The Last President

^{ABOUT THE SAME TIME. RUINS OF LAFAYETTE. 12:15 PM EASTERN TIME. TUESDAY, MAY 5, 2026.}

“She’s dead,” Chris said, flatly. “And the plane is already burned beyond repair. Lieutenant Marprelate, there is no reason—”

“I’m in command here,” Marprelate said. His voice was terrifyingly calm and reasonable. “American forces depend on air power. We can’t lose air superiority.”

Jenny looked at the flame towering twenty feet over the heads of the Daybreaker mob, and at Marprelate’s little band of thirty volunteers. She thought, Half of them look like psychos trying to die, and probably are, and the other half look too scared to back out, and I know they are. Forcing her voice to stay level, low, and calm, she tried once more.

“We don’t have air power,” she said. “We used to have an airplane and a pilot. They’re both gone. You’ll be taking these men into a pointless—”

“Return to headquarters and have a situation report waiting for me when we return. And we will return, with the airfield secured. Go now. If you’re part of this force, that’s an order, and if you’re not, I don’t want to waste time arresting you, but I will, and chain you too.”

Jenny and Chris caught each other’s eyes, and walked away.

Chris said, “Those men could stop the whole thing, just say they don’t volunteer after all, anymore, because it’s fucking crazy. But they’re going right out there with him to die. What makes anyone do that?”

“Let’s run. If we go up on the roof we can at least get a good view of what happens and I think we’ll need to see.” She sprinted and Chris chugged and puffed after her. Twenty years and sixty pounds was a big difference. He didn’t catch up until he was following her up the ladder from the second floor through the roof access.

Once he stood beside her on the flat roof, she said, quietly, “Jeff said once that some men want to die with honor, and other men will die just to be around them. He was big on honor. Probably, so are these guys. I just wish Marprelate was—”

Chris said, “Here they go.”

The platoon waited behind three iron-pipe cannon, which sat behind an old flatbed trailer covered on its far side by a chain-link and barbed-wire gate. At Marprelate’s whistle, men dragged the gate aside.

Daybreakers rushed the emerging gap; the iron pipes erupted in a point-blank volley of “Edison shot”—electrical parts from hardware store bins, crushed into juice cans with a perchlorate mix, so that the rotted plastic exploded and burned and the copper and aluminum fragments formed shrapnel. The smoke blew off to reveal ground covered with blood and shattered bodies, almost a third of the way to the downed plane.

Marprelate’s scant platoon of volunteers jogged forward, slipping on patches of blood. A few downed Daybreakers were still reaching upward with knives and hatchets; the soldiers clubbed them with rifle butts.

As they reached the tip of that little peninsula of murder sticking into the tribal sea, Marprelate barked orders. Because the volunteers were drawn from a dozen different units and had never worked together, their execution of Street Firing was ragged and slow, but they did put out three volleys, pushing the enemy farther back.

“Reload.” Sergeant Patel, on Jenny’s other side, spoke it like a prayer. Chris and Jenny turned.

“Marprelate sent me here to guard you because I tried to talk him out of it too.” His gaze remained on Marprelate’s men, who had drawn hatchets and were charging into the panicked tribals in front of them. “I wish they had reloaded. The enemy was hesitating. Newberrys load quick, wouldn’t’ve taken more than a couple seconds and they might not get—aw, shit.”

Tribals were pouring into the space behind Marprelate’s party. Patel shook his head. “It’s gonna be all hatchets and bayonets from now on. And everybody along the line back here’s gonna have to shoot too low to do any good, for fear of hitting them.”

All around the little surrounded party, Daybreaker spirit sticks rose high, rattles and whistles sounded, and the crowd pulsed like an amoeba engulfing food. Army snipers from building roofs and windows brought down spirit-stick bearers and silenced booming war-drums, but there were more every second.

Then dozens of spirit sticks rose all at once, drums pounded to a crescendo, and the knot of tribals yanked closed around the surrounded soldiers.

Their first volley was a single disciplined roar, and the attackers staggered back. But instead of trying to break through back to the gate, Marprelate’s men surged a couple of yards closer to the burning plane.

Again the sticks rose, the drums thundered, and the tribals leapt in. This time the answering volley was feeble and scattered, and did not even slow the tribals closing around them under the big puffs of blue-black smoke. A few more shots cracked like the last popcorn in a kettle. Hatchets, pikes, and poleaxes rose above the crowd and plunged into the center, too fast to follow.

The tribals ululated exultantly, then fled back toward the still-blazing plane. On the suddenly bare, crumbling pavement, Marprelate’s force was now a pile of still bodies at the center of a ring of tribal dead and wounded. A lone young man stood holding Marprelate’s severed head aloft, upside down by the beard, singing “Give Gaia Her Rights.” Then he fell backwards, hit by a sniper, and Marprelate’s head bounced a few feet from him on the pavement.

But it was mere revenge; as the crew slid the gate closed, the war-drums were already thundering again.

Chris turned to Jenny. “Your army now, General.”

“I told you, I am not—”

Very softly, Patel said, “Don’t let them hear you.”

She turned to follow his gaze; a little knot of lieutenants and sergeants, the unit commanders she had appointed, were emerging from the opened skylight onto the roof, looking like ashamed children expecting to be spanked. Shoulders drooped, weapons dangled in loose grips, and sooty cheeks had been tracked by tears like snails.

