Military Sanctioned

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Military Sanctioned
Cover art Pending
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‘Military Sanctioned’ came before Orson’s title. Took a bit of the grandeur from the whole thing, but he made sure to put those two words in a small font on all of his engraved items. The next two words were the ones he wanted people to focus on; Senator Orson. In bright gold, above his door, on his desk, on all of his official documentation. Big font, kerneled in such a way so as to take up just enough space to cover the whole of the frosted door window, and the entire length of his modest desk.
Inlaid into an obsidian black and mahogany nameplate, he perhaps took a bit too much pride in his job. Definitely too much leniency in performing it, considering he viewed it as little more than a band-aid measure. He held no power, no sway save for that which he made for himself, and very little impact on the war effort.
Just how he liked it. Orson was a politician first, not a soldier, hence why his formal military rank of ‘Lieutenant General’ appeared nowhere on his official documentation, nor on his title plaque, nor on his door or nameplate. He was more than fine with senator, just less than fine with the ‘Military Sanctioned’ part, hanging over him like a carrion bird ready to remind him who held the real power.
Shaking his head, Orson went back to his forms. Lots of it was simple minutia; imports, exports, economic growth, inflation rates, census results, many of which were from planets that dropped off the grid. Many civilian casualty reports, industrial materiél losses.
He sighed, reaching under his desk for the bottle of port he so conveniently forgot to take home, and continued to conveniently forget to take home whenever someone asked him about it. Every MS Senator, Governor, or Colonial Representative had their vices—his happened to be in his office.
He popped the lid off and let the acrid smell of alcohol burn his nostrils. With a contented smile and a sigh he went to pour it into his glass.
A buzz at his intercom gave him pause, and his eyes snapped up to the frosted doorway, and the silhouette of a person beyond it. Orson set his bottle down, lifted his hand from the glass, and took as much time as he physically could screwing the black-labelled cap back onto it.
He stood up, fixing the buttons of his three-piece pinstripe suit as he went, before striding over to the door with a thunderous look on his face. He threw the door open, ready to yell havoc against the person on the other side, before his words died in his throat at the crisp white uniform and scowling face of Lord Hood.
“Terrence,” he choked out the word, before recovering and plastering a strained smile on his face. “Good to see you again.”
Lord Hood held up a wad of papers, fist clenched around them so much they wrinkled around his fingers, conforming to them like a plastic mold. “You mind explaining to me why you didn’t sign this?”
Sighing. Orson let his smile drop. “Really?” he asked, pushing the doorway open, and turning his back to the older man. “Right down to business? No tea first? Coffee?” He looked over his shoulder. “Kick in the teeth?”
“You know why I’m here,” Hood said, stepping into the door and shutting it behind him with a calmness that belied the man’s rage. “Not only did you not sign this,” he flapped the papers for good measure. “You lobbied for everyone else not to?”
Orson unbuttoned his suit, taking his position back behind his diminutive desk, with his papers, and his bottle of twelve-year-old port. “That I did,” he said, lacing his fingers together and looking up at the other man in the room. “You want me to give you extra emergency powers, and allow you to build a new line of wonderful ships that’ll beat the Covenant back and end the war, right?”
Holding up a hand, he went fishing in the sea of white papers, knowing he had seen the Navy’s signature on more than a few of them. Buried at the dregs of the pile, near the bottom feeding petitions and adipose-like deposits of reformation votes was Lord Hood’s crest, the naval crest, and the stamp of his name in block red letters.
Orson picked up the paper, flapping it a few times in a show of straightening it out, before clearing his throat, and picking up his reading glasses. He didn’t bother to put them on properly, merely rested them atop his nose, craning his head back to stare down at the paper with disdain.
“A ship with three SMACs,” he hummed, making a face at Hood before going back to reading. “And new experimental missiles, hmm.” Discarding the paper, he resumed his stance of locked fingers and a feigned smile. “Sounds fancy,” he said, then pursed his lips. “Sounds expensive, too. The Senate got a bit, you know,” he held up his hands, making a show of moving them both up and down. “Temperamental around those words.”
