The Last President

^{THE NEXT DAY. PALE BLUFF. 7:00 AM CENTRAL TIME. THURSDAY, MAY 7, 2026.}

Pale Bluff had been far too small to have an airport, back when it had first come to the attention of the wider world in December 2024. That had been a pure accident; the very first EMP attack from the moon gun—the one that had destroyed the original recovery center at Pittsburgh—had forced down the Gooney Express that had been carrying Graham Weisbrod in his escape from the TNG prison, on his way to found the PCG.

Now, as Quattro Larsen brought the Gooney back to Pale Bluff for perhaps the thirtieth time, he wished he had Bambi in the co-pilot’s seat, so that he could say something like, “Remember when we made our first landing, here, babe?” but she had insisted that if the aviators of the continent were going to converge to win this war, she would want her own plane. At this moment her Stearman was off to his right and a little below him.

That first emergency landing had been on I-64, miles away. It seemed like such a big deal at the time that Graham Weisbrod was the true President of the United States, so my plane was Air Force One. Once they were safely on the ground, however, any pretensions Quattro might have had had deflated like the greased linen tires on the plane. Everyone, including the nominal President of the United States, had walked into Pale Bluff with Freddie Pranger, the Township Constable.

Now look at what you did, Gooney, Quattro thought affectionately at his heavily modified DC-3. In a bit over a year, Pale Bluff had grown from a tiny town sleepwalking toward ghostliness, to the important crossroads where Weisbrod had given his Pale Bluff Address, to the most important town, industrial center, and military base on the Wabash frontier.

What one opportune forced landing had wrought was visible on the ground below, now. The old orchard-market town of back before was the center spot of a bull’s-eye. Surrounding the old town in a broad circle, where there had been only open fields leading out to the orchards, were newly-built wood-and-scrap metal shacks and cabins, and a profusion of temporary shelters ranging from lean-tos to tents, and every other conceivable arrangement in which people might sleep between shifts of work. Most of the refugees pouring out of the Lost Quarter after the rise of the tribes last spring had kept right on going after a brief stay in Pale Bluff, but enough had stuck to triple the town’s population.

The apple orchards, now dense as the spring green darkened to summer, were the next ring, which had a prominent notch in it: an old plot of aged, underproducing trees, surrounding a stretch of serviceable county road, had been sacrificed to create an airfield within the city wall, which outlined the whole bull’s-eye.

Quattro leaned back and shouted to his passengers over the thump and thunder of the biodiesel engines. “I’m going to let Bambi land first; she’s got less fuel reserve and the Stearman isn’t as durable as this old pile of junk.” He put the Gooney into a wide circle around the airfield, and enjoyed watching the golden early morning light dance across the green orchards below. When he saw his wife’s plane roll to a stop and the ground crews running out to pull her in, he swung down lower by the tower, caught the go-ahead signal from the flagman, and came around to land.

Like so many times before, Carol May Kloster was waiting for Quattro and Bambi, but this time she was joined by the town government and the local militia commander, there to meet the party of officers Quattro was delivering to them. It had been short notice; he had only radioed from Cape Girardeau, about 150 miles away, a couple of hours before, but apparently the radio operator had realized he needed to awaken Carol May, and she’d turned out the officials of the town.

Quattro removed his leather flying helmet with a sweeping bow. “Gentlemen, and lady, I come not to replace your authority but to enhance it.” He tucked the helmet under his arm, where his plumed hat had been, and set the hat on his head. “I bring you two lieutenant colonels, four majors, and three captains, all experienced Army and Guard officers from Kansas, Missouri, and Kentucky, who volunteered literally overnight to come here and help you organize your defenses against the expected tribal attack.” He made all the introductions, secretly pleased that he’d managed to remember everyone’s name. “And aside from their sterling qualities as officers, these are also the winners of the Good Sport Award. While I was on the ground in Cape Girardeau, I got a radio relay from Bret Duquesne, whom some of you may know as the Freeholder of Castle Newberry—the place where all the nice guns come from, and currently the leading aircraft manufacturer in North America.

“Bret had received a message from me and taken it upon himself to round up a cadre of officers for the Army of the Wabash, and he’ll be flying them direct to the army on the NSP-12, Newberry’s first experiment with an airliner of sorts. They should be arriving within a couple of hours.