Looking down, Chris murmured, “Remember, two years ago, most of these guys weren’t ready to manage a shift at McDonald’s. Some of them just made sergeant a month ago. Now they’re commanding battalions.”

She forced herself to look back at the approaching men and women with a level, expressionless gaze. I will pretend that I am reading an order to them very clearly, an order from Jeff, the one he’d give if he could, and I see it in my mind’s eye. Aaaand… I read it, aaaand I say…

“Thank you for coming. We don’t have much time. When I send you back to your units, if you’re up on the line, give the bastards three good volleys if they’re close, or some sustained sniping if they’re farther back. We’re still far ahead on firepower and both your men and the tribals need reminding.

“Then keep the enemy well back for the next hour.” To her surprise, her voice stayed even and controlled. “As I said before, don’t spare the shot. Keep sending runners for ammunition till you are up to full stock.”

“If your unit is not on the line, then appoint company and platoon commanders as you need to, let them pick their XOs, and get ready to go up on the line. Clean and maintain all weapons. Distribute ammunition, food, and water. Make them eat a meal. Be ready to move up to the line and take over from a unit there within an hour and a half. Units on the line, same drill as soon as you’re relieved.” Jenny felt as if the person Jeff had always wanted to be had taken over her spirit.

“Now, before you go, we’re going to figure out who’s going where. Walk with me around the roof. This is my XO, Sergeant-now-brevet-Major Patel, and most of you know Chris, my intelligence staff. Chris, get out the notepad.”

In a quick circuit of the roof, she assigned everyone to advance or retreat to straighten and contract the line, pressuring them to volunteer and to keep their mouths shut about difficulties or objections.

Back at the access ladder, Jenny halted them all with a glare. “What kind of example are you setting your men? Stand up straight, hold those weapons like they’re yours, and when you give orders make them sound like orders. Dismissed!”

The men and women climbing back down through the skylight were still frightened, worried, unsure, even traumatized, but they moved like people who intended to do their duty.

“You were saying, General?” Chris said, smiling slightly.

“You know, right now they’d hang any man I told them to. What if I turned out not to have a sense of humor?” She saw the speculation in his eyes that she might mean it, and scolded herself for enjoying it.

^{9 HOURS LATER. RUINS OF LAFAYETTE. 10 PM EASTERN TIME. TUESDAY, MAY 5, 2026.}

“We’re six hours into blackout, ma’am.” Adele was a heavyset young woman who had probably been ignored by everyone back before because she was quiet, but there was no problem with her assertiveness now. “If I set up a radio we’re risking destroying irreplaceable parts at best, and a fire or an explosion at worst, and anyway chances are no one is on the air to hear us right now. Plus all the parts will have been out of sealed containers and the nanospawn’ll start up on them. I’ll do it if you order me but you’re going to have to order me.”

Jenny nodded. “Then I’m ordering it. We’ll get you a couple more oil lamps so you have light to work by.”

“Don’t need the lamps. They’d just be one more thing to burn if the radio blows up. Just give me a clear table and have someone ready to run the antenna out.” Adele hoisted the metal file box onto the table and began unpacking parts. From the corner, Chris said, “I’ll have the encryption all rechecked in a couple more minutes.”

Jenny nodded. “Great, and thanks, both of you. And remember, some folks on the west and south sides of the line did think there was a flash in the sky late this afternoon. Good chance the moon bomb already went off, probably over Pueblo. We weren’t monitoring for an all clear at the time.”

“We were a little busy,” Chris muttered. The tribals, having exhausted the possibilities of their crude firearms once the army had re-discovered taking cover, had fallen back on massed charges. It was no more effective than it had been before, but it still had to be coped with and it was still nerve-wracking. For the last hour things had been quiet, and after a quick meeting to assign responsibilities for the night, they were catching up on everything that went into running an army under siege, and preparing a breakout for the next day.

Chris reminded himself that he was alive, behind the lines, and might even get some food and sleep soon. And thank god or some such person, Jenny banished Reverend Daddy to the supply office, where he’s useful, which means I didn’t have to add murder of clergy to my sins. I don’t think he has any idea how much she’s not his little girl anymore. That’s going to be—

“Hey, can I get a message to Heather O’Grainne into that queue?” Larry Mensche said from the door. “I want to tell her I quit.”

Chris looked up in shock. “You’re alive.”

A minute later the two old friends were bear-hugging, pounding each other’s backs, and Jenny was explaining to Adele, “It’s a beefy old guy thing, I think.” Behind Larry’s back, Chris shot her the finger.

Larry asked, “Has it been bad in here?”

Chris nodded. “Yeah. Out there?”

“Bad too. Really it’s a good thing I can’t just teleport to Pueblo and collect a pension because I’d do it in a heartbeat, or worse yet I’d think about it, not do it, and curse myself for being an idiot. Anyway, I’m here. Have any other scouts made it in?”

“They have now,” Freddie Pranger said. He appeared to be unhurt but looked exhausted; the two young men following him were Roger Jackson, who was hobbling on crutches with a splinted leg, and a man with strange facial tattoos and a bandage wrapped around his head, wearing the grimy and bloody remains of a TexIC uniform, who introduced himself as Dave McWaine. “Got two that should see a doctor soon, and with stories to tell, so if it’s okay, Larry, I’d like these guys to report first.”

Patel leaned in through the door. “Ma’am, I’ve got medics for these men and food for everyone on the way; I’m having the cooks make up some of the emergency coffee because I think you’ll be up for the night.”

