The Only War Read online

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  Content copyright © Jason Wray Stevensson 2018

  The right of Jason Wray Stevensson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents act 1988

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  Respectfully dedicated to Marie Byrd, Evelyn Brown and everyone fated to wait in hope for those they love.

  The character of Matthew Lancaster is based on the late, great Matthew Peter ‘Doc’ Purchase. Doc was Pickering to my Higgins, and the very best friend I ever made. See you on the other side, old boy.

  Nicaea, Bithynia 325 A.D.

  Welcome to Earth, population: everyone. It was what a lot of people were calling the fourth century in the Year of our Lord; a lot of people were also arguing about our Lord, and fighting over Him. Most countries have an army, some armies have a country but in Rome the army has an Empire. Victor Constantine is one more Emperor in a long line, installed and supported by the military machine; he has battles to win if he is to maintain his position, wars even, but their souls were escaping him. Constantine is a pagan, a sun worshipper who owes everything to the fiery all-seeing eye in the sky; he could not apostate his true faith, but you can’t control anything from the outside. He is currently a catechumen, receiving instruction in this alien religion; he would die unbaptised, but could not cling to power by ignoring the winds of change. Traditionally, troublesome ideas from conquered lands would be infected and subsumed by Roman culture; hair shirt militancy loses its shine over the years, once you have sanitation and a local Circus Maximus. Egypt perfected this technique long before the Israelites left, but four hundred years of baths and charioteers had failed to erase the carpenter from Judea. Christ inanity was gripping the Empire; it permeated the military religio, encompassing both the approved faiths within camp and those practiced beyond its boundaries. There was no longer any way of suppressing it so he determined to bring it into the first category, the official life of the army and by extension the Empire itself. Not one of the three hundred council members was present willingly; they knew he would get everything he wanted, and the best they could hope was to be released alive.

  After centuries of vicious and bloody oppression, the Christian leaders had been legitimised under Constantine’s rule; much of the largesse they received was previously heaped on those holding the rank of Bishop within the Roman administrative machine. They took Roman titles and patronage, and in return attempted to run those parts of the Empire that had lately become more trouble than they were worth; this council would provide a framework to quell the widespread civil unrest, and may God help those ordered to Nicaea who refused the call.

  “I will not have bloodshed in my lands!” A few of the braver or more foolhardy Bishops exchanged sideways glances, which did not escape his notice. ‘Temet nosce,’ he reminded himself, and relaxed a little.

  “I will not have unsanctioned bloodshed in my lands; you’ve had a month now to decide what you can all agree upon.” He could guess the gist of it; petty recrimination and sexual repression to bulk out the main part and this Yeshua ben Yosef they all claimed to follow would doubtless require a short cameo, otherwise what was the point? Scriptures’ greatest hits were to be condensed into one handy state approved tome, and the Empire would become once again a nest of singing birds. Any wisdom of the ages missing this boat would languish forever lost and forgotten; goodbye Enoch, farewell Lilith and we shall never speak again of the Christ dying painlessly upon His cross.

  Constantine traced rays from the circular stain left by his cup, and cared not if those seated nearest saw him do it. Sol Invictus! Still got it; never lost it. It was the mother of all peace agreements, and once everything settled down he could easily dismantle this new Catholic Church; it was little more than a device to unite the warring masses and his great pax will remain, strong and stable as a basilica, when the scaffolding comes down.

  It was the pax to end all pax.

  Westminster, London

  All Hallows Eve, 2090 A.D.