“I had been flying these officers to the Army of the Wabash, and in fact they will still be joining it, but when they heard that the Army of the Wabash was going to be all right, but Pale Bluff was still in terrible danger, they agreed to come here and give you a hand. I suppose if you don’t need any more officers—”

The local militia colonel shook her head. “Don’t you dare take them away. Gentlemen and ladies, you are all very welcome here. If you’d like to follow me, we can start planning our defense.”

As the officers walked away, Carol May said, “And those officers were willing to get up in the middle of the night, and get on a plane, just because of your request.”

“I was surprised too,” Bambi said, “at first. Then I realized that the same charisma that had so gripped me completely into Quattro Larsen’s thrall was affecting other people just as strongly, and like a sort of Pied Piper in a silly hat—”

“Aw, shit,” Quattro said. “It’s just that everybody out there wants to friggin’ do something. Nobody wants to just hang back and wait for the blow to fall. They were all just fine and in solid with the restore-the-Constitution stuff when it looked like we would just clean up the Lost Quarter, raise the Stars and Stripes over the ruins of Castle Earthstone, go home, vote, and have our nice old familiar United States all back together again.

“Now they’re being reminded of the kind of thing that made my parents into libertarians, the stuff that made my old man start building Castle Larsen back in 2013. When minutes count, the national government will need to spend weeks negotiating and deciding; and because they always see the big picture—or that’s what the government types always call whatever they see—little details like a town facing a tribal horde get swept to the side as details. So even though a couple of years ago those officers couldn’t have imagined being invited to get out of bed and climb into the Duke of California’s airplane to go take a stand for civilization, nowadays—”

“They’ve already believed a hundred other things just as crazy,” Bambi finished for him. “I’ll admit, ‘The Duke summons you to defend a friendly realm from a most desperate foe’ has more of a ring to it than ‘You have been assigned to maintain a full level of readiness in the Western Kansas Military District.’ If any of those officers ever saw Star Wars or The Three Musketeers, I mean, how could they not be on board with all that romance?”

“Maybe so,” Quattro said, “but people are starting to realize that the real world today is romantic, and that no matter how much they miss back before, and would like to go back to filling out forms and voting on resolutions, that’s no longer their world. So a chance to get in some hard shots at Daybreak, and for it to be just plain personal instead of about all this abstract nation-and-Constitution stuff, well, that gets a lot of people pumped up.”

Quattro had always enjoyed arguing with Bambi, but lately arguments were always about this subject and never seemed to go anywhere. Perhaps Carol May saw Bambi’s irritation, and decided to intervene before it turned into a public quarrel. She said, “Chris Manckiewicz, and General Phat, and James Hendrix all keep talking about how we’re slipping back in time, and I guess as we get more feudal, war gets more personal. I don’t know if it’s a good thing, or a bad thing, but it’s definitely a thing.”

Quattro felt vaguely reprimanded, but before he could sort out why, Carol May added, “Nobody else is going to be coming in till late today at earliest. And you’ve been up all night flying and need some rest. Let’s go back to my place, and I’ll fill you full of pancakes and dump you into my guest bed.”

Quattro had always liked walking through Pale Bluff in the morning; this wasn’t even the first time he’d done it while exhausted from a long flight overnight.

Pale Bluff was the most irreplaceable link in the chain of airfields linking Athens and Olympia, but the town proper was a tight little jam of nineteenth-century gingerbread frame houses, interspersed with twentieth-century ranches and brick bungalows. It looked like a set from some historical drama back before, one of those gentle stories about life in a bygone day. Kids were trudging off to school, just as always. Adults were carrying lunch buckets and toolboxes more often than briefcases, and no one had a phone at his ear or a screen in front of her face.

Rounding the corner into the main part of town, they saw a militia company march by; they weren’t in uniform but their badges and insignia were all pinned in place, and “they march as if they’ve done it before,” Quattro observed.

“Not by much,” Carol May said. “We sent every soldier we could spare with Grayson, and now we have to hope they make it home in time. These aren’t raw recruits, but they’re not seasoned troops either. More like half-baked recruits. And if the numbers Jenny Whilmire Grayson reported are anything like right, we just don’t have anything like enough. We really need the Army of the Wabash to get here before the tribals do, but since I don’t see how that’s going to happen, we’re counting on that handful of militia to hold the tribals off till the A-o-W gets here.”

Quattro looked around again, still cheered by the bustling prosperity of the town, but also letting himself realize, “It’s hard to imagine we could lose all this.”

“Harder to imagine when it’s always been home,” Carol May said. “Hope you can stand some of the usual apple butter on those pancakes.”