Adele looked up from the radio setup and said, “Ma’am, there was an EMP strike over Pueblo this afternoon, so they’re broadcasting an all clear. We can send out reports as you like, at least till the nanos eat the radio.”

Jenny looked around the room, stretched, and yawned. “Gawww,” she groaned. “All right, thank you, Major Patel, perfect on everything. Make sure there’s a cup for the radio operator.” She turned back to the scouts. “You’ve all heard that General Grayson and the senior leadership were assassinated, and I’m commanding because I’m the one who will?”

They nodded.

“All right. Chris, that message did include a request for a real general and some actual officers ASAP, right?”

“Oh yeah.”

“All right, then.” She shook her head and rolled her neck; her hair had long since escaped from its ties. Chris couldn’t help noticing, in the yellow flicker of the oil lamps, that she was still strikingly beautiful despite her evident exhaustion, and a glance around the room showed that even Roger, broken leg and all, seemed to take an interest. God, if I get the chance to write that next book, it’ll make a great scene but no one will believe it; some future historian will say that men could not notice a thing like that at a time like this. Some future historian who has never seen Jenny or is not a straight man, anyway.

Jenny seemed to summon full alertness by an act of will and said, “Let’s hear everyone’s reports, starting with—Roger, correct?—since I want him to get to the medics quick. I’m just glad to see we have some scouts left. What did you see and what’s out there?”

Taking turns, the four scouts told a quick, brutal version of the last stands of the TexICs and the President’s Own Rangers. Larry Mensche confirmed that it had been he who had fired the shots that alerted the camp; while over on the western bank he had seen most of the gigantic tribal horde pass down the Wabash in rafts and canoes, or moving at a quick march along the river road. The tribal force had escaped them and they had no way of catching up.

On their way in, Freddie, Roger, and Dave had seen all the bridges below the narrow, old one at Prophetstown, knocked down; they had actually witnessed the tribals drag rafts loaded with fifty-five-gallon drums against the pillars of the US-231 bridge and then detonate the rafts, dumping the bridge into the river.

“So if we wanted to cross the river and catch’em, and we had the rested men to do it,” Freddie said, “we’d have to go about ten miles the wrong way up to Prophetstown, go over a truss bridge there that’s only two lanes, and then the way the river arcs, we’d have another twelve miles or so to get to a point opposite us here. More than a day’s march just to be at a point where they’ve already passed. Makes me sick to think about it but there ain’t a thing we can do.”

Jenny sighed. “How did you get back to this bank, Larry?”

“I stole one of their canoes, and they had so much traffic on the river right then I’m not sure they even noticed. I probably just looked like another cruddy, worn-out old guy with some mission for Mother Gaia. Paddled into a corner where a lot of them were loading into canoes, said, ‘Here’s another one,’ and took off before they looked too close; walked like I had someplace to be through their camp, yelled ‘On my way!’ at the edge and charged down into the brush, sneaked this way. They were pretty busy; looks like they loaded twenty-two to twenty-five thousand tribals onto rafts and canoes for the next leg down the Wabash. Closer in than I landed, they’ve got maybe three thousand still holding south and east of here, to keep us from pursuing them. Had to come around them, which took a while longer.”

Jenny leaned across the map and said, “On those rafts and canoes, it’s not likely they’ll make it through a wrecked dam or bridge. So if they’re going to keep wrecking bridges to keep us trapped on this side, they’ll have to take their whole force under each bridge first, before they blow it. And the ones still fighting us probably aren’t being expended either; Lord Robert doesn’t think of all human death as progress the way mainstream Daybreak does. So there should be a bridge across the Wabash open somewhere not far downstream.” She called softly, “Patel.”

He came in at once, and she said, “Your opinion. Will the troops do something really hard if I ask them?”

“Depends on what you mean by hard, and how you ask, ma’am, I think.”

“Well, here’s what we need to do. We’re not under siege anymore; they’ve lifted the forces east and north of us. I think they’re trying to trick us into going twenty miles out of our way to use a bridge up that way, and make it hopeless for us to catch them. So they’ll be very encouraged if their scouts see our forces moving out on the east side of camp. But what I want is the fastest-moving forces we can get to go way out around and then attack them from the south side, along the river to pin them against the main force. If our troops have the energy, we might bag that whole Daybreaker force. Then after that—”

“After that, ma’am? They’re already exhausted.”

“—after that, as I was saying, we all head downriver as fast as we can to the first open bridge, and start chasing the enemy main force. Don’t tell me whether our troops will be willing to try—leave that up to me. Just tell me, physically, if they try, can they do it?”

“I think so, ma’am. They had more than a night’s sleep yesterday. They’ve fought all day today but once you started the rotation they’ve all had some rest, most have had a hot meal. But you have no officers left to speak of, these are mostly militia or not much better, and—”

“But they could do it.”

“They could.”

“Get me battalion and independent company commanders in here, and anyone we have left at regimental level. Half an hour. And kick a medic for me and make sure someone puts Roger into a bed and takes a look at his leg.”

“Right away.” Patel vanished through the door again.

“All right. Freddie, Larry, Dave, find somewhere to finish your meals, and sack out someplace Patel can find you. You’re all the functioning scouts I have left and there’s going to be work soon. Adele, any word back from the transmissions?”

“Just a QSL from Pueblo and one from Pale Bluff. So they know what you told them.”

