The scourges of drought, famine and war.
CHAPTER 17 – SOUTHERN REACTIONS
13:40 (Central Africa Time)
Wednesday, October 27, 2320
Presidential palace of the Southern Federation
Kinshasa, Congo, African Union
Mamadou Kajeje did not need to show his security pass to the two armed soldiers of the Presidential Guard posted at the door of the offices of President Makambo. As the head of the intelligence services of the Southern Federation, Mamadou met with President Augustus Makambo nearly every day and was well known to the soldiers of the Presidential Guard. One of the guards saluted him and opened the door for him, letting him walk inside the anteroom, where the young and beautiful Daliane, Makambo’s secretary, sat behind her desk and was typing on her computer. Mamadou smiled to her, getting a genuine smile back from the secretary. While Daliane knew perfectly well what kind of work he did and what that entailed, she still appreciated him for his high intelligence, culture and physique, which was still very impressive for a man in his fifties. It also helped that Mamadou had the reputation of being a considerate lover who, contrary to many local men, didn’t treat women like inferiors. In truth, Daliane secretly wished that Mamadou would be President of the Southern Federation, instead of Makambo. For one, he would certainly make a more competent and productive president than Makambo, an aging man with few qualities or skills other than his ruthlessness. Since losing the war against the Spacers League and the Northern Alliance in 2315, followed by the death in 2317 of Vice-President Jonas Mobutu, who had also been the President of the African Union and had been killed by a Spacers orbital strike on his resort island, things had been steadily going downhill for the Southern Federation, with the African Union faring the worst among the states of the Federation.
‘’Good afternoon, Daliane! I am here to see the President about an urgent matter.’’
Those last words made the secretary look up with some worry at Mamadou: in these troubled and difficult times, ‘urgent matter’ often equated with ‘problems’. She however didn’t ask him about the ‘urgent matter’ and used her intercom box to speak with Makambo. After a few seconds, she smiled back to Mamadou.
‘’You may go in, sir.’’
‘’Thank you, Daliane!’’
The soldier guarding the inner door of the anteroom opened it for Mamadou, letting him enter a huge, nearly empty office. At one end sat a large work desk made of polished rare wood, behind which Makambo sat. His desk was actually quite far from the nearest windows and was masked from direct view by a mobile partition doubled with bullet-resistant plates meant to hide and protect Makambo from any sniper aiming from the outside of the building. The President had a nearly obsessive fear of someone assassinating him, which made him a rather paranoid man and also made him a lot more difficult to work for. He even had personal food tasters to thwart attempts at poisoning him. However, Mamadou was well placed to know that Makambo had real reasons to fear assassins: Makambo himself had ordered the assassination of many past political opponents and half of Africa secretly hated his guts but didn’t dare say so openly.
Makambo, a bald and overweight man of medium stature who was in his late sixties, watched Mamadou approach his desk and stop some two paces in front of it before speaking up, painting a fake smile on his lips.
‘’So, my dear Mamadou, what is this urgent matter that you have for me?’’
‘’A rather stunning report from my agents infiltrated inside Spacers League territory, Mister President. If I can believe them, the Spacers are now able to travel quickly to other star systems, and this thanks to a recent invention by a Koorivar scientist. Furthermore, the Spacers League has started to canvass volunteers willing to go settle on other planets outside of the Solar System.’’
While the first part was already shocking enough for Makambo, the second part actually enraged him: new and fresh lands was precisely what Africa lacked the most of.
‘’WHAT? THEY MAKE SUCH AN IMPORTANT BREAKTHROUGH AND KEEP IT SECRET FROM US? HOW SURE ARE YOU ABOUT THAT INFORMATION, MAMADOU?’’
Mamadou, by now well accustomed to Makambo’s flashes of anger and fickleness, didn’t let his screaming phase him and answered in a calm voice while taking two still photos out of his briefcase and putting them on Makambo’s desk, where the dictator grabbed them to examine them.
