One in Ten Ch. 10

"The politics of payback," Flame laughed. "Jethro might sound like some sadistic bastard to the rest of you; not to me. His tactics are sound and they work. Kill enough cops and women stop joining the force. The authorities either crack down harder, bringing more over to your cause, or they concede to some of your demands."

"It is how a very small force fights a much larger adversary," Flame concluded.

"That's still cold blooded murder," Angel reiterated. I didn't know what to think. Jethro butchered defenseless women. The President doomed millions. I admired what Zara did except it was some of the same things that Jethro did...yet she was a soldier and he was a terrorist.

"There is no resolution to this argument," I spoke clearly and loud. "Short of violence to silence the opposition, there is nothing we can do to rectify the past now. Jethro, why did you stop being a member of the MRA?"

"Spokane," Jethro answered. "I had no problem with killing cops and Feds, and intimidating their families. They were part of the problem."

"Those high school girls though - that made no sense to me. We weren't at war with the female gender; we were at war with the government and their policy of enslavement. Killing random kids was wrong and I wouldn't be associated with it. I talked this over with my cell, they disagreed and I told them that if I saw any of them again, I'd kill them," Jethro clarified.

"I had several caches only I knew about. I waited a few months then moved up to the city, slowly bringing everything up here as I had the time. A year and a half later, my old buddy was caught up in a traffic stop, shot it out with the cops and was killed. From stuff they found on his body, he rolled up the rest of the gang, but the other members didn't know my real name."

"The GED came out and talked with me. They kept an eye on me for a few years. I behaved and grew old so they eventually went sniffing elsewhere. We wouldn't be here now if I hadn't gone drinking with Kuiko and let slip about my gun stash," Jethro smiled at my little friend. "I knew she'd never betray me...and she hasn't."

"Now I've got a front row seat to the End of the World so I get one last chance to make a difference," he said. Yeah, this old guy wanted to go down in a hail of gunfire, no doubt about it.

"Good for you, you butcher," Roni glared. "I won't do this."

"I signed on to make a difference," she continued, "not to hang out with cold-blooded killers. I'm out of here. Is anyone with me?" Aniqua stood up. Venus seriously hesitated before joining them. Venus was looking right at me. Angel's eyes were boring holes into me as well.

"Israel?" Angel inquired.

I could go with them. I could stay. I could beg them to stay. I could stay silent and let events drag me along. My mind was playing Jinga with the vortex of intellectual input and buzz saw emotions that were boiling forth.

"Angel, Roni, Venus and Aniqua sit back down," I stood and stated. It took them a varying number of seconds to realize I was NOT pleading.

"Israel, you don't get to decide that for us," Roni replied evenly. "We let you go to the Arena last night. This time, we get to choose and we are leaving. If you are the man I hope you are, you will come with us."

"At the same time you're pressuring me to give more to the group despite my misgivings, Roni, you are giving less?" I countered. She started to protest. I raised my hand for a reprieve.

"Hear me out," I continued. "It isn't that simple. I am not questioning your moral quandary about working with people too comfortable with taking human life. It is very real and I feel it. The difference is that you would rather be right and dead than alive at any cost. You've never had to make that call before, but I have and I'm alive to tell you that you are wrong, Roni."

"You are dead wrong because dead does nothing. The living can always come back and make something better. Hell, that's what my life has been about the past week and a half. The rest of you are neophytes going into this. I'm not. I know exactly what it takes morally to survive. Don't make me follow any of you out that door. I love each and every one of you."

"I do love you, but am I obligated to jump off a cliff for you? I respect your choice to choose suicide. It would be wrong of me to rob you of that freedom. Please don't try to make this about affection, compassion, or loyalty though. It is a matter of life and death. Roni, you are trying to kill me, which I'm okay with. I resent you killing Angel, Aniqua and Venus," I stressed.

"That's fucked up reasoning," Roni fought back. "Those two get off on killing other people. They enjoy it. Why can't you see that they are just as likely to get you killed as keep you alive?"

"I will agree with you that Flame gets off on watching people suffer and die," I nodded. "It is the way she is. I don't know Jethro so I'm not ready to make a judgment call on him."

"I do know that both of them have exquisite weapon skills and I'm pretty sure we are going to need them before we are truly free," I explained. "I would prefer an all-male super commando squad who had passed every psychological test ever made. That doesn't appear to be on the menu, so I'm willing to hold on to whatever resources are available."

"So you are willing to risk all our lives for the sake of expediency," Angel glared.

"Absolutely," I shot right back. "In case no one is paying attention, I am not in some government facility helping working on some kind of serum to fight the new plague. In case you missed it, EVERYONE here agreed with my decision to flee instead."

"Roni - Angel, you do realize that young lady who saved me this morning is going die, right? I could have insisted she come with us. I could have given her the cure. I didn't. None of you asked me to even after I told the whole globe of an unstoppable wave of death coming for everyone. I'm not asking you to take responsibility for my decision because it was mine."

"I'm begging you; understand that it isn't the end of morality to stay. When the madness ends, you need to decide if we will still be worthy of continuing on. You'll no longer be part of that equation if you go now," I declared.