“Well, then you might as well take down the station and wipe it and box it for the night, and after that you’re dismissed but make sure the messenger pool knows where to find you. Thanks for your help. Chris, I need you to stick around and let’s—finally.”

Two men carrying a stretcher had arrived, and Roger fell asleep literally as they picked him up; the other three scouts followed along to the infirmary, leaving Jenny and Chris alone.

She turned to him and visibly forced a smile. “Well, chief of intel and staff, what do you think?” Her face hung limp and enervated; she must have seen his worry because there was a brief flicker of her beauty-pageant dazzle when she added, “Don’t worry, I’ll be all sparkly and vivacious for the captains in a few minutes, but right now, with you, I figure I can rest my face a little.”

“You’re pretty amazing,” he said. “All right, my take on things, bwana-boss-milady, is that you did it. The only reason the tribals left a bridge standing, just barely in reach, was to sucker us into losing more time by going around the back way. They’re moving as fast as they can, and the target has to be Pale Bluff.”

“Checking our thinking, why Pale Bluff? Why not go all the way down the Wabash, land on the south bank of the Ohio someplace, and put themselves totally out of reach?”

“Because Lord Robert is smart but he’s not cold-blooded. He hates Pale Bluff as a symbol; it’s the closest town that’s still really part of the old order. And if he can shut down the airfield there, and the railroad close to it, that breaks the quickest, easiest links between Tempers and Provis, his two biggest enemies.

“But what worries me more is that now that he’s gotten past the army with a horde that size, I doubt anything can stop them before Pueblo. They’re going to burn out a big part of the functioning middle of the country and I don’t see what we can do about it. Do you see any way we can catch them now?”

She shook her head. “Not really. But I think we have to try, at least till we’re sure we can’t. Lord Robert and his mob are only mortal, too, and they could run into so many kinds of trouble with what they’re trying to pull off. So in case they do, I want to be right there on their back to pull them down right away. So I want to keep up the pursuit, and preserve the possibility of our having some dumb luck.” She shook her head and clicked her tongue.

“What?” Chris asked. “You just had a thought.”

“I sure did. I just thought can my army do this? I hate how much I’m getting to understand poor old Jeff.”

Chris Manckiewicz had spent a lifetime doing interviews, and he’d mastered the art of the quizzical look that calls forth more words long ago. Feeling like a little bit of a shit for taking advantage of her vulnerability—she looked so tired—he gave her the quizzical look, and waited.

After a moment she looked away, and stammered, “We quarreled very badly just before he was assassinated, and somehow I keep remembering I’m angry and forgetting he’s dead. Uh, I hope that’s off the record.”

“You know as well as I do—you’re one of my best writers, whenever you have time for it—that the Pueblo Post-Times is dedicated to printing the legend always, and the truth when it’s convenient.”

“You’re a cynical guy, Mister Manckiewicz. I take it that means that my marital problems—”

“Are your own business. As for General Grayson, de mortuis nil nisi bonum. If you haven’t figured it out yet, he may have been a hard guy to get along with, and we’ll miss some of his talents, but he might be even better as a legend.”

“He was still my husband.”

“I’m sorry, it’s much too soon. I spoke thoughtlessly.”

“Don’t beat yourself up. You’re right, he wasn’t an easy man to like, not even—well, especially not—as his wife. It’s just, right now when I’m scared stiff, I can’t help missing him; he was the only person in the world, including me, ever to have complete confidence in me.”

“There’s at least one more now, because I do. And when I write it up the way I intend to, the rest of the country will too. By the time it’s officially history, everyone will understand that General Grayson was the brightest hope we had, but because his warrior widow rose to the occasion and played the part of the American Joan of Arc—”

“Oh, geahhh, yuck.”

“By the time history is written, I hope none of us will recognize ourselves.”

^{THE NEXT DAY. WHITEFISH, MONTANA. 2:00 PM MOUNTAIN TIME. WEDNESDAY, MAY 6, 2026.}

The town square of Whitefish hadn’t changed much for almost a hundred years, back before. Two buildings on its perimeter had burned in the last year, victims of the difficulty of fighting fires by nineteenth-century methods; because knocking their charred remains down was not a priority, the blackened timbers still framed the holes in the facade of the town. For similar reasons, the surrounding streets were still lined with abandoned, decaying cars, slowly being picked apart for salvage. But most of the chimneys in town sputtered little gasps of smoke into the brisk spring breeze, staining the bright blue sky, and the snow still clinging in the shadows was trampled and dirty from human traffic. The little town smelled of cold damp, woodsmoke, and outhouses, but it was still recognizably civilized.

Looking at it from the President’s Residence car of “Amtrak One,” Allie said, “Such a pretty little town. I don’t know if I’m more relieved that it’s in such good shape, or more heartbroken that it’s in such bad shape.”

“Eventually we’ll put it back into good shape, and you’ll just be saying, ‘What a pretty little town,’ like people did back before,” Graham said. “For right now, though, it’s not what it looks like, it’s what it is. An intact town that’s winnable in the fall election, but not in the bag. And they have a newspaper, and regular radio contact with the outside world.”

“I still… well, I guess it goes back to your grad seminar, doesn’t it? I’ll never understand why we don’t just have the smart people figure out the right answer, and give it to everyone else, and they just do it.”

“The technical term is ‘democracy,’ Allie.”

