General Raoul Salan, assembled with his senior officers around the large map table occupying the center of his operations center, nodded his head slowly as he looked
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at the markings and symbols written on top of the transparent plastic film covering the Algeria map.
‘’So, the FLN forces in Algeria are basically being exterminated by those Time Patrol combat machines, and this over the whole country.’
‘’That’s correct, General.’ replied his senior operations officer. ‘’However, we have received reports saying that there were a number of attacks against the FLN
outside of Algeria, notably in Morocco and Tunisia. The known headquarters of the FLN
in Morocco were blown up and utterly destroyed early this morning by a huge ship of the Time Patrol, with the top leaders of the FLN killed in that attack.’
‘’Good riddance!’ said Salan at once. ‘’Those murderous bastards deserved nothing less. So, do we have at the least an approximate count to date of the losses suffered by the FLN today?’’
‘’We do, General!’ answered his military intelligence officer. ‘’However, more reports of those losses keep coming in, so what I have now can be viewed only as partial figures. From what our troops on the ground have reported, we presently have a confirmed number of 37,902 FLN combatants and active supporters found dead, either in hidden field camps or in safehouses around the country. Our patrols also found out that the weapons and ammunition of those dead FLN guerrillas had been picked up and neatly stacked next to the bodies. Those Time Patrol robots did a very thorough job of cleaning up the FLN today. Our units are now in the process of picking up those weapons and ammunition and bringing those to our own depots.’
‘’This brings a question to me, General.’ said his chief of logistics. ‘’What are we going to do with all those weapons and ammunition? Destroy them? Right now, our depots are about to overflow with them.’
‘’No! Keep them for the moment, Langlade. They will help complete the reequipment of our auxiliary units and of those of the General Government, including Harkis and Territorial Units. Blanchard, what has been the response or reactions from the Moroccans about this massacre?’
Salan’s head of military intelligence nodded his head once and quickly looked at a report on top of the thin pile of documents he had brought with him before answering.
‘’Up to now: nothing but silence and inaction, General. Even King Mohammed has stayed silent about the attacks on FLN installations in Morocco, something very uncharacteristic for him. One big question I have right now is: why? Why did the Time Patrol do all this?’
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‘’Let me answer that question for you, gentlemen.’ then said a male voice coming from behind Salan. Salan, like his officers and the other French personnel present in the operations center, turned around at once, to see a big man wearing some sort of sophisticated armored suit now standing some five paces from the map table.
Salan recognized at once the suit worn by the newcomer, as he had seen similar suits some fourteen years ago, when the Time Patrol had intervened to put a stop to World War Two by destroying the German and Japanese armies around Europe and in the Pacific.
‘’The Time Patrol! Whatever your reasons to do all this were, I must thank you profusely, mister: you basically put a stop on a most murderous and bloody conflict.’
‘’That is actually the reason we acted, General: to stop that conflict and to bring peace back to this country. Let me present myself: Mike Crawford, Chief of Operations of the Time Patrol.’
The newcomer then opened and raised the armored visor of his combat suit, allowing Salan and his officers to see the face of a handsome man who appeared to be in his late thirties. Crawford then slowly walked to the map table and presented his gloved right hand to Salan, who shook it.
‘’You just saved France from bloodshed…again, Mister Crawford. I saw your troopers and robots in action in 1942, when you chased the Germans out of France.
The Time Patrol has always acted to promote the good of all but what pushed you in acting today? There have been many other conflicts since 1942 in which you did not intervene.’
‘’A relevant question, General. The answer is that, this time, the scale of suffering and deaths caused by this insurrection became too much for us to tolerate.
Remember what Nancy Laplante said at that big peace conference in Paris in 1942, after we put an end to World War Two. She and the Time Patrol then pledged to prevent future wars and abuse of the innocents by eliminating those who would be the cause of such wars and abuses. The massacres of civilians and the tortures and mutilations committed by the FLN decided us to act…that and the political cowardice of your politicians and government.’
Salan and the other French present stiffened on hearing that last sentence but Mike Crawford continued on before they could state objections.
‘’The sad truth is that the government of France, along with the general attitude of the French people, contributed a lot to create this conflict, both by not granting true
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independence to the Algerian people and by being ready to abandon your own settlers in Algeria and washing your hands of the blood of the ones you call ‘Pieds Noirs’. We acted in order to prevent further deaths of innocents, not to preserve the hold of France on this country. Nancy Laplante was very clear in 1942 about what she thought about the various European colonial empires still existing at the time, including that of France.
Unfortunately, the various French governments which succeeded each other since then mostly neglected or ignored the need to let go of this colonial grip, something that only created Algerian public support for the FLN. I can tell you now that the Queen of Jerusalem has paid a visit today to your government in Paris, both to encourage it to give true independence to the Algerian people and to rebuke it for its bad faith and missteps about Algeria. Know as well that we reacted not only to the abuses and crimes of the FLN but also to those committed by certain portions of French government entities in Algeria. I am talking about the too common willingness of your secret police and of some of your military intelligence units to use torture and summary execution of suspects. Some of the worst sadists in that lot already paid at our hands for their crimes.’
‘’YOU KILLED SOME OF OUR PEOPLE?’ shouted the representative of the French Deuxième Bureau20, anger flaring in him. Mike Crawford stared at him with cold eyes.
‘’Yes, we did and we will continue doing so if your people keep using illegal means in Algeria…and in France. This is a case where the end doesn’t justify the means, and this comes not from the Time Patrol but from The One. As Nancy Laplante revealed at the Paris Peace Conference in 1942, every human alive has a tiny part of The One inside him or her, a part commonly called ‘The Soul’ by many. This means that The One knows at all times what everybody does or think and can thus choose to act accordingly. After being very patient for millenniums, and especially with the advent of nuclear weapons, which could utterly destroy Earth, The One has reached the end of its patience and will now react forcibly to future major acts of abuse, cruelty, hatred and intolerance which could or would cause the suffering or death of innocents. In this case, a mix of religious extremism and political abuse of power caused The One to intervene via the Queen of Jerusalem and us in this conflict. Next time, if such abuses and crimes 20 Deuxième Bureau : Old name for the French Secret Services in the 1950s.
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continue, then it will be The One who will intervene…directly. This will be the only warning he will give to all of you. Heed it or regret it!’
Mike Crawford then disappeared from where he stood in a brief flash of white light, leaving behind a stunned and shaken group of French officers.
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CHAPTER 10 – BACK IN ANNECY
14:48 (Paris Time)
Saturday, October 20, 1956 ‘B’
Annecy train station, Haute-Savoie