"Are we supposed to ignore that he was a terrorist and she is a homicidal maniac?" Aniqua said.

"I'm not homicidal," Flame grinned. "I'm a psychotic sociopath. I don't randomly kill people. I do it with malice of forethought." Jethro didn't show a desire to defend himself.

"Israel, Flame almost killed you last night," Venus pointed out. "Why would you stick around?"

Why was I sticking around?

"Israel, don't do this," Angel said. "You promised me you would stop running into danger."

"Angel, why do you have to be right and I have to be wrong?" I sighed.

"Because those two are dangerous criminals," Roni answered. Didn't Roni understand that I was a far more callous killer than either of those 'criminals' and I didn't have to lift a finger, or look at a single grave?

(Before the Curtain Call)

Shortly after nine-thirty that night, the awaited and feared seismic event happened in China. A few minutes past sunrise over Hong Kong the rains broke and a fleet of helicopters and VTOLs (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) were heard over the city. Helicopters were not unknown in this center of wealth and commerce. Well over a hundred all coming in at once was noteworthy.

For many of the citizens of the city, it had been a restless night. After midnight, police sirens had been wailing all over the city. Some even heard gunfire. What they didn't know was that for the past four hours, private security forces working for the most prominent communities and some special police units had raided the middle class communities of the city and stolen their men.

They forced the men into protective suits and hustled them back to the high-rises that sheltered the most 'important' people. This was an outrage that they could not get away with - had China still functioned normally. A new order based on brutal social cannibalism was taking place. The rich were taking their vassals and their new 'acquisitions' to their estates far from the population centers.

This was supposed to be a gradual process except late yesterday afternoon the other Great Families learned that one of their own had their first reported case of this new 'flu'. They could wait no longer. They would have preferred to flee under the cover of darkness, but rain and the danger of so many helicopters and VTOLs moving around forced them to postpone until first light.

You didn't have to be a connoisseur of conspiracy theories to figure out what was going on. Men had been stolen and now the rich were bugging out of town in one big hurry. Late Friday, the 'flu' began to appear in the population in a big way. The workers in the hospital were afraid - not fearful - afraid.

The councilwoman from one of the poorest districts called the Head of the City Council - no answer. She called one of her colleagues from one of the richest districts - no answer. She was a savvy political creature and she smelled a rat bigger than the Tomb of the First Emperor. She called the General of the 9th Reserve Division; Hong Kong's defense force.

The first problem was that the 9th ® division only existed on paper - the troops had to be called to arms. The second problem was that the 9th ® was not well equipped. That was one of the fundamental differences between the Federation and Chinese militaries. Both had large, volunteer professional armies. That was their only real similarity.

In the Federation, the average enlistment time was 6 years - two 3 year terms. In China, women enlisted in to the ranks for 20 years with an option to continue 10 more if you were a high enough ranking NCO. Soldiering was all these women did. Officers in the Federation went to Military Academies with a perchance for democratic selection and the average term of service was 10 years.

In China, you had to come from an upper tier community, you went to a military academy and then you served until you were 62 years old with a deferment for 10 more years if you were high enough rank. It wasn't that one system was better than another. The Federation troops and Chinese troops got along well on UN missions.

The Federation command thought the Chinese were disciplined, brave and experienced. The Chinese considered their Federation counterparts to be aggressive and more prone to individual initiative. The issue was back home. Federation troops exited the standing military and many entered the Reserves.

They had the same equipment and less intense, but similar training at their full-time counterparts. By and large, the regular commands felt they could rely on the Reserves to fulfill any active duty role they were trained for. In China, it was very different. Their reserves' role was defensive in nature - to protect strategic areas while the regular army was elsewhere.

Regular armed forces troops did not rotate to a Reserve division after leaving service. They got a pension and a government job. The reserve troops enlisted under a different system. Same length of service - different mission entirely. Their training was less rigorous, their equipment more primitive and their duty was to assemble when called then report to their assigned defensive position in their region.

The Central Government did NOT want a Reserve Division to be able to hold off a regular service division for purely political reasons. See, the command of Reserve Divisions usually fell to someone of lower or middle class background. There simply were not enough upper tier women around who did well in the military. These backup divisions were therefore more egalitarian.

The other issue was one of association. Regular service enlisted women thought of themselves as part of the military family. They would spend a huge chunk of their lives in arms. They didn't participate in the lives of their childhood communities, nor did they identify with the working classes. They were separate and distinct.

The officers were very different as well. They were very much part of the political life of their communities. They had to be good at their trade yet mindful of their family's needs. Their general attitude was that enlisted troopers were tools, finely honed for their assigned task. Personal relationships were discouraged with the lower ranks.

This societal and professional divide was about to be tragically played out in Hong Kong. See, China was a middle class country. These women staffed the government buildings, taught and went to the universities, filled out most of the professions and were the workhorses of the economy. It would stand to reason they had the most men and they did.

Over the past week, the upper tier families had been doing the genetic and reproductive mathematics. Yes, they had the best women to men ratio, but it wasn't enough. They were going to die out. They could either change the basic fundamentals of their society - or they could steal more men. They chose kidnapping.