‘’One of my agents, at great risk to herself, was able to obtain those two pictures, taken inside one of the underground shuttle hangars of the astroports of Callisto Prime by a maintenance technician. That technician had taken them five months ago, despite firm orders to keep secret what he would see then and there. In those photos, you can see two alien creatures who resemble mythical centaurs coming out of a shuttle. Our agent eventually gained more information about those aliens and how they came to the Solar System. Apparently, the star systems around us are full of life, with quite a few harboring intelligent life, including those Centaurs, who came from the Gliese 581 System, situated some 20.5 light years away. Many planets that are habitable, meaning that they have breathable atmospheres, liquid water and moderate temperatures, were found during the last few months. Consequently, the Spacers League Council, along with the Northern Alliance, has decided to launch a program of selective colonization of the most promising worlds and are presently in the planning stage of such a colonization program.’’
Mamadou was careful not to mention the key role played in all this by the A.M.S. KOSTROMA and Captain Tina Forster, as naming them would have assuredly launched Makambo into a fit of rage. The KOSTROMA and Captain Forster, through their role in the defeat of the Zembelo Regime, from the ruins of which the Southern Federation had emerged in 2316, were now well established as notorious ‘bogeymen’ around the Federation. However, even the limited information Mamadou had given him was enough to plunge Makambo into a foul mood.
‘’Those damn Northerners! They invaded our continent centuries ago, enslaved our people, depleted our mines, polluted our soil and water and made themselves rich and prosperous on our backs. Now, they are about to occupy more lands but are hiding that from us, so that they don’t have to share them with our people? We can’t accept that!’’
In that, Mamadou had to mentally agree to a point with Makambo. It was a historical fact that Europeans, then North Americans, had pilfered Africa’s resources and people for centuries, including by taking hundreds of thousands of black slaves away to the Americas. However, starting in the late 20th Century, African politicians had started to be in charge of most of the continent, while the European armies had mostly left. Unfortunately, what had been a story of exploitation by outsiders had too quickly turned into a story of exploitation from within, with corrupt leaders and dictators siphoning fortunes from their state’s coffers and into their personal confidential bank accounts in Switzerland, the Caribbean and other so-called ‘fiscal paradises’. Too often, incompetence had been added to corruption and graft, cutting further into the resources and services meant to help the general population and the continent at large. The scourges of repeated droughts, famines, ethnic and tribal conflicts, religious extremism and wars had been devastating Africa for more than three centuries now, with the Africans themselves being the ones mostly to blame for that. Mamadou however knew and realized too well that the mass of the African population was not at fault in this and simply endured all this, with little ability to change things. It was the so-called ‘elite’ that too often engaged in the corruption, graft, nepotism and dirty politics, often with the help of local armies led by corrupt officers, when those same officers didn’t simply decide to take power themselves via military coups. As a result, only a handful of countries around Africa, if you excepted the region of North Africa, could be said to be reasonably prosperous and happy. The states of the African Union were definitely not part of that lucky lot.
On his part, Makambo was now reviewing mentally his options about how to react to this revelation about a Spacers League space colonization program. Those options were however extremely limited. The Southern Federation had no spaceships of its own and had to rent or charter the services of spaceships belonging to neutral countries of Earth in order to import or export merchandises or carry passengers. Even then, the Spacers League kept a tight watch of those neutral ships, to ensure that the Southern Federation did not acquire spaceships by using false flags of convenience. For all intents and purposes, the Southern Federation had been quarantined to the surface of the Earth and denied the right to operate in space by the Spacers League. The hijacking of two Northern Alliance spaceships in 2317 by agents of the African Union, in a failed attempt to conduct suicide ramming attacks against occupied asteroids belonging to the Spacers League, had only tightened that noose, on top of causing the death of Vice-President Mobutu in a retaliatory strike by the Spacers. Threats of the use of force by him against the Northern Alliance would also be futile and also dangerous: the crushing of the Zembelo Regime had resulted in the loss of millions of soldiers and of most of the attack craft Africa had possessed. About the only things that the present military forces of the Southern Federation were able to do was to intimidate its own populations into submission and effect some pressures on the weakest of its immediate neighbors. As for rebuilding his military forces, Makambo himself was ready to concede that the present state of the Federation’s economy would not allow that. He finally did what he often did when faced with a difficult decision: he asked others for their opinions and ideas.
‘’Mamadou, we need to gain access to at least one of those new worlds, but we don’t have a single spaceship. What would you do now?’’
‘’I would speak to the Spacers League, Mister President.’’ Answered the intelligence chief, shocking Makambo. Before the latter could explode, Mamadou continued.
