The Silent Code

Sep 16, 2024

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Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change the world which yields most painfully to change.
Robert Kennedy

Suddenly the wall next to their table lit up with ‘urgent bulletin’ splashing out and then the wall seemed to dissolve and they appeared to be overlooking some small town on the plains, somewhere. With a lad in a newsy suit standing in the foreground, as if he was hovering in mid-air.

“Vision news has gotten an exclusive story regarding the war!” the reporter said, breathlessly. As if they didn’t have a dozen a day. “Our troops have eliminated the last enemy base on Drendar IV.” The view took one of those stomach dropping leaps forward and they seemed to be suddenly standing next to three armored figures standing in front of a hatchway, out of which smoke was pouring.

“At approximately three o’clock local time this morning our troops launched their final assault on this, the last alien base on Drendar IV. Viewers will remember that Drendar IV was the planet where our Beloved Dictator, may he reign long and well, began his career. On his assumption of power he vowed that it would be among the first planets to be liberated and, true to his word, it is the fifth planet he has liberated since his reign began. Viewers will also remember that it was a particularly problematic planet to liberate as it stands so close to the enemies lanes of power. That makes its liberation particularly important as it gives us a powerful base to interdict the enemies lines of shipping…”

They watched the rest of the broadcast, then resumed their eating. “I was two when the dictator took over,” Eukles said. “I can’t imagine life without him.”

“There might not be life without him, or so everyone over thirty tells me. If it hadn’t been for him and the Ash… not that they were called that, then… coming in and changing everything upside down from the way they had been before, we would likely all be dead.”

“Not that all of the changes happened overnight,” Meriones said, with a glance at Illoia.

“No,” Eukles said. “The military changes were first, well, after the initial purge, and began well. The other changes took quite a bit longer.”

“They’re still going on,” Tomirosh said. “Look at us.”

The others looked at each other, confused. “Can you imagine someone like me, the son of a shopkeeper, marrying someone like Illoia here… even six months ago?”

“Not even six weeks ago,” Eukles said. “I was shocked you dared… even with your medals.”

“Those certainly help. But nor could you have gotten your wife, except for this trip.” Tomirosh said to him.

“I could have seventeen’ed her back on planet!”

“Oh, how? When was the last time you went to an article seventeen meeting, Eudoria?”

Eudoria turned kind of white. “Oh, I’m not accusing your father of treason,” Tom said. “But it is well known that rich people tend to live far from anywhere where they might get invited to such a meeting. They are all the rage in the cities, where the masses of lasses come from far and wide hoping to marry.”

“Some hoping for a widow’s pension,” Eudoria said, glad to have the attention off of her and her family and the very real, but very, very unspoken (and usually even unthought) idea that some fathers might ‘arrange’ that their daughters would be ‘out of the way’ when an Article 17 meeting was being held.

“Certainly. But so many of the others, those more well to do… well, they manage to live farther away, and just never happen to make it to a meeting. They are doing well enough to attract husbands even with so many lads being shipped off to the front…”

“Boring lads, mostly,” Eudoria said, gripping Eukles.

“What?” Meriones asked.

Eudoria leaned forward, and whispered, “Look, we all knew that our father’s wouldnt’ have been all that pleased if we had married a soldier lad. But for most of the lasses… yes, even me, that didn’t mean we didn’t want to! I think I’ve grown up a lot since I got married, and with the training and all; but, even before then, I did want to marry one. I never dreampt I would succeed, or get such a handsome Leader.” She punctuated this remark with a grip on her husband’s arm. “When we would go to town, I would see soldiers, and dream of getting one, and going away to some new exciting place.”

“So… you all wanted to get 17’d??”

“Well… sort of. It was an exciting thought. It was like a daydream. Basically it seemed like we had two choices in life: stay home with some boring lad who has a boring job similar to Daddy’s… or sail off into the sunset… figuratively speaking… with some mysterious hero…”

“Well, we knew it wouldn’t really be like that. The ‘hero’ would be some poor slob who was drafted, or who took some rich young lad’s place, and who had managed to survive one term as a Ranker and gotten a preferment that allowed him to visit home as a new spanked Mid Ranker and who talked your dad into taking him as a son in law, despite the fact he had no bride price.”

“Illoia got a hero,” Eudoria said, and the table fell silent.

“But Tom,” Euckles said, after the awkward silence, “you say that things are going to change?”

“Yes, one way or another. Ships will now all have to have 17 parties on a routine basis. So the rich and powerful will either have to stop letting their lasses go on their ‘pre-nup trips’, or they will have to face the fact that their daughters will all be coming back 17’d. And the governors and all will start to feel the heat, and there will not be so many ‘absences’ from 17 parties.”

“But why?” Meriones asked.

“That’s what 17 was supposed to be about in the first place. Not only that soldiers need wives, which is true enough, but to break the barriers. I was actually supposed to, well, make it sort of popular. Illoia and I, that is.”

“You…? Popular?”

“Well, that’s what happened with you all, isn’t it? When you went to your lass’s guardian, don’t you think that the fact that we had already 17’d made a difference? The governor’s daughter and ‘the young hero’?”

Tom now had everyone staring at him.