“I relate well to apple butter,” Bambi said. “Always have. Lead on.”

^{2 HOURS LATER. NEAR THE BRIDGE OVER WEA CREEK ON THE FORMER INDIANA HIGHWAY 25, JUST WEST OF THE FORMER LAFAYETTE. ABOUT 10 AM EASTERN TIME. THURSDAY, MAY 7, 2026.}

Jenny Whilmire Grayson looked around the camp; she felt like she had utterly emptied her soul. “So it’s there,” she said. “We guessed right.”

“You guessed right, I said it made sense, and now Freddie’s confirmed it,” Chris Manckiewicz corrected her. “Lord Robert left the bridge standing at Attica because the last horde that was supposed to push us up toward Prophetstown could walk there, crash for the night, and have an easy way to the other bank. And they didn’t make any provision to blow it because they figured we would have a way to know what was happening at Prophetstown, but we probably wouldn’t have a way to know about Attica. If you’d fallen for that, Mrs. Grayson, we’d be twenty miles further behind them.”

Freddie Pranger nodded. “I was never so happy as I was to see that bridge standing, after the two that were blown.” At dawn, the morning before, when the battered Army of the Wabash had abruptly wheeled to attack and destroy its tormenters, he had scouted for the two cavalry troops dispatched to find and secure the bridge. He had missed yesterday’s battle at the “small” cost of a very long round trip, and his exhaustion showed in the gray pallor and deep lines of his face.

And the man’s not thirty-five yet, Jenny thought. The moment he finishes reporting, we’re throwing him into a wagon for a long nap. After a pause, Freddie added, “When I left the Montana cavalry, they were digging in on both ends of the bridge, and they had sharpshooters covering the river upstream and down. They will still be holding that bridge when the rest of the army gets there. So you’re in business as soon as you get moving.”

“I have never doubted they’ll hold it as long as they have to.” Jenny looked around; everywhere, men who had staggered up from their first decent sleep and meals in days were packing up camp, however stiffly and slowly. “That getting moving part might be a while, but I truly don’t have the heart to push them.”

Yesterday, worn-out by the desperate push to flank, surround, and subdue their besiegers, and even more by the brutal massacre afterward, they had barely marched three miles from the fairgrounds to this more-easily defended space where there was a long stretch of straight road in an open field for a plane to land, abundant water for cooking and cleaning, and plenty of decent grass for the horses to graze.

But though they had staggered into this camp, they had staggered in victorious, with enough spirit to make a proper camp for the night. Most of the soldiers had filled their bellies and had their first real rest in a long time. Today would be a long march—seven hours on the road, they estimated—but at the end of it, they would cross the Wabash at Attica, and be able to make a beeline drive for Pale Bluff.

That’ll be about a 170-mile beeline, Jenny thought. There will be a lot of tired bees at the end of that. It’s flat ground, mostly along the old interstates, but it’s still going to take ten days at the most optimistic. Lord Robert and his horde will be going the long way round because they have to stick close by the river for 210 miles, then drop most of their supplies and march about 40 overland. They have almost two days head start, and we don’t really know how fast they move along the river or overland… too many unknowns for anyone to come up with a number, as Chris keeps telling me. We don’t even know if it’s a close race, or we’ve already lost, or already won.

A distant droning rumble alerted her, and then it was drowned out in cheers from the camp. What was approaching from the south looked to Jenny something like an Art Deco railroad diner car sandwiched between sections of a circus tent, one low and one high, joined by wooden trusses. Five propellers, one at each wingtip, one close to the body, and one on the nose, were pulling it through the air. Twin pipes stuck up from the middle of her fuselage, looking like—

“Well, shit,” Chris said beside her, sounding somewhere between amused and amazed. “Those are the old raised exhaust pipes from some semi rig, but they look a lot like smokestacks. You almost expect it to have paddle wheels.”

The ground crew were waiting and flagged the NSP-12 down. As it passed overhead, Jenny’s party could see that it had about half again the wingspan of the Gooney Express, “but since that’s doubled, on a biplane, figure maybe three times the wing area? Lots of lift but it probably needs all those props to fight drag,” Chris said. “I can’t wait to hear what Quattro thinks of it.”

“Boys and airplanes,” Jenny said, “I’m just glad it got here. I’m guessing if we start walking now he’ll have finished his taxi and be climbing out by the time we get there.”