‘’Mister President, we don’t even know how the Spacers’ ships are able to travel to the stars, on top of having zero spaceships of our own. Going ourselves to find a new world is thus impossible. Our only realistic option would be to convince the Spacers to let our people travel on their ships.’’
‘’And you think that they would agree to give one planet to us?’’
Mamadou swore mentally at the obtuseness of his president while keeping a straight face.
‘’They won’t give us a planet because they will never allow us to control one, Mister President. However, we could appeal to their claimed regard for human rights and ask them to allow our excess population to emigrate to other planets. That could relieve much of the present pressure on our infrastructures and our economy and give us a chance to rebuild the Federation.’’
‘’ARE YOU MAD OR STUPID, KAJEJE?’’ shouted Makambo at once, surprising his intelligence chief. ‘’What good would be such an emigration if I can’t profit from it? I want a planet for me! Forget about this idea of talking with the Spacers: I will think of something else. You are dismissed!’’
Angered by the stupidity and selfishness of Makambo’s reaction, Mamadou had no choice but to turn around and leave the presidential office. One look at his expression convinced Daliane to not ask him what was wrong as he stormed out. Getting back in his private air car, Mamadou took off and started flying back towards the office building housing the Department of Intelligence Headquarters. However, after only a few seconds of flying, he changed course and headed towards his residence, a luxury apartment on a top floor of a residential tower reserved for members of the elite. That tower, along other similar buildings, was situated inside a gated district where the general population was not allowed in for security reasons. After a few minutes of flying, Mamadou landed his air car on the roof landing pad of his residential tower, then rolled it to its reserved parking spot and parked it. Locking up his vehicle and taking his briefcase with him, he went to the roof access hut and took an elevator cabin, going down by two levels before stepping on the floor of his apartment. Once inside his home, with the door firmly locked behind him, Mamadou went to serve himself a glass of scotch and sat down in his favorite chair. Being a single man, he was now alone to try chasing the bitterness filling him. He believed himself to have been for years a loyal, competent and effective member of the government of the Federation, something not many of the government members could claim. However, today had been too much for him. Something would have to change…and soon.
14:07 (Central Africa Time)
Thursday, October 28, 2320
Department of Intelligence Headquarters
Kinshasa, Congo
Having just finished directing a meeting in a secure briefing room of the Department of Intelligencey, Mamadou Kajeje walked out of the room and started on his way back to his office. He however decided to take a washroom break and entered the nearest men’s washroom. Taking place in front of a urinal, he unzipped his fly and started relieving himself, his classified briefcase resting on top of the urinal. Another man then entered the washroom and took place at the urinal next to Mamadou’s urinal. With only a few centimeters between both men’s shoulders, the newcomer then started speaking in a very low voice while looking straight to his front.
‘’You have been placed under surveillance on orders from President Makambo. However, do not change your routine and continue working for the good of Africa. You are not alone in being fed up with Makambo and his clique. Things will happen, soon. Please don’t try to follow me after this.’’
The man, whom Mamadou had never seen before but who wore a security pass clipped to his jacket, then left the washroom. Mamadou didn’t move for a few seconds more, as his boiling mind churned over the words of the man. Few people would know about an order by President Makambo to place him under surveillance and all of those people would need to either be high placed government officials or to be working for such people. This thus smelled like a conspiracy and coup in the making against Makambo. Normally, Mamadou would consider it his prime duty to then warn his president of such a conspiracy. Was he going to do that now? Absolutely not!
02:52 (Central Africa Time)
Friday, November 05, 2320
Residence of the Director of Intelligence
Kinshasa, Congo
Mamadou Kajeje was soundly asleep when the first of many successive powerful explosions shook Kinshasa, brutally awaking him. Taking a few seconds to fully wake up while sitting in bed, he then got out of bed and ran to the nearest window. What he saw were a number of fires dispersed around downtown Kinshasa. His trained eyes then caught for a second the trail left by an air-to-ground missile crossing the night sky just before a huge blast shook again the city. That blast was followed by a fireball rising from a location he knew well.
‘’The Ministry of Security building: someone just bombarded it from the air.’’