  The Church of England cut all ties with the state in protest at the nuclear strike on mainland Europe. By this one action it lost money, land and buildings only to find a Church has, in reality, little need of these things. The Archbishop of Canterbury herself made this very observation in a notice left nailed to the entrance of Church House. She did not let the door bang her arse on the way out, but as she stomped forcefully towards the station on Great College Street in her light hazmat suit, cardboard box cradled in newly unemployed arms, Archbishop Granger slowed her pace and began to wonder if she’d not been a teensy bit rash. There was no way she was creeping back for her note, especially as she had returned the hammer via a closed window, followed by the keys. The doublethink of faith and religion had been bottled up for too long; it coloured her entire adult life and if a slightly mental tear stained plea to reason gets stuck to a door, what of it? There was a permanent marker and the back of a roll of wallpaper to work with, and what was intended as a brief and incisive critique went on for over nine feet. She’d needed a stepladder to nail it up; just as well it was a big door.

  It was never intended to be a manifesto.

  All days are holy, the Archbishop maintained; we’re never going to get anywhere on one day a week.

  She also indicated she was sick of a load of Bishops from seventeen centuries ago dictating her reading list; they made the entire Bible the literal Word of God, reducing Jesus to parity with the lowest scribe. It was a blatant power grab, drowning the Saviours’ voice in a cacophony of opinions, and you know what they say about opinions. The Bible wrested faith from the Lamb of God, placing it instead in an object and those who protected that object. Fundamentalism had been a means to an end; when every man was his own priest the people were encouraged, even compelled to read for themselves and mass literacy erupted across Europe. As soon as the people could read, they read everything and asked questions, but the Holy Bible damned all other scripture as apocryphal or even blasphemous. As a proto-Orwellian act of historical whitewashing, it had to go.

  The Archbishop also stated she gave not a fig if Jesus’ mum was a virgin; Horus’ mum was a virgin as well so it’s clearly nothing special, and absolutely none of our business either way. As a small girl, she’d wondered why Joseph’s ancestors held such fascination for the gospel writers; Son of God or Line of David, you can’t have both. She thought she’d understand when she was older, but understanding never came. Maybe Mary had the same grandfather, maybe a hotly disputed word in the book of Isaiah did mean virgin; maybe she herself fell so short of the glory of God she would never understand. As the doubt and disbelief poured out she wondered what was left to hold her, and then remembered the Ascension; one perfect human being lives forever at the right hand of God, and she knew it with a conviction bordering on insanity. Jesus of Nazareth wasn’t just a good man or a wise teacher; He was the Saviour. He had shown us the way, and she lived by the words He is said to have spoken. The words alone, above everything else, drew her to Him and made her dedicate her life to the hope all may know Him.

  Finally she maintained everything, even now, especially now, could still be made right; it was just going to take a lot of hard work, and don’t expect anyone to thank you for it.

  It is not remembered who found the notice and we will never know what drove them to copy and distribute it so widely, but it stands as one of the documents which shaped the modern world. The original is viewed daily by tourists and pilgrims at the British Museum, and Granger Declaration tea towels are a popular if lengthy souvenir. Alternative historians have speculated on Britain today as a
Catholic country or even a Caliphate, but the truth would probably have been closer to a kind of apathetic secularism; you know how lazy the Brits get if nobody bosses them around.

  Europe had already experienced two heavyweight challengers to Victor Constantine’s blueprint for Christendom; what Martin Luther defined, King Henry VIII backed with the full sovereign might of England. If the Granger Declaration stands on their shoulder, it is different not only for rejecting the Nicene Creed. All in all, taking everything into consideration, and weighing the whole shebang in the balance, there is this to be said for it:

  She didn’t do it to get laid.

  They found her in Peru teaching English and mathematics to factory women, working alongside them for pennies in the slums of Lima. At first she refused to leave, now or ever. The whole point of faith was not having leaders; the position had been filled long ago, but in truth she was scared shitless. Why had she written that thing? She liked it here, and not just because you could go outside without suiting up; the workers wanted to learn, somewhat a refreshing concept after years of officiating inner city youth groups which were essentially seven sided civil wars. She’d even organised little patrols around the town after a local girl bled to death in an alley; the women learnt basic first aid and self defence and toured their neighbourhoods in pairs after work, doing what they could. The Archbishop kept an eye on the British embassy and occasionally snagged a guest instructor; the hostage negotiation primer had been particularly well attended. In their blue company jackets the women were a recognizable sight as few employers provided uniforms; expats nicknamed them the Granger Garda.

