By YUIS JUTEPOIER
Printer-friendly page.
The mothership was spotted a couple years out. The aliens claimed to be friends of humanity, their only beef was with the United States. Claiming that the United States possessed Weapons of Interstellar Destruction and therefore threatened them directly, the Arcturans took their case to the United Nations. While informed observers doubted that the star-bound Pioneer and Voyager probes constituted WIDs, many were convinced by Ambassador Vader’s report.
Knowing full-well that UN inspections would uncover, at best, under-funded long-range plans for interstellar telescopes the Arcturan viceroy preempted their report by launching his invasion of the United States. His Excellency, Faud Reid Ratha III, however, had studied human history and was not about to repeat the mistakes he felt the Americans should have learned in Iraq, if not Vietnam.
Though Faud had too few troops to properly occupy a country the size of the US, he did know the first principles of power. After destroying the US military and political leadership (which had not prepared the country for the inevitable and had not planted a ready-made resistance) in the first few hours of intense orbital bombardment, his forces quickly captured the levers of state and bureaucracy and the means of communication, followed swiftly by the major armories and population centers. Signs of civil disturbance, such as looting and rioting, were forestalled with deadly force.
Though the Arcturan Empire stood to gain a great deal by occupying the US, (apart, that is from the strategic goal of knocking out what was surely going to become a major regional power in this part of the galaxy) Faud was generous parceling out the spoils and several other human states contributed forces to protect their new assets. At the same time he realized that whatever he was going to do in the United States could either be done in a lighting strike or over decades.
He opted for the former even though his forces had just finished putting down the insurgency on Alpha Centauri I, `b’ and before that had taken a mere seven years to crush the revolt on Sirius VII. They knew how to operate in small units, to blend in to a community, to exact overwhelming revenge, to instill both fear and hope. So elections were held around the US under proportional representation and power quickly passed to the governments thus constituted.
It was no easier for the Arcturans to give up power than for anyone else and they too gave themselves the right of detention even after the symbolic transfer of “sovereignty.” It was this, perhaps more than anything else, which crystallized the American Resistance into a potent force from a ragtag collection of right-wing militias, survivalists, religious, fanatics, Texans, Communists, common criminals and former-regime dead-enders.
Though still bitterly divided amongst themselves, the AR insurgents have learned how to work together and have killed several hundred Imperial troops despite the overwhelming technological advantage held by the off-worlders. They have been far more effective against those Americans working with the Arcturans to help reestablish services, security and the rule of law. At the same time, heavy handed Arcturan practices, such as systematic round-ups and use of heavy weapons in urban areas, as well as allegations of torture, strenuously denied by Imperial officials, have cost the Empire much of the local and interstellar goodwill it initially enjoyed after the heinous attacks on the Imperial Capital by Schaundi terrorists on 6/13/102027.
At this stage it is still possible that the Arcturan intervention will work out for both the Arcturan Empire and for the United States and the local species. Though the Empire is losing several irreplaceable troops every month (motherships do not grow on trees) and the recent campaign of assassinations against `collaborators’ would not seem to inspire confidence, Imperial officials asserted that their campaign against the `terrorists’ was gathering steam and that it was only a matter of time before the newly elected government could take over all security tasks and the Imperial forces could be redeployed at more pressing crisis spots. Critics say that the Empire has bitten off more than it can chew and that it is bound to choke.
Additional reporting by humans in the United States and elsewhere on Earth. They are best left anonymous.
