The Prince (anthology)
The Prince is a science fiction compilation by Jerry Pournelle and S. M. Stirling. It is part of the CoDominium future history series. The Prince is a compilation of four previously published novels: Falkenberg's Legion, Prince of Mercenaries, Go Tell The Spartans, and Prince of Sparta. Of the original novels, the first two were written by Pournelle alone; the last two were cowritten with Stirling. Pages 174–176 of the printed edition are new to the compilation. The Prince was published by Baen Books in hardcover in September 2002.
The title and subject matter of the book are inspired by The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli.
Background
The CoDominium is an uneasy formal alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union which holds power over Earth, with a cynically hegemonistic foreign policy toward all the other nations of Earth and Earth's off-world colonies. The action occurs over a period from the 2060s to the 2090s.Humanity has developed interstellar flight. It has colonized many planets outside the Solar System, simply moving in and setting up shop on some, terraforming others with a not-specified Terraforming Package that transforms an alien world into a planet that supports Terran life forms, from bacteria to plants to animals to humans. A recurring theme through the stories is the result of the CoDominium's policy of shipping large numbers of voluntary and unwilling colonists from Earth to the colonized planets. The involuntary colonists cause much trouble, knowing nothing but a welfare state existence in government ghettos, where drugs, booze and entertainment, paid for by the productive members of society, keep them pacified. Shanghaied to the colony worlds by the Bureau of Relocation in an attempt to keep Earth's population down, they gather in city centers and shanty towns, reverting to their parasitical or criminal lifestyles.
While some convict and involuntary transportees do assimilate into their new planets' societies, most band together against the original colonists of whatever world they end up on. Political parties always form to demand a consumer-oriented welfare state, ostensibly to promote social fairness but with agendas meant to advance the welfare state at the expense of the more responsible elements of society. The welfare state demanded by the influx of Terrans from the Welfare Islands requires cheap energy, a consumer industry, and an unrealistically large tax base. Even without explicit knowledge of the agenda of the socialists, the productive members of each planet's society are outraged by encroachments and banditry forcing them to yield lands or businesses which they have worked hard to establish.
Pournelle pays attention to the soldier's dilemma of being expected to obey orders without regard to the consequences to the people of the colony planets. Pournelle repeatedly discusses the resentment of the CoDominium Navy and Line Marines used to subdue local defiance of CoDominium rule to garner fortunes for Grand Senators, their cronies, and multinational corporations without the opportunity of "leaving things in working order."
Falkenberg's Mercenary Legion opposes the policies of Earth's politicians, the Humanity League, and the socialists. Working with Grand Admiral Lermontov, the admiral in command of the CoDominium Space Navy, the Legion acts to suppress the bandits, rebels and insurgents who prey on landowners, and works against corrupt politicians bent on exploitation.
The saga follows the progress of John Christian Falkenberg from a junior officer in the Line Marines of the CoDominium Navy to a senior Marine colonel. Forced out of the CoDominium Line Marines on a technicality, Falkenberg is a military genius with a flair for the bold and unconventional, often resorting to deception to win battles. The core of Falkenberg's Mercenary Legion comprises officers and NCOs from the 42nd Line Marine Regiment, commanded by Falkenberg before budget cuts caused its disestablishment, and recruits enlisted from planets on which the Legion fights. Falkenberg's rise through the officer ranks of the CoDominium military and the growth of the Legion's reputation is paired with the decline and fall of the CoDominium.
Falkenberg has a powerful enemy in Grand Senator Adrian Bronson of Earth, who blames him for the death of his grandson and heir while under Falkenberg's command. Bronson also opposes Grand Admiral Sergei Lermontov, Falkenberg's mentor, whose goal is to preserve the CoDominium as long as possible.
Scientific and technical advances with military implications are ruthlessly suppressed by the CoDominium. Also, the cost of importing and maintaining advanced technology means that cheaper, less modern alternatives are common. Mules, donkeys and horses are superior to trucks on a colony world, while a handful of tanks might be the deciding factor in a campaign. Planetary forces and mercenary units are equipped with rifles, machine guns, grenades, mortars and light artillery. Tanks are a scarce, costly commodity. A few helicopters are available, but in most situations are vulnerable to man-portable antiaircraft missiles.
Arrarat
Originally published as the novel West of Honor, later incorporated into Falkenberg's Legion.Founded by religious zealots, Arrarat′s agrarian society is besieged by well-organized and well-supplied bandit gangs composed mainly of involuntary colonists. The story is told in first-person narrative by just graduated and commissioned Lieutenant Harlan Slater of the CoDominium Line Marines. Slater and two classmates from the Academy were chosen by John Christian Falkenberg, the youngest captain in the history of the CoDominium Marines, to oversee the transfer of Marines to the planet Arrarat to suppress local unrest.
