The First Love Of Alipang Havens

[Copperfox]

Lupita Formentera was so well-liked among the gang leaders of the Aztec-Maoist Republic, that regardless of the predatory attitude most of them took toward women in general, she could have safely walked in their midst with no bodyguard at all. But her brother, El Presidente, considered it good form for Vinu Dandekar and Vitaly Khloponin to accompany her on her visit to the bivouac in Big Thompson Canyon: a bivouac at which no females were stationed except in service capacities. Arriving by low-flying helicopter, Lupita first asked the pilot to fly the length of the canyon, so she could look over the ordnance gathered there. She gave a particular smile at the sight of the armored personnel carriers, which were made far more formidable by the mounting of rail guns on their turrets, in place of the machine guns which had been removed before the vehicles had been surrendered to Aztlan.

Those rail guns were just one step up in size from a man-portable rail rifle. But even the rail rifle was a weapon to be respected, and the guns now in the possession of Los Malignos would surely be able, assuming adequate target tracking, to destroy or disable anything the gringos in the Enclave possessed. Of course, they needed electrical power to be able to shoot at all; but each vehicle carried multiple accumulators at full charge, their power of course being supplied by the electrical current sent southward by the gringos in their futile attempt at appeasement. The same power supply was meeting all the energy needs of the Thompson Canyon encampment. This was a favorite joke in the minds of everyone in the invasion force; a few among them could recall how the state of Israel once had similarly furnished electrical power to Gaza even while terrorists in Gaza had been busy shooting rockets at Israeli civilians.

The other most important item was the short-range ballistic missiles obtained from Islamist allies overseas. Like the rail guns, these weapons had the merit of being _small_ enough to avoid attracting a punitive reaction from China. "Emilio really is wiser than Papa was, to keep our ambitions modest where armaments were concerned."

Vitaly nodded. "Yes, what you have here will be more than enough. Anything heavier can wait for the future."

Soon they landed on the space of level ground prepared for them. Lupita, purposely dressed to be admired, was greeted with wild cheers as soon as she emerged from the helo. The cheers were sincerely meant, not having to be commanded; for El Presidente had never failed to let his followers know that he gave his sister credit for helping him to plan policy.

The jefe of Los Malignos greeted her from a hastily-constructed platform: "We, the troops of The Race, welcome the smartest woman in the Americas! And we welcome your companions, who by their service to the People's Republic have earned adoption into The Race!" Applause filled the time from this greeting until the adored young woman took the microphone.

"Compadres, the historic minute is almost upon us! My brother only awaits a few more developments before he orders the launching of your missiles. Then we will _take_ what is ours by right, the Sun-given right of The Race! In the meantime, Colonel Dandekar has a few facts of interest to report to you all."

Vinu stepped up with as much self-assurance as if he had not just been given his military rank less than two weeks ago. "Amigos, I am now permitted to tell you where Los Lagartos have been for the past fifteen days. Helped by information obtained by La Bonita Jacinta, the potash miners under their command have driven a tunnel under the Enclave perimeter, nine kilometers east of the point where your armored battalion is to break through. They are now standing by to enter the pre-existing utility tunnels, whose farthest southern extent is only two kilometers into enemy territory. From these, they will be able to surprise the city of Casper, like paratroopers from beneath the earth! Our esteemed ally, Swapnil Vamsa, is providing a special Indian kill squad of Rajput Racketeers, which will assist the men sent by Los Lagartos...."

The briefing went on for a quarter-hour from there, with several pauses for cheering. Then Lupita, striking sexy poses for the men, spoke more words of encouragement, which included the usual denunciations of the gringos as Nazis. After this, the Malignos leader took over once more, leading the troops in singing a song which had been composed for them -- or the words written for them, anyway -- by La Bonita Jacinta, who was really Jessica Trevette:

"Aztlan, Aztlan sobre todo,
Sobre todo, Aztlan, si!...."

Lupita and Vitaly caught each other's gaze during the song, sharing the humor of it. For they were the only two persons now standing inside the canyon who knew that the melody Jessica had used for this battle anthem... was an old _German_ melody.

 

[Copperfox]

Dan and Chilena Salisbury found it a bitter irony that -- apart from the airship shootdown -- the Western Enclave had not after all come under attack during the time when Kim and her children had been in Canada. In fact, Alipang's wife and children had come _closer_ to harm by being in Canada at the time of the Islamist uprising there, than if they had remained in Wyoming. Yet now that they _were_ back in Wyoming, _that_ was the place where new violence was increasingly likely.

Nothing had been heard from Isadora Cruller's party in Aztlan for two days now. Any hope that their bootlicking gestures toward the Formentera regime would accomplish any good was fading. Dan and Chilena had no choice now but to think of the safety of their own children. They could not milk any further the unique furlough that had been granted to Alipang's dependents; anyone who was an internal exile, was going to have to stay inside the reservation, come what might. Cecilia the Elder, and all of Chilena's other confined relatives, were unanimous in telling Chilena that they did not blame her a bit for escaping with her own household while she could. The farewell, of course, was not without plentiful embraces and prayers. Alipang's own household was there in Casper to take part in this.

An Atmosfleet plane took off from Natrona Airport, escorted partway by the Texas Rangers' one new Great Condor, and ordered by Emilio Vasquez to fly a low-level evasive course toward the north. Besides the Salisbury family, other passengers included Melody and Douglas Vasquez, all dependents of other married Texans (which did not include the widowed Rosa Cantu, who insisted on staying behind, to carry a rifle if she could get away with it), some other government personnel who were free to leave.... and former Chief Justice Tim Govinda. The once-insane boy sat near the Salisburys, talked in a startlingly normal fashion on perfectly normal subjects, and unabashedly declared how much he would miss being with the Havens and Rand families. He also missed his cousin Chida, but he did not miss Samantha Ford.

STANDBY INSERT NOTE, Year 2025: There might be cause to add something on this page about the background of Chida, with reference to the relationship between her parents and Tim's.

Even the tiny token military air activity now occurring over the Enclave meant that aviation fuel was in shorter supply than usual; so the airliner had just enough, taken together with the solar-battery input to its hybrid engines, to fly safely to a destination in what had been the state of Iowa. The former inhabitants of Iowa's Amana Colony had, upon the turnover in American governance, been relocated in Nebraska Sector along with the similar-spirited Mennonites, and the Amana Colony had become the Amana Resort, exclusively for celebrities and highly-placed officials of the government and the labor unions.

The Transport Police, in approving the airliner's flight plan, had shared with both Texas Rangers and Atmosfleet personnel their knowledge of the state of the epidemic riots outside. All indications were that Amana would be a safer stop for the travelers than many points farther east, even if the plane had had more fuel to spare. Thus, flying a course into Iowa was never questioned.... not even when the air controller at Amana failed to answer the Atmosfleet pilot's call.

Air traffic in the Diversity States being at less than a quarter of the average volume when the United States had existed, and the arrival being in clear daylight, the crew did not hesitate to make a landing even without ground guidance. They came to a halt with the modest one-story embarkation terminal on one side of them, and some sort of barns or farm sheds on the other side. There was visible damage to the resort's boundary fence, but no one was in sight. The passengers were told to pick up their carry-ons and use the plane's own retractable ramp to get off, since no one was showing up to assist them. Dan Salisbury had just enough time to remember old movie lines about a place being "too quiet"....

...when, as debarkation was half completed, a shrieking mob materialized from within and behind the far buildings. Some of these were unarmed, others had clubs of some sort. Bearing down on the travellers, they were screaming what sounded like, "Capitalist Nazi racists! Un-mutual reactionaries!"

"Get in the terminal!" Dan shouted at his wife. There would be no time for those on the ground to try to return into the airliner for refuge. The airline personnel, being unarmed and never trained for anything resembling combat, were the first to flee to save their own skins. Not waiting to see what anyone else did, Dan ran _toward_ the mob, surprising them by hurling at them first one and then the other of the two travel bags he carried. As four or five of the rioters fell off balance, Dan plunged into their midst.

His years of theatrically falling down when supposedly struck by invincible superwomen served now, to his own surprise, as a martial-art style all his own. A diving roll knocked the legs out from under two men in the mob, and a repeat of the move bowled over three women -- who seemed themselves to find it amazing that a mere male could in any way thwart them. A third time brought down one large man, and gave Dan possession of the length of metal rod the man carried.

Instinctively knowing he must not go to the well one time too many with his rolling maneuver, Dan came to his feet, gripping the metal rod like a two-handed sword. In spite of the current movie industry demanding that all women be superior to all men in combat, Chilena had grown so tired of her beloved husband being always humiliated, that she had secretly taught him the sword techniques she had learned. Thus, in this emergency, Dan was able to swing his newfound weapon with some effect. The rioters took many painful blows before they could swarm him. And by the time they did swarm him -- help was on the way.

From the corner of his eye, even as someone was strangling him, Dan could see that a second crowd was charging at the first, and this crowd was not yelling like insane cavepeople. One voice from this group was Chilena's, frantically crying out his name. An instant later, Chilena herself was there, her fists furiously smashing the face of the man choking her husband. As Dan gasped for breath, it seemed that a battle raged all around him. He could make out Chilena's voice as her arms went around him: "The kids are safe, but it looked like you were forgetting to use your stunt double!"

As normal breathing returned to him, Dan looked around and beheld who was leading the rescue force: a massive woman, who picked up one enemy after another and threw them out of her way. When the still-conscious rioters fled, this woman turned, and her face confirmed that she was Pulverizer Clarendon.

"Chilena, is he all right?" the big actress inquired. Receiving an affirmative reply, Pulverizer helped Dan to stand up. "Glad I could be of assistance, Daniel. Here I was in convalescence at the resort after the improvements on my kidneys; I guess I'm back in shape, all right!"

"What's going on here?" Dan asked her.

"Part of the nationwide wave of random insurgency. All I know about the cause is that various dormitory groups, union locals and Party cells received what must have been fake directives, telling them that this or that _other_ group or local or cell had been corrupted by neo-Nazis or whatever. Gaia only knows what _these_ people were told about Amana; but they besieged us, and cut off our power lines. That's why the controllers couldn't communicate with your flight. Maybe we'll find out something about the reasons by questioning our new prisoners. Yes, I know, I'm not really a cop, I just play one in movies; but I'll wing it."

"You sure will," said Chilena, gratefully hugging the big woman.

Pulverizer spared a comradely smile for Dan. "You did mighty well, for a guy."

 

[Copperfox]

Josiah Redfern, back at his hospital routines in Kampala, was not part of the secret army's command structure, but several factors argued for including him in a security briefing to be held in Uganda. One was the fact of his having been in the former United States not long ago; another was the esteem in which he was held for helping to stop the terrorist attack on the Ugandan capital; and a third was the fact of his own son David being part of the defection incident at the Bi-Continental Assembly of the Western Hemisphere Union.

