Mutually Assured Destruction (25/?)

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Mem-O-Gram file user: Betty Hartwell, US Ambassador to the Venlil Republic

File subject: Classified

Date [standardized human time]: November 15th, 1974

It had been months since the festival. On the surface, the festival had gone off without a hitch. The foundation had been set, the populace appeased, and the Venlil in the area welcomed the humans with open arms before they, too, silently evacuated. I skimmed various news sources for news about a terror attack, but I got nothing. In fact the only result I had from the weirdness at the festival was a curt invitation from Sam, to meet with him to 'discuss relations between our two races.' Scary.

Even though Sam was a friend, he was still governor, so I arrived on time to a small conference room tucked away in the bowels of the UN building. Inside was Sam and a single other Venlil, wearing a Venlil Navy uniform. I caught the tail end of an argument as I opened the door.

"-bad idea, Sam. She'll definitely report this to her-"

The Venlil from the Navy stopped as I entered the room. "Well, it's a bit too late for that," said Sam drily. "Have a seat, Betty. Please."

With some trepidations, I sat down across from them. Their ears twitched and spasmed; they were nervous. The other Venlil introduced herself as Captain Tarva, Sam’s Navy liaison.

Sam reached over and tapped a box on the table. It beeped, and he sighed. "All right. This conversation is going to be reported, for posterity. I hope you don't mind.

"I've been reaching out to various human ambassadors. You humans are so fragmented. Honestly, it's exhausting." He tried to sound friendly, but he only managed to sound tired.

Not only did Sam look tired, his voice was entirely different from the way he usually spoke. There was no stuttering, none of the high, wheedling voice I thought was kind of endearing about him. Now, Sam sounded… plain. Entirely unassuming. If there were a blank slate for a voice, Sam’s was it.

Sam cleared his throat.

"Okay. I'll get down to business. See, I'm facing a coup-d'etat. I'm trying to keep it quiet, but at this point the other side is desperate, and they're willing to use open violence at this point. The effects will spill over eventually, and I'd rather you guys are informed when things begin to happen."

I thought for a bit. "Okay, I'm listening. But first off, what's this 'other side'? What do they want"

"Well, they call themselves the Federalists. They align to the ideals of the old Federation. Which include its policy on predator species. They don't really like you lot."

"For good reason," said Tarva. "They're scared of how you'd react. When it comes to predators, our only example to go off on are the Arxur. Not to mention your history shows that you react impulsively to attacks on your territory." She looked guilty as she said it, as if she said something she wasn't supposed to.

"Wait, attacks on our territory? What are you talking about?"

Sam sighed. "Well, we were behind the nuclear attack on Cuba. A ballistic strike, mixed with some unstable isotopes to simulate human atomics. We'd have used real atomics, but, well…" he chuckled humorlessly. "Atomics weren't really a thing for us until you came along."

He'd said it so casually that it took a moment for me to get what he was saying.

“Are… are you serious? You know how bad it was? Everyone was eyeing each other - the whole planet could’ve gone up in flames!”

“Yes,” said Sam. “We were very aware of that.”

It took a moment to understand what Sam was getting at.

“You all are bastards, you know that?”

“Yes. We also are aware of that.” Now Sam’s ear twitched in faint amusement.

“It’s not funny.”

Sam’s ear stopped. “No, it’s not. In fact, as of now it is an existential threat to my race.”

"Existential threat how? That we'd whoop your asses once this gets out to the public?"

"That," said Sam, his voice going flat, "is exactly what the Federalists are worried about. It is precisely why I have evacuated our entire population and frankly, it's why I have warhawks at my doorstep calling for me to incinerate your species from orbit and colonize the remains."

He leaned back in his chair. You couldn't really call what he said an outburst. He was calm the whole way through. Certain. Like he was stating facts.

"I really want to work with you, I really do. But we're going to have to put aside our problems. What we did is a terrible thing, no doubt. But we'll deal with it later. There'll be justice, I promise you. But we have more pressing matters at hand."

He sounded tired. Done with everything. Exasperated. That was Selvim, I realized. I knew him for less than a month, but Sam's predecessor sounded permanently resigned. He had the air of a schoolteacher dealing with his umpteenth class of rowdy troublemakers, and Sam was beginning to show it, too.

"All right," I ventured. Best to be cautious here. "We can figure something out. But first, I need answers. People have reasons for what they do, so it'd be better to figure out the reasons."

"Okay. Funny. Andrei said much the same thing." Sam leaned forward and pulled out his tablet. "Okay. Cuba was technically Selvim's orders. Not that I'm trying to worm out of anything, but Selvim intended it as kind of a test. He originally wanted to incinerate the planet, but he'd been reading into your history and," he coughed, "began to empathize. He thought if he made one strike, at a contentious point in your history, and you conformed to the Federation theory of how predators acted, you'd destroy yourselves, and Selvim could move on without guilt."