Bret Duquesne was a handsome young man. When he stepped down from NSP-12 and shoved his flying helmet back off his head, letting his straw-blond forelock flop down between his deep blue eyes, Jenny thought, Definitely, back before, he could’ve done underwear ads.

Introductions were quick; the NeoGoliath, as Bret had dubbed it, had flown here direct from Fort Benning and could loop back to Campbell before needing to refuel. This was “logistically marvelous, but since the design team didn’t think to provide the NeoGoliath with a restroom, urologically disastrous,” Bret said, returning from claiming a pilot’s privilege of being first at the latrine.

“Where did they come up with the design?”

“One of our machinists at Castle Newberry used to build R/C model planes. He had lived a few miles out of Newberry, back before, and it occurred to Dad to send a wagon and some guards to recover his whole model collection, as research material for later. Well, one of his proudest productions was a big honking model of the Farman Goliath, the first real airliner. Not the most aerodynamic or esthetic thing you’ve ever seen, but at least we knew that airframe would work if we built it out of canvas, wood, and wire. And we’d been working toward a high-powered pure diesel engine, something that wouldn’t attract nanospawn or have to be rebuilt after an EMP. The power part was fine, plenty of horsepower, but making that work took such a big engine block that we only wanted one per plane, and that was where someone thought, you know, quite a few early planes had chain-driven props. So the NeoGoliath has four chain-driven and one shaft-driven, and that big diesel can chug away, nice and slow, the way it wants to, without having to spin a high-speed shaft, and still give it plenty of thrust.”

Jenny raised an eyebrow toward Chris to remind him of her earlier comment about boys and airplanes, but he appeared to be rapt with Bret’s explanation. Well, I guess that proves my point. Wish I had Bambi here for sympathy. To break up the conversation, she asked, “So you said this thing is EMP and nanospawn immune?”

“Because it’s pure diesel,” Bret said. “No spark plugs or alternator, no electricity at all. You just have to preheat the glow plugs, but you can do that in a campfire if you have to. In fact, you probably haven’t heard but we’ve been warned there’s a blackout in three days—mid-day till midnight on the tenth—and it’ll be our first chance to see how the NeoGoliath does. We expect it’ll be fine even if it’s right under the EMP bomb, ready to go without any repairs. Even the structural metal, like wires and struts, has been set up not to let big charges or currents form. Then if it rides out an EMP on the ground, we’ll actually try flying during one. So they haven’t got us grounded forever.

“But I’ve got some news that’s a lot more urgent than the aircraft tech news—and not nearly as fun. We purposely flew along the Wabash as reconnaissance, and Lord Robert’s forces are already in Terre Haute.”

The punch-in-the-gut feeling must have shown on Jenny’s face, because she could see how Bret Duquesne was reacting to it; that was annoying, as if he was regretting have stressed out the little lady, so she snapped at him. “And you couldn’t tell us that right away?”

He winced. “I already admitted that I should have.”

Chris Manckiewicz broke the awkwardness. “Look, it took us five days to walk here from Terre Haute, and that was with cavalry and air scouting, and a baggage train with wheels and horses and mules. How did a bunch of unorganized hippies on foot and rafts manage to do the same distance in three days?”

“Probably less than two,” Bret said. “Major Southern here did a lot of coursework at Fort Lee, back before. Even while we were circling, and trying to figure out what had happened, he started scribbling and arguing things out, and then we did some more reconnaissance by tracking a couple of the rafts against the street grid along the bank. Southern’s answer is, we’ve all been working with the number 0.6 mph, which is about how fast the Wabash flows in normal times. But these aren’t normal times; thanks to all the fires and soot in the air and all the rest of it, we’ve had way over average snow and rainfall, and way more than usual erosion too. All the rivers on the continent are flooding or close to it.”

“We should have realized that,” Jenny said. “The river was so high that on the way in we never even thought of fording it or stopping to build a temporary bridge. No shallow spots left, and it’s way up on its banks.”

“Exactly,” Duquesne said. “We were surprised too, but in present conditions, the Wabash flows at between three and four miles an hour, five to seven times as fast as normal. And although it’s full of trash, it has a deep center channel, and if they stay on that, they’re mostly okay. So they just floated all the heavy stuff on rafts, letting the guarding force run along the bank carrying nothing but a little food and water, and switching off between floating and running so they could literally sleep on the march. The force you left behind at Terre Haute probably didn’t have any idea what was coming till Lord Robert and his Daybreakers were right on top of them.