  Closeted in the Archbishop’s lean-to, the envoy stated his case.

  “The Church lives, your Grace; people are meeting wherever they can, and your name is never far from their lips. Parishioners are establishing soup kitchens, homeless shelters, clothing banks, real practical solutions to immediate problems; these places are where Christ’s love and compassion is being put to work, they’re the churches now.

  “From what you say, everyone’s getting along fine without me.” The Bishop shakes his head.

  “It won’t last; this kind of energy never does. The people need a figurehead; you know it’s a placebo and so may they, but it’s the way human beings seemed programmed to work. We like to have something watching over us, something to look up to and inspire us; most of all we need something which can find its own bum with both hands and a flashlight. You’ve started something; it may die without you.”

  “I can’t abandon these women.” The Bishop smiled.

  “You won’t have to! The Granger Garda? I cannot imagine anything more in keeping with the zeitgeist. There are funds emerging; we can pay them to train our people, it won’t be much and they’ll live billeted with volunteers but with the exchange rate the way it is they’ll be able to send a few bob home for their trouble. We’ve more than enough young men and women willing and able to come out here, or anywhere they’re needed. It’s a new dawn, Archbishop; the Church is rolling up its sleeves.”

  USS Kobzar Control Room, off Guam

  2097 A.D.

  The megaton of Hell on Earth unleashed by Britain at least dispelled forever the myth of a localised attack, but in the last hours before multilateral disarmament a final nuclear drama unfolded. The political situation at the time was roughly this: The U.S. and Russia were united by little more than a common dislike of Korea; the reunified country had taken advantage of political breakdown in China to annexe Liaoning and Jilin, but had been handed its arse by Vladivostok and wasn’t currently bothering anyone else. There was no public appetite for conflict, but powerful people wanted war. A catalyst was required, a Korean atrocity to unite old allies; a new Pearl Harbour.

  The Ohio class ballistic submarine USS Kobzar usually carries a crew of eighty five; she currently has ninety seven aboard, five of those are now dead and the sub is over two thousand miles closer to Guam than she should be. The vessel is no longer under Naval command; an unknown force has seized control, and their commander is demanding the launch codes. Korea has warheads, but her rockets lack the power of those in the free world; a nuke fired at this range upon a U.S. island territory would be proof of Korean aggression, as no other nuclear power would need or dare to get so close. The tide of public opinion would turn, and conflict would be inevitable. There is a failsafe known only to the Captain; if the wrong code is entered the warhead will detonate without launching, war will be averted and just a few short hours from now world wide disarmament will proceed as planned. This vessel, or at least many like her, will return to their ports for decommissioning.

  Looking around his command for the last time, the Captain gives the code and a warhead detonates backwards into the sub, instantly raising the air temperature to five thousand degrees. The Kobzar implodes and her crushed hull freefalls the full depth of the Mariana Trench, picking up momentum until eighteen thousand imperial tons of wreckage smashes into the ocean floor at seventy nine miles an hour.

  The Korean and Russian Navies cannot help but notice an awful lot of American activity in the area for a time, and examination of sonar readings reveal something big went pop. The possibility of an unattended US sub down there stuffed with warheads and secrets was tantalising, but the Trench is deep.

  New Sunlight, Alpha Centauri Bd

  Wednesday Morning, 2220 A.D.

