Chapter 17

We now had an SOP (Standing Operating Procedure) for attacking the walled towns that the Bustol bases had turned into. It took another year to clean out all of the remaining Bustol bases on Inglet. The operation had settled into a routine that really didn't need me for more than an occasional boost in morale. Ansa had stopped using birth control and was now pregnant, though Hasup said that she was hoping for more excitement, so she was still taking her birth control pills.

Verla's baby, a boy she named Atron, had been born on schedule and was now a living, breathing member of our family. The Arklet Army had an efficient day care system, so Verla was able to keep up with her supervisory work on the radar and communication front.

We were able to appoint/promote a number of deserving and competent people to command positions in the ISDF, so Verla, Ansa, Hasup, and I had less and less to do in direct control of the fight on Inglet against the Bustols. Pretty soon, we Arklets could back off completely and let the Inglets handle their own defense.

I was very proud of what we had been able to do, but I was completely ready to hand over the day to day operations to the native Inglets. My main concern had become one of helping the Inglets make sure that the Bustols didn't come back.

The TWT people promised to keep an eye on the Inglet situation in perpetuity to be ready to help them in self defense if it became necessary. Frankly, I didn't think that the Bustols would be back.

The fighting on Inglet had simply become too expensive to maintain the obscene profits that the criminals on Bustol had come to expect. They were rapidly approaching a break-even situation, at best, so the money-types on Bustol would just drop the operation on Inglet as a losing proposition.

Furthermore, the war with Arklet was turning against the Bustols. The way things were going, Bustol could not hold out more than another year. By that time, Bustol would either have to surrender or suffer an invasion of the home planet. Actually, neither side wanted that, so some sort of compromise would be worked out. No matter what happened, I could see that the slaving expeditions from Bustol were coming to an end.

Well, the war with Bustol is over, and it ended very close to the way I predicted. There was hardly more than a token invasion of Bustol when the government fell from a coup d'état. The people of Bustol were sick and tired of continual war, and actively supported the people who overthrew the existing government. Thus, Arklet suddenly was left with a large standing army and no where to use it.

My family and I were part of that surplus and were "demobilized" in the earliest stages of the trimming down of the military. We all got hearty thank-yous and severance pay that was more than generous, but, no matter how you sliced it, we were out of jobs!