“Yeah, I know.” She turned to rest a shoulder on his, and run a hand down his arm. “I’ve enjoyed this express train ride so much. Just you and me in the car for a whole day, nothing to do but rest and eat and talk. And the ride from Olympia to here… well, it’s still a beautiful country, isn’t it? Mountains and rivers and canyons, and pretty little towns like this—behind fortified walls, and with tribals dangling from gallows by the gates…”

“You have a knack for the unpleasant,” he said, stroking her hair.

“Yeah. Maybe losing my whole family, maybe having Daybreak take my mind for a while, whatever, I’m not the sunshine girl I was before.” But her mouth twitched in a little smile. “You mean you don’t think the gallows, and the palisades, are part of the beauty?”

“I’m a sentimental old poop, as you never tire of reminding me, sweetheart. I remember when we Americans did our killing overseas and out of sight except for what was on screens. Anyway, here we are, and—”

A guard stuck his head in and said, “Showtime in two, Mister President.”

“Thanks,” Weisbrod said. “All right. Quick review. Goals here: electoral, get stories into news media about what nice reasonable answers I give to people who don’t agree with me, so that we get some favorable coverage in the Temper states, but we still reassure all our Provi supporters that I haven’t sold the side out. Presidential, firm up this area’s commitment to staying in the state of Montana and Montana’s commitment to the Union, because there’s a growing independence movement and a growing federate-with-Alberta movement and we don’t want either of them to grow any bigger. What am I forgetting?”

She glanced down at her pad. “National security goal. Firm up the commitment to keep them involved in suppressing the tribals. The Whitefish city government has been conducting covert talks with Daybreakers about a separate peace. There’s considerable support in the town for that and local merchants are almost openly trading with tribals. You need to tell them to cut that crap right away, as a last warning before we send some muscle out here to make them cut it. You’ll be doing the nice-doggie part of the program, you might say, because I don’t quite have the rock picked up yet.” She held her breath a moment as she squeezed his hand, afraid he’d reopen the genocide argument right now, while there wasn’t time, or insist on some unacceptable condition at the last moment.

But he nodded. “Slipped my mind. Three sets of goals for 40 towns on this trip is 120 sets of goals. That’s a lot for a guy to remember when he’s at an age where a more common goal used to be getting through a day without losing my glasses.”

Recognizing her cue, she kissed him passionately and said, “You’re still in shape to seduce a former student.”

“Even if it’s a grad student from a quarter century—”

“Poo. The student/seducee rules it’s a score and you’re a stud. Now, go out there and—”

The door opened again, and Weisbrod said, “Just coming,” but the guard said, “Uh, no, sir, sorry, but there’s an urgent radiogram that was waiting for you here in town. The mayor’s already told the crowd that you’ll be delayed at least twenty minutes.” He held out three sheets of paper. “You’d better read this right away.”

Graham Weisbrod stood up like a much younger man and took the pages. The guard ducked back through the door as if he had seen a bomb with the fuse burning down. Weisbrod glanced at the triple line of decoded message; his eyes widened and the paper crumpled and bent as his grip tightened. Allie rose to stand beside him, reading over his shoulder.

“Well,” Weisbrod said, “shit.”

“Yeah. Are we going—”

He grabbed up a pencil stub, turned the radiogram over, and scrawled a few words.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Getting ready to break the news to them.”

“You’re supposed to just give a quick speech, do a q&a, and get on down the line, Graham, chances are no one will have heard before you’re done and out of town, and we’ll have a lot more time to think—”

“So, what’s to think about? There is terrible news. As a nation we have to face up to it and deal with the consequences. We don’t know much yet so we can’t say exactly what we’re going to do. We’ll come through this and we’re strong and brave and smart enough to handle it. That’s all there is to say, Allie, so I’m trying to find a dignified, respectful way to say it.”

“But if we can work on it on the train on the way down to Bigfork—”

“It’ll be the same simple problem, and we’ll just over-think it. Is there anything to add? As far as you can tell, did I just leave anything out of the analysis?”

Reluctantly she shook her head; he bent to his work with the pencil, muttering as he scrawled, beating cadences with his free hand, satisfied in a few minutes. “Make sure you get this paper back from me. We want to give the local paper a scoop, and breaking the exact text should do it. All right, let’s go.”

It was clear that the crowd around the platform had not heard the bad news, because they were bouncing up and down, chanting and cheering, and when Weisbrod walked onto the platform there was a great thunder of applause. He waved; Allie remembered that big, infectious Graham-grin, profiled against the distant forested and snowy peaks, for the rest of her life.

Clearly some of the officials had heard the news, because they tried to huddle around Weisbrod as if to shield him, and buzzed with obvious advice delivered fast and low. Weisbrod shrugged them off like an ugly sweater, and said, “I’ve worked out what I’ll say already.” He walked to the edge of the platform.

Allie recognized the format of Graham’s speech from her PR classes, ages ago. First he asked the crowd for silence because he had bad news, and waited for a wave of shushing and silencing to run through them. Then, simply, in the plainest of plain sentences, he told them as much as he knew. As they collapsed into themselves, absorbing the blow, he said, “This is a terrible blow to all of us, to the Provisional Constitutional Government, to the United States and the people of Earth and to generations not yet born. And we have not seen the last of it, much as I wish I could say we had. The enemy have the advantage, and they are going to press it just as hard as they can, and so we can expect more terrible blows will fall before we are able to recover.