“How did we even get a 17 party, anyway?” Eudoria burst out. “I have five sisters that went on pre-nup trips and not one time, either way, did any of them have 17 parties. I’ve never heard of one on a transport flight!”

“They’re going to be the regular rule, now, Tom?” Euckles asked.

“Yes.”

“The silent code?”

Tom nodded. All of the articles were surrounded by a series of ‘customs’ called, in popular parlance, ‘The Silent Code’. It was a series of actions that the general public all ‘knew’ were required or forbidden, even tho they appeared on no written law.

The ‘tap on the shoulder’ was one of these. It had originated, no doubt, as one nervous Mid Ranker or Leader tapped some even more nervous colonists daughter on the shoulder at the first of the ‘get to know you’ meetings that article 17 had inspired. It had ‘caught on’ and now developed a life of its own, part of the ‘Silent Code’ that no right thinking (or even sane thinking) individual would ignore.

“Tom?!” Illoia burst out, startling herself, “That family, at the party?”

“What?” Eudoria asked.

“You remember, we were at the 17 party, and it seemed like we’d been dancing and all forever… and oh was I mad!” She said, glancing at her husband, “but then you suddenly stopped dancing and said we had to register… and there was that family that was leaving…?”

Tom nodded,”Yes. My goal was to have the largest audience possible… which both meant staying so everyone could see us, and bring the ‘news’ back to your home planet about how it had happened, but also to register and leave before… while most of the people were still there.”

There was a long silence, and then, “So are the lasses just going to get married to soldiers willy-nilly?” Meriones asked.

“No, I don’t think so,” Euckles responded. “Illoia here didn’t just marry some unknown Mid Ranker, but our young hero who hums all the time. You and I… if you look at the military as sort of ‘equal’ to the other, well, the rest of the bits of society, then, well, we are sort of at about the same level as our wives, aren’t we? Or wouldn’t we be, if you see what I mean?”

“I don’t understand,” Eudoria said.

“Well, in the new army a leader is something. Not to toot our own horn, but now that everyone goes through all of the ranks, we are as advanced as we could be at our age… except for Tom here. It used to be that lads came in as leaders… they used to call them ‘luitenants’, and so a luitenant was the lowest of the low. And people still sort of think like that. But it isn’t true, nowadays. Practically everyone that lives gets out after their time as Top Ranker and goes their merry way.

So a Leader is someone who went through those six years, except Tom, and then gets examined and stays in. He has to pass his exams, and be voted in by his men. It’s no small thing nowadays.”

“Oh,” Eudoria said, looking at Euckles in a whole new light.

“I would still have gotten married without the party,” Eukles said. “I had planned on asking her at Final Presentation. She would have had to be there, no?”

“Yes, yes,” Meriones replied, before anyone else could answer. “And we all know that a lot of the lasses were hoping to be snapped up there, and probably would have been. But you have to admit it would have been much, much harder for someone like Tom to get someone like Illoia there. Her guardian could have just mumbled something about a lad back home, no real time to check before we are suddenly off to the front. No, this dance made a real difference. Did you see how many recruits got wives? And I think I even saw a draftee or two!”

“Oh, don’t be silly,” his wife said. “They are too young!”

“Not legally, not since Article II. And they know as well as anyone how hard it is to get a wife once you’re deployed.”

There was a pause.

“We can talk about the military having power,” Meriones said. “And it’s true enough, in its way. But if a lass wants to marry real power she needs to marry an Ash.”

“Mer!” Marja said, scandalized.

“Not supposed to talk about them, I know,” he said. “Although I’ve never heard of anyone getting in trouble for it. But that’s where the real power lies.”

“Hard to marry one if you don’t know who they are,” Euckles said.

“Do the Ash have real power?” Tom asked.

“What do you mean, Tom? You don’t call a midnight visit ‘real power’?”

“I suppose it depends on what you mean,” Meriones said. “Sure, its scary enough… although I’ve heard that a first visit is always ‘as gentle as a breeze’. But they can kill you, or draft you, or cut… well, anyway, they are scary. But I’ve never heard of even one Ash going ‘off the reservation’ if you see what I mean. When they whisper in your ear at two o’clock in the morning that the dictator might not be too pleased at the way that you’ve been making eyes at your neighbor’s wife… not that that happened to me, mind… you know what to do well enough, and are pretty sure that they’re right, that the dictator himself wouldn’t be pleased.”

Several eyes kept glancing at Tom, but he was staring off into space and humming. Just then the waiter came over with suggestions for dessert, which were widely approved.

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Thanks again, God Bless, Soli Deo gloria,

Von

Links

Article 17

Article 17 is a military science fiction story with aliens and romance. It is set in a future reminiscent of Napoleon era Britain. The war was going very poorly until the military installed a dictator. This story follows one of the dictator’s great men: Cladin Tomirosh, Leader, and thrice decorated hero.

Intro // Podcast Version

She was pretty, popular, snobby, and a planetary governor’s daughter. He was the son of shopkeepers, a social misfit, and a decorated hero. She thought she was there to dance. He had other ideas.

A Dance // Podcast Version

As a governor’s daughter, Illoia usually avoided such events, but when the captain made the announcement that there was to be an Article 17 dance, she, too, was forced to attend. If only the scum hadn’t been there too.