Dark Fate, Chapter 161 (Patreon)

Chapter 161 – Polite Discourse

To say that there were people who were displeased with how I dealt with the situation in the Middle East would be an understatement on the level of saying that a hurricane was a bit wet and windy. Honestly, if I had been in charge of a kingdom on Earth, it was likely that someone would have tried to do something completely foolhardy, like sending in people to try and abduct me, or lobbing a cruise missile at my house. Even on Ceres, I wasn’t completely immune from that kind of foolishness.

Oh, sure, they couldn’t just lob missiles at me, but after eight assassination attempts in a day, I was starting to get annoyed. The four snipers I had no issues with. They shot me, I shrugged off the hit, and then I sent a bolt of hellfire back along the line of attack. Because of how Ceres was built, attack ranges were always limited due to line of sight. That meant that, unfortunately, all four snipers got crispy. They survived, but were unable to escape capture due to their wounds.

The three groups of melee combatants were also not an issue. They all attacked me alone, while I was out in public, and did their best to not involve bystanders. I could respect that, so I just captured them as slaves. They were state actors, so I planned to send them back as ‘gifts’ to the nations that sent them. It would be an easy PR win for me.

Those seven attacks were not an issue. Even if the people behind them were decently high-leveled, they still had not quite cracked Tier 2, which meant they weren’t a problem for me. And the restraint from causing collateral damage was worthy of respect, as well, so I made sure everyone got healed up, and would send them on transports home, as soon as I was sure the shuttles wouldn’t get shot at.

The last attack, however, I wasn’t going to play around with. They were ‘former’ members of the Israeli Defense Force. Not saying much, since Israel had mandatory conscription, but these five men and one woman were all part of a group that pressured Palestinians out of their communities in the West Bank, ahead of Israeli settlers. Not clear whether their actions were known, or condoned, but I didn’t much care either way.

Not because of who they were, but because of how they’d tried to attack me. Apparently, they decided that if I could shrug off a tank round or point-blank nuclear annihilation, they should try to cause as much damage to everyone around me as they could. So, they brought bombs to Ceres. Pity that the System contracts they signed during their entry automatically enslaved them when they tried to deliberately cause mass casualties and destruction to the station. And the fact that the contract included a set of ‘base orders’ to disable any threats to the station and its citizens just made things worse for them, since they had to disable their own bombs the moment that they turned them on.

That alone was enough to tell me that this was no state-sponsored action. The nation-states had learned not to disregard boiler-plate System contracts, especially my contracts. Which meant that they did not get the privilege of being treated like the other assassins. No, they would get to fight, and die, in the arena, as the opponents for other criminals, who would know that, if they killed the assassins, they would go free.

Thus, did I provide security and entertainment for my people, even in the face of those who would do them harm. It was more proof that the old ways were of no more use. The System had come, and you could either adapt, and thrive, or stagnate, and die.

Still, it was only two weeks after the destruction of most of the Israeli armed forces, and the situation on the ground was still settling. I left something of a power vacuum that was only filled by my troops ‘politely’ informing everyone that further atrocities, by either side, would be answered with extreme prejudice. More peacekeepers were coming in from other nations, to keep the Israelis and Palestinians apart. My attack had been a shock to the system, that stopped everything in place, but it had not removed sixty years of bad blood overnight.

Which was why I was having this meeting, today. Ambassador Carl Thurston from the US sat across from me in the private office I decided to have this chat in, as one of the maids stepped out of the room, leaving behind a fresh coffee for him, and wine for me. Of course, it was a Tier 1 wine, and with my stats I could have drunk the vineyard dry and only been buzzed, but it tasted better than coffee or tea, in my opinion.

“Well, Ambassador, why don’t we start with what you really want to say. Don’t bother with the stagecraft. There’s only the two of us here, with no cameras or recorders, so we can speak plainly, so long as we’re both civil.”

“A nice way of saying that you don’t intend to shoot the messenger, so long as he doesn’t start adding his own insults, right?”

“Not at all. So long as they are banter, mild insults, or statements of fact or opinion, and not pejorative or deliberately insulting to me or mine. I have no patience for threats as negotiation, either. If there are measures being considered, simply state them, along with what you hope to achieve. This way, we can keep things polite without having to spend hours saying nothing and wasting both our time.”

Thurston sighed, and said, “Yeah, Jones from the State Department said you were like this, after your meeting in Atlanta. Fine, if you want straight talk, we can do that. Starting off, the President is going to continue to officially denounce your massive use of WMDs over Israel, but he knows there isn’t anything to be done about that, since Ceres isn’t part of any treaties. He’s mainly using this as a way to push the idea that the treaties need to be updated.”

“Yes,” I nodded, smiling. “From what my people are hearing, it is a mix of ‘bring Ceres in line’ or ‘make sure this situation never happens again’, depending on who the Administration is talking to. An interesting balancing act to try and pull off.”