Brendan Hyland, lately come from the last briefing in Nigeria, sat beside Josiah. ///// RETROACTIVE INSERT: For a warmup, the participants discussed a prospective operation aimed at long-range environmental relief: wide- ranging removal of assorted trash from the world's oceans. \\\\\ When this had gone as far as it could for the present, a much more time-sensitive report was given by the Moroccan agent Akhmed Ballul:

"Information given to our Mexican friends by Vibol Ritisak tends to confirm certain persons of interest as being Babylonian Caliphate agents assisting in the Neo-Marxist-fronted coup in Argentina." Faces were displayed on a large flat screen, and Akhmed reported relevant facts about each person. "They appear to be writing off their losses in Africa -- and to be congratulating themselves on getting the Egyptian Caliphate to absorb the greater share of casualties in that campaign." There followed a brief update on human and material losses for all sides in that unsuccessful attempt to conquer the African Union.

"The Venezuelan Alliance, though strengthened by gaining Argentina, has likewise written off any more involvement in schemes against Alchatka," the Moroccan continued. "But there is a high degree of danger that they will try reprisals against our friends of the Pacific Federation, probably by means of raids and acts of terror against vulnerable islands like Tonga and Fiji." He presented further details about the assets which these enemies could commit to a Pacific terror offensive.

"The Chinese are still being sorely harassed by sophisticated cyber-terrorists, and cannot be expected to intervene in support of the Pacific Federation anytime soon. The Indians are helping some, but are partly distracted by helping the Alchatkans and Canadians recover from _their_ troubles. It will be necessary for more of _our_ personnel and resources to take up the slack in helping the Pacific powers to root out the widely scattered threats to their populations.

"Which means, I am sorry to say, that our network will not be able to do much, if anything, to thwart the new aggression obviously planned by the Aztec-Maoist Republic. We can only do what we can do; and for my part, I hope in my future service to be worthy of the memory of my friend Yirimyahu."
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

After the briefing, Brendan ate with Josiah, and brought up a subject which had been waiting for attention. Both men had learned recently about the rather-less-than-pure personal relationship which David Redfern was conducting with diplomatic worker Vonetta Ashford, but this was their first time talking to each other about it "For what it's worth, Josiah, remember that I was actually acquainted with Vonetta and her family, back in Virginia. Whatever the changes in America have done to her, she has a Christian foundation down there someplace. And with her ties to the Falseness Party finally cut off, maybe she can come back to what she was raised to be."

Josiah nodded. "Yes, I can see a bright side. More bright than gloomy, for sure. The very fact of getting _out_ of the Diversity States means _both_ less evil influence on David's life, _and_ being clear of the new storm that's about to break over America."

"Can't argue with you there. But does it bother you that David's so _young_ to be in an erotic relationship?"

"A bit. It bothers Melody more. Worse for Vonetta being what, is it eight years older than my boy? But when I compare this to what Samantha wanted to make David into -- it isn't so bad."

Brendan smiled sourly. "Spot-on again, soldier. Are you inviting them to come live with your family?"

"Inviting _David_ to live with us. My last message told him frankly that I can't endorse everything he's doing, but that I _mean_ it about his relationship with Vonetta still being cleaner than a lot of what goes on these days. I let him know that I can't in conscience have him and Vonetta actually both sleeping under my roof while they're unmarried; but that otherwise Melody and I, and Isaiah and Elijah and Alyssa and Holly, will not in any way _snub_ Vonetta, or act condemning toward her. And I said I would do all I could to line up employment for them both if they do move to Uganda."

"Well, Jennifer and I will pray that this works out for you. And for David."

Josiah smiled. "Whatever else happens, the kid will never have to endure being called Daffodil again!"

 

[Copperfox]

In one small Mid-Atlantic town where Carolyn Biao, one of Jessica Trevette's rearguard agents, had sent agitators to get citizens fighting each other.... a turning point was reached.

In a public park, two groups of proletarians, not one of whom had any combat skill worth mentioning, had worn themselves to exhaustion fighting each other without knowing exactly why. Only one pair of combatants felt obligated by Party loyalty to go on battling each other: two equally-matched middle-aged black women. They had tacitly agreed from the start not to pull each other's hair, since hairstyling was so hard to come by anymore if you weren't one of the elite class; deliberate clothes-ripping was also out, for similar reasons. The two ladies had shoved each other, flailed their hands at each other, and wrestled awkwardly, unsure what would constitute winning. Other fighters of either sex had inflicted quite a bit more damage on THEIR opponents; but these two, like the winning couple in an old-time dance marathon, had outlasted everyone else in the riot.

With weary breath coming harder and harder, while a few sprawled members of each woman's original mob half-heartedly called out encouragement, the two African-Americans managed to stand up again after a slow-motion clinch... gripped each other's arms and leaned into each other to keep from falling down again... and then paused, unable to do ANY more fighting, not even able to LET GO of each other until they felt less dizzy from fatigue. Propping each other up, they panted hard for half a minute; then, one of them wheezed to the other:

"Did you actually call me a WHITE supremacist?"

Her adversary stared, and replied in an equally dry-throated voice: "I thought you called ME that!"

Both of their jaws dropped. As soon as they could stand without each other's support, they separated, no longer interested in fighting each other. Instead, each approached nearby persons who had been on her own side in the brawl, and began asking them just HOW they had known that there were anti-collective racist reactionary Nazi capitalists needing to be stopped by loyal citizens. Nobody there seemed to know.

But those who DID know, like Carolyn Biao, soon began to receive reports that the underclass people they had stirred up to riot were belatedly starting to figure out that they had been lied to. It was very belatedly. Not all of the mass fighting had been as trivial as the instance that led the two black women to be first to question WHY they were brawling. Law-enforcement estimates were that no fewer than seven thousand Diversity States citizens had been killed in the senseless urban battles.

Even the Party Presidium, which had far more than seven thousand murders on its collective hands, chose to feel indignant at whoever had set off this unauthorized bloodshed.

And Carolyn Biao hastened to accept an offer which came to her via the secret comms channel which Jessica Trevette had left available to her. The damage to the Diversity States having been done, deep-cover agents in imminent danger of exposure could clear out. Several aircraft were in the hands of Trevette underlings still in-country; they would make rounds to pick up the agents in need of evacuation to Aztlan.

Carolyn felt fortunate to catch a ride on one of the faster planes, a recent-model twin-engine turboprop. Not that she expected to be pursued by anyone; she had abandoned her office before anyone in the administration or district police had time to trace any riot-provoking to her. And although the Texas Rangers had had ZERO rioting to contend with in THEIR district, there still were too few Ranger aviators to bother checking out a civilian passenger plane just now.

The last stop Carolyn's ride made before crossing into Aztlano airspace (enjoying clearance with Los Flechadores) was just outside the Western Enclave, to pick up Winnie Drucker of Aero-Aquatics. She felt the need to get out before someone arrested her for supplying railgun ammunition to the Aztlanos. Carolyn and Winnie had never met before, so they struck up a friendship as their pilot headed his plane for the city once called Boulder, Colorado, now known as the city of Sisepuede.

 

[Copperfox]

When they made landing approach, it could be seen that one similar airplane, plus a helicopter, had landed ahead of them. No less a person than Jessica Trevette welcomed them in the terminal -- instructing them to address her by her new Hispanic name of Jacinta. Winnie and Carolyn mingled with those who had arrived ahead of them, some of whom were clergy of the Oneness Temples. Another helo came in behind them; and last of all, a lighter-than-air ship which had made pickups in the Northwest and Rocky Mountain Federal Districts. Its passengers included two animal handlers from the All-Species Council in Seattle.

Carrying an old but functional tablet computer, one of Jessica's guards tallied up the arrivals. Presently the ex-President announced to the travellers gathered around her: "Very good! Everyone who wanted to be extracted is here now! Come with me, and you'll meet some celebrities!" There were twenty-six agents in all, counting some assistants of direct-line agents.

The group was transported by ground cars to what had been a university auditorium. Along the way, they beheld commoners of the People's Aztec-Maoist Republic, who were clearly under orders to cheer wildly for La Bonita Jacinta's motorcade. It was undeniably obvious that the very poorest proletarians of the Diversity States had better clothing than these people.

But there was little time to think about that, and no reason to remark on it to their hostess. Before long, in the old auditorium, they were being introduced to Isadora Cruller, Neutron Invincible, and the other media people who had come to Aztlan to work on the projected movie The Different Make the Difference. Then, ascending to the stage with two of her guards, Jessica invited everyone to be seated.

"Friends, you have been taught to keep saying, 'The collective is all!' Today, I'm going to give you some clarification on that subject.

"There was a military doctrine in the old Soviet Union, that wherever your forces are at their strongest and are already enjoying success, you reinforce them there, so they'll achieve STILL MORE success. It was always a doctrine of the Fairness Party to operate similarly. The movie people who have joined us did not know this, but you agents did know that the Aztec-Maoists were not acting AGAINST the Fairness Party when they claimed possession of the Southwest. The program of self-pity and grievance politics among Hispanics had advanced far enough in that region, that it was purely natural to take it still further, and place the Southwest under the banner of Aztlan Sobre Todo. Admittedly, the Mexican government did not support the Formenteras as we would have liked; but the Triads, and then the Indian mafia, made up the difference, enabling a reasonably successful regime in Aztlan.

"In most of the former United States, though, there was less of a clear advantage for one ethnic faction; so we relied upon generic welfare-state thinking. Just promise them everything, and make it sound good."

Isadora Cruller, accustomed to wielding authority as a movie director, stood up, eager to say something. Jessica permitted her to speak, and Isadora said, "And it worked! The collective in the Diversity States IS a success!" A weak round of applause faded when Jessica resumed speaking.

"It has managed to appear as a success, because of a certain amount of coasting on past prosperity, a bit of subsidizing by the Chinese who felt they owed America something for their having conquered it economically, tourist income from all the other countries that wanted to gloat over America's fallen state.... and the ongoing contribution made by the internal exiles."

"The God-fascists?" Carolyn Biao blurted out. "What good are THEY?"

Jessica grinned. "Citizen Biao, you have Citizen Drucker there beside you; she could answer your question. Greatly though you and I hate them, the God-fascists are in fact the MOST productive laborers, by orders of magnitude, anyplace in the D.S.A.! Their work in the energy sector above all, along with some role in feeding the nation, is a support without which YOUR union members would be like helpless babies tossed on a roadside. Of course, we've kept the general public from realizing this.