Lord Hood leaned forward, bracing his hands on the top of Orson’s desk, pinching the thumb and forefinger of his left hand while he raised them up to his face. “You’re not seriously telling me that you short-changed the Navy over a few buzzwords.”
“No,” Orson shook his head. “That’s not the reason, Terrence.”
Terrence waited a few seconds, then blinked. “Then explain.”
“The UNSC has all of the emergency powers it could ever want,” Orson said. “Any more is gilding the lily.”
“Then why do I still need to get these ship commissions signed off by the Military Sanctioned Senate?” He flapped the paper once more, making Orson’s teeth bristle. 
Orson stood up, snatching the paper and tossing it over his shoulder. “Because we’re still a democracy, Terrence. Or at least we need to appear like one. The UNSC is doing a good job keeping us safe, but we still need to abide by due process!” He hissed the words out, holding Hood’s steely gaze with his own determined scowl. 
“The public isn't happy about junta rule,” Orson said. “And neither are the furloughed governors and senators. Every senator or colonial representative gets twitchy around the subject of WMDs,” Orson raised an eyebrow. “And every single space-faring combat vessel is considered a WMD. Each and every one of them can launch nukes, which makes each and every one of them a threat to each and every colony. These ships have three SMAC cannons, each of them capable of levelling entire cities, and that’s not even touching on their nuclear capabilities.”
Terrence cast a hand behind him, towards the doorway, a confused look on his face. “They think we’re gonna nuke human colonies? Every single gun we have is pointed at the enemy, not at them. The only problem is we are running. Out. Of guns!”
Nodding, Orson motioned at the man, before sitting back down in his chair. “And this is the part where the Senate asks ‘who decides who the enemy is?’. Terrence,” shaking his head, Orson sighed, his shoulders slumping. “Everything you could possibly say has already been tossed around by the Senate, and they’re still no closer to forming a consensus on whether or not to give the UNSC full autonomy over ship production.”
Terrence drew back, shaking his head, top lip curled as though he’d smelled something distasteful. “How many more colonies need to get glassed before they get those sticks out of their asses!”
Orson held up a hand. “Calm down.”
“Calm down?!” Terrence slammed his hands down on the desk. “You want me to calm down?! If the Senate had their way we’d be fighting the Covenant with sticks and rocks because it’s more economic.” He spat out the word like poison. 
“Well let me tell you right now,” he jabbed a finger into Orson’s chest. “Being stingy doesn’t win wars!”
“Goddammit Terrence,” Orson batted the offending hand away, straightening his tie. “What do you want me to do?!” He pointed a finger at the papers on his desk. “If it were up to me I’d sign off on every one of these ship requests because we need them. But the truth of the matter is that I can’t. The Senate may have authority, but public opinion matters!”
Terrence rubbed the bridge of his nose, shaking his head. “You let the Senate continue debating policy, and they won’t decide the Covenant are a threat until Earth is another one of those glass balls!”
“It’s not just the ships themselves. It’s the resources. Every time we sign a bill, we get called wasteful bastards.” Orson moved his head from side to side, his tone turning mocking. “‘Why are they spending money on pointless projects when there’s a war on?’ Every time we reject a bill, it’s the opposite. ‘Why isn’t the senate spending money on helping us during this crisis?’” Shaking his head, Orson shrugged. “We can’t win, Terrence. We can’t afford a lynch mob battering down our doors and stringing us up, not while the Covenant scorches our space.”
Lord Hood straightened back up, fixing his uniform. “You care about public opinion too much. There are bigger things to focus on.”
“Wrong,” Orson pointed a finger at him. “I care about it just enough, because the public also includes all the soldiers currently fighting, and dying, on the front lines.”
“And if they think they’re being short-changed, what happens then?” Lord Hood said, his eyebrows furrowed, and eyes narrowed. “What happens to your public opinion when the entire Navy finds out that they won’t be getting new ships?”
Orson shook his head. “The credits, the alloys, the armour, all of it can be used elsewhere, Terrence.” He shrugged. “A new battlegroup, a new division, a resupply on a sieged world. Every new ship class we sign off on is another battlegroup that doesn’t get resupplied. Another division bogged down for a bit longer. I really wish we lived in a perfect galaxy, where we Senators could give everyone what they want. But the reality is we can’t even give everyone what they need, so we have to pick and choose.”