“So when we flew over Terre Haute, whatever hadn’t been burned before was burning now, and there was a huge encampment of tribals along the river, swarming with boats and rafts. We think he’s regrouping, but at this current speed, he’s only a day or so by river from St. Francisville, which is the closest landing to Pale Bluff.”

“Well, that answers the question,” Chris said softly. “We’ve lost the race before we start. We’re ten days from Pale Bluff, minimum; they’re only about three or four.”

“Ma’am,” Patel said, “the new officers are all comfortable, and they’re ready for their briefing in the pavilion tent.”

“Let’s get it done,” she said.

Duquesne said, “I’ve got nothing more to report than what I’ve already told you, and Major Southern can give better details and a clearer idea about things. If you don’t mind, I’d like to look up your dad and maybe talk some things over with him.”

“Sure. He’s that way, at the Quartermaster’s tent; he’s been doing a lot of our logistic and organizational work.”

“Thanks!” Duquesne almost sprinted away.

“Why is he so eager to see your father?” Chris asked.

“Well, purely personally, that beats me too, but it’s probably that he’s quite religious, and a lot of people who are like to pray or get a blessing from a particular person they think is wise or holy. Bret Duquesne kind of looks the handsome-playboy type but he’s what Daddy calls ‘solid Bible all the way down.’ When his father was killed in that accident, all of a sudden Castle Newberry went from being a bulwark of the secular types to square in the church’s corner. So, I’m guessing, Daddy’s been away for a long time, and the Earl of the Broad River, or the Satrap of Carolina, or whatever he’s calling himself probably feels a need to get caught up on the spiritual guidance.”

“I’m not going to quote any of this till I do a book, years from now,” Chris Manckiewicz said, “but you don’t sound quite like you used to.”

She sighed. “The last few weeks have been an eye-opener. I had no idea how many things were wrong with Jeff Grayson; I think if I’d married him but Daybreak had never happened, I’d never have had anything worse than a creepy feeling about him, which I’d probably have shrugged off as ‘Mama told me men were like that.’ And I might’ve just thought my father was a crusty old poop, but very sincere and after all we’re both Christians and he just wants what’s best for his daughter and… well. I found out so much was bullshit that I’m still sorting out what parts aren’t. It might take me a while, and I might be a little sarcastic about people who really just believe the same things I did a month ago. Especially Bret, because he’s so schizo about it all; he’ll be joking and laughing and kind of a dashing young heroic type, reminds me a lot of Quattro Larsen, and then somebody makes a slightly off-color joke or says ‘God’ or ‘Jesus’ as an oath, and he’ll lose it and go crazy rigid puritan, worse than Daddy. A couple months ago I’d’ve attributed it to his spiritual struggles but nowadays I just think he’s an unpredictable part-time dick.”

“Language like that will humanize you in the history, you know.”

“Like anyone wants to be human, or has the time.” She grinned at him. “Sometimes you just need to call a thing by its right name. Well, let’s get the handover to the officers done. After that I’ll figure out the rest of my life, or take a nap, or something.”

^{ABOUT THE SAME TIME. MANBROOKSTAT. ABOUT 11 AM EASTERN TIME. THURSDAY, MAY 7, 2026.}

Jamayu Rollings had worked hard and consistently to thoroughly establish that he did not permit anyone to interrupt him, ever, during his just-before-lunch daily meeting with his daughter Deanna. Anyone with a really thorough inside knowledge of Ferengi Enterprises might have wondered why an hour-long meeting was needed every day for a company that consisted of a couple of warehouses of high-value salvage cataloged on index cards, an office with four clerks, and a largish yacht that needed a crew of three. But Rollings kept so much of his operations quiet and out of view that no one really knew how little administration Ferengi Enterprises needed or how simple things really were.

The real purpose was not to secure the non-existent meeting, but to make sure that no one who wasn’t family would ever walk in while they had the clandestine radio and the one-time pads out in view. The transmission from Pueblo to White Fang was exactly 500 words long, as always, so that if anyone was listening, a change in the length of the message would not provide any hints to the codebreakers.

Private radios were not exactly illegal in Manbrookstat. They were on the list of “Discouraged Activities,” and “participation in a discouraged activity” could result in being assigned to a labor gang or preventive detention, and every now and then a preventively detained person simply vanished, leaving behind only a name on the list of subjects about which unnecessary conversation should be avoided. But they were not officially illegal.

