Ianto's Journey, Part V, Chapter 82- Accusations

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IANTO'S JOURNEY, PART V- REDEMPTION
TITLE:   Chapter 82- Accusations
AUTHOR: Aviv_b
RATING: Chapter 82- G/PG
CHARACTERS::  Ianto, Mickey
DISCLAIMER:  Not mine; Aunty B's and RTD's
WORDS: ~ 1460
SUMMARY:  Ianto and Mickey prepare for Torchwood's defense before the UN Security Council

Title is from: When one person makes an accusation, check to be sure he himself is not the guilty one. Sometimes it is those whose case is weak who make the most clamour. Piers Anthony

Ianto's Journey begins here: http://aviv-b.livejournal.com/1972.html
All Chapter are linked.

A/N:  I realized some casualty figures used in previous chapters didn't make sense (too few or too many given strategic importance and population). So my OCD kicked in and I spent some time allocating the 20 million casualties amongst the nations of the world. I also went back and adjusted the numbers in two previous chapters so there wouldn't be any conflicts. Populations estimates are my own projections for 2039. And yeah, I've included the chart as an addendum for those of you who might be interested.

Finally, my apologies to the French. I had to pick an industrialized nation to be unprepared and you just got lucky. It really could happen to any nation that put politics first (and you have noted hopefully, that I haven't given the US a free pass here either). Thank goodness we had a women president in 2039 with some balls!

***

Ianto stormed into Jack’s office first thing the next morning. Mickey looked up the computer on Jack’s desk and sighed.

“So you’ve heard. Can you believe the nerve of those do-nothings over at the UN? Can you fill me in on what really happened; I may not have always gotten on famously with Jack but even I know he would never do anything that was contrary to the Earth’s interests.”

It took some time for Ianto to explain the intricacies of the past two years of negotiations. He finally reached the crux of the problem.

‘Too many at the UN either didn’t believe that there were aliens, or believed that since Torchwood was under charter by the British Crown, that it was some ploy to manipulate other countries into actions that would be advantageous to the United Kingdom. Of course they could never articulate what those alleged advantages were, but despite all the information they had and the new rifts developing around the world, the concept of an actual alien invasion was too much to accept.’

“So they lost nine months bickering about what role the UN should play, how and what to tell the Earth’s population about the invasion, how resources would be allocated and all the rest,” Mickey surmised. “But then how was the planet so well prepared?”

‘Twenty million lives lost would not be considered well prepared in a lot of people’s views, but you saw the casualty estimates of at least one hundred million lives if no preparations were made. After about three months of infighting, Jack and the head of UNIT approached heads of states privately in order to get production of the Tasers and other defensive equipment started. Not surprisingly, the biggest help came from China and India. They have the manufacturing capacity and let’s not kid ourselves, having weapons ready to help other countries wasn’t going to hurt their standing worldwide.’

“I’m surprised that the Americans and Western European countries didn’t help more.”

‘That’s the problem with politics. No one in power in those nations wanted to take the chance of going behind their parliaments’ backs. If they got caught, they’d be voted out, or the government would fall which would spell political disaster for the leaders. The non-democratically run countries generally had a much easier time commandeering production, maintaining secrecy and reaching a high level of readiness.’

“And yet China still took a terrible hit. Over three and a half million casualties mostly in the industrial cities. I’m amazed that their citizens stayed at the factories to keep production going until they were destroyed. And while India did evacuate their major industrial locations, they never hesitated to take Torchwood’s warnings seriously.”

‘For China, even with greater personal freedoms, the good of the nation over the good of the individual is something that’s ingrained in their populace from practically the time they are born,’  Ianto explained.

‘India was a miracle. Someone in the Indian parliament said that given the country’s familiarity with the fantastic gods and demons from Hindu mythology, invaders from outer space didn’t seem all that outlandish. So they accepted the evidence and immediately took steps toward readiness. ’

“They lost, was it almost three million people?”

Ianto nodded.

“I spoke to General McGregor at UNIT this morning and we can’t rely on any real support from them. Since they aren’t being implicated, they are taking a position of neutrality on the charges being levied against Torchwood. I think that eventually they will get criticism as well and may have to stand up, but right now they aren’t willing to get involved in political squabbles. So what do we do, Ianto? I agree that ideally we should wait for Jack to return, but we don’t know when that will be. The longer this story is out there without a response, the worse its going to look for Torchwood and Captain Jack.”