"It's easy to do so, because for years most Americans have literally wanted to be deceived, wanted to be told only things that appealed to their emotions. Before the Fairness Revolution, the United States in its last years already had a centralized welfare state, scarcely distinguishable from what the Diversity States has now. All that was missing, really, was to silence the remaining voices of religious dissent. So, in 2021, secretly coordinating our timing with the plans of the Formenteras, the Fairness Party pretended that the just-elected U.S. administration -- which in reality was almost identical with us in political views -- represented 'a terrifying surge to the extreme right' which had to be stopped. You'll recall my using those words at rallies. This allowed us to convince our human cattle that they were 'heroically taking their country back,' when of course all they and we were doing was to CONTINUE in the same unchanging direction of more and more centralized control.

"It was always on the agenda to weaken the minds and spirits of the D.S. population so much, that eventually they would roll over and let Aztlan conquer them outright. Sherman Lake's independent conspiracy gave me some trouble, and Carlos Anselmo came close to derailing me altogether; but thanks to my expendable clone, and thanks to the assistance of you deep-cover agents, I was able to proceed, with some adjustments. By this time next year, or sooner, Emilio and I will be ruling ALL of what used to be the contiguous United States.

"Yes, for any of you who aren't caught up on the fact, Emilio Formentera is my lover and consort. Has been so, on and off, since BEFORE the founding of Aztlan. Now, it's 'on,' full time. His sister Lupita also gets along very well with me; we both enjoy the ritual sacrifices, among other pleasures."

 

[Copperfox]

"Then do you want us to produce a movie honoring the new order in America?" asked Isadora.

"You'll be _actors_ in such a movie, actually," Jessica replied. "Have patience, it'll all be clear momentarily. I need to make sure that all of you appreciate the true meaning of what you have _already_ contributed to the great changes now impending.

"As good Party members, all of you have studied the thought-control methods of early Communist China. You know how their Party cells would regularly conduct 'self-criticism sessions,' at which every proletarian was required to find some fault with _herself,_ some shortcoming in her usefulness to the collective. This, of course, was always intended to erode their self-confidence, to make them inwardly incapable of even _wishing_ to disobey the rulers. In the Diversity States, albeit in slightly subtler ways, we did the same thing: worked to make it _inconceivable_ in common people's minds that they could ever mutiny. At the same time, by periodically manipulating groups of proletarians into fighting each other, we created enough mutual distrust that they could never unite in large numbers against us.

"Starting today, the people we dumbed down will begin to realize just how tremendously the joke is on them. The few persons remaining in the D.S.A. who do still have the brains to be any threat to us -- and apart from the Biblicals confined in the Enclave, that chiefly means Texans -- have their attention focused on our expected ground invasion of the Enclave to seize the power plants. Of course, we _are_ going to invade there; but with our invasion depending on ground forces, all of the aviation assets belonging to Los Flechadores are free to surprise them, with an air attack on Texas. This attack, as a matter of fact, is already beginning as I speak.

The Texans will move their long-range defense aircraft there as fast as they can -- at which time, Emilio will order the launch of our short-range ballistic missiles held in readiness north of here. Apart from two missiles aimed at Rapid City, to kill or at least isolate their leadership, all of the missiles will be aimed at those power-transfer substations along the Enclave perimeter which pass power out onto the nation's electrical grid. Well before sunset today, the Diversity States will abruptly lose at least half of all its electricity. _Then_ they'll realize, too late, how much they owed to the labor of the exiles. The panic from this, naturally, will start the rioting all over again; so, any faint hope the Atkinson administration might have of resisting us will be dissolved. _Aztlan_ will still have all of its electrical utilities; and with the Enclave quickly falling under our direct control, Emilio and I will dictate terms to the Rainbow House as we please.

"Then, we will show the proletarians what _real_ domination means."

Jessica's voice put a chill in the spines of her hearers, even those who had worked most eagerly to assist her. The chill worsened when El Presidente Emilio Formentera suddenly entered by some back door, appearing on the stage with Jessica, whom he kissed sensuously in the sight of everyone. From somewhere, the number of armed guards in the auditorium had also increased.

"Gracias, querida," said Emilio. "No one puts things better than you do; but my machismo would suffer if I left _all_ the talking to you!" His laugh attested that he wasn't really worried about Jessica; whatever sort of power-sharing they had arrived at between them, it seemed completely satisfactory to both.

"Now, compadres, to wrap up your debriefing.

"Even the most empty-headed among you cannot have failed to notice that the Diversity States _never_ seriously tried to make _everyone_ equal. The difference between Aztlan and the D.S.A. has mainly been that the D.S.A. made more _pretense_ of caring about equality. But each one of you sitting before me has knowingly enjoyed special privileges in your society. All of you have long been accustomed to acting indignant about 'corporate capitalists getting rich on the backs of the poor;' and all of you, in actual fact, have yourselves been _more_ uncaring about the needs of the poor than the average capitalist _ever_ was! You, like Jacinta and me, have used people's envy and resentment of other groups to keep them looking to you for 'justice;' but you, like Jacinta and me, have always _liked_ being on top of the food chain yourselves.

"This, in the end, is what it has always been about: the superior dominating the inferior. Does not evolution teach us as much? Now, I grant you, Aztlan, even an Aztlan stretching from coast to coast, will probably remain a very minor power on the global scene for my lifetime. But we will enjoy enough support, from the Venezuelan Alliance and elsewhere, that we can be secure _within_ our borders to do as we please with our peasants. And my children, those I already have and those whom the Solar Influence may give to Jacinta and me, will live to see Aztlan growing stronger, perhaps even colonizing space!

"None of this, however, need occupy _your_ minds, my friends. The survival of the fittest ordains that the cunning shall eliminate the stupid. And, amigos, has it really not occurred to you how stupid _you_ are, to have come here of your own free will, when Jacinta and I have no more use for you?"

Winnie Drucker, Carolyn Biao, Isadora Cruller, Neutron Invincible, and the others who had expected a welcome here in Sisepuede, did not break their disbelieving silence until the gunmen of the Aztec-Maoist Party were actually dragging them out of their seats. Then, they all began their desperate pleading, insisting that _they_ were not the tribal white-supremacists and capitalistic marriage bigots who deserved to die. Emilio Formentera and Jessica Trevette enjoyed listening to their whining, as the guards hustled the victims out of the auditorium, bound for the nearby Altar of Solar Influence which awaited their blood, with a video crew standing by to record the ritual.

 

[Copperfox]

Chapter 135: Under Fire

The termination of Jessica Trevette's no-longer-needed spies, and the commencement of Emilio Formentera's new attacks on the Diversity States, were taking place on Thursday, September 10, 2026. Emilio had not wanted to start on the eleventh, lest he go down in history as a copycat.

But residents of Texas had more immediate things to think about than wondering what might go into the history courses of a coming generation. Aztlan's Flechadores gang, possessor of nearly all modern combat aircraft in Aztlan that were not under direct Party control, was venting its macho pride in an all-out attack into Texas, prodigal of both fuel and ordnance. Today, the Flechadores cared only about humiliating Texas Rangers; and El Presidente was pleased to have them thinking this way, so that they would cheerfully make themselves weaker compared to the Presidential forces.

They were prodigal with jet fuel, but not suicidal. Their limited supplies made it wiser not to try to reach Dallas; they settled for bombing Lubbock, and smaller towns between Lubbock and the Texas-New Mexico line. Since Ranger aviation had not made use of Lubbock as a base, the Aztlano pilots anticipated their favorite kind of sortie: a mission to bomb defenseless victims, literally for the fun of it. El Presidente, after all, had assured them that this counted as making sacrifices to the Solar Influence, which would bring them good luck.

But their luck today was not to be totally favorable.

Operations Marshal Rodney Camberville of the D.S. Marshals' Service had been ordered to deploy his officers all along the west-facing border of upper Texas: not to resist any aggression from the Aztlano side, but officially "to prevent hot-headed Texans from creating racial incidents which might worsen the diplomatic situation." For Meg Atkinson was back in Washington; Ricardo Formentera had let her leave Caracas deluding herself that her offer to support an Aztlano location for Hemispheric Union headquarters had mollified his government. So President Atkinson was telling everyone that the supreme necessity was to "exercise restraint" while diplomats addressed "white-supremacist madness, the root cause of all the friction." Camberville placed his command post in Lubbock, and was determined to execute his orders -- to take action _only_ against Texans, no matter _what_ the Aztlanos might do.

But Ranger Vice-Commandant Jed Brickhouse was not meekly accepting the situation.

Some ten minutes before the fighter-bombers roared over the border, Jed landed near Camberville's command post in Ranger Aircraft Number 309, a small piston-driven helicopter, the same type as Lieutenant Vasquez's Number 343. With him was Ranger Annabelle Swain, a champion sniper. But both Rangers were unarmed on this trip, since the Main Party Presidium in Washington had directly ordered the Rangers on the ground to carry no weapons in the western parts of Texas which were temporarily under Marshals' Service jurisdiction. All Jed was hoping to do, besides observe what the Marshals were up to, was to find some chance to reason with them. He had, after all, met at least _some_ D.S. Marshals who had pre-Fairness Party police experience, and who weren't _quite_ brainless robots of the current regime.

Having been advised of their coming, Rodney Camberville admitted the two Rangers to his command post on the third floor of an apartment building, a building on whose roof a g.p.s. pickup antenna had been installed. The once-only lover of Jessica Trevette (who was alive so far _because_ he had not been in on the secret of _her_ still being alive) greeted them thus: "Welcome, colleagues! The collective is all! I'm pleased to see that folks back in Mid-Atlantic have it wrong about you Texans; you _are_ capable of wanting to grow and find paradigms beyond primitive belligerence...."

A rail rifle with drum magazine, a weapon whose workings all Texas Rangers understood, but which the federal government would not let them _have,_ was leaning on a stand beside one wall. Jed allowed Annabelle to see clearly how his eyes went to her, then to the weapon, then back to her. She gave him a microscopic nod. The electromagnetic gun was fitted with an electronic sight just like those on some of the conventional rifles the Rangers _were_ permitted to carry.

When Camberville had uttered enough diversity-speak for a preamble, Jed said to him, "Operations Marshal, we for sure do like to learn new approaches. But you know that what works at some times may not work at others. Were you informed of what Greg Jessup's ship reported?"

"I confess I was not. Is it at all relevant to my peacekeeping assignment?"

"It's as relevant as any case of gangsters _breaching_ the peace," Annabelle put in, irritated at Camberville's condescending manner.

"What Ranger Swain is referring to," Jed continued, "is the fact that Jessup used long-range optics at maximum altitude while overflying southwest Kansas, to see as far into Aztlano territory as he could, _without_ violating their airspace. He unmistakably saw fighter-bombers being loaded up with underwing ordnance, which--"

"Only for drills!" Camberville interrupted. "That's to be expected, when racist hatemongers like that loosh Vibol Ritisak have been slandering them."