Terrence said nothing, so Orson went fishing again in the ever-broiling foamy sees of public opinion and requisition requests. Money, money, money. Everything had a price tag, and he picked out the most recent ones that came to mind.
He held up a paper, words pointed towards Lord Hood even though Orson knew that the older man likely couldn’t see them from where he stood. 
“This bill calls for replacing all ship armour with Tungsten,” he said. “Titanium is plentiful, but Tungsten would be better. Higher melting point, higher radiation protection, lovely.” He turned the paper over, then ripped it in half. “You know why we don’t use Tungsten for ships? Because Tungsten is used for MAC rounds, and we chew through them like candy.” 
He picked up another one, this time emblazoned with the insignia of the Office of Naval Intelligence. 
“This one,” Orson said, “calls for the replacement of point-defence guns with ONI pulse lasers. We don’t use pulse lasers on all our ships, because reactor overhauls are costly and time-consuming.” He ripped the paper in half.
Another paper materialised from the miasma. “We don’t use coilguns in place of autocannons because the slugs are difficult to transport and store en-masse.” He ripped it in half.
“Autostims and Augmentors cause too much long-term damage to our troops, even though their effectiveness is well-documented, and they might even save lives in the face of inevitable death-by-plasma.” The paper was torn asunder, and scattered to the walls of the room.
“Don’t you get it, Terrence?” Orson asked. “These little concessions aren’t the braindead decisions that they seem to be. As part of a whole, they form the necessary evils of war. We shortchange one to feed the other. We pick one pocket so the other can have enough.”
Orson leaned forward, no longer able to resist the alluring call of the Port on his desk, catching the light overhead just right to cast a sparkling amber glow on his desk. He tipped the bottle into his glass, and filled it up far more than he would normally.
Terrence watched him with a raised eyebrow, but didn’t comment.
“How does a senator know anything about logistics?” he asked.
Orson laughed, lifting his glass tumbler to his lips and closing his eyes to relish the scent of cheap booze. “Because,” he said. “Contrary to popular belief, I don’t just sit in my office all day. I’m fighting this war just as much as you are, but my forms aren’t filled with military casualties.” He paused to take a deep draught of the alcohol, wincing as the burning liquid lashed his throat raw.
“My reports are filled with money,” he said, staring into his glass with a forlorn look. “Budgets, expenditures, sector breakdowns, export figures. The economy is dying as it is, and you want me to sign off on a new line of experimental warships?” He looked up at Lord Hood with a sigh. “If my party agreed to fund every magic-bullet bill to pass my desk, we’d have no money left to pay the soldiers.” The Senator shook his head. “And they won’t fight for free.”
Terrence sighed, taking off his hat and running a hand over his scalp. “We already have hulls in production, we just need a little bit extra to kickstart the others.”
Orson hummed and stared up at the man. “Well when one hull is complete then you can come back with a performance report.”
Terrence's face turned back to incredulous anger. “It won’t be ready for years!”
“That’s right,” Orson smiled up at him. “And this won’t get signed for years after that,” he rapped the desk with his knuckles. “Meaning any second wave of ships we sign off on will take more years on top of those. You’re already building these ships, meaning the Senate would piss themselves if they knew.” He flicked his chin towards the door. “Come back with something I can use, and I’ll do my damndest to get it signed. But Terrence, if you can’t sit there and explain to me why these ships would be better than a division, or a battlegroup, or food shipments to feed the hungry, then I just can’t.”
Lord Hood’s back straightened, his jaw set, and he pulled the hem down on his uniform. “You’re gonna regret this,” he said with a nod. “One day, when we run out of Supercarriers, or Spartans, or whatever else, you’re going to wonder why you never signed it.”
Terrence turned, throwing Orson’s door open.
“I regret a lot of things, Terrence,” Orson said, putting his glass down. “Add this one to the pile.”
The door swung shut by itself with a click.
Category:SilverLastname
Category:Short stories