Falkenberg takes Slater and the group of guardhouse scrapings and ne'er-do-wells he brought to Arrarat and forms the 501st Provisional Battalion to respond to an urgent request from the governor of Arrarat. The governor had requested a regiment of military police and a destroyer for fire support to deal with the numerous lawless bands in control of much of the countryside. The superannuated CoDominium officers stationed on the planet, all Garrison Marines, fear the havoc unruly Line Marines will create in the capital city of Harmony.
To avoid this, Falkenberg elects to take the Line Marines upriver to the bandit-occupied Fort Beersheba, an outpost built by the Line Marine regiment that had initially pacified the planet. Slater is tasked with taking and holding Fort Beersheba. In a daring night assault using one company of airlifted troops, Slater takes the fort while Falkenberg marches the remainder of the newly organized 501st Provisional Battalion up the Jordan River valley to relieve him. Holding the fort is not easy; though disorganized and untrained, the enemy outnumbers Slater′s A Company almost ten to one and has mortars and machine guns as well as smallarms. Although A Company takes heavy casualties, Slater holds his position long enough to delay the bandits until Falkenberg arrives with heavy artillery to break the siege. Slater and A Company are decorated for their valiant stand at Fort Beersheba.
After establishing the fort as a base, Slater and the other officers watch the restless and combat-eager Marines suffer more and more from le cafard, aka “the Bug,” a kind of military cabin fever frequently endured by soldiers of the French Foreign Legion who are the ancestors of the CoDominium Line Marines. Partly to combat this growing problem, Falkenberg and Colonel Harrington, head of Arrarat's small permanent Marine garrison, urge the planetary governor to move against the bandits tyrannizing the farmers of the Jordan Valley, who simply want to farm and be left alone by both the central government and the bandit gangs. Governor Swale refuses, pleading lack of resources – and his previous treaties with the bandit "governments" in Arrarat's interior farming country which compel the farmers to turn over most of what they grow as "taxes" and sell their grain through the bandits to the coastal cities.
The bandit groups break their deal with Governor Swale, jacking prices on grain up precipitously and stopping shipments entirely to encourage Swale and the citizens of his coastal cities to accept the new deal. Governor Swale goes to Fort Beersheba to demand that Falkenberg's regiment go to the Allan Valley farm country to force the Mission Hills Protective Association to honor their previous agreement. Falkenberg asks Swale how, exactly, he's to restore the grain supply from farmers who are already oppressed by bandits and unlikely to respond to pressure from both the planetary government and the local bandit gang. When the governor cannot provide a logical answer and refuses Falkenberg's counter-offer to take the farm country back from the bandits, Falkenberg refuses the order to march, as do the Marine garrison commander and Falkenberg's junior officers.
Vowing to have them all broken out of the service, Governor Swale orders the Harmony militia to march on the farm country, and accompanies them. However, the governor′s campaign goes poorly and his forces are besieged in the town of Allansport, forcing him to call on Falkenberg and the 501st for help. Sensing things are not as they seem, Falkenberg sends Slater and A Company on a deception mission to bait the enemy south of Allansport, where they find themselves facing the major enemy force waiting in ambush for the main body of the 501st. Though A Company takes heavy casualties, its survivors are able to spot for Falkenberg′s artillery; and Slater takes and holds a strategic hill called the Rockpile. His success cuts the enemy line of retreat and insures their defeat. Slater is severely wounded and medevacked to the capital for regeneration therapy, his second trip to the medics since arriving on Arrarat.
The political fallout of the Allan Valley Campaign is morally equivocal. Led by a pair of religious fanatics, the farmers avenge themselves on anyone who collaborated with the bandits. Meanwhile, the colonial governor, who was trying to use the bandits to generate revenue to be used to set up industries on Arrarat to provide employment for the time-expired convicts, reveals himself to be in the Bronson camp – and to have arranged the sale of mineral rights from land controlled by the bandits to mining companies affiliated with Grand Senator Bronson.
The story ends with now-Major Falkenberg explaining the facts described above to Slater, admitting that industrialization should occur in Arrarat to preserve civilization there; but not on Swale's terms, and not merely to enrich the clients of Earth politicians like Bronson. Falkenberg then recruits the newly brevet-promoted and decorated Captain Hal Slater into joining him in Falkenberg′s next assignment as regimental adjutant of the 42nd Line Marine Regiment. Slater′s Arrarat-born girlfriend Kathryn agrees to marry and go with him.