“Nonetheless, the United States and civilization will survive. Nonetheless, ultimately this war will be won. Even if we are not the ones to win it, nonetheless our children or our grandchildren will live in a world that has returned to the upward path, and their children will walk and advance along it, not only all the way back to the level where we stood so recently, but far beyond where anyone has ever been. We begin their long march back to civilization as we knew it, and beyond to something better, at this moment—nonetheless.

“I’m not much of a praying man; as most of you know, I’m a non-observant Jew, which means I only talk to God maybe three times an hour, at most, but I’d like us all to take a moment to pray together, silently, for our country, and our people, for all of our leaders, and for our planet and all its people.”

When he had allowed less than a minute to pass, he said, “All right, I was planning to speak briefly and then you would ask me questions. I’ve already spoken briefly. Please pardon that I probably don’t know any more than you do about what’s going to be foremost in all our minds. But if you still have questions about anything else, let’s go to those.”

Hands near the platform waved, and Graham chose one.

The man was small and very thin, with whiskers most of the way down his chest, and he said, “I just wanted to point out that sad as all this is for Grayson and all his men, the truth is, we were invading their territory. In fact for three months the so-called civilized people have been invading tribal lands and slaughtering as many as we can, every chance we get. What’s wrong with living in peace? It’s a new world now, maybe not a shiny one, but new. Why not just make peace?”

Graham Weisbrod couldn’t get an answer out because of all the shouting. People were grabbing the man as he shouted, “It’s a question, it’s just a question, I only want to know—”

Allie felt more than saw something move in the front row, and then a man in a long dark coat leapt between two of the guards, onto the platform. She had an instant to realize she recognized the face, another to know it was Darcage, but no time at all to scream or raise a hand before Darcage lunged between the mayor and a councilman, shoving them against the guards on either side, and threw his arms around Graham.

She saw her husband jerk back, but his face was away from her. Darcage’s gaze seemed to pass through her and go a million miles farther into space; there was no sign of recognition. His hands clenched together around Graham’s middle, tightening and pulling the two men close together.

She felt her feet try to fling her forward, when—

A terrible roar.

On her back on gravel. Everything hurt. People all around her. Shouting. Someone wanted a doctor. Someone wanted troops.

Someone always wanted something.

Her mouth wouldn’t work well enough to ask what had happened to Graham.

Dark and quiet. It felt like sinking into freezing cold ink. She could not swim back upward. She felt herself trying to come back, over and over, like sparks struck off flint in a cave, until there were no more sparks, just the attempt, and then not even the attempt.

^{3 HOURS LATER. PUEBLO. 6:30 PM MOUNTAIN TIME. WEDNESDAY, MAY 6, 2026.}

“Today’s situation report is… well, honestly,” James Hendrix said, “my main purpose today is to make sure you don’t all decide to just give up. We are in a very bad spot, but we may yet reach January 20 with the United States back in place and some hopes for another 250 years. The country has suffered terrible losses, and our side is in more danger than I could have imagined even three months ago, but we’re only beaten if we decide to be. So, per Heather’s request, I’m going to wade into the bad stuff right away, and then talk about what we’ve still got going and what our options are.”

They were in a conference room that had once been judge’s chambers in the Old Pueblo County courthouse. The late afternoon sun provided enough light through the north-facing windows so that the kerosene lanterns on the sideboards were unnecessary. James stood at the end of the long table; behind him there were two easels, one with maps and one with a newsprint pad, and a kerosene lamp on a stand for lighting, since they expected the meeting to run late.

To James’s right, Heather sat quietly, her attention seemingly on smoothing the covers around the sleeping Leo. James had asked her to be present for this meeting, but she had said it would be difficult enough even to be there. Graham Weisbrod had been her teacher, friend, and mentor for twenty-five years; the initial radiogram had included the detail that the explosion had cut him in half. Allie Sok Banh had been her rival and her dependable ally, her most-trusted buddy and her debating foil, for nearly as long; the radiogram had said that though she was alive, she had lost her left eye and hand for sure, with cracked ribs and broken pelvis, and a probable severe concussion with high risk of brain damage, adding that they urgently needed tetracycline from the new facility in Pueblo.

Graham was really as much family as Heather ever had, James thought, looking at her, and hated that he had even had to ask her to be present.

Lyndon Phat sat at the opposite end of the table, fingers resting and tented as if he couldn’t quite decide whether he was praying. He was gazing out the window right now; James wondered if he was thinking about the strange, sometimes horrible story of Jeffrey Grayson, wondering if he might have done any better or any worse, perhaps wondering if the deep cracks he had perceived in Grayson’s character had helped cause the debacle, or if Grayson had gone to his abrupt death without the fatal break. In any case, now no one will ever know.

Beside Phat, on the corner of the table, Quattro and Bambi leaned on each other, looking down at the notes Bambi was preparing to take. Bambi always takes so many notes, and more when she’s nervous. She says she needs something to do with her hands, and it’s a good habit anyway for someone who ever only really wanted to be a cop. Her free hand clenched on one of Quattro’s; he had both hands pulled against his chest as if cradling a kitten. Lot of pain there too.

All the aviators are such a close-knit community, James thought. And Nancy Teirson was popular, and the way she died is all of their nightmare.