"But we didn't destroy ourselves."

"Right. Selvim ended up with more than he bargained for with you. He was shocked that you survived, and scrambled to prepare for your inevitable entry into galactic politics."

"People said he was going to turn you into an army to overthrow the Federation," interjected Tarva.

"As I was saying…" Sam threw an ear-flick of annoyance at Tarva. "I think at this point he realized that you weren't… well, monsters. He wanted to integrate you as a civilization. To be more open-minded towards predators. After all, if you can pull together after an attack of that magnitude, maybe you wouldn't kill everyone the moment you discovered FTL spaceflight. No offense."

"None taken," I sighed, even though I very much did take offense. "But what does this have to do with what's happening right now?"

"Well, Selvim's a very popular figure among the Venlil. War hero, advocated Venlil autonomy, butted heads with the Federation a lot. People liked him. But this stance on predators was a bit too much. We split into two factions regarding you. The Federalists, obviously, and the Progressives, who follow Selvim's views on you."

"So like human political parties."

"Not so. The two factions actually agree on a lot of things. In terms of domestic policy the two are identical. The contention point," emphasized Sam, "is how we should treat you. Should we open our cities, work together, let hunters into the herd? Or do we do what we've done up until now, which is to exterminate everything and carry on, safe but ignorant? I'm quite sure which one you'd prefer."

"Obviously."

"Yes… well, the problem is that even though the two agree on everything else, this one problem is a very big problem. Big enough that each side genuinely believes that the other side is dooming the Venlil to extinction."

Sam rubbed his eyes. "They're pressuring me from both sides. Especially the Federalists. I appeased them a bit by stationing fleets so that we could deal with you in case you turned on us-"

"Excuse me?"

"-Yes, yes, I know. All the ships I selected are staffed by Progressives. They won't lift a paw against you. But anyway, the Federalists are now demanding I use those fleets. And radical factions in the Navy are threatening me, saying that if I won't solve 'the human problem' the way they want, they'll do it themselves."

“But that’d mean all-out war,” I protested. “Not to mention that a first strike makes them look bad. They’d lose popular support.”

“You’d think that,” sighed Sam, “because you believe yourself to be a thinking, rational being, worthy of rights and protection of law. The Federalists don’t see humans that way. But you are right on one count: most Venlil do see humans as thinking, rational beings, at least on some level. Any attack by the Federalists would cost them their popular support.

“Which is why I anticipate some kind of false-flag attack to happen within the next few weeks. Human terrorists, or human radicals, or some kind of human splinter cell will make their move on a Venlil asset. The Federalists will seize the opportunity to force me to act against you, or depose me if I show hesitation. Whatever happens, there will be reprisals against the human population. Justified or not, it will happen."

"But we wouldn't do that. None of us have any problems with the Venlil. You're jumping at shadows."

"Are we? There are radical communities of humans, you know. The terrorist cell we took out during the festival, for one. A few radical networks are operating in the Balkans. Your congress seems divided on the issue, and 'Earth for the humans' is a substantially popular opinion."

"But those opinions are in the minority; they can't do anything. Most of us support you."

"The fact that there exists a minority at all is alarming to us."

I tried very hard to keep down the urge to scream. "Okay. Fine. But what do you expect us to do about it?"

Tarva piped up. "You have large numbers of emergency bunkers all over the planet, which we assume were to be used in the event of atomic warfare. We can discreetly expand these shelters, turn them into cities for your people to live in. On the surface, we will create simulations of civilians to create the illusion that things are progressing as normal. When the false-flag happens, Sam will give in and 'attack' human settlements, while you live on in secret. Everyone lives and everyone is happy."

I could already see the flaws in the plan. "And what, are we just going to live in the bunkers forever then?"

Tarva looked embarrassed and Sam leapt to her defense. "Considering we've only had a week to draft this plan up, it's the best we've got given the time frame. And it would only be until I can deradicalize the populace and get them to accept you."

"I, erm, don't think that's going to happen. We humans would all be dead, right? If we emerged you'd have a lot of explaining to do. And generally, I've found that lying about something always makes more trouble down the road."

"Hm. If you have a better plan, we'd be happy to hear it."

Well, as it happened, I did. "We'll boost security on our ships, check our crew for anything weird, and make sure that the weapon systems require more than just a few people to fire. That way, even if a group of radicals got control of a ship, they wouldn't be able to do anything with it."

There was a disbelieving pause.

"That's it?" Sam sounded incredulous.

"That's it."

"You do realize this is only a temporary solution."

"Well, so is yours! And your plan cleans up after everything happens. Wouldn't that mean people would die?"