Stealing men from the poor, while better for the long term political outlook, was sending your precious security troops into some really bad neighborhoods. The middle class? They lived in nice quiet neighborhoods. Besides, the upper tier no longer cared about long term political consequences. Now it was a battle for survival.

The middle class women didn't simply hand over their men. They fought and in more than a few cases, died trying to keep their lineage alive. At the time, most had no clue why this savage act had befallen them. Words from on high instructed the local police to do nothing. The flaw in the evacuation plan was that most policemen were middle class too.

A special effort had been made by the kidnappers to not steal men from communities with policewomen. That would have been a catastrophe. The thing was, the rank and file policewoman identified with their fellow worker. Their orders didn't make sense - men were the most precious commodity. Police unit began having hushed communication with other police units.

They didn't like the picture that was being revealed. With the roar of aircraft at dawn, the cops knew what was happening and the tide of rebellion was rising with the Sun. The schedule had the majority of the evacuations being finished by late afternoon, even with bad weather. One of the keys to making this possible was to shut down the communication network.

This is exactly what the Security Troops did. Sure, there would be panic, but it would a disorganized panic. All of this failed to take into account the human condition. Shortly after seven o'clock in the morning, a police sergeant boldly walked through the central headquarters, took a quick right turn past two surprised police administrative officials, opened the door to the Police Commandant's office and filled that woman with all eleven bullets in her gun. Why? A Special Security Team had mistaken one address for another, stormed in, and killed her mother, aunt and three sisters in the process of stealing her community's two males and her son.

The Sergeant dropped her pistol and waited. Policewomen, weapons drawn, swarmed the room. In a normal world, the assassin would have been born to the ground, arrested and medical aid summoned for their downed leader. This was not a normal morning. While those policewomen couldn't put a finger on what it was, something was horribly, horribly wrong.

The Sergeant turned to her growing audience and began issuing orders. For an instant, no one moved then the first lemming jumped off the cliff and the flood gates were opened. Several minutes later, the head of Hong Kong's tactical unit was leading her team toward the Security Services HQ with order to link up with other units and storm the building.

What was she waiting for? While the Security Troops were very well equipped, the HK Police had armored cars used for riot suppression. Like their Federation counterparts, these vehicles normally fired tear gas. The Chinese were extra efficient with their devices though. They also fired a variety of grenades, even a rocket meant to penetrate hardened structures.

Yes, Virginia, the cops had armor piercing shells for their little RVs. The Security Building was solidly built and the troops defending it were confident they could hold out until other units relieved them. When the first chunks of granite began exploding in on them, the fear gripped their ovaries. In theory, the structure should have held out for 24 hours.

In fact, it held out 18 minutes. By the time the Security Services helicopter showed up, the communication network for the city had been restored. The helicopter strafed the police but didn't have anything that could deal with the armored vehicles. They called in the Marine Regiment assigned to Hong Kong to come and restore order.

The Marines prepared their land and air assets to roll out then discovered a problem. Outside their gates a battalion of infantry from the 9th Reserve division had assembled. It was their post after all - replacing the Marines if they had been sent to a war zone. There were 2500 Marines and only 600 light infantry. The issue was exactly where did the 9th Reserve division stand in all of this mess?

The Marine Colonel didn't want to roll out of her base only to have the reservists storm in once she was gone. Splitting her forces wasn't a good idea either. Apparently the Security Service had a real fight on their hands. While she was trying to figure this conundrum out, the Navy began shelling - Canton. Compared to Hong Kong, Canton had gone totally insane.

She called up the commander of the 9th Reserve Division to see where she stood. That General informed her counterpart that she was about to storm the towers and to hell with anyone who got in her way. The Colonel called the Security Services' new commander to find out what was what. The SS commander started screaming at the Colonel to get off her ass and into the fight.

After some careful consideration, she called her liaison with the naval amphibious detachment and formally requested to be evacuated from Hong Kong. The Navy was coming to help her out. Why? Because the head of the naval base in Canton wasn't an idiot either. She had ships, but no troops and now here was this 2500 women force volunteering to be her much needed muscle.

This was a far more crushing need because Canton had a regular service division barracked there. Duly informed of a riot supported by the police breaking out in the wealthiest section of town, the division had raced to the rescue. They massacred the mobs around the towers and rescued the private security forces defending there.

As soon as she secured the perimeter of the district, the General of that division had her troops storm the towers. These weren't a mob of workers with policewomen in the mix. These were combat troops and they cut a swath through the private security. Men were 'liberated' along with other assets that hadn't escaped yet. This act of betrayal accomplished, the General and her division began their withdrawal.

The Chinese Army and Air Force had been hammering rebel positions all morning. Now they didn't know what in the hell to do. Over the next forty-eight hours, many division commanders came to the same conclusion. It was time to take the men and run. Remember the relationship between regular divisions and the populace?

This was coming out badly in a big way and not in a way most people would have thought of. The civilian woman had no connection to the soldiers what-so-ever. That meant no atrocity was out of bounds. Both sides knew that defeat meant death. The soldiers were in all metrics better save two; the soldiers were outnumbered a hundred to one and most fights were in an urban environment that lessened the soldiers' technological superiority.