests from other units almost all of whom had higher priority than the companies of the 26th. Unless a posting was near the bottom of the priority list the 26th would not have been tasked to garrison it. However military personnel systems are nothing if not capricious. There is always some poor soul either unlucky enough or who has offended his superiors sufficiently to be sent on a one-way trip to Haven.

  One-way trip it of course was. Again in theory one could be posted elsewhere. However the norm was that when you fell down a career sinkhole sufficient to be posted to the 26th you stayed there until retirement or death. So the growth of the unit to full company size was more a matter of local recruitment. The transports always had a surplus of men with no future and pasts they would as soon forget.

  The Marines had recruited such back to when some of these units had actually been part of the Foreign Legion. Pay was not really an issue. The garrison levied on the civilians for food and locally produced products paying in scrip. The officers and men were paid in the same make believe money less any amounts they were sending elsewhere to support dependants or pay fines from past transgressions. The scrip circulated in Castell City (later planet wide). It was money because the stores and bars would accept it as such. They accepted it because to refuse to do so was to incur the wrath of the only force capable of protecting their property. The Marines knew how to make do and the civilians adjusted to what amounted to a form of taxation by fiat currency creation. A Fleet that supported itself in good part by drug sales could not afford to be fussy.

  To Win the Peace

  Frank Gasperik & Leslie Fish

  Haven, 2055 A.E.

  A party was obviously called for and Leo Makhno had fueled it, literally. The short olive-skinned, ebony-haired captain had brought in five CoDo gallons of reserve fuel from the Black Bitch—his supercharged, twin Kawasaki-powered, Zodiac built ‘baft’—and was presiding over the proceedings, but not taking particular pleasure in them. He had too many problems to think over. Besides, continually being around three-hundred horsepower engines—powered by CH3-CH2-OH at a surface pressure equal to 1,500 meters above Earth sea level—gave one a certain immunity to alch-induced euphoria.

  From behind the bar, Makhno noticed that Jane, the winner of the vest-pocket war they had just fought, wasn’t drinking either; but Van Damm and Brodski, the two mercs that were responsible for winning it, were sucking it up heavily. Van Damm drank morosely, but Brodski imbibed with as much joy as an ex-Fleet Marine Gunnery Sergeant, of twenty-five years service, who had just acquired a bar and a connection to the best beer, booze, and sandwich makings on Haven—and two adoring charges, (blonde, green-eyed, aged fifteen and seventeen, named Dora and Flora respectively)—could have.

  Well, Brodski had earned it. If it hadn’t been for him and the shaven-headed Van Damm, Jomo and his Simbas would have consolidated the area around Castell City and with it been able to hold an iron fist over the rest of Haven.

  The stories Makhno had heard hadn’t boded well for old Harp’s daughters either; they were much better off with a man of honor like Brodski than a thug like Jomo.

  One of the locals had noticed the changed ownership and they had made a swap: three free drinks for repainting the sign from Simba to Harp’s Sergeant (with the insignia of a Fleet Gunny under it). More of Jomo’s bullyboys had showed up, after DeCastro left, and been quickly dealt with. The news had spread rapidly around Docktown, and Jomo’s goons were having a rough time of it. Several people had told Leo about the Simbas’ reckoning. The justice in the cribs was downright bloody, while the Simbas at the sweatshops were dealt with more slowly. Leo suspected that there wouldn’t be any alive by morning.

  DeCastro was a different matter however. It was hard to be a “criminal” on a planet where nothing was illegal. The only restraints were those of social mores and whatever personal code of behavior one had brought from Earth. DeCastro’s organization and code seemed to be something right out of the ancient writings of Damon Runyon.

  The party was becoming loud; an impromptu “Victory Band” of two guitars, a battery powered synthesizer, a fiddle, banjo, and improvised drums were announcing victory to all of Haven. There were even some Harmonies improvising words to the instrumental jam.

  I should feel better, thought Makhno. Why don’t I?

  Maybe it was the understanding that, with the Last Resort sunk, his Zodiac was one of the largest river boats on the planet. That did not bode well for trade in the Shangri-La Valley, where the only reliable roadway was the river.

  Maybe it was the thought of the Kennicott Mining ship still in orbit around Haven, a shadow of the CoDominium and the future….

  Yeah, we won this one, but how do we keep it?

  Maybe Owen Van Damm would have a suggestion or two; he’d been around in CoDo space, he’d seen a lot and seemed to know a lot about what was going on—like who was Who amongst the interstellar companies, and who was getting what slice of what pie. Maybe current BuReloc policies? Who better to ask than the far-traveler for news of far-off places? He was off the last ship, too. Not too many people from that ship: only three hundred or so “settlers” from the Bureau of ReLocation, some donations from Earth for the Harmonies and that load of CoDo stunners for Jomo.

  “Captain Makhno?” asked the wiry little man wi
th the perpetually stained fingers.

  “Yeah, Sam? How’s your off-world gear holding up?”

  “Better than usual, Leo. I got some replacement parts in trade for some euph from a crewman on the Kennicott Harbinger upstairs, and uh, do you know somebody named Van Damm? I got a message and a two-way trip ticket for him. I didn’t know somebody up there was a friend of his.”

  “He’s the one sitting next to the big blonde, behind you. How’d you get this? With your ham gear? Or did a shuttle land while I was gone?”

  “Off the ham gear. Come on, Leo, who else has the town got as a Comm Tech? Just me, Sam Kilroy: ever since the budget got cut, just one man to keep an off-planet radio watch. I owe you one for the warning about Jomo, by the way.”

  “You can pay that one off right now if you want. What was in that message to Van Damn?”

  “You don’t want to know, Leo. I sure don’t even want to know; it’s in code.”

  Code? That, Makhno considered, opened up a large can of possibilities. Van Damm an agent? For who? The Lords of the CoDo? Reynolds Off-World? Kennicott, Dover or Anaconda? BuReloc? Fleet? It could be anybody. But then, why did he help us so much? “See you later, Sam, I need some air.” Makhno went outside.

  The view from the porch of the bar wasn’t particularly inspiring: just the lake and Splash Island, and off in the distance what was called Xanadu River.

  Makhno remembered the trip down the river, helping to ferry miners well over a thousand kilometers down river into what could become something next to slavery for Kennicott Metals and Mining, but they were willing to pay for it no matter how much he had talked against that trip. The Bitch had towed rafts that could only be considered marginally river-worthy, even during the wind-slack period of Haven’s cycle. Some of the miners had been taken by land-gators and cliff lions as they hunted along the river banks. A few had drifted their hands in the water, giving quick snacks to riverjacks, and a couple of the rafts had performed an act of dissolution due to poor engineering and even worse construction, providing the river carnivores with full meals. So had two of the “kit-design” steamboats shepherding the rafts.