  Far from Earth is a distant star named Alpha Centauri B. Well, it’s a sun really, and that is a very different thing. It twinkles like a star though, if you’re far enough away, and in this twenty third century human colonies dot the surface of two small planets and their God-awful moons. New Sunlight, named for its illuminated dome, is a mining community built on lead and silver by the industrialist, philanthropist and writer of unpleasant fiction A.A. Barwing. They turn up a fair bit of platinum too, but beyond cheap jewellery there’s not much call for it these days. Occasionally the processing plant will find trace amounts of Rankinium, a mineral so rare nobody has any idea what to do with it yet, but people pay a lot for it and keep it safe just in case. If you’ve never visited the colonies you should know domes are not dome shaped; it’s just easier than saying artificial atmosphere. Viewed from outside they are dark, wobbly and rectangular like huge undulating slabs of raw blackcurrant jelly;[*] viewed from the interior they are sky.

  For the past year, young Miles Ravenscroft has been settling into a career underground; he operates a jackleg drill and is currently ankle deep in muddy water. To one side of him Jenny Nwanoku fires expanding studs into the parts of the bedrock they want to stay in place; five thousand feet of planetary crust is above their heads and it’s just itching to fill in any big gaps they may be thinking of making, unless they teach it some manners first. Packing dynamite into drill holes, Miles links the explosives with detonation cord; he connects a long fuse and he and Jenny make their way back up the tunnel. These techniques were developed during the Californian gold rush and haven’t changed; an old time prospector would recognise the jackleg if not the cartridge which powers it, and even the tradition of communicating with cap lamps in the blackness remained. There was no mine wide Tannoy, so in an emergency they connect the ventilation shafts to the biowaste activator and turn the blowers up; it’s pretty much a universal language for get out. From somewhere back the way they came erratic reports rock the world, and when the dust settles Miles and Jenny are explorers in a new land, sending its bounty to the surface. They knew how it felt to stand in a place which didn’t exist half an hour ago; it’s like creating a universe one big bang at a time. Synthetic silver was widely used in compounds and alloys, but there was still a market for virgin metals of the maximum purity. The shiny stuff was all but mined out on Earth, as increasing use in medicine and tech consumed and discarded it like never before; if new reserves had not been discovered off world we would have effectively used up our first element from the periodic table, which would have been an embarrassing milestone.

  Increasingly amon
g the Outer Colonies, one ounce silver coins were trusted above paper notes. Cashless societies had been tried, but people will always find something to use as money; it’s almost as if they’re predisposed to secrecy. When currency devalues it looks like prices rising, and as they rose so did silver. The Britannia in your pocket would always get you a tank of fuel or a bag of groceries whatever the economy said, and if the worst came to the worst it would purify water and disinfect wounds; the only thing you can do with paper is wipe your bum.

  The Mint needed currency to pay the bills so new quarter and tenth ounce ingots joined the Britannia in street level circulation, but such brinkmanship cannot continue indefinitely. In any system, be it a mine or an economy, you need buffer zones of time and resources because a black swan event is always just around the corner.

  2208 was the year of the French Plague. Millions died over a few short weeks, with billions more wiped out financially in the collapse of the overheated Gallic property market; negative equity fed an avalanche of foreclosures, while those at the top were stuck with empty mansions they couldn’t give away. Housing was the wealth of the world but now there was far, far too much of it; there were apartments in Saint-Germain-des-Prés upon on which the doors were purely ornamental, carved into meteoric stone façades in defiance of occupation. The Plague destroyed people but left buildings standing; the twin horsemen of supply and demand wreaked Keynesian carnage and the financial base of Western Europe crumbled.

  There had been prosperity not so very long ago; the StringStreamer drive wasn’t the first method of intersystem travel, but it was the first capable of reaching previously unexploited planets and asteroids in days rather than lifetimes. Wealth flowed through Earths’ first, best and only spaceport at South Downs, England; the colonies needed manpower so Britain flung wide its doors to anyone with a shovel, but a time comes when everyone has two of everything and doesn’t want a third. The market shrank and debts were called in; governments were left trying to explain to other governments why they no longer had the gold they were keeping safe for them and the collapse came before the first Frenchman sneezed; the economy was already face down in a gutter when the Plague kicked its head in.