Crush Depth by Joe Buff

rest. The schnapps will help.”
    “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” It would be nice to get a decent night’s sleep for once.
    “Keep each gathering brief. Speak no more than fifteen minutes, say, and allow time for questions and open discussion.”
    “On what subject, sir?”
    “On why we’re fighting, on why our cause is just, on how well the war is going, and on where we’re voyaging next.”
    “Where are we going next, Captain?”
    “In due time. Let me take these points in order. You’ll remember what I say? You don’t want to take some notes?”
    “I have a good memory, Captain.” A first officer needed one. “I’ll write things down if it becomes necessary….”
    Ter Horst drew a deep breath. “We and the Germans are together fighting a police action, Gunther, against American imperialism, against outside interference in our proud national destinies, and against Anglo-American military-political atrocities of the last century or more.”
    “You mean the forced end to apartheid,” Van Gelder stated. “The abuses of the Versailles Treaty after World War I.”
    Ter Horst nodded. “Stripping Germany bare. Destroying her economy, and her self-esteem. Doing it again after World War II, especially in the East, under Soviet occupation for fifty years…. The Boer War, putting our forefathers’ wives and children in concentration camps, where thousands died of typhus.”
    “But we fired the first shots, this time, in this war, sir.”
    Ter Horst shook his head vehemently. “It’s all one long connected war, Gunther, going back decades and decades. Don’t you see? This is just the latest battle. The Americans, the British, they fired the first shots, long ago. Militarily, politically, they’re culpable for all that followed, and for all that follows now. They’re culpable morally too.”
    “But the Germans nuked Warsaw and Tripoli.”
    “And the U.S. nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Don’t you see the duality, the justice of it, the revenge here on a global scale? Many readings of international law say all nuclear weapons are illegal. Who invented them? Who used them first?”
    “I see your point, Captain.”
    “And take the collapse of apartheid. That system worked for us, for all South Africa. The Bantus, the coloreds, they had a proper place in our society, and a proper, safe place in which to work and live. The communist so-called Front Line States to our north made trouble along the border, sure, but we fought them back. We held the line against the Reds as much as America ever did, with their botch-up in Vietnam. We held it better, until the Berlin Wall came down! Then the Americans hit us with trade embargoes, sanctions. They claim we’re violating human rights. So apartheid falls, and starting in 1994 our country becomes a democracy. And what do we get, from this democracy? ” Ter Horst said the word like it was obscene. “Open borders, and an inrush of AIDS decimating our black population. An open economy, freedom for all, and violent crime skyrockets. Internal terrorism, tribal strife, they explode all out of control! Look at the statistics, Gunther. Years and years of statistics. The statistics don’t lie.”
    “No, sir, they don’t.” Van Gelder felt himself being won over. He felt himself relaxing, his inner concerns being salved.
    Watch out, my friend. Is this burgeoning peace of mind because of ter Horst’s hard logic, or because of your own fatigue and the schnapps? Is ter Horst an inspiring leader, or is he just a manipulative, seducing bastard?
    “It’s the enemy who lies, Number One. It’s the enemy who practices hypocrisy on a monumental scale. What the Brits have done to the Irish. What the U.S. did to their Native Americans, what the North did to the South in their bloody War Between the States…The joint NATO task force we and the Germans attacked at the outset of this latest conflict was a legitimate military target, Gunther. Diego Garcia was a legitimate military