Active Resistance |
The organization of a traditional, active Resistance cell on Luna has been a slow
and dangerous process, but the beachhead has been established, and there is every
reason to expect more rapid growth of our movement in the future. When Darkside Station was first established as a penal colony, Resistance recruitment was difficult to the point of impossibility. All lunar citizens were gainfully employed, carefully screened WEC professionals - traditionally not the most fertile ground for fifth-column operations. The discontented majority among the Conscript population was inaccessible. In time, however, this equation became much less clear cut, and therefore Lunar operations have become a much more attractive Resistance prospect. Despite the health hazards of the mines and draconian WEC sentences, many conscripts have managed to complete their sentences and be released. As has been the case in penal colonies throughout history, many of the recently released choose to remain on Luna and work for the LMC, rather than return home and face social and professional ostracism as malcontents. The LMC, for its part, is often content to allow former prisoners to stay on, because of their experience and willingness to take on more dangerous assignments than most citizen/partners. Although this population of released prisoners is small (about 3% of all non-Conscript personnel) they already form a crucial recruiting base for the Resistance, and their numbers are expected to continue to swell over the next several years. Also, and perhaps more significant in the long run, intelligence indicates a dramatic downward shift in morale among the lunar citizen/partners over the last few years. Since the establishment of the LMC, earthside demand for Di-Cor has risen steadily and quotas have increased dramatically. At the same time, on Luna, wages have remained largely static, workloads have shot up, and improvements in the Lunar quality of life have been negligible. In short, the free population of Luna started out as a WEC elite, but is now well on the way to becoming yet another population victimized by the WEC, and ripe for Resistance influence. At present the full-time Resistance garrison on the moon remains tiny, with only one officer who does not also maintain a full-time WEC cover identity. Nonetheless, operations are efficient and effective given the current personnel situation. There is a small unit of guerrilla forces trained, active and on-call at all times. There is also a large and extremely efficient intelligence network. (There is presently, however, a significant flaw in the Lunar Resistance intelligence operation, in that the absence of secure communications between earth and the moon require that intelligence reports either be smuggled to Central by hand, or encrypted and sent over public information networks. For the moment, there seems to be no obvious solution to this problem.) Immediate goals for the Lunar Resistance cell, in addition to general readiness and crisis management, include enhanced recruiting with an eye to augmenting available guerrilla forces, and cultivation of deep sleeper operatives in the LMC leadership hierarchy. Logistics are, for the moment, not a problem, as sufficient stockpiles of munitions and provisions exist to support an operation up to five times the current force, for a full year. |