Usually the message from the RRC in Pueblo was merely that their report had been received, with perhaps a question or two that James or Heather had about it. But today it concluded with an answer to an earlier question:

There was another brief, appended note:

“So we’re screwed,” Deanna said.

“Sort of. Basically it means we have to stick our neck out, maybe take the chop, but if we start to win, then they’ll come in.”

“So do we do it, Pops?”

Rollings sat back. “Well, not this afternoon. I’ve got no connections I trust in the Special Assistants or the militia, so a coup is out. The Special Assistants know they’re dead if the regime comes down, so if anyone openly killed the Commandant, the SAs would butcher that person on the scene, at best, and maybe drag them straight to torture.”

“So…” Deanna leaned back and looked toward the ceiling. Rollings had always liked the way his eldest daughter “thought with her whole face,” as his wife described it. After a moment she shook her head. “Unless there’s something you haven’t told me about, we got no connections, zip, for a more covert kind of assassination. I don’t want to try to build a bomb that works right the first time, or cook up a poison, and I’m no sniper and no ninja, and I don’t think you or anyone else in the family is.”

Rollings nodded. “I’m afraid that in every education there are always some deficiencies.”

She made a face at him. “I hate that someday I’ll probably quote that and some people will think that meant you were laughing in the face of danger, instead of just couldn’t resist a silly joke. Oh, well.”

“Yeah, more seriously, that was kind of what I was hoping Pueblo might provide us—some clean, covert way to take him out, and someone untraceable who knew how to use it. But the more I think about it the less useful their help would have been anyway. There’s a couple of hungry creepy types that would move right in after an assassination, and the idea is to get rid of the Commandant, not replace him with a clone or worse. So it’s going to have to be a revolution… or at least a revolt, maybe some serious rioting… and right now people are still pretty relieved just to have a roof and food. Any idea what we can get them to rise up about?”

Deanna said, “Well, somewhere back in one of those AP History classes you made me take, I remember the instructor said something about how riots often start on or around holidays. Next big one is Memorial Day—”

“Too soon, and back before, anyway, it was basically the start of barbecue and white shoes, they didn’t—hunh. And the next big holiday would be the Fourth of July. Matter of fact, it’s the 250th Fourth of July. Should have been one of the biggest of them all, ever, eh?”

“Wasn’t it just another day to eat yourself sick and watch fireworks, back before, for most people anyway? Isn’t that what it’s going to be this year, except with less food and even less fireworks?” she asked.

“What if the Commandant decided to put the Fourth of July on the Discouraged Activities list? Threatened to punish people for celebrating it? Maybe even sent cops to break up a celebration?”

She started to grin. “He’d have to be crazy or stupid.”

He was grinning back. “Well, we already know he’s crazy. Maybe we can give him some help with the stupid. And here’s another thought; we have a blackout day coming up in three days, and that means lots of people on the street with nothing to do. Suppose we help them find something.”

^{ABOUT THE SAME TIME. ARMY OF THE WABASH ENCAMPMENT AT WEA CREEK. ABOUT 12 PM EASTERN TIME. THURSDAY, MAY 7, 2026.}

Jenny Whilmire Grayson and Chris Manckiewicz had just finished walking through the Order of Battle, identifying the most in-over-their-heads temporary officers, the best and worst performing units, where each unit was right now, and a bit about what each unit had endured recently. They’re all nodding and I like the way they take notes and ask questions, Jenny thought. Sure, it’s only been “my army” for a couple of days, but I want to hand it to people with some idea about how to care for it.

Chris was explaining that the Fourth Washington Volunteers had been surprised on their flank by the pipe-and-fuse muskets. “In that first volley they lost half of one company, all from Pullman, Washington, people who knew each other well. They’re all putting off grief but there’s a world of pain there, and you’ll want to keep an eye on it. Now, turning to the artillery, you have three batteries that didn’t even—”

An unmistakable chuffing raced up into a drumbeat, then rose to a rumble outside: a very large engine starting up slowly. They all stared at each other for a moment, then rushed out of the big tent en masse.

The NeoGoliath was already rolling along Indiana 25, gathering speed into the wind, Chris, Jenny, and the officers crowded together, gaping, its spoked, iron-tired landing wheels on their double-bowed axles lifted from the roadway. The tail wheel came up, and the NeoGoliath was airborne and on her way. NSP-12 turned south at once, as if afraid or ashamed to let the officers look more closely, and began a steady climb into the sky.