Jed was still trying to argue with the uniformed Fairness Party puppet, when a command-and-control console beeped an alarm. Crowding as close as possible to the man who was minding this console, Jed and Annabelle saw the g.p.s. indication of eight jets heading straight toward Lubbock. Of these, one peeled off to the south and another to the north a moment after crossing into Texan airspace; the remaining six kept on their original vector.

"THERE'S your belligerence, idiot!" Jed shouted. "They're coming to kill people! If you've got _any_ air defense, get it moving!"

"I will obey my orders," Camberville huffed. "What matters is to prevent rash actions by--"

The Operations Marshal never completed his sentence, due to a rash action by the Ranger Vice-Commander, who kayo'ed him with one blow of a snake-swift fist. There were three Deputy Marshals in the room, besides the seated g.p.s. technician. Jed and Annabelle treated these with perfect sexual equality: two of the three standing deputies happened to be women, _and_ happened to be in Jed's immediate reach, so he knocked them out as ruthlessly as he had done to their leader. Annabelle similarly took down the one standing male adversary -- though he was big enough that she had to hit him three times before he collapsed. Then she gathered up the rail rifle, while Jed put out the console man with a neck-chop.

"Warm up the chopper!" Jed yelled. "I'll be there in a second!" As Annabelle ran downstairs, the rail rifle in her hands disssuading anyone from trying to detain her, Jed put out a radio call on a common police frequency, hoping that Jessup and Finnegan would hear it: "All Texas aircraft, alert! Bogeys attacking Lubbock, repeat, bogeys attacking Lubbock!"

That much would have to be enough. Not even waiting for a reply (though he intended to come up in comms from his helicopter), he ran to join Ranger Swain.

She had the rotors turning, and they got airborne just before the first bomb hit the apartment building. With Jed flying, the young sniper made ready. _Any_ size of railgun would be bad news for any airplane, and the sighting array on this weapon was all passive: no emissions to reveal the threat to the cocksure Flechador pilots.

 

[Copperfox]

The Aztlano pilots had already swept past the ruined building (which was now the tomb of Rodney Camberville and some of his deputies) before their minds could register anything happening with the small helo that had been parked near the building. But Jed reckoned that they would stay in the general vicinity, since (thank God for small favors) they still had only guns and gravity bombs to attack surface targets, not long-range missiles. As he got airborne, he picked up a return call, recognizing the voice of Colt Finnegan:

"Caller, this is Bright Stetson! Caller, Bright Stetson! We confirm bogey report, have them on g.p.s.; any details?"

Jed came back, using his flying callsign: "Bright Stetson, Dirty Cactus! Eight known fighter-bombers, hitting Lubbock and points northwest and southwest! Using bombs, not yet seen strafing. Already ground casualties, including Spoiled Soybeans." The last code phrase was private Ranger slang for all high-ranking D.S. Marshals. "Am up in my 309, attempting to interfere with bogeys. Track me! Busy now -- good luck!"

"Ten-four, Dirty Cactus. Our e.t.a. Lubbock, thirty-four minutes." Finnegan spoke simply, realizing that the last thing Jed needed was longwinded talk distracting him. Only Greg Jessup's Tu-95 could reach Lubbock in just over half an hour at top airspeed; Finnegan's ship, starting from farther north, would arrive eight minutes later than Jessup's. Captain Finnegan promised himself that if he lived, Meg Atkinson and Reed Harrison would hear what he thought of their only allowing the secret army to provide the Texans with two more of the long-range defense aircraft.

Jed Brickhouse, meanwhile, visually sighted one of the Aztlano jets curving back over downtown Lubbock, dropping what seemed to be its last underwing bombs. Turning his chopper to give Annabelle a leading line of fire, he said nothing to break her concentration, relying on her own situational awareness. And sure enough, helped by the speed-calculating electronic sight, the lady sniper sent two aluminum slugs flying at nearly half the speed of light. Both shots hit the target's fuselage, doing enough damage that the plane spun out of control and crashed.

Jed and Annabelle both realized that the falling jet might crush civilians as it struck pavement; but people on the street would at least have some chance to dodge a conspicuous falling airplane, more chance of this than to dodge bombs and bullets intentionally aimed at them. And every Aztlano plane destroyed was one less plane that could return again and again to murder still more Texans. The first enemy pilot killed had had no time to realize his danger, thus no time to alert others. Jed found a second target for Annabelle, and she uttered a rebel yell when her first shot at this target went right into the cockpit. "Save a seat in Hell for Formentera!" she then shouted as her second victim fell.

Jed was making altitude changes between Annabelle's shots, to create as much difficulty as he could for their adversaries. This tactic bought him and his sister Ranger another moment of life as one Flechador pilot, finally detecting the threat, opened up on them with his rotary cannon. The shells passed below Number 309.... and with Jed spinning his helo as this jet went by, Annabelle got off one more shot, right into the fighter's fuel tanks.

The bogey vanished in a sphere of flames. Four seconds later, so did Number 309, as the cannon fire of a fourth jet found them. Thus did Jed Brickhouse and Annabelle Swain earn their place on the rolls of the fallen heroes of the Texas Rangers.

Their deaths had saved more Texan lives than they would even have expected; for the surviving Aztlano fliers, having lost three planes that suddenly, began remembering their own mortality. Not knowing if another such adversary might show up, they contented themselves with strafing houses as they high-tailed it back home on afterburners.

But the cowardly murderers were not home free.

Colt Finnegan had known that he and Greg Jessup could not physically get to Lubbock before the attacking jets would complete their sortie and withdraw. He had ordered Jessup's plane and his own southward anyway, hoping that the jets might turn to engage them instead of continuing the attack on Lubbock. As it was, he saw how Rangers Brickhouse and Swain had repelled the raid. His g.p.s. technician also saw that additional jets were attacking the airfield at Fort Stockton.

The unarmed Tu-95 which President Trevette had formerly used as transportation happened to be kept at Fort Stockton; and Finnegan had suggested a new use for it. Right now, the Rangers at that airfield were doing just what their aviation leader had recommended: sending the plane up on robotic pilot, unmanned, in order to make the bogeys _think_ that they had an armed Texas Bear to cope with. The diversion would at least give the people on the ground more time to get under cover while the robot plane (someone had jokingly called it "a Texas-sized drone") was being shot down.

As for Colt Finnegan, he had had enough of blatant acts of war going unpunished. That was going to stop today. He called Jessup's plane by encrypted cognitive radio: "Wide Noose, Bright Stetson. Change to Reserve Plan Seven. We're going to collect on a debt."

"Ten-four, Bright Stetson."

Both Tu-95's did not await anyone's permission for what came next, but they did transmit encrypted reports on their intentions to Ranger HQ.... as they changed course to cross into Aztlano airspace and attack the base the aggressor jets had come from. As they did so, their g.p.s. deception software was doing its best to conceal their approach from the enemy. Jessup slowed his plane to facilitate Finnegan's plane converging on him. They arrived together as the enemy pilots were presumably meeting with their wing commander in one of the airfield buildings; and they achieved near enough to total surprise.

The weapons fit on the Texas Tu-95's was all meant for air-to-air combat, since (as everyone everywhere knew, though Aztlan's apologists pretended to believe otherwise) the Diversity States had _never_ formed any notions of invading Aztlan. But with a banking approach, and shallow diving as appropriate, the avenging Texans could bring both their chain guns and their particle beams to bear on ground targets... reserving their compact air-to-air missiles for any hostile aircraft that managed to get airborne.

Jessup took the southern half of the enemy base, Finnegan the northern half. When they had their targets in fire control, and saw what excellent surprise they had achieved, both plane commanders, using different frequencies, sent a clear transmission to their enemies, a spontaneous variation upon an old battle-cry:

"REMEMBER LUBBOCK!"

Not one Aztlano plane at this airfield survived to fight back. It took half a squadron from the next base, these also being Flechadores, to stop Finnegan and Jessup, and even these planes took severe losses from Texan missile fire before the Rangers died.

Colt Finnegan, Greg Jessup and their crews had struck a good bargain indeed. They killed more than thirty enemies for every death of their own; left the aggressor base in smoking ruins; and left Los Flechadores virtually destroyed as a viable military force.

 

[Copperfox]

Even in the midst of deadly peril to everyone he loved, Peter Tomisaburo could congratulate himself on a bit of stereotyped Asian subtlety. Everything he had told his wife had been perfectly true, as far as it went. He had told Lucinda:

-- That the Chinese government knew who he was because his parents had lived in China for a time in their youth.

-- That during Yang Sung-Kuo's first visit to the Enclave, he had spoken confidentially to Peter about China's interest in hearing how life was for the exiles.

-- That a Chinese intelligence officer had subsequently planted nanobots in the body of a person due to visit the Enclave, so that when this person met Peter the nanobots would be transferred, giving him the power to see radio-spectrum waves as if they were visible light.

-- That these nanobots had accidentally been transferred instead to their son Victor, which was why the boy had experienced a bewildering change to HIS eyesight until the mistake was rectified.

-- That once Peter had the nanobots in his own body, the Chinese had used signals visible to him to communicate in an equivalent of Morse code which his parents had learned in China, their purpose being to instruct him to observe events on the ground for them.

-- That he had had cause to believe he would be endangering the lives of his family if he revealed his situation to them without permission, but that now he had received permission to tell them.

-- That the remarkable hand-portable weapon he showed to her had been given to him by Lieutenant-Colonel Yang. (This was true, only Peter omitted to mention that Yang had been giving it BACK after borrowing it.)

This much information meant that it would make sense to Mrs. Tomisaburo when Peter announced that Beijing had warned him of a coming Aztlano attack from the direction of Colorado. It merely left out the part about his having already been a Chinese spy even before he had married her. Peter genuinely loved his wife and their children, but he had seen too many movies about women's reactions to being deceived by men, to feel comfortable about letting Lucinda in on the WHOLE story all at once.

As it was, once he had informed her sufficiently that she could start packing in case of evacuation, Peter had run to the small office building which handled all federal affairs for Sussex, and had insisted on being allowed to pass his warning to all four police forces currently represented on the reservation. When the dull-witted bureaucrats had balked, Peter -- ever mindful that missiles might begin falling on Wyoming at ANY time -- had played his hole card. His micro-whip, a weapon the office workers had never even heard of, had sliced three heavy desks into neat pieces in five seconds, then had effortlessly cut a new triangular door in one exterior wall. After this, Peter had gotten his call to Rapid City made without further argument.

