21.
Transcript #30,499 Highborn Archives of an exchange of notes between: Paenus, Inspector General, Earth, and Cassius, Grand Admiral of Highborn. Dates: December 15 to December 20, 2349.
December 15
To Paenus:
The training schedule must be accelerated. Hawk Assault Teams and panzer crews are especially needed for the pending Australian Sector Campaign.
To Cassius:
Your Excellency is surely aware of the lack of qualified recruits. Combined with enemy sleeper agents, worldwide anti-Highborn propaganda and terrorist assassinations makes the accelerated training program, especially for these elite units, a daunting, perhaps a hopeless task.
December 17
To Paenus:
Surely not hopeless my dear Inspector General.
To Cassius:
Your Excellency must know that most of my recruits are herded to me at gunpoint. As fodder for bombs and lasers, they excel. As warriors, they are sadly lacking. Hawk Assault Teams and panzer crews require a certain élan for maximum effectiveness. Still, I shall comply with your wishes to the best of my ability.
December 18
To Paenus:
I thank the Inspector General for informing me of the need for élan in certain shock and exploitation troops. Such graciousness should be returned. Thus, I have decided to solve your training problems as way of reward.
The easiest expedient to help instill fervor in recruits is to show them the folly of lacking it. For instance, a bullet in the back of the head, preferably where many recruits can witness the event, will help energize the others. Every recruit must learn that orders are to be obeyed. Sleeper agents abound, you say. I recommend strenuous mind-probing. When an offender is found, brain-wipe him and send him to a penal battalion. These battalions should be highly visible as deterrents to the others. Therefore, all penal battalions must be designated as suicide troops. All suicide troops must have a mini-explosive implanted in their cortex. Detonation devices will be in the control of the battalion’s colonel, captains and lieutenants. I believe that all our Earth draftees should have a cortex bomb, but at some point, the enemy will learn the code and frequency of various sets and they will explode them before it is desirable.
Let me point out to the Inspector General the very urgent need of these soldiers for the coming Australian campaign. Actual Highborn deaths took an alarming turn in the New Zealand and Java Island Campaigns. Yet we cannot afford to slacken the speed of our advance, thus the need for your Earth levies at the earliest possible date.
I surely do not need to point out to the Inspector General that victory in the field automatically diminishes the effectiveness of enemy propaganda. We must strike hard and fast NOW, but we must keep Highborn losses to a minimum. I cannot overstate this need for trained Earth soldiers who can fight. Brutality, my dear Paenus, done in calculated doses, will save lives and ensure us a golden future sooner rather than later.
December 19
To Cassius:
I hear and obey you, Grand Admiral.
To Paenus:
I know you too well, my dear Paenus. You held back. I know, because your curt reply plays repeatedly in my mind. Please, share with a fellow warrior what ails you.
December 20
To Cassius:
I am indeed troubled, Grand Admiral. I feel that we are somehow going about this the wrong way. I realize that brutality and hard training can make soldiers of civilians in short order. And yes, our technology allows us a certain leeway that warriors in the past never had. I refer to brain scans, wipes and cortex bombs. I ask myself, however, will we have to garrison our conquests forever? Our enemy blares on the vids and holos against us, and on the airwaves and in the streets.
Grand Admiral, to a space battle we bring Doom Stars, tac-craft and long-range lasers. To a land assault, we brings orbital fighters, heavy panzers and drop troops. My question, Grand Admiral, is what does one bring to a propaganda war?
To Paenus:
My brilliant friend. You are quite right. You fight an idea with a better idea.