Sam's face hardened. "We have to accept that casualties are inevitable."

"What the heck? I mean wouldn't it be better to just make sure nobody dies?"

It wasn't Sam that answered, but Tarva.

"Unfortunately, in my line of work I've learned that trying to save everybody ends with you saving nobody. It's… like making an omelette. You have to crack eggs."

"Well, there is a way: Safety protocols! They've prevented lots of crises. I just think it's better to solve the problem before it becomes a problem, you know?"

Sam rubbed his nose. "Well, I'm only surprised because we already have security protocols. But the Federalists are everywhere. We have to assume that they are compromised."

"So we just use our own. I'm sure two layers of protocols makes it that much harder to override a ship."

Sam looked uneasy. "I'm not sure we're ready to allow human protocols onto our ships."

"Well, it's going to be entirely separate. And only for joint ships crewed by both of us. After all, if it's a false flag attack, it wouldn't make sense to use a fully Venlil ship, right? Not to mention that with both of our protocols in place, it'd require cooperation between crew to work. We'd integrate much better."

Sam seemed to consider it. "You know what? Sure. I can see it working. And it doesn't harm us Venlil. Why not?"

I smiled. "You know, you guys are mighty shady, and you gotta work on that. We gotta work on that. But this? This is a start."

We shook hands.

"I'll go talk with my buddies in the UN. We'll get our security protocols up and running in no time." I left out the fact that we'd be doing this so fast because we were only expanding protocols we'd already set up so maniacs wouldn't be able to kick-start armageddon."

"And we'll work on things from our end as well." Sam looked guilty. "And, erm, sorry for everything. We'll try to, erm, do better on this whole diplomacy thing in the future."

I could tell it was killing him, and for a moment I saw the nervous, stuttering alcoholic governor I knew from before.

I sighed. "Well, we have a long, long way to go. But we'll do it."

Sam nodded. "We'll do it."

…

Declassified Document

To: Governor Sam of the Venlil Republic

Venlil Republic: Ministry of Internal Affairs

Date [standardized human time] November 30th, 1974

Sam,

The committee you've put together has concluded their investigation. Attached is a full report of the incident, as reconstructed by survivors' accounts as well as every forensic technique we have at our disposal.

The summary is thus: The USS Maine was, as you know, a joint project, built and staffed by both humans and Venlil, but her crew were majority human. She served with UN SCSG-3 as an escort, and at the time of the incident was refueling with her fleet at Venlil station Habitat 03, a logistics hub for our operations.

On [November 21st, 1974] at [22:00] standard time, the USS Maine received a coded request that activated Contingency 7, which assumes that the ship's crew is dead or incapacitated and that the ship cannot be piloted from the bridge. Designed to get an evacuated or empty ship to tow itself to safety for repair or salvage, the contingency systems bypassed the Maine's onboard controls and remotely steered the ship into Habitat 03.

Safety systems deployed as designed, and emergency response was swift, having been mobilized prior to the incident as per your order. However, the collision heavily damaged the main hangar and violently depressurized a third of the station.

Exactly ten minutes after the collision, the Maine received another request from the Admiralty, to activate Contingency 9. Contingency 9 is designed to trigger a reactor bloom to deny the ship and its crew from falling into enemy (specifically Arxur) hands.

However, surveillance records and system logs show that three reactor technicians, following emergency protocols, attempted to scram the reactor following the collision. They managed to deactivate most of it before the request was sent, resulting in a partial bloom that failed to breach the reactor room shell. The three technicians prevented a disastrous explosion at the cost of their lives. Their sacrifice allowed us to recover the Maine intact, as well as her system logs, which was how we acquired the prior information.

On [November 25th, 1974], Ministry agents completed their scan of the Maine's logs. A following scan of Venlil Navy HQ's correspondence logs implicated the Home Fleet's Admiral Banlek as responsible for the incident. Ministry agents arrested him on the same date at [20:00]. 25 of his accomplices have been detained, but we estimate more to be at large. A compilation of their private logs has been attached.

Ministry agents have also reported surreptitious fleet movements and I have attached coordinates for suspected rally points. My guess is that rogue elements of the Navy are on the move. I recommend rallying the fleets now, Sam. The Ministry can reach very far, but we can only do so much. This is threatening to spill over into open warfare; best to alert the humans, too.

Note: Venlil contingencies are remote orders direct from HQ. They'd override the new UN security protocols, which are designed to prevent radicals on board the ship from taking control. We need to tighten these protocols to include HQ orders now.

Total casualties are estimated in the thousands.

I've given the following my personal recommendation for the Heroic Conduct Medal, 1st Class:

ETN Michael Morgan

ETN James Brown

LTJG Alvin Oak

Sincerely,

Kam

Commissioner, Ministry of Internal Affairs