The first person of consequence he had reached by phone was the commanding officer of the Enclave's contingent of Commerce Inspectors. She had surprised him, as soon as he introduced himself, by saying, "One, one, eight, eight, pink, black, orange" -- a recognition code meaning in substance, "I have been told to cooperate with you." She had followed this by quickly explaining that she was not a full-time agent for China, but someone from the nearest Chinese consulate had contacted her to let her know an agent would be calling her. That man had given her the recognition code to ensure that when Peter called and she took the call, he would know he could expect her cooperation.

The Commerce Inspectors commander had gotten the ball rolling, alerting the triumvirate and all of the diverse law-enforcement groups, plus the Grange Association. Such civil-defense measures as the Enclave administration could manage, had gotten underway, including the evacuation of non-essential personnel out of the Enclave towns nearest to the Colorado border.

Now, on Thursday, less than an hour after the "Sky Rangers" had won a costly but meaningful victory against their Aztlano enemies, Peter was about to meet with several persons who were taking charge of keeping civilians alive in the Wyoming and Yellowstone Sectors. Among these persons were Grange volunteers John Wisebadger, Alipang Havens, and Henry Spafford. Facilitating the meeting was Lyra Bender, the ranking Forest Ranger for Wyoming Sector....

 

[Copperfox]

"Your father," said Forest Ranger Bender to Alipang, "is doing wonders getting the people in Casper organized to evacuate in this direction. It helped, of course, that people held planning meetings the _last_ time it looked as if we were about to be invaded."

"Our Amish friends," reported John Wisebadger, "are on the ball, getting food and other survival supplies ready for temporary refugee camps."

"At least _these_ camps won't be _concentration_ camps," growled Pastor Peter Ionesco, who had ministered to many new Enclave arrivals who had previously suffered in the concentration camps of the now-disbanded Campaign Against Hate.

"But what's being done about _fighting_ those Aztlano thugs?" Alipang demanded. "My brother-in-law has _some_ combat assets, but by no fault of his, he _doesn't_ have a well-rounded fighting force. Is Washington going to do _anything_ to defend this territory?"

Lyra Bender sighed. "I'm told that Aztlano planes have attacked Texas again, diverting the Texans' fixed-wing combat aircraft to defend there. As for Washington, the Atkinson administration is doing the same thing the Trevette administration used to do: cringing and whimpering at the feet of the Formenteras, while finding just enough aggressiveness to stomp on our _own_ citizens."

"In the riots outside the fence, you mean?" asked another participant in this conference, the handyman-mechanic Raoul Rochefort.

"Yes. Deadly force has been used quite freely in the worst-hit cities. Nobody seems to know for sure what caused the disturbances -- though it's been revealed that a couple dozen officials, including Winnie Drucker from Gaia's Guts, fled the country shortly after the rioting started."

"Nothing we can do about those characters," Kimberly Havens remarked, stepping closer to Lyra. "Let's get back to Al's question about _fighting_ the invasion. What _can_ we do?"

"Well, the Energy Undersecretary has just taken one useful step. You, Citizen Spafford, will recall your own part in uncovering that unauthorized air-defense base that Nash Dockerty built in support of Sherman Lake's conspiracy. Gaia knows what became of the _weapons_ Dockerty stored there; but the Undersecretary is letting Lieutenant Vasquez have the holographic deception projectors which had been used to conceal the base. The Rangers can present the Aztlano troops with a fake landscape, maybe in front of the first power plant they try to seize, and so spring an ambush on them."

Peter Tomisaburo drew himself up like a man who has just made a momentous decision. "Ranger Bender? The Texans have hardly anything for _ground_ use that can damage an armored fighting vehicle--"

"They may soon be receiving two or three of the rail rifles the Overseers used to carry. Those can damage armor."

"Good. But with the extent of the front our side has to try to defend, what I was about to propose is still pertinent." He held up his micro-whip. The cautionary fear of offending China, which had become ingrained in most Americans, had prevented anyone from trying to confiscate Peter's weapon. "If I could get close enough without being shot first, _this_ weapon can slice through any armor ever made as easily as cutting cheese. I hadn't planned on trying it, since I'm not bulletproof; but if a holographic illusion kept enemy tank crews from knowing I was there until I was on top of them, it _would_ be possible for me to disable several of their vehicles, and even escape again before they realized what had hit them."

Henry Spafford's face lit up. "That's right! And if that ambush made it possible to use _your_ weapon effectively, it could also give a chance for success to _other_ weapons which would normally be useless against a modern army." Henry shifted his gaze from Peter to Alipang, who completed the thought for him:

"Bows and arrows! Effective against infantry, at least."

The new suggestions accelerated the pace and volume of talking. Lyra was preparing to use her dataphone to try to reach Emilio Vasquez and let him know about what the civilian volunteers were proposing.... when a ripping, screaming noise interrupted everything.

Those who looked up quickly enough -- which included Alipang and Henry -- saw that a modest-sized guided missile was passing above them, heading in a direction which apparently would take it toward Yellowstone Sector, or maybe the western part of North Dakota Sector. Even those who had reacted too slowly to see the missile, kept staring skyward in stunned horror after the missile passed.

"We just ran out of time for lengthy deliberations," John Wisebadger declared. "As an Ombudsman, I'm already committed to helping to manage the evacuation. Ranger Bender, if you'll take my advice, you won't wait for permission; you'll begin _immediately_ to assist our informal militia to get down to Casper and join Lieutenant Vasquez."

 

[Copperfox]

The missile which Alipang and Henry had glimpsed was in fact bound for one of the power-transfer substations just outside the Enclave perimeter: in its case, the one close to the northwest corner of North Dakota Sector. Its controllers had video guidance on it, and were aiming to bring it down where it would wreck the substation -- yet leave the boundary fence intact, thus NOT giving anyone outside an easy way to come in and try to repair the electrical connections. The plan was the same for other shots at substations feeding the Diversity States. But except for the southernmost of these targets, none of the substations would be hit sooner than Rapid City was hit.

In the Enclave capital, two of the triumvirate members, Distribution and Agriculture, issued pompous instructions for "avoiding panic" -- before they themselves retreated into the cavernous fortifications inside Harney's Peak. Some government personnel had already contrived reasons to get out; but the two Undersecretaries felt they ought to maintain at least a faint appearance of remaining at their posts.

The Energy Undersecretary, with her military background, was just as glad to have her two colleagues out of her way, as she kept in contact with the Texas Rangers and other police types, giving such guidance and help as she could.

As one of the efforts to project business as usual, the Blue Moon Stun Jazz Orchestra was proceeding with a scheduled open-to-the-public rehearsal. Even some of the exile musicians echoed the sentiment of the young non-exile woman among them called Frigate, the one whom Alipang Havens had once protected from bullying. The sentiment was to the effect that art was always important, and the show must go on.

Osmawani Jalil, as the orchestra's manager, was present -- more physically than mentally. She kept looking out the windows of the rehearsal building. Sixty percent of her attention was on the possibility of an air attack against Rapid City, and another thirty percent was on David Redfern. She missed the boy painfully, but she still was glad that he was free from Fairness Party supervision.

The ten percent of her mind that was listening to the musicians gained ground for a moment, when she noticed them hitting a difficult passage, one of the sharp changes in tempo and instrument selection that gave stun jazz its name. But a moment later--

A noise too loud for the hearer's brain to accept shook the building, and windows exploded into fragments. At least the windows were of a "safe-break" type of glass, which when shattering turned into small rounded bits which would inflict little if any harm on people. Her hair and clothing spangled with these glass fragments, Osmawani ran outside. There, she could see that flame-streaked smoke was rising from a nearby place toward the west, and a more distant place toward the east-by-northeast. The nearer place appeared to be the campus where Western Enclave Medical University had just been getting started forming classes; the other, judging by the secondary explosions following the first blast, was the former Ellsworth Air Force Base.

Ducking back inside the rehearsal hall, Osmawani commanded order from the chaos of astonished and frightened musicians. "Listen up! The city has been bombed -- or hit with rockets, I didn't see any planes. Anyone who has any first-aid training, and anyone strong enough to dig in wreckage, come with me! We'll go the closer impact site!"

About one-third of the persons present, including a few of the onlookers at the rehearsal, came with her. One young man among the onlookers, happily, was a night-shift physician's assistant at Sioux San Hospital. As they ran toward the university campus, they saw several Commerce Inspectors cowering down in terror, not at all resembling the heroes of the collective who had been depicted in Isadora Cruller's two Enclave movies. A Transport Police helicopter was airborne, heading for the airfield. The only official figures who were ahead of Osmawani's party at the university campus and actually doing something useful, were the Forest Rangers Mark and Dana Terrell -- with Whiplash.

Coming upon the scene at the head of their group, Osmawani and Frigate beheld the enhanced border collie digging into some of the smaller brick-rubble from what had been designated as the new university's library. Turning toward his master, Whiplash uttered two barks in differing tones, and made some startlingly humanlike gesture with a forepaw. Whatever it was that the dog meant to say, Mark Terrell seemed to understand it perfectly, and he and Dana went to work where Whiplash had begun.

Osmawani gestured for the physician's assistant to join the Terrells and their collie, while she led the others to search for victims elsewhere.

By nightfall, Osmawani's hands were bloody and bandaged, but she had saved the life of one casualty: a Quaker girl who had come from North Dakota to realize her dream of becoming a physician. Thanks to a tourniquet the Malaysian woman had applied, the girl would still live to pursue her dream. But for others, earthly dreams had ended here. The most prominent losses at W.E.M.U. were Doctors Barney and Ursula Jamison, who had been meeting with new students one instant, and who (in the company of those new students) had entered Heaven together the next instant.

Over at Ellsworth, one Texas Ranger had been among the slain: Rip Falkirk, who had been keeping watch over a supply of aviation fuel earmarked for his detachment's use. The ignited fuel had left Ranger Falkirk's corpse unrecognizable, even as his spirit was being recognized and welcomed by his Savior. The two Atmosfleet passenger planes remaining in the hangars, plus a Distribution Department passenger helicopter, had also been destroyed, along with various hardware and supplies.

As of now, even the most delusional of the Fairness Party members in Rapid City could no longer set much store in the likelihood of diplomacy doing them any good.

 

[Copperfox]

The Department of Sustainable Energy had given clear instructions to its personnel assigned to the southern edge of Wyoming which was a narrow buffer between the Enclave boundary and the Aztlano border. The instructions were to re-adjust the infrared projectors which were stationed west of Cheyenne. Used normally to heat up air masses as directed by the Energy Secretary, so that rising air would affect the direction of winds as part of national weather control, these projectors could have their apertures narrowed, so as to produce damaging heat rays. Not properly lasers, not true coherent light, but enough heat to overheat vehicle engines and inflict heat stroke on humans. This would create at least some difficulty for the impending Aztlano invasion.