“Well, even before this, he was working to try and pull people along, but you were originally American, so you know the kind of cultural baggage he’s up against.”

I chuckled at that. “One of the benefits of making your own country, is that you are starting with a mostly clean slate. Don’t have the same kind of history that more established countries do. Gives me more freedom to actually act.”

“You know there are people pushing for you to be brought before the International Criminal Court for what you did, right?”

I waved away the Ambassador’s words. “Yes, and Ceres is not part of the treaties establishing or honoring it, just like the United States has never joined the Court as anything but an observer. I assure you that anyone trying to bring the Court down on my head, or upon any citizen of Ceres, is going to have a very bad day.”

Thurston shook his head, sadly. “I thought as much. Look, the President doesn’t want an antagonistic relationship between the US and Ceres. Frankly, it isn’t in anyone’s best interests if that happens. However, your actions were basically bulldozing a house because the plumbing was rusted out. The President understands what you were doing, and why, but surely there was a better way?”

“Oh, I’m sure there was a better way that things could have been handled. At the start. This was less a case of bulldozing a house because the plumbing was rusted out, and more a case of cutting off a leg above the knee because people spent too long patching symptoms, and allowed a wound on the foot to get gangrenous.

“Losing the leg sucks, naturally, but the cause of the problem had been allowed to fester for too long, because no one was willing to do the work at the beginning, when it wasn’t a big deal. Oh, there were other things going on. Bigger problems. Cold war and a nuclear arms race, and all of that. So, some things got pushed to the side and forgotten about. And, because of that, they got entrenched, and grew worse. And the longer the disease was left untreated, the more work it would take to actually solve the problem. Work there was never the political will to support, with the time and energy and cost it would take to do the job right. Not when patches could fix things well enough for now, or at least well enough that things didn’t break until after the next election cycle.”

I paused, looking at the Ambassador. “Not blaming the US in particular, here. Lots of people could have stopped things, before they got to this point. But no one did. Which is why people became desperate, and turned to atrocity to make their voice heard. And the Israeli state, never held to account for its actions, responded in kind, getting bolder each time they weren’t held to account, or just given a slap on the wrist. Which only continued the cycle.

“Ceres is a wild card. I made it specifically to be a wild card. We literally aren’t on the same planet as anyone who may wish to cause us harm, so we’re well-shielded from any backlash that might come our way. That lets us act in ways that other nations simply can’t, either because of domestic issues, or fear of international retaliation.

“Ceres is not a ‘slap a patch on it’ kind of nation. There’s always the chance that, as we get more established, and start having more treaty ties, that we may be forced into such a role, but I intend to fight against that as much as possible. I want my kingdom to continue to be the kind of force that looks at a problem, and cuts out its heart to end the threat as quickly as possible.

“We are masters of destruction, and, in time, I’m sure we’ll become great at rebuilding. But we aren’t going to be the ‘quagmire’ kind of nation. We will not spend twenty years occupying a country, fighting insurgents in the mountains. We will level the mountains, and help whoever is left build a farm or something where the mountains used to be.”

Thurston nodded. “Yeah, Afghanistan has done a lot of damage, domestically, in people thinking that the government’s approach to foreign policy works. The problem is that it was the best solution at the time, that we could actually work with.”

“Like I said, not calling out the US specifically. But, you’re right. That whole debacle changed how a lot of people my age thought about foreign affairs, even before the world went and changed. But that’s the thing, the world has fundamentally changed, now, and that gives you the opportunity to keep things like what I did in Israel from happening again.”

“Really? I’ll admit that ‘not watching Ceres blow up a country again’ is high on the list of things the President would like out of this meeting.”

That actually got a laugh out of me, especially with the droll delivery. “Well, it is simple, really, if you get down to the numbers. The death toll from the System started at almost twenty percent of the human race. From the numbers I’ve seen, and including my own recent actions, it is now closer to twenty-five percent. Not great, but better than the first time through, since governments are still functioning, for the most part, and we don’t have pirate lords setting up shop.

“You have whole new industries popping up, and ‘adventurer’ is now a viable profession. As are people gathering resources and even food from dungeons. For a lot of places, this means that people have a clear, if dangerous, route out of desperate situations. If you encourage that, as most governments have, then you undercut a lot of extremist movements. People are a lot less likely to become radicalized when their basic needs are met, and they have some security in their home, where they can raise children in relative peace and comfort, if not luxury.

“The System gives people a way to earn a living who might have been stuck falling into crime or extremism before. Bloodsports, like the organized dueling Ceres has, give people with aggressive tendencies a legitimate outlet for them, rather than violence. If you take oppressive regimes, and make them start changing, then you not only keep radicalization low, but keep state-sponsored atrocities from happening. Like what I’ve been doing in North Korea.”