His first thought, in view of the other explosions and fires, was that the Spacers or the Northern Alliance were bombarding Kinshasa, in which case he would do his best to defend the city against its attackers. He then discarded that first idea: an air attack by outsiders as powerful as the Spacers or the Northern Alliance would have been an overwhelming one, not like the present one, which seemed to be a limited attack against a few pinpoint targets. A group of five nearly simultaneous explosions, all from the same location, made Mamadou snap his head towards what had to be the barracks of the Presidential Guard. That was when he fully understood that he was looking at the start of a coup against President Makambo. Looking in the general direction of where the private mansion of President Makambo, in reality a luxurious palace, was situated, Mamadou saw a distant but fierce fire illuminate that district of the city. Smiling with satisfaction, he then hurried to dress up in a good business suit but made sure to hide a pistol in a shoulder holster rig worn under his jacket. On second thought, he pocketed as well a silencer for his pistol, plus three full spare magazines. His first telephone call was to the duty watch center of his department, where calls and communications links from his agents dispersed around Earth and in space arrived day and night and from where directives were sent back to them, all by encrypted means of course.
‘’Hello? This is Director Kajeje. What the hell is happening?’’
‘’Sir, things are still quite confused but it appears that a coup against President Makambo is in progress. Where are you right now, sir?’’
‘’At my residence. I am going to fly to the headquarters in my air car, to direct operations there.’’
‘’Please don’t use your air car, sir: the air defense units of the city are liable to shoot at anything flying around right now.’’
Mamadou had to concede that point to the duty officer and tried something else.
‘’Can you send me an armored car, then?’’
‘’Yes sir! I will order one out right away but, please, stay inside your building for the moment. There are shots being fired all around the city and the streets are unsafe.’’
‘’Very well. I will wait inside the lobby of my residential tower.’’
Mamadou then closed the link and walked out of his apartment, carefully locking the door before proceeding towards the nearest elevator banks. Going down to the level of the entrance lobby, he found there a lone and very nervous private security guard armed with a shotgun and a pistol. The man gave Mamadou a deferential nod of the head when he came out of the elevator cabin.
‘’Mister Kajeje, I must advise you not to go out at this time. There has been some shooting around the neighborhood, along with those explosions.’’
‘’I know, my good man, but duty calls. Don’t worry about me: an armored car is on the way to pick me up.’’
The man nodded again. Contrary to many high level officials of the Makambo government, Mamadou was actually respected and liked by the average people he met, thanks to the politeness and caring he displayed towards them. Mamadou may have been ruthless towards the enemies of Africa, but he didn’t do it to get rich and had the reputation of being incorruptible, a trait that was unfortunately too rare in the Southern Federation.
The promised armored car, actually a full-fledge armored personnel carrier, arrived at the entrance of the tower some sixteen minutes later. The driver of the APC then backed it up the walkway and stopped a mere two meters from the transparent sliding doors of the building. The rear armored doors were then opened from the inside by soldiers, who then stepped out and pointed their weapons outwards, protecting Mamadou while he quickly got inside the back of the APC. With the soldiers returning inside the APC and closing the rear doors, the heavy vehicle started rolling as Mamadou looked at the young lieutenant in command of the APC.
‘’Do we have any new information about what is happening, Lieutenant?’’
From the short hesitation of the young officer before he answered, Mamadou guessed that he would be in for some disturbing news. In that he was quickly proven right.
‘’Yes sir! Just before we arrived at your building, we got news by radio that this is a coup against President Makambo, a coup led by our own air force. Federation Air Force fighter-bombers attacked and destroyed with heavy missiles the Presidential mansion, the headquarters of the Ministry of Security, the barracks of the Presidential Guard and of the Internal Security Force, plus the residences of General Mafuto, Minister of Security Barangita, Minister of Interior Kwayo and Finance Minister Taylor. Assassination squads have also been signaled around the city, killing various government officials inside their residences.’’
‘’So, a well organized coup, judging from what you just told me. What about President Makambo?’’
‘’He is dead, sir, killed in the first airstrike. There is next to nothing left of his mansion, while his guards there are positive that he was inside and did not come out.’’
‘’I see!’’ simply said Mamadou, hiding his relief: with Makambo dead, this coup now had some good chances of succeeding. There was however one factor of importance to consider.
‘’And the Army? What is it doing right now?’’
‘’It is now on full alert inside its barracks, but has been ordered by General Mafuto’s deputy, General Kisangani, to stay inside its bases and keep a defensive posture, sir.’’