The problem in practice was that the Fairness Party had spent years relentlessly deriding and mocking such "primitive" qualities as patriotism and bravery. As a result, even before the Aztlano missiles were launched from the vicinity of Big Thompson Canyon, most of the Energy Department workers in that Wyoming strip, including Fawn Seavers, had fled eastward.

But Odette Galloway could not forget an Apache brave who had saved her life less than a year ago. That warrior, and his family, were in the Enclave now, targets for the merciless Aztec-Maoists. Odette remained at her post, along with four male technicians who also vaguely remembered things like duty and honor. Odette coordinated their efforts with the heat projectors, until all of the devices were ready to be set off by a single switch. Once they opened fire, the projectors would keep on emitting their infra-red light until they were destroyed. Meanwhile, Odette and her companions -- who were by no means suicidal -- would maximize their own chance of living by fooling their attackers. A programmed ground car, upon being signalled, would start moving eastward, as if emulating those workers who had already escaped that way. Then the five technicians would actually run for it in the opposite direction, making for the high ground farther west.

No ground assault came during daylight hours on Thursday; but Odette waited with her four friends, while thinking about whether her life had ever counted for anything. Now, it might.

Around eleven-thirty that night, they heard the sound of approaching engines. No headlights shone; the drivers must have night-vision gear to steer by. Hopefully, the huge heat output from the weather-control station would mask five human bodies running from there. Not bothering with any theatrics like waiting "to see the whites of their eyes," Odette threw the master switch. The heat beams blazed away at the highway up which the enemy had been correctly predicted as coming. A moment later, one of the men started the robotic decoy car fleeing east on a side road. Then all five temporary artillery soldiers fled westward for their lives.

They made it clear with little to spare. Volleys of railgun projectiles demolished the heat projectors, though not before half a dozen armored vehicles had suffered damage that would need repair before they could be used again. The seeming getaway car was also destroyed. By the time any Aztlanos became aware that no one had been inside this car, Odette and her friends were well out of the path of the invasion force, using all available cover to avoid being seen as they fled.

Odette had done what she could. Now Henry Spafford of the White Mountain Apaches, and his fellow Grange huntsmen, were on their own.

 

[Copperfox]

Chapter 136: Lights Out

Time zones being what they are, it was already evening in New York City, Boston, Washington, and other East Coast cities at the moment when Aztlano missiles destroyed the connections carrying electrical current from the Western Enclave to the rest of the Diversity States. This left the computers in charge of the power grid to follow their protocol telling which consumers enjoyed priority for the remaining electricity. What was generated by solar-energy plants, windmills, tidal generators, and natural gas-burning power plants, went first of all to the workplaces, offices, homes, and recreational spots of the elite rulers and their enforcers.

Which left many other places blacked out.

In hundreds of high-rise residential buildings, both ones for employed persons and ones configured as Collective Dormitories for welfare recipients, all the lights went out in unison. Once the dumbed-down residents figured out that no one on their own floors had power, and figured out that the comm systems and elevators didn't work, there began to be enormous human avalanches pouring down the stairways, in search of whatever Party officials or labor-union officials might be able to help them in their helplessness.

Those officials, however, had in almost every case fled for their lives before the crowds found them, since they had seen the effects of the latest wave of riots which had only just been suppressed before this new calamity struck.

The vast numbers of proletarians now milling about in fear did not even have to be intentionally rioting, for their panic to become a disruption even worse than the previous crisis.

Former state or federal penitentiaries, now known as Self-Esteem Centers, had always been low in priority for power supply. This, because the Fairness Party had been fully aware that, with no more than a handful of exceptions, the inmates now inhabiting those prisons WERE NOT criminals. The criminals previously sentenced there had been either terminated, or appointed to government and labor-union jobs. Now, therefore, the powered gates and electronic locks in all the Self-Esteem Centers went dead, and the guards fled for the same reason as apartment managers had, leaving thousands of political prisoners to wonder whether they dared to walk outside.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

In what had been the state of Oregon, there still was daylight at the time the blackout hit. Just before the power loss, a young woman from a collective farm had gone to one of the women's-health clinics of the Genetic Health Service, one located very close to her farm, in order to get rid of the new life inside her which had somehow bypassed the usual preventions.

This barely-adult woman, an enthusiastic worshipper of Mother Universe at the Oneness Temple which served her agricultural collective, had been born Lisa Granholm, but since the Fairness Revolution she had been calling herself Lyrical Granite. The father of her unborn baby was one of six co-workers at the collective farm; without access to DNA testing, she could not have said which. It was in fact a black man. But although the Genetic Health Service had previously certified Lyrical as qualified to reproduce, not one of the six possible fathers wanted to be bothered with a bioproduct; and Lyrical did not care to give up the special favors with regard to working conditions that she had been obtaining by putting out for men who could help her. So the bioproduct was expendable.

But before the termination could be performed, the clinic lost its electricity. The collective farm did have stand-alone solar panels of its own, and so did not lose all power; but the clinic was lower in priority, because most pregnancies these days never even began unless they were pre-planned and approved. So Lyrical did not get to kill her baby that day, and her mind was called to other things as locally-powered loudspeakers ordered all the farm workers to report in and begin emergency recovery procedures.

The people of this collective were of course not as hard hit as the dwellers in big cities. They did not yet realize just HOW bad things were about to get. But it was the destiny of Lyrical Granite to survive all the coming troubles... to decide that she didn't mind carrying a baby after all, when some people in the midst of danger showed her special consideration BECAUSE she was pregnant... to give birth to a son, whom she would call Tristan... and to let him use her original surname of Granholm.

Citizens of the Diversity States had been encouraged never to care about events any farther in the future than five years or so. But it was a fact, known to the Heavenly Father Whom the Party denied, that the son of Lyrical Granite would have a great-grandson called Eliot Granholm, who in the 22nd century would become a truly remarkable hero.


* * * And that, my cherished readers, is the foreshadowing of the new series of novels I plan to write AFTER the Alipang Havens saga. I describe Eliot as having brown skin, and Lyrical Granite's black bedmate will have tipped the genetic scales in this regard.

 

[Copperfox]

The prison population at the Attica Self-Esteem Center had borne Juanita Porres no malice at any time; and after the death of Rick Marquette, some of the positive respect prisoners felt for him was transferred to Juanita. Prisoners were aware of how Rick, in the deliberately chosen manner of his punishing the murderer of his daughter, had simultaneously been protecting Juanita from additional gratuitous abuse by guards. If Rick had thought well of her, so should they; and Juanita had thenceforth been able to bring her old school-principal persona into use, as little interpersonal frictions between inmates began to be brought to her for mediation.

Thus it was that, on the night when the lights went out in their prison -- with no emergency generators, because horror of horrors, emergency generators might have used FOSSIL FUELS -- Juanita found herself being looked to as a leader, without any election having been held.

Fortunately, in the no-power condition, it was possible to open doors.

"First, let's call out, in case any guards are actually still here," she told the four fellow prisoners standing next to her (using her indoor voice by force of habit). When concerted shouts produced no response, Juanita's next recommendation was, "All right, let's see if any flashlights were left behind. If we find more than one, let's only turn on one of them for now, since we won't know how much life is left in the batteries."

Two working flashlights were found. Juanita appointed another woman as her segunda, leaving one flashlight with her as she waited in a cellblock with the majority of the prisoners. Carrying the other flashlight, Juanita set forth with ten others to inspect the whole prison. The only other living beings they found were additional prisoners whose cellblocks had not communicated with their own. These others had not chosen any leader in the short while since the guards ran away, so Juanita found her sudden little empire expanding.

So the search for anything useful, and for any clue to what was happening on the outside, continued with an enlarged search party. A few abandoned weapons were found, concerning which Juanita declared, "Those will certainly be DNA-keyed, and for all I know they might even explode if any of us tries to handle them. Let's not borrow trouble." On a happier note, they discovered supplies of non-perishable foodstuffs, and determined that all plumbing fixtures were still working for the present.

Juanita's short-term assessment was that the power loss had to be on a FAR wider scope than the prison alone, or else repair crews from Sustainable Energy ought to have arrived at Attica by now. Which in turn meant that serious disorder -- maybe even more senseless fighting, like what had been happening on the night when Riff Gamble had perished -- was likely to be going on. Accordingly, even apart from the technical issue of legality (in a society whose authorities Juanita no longer felt any respect for), going outside could prove suicidal.

So, repeating her reasons many times to other inmates, Juanita judged that they needed to stay voluntarily inside the Self-Esteem Center. They would build some kind of barriers at the gates, but would let any returning law-enforcement personnel know that this did not signify a prison rebellion, only a precaution against OUTSIDE rioters breaking in while the guards were away.

In the course of carrying out her plan -- which enjoyed the support of her fellow prisoners -- Juanita experienced an unexpected flashback to childhood. A Sunday-school lesson, something she had resented her parents for inflicting on her, had told of two Biblicals named Paul and Silas, who had been unjustly imprisoned just as Juanita was now. An earthquake had broken open the prison that held the two preachers; but they had stayed where they were, apparently to make a moral point about their never having been wrongdoers in the first place.

Maybe it wasn't too late to learn something from those long-gone churchgoing years. Juanita and her flock would stay put, like Paul and Silas, waiting out the crisis in relative safety, and hopefully proving a point about their own moral character.

Of course, as she was now capable of realizing, GOOD moral character was the very reason why they all had BEEN arrested to begin with. But Juanita's chosen course of action still was the best choice any of them could think of. Who could say, maybe even the rulers would learn something in the meantime.

 

[Copperfox]

The President and Vice-President of the Diversity States didn't _want_ to learn anything, still less to be obliged to do anything about events. Megavolt Atkinson and Reed Harrison had both always known that the Fairness Party intended to make their public so completely spineless that they could eventually surrender the country to the Aztec-Maoist Party, allowing the Formenteras to enlarge the dominion of their neo-Stalinism. But just as the two colleagues and lovers did _not_ know that Jessica Trevette still was alive, so they had _never_ known that Jessica and her true insiders _didn't_ regard it as necessary for this takeover to be non-violent.

On her meddling visit to the Bi-Continental Assembly, Meg had flattered herself that the give-away-the-store concessions she offered to Aztlan would be a historical turning point. She had envisioned herself looking supremely diplomatic, the consummate peacemaker, as she yielded the Rainbow House to new owners. It was simply _impossible_ for Emilio Formentera to _fail_ to see how the way was being paved for him; he _had_ to have seen that further violence was unnecessary! All the same, the Formentera regime _still_ was using armed force.