“Well,” Chris said, “there goes your ride, Jenny. I was planning to stick around with the Army of the Wabash, but it would have been nice of them to offer me a choice. I wonder—”

“Let me think, Chris. I don’t see—”

Patel approached her, saluted, looked embarrassed because he wasn’t sure he was supposed to do that in front of officers, and handed her a folded sheet of paper.

She opened it and read:

She turned to face Chris and the officers, and with her voice even and level, priding herself on never falling into sarcasm, she read the whole letter aloud, and when she finished, she said, “Now, are you all a part of whatever my father was talking about, or if you are not, can you tell me what the fuck it is?”

Colonel Irwin, the seniormost officer with them, said, “Well, ma’am, we’re mostly here because we’re not a part of it. At least that’s what I think, anyone else?”

All the other heads were nodding.

“Well, that’s the start of an answer. Part of what?” Jenny said.

“I guess it started back early in the Ohio Valley campaign, ma’am. Your dad, he, uh, well, he thought he was being excluded from a lot of decisions. Like he wanted to spare a lot of lives and get preachers in here to convert the Daybreakers, he thought you could kind of pray them out of it or heal them like they were possessed or something, and he wanted the Board to order General Grayson to try to do that, he thought that… well, he thought the massacres were un-Christian. And he wanted the Board to remove General Grayson as the NCCC, he was arguing all the time that they had the power to do that if they wanted, and a lot of different things. But he was the leader of the Church side of the Board, and General Grayson was more the leader of the Army side, and not only was there already kind of a balance, but nobody really wanted to stick their neck out and make big decisions with the main guy on each side so far away, especially not with it being a war and all. So… this is kind of embarrassing… well, to put it delicately—”

“Please don’t put it delicately,” Jenny said. “I have feelings about this because we are talking about both my father and my husband, but I really need to know what’s going on.”

Irwin’s lips pressed together, and he said, “Two days ago when we received word that your husband had passed on, and the army was surrounded, some of the Church people made a really big move; they tried to vote about half the military officers off the Board and replace them with ministers, they were going to declare their independence as a Christian nation, declare peace with the Lost Quarter tribes, and call the Army home.

“Well, that didn’t set well with the Army, and it turned out there were a lot of people that didn’t want the nation to be any more Christian than it was, so there were protests and demonstrations outside the government buildings in Athens, people demanding to stay in the US and backing the Army against the Church, and the Army was called in from Fort Benning to break them up and most of us here were among the group that refused the order, said it was against our oaths. And it was starting to look like a real revolution against the National Church, in Athens, a lot of officers muttering they didn’t like Graham Weisbrod or liberals or the Provis much, but now that General McIntyre is President up there, they’d a lot rather be dealing with a gay three-star three thousand miles away, than with a bunch of ignorant-ass crazy preachers right on top of them, if you’ll pardon my putting it that way.”

“I’ve been having similar thoughts,” Jenny said, smiling a little.

“So things were hanging in the balance, with the old Board and the Church holding most of the government buildings in Athens, and the crowds outside chanting for ‘Restore the Constitution!’, and churchers and rebels fighting each other everywhere. Most of us in the Army were figuring the rebels would win and invite us to restore order, sometime in the next few days, and we needed to stay out of it, because that’s what we’ve been trained to do, stay out of civilian politics.

“Well, but here you were surrounded and without officers, so let’s just say many of us were worried about you. Then that Bret Duquesne, you know, he’s nothing like his dad who was the biggest independent on the Board, well, Duquesne offered to fly twenty officers up here, and naturally the ones that were in favor of reunification and winning the war with the tribals were the ones who volunteered. And I am seeing now that we have possibly all been had, ma’am, because we all thought he’d be taking you back there, because our side could sure use someone to rally around—actually both sides could—and now Duquesne has maneuvered things so we’re up here, you’re up here, and the Reverend Whilmire is down there.”

Jenny nodded. “Pure Daddy. Political from the ground up but he always thinks he’s doing it for God. Well, the Army is almost ready to move, and we have the assignments worked out, so is this the place where we all shake hands and you go to your different commands?”

“Yeah. I just wish we had a way to get you to Athens; it won’t do us much good to pull the Army back together, relieve Pale Bluff, and then all be called home after the Board sends a note of apology to Lord Robert for annoying him.”

Chris spoke up. “Isn’t the radio rig still up? Let me talk to the RRC and see if something can happen.”