Mamadou nodded once at that, not too surprised: Kisangani, an officer known for his competence and honesty, was probably secretly part of the coup, while General Odierno, the head of the Air Force, was directing the coup. The big question now was for whom was this coup perpetrated? Did Odierno plan to name himself President of the Southern Federation, or was there another high figure, still unknown, directing this coup?
Mamadou was still wondering about that when the APC arrived at the headquarters of the Department of Intelligence and rolled inside the underground garage of the building. With four armed soldiers of his department escorting him closely, he went up to the floor where his office suite was but, once on that floor, headed instead towards the duty operations center, where he found a hectic activity, with officers and specialists running around, shouting pieces of information at each other and updating the big central situation display table. Going to the display table, Mamadou examined the electronic picture there, a map of the city area with numerous symbols in red distributed around. The duty officer, a major, joined him there and saluted him.
‘’I am happy that you made it safely, sir. Many high level government officials can’t say the same, however. Here is the latest list of officials confirmed as dead, along with the installations which were destroyed by airstrikes.’’
Taking the paper sheet from the major, Mamadou read it quickly, his face somber.
‘’While riding in our APC, I was told that the airstrikes were done by our own air force. Is that correct?’’
‘’Yes sir! General Odierno started playing a public video message some fifteen minutes ago, in which he claims to be leading a coup with the goal of ending the tyranny of President Makambo and his corrupt clique. Judging by the list of officials killed already, I would say that the government has been pretty well decapitated, while the two forces which were truly loyal to President Makambo, the Presidential Guard and the Internal Security Forces battalion based in Kinshasa, have been gutted by a series of heavy airstrikes.’’
‘’What about the rest of the country and around Africa?’’
‘’Airstrikes were also reported outside of the Kinshasa area, while a few regional governors are known to have been killed, but the situation is still very confused, sir. Do you have orders for our agents and personnel, sir?’’
‘’Yes! They are to stay inside their present locations, defend themselves if attacked and observe and report what is happening around them, but not intervene. I want to get a clearer picture of all this before we will do anything. Pass the word around! I will be in my office.’’
‘’Understood, sir!’’
Going to his office, Mamadou sat behind his desk, then switched on the five video screens hooked from the ceiling and forming a semi-circles in front of his desk. Next, he tuned each of them to a different news channel, the center one on the African News Channel, or ANC, the most listened to news channel on the continent, with the four others being tuned to international news channels, including the venerable Eurovision and ABC News. Leaving the international channels on mute for the time being, Mamadou then watched the address prepared by General Odierno, which played in an endless loop at the moment. That address actually didn’t tell him much that was new for him and he then lowered the volume on that channel, while putting the other channels as well on low volume. While he was confident that his agents and posts would report quickly on the situation inside Africa, Mamadou was most interested to see how the coup would be reported on and its leaders portrayed around the World. One channel he paid special attention to was the Space News Network, which was broadcasted around the Solar System. Not surprisingly, due to the long transmission delays caused by the huge distances between the various planets and moons, SNN soon proved to be the slowest to catch up on the situation in Kinshasa.
Mamadou had been watching the news for maybe twenty minutes when there was some kind of disturbance in the hallway outside of his office. Quickly drawing his pistol and making sure that its safety was off, Mamadou then inserted it between his legs, where he could quickly grab it if needed. He had just done so when Frederic Sage, the Deputy Minister of Security, barged his way in Mamadou’s office, ignoring the protests of a young lieutenant. Mamadou didn’t get up to greet Sage, who was a creature of Makambo and who was notoriously corrupt, on top of having a sadistic and psychopathic side to him. Sage didn’t ingratiate himself to Mamadou by coming at him while nearly shouting.
‘’What the hell are you waiting for to help the government against this coup, Kajeje? Your men are still sitting around and doing nothing, while my security units are being bombed from the air.’’
In turn, Mamadou stared at him with a cold expression.
‘’My men are neither trained nor equipped for heavy fighting, Sage. They are trained for covert, small scale operations, spying and information collecting, or did you forget the meaning of ‘intelligence work’? By the way, next time that you come to visit me, at least show the courtesy of announcing yourself properly first before entering my office.’’
That only seemed to infuriate more Sage, who banged his fist on Mamadou’s desk.
‘’Who the hell do you think that you are, Kajeje? You don’t even rank as a junior minister in the government.’’
‘’What