Now, Continental Marshal Yelena Gorshkovskaya was acting, by Meg's own orders, as a surrogate President, while Meg and Reed hid out in the bed of the former Lincoln Bedroom, commiserating over the fact that her brilliant Gaia-honoring diplomacy had not after all prevented fresh bloodshed. Yelena's orders were to use deadly force only against citizens of her _own_ country, while taking all possible steps to accelerate a rapid and supine capitulation of the Diversity States.

Meg remembered the classic movie Billy Jack, treasured by the Fairness Party for its militant aim of subordinating Christianity to Native American paganism. She remembered the movie's theme song, "One Tin Soldier," which sang of warmongers killing off a peaceful society _despite_ that society having already offered submission. It had always been clear as daylight that the warmongers in the song represented the racist, chauvinist, greedy, Bible-thumping, white-supremacist United States, while the innocent "mountain people" represented, well, anyone who _wasn't_ the evil horrible United States. But now, defying all Fairness Party dogma, it was A NON-WHITE, SOCIALISTIC, PAGAN REGIME which was attacking defenseless people _even_ when submission had already been offered.

Trying to force her mind away from this disturbance of her worldview, Meg snuggled closer to her part-time lover and full-time political ally, kissed him, and asked, "Say, do you suppose that Vice-Commandant Brickhouse _himself_ might have murdered Rodney?" No one in the federal government knew more about Rodney Camberville's end than the fact that he had been blown to bits inside the building he had claimed for his command post in Lubbock. Nor did they know how Jed Brickhouse and Annabelle Swain had come to have the rail rifle with which they had been so intolerant as to defend their fellow Texans.

"It's conceivable," replied Reed. "Brickhouse was a God-fascist, which is the same as to say that he worshipped death. Whether he killed Rodney or not, we'll be better off without _any_ Texas Rangers in the new order. Shall we simply skip to the good part, and broadcast our total unconditional surrender?"

"Hmmm, no, not _quite_ yet, sweetheart. We need to let the global village see that we did first request guarantees that the Formenteras _won't_ massacre all the internal exiles out of hand. The exiles are still useful workers, and we did promise China that we would do right by them. We have President Formentera's surrender demand on record; but let's wait until the Aztlanos have had time to destroy all resistance inside the Enclave. Yelena will see to it that no outside help reaches the Texans and their friends. After the conquerors have had their satisfaction against that Vasquez caveman, they may be in a better negotiating mood, so we'll get a better deal for the surviving Biblicals...."

= = = = = = = = = = = = =

The contingency plan which Ranger Commandant Brittany Pierce had agreed on with Mexican President Andreas Garcia recognized that secession might have to be enacted at a time of electrical power loss. Therefore, with the help of some Energy Department employees who secretly sympathized with the Rangers, unscheduled alterations had been made in switching and routing priorities for the power grid of the Texas Federal District. As long as even fifteen percent of the usual power supply remained, it would be possible to proceed with the emergency plebiscite which would make Monica Sotero the first President of the newly-autonomous Republic of Texas. Concurrently, with technological assistance from the secret army, the Rangers had pressed ahead in efforts to tap into Presidential-level communications.

Consequently, when Yelena Gorshkovskaya transmitted through a supposedly secure channel the order for all Texas Rangers to be disarmed, disbanded and arrested, none of the D.S. Marshals in Texas received it any sooner than it was intercepted by Rangers and made known to Ranger Headquarters in Dallas. Ranger Sergeant Zella Greenlee, recently promoted both for her merits and because recent Ranger casualties necessitated promotions, was standing the midnight headquarters watch; and she had standing orders from Commandant Pierce to guide her now. Her first action was to press a button on her desk, causing alert signals to go out to senior Rangers. The signal would also be relayed to the Mexican Federales. Her second action was to turn toward the two D.S. Deputy Marshals who were in the office as unconfessed anti-Ranger watchdogs, draw her sidearm, and shoot each of them through the head before they could bring their own guns to bear on her.

 

[Copperfox]

Before the nocturnal call to revolt went out, the people of Texas had already been awake and busy, both coping with the damage done by the air attacks in and around Lubbock, and helping each other deal with the sharp reduction in electricity. No serious riots occurred anyplace in Texas.

Governor Steven Jiang, and his confidential aide Sugarstar Hamilton, had taken refuge inside an elite club which was supposed to enjoy electrical priority. The first intimation the two men had that something was amiss was when the club nonetheless did lose electricity, even though nearby buildings had lights on. His dataphone somehow failing to make any calls, Governor Jiang bravely ordered his younger companion to go outside, accompanied by two of the D.S. Marshals who were acting as gubernatorial bodyguards, to find out what was happening.

Waiting in darkness, Jiang could hear some kind of shouting outdoors; but it seemed like cheerful, confident shouting rather than panic. Somewhere in there he heard what might have been gunshots. About ten minutes after Sugarstar had gone outside, someone else came in -- rather more loudly. The smashed bedroom door admitted one female and two male Texas Rangers. One of the two men held a flashlight, the other a pistol, both of these being directed at the Governor. The woman was Ranger Captain Martha Pollock.

"Good evening, Citizen EX-Governor," she exulted. "You've just been retired. I was the senior officer closest to your location, so I get to deliver the good news. We've been putting out the word by every possible means: Texas has had enough of you and the UN-Fairness Party. We just became an independent nation, by an immediate and massive response from the people. Our new President is Monica Sotero, the widow of a man who was killed by your Aztlano friends. And a section of Oklahoma looks like breaking loose to join us."

Slow to grasp the distasteful reality, Jiang finally regained the power of speech. "You can't do this! And where's my assistant?"

"Your fancy-boy is alive. As for the two deputies who were with him, they made the mistake of drawing on Rangers. The deputies inside this building were smarter, and are in Ranger custody. You and Citizen Hamilton will be spending a short time in a jail cell, while we mop up your goons. When we feel ready to let you out, you will be permitted to leave Texas by the fastest available transportation. If you ever show yourself in Texas again after that, you will be killed by the first Texan who sees you. That's you, singular; Sugarstar Hamilton will be offered the option of staying here, on parole, to be accepted eventually as a Texan citizen if he keeps his nose clean."
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HOLDING SPACE for any added retroactive narrative gap-filling.

Blah blah blah blah blah

 

[Copperfox]

The complacency of the Rainbow House, the Presidium and the Supreme Court had helped the Texas Rangers to prepare in secret. As the sunrise drew closer, rescue and recovery efforts were proceeding in the Lubbock area; but contrary to the impression that Party minions had been given, hardly any Rangers were involved in this work.

Some of the Rangers who _weren't_ in Lubbock, _were_ with their other most senior surviving officer below the Commandant: Captain Wade Sampson. His team had its own objective: a building in Houston which had formerly been a bank, and whose vault was now a storeroom for military-grade weapons. This arsenal was extremely modest by modern standards, in keeping with letting _nobody_ in America be so well armed as to worry the Chinese; but it would be a valuable improvement over what the Rangers had been allowed to possess for ground combat in the whole time that they had served under the Diversity States.

The electrical engineers collaborating with the Rangers had made _sure_ that the powered door to this vault would not be able to open until the Rangers were in possession of the building. A mixture of Marshals and Commerce Inspectors were vainly trying to get the vault open, when snipers with old-style hunting rifles and new-style night-vision gear took down the officers they had on watch outside the building. Captain Sampson and six fellow Rangers came in through the windows, and mowed down all their enemies inside, excepting two Commerce Inspectors and one Deputy Marshal who surrendered and were spared.

"Give all their sidearms and ammo to people on The List," Sampson ordered. He was referring to a top-secret list of Texan civilians which the Rangers had maintained since the Fairness Revolution. These were men and women whose good character was well known to the Rangers: persons who knew how to use guns, and who could be deputized if the day for an uprising ever came. Technicians loyal to Texas would deactivate the DNA-recognition restraints on the weapons.

Sending an encrypted signal to his power-industry allies, he soon beheld the vault door opening, courtesy of some computer hackers who were also on the side of the Rangers. "Bring everything out and inventory it!" said Sampson. The haul consisted of:

-- Four suits of energy-reflecting body armor, formerly property of the Overseers.

-- Three rail rifles of the same type as the one Ranger Swain had put to such good use.

-- Three portable rocket launchers, with five rockets each.

-- Two 40mm mortars, made to launch non-lethal infrasonic-shock bombs, and ten trank rifles with three ammo clips for each. The Rangers were as glad for these as for the deadlier weapons, for they didn't really want to take any more human lives than was absolutely necessary.

Another of the light patrol helicopters descended, flown by Ranger Sally Pitt. She had not happened to be on duty at the time Finnegan and Jessup made their flight to glory; so, by default, she was now to be promoted to lieutenant and assigned as acting commander of Ranger aviation, pending the question of whether Emilio Vasquez, who was senior to her, ever came out of the Western Enclave alive again. Sampson told one of his snipers to go with her, taking along one of the rail rifles for his own use, plus one of the mortars and two of the trank rifles. Lieutenant-Elect Pitt and her gunman would fly to Ranger Headquarters; the weapons they carried would be deployed to help defend that building, and Miss Pitt would join Commandant Pierce in trying to keep the revolution organized and moving. Sampson ordered her to don one of the protective "mirror suits," as her life was now especially important. Then he divided his followers into three squads, the largest remaining under his own command; the rest of the captured military-grade weapons would be divided up to equip all three squads. They would then await the Commandant's orders for where to strike next.

Before taking off, Sally Pitt told Captain Sampson, "While I was waiting for you to be ready for me, I heard some good news. A bunch of District Police and Commerce Inspectors in Oklahoma, under hasty orders from whoever's in charge in Washington, grabbed a mag-lev train and raced for the Aztlano border, in order to BLOW OPEN the border fence and _invite_ the scragging gangsters _into_ the D.S.A. as conquerors!"

"That's _good_ news??"

"The _next_ part is. A squad of Transport Police came over to our side, seized the train, and requisitioned the explosives the krins were going to use on the fence! When it was known what had happened, a crowd of civilians came and volunteered to join them if they were for secession. And they were!"

"Hoo-ee! We might could bring all the Okies along with us to freedom!"

Wade Sampson did realize, however, that the hopes for such an optimistic outcome would also be affected by hemispheric politics. It remained to be seen whether Mexico would let itself be thwarted politically from extending the immediate offer of alliance which President Garcia had promised.

 

[Copperfox]

Inside the Enclave:

Emilio Vasquez possessed no details of the uprising by his fellow Texans, but a code signal had reached him so that at least he knew it was happening. This might result in Mexico becoming politically free to come to the Texans' aid; but even in the best case, no such aid, in any form, could conceivably arrive in Wyoming sooner than the middle of Friday morning, September eleventh.

