Crusade
(Starfire #2)

David Weber and Steve White

Riverdale: Baen, 1992. ISBN: 0-671-72111-9. Pp. 426

Review © 2006 Branislav L. Slantchev

Although published after Insurrection, Crusade describes events that take place prior to the break-up of the Terran Federation in the Starfire Universe. After humans and cat-like Orions allied to defeat the Rigelians (and basically exterminate them as a race), there is an uneasy peace between the Khanate and the Federation. Some limited success with liaison officers holds out hope for a more permanent co-existence. But then an unknown ship emerges from a warp point which no ship that ventured through ever came back. The ship refuses visual communication but identifies itself with old Terran codes dating back to the time of the last war with the Orions. It then treacherously lures the Orion vessels and destroys them... but not before they manage to dispatch an Omega drone describing what happened.

Thus begins the invasion of the Terran Federation. The Orions are understandably miffed and demand some sort of honorable recompense (whose description to a long-suffering reader is about as exciting as wading through a dictionary of a language you do not know written in script you cannot read; I am not a big fan of the invented 40-odd letter words that purport to refer to utterly alien concepts that somehow always can be reconciled with easily recognizable Terran equivalents; which, by the way also holds for those ridiculous ranks for the Orions - "least-paw"? please, just call them "commanders" or whatever, it's the same without the exotic-sounding but ultimately distracting verbiage.) Enough with the rant though. So the Orions essentially graciously agree to let the Federation clean its own mess, preferably by doing unto the attackers as they had done to the Orions.

Things get a lot more complicated when it turns out that the invaders are not human. So what are they doing using human technology and invading? In a twist that one can hardly take seriously, we are told that these Thebans (now, I am not making this name up either) have developed an elaborate religion centered on "Holy Mother Terra," all from the scraps of information provided to them by human refugees escaping the last war with the Orions. Of course, this means that the Thebans do not know about subsequent developments (e.g., peace with the Khanate) but even when they learn about it, their religious stance simply leads them to declare the Federation in a state of apostasy and then proceed to cleanse and liberate it from its delusion. Salvation by the force of arms. And when the bastards do not want to be saved, nuking them helps too: God would sort out his own (although I am not so sure about Mother Terra).

As a premise, it's slightly on the ridiculous side. To believe that people with interstellar capability would be so thoroughly brain-washed and unable to stop and think for a second about what's happening around them beggars belief. I have talked repeatedly about this particular recurrent idea in Weber's writings (Masada, anyone?) but it crops up in many novels (Moon's Rules of Engagement or even Bova's Saturn) and it never makes sense. For a reference of how it can be done with much more flair and conviction, check out Feintuch's Seafort Saga, where there's a fundamentally religious strain to the planetary government but where it resembles something that may actually occur.

Leaving aside the problem, we still have to contend with some rather murky and under-characterized ideas about the Theban religion. It's never actually specified what it is that they believe in, and the reconciling references to Holy Terra and Satan-Khan may leave one more confused than wading through pages of Hindu scripture in Sanskrit. This is a problem because we need a good justification for the Theban behavior which seems too blood-thirsty for any true believer. Weber and White seem to take a hint or two from our own history when it comes to crusading but they never go beyond naive popular myths about that activity. So we see very dogmatic and bloody-minded inquisitors who go about exterminating millions in half-assed attempts to convert them. Needless to say, this makes no sense whatsoever; even our own Inquisition did not do anything of the sort (and would be extremely unlikely to, anyway). But to think that those Thebans would not flinch from mass murder on planetary scale in the name of religion... I don't know, especially when taking into consideration what can be gleamed about them and their belief system from the tantalizing scraps of information the authors sneak on us.

