A Message From Big Brother

For All Nails #167: A Message from Big Brother

By Henrik Kiertzner

Ministry of War

2 January 1975

The Chief of Staff of the Confederation Armed Forces, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Samuel Smith, was not a happy man. He was juggling the forces available to the Confederation to meet the sudden crisis which had erupted in the days since the Christmas Atrocity and was coming to the conclusion that the Armed Forces were in no way ready for a large-scale engagement of any description. The Governor-General had issued a highly secret warning order to the Armed Forces, alerting them to the possibility of war with the Old World -- on the side, perhaps, of the USM -- and Smith was deeply depressed at his nation's capabilities.

The Army was still in a state of chaos - a number of Regular units had completed their retraining since the Boricuan debacle, but no formation-level exercises had yet taken place and thus, while the CNA had a considerable number of well-trained battalion-level units, it had no equivalent brigade and divisional-level formation staffs to control their operations. The Army General Staff College had still to graduate its first class of the "new breed", trained by British and Australian liaison officers, the new logistic support organisation existed mainly on paper and the integration of Air Branch firepower with the Army Ground Forces was also mainly theoretical. The Air Branch, with its cavalry tradition, was exceptionally well-suited to single combat with the vaqueros, but had yet to grasp that a primary role was delivery of ordnance upon the enemy on the ground, whether through strategic bombing or tactical air support.

His own Service, the Navy, was in somewhat better condition. Leaving aside that the Royal Confederation Marines Corps was still in a parlous state, under rebuild since its decimation in Boricua, it still disposed of the Home Fleet, the Gulf Fleet and the Atlantic Fleet, altogether a good theoretical match for the USM Navy, but significantly inferior to the (worst-case) enemy naval strength of the German, Scandinavian and British navies combined.

The very prospect of finding himself at war with the Royal Navy was one to terrify him. Quite apart from the fact that the two Services were so closely related and shared so many traditions, he himself still felt the shame at having sat on the sidelines during the Global War and watched the British take on and hold the might of the German Empire, without intervening. As a junior Sub-Lieutenant on HMNAS Northern Vandalia in 1943, Smith had watched as a German heavy cruiser had engaged and sunk a British passenger ship and had writhed, impotently, as his Captain had complied with his orders and only intervened to take off the few survivors after the Germans had completed their bloody work.

A double rap at the closed door to his office brought his chin up. His aide-de-camp, a fine young officer from the 4th Southern Vandalian Light Dragoons, marched in, halted, saluted and announced:

"Sir, the British Senior Military Attaché presents his compliments and wonders if you might spare him half an hour?"

This was highly unusual. The British officer, a diplomat, would normally engage with the Chief of Staff during office hours only after formal approaches through the High Commission. He and Smith were good friends off-duty and would usually contrive to deal with any matters they needed to discuss in a more informal context, usually over a glass whiskey.

Smith raised his eyebrows and removed the gold-rimmed spectacles from his nose, straightened his cravat and put down his pipe:

"Show the Attaché in, please, Julian."

The door opened fully and the British Senior Military Attaché, Major-General Sir Padraig O Cellaigh, resplendent in the dark green working uniform of his old regiment, the Royal Irish Rifles, and wearing the rows of ribbons denoting a long and active career taking on the King's enemies, walked in, halting and saluting before dropping into the armchair Smith indicated with a fractional nod.

"Padraig. An unexpected pleasure to see you, especially under the circumstances. What can we do for you?"

Smith was desperate not to show his concern that O Cellaigh had come to inform him that the British were withdrawing their training staffs and liaison officers, whose input was so vital in rebuilding the CNA Armed Forces.

"Sam. Good of you to see me. I quite realise," -- cocking an eyebrow -- "how busy you are, but I have just received instructions from London to come and bring you a message."

Smith leaned back, his expression neutral.

"A message? What sort of message?"

"Quite a complicated one, I'm afraid. There are two parts to it. The first is in this note to the Governor-General from the King -- actually from Gold -- and the second is verbal. The note says, in part," -- the General's expression blanked as he went into recital mode -- "His Majesty's Government is conscious of the particular circumstances in which the Confederation of North America finds itself with particular reference to the less-than-optimal correlation of forces in the North American region and is thus aware of the need to avoid presenting the Governor-General's Government with any choices which it will find unacceptable. His Majesty's Government thus asks that the Chief of Staff of the Confederation Armed Forces convey to the Governor-General, confidentially, the accompanying verbal communication to this Note."

"So what does that mean, Padraig?"

"That's the crux of it. The verbal communication is this (and this comes directly from Gold): we -- and a number of associated powers -- are going to take action to locate Mercator and eliminate his organisation. We suspect that the bulk of the action necessary will take place in New Granada and the United States and we hope that the local authorities will cooperate in taking this action. We see no threat to CNA strategic interests and certainly plan no hostile actions against any CNA installation, unit or asset.

"We have not formally asked the CNA to associate itself with us for two reasons -- the first the CNA's demonstrated ... reluctance ... to become involved in foreign adventures, the second, our awareness that the CNA is not in a condition to make war upon the USM, which would be a clear risk if the CNA were to become a formal member of an international alliance which might be seen as being directed at the United States.

"My Government thus asks that you convey to the Governor-General all of this and that we will be making separate approaches to the USM to explain what is going on. If we can convince the United States to cooperate with us, we will then revert to you and ask you for a formal commitment to our operation; should we be unsuccessful, we would ask for your neutrality during our operations, which will be directed solely at the elimination of this barbarism."

"So the message is, basically, come in with us or stay out altogether?"

"I'm afraid so, Sam. I'm afraid so."

"I think we had better go and see the Governor-General. Now."

Forward to FAN #168: Pound Diplomacy.

Forward to 3 January 1975: Notes from the Investigation (Part 1).

Return to For All Nails.