Before any orders for unconditional surrender came to Rapid City from Washington, the Energy Undersecretary had decided that two could play the electricity-stopping game. The invaders had not yet reached even the southernmost power plant before workers had shut off the current flowing into Aztlan, and had done as much as they could in a short time to wreck the connections so that their enemies could not soon get the power flowing again. Bill Shao and Purvis Kroll had been among those coordinating this bit of scorched-earth tactics.

By now, in the final hour before sunrise, all non-combatants should be clear of the most immediate threat zone. Emilio, at this moment, was above the east-west line of ridges which passed south of Casper, flying solo recon in old Number 343. His canopy had built-in light amplification, so he could see his way without advertising his presence by active radar emissions. He was aware that the Aztlanos were likely to split in three directions. None of the power stations for Nebraska Sector were as close at hand as the numerous plants to the north and west, so Emilio expected that the smallest number of enemy troops would head east, more to guard the flank (and look for chances to rape and plunder) than anything else. A larger force would move westward, to seize Gas Hills and other energy facilities. Emilio believed that the largest force would continue north: to capture power plants in that direction, to occupy or destroy Natrona Airport, and to gain control of the railways.

The Commerce Inspectors commander, the same woman who had been prompted by the Chinese to cooperate with Peter Tomisaburo, had selected those of her personnel who she thought were least likely to lose their nerve and run away, and had flown these down to the vicinity of the recycling center, where they were placed under the command of Forest Ranger Kostas Demophilos. This group would act as skirmishers, to slow down the Aztlanos' eastward thrust which was likely to be all infantry. To the west, the Transport Police were standing by to defend the Gas Hills uranium refinery, using the defensive earthworks which exile workers had previously prepared. The Transport Police had heavier weapons than the Nebraska contingent, including their shotgun-like flame-shell guns; but of course, these had nothing like the range of the rail guns mounted on the armored personnel carriers. Accordingly, starting more than four kilometers away from Gas Hills, some explosive devices had been rigged along the enemy's line of approach, in addition to the several already-existing pitfall traps.

This battle plan left the "Sky Rangers" free to attack the center column of the enemy, without worrying about hitting friendlies on the ground. No ground resistance would be offered until the enemy advanced as far north as Natrona and the evacuated city of Casper. That was where the civilian volunteers, including Alipang Havens, Henry Spafford, and Peter Tomisaburo, would hopefully be able to inflict casualties in daylight, from their holographic ambush.

Right now, by Emilio's orders, the Ranger detachment's Great Condor was acting like the military of a sovereign Republic of Texas, and following the example of Colt Finnegan -- bringing the fight to the enemy. Taking a circuitous flight path, Saul O'Keefe and his crew had crossed into Aztlano airpace, where much of the enemy's air-defense radar had been disabled by the loss of Diversity States electricity, against which they had forgotten to prepare in their smugness. And right now, they were attacking President Formentera's followup ground forces which were moving up the former Interstate 25.

An encrypted report came to Emilio's cognitive radio. As he had hoped, the enemy troops had no air cover, because they had not believed it would be needed. Sweeping in from the west on whisper mode and unleashing its complete load of air-to-ground ordnance, the helicopter gunship first crippled all of the armored vehicles that were most likely to be able to shoot it down with railgun fire. Then, with its rotary cannons, it massacred more than a hundred enemy footsoldiers. The whole attack took less than a minute; and when Saul O'Keefe made his escape, he left behind him an Aztec-Maoist army that was feeling a lot less like swaggering.

Communications intercept informed Emilio -- and it was only to be expected -- that the rear-column officers were frantically reporting to their forward elements that the gringos had pulled off an ambush. Emilio counted to ten, giving the forward hostiles time to react in shock; then he sped forward to make his own modest contribution to the counter-offensive.

One of the railgun-bearing armored vehicles, with what looked like fifteen infantrymen walking along behind it, was scouting ahead of the rest of the lead force. This probe was almost to the ridge line; once past there, it could easily shoot projectiles toward Natrona. But Number 343, in her first-ever sortie as an attack aircraft, swooped up to strike before the quasi-tank could cross the hills. Emilio used two of his three particle-beam shots on the vehicle, because he was unsure how much penetration his relatively weak energy weapon would achieve.

It achieved enough. The armored carrier instantly went dead in its tracks, not moving and not attempting to return fire. At the very least, its electrical systems would have been destroyed, rendering the vehicle unusable. With luck, the crew inside would have received a lethal dose of radiation, if not been slain outright.

Emilio was already flinging his chopper sideways even as he noted the success of his attack. As further evasion against small-arms fire from the infantrymen, he activated the anti-gravity device which the spy from India had given him so many days ago. The seeming tablet computer had been attached to Number 343's underside all this while, waiting to be used at need. Now it proved its worth: Emilio's helicopter flew straight up faster than anyone on the ground could have guessed was possible. In fact, it rose as fast as it physically could without breaking off the rotor blades. This, Emilio suddenly realized, must have been something the Indian engineers had calculated for when planning the energy level of the anti-gravity generator.

Successfully dodging all the initial return fire from the ground, Emilio let them have the last shot from his beam weapon. At least two enemy soldiers fell down dead, and the rest must have been able to smell their flesh cooking. The survivors exercised the better part of valor, sprinting back southward at Olympic-athlete speed. Of course, Emilio now equally needed to retreat.

With a drop in altitude, he turned for Natrona. A rushing noise passed above him as he did so. A railgunner farther south must have acquired him somehow; if he had not changed altitude just as the gunner was about to fire, that shot would have killed him. He hastened to interpose the ridge line between himself and all rail guns, just like that time sheltering behind the Stegosaurus with Juan Riquelme, and flew for home barely three meters above the ground.

It felt good to strike back at the barbarians. He would not soon be able to recharge his particle beam; but the enemy didn't know this. Now they had an additional menace to worry about.

 

[Copperfox]

Chapter 137: The Frontless Battlefield

The Undersecretary of Eco-Sensitive Agriculture was known to have commandeered a helicopter belonging to her own department, to escape from the Enclave into the questionable safety of the browned-out federal districts. In fairness to her, there was some legitimacy in her explanation that she had to oversee emergency food distribution outside the perimeter, since the regular means of feeding the proletariat were now handicapped. For five years, the government had been _arresting_ citizens (outside the Enclave) who tried to grow _any_ food independently; so a great part of the American public really _didn't_ have anything to eat now.

The Undersecretary of Distribution continued to hide fearfully in her quarters deep inside Harney's Peak, offering vague excuses to the effect that she was inventorying emergency supplies in the underground shelters. The Undersecretary of Sustainable Energy was as usual the most productively occupied of the three women, supervising workers who were trying to repair the power lines leading outward to their nation at large. This required her to supply emergency codes to shut off the infrasonic minefields, so that the crews _could_ enter the perimeter zone. They had been slowed down by a single armed Aztlano helicopter, which, while not daring to tackle the Texas Rangers' Great Condor, had succeeded in going unchallenged flying over a bit of Kansas and into the Enclave's Nebraska Sector. Coming upon a repair crew that was working on the destroyed connections for Great Plains Federal District, with Kostas Demophilos' force not near enough to pose a threat, the helicopter had slain five workers with machinegun fire. The news of this was demoralizing all the electrical workers.

Rapid City itself was thus left without much in the way of leadership. A spontaneous committee was formed on Friday morning for civil defense and damage control, with the hasty approval of what remained of any kind of police in the Enclave capital. Members of this committee included persons as diverse as Avery Glass (whose daughter Lenore and son Larry had both been injured in the missile attack, but not fatally), the elderly Estelle Upton, the pedicab driver Ignacio Balubal, and the sometime exotic actress Osmawani Jalil.

Samantha Ford had been invited to join this committee and make herself useful; but she had opted instead to clear out, along with Hydrogen Forbes and Zimmo Garland, as soon as they could get seats on something that could still fly. Samantha was clinging to the hope that she could restore her diplomatic credentials by having some role in the grovelling surrender of the whole Diversity States to Aztlano conquest.

= = = = = = = = = = = = =

In Wyoming Sector, meanwhile, the population of Casper was camped out on and around the small rock buttes near Teapot Creek and the Montefiori sheep ranch. This was the same piece of territory across which Kim Havens had ridden with Lynne Wisebadger last year. Kim had later commented that the place reminded her of Masada in Israel. Kim's mother-in-law Cecilia was now hoping that this comparison was nothing prophetic.

Pastor Wayne Schell, Dalbir and Sarbar Pitafi, Tilly and Miguel De Soto, and Reuben Torvill were acting as this camp's de facto governing committee.

Rudolfo Montefiori, having previously managed to transfer much of his livestock farther north, set about to butcher several ewes and lambs that were still with him, in order to feed these refugees. He was not asking for any money; but he did not refuse to accept the "In case we survive this" I.O.U.'s which some of the families from Casper presented to him.

As for another natural leader of the internal exiles: Eric Havens, over Cecilia's objections, had stayed behind in Casper. With him were some teenage boys and girls who had been in training to become Grange volunteers, plus Texas Ranger widow Rosa Cantu. The crisis of the Aztlano invasion had led to a startling turn of events for Eric and Rosa: they were both carrying guns. After the downfall of Nash Dockerty, Enclave authorities had examined the traitor's personal effects, and had found what the Deputy Commander of the Overseers must have regarded as collector's items: an old-style but still functional lever-action rifle, a double-barreled twelve-gauge shotgun, and ammunition for both weapons. The Forest Rangers had been allowed to keep these weapons, in case a use might turn up for them. Now the use existed. In the midst of the frenzy of evacuation, Forest Rangers had given the two guns to Eric and Rosa, who knew how to use them, and asked the two still-active senior citizens, not to seek a gunfight, but to observe what they could of enemy movements, in case the enemy came as far up as Casper. Which did seem likely.

Wilson Havens had pleaded to be allowed to join his grandfather's squad, but had been reminded by Eric that all the volunteers with Eric were older than Wilson. Strictly ordered to stay with his mother, grandmother and siblings, Wilson found something to do upon reaching Teapot Creek: taking a shovel and beginning single-handedly to dig emergency trenches for cover in case of gunfire.

Eric and Rosa had also been given another item unusual for exiles: two walkie-talkies (like the rifle, old but useable), whose frequency could be received by all of the parallel police forces. Eric had assumed a callsign of Overbite, and Rosa would be known as Pecan Tree. The addition of the teenage volunteers, who had bows and knives, had been the teenagers' own idea.

Eric had no contact with the ambush party Alipang had joined; but the old dentist could and did ask God to protect them all.

 

[HammerDoc]

(From post #1750)

"And the new Pope is from Brazil."

Not too shabby. Missed guessing the ACTUAL first non-continental Pope in over 1000 years by 1 country over!