Despite this flaw, the novel is a rather engaging space opera on the grand scale that would be familiar to anyone coming from Weber's Honor Harrington series. There are space battles aplenty with technology that Weber would mostly recycle in the Honorverse. There are also plenty of venal politicians (Weber's take is that civilians are either cowards or dummies or both and that even though they savage the military with words or budget cutbacks, they can always rely on it when push comes to shove to come and haul their chestnuts out of any fire they manage to create through their incompetence.) I am sure this is meant as a stab against politicians who enjoy peace so much they forget that it nearly always must be bought at a price paid with blood. This particular short-sightedness is not limited to liberal peaceniks who would rather levitate the Pentagon than contemplate the harsh reality of a world unchanged since time immemorial in its basic working that the Romans captured with the phrase "If you want peace, prepare for war." In fact, hippies reborn as multiculturalists cannot hold a candle to isolationist conservatives there. Folly across the political spectrum, and I am not sure Weber/White can quite stomach that reality. Instead, we get the usual canard about liberals and their cretinous mishandling of things military.

But, as is wont with Weber, things get better when the liberals get swept away by hard-nosed conservatives with strong military connections. This time it takes a former admiral and president to put things in order, and then the mighty Federation begins out-producing the Thebans. The war becomes something like WWII in that the two warring sides slug it out without much grace and the side with the most toys eventually overwhelms the other with sheer numbers and superior technology. There are very few exciting tactical or strategic maneuvers here, it's all an endless series of rather brutal missile salvos with occasional inspired flash of genius (e.g., the missiles launched through a warp point.) The last 75+ pages or so also describe a Marine landing and assault on Thebes itself, and it is a welcome break from the interminable space engagements.

There are several rather sympathetic characters (I was quite fond of the foul-mouthed Admiral of Russian descent, Ivan Antonov, actually) but the best is the Theban admiral Lantu. He provides the sole attempt at character study in the novel and goes from a nearly blind lapdog of his religious leaders to a traitor to them but savior of his race when he realizes just how invented the Theban faith is and just how dangerous a humanity in a murderous mood can be. Of course, Lantu's description is very Weber-ish: he is thoroughly competent, he is thoroughly honorable (witness his dealings with the resistance), and he is thoroughly beyond any "natural" considerations like his own's safety. He is the epitome of the honorable military man: devoted to his duty even when his understanding of it departs from what his superiors (and many of his fellow military men) think it should be.

Leaving aside some of the more, hmmm, not well thought out, shall we say, aspects of the story (who attacks a mighty interstellar Federation without so much as sending a recon drone, for gods' sake! one would think that the Thebans would not embark blindly on a war without the slightest clue about enemy dispositions, or at the very least his industrial capacity, standing fleet, alliances, and so forth; this was one place where I was fully prepared to write off the Thebans as incompetent nincompoops), the military confrontations are breath-taking. Populated by eminently likeable characters (even on the alien side), the conflict quickly acquires the patina almost all wars do: waged by decent human (and alien) beings on either side in a maelstrom created by venal politicians or power-hungry religious zealots. Weber never met a politician he did not love to hate (except Howard Anderson but then he is a former admiral and a directly-elected president, not one of those party hacks that populate the assembly), and he never met a military person that did not fully deserve at least a score Medals of Honor (with the rarest of exception of a coward who, invariably, is in the military because of political connections). But if you think any of it gets tiresome or old, think again. I love reading and re-reading these things.

Weber and White have deep and abiding faith in the fundamental decency of Humanity and the handling of the defeated Thebans puts us in the best possible light. Terrans did not activate Directive 18 (which led to the extermination of the Rigelians) and they did not even seek the type of vengeance that they could have given their own losses once they realized how Thebans were duped. This is all well, but I have to wonder since when believing sincerely in a lie is an excuse for murder. That line of logic would have us idolizing Stalin, Che Guevera, and the recent crop of Islamofascists. I am not saying Thebans should have been exterminated, far from it, but their leadership should have been severely punished. Since this is the only bow to modern sensibilities the authors make, I will let it pass.

A very nice novel, tightly written and invigorating, Crusade is a fascinating study in something that can probably never happen, but fascinating nevertheless. The sole regret is that aside from the rare glimpse at an Orion, none of the alien races in the Starfire Universe make a showing here. The conflict, exclusively waged between Thebans and Terrans, involves only these two species. Hopefully the other books would do full justice to the multitudes.

August 5, 2006