About halfway along the table, her long, rawboned frame in the careless sprawl of a lifelong athlete, Leslie Antonowicz was the only person that James was sure was really listening. And not as a favor to me, either, he thought. As if she’d heard him, she smiled for an instant, just with her mouth. He hoped she was signaling Go on, we’ll get this, James, we’ll make it work.

Having finished his I am serious scan of the room with only that encouragement, he suppressed a sigh and launched into details. “Grayson had to strip out every still-functioning unit he could from the Temper states to mount his expedition. That’s not blame; he had to bet the works to win, but unfortunately, he didn’t win, so we lost most of the works.

“When I say ‘most of,’ that doesn’t mean we have nothing left or can’t recover. Red Dog’s really wired into the Army at Athens, and that picture is very reliable, even if it’s discouraging. What’s left down in the Temper corner of the country is mostly jumped-up militia trying to find their way, and some old and disabled officers and sergeants who are trying to turn it into an army. They’ll get there but not till late summer.

“It’s a little worse in the Northwest, to judge by Blue Heeler’s reports. The Provis didn’t start with much of an army, just the Rangers and a scattering of cadre and a half-dozen decent National Guard units. Most of those are smashed or stuck in that useless pocket on the Wabash, and the Rangers are gone. The Provis will take even longer to have any really professional, functional units available. The best news might be that our analytics team says there’s no risk of a Second Civil War in the next year.”

Leslie added, “I am that analytics team. Temper and Provi states don’t even touch each other at any point anymore, now that the New State of Wabash is lost. Neither of them has an army that will be ready to go on the road for at least a year, so even if we can’t bring them together, they can’t push themselves farther apart.”

Phat cleared his throat. “You’re overestimating the time to get both Temper and the Provi forces back on line. They won’t be as good as what we’ve lost but we’ll have a functioning army—well, two functioning armies—well before the end of the summer. First of all, a black-powder foot army just doesn’t take as long to train, and besides, as soon as we can get the Army of the Wabash onto trains and shipped back to their home territories, that’s a lot of men who have lived through combat. Give them a chance to win, and some time to train more militia from back home, and they’ll be there for you. Don’t sell those old sergeants in Temper territory short; there’s a reason why they used to say a good sergeant had to be trilingual, English, Spanish, and Alabaman.

“As for the Provi area, Norm McIntyre was a pencil pusher and a garrison commander all his life, and I wouldn’t want him running a war, but he had a knack for training and readiness, and especially without Allie Sok Banh and the Provi Congress riding him to do social work and provide special cushy slots for their relatives, and with a bunch of experienced troops to mix in, he’ll turn the new recruits into an army faster than anyone else could. In another hundred days, tops, maybe much sooner, we’ll have road-ready armies again. I’m more worried about Manbrookstat and Texas. Can we skip to that part of the report?”

That’s good. At least Phat’s attention is here in the room, James thought. “Governor Faaj stuck his neck out politically and twisted a lot of arms to loan us the TexICs, which the State of Texas was pretty proud of, and there’s one survivor. The name of the United States is below mud, and well down into shit, in Austin. The unofficial word from Governor Faaj is that he couldn’t hold the legislature back from declaring independence for more than about a week, and anyway… he doesn’t want to.” It made James sick to see the old general look so sad, but some perverse desire to share the full misery made him add, “He told me that Texas has had a good time in the USA, but Texas is Texas first, and the United States has nothing much to offer anymore.”

Phat nodded. “And Manbrookstat?”

“White Fang, our main agent there, has asked us to consider active measures.”

James saw Leslie tense, though she had known it was coming. Heather glanced up for a moment at him, a bland little smile that reminded him that he was the one who had insisted on bringing this up now. Quattro and Bambi sat back in their chairs. They’re trying to make themselves listen in a fair-minded way. But they also know that what we do to the Commandant of Manbrookstat today for good reason, can be done to the Duke and Duchess of California tomorrow for any old reason. That means it’s down to Phat—

“‘Active measures’ means what?” he asked. “I know we can’t just invade, we just finished working that out. So we’re talking coup? Revolution? What? And why now?”

“Coup or revolution,” James said. “Most likely both together.”

“And why now?”

“The Commandant has stayed very, very quiet. But White Fang is far enough up in the inner circle to hear about most of it, and for what he calls ‘personal reasons’ which we think means the Commandant is hot for his daughter, he’s been taken into confidence on some of it, so the source is about as good as you get. The Commandant is currently taking bids to sell off the depopulated land in the Dead Belt—and not just a little, I mean parcels as big as Maryland or New Hampshire.”

“Sell them off? To whom?”

“Argentine, Irish, Icelandic, or Portuguese settlers—those are just the ones we know have already put in bids. And that’s only problem one. Problem two, he’s the main organizer behind the Atlantic League, which would be a sovereign confederacy of city-states.”

“Sovereign as in ‘Manbrookstat becomes part of a foreign power’? No longer even nominally part of the USA?”

“You got it. Then there’s problem three. The Commandant is negotiating under the table with Lord Robert and some of the tribes to set up trading posts in the Lost Quarter.”

“Trading posts? But they don’t trade.”

“They didn’t. They also didn’t use guns till recently. Remember Lord Robert has created Daybreak 2.0, which is basically all the primitivism and savagery but with more in it for Lord Robert, and less random agonizing death for everyone else. A week before the battle, we intercepted the Commandant’s proposal to Lord Robert: tribals will loot metal and anything else useful from the Lost Quarter, in exchange for canned food and new clothes. How long before it’ll be guns, too?”

