Having ended Fusion on Monday, I mentioned it might be several days before another idea comes along. Turned out to be about fourteen hours. As a plurality – if not majority – of my books have a female lead, I quite deliberately wanted to avoid that. So, I went and looked at the Hartmann family tree I recently updated, and pondered.

He gets a few lines in Ice Inundation Intelligence, but I really do not know much about Stephen Johnston, Fussy’s second husband, other than that he was from the Gulf Shore States and something of a political maneuverer. So, here we are.

Don’t know how long this will go, so that’s the ? next to the “4” up there.

Enjoy my content? Buy me a beer!

As Stephen Johnston closed the door to President Dysart’s office in what had once been the City-County Building, a scant thousand feet from the Mobile River, and was now the seat of government of the independent Gulf Shore States, a collection of communities that survived the Breakup, stretching along the Gulf Coast from Panama City in the east to the Pearl River in the west.  He smiled to the diplomat from the imperium, who had been talking to his boss, the president, for the last hour.

“Ain’t this the damnedest thing, Steve?” Dysart asked, rising from his desk and walking to a tray on a table next to the west wall.  He poured more coffee for the both of them.  “Empress Faustina negotiated with my dad nearly fifteen years ago, and now they’s sayin’ it’s time to revisit that.”

Rather than returning to his desk, he went to two black leather couches in the middle of the room, facing one another across a coffee table.  He waved for Johnston to sit opposite as he did.  Both relatively young men, thirty one, Dysart was already nearly bald like his father.  Johnston still had his thatch of sandy-blond hair, but knew his grandfather’s was very thin before he passed.

“Now, there’s a few things we both know,” he went on, “one, of course, is that I didn’t inherit a tithe of my pa’s political skill, and two, when it comes to it, you’re probably more suited to this job than I am.”

“Mister President, please…” Johnston began to object.

“No, let’s be honest.  And with the door shut, you know it’s Douglas.” He took a sip of coffee.  Real coffee, imported from Cuba but grown on Jamaica.  “My father was a great man, hand-picked by our first president, Mike Dole, to succeed him.  I was picked by the first real vote we had since the Breakup just ‘cause my last name.  All the while, you were there doing the heavy lifting as Secretary of State once Conner retired, first for him, and after I’d asked you to stay on, me.”

“And now,” another drink before setting the cup down, “I’ve got to know all what you know, about the Texans, the imperium, and everything else.  Like what in the hell is a demi-human?  Can you do that for me, Steve?”

“I will, Douglas, I will.” He leaned over with his hand out, shook Dysart’s, then picked up his cup as he leaned back.  “Now, I know you know all the basics:  the treaty your father made with Faustina limited our country to a thirty-mile strip along the Gulf, excepting the army base at Camp Shelby.  And, while you mentioned the Pearl River, out west, the old Louisiana border, we all know our real reach ends ten miles short of that, at Bay St. Louis.”

He set his cup down.  “We’ve just never had enough people to push west or inland.  That’s how their imperium caught us on the hop.  And, you know how I am, like all of us Southerners, so let me tell you a story…”

While he talked, Stephen thought to himself.  Most of what I know came from then captain, now colonel, Alene.  At the time Faustina showed up with her army, he was the intel guy for Camp Shelby.  Now, for all of the GSS.  Like me, he listens much and says little; intel and diplomacy have that in common, I suppose.  He paused his words and thoughts as Douglas went for more coffee for the both of them.

“Now as to the imperium’s long-term goals, with Old Washington gone, they have Canada to their north, us to the south, and Texas to their west…” he resumed.

“Old Washington,” the president shuddered.  “They killed, what, fifty thousand soldiers and the same number of civilians?”

“At least, sir, er, Douglas, yes.  At the start of that campaign their empress publicly stated that what she called Satanism-Bolshevism was intolerable, anywhere on earth.  A rather bold claim for someone just in the old Deep South,” he said, taking a drink.

“But she did win, Stephen.”

“They won, sir, and I use sir for a reason:  no matter what she is, had not Faustina had the loyalty of all of those brigades, legions, she calls them, then she’d just be some oddball living in Knoxville.” Cup down, he returned to his topic.  “Of the three remaining, we, of course, are the smallest…”

And the diplomat who arrived yesterday and called on us this morning was a shot across our bow:  the Gulf Shore States should think long and hard about moving our status from Friend and Ally to a much closer affiliation.  It was an open declaration they will annex us.  The empress has family in Texas, and one of them, Arpad Rigó, a colonel in their army – in Special Ops, no less – and a position high in their foreign office.  I bet Faustina thinks her western border secure for now.

With his thoughts bent that way, Stephen carried on about Texas.

“While they stayed still and quiet during your father’s attempt to bring New Orleans to our side, it was also Texas who brought the matter to the empress’ attention, leading to her bringing part of her army here, and the settlement with your father,” he said, getting close to the end.

“I recall Pa told me that she could march her men fifty miles on a road and in good weather,” Douglas sighed.  “I couldn’t do that on a horse, much less carrying a full soldier’s pack.”

He’s not weak, he’s not dissolute, Stephen thought, but he’s right:  this Dysart is manifestly unsuited for this job.  I’m sure he’d be fine as a mayor, but no more.

“So,” time to close this, “New Orleans is now under the Texians’ wing.  And we were just now politely threatened to fall in with the rest of Empress Faustina’s provinces.”

A bit jittery from all the real coffee, not chicory, he set his cup down.

“They sent a negotiator to start this.  And, as we are now talking business, let me be formal.  I’d suggest, Mister President, that you respond with one.” Good, he got what I’m saying.  “Had the empress come down here?  You would speak to her.  This is a minion.  Let one of yours, me, deal with another minion.”

“Now, Steve, you know I think better of you than that.  But, I also think you are right.  This is not some state-to-state summit, to use the old term, but just-opened negotiations.” Dysart seemed to sag, his face looking to the carpet.  “You handle things.  Just keep me in the loop.”

“Always, sir,” Johnston replied, standing.  They shook hands and he saw himself out.  Won part one, now onto part two.