They decided that they would wait a while longer before issuing a response and proceeded to gather information on the various countries on the Security Council.

The five permanent members of the council had suffered terrible casualties, but the percentage of the population killed varied quite a bit between nations. The United States had conspicuously low casualties, but that was due to the President circumventing the Congress and authorizing the Pentagon to make preparations necessary to the defense of the United States. She was in the last two years of her eight year Presidency and believed that her legacy depended on a successful defense for the United States.  If she was duped, then she’d be remembered as a fool, but if she ignored the warnings and the attack materialized, she would be remembered as perhaps the worst president in history.

Russia and France had higher than expected casualties. Russia was well prepared, but Torchwood, UNIT and the UN had all underestimated the ferocity of the Toclafane attack. No one could figure out why Russia was so heavily targeted, but speculation centered on the almost inhuman suffering that Russian troops had withstood during the German invasion during WWII, and whether the Toclafane had overcompensated in order to assure victory.

France simply wasn’t prepared. Their President and UN representatives had scoffed at the idea of an alien invasion and only got serious about six months prior to the attack. And when the public announcement of the impending attack was made, their parliament refused to cooperate with approving defense plans.

Of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council only France supported the resolution calling for an investigation of Torchwood and its leader Jack Harkness.

Of the ten non-permanent members, six countries, Saudi Arabia, Eritrea, Pakistan, Bolivia, Nigeria and Germany supported the resolution while the other four, Peru, Italy, India and Jordon did not. Nigeria went so far as to demand that Director Harkness be referred to the International Criminal court for prosecution for genocide.

The other four permanent members of Security Council declined to veto the resolution as they felt that Torchwood would be able to defend themselves against such charges and knew that most of the countries voting for the resolution were doing so to deflect blame from their own governments. Better to let the truth come out they reckoned, than to allow blame and suspicion to linger.

For the next month, Mickey and Ianto worked tirelessly trying to settle the matter quietly. While they had records of all their meetings with the Security Council the absence of Jack Harkness would invariably lead to questions that only he could answer. Ianto put aside his personal anger and did his best to persuade members of the Security Council that a public hearing on the matter was not in their best interests. Unfortunately, the politicians of the lead countries had put Torchwood forward as the cause of all their nations’ failings and they couldn’t back down even in the face of evidence to the contrary.

“But we have the French Ambassador to the UN on record mocking the whole idea of an alien attack. Weren’t his exact words, ‘the English want us to waste our energy and capital on a useless exercise predicated on little green men from Mars showing up in a few years.’ And the Indonesian government along with others refused to even discuss mounting a defense. How can he deny that this happened?”

‘Perhaps they don’t remember or they’ll deny what was said and accuse us of manipulating the recordings. We’ve given them every chance to resolve this without humiliating them, but now I don’t think we have any other choice. And I hate to admit it; I’m rather looking forward to taking some of these arrogant gits down a couple of pegs. There are going to be some very embarrassed UN and government officials by the time this was all over.’

Finally, six weeks after the Toclafane were defeated; a public hearing concerning Torchwood’s culpability was scheduled. The Torchwood team was assembled once again in the main auditorium in London with hookups to the UN and governments around the world. To the chagrin of many governments, Torchwood would be providing live coverage via satellite and on the Internet. With a worldwide audience expected to be in the hundreds of millions both sides were well prepared for the showdown.

‘If only Jack were here,’ Ianto sighed as he reviewed his testimony one last time. ‘We can easily defend Torchwood’s actions leading up to the invasion, but we having nothing on the actions or whereabouts of Captain Jack. And without him, they will still be able to distract people from the truth. I can’t wait to see the conspiracy theories that are launched after today’s meetings.’

Ianto checked his watch and saw it was almost 9:00 hours. ‘It’s show time,’ he thought as he left his office and began the short walk over to the auditorium.

 Addendum for Chapter 82 is here:http://aviv-b.livejournal.com/48371.html 

 Chapter 83 is here:  http://aviv-b.livejournal.com/48428.html

 

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Yes - cause it wouldn't be fun otherwise!