“And you think a revolution could happen about that?”

“Well, none of that would be popular if it were known. But what’s more likely to set off the revolution is that the only people who are better off because the Commandant is in power are maybe thirty families that can see a chance to be the aristocracy of a new nation, and maybe a thousand thugs and bullies lined up behind them. That’s it. Everyone else is living with isolation, regulation, forced labor, and obvious favoritism and exploitation. He’s pissed a lot of people off. So we topple, kidnap, or assassinate him, chase out his cohorts, and give Manbrookstat space to reorganize.”

“What will they do if we do that?”

“Well, White Fang seems to think there’s no way they’d elect the Commandant or any of his followers if you gave them a real choice. Maybe they’ll join the Tempers as the successor to New York State, maybe apply to be a New State under the Provis, maybe do both like those counties trying to form Pelissippi are doing.”

“But you’re thinking the coup first, to get him out of the way, and then hoping the revolution will endorse it retroactively?”

James shrugged. “A coup against an illegal government—”

“Wasn’t that what Norcross thought when he overthrew Shaunsen on a bunch of Constitutional tricks? And what Cam Nguyen-Peters thought when he locked up Weisbrod to keep him from becoming President? And what Grayson thought when he assassinated Cam? Only a little over a year ago we had four presidents in ninety days and barely averted Civil War Two. Supposedly May 1st was Open Signals Day, a new permanent national holiday to celebrate our avoiding the war, and how did we celebrate the first one? With nothing at all. Not even a proclamation from the Temper Board or the Provi President.” Phat was shaking his head slowly, his mind clearly made up. “Now, look, I will acknowledge that having spent most of the last year in a prison cell because I was inconvenient for purposes of changing presidents by coups, and starting civil wars, I am probably too personally sensitive. But all the same, here’s how I see it: an intelligence agency of extremely dubious Constitutionality, which let’s face it is what the RRC is, which got the blessings of two dubious successor governments, is now proposing to overthrow another dubious successor government. That’s a lot of dubious.

“If there was a revolution underway already in Manbrookstat, and we were just helping out, sure. Recognize the rebels as the government, send them guns, blockade any outside help the Commandant calls on. But Federal officials actually organizing a coup against a local government—no. No way. That’s what we’re trying to get away from, James. You can’t just suspend the rules whenever you feel like it, the whole point of Constitutional government is that you play by the rules when they’re inconvenient.”

Leslie had been listening intently. “What the Commandant is doing is treason by the standards of Article III, Section 3. If we could arrest him it would be a short trial and a quick hanging.”

“And if you could arrest him I would suggest you do it.” Phat shook his head sadly. “But you can’t send a force big enough to just barge in and lock them all up.”

“He could be shot while resisting arrest,” Heather said quietly.

Quattro stood up, his face stiff with fury. “Is that the best we can do?”

James froze, taken completely by surprise. Heather and Leslie had turned away from him to face Quattro; they sat perfectly still. Behind Quattro, Phat seemed to be looking for something to say. Bambi rose slowly, reaching tentatively around her husband to take him in her arms, but he gently pushed her away. “My god,” he said. “Look what we’ve gotten into and what we’re thinking about. I started wondering about us when we went busting into a family Christmas and murdered the dad. I flew over the camps on the Ohio where Grayson piled tribal bodies ten deep. And now… we’ve had a whole army beaten, surrounded, and saved just because Jenny Whilmire Grayson was too crazy to let them give up. And with only twenty-two airplanes on the whole continent, we let one be shot down, and the pilot—who was also one of the most expert airplane designers we have—was burned alive. And now we’re sitting here saying well, we can’t do anything for Pale Bluff, one of the most decent civilized places there is and one we’ve depended on for so many things, and we’re going to just let the enemy have it, to murder and loot and burn. And so where do we put our attention? Into getting our army out of there? No. Into avenging Nancy Teirson? Not a bit. Into maybe, just maybe, at least fucking trying to save several thousand civilized people that have been a total bulwark for our side, from being burned out and butchered? Oh, no. No no no. Perish fucking forbid. We’re trying to decide how to keep our consciences clear while we kill the leader of one of our few working, functioning port cities. I’m so fucking proud of you all I could just fucking piss my pants.

“So here’s my little thought for you. I know I’m not an ex-general or an ex-cop or an ex-librarian or anything cool like that, I know I’m just a rich guy that happened to inherit a fortified house and it’s all kind of a bunch of coincidences that a lot of people now think I’m the feudal lord of California, and shit, Heather, it was a joke when you talked me into taking the title, but you know, as a rich man and a guy who owns a lot of land and has sworn vassals that I have to think about and protect, all the way from San Diego up to Crescent City… I am very tempted to take my ball and go home. But I won’t. What I’m going to do is win this war, the way it needs to be won. You got a message for me, radio me in Pale Bluff. Don’t bother appointing me to a command or whatever you want to call it. I’ll let them know I’m taking over when I get there. You coming, Duchess Babe?”

Bambi nodded, but her eyes were closed and she was breathing hard. “I’m your wife and your duchess, both. And you’re not going into that much foolish danger without taking me along. Just let me talk to these guys for a second, okay? I’ll catch up.”

He kissed her, said, “Don’t be long,” and went out the door. They all looked at each other.

“I will try to help this all come out for the best,” Bambi said. “If I don’t see any of you again, remember me whenever you’re drunk and sentimental.”