Stepping up posting a bit as it will force me to finish this. There will be a Part Five, a conclusion. My notes from last night are awful, so I’ll flog them together later today.

In RealLife, I had to do preliminary tax work this morning. Ours are complicated so we’ve used a CPA for twenty years. Since the Fed’s Magic Money Machine can just go brrr, brrr, filing taxes is nothing more than a humiliation ritual the Cloud People use to show how much they hate us.

Below, Stephen meets Fussy for the first time and, I think, likes what he sees. He is a cautious and reserved man, which I think is why I had to write a part 5; nothing happens quickly. In fact, from my notes, nothing really happens.

Enjoy my content? Buy me a beer!

A twin prop plane took him from Mobile to Birmingham, just north.  I’d heard of all the new construction:  steel facilities, but had no idea of the extent…  From there, he was hustled onto what, to him, looked like a flying saucer.  Asking if this was a joke, he was assured it was not.  Pressed back into his seat at six Gs, Johnston agreed.  Moments later, his four-point harness keeping him from splattering on the opposite wall, motion stopped.  A man in a legionary uniform announced they were just outside Front Royal, Virginia Province, and would he please accompany him?

Virginia.  Their, that they call, their Old Eagle campaign.  Over one hundred thousand dead.  By her orders.

A small car, powered by CNG, drove him east, to the top of the eastern ridge of hills which defined the Shenandoah Valley.  The driver indicated a rest stop to their right.  Most of the traffic here is horse-drawn carts, not trucks.  These people have spaceships yet parts of their country lives in the nineteenth century.  Johnston recalled looking up the word that Chesney could not recall:  subsidiarity.  Leaving local communities alone.  So I suppose it’s flying saucers for the well connected and horses for everyone else.  He washed his hands and checked how he looked in the mirror.  I look old.

“Not that old, Stephen Johnston,” said the woman waiting outside for him.  Two horses were tied up behind her.  “And, we don’t all use reactionless motors to get about.  How are your equestrian skills?”

A plain legionary uniform but for the trademark gold circlet.  Her long, dark hair was in a braid down her back.  The pictures do not do justice to her eyes.  I don’t even know what to call their color.  He collected himself and gave a short bow with a nod of his head.

“Empress Faustina,” he said clearly.  “Odd place to meet a visiting foreigner.”

“You won’t be a foreigner much longer.  And the color is turquoise.” She swung up onto her mare and waited for him to do the same for the other horse.

Alene warned me about this:  demi-humans can read humans like books and it seems as if they are looking right into our minds.  Old Dysart was right:  I cannot let her bully me.  While not much of a rider, he, too, stepped up from the stirrup and lightly held the reins.

“That’s Pookie, a gelding,” she volunteered.  “Easy ride.  Come along, please.”

Alternating walk, trot, and canter, she did not seem interested in talking.  She did stare over at him, he noticed, more than he would have thought.  She’s a sovereign and I’m a diplomat; it won’t be me speaking up.  But, for someone supposedly my age and with five children, she looks younger and fitter.  And I’m guessing you know what I just thought?

“Yes,” she replied, dropping her horse to trot and giving him a very enigmatic smile.  “You are a subtle man.  My first husband was a subtle man.”

“First.  Implying a second?” he asked.

“Certainly.  The imperium is its children, grandchildren, posterity.  I, empress, must lead by example and be mother not only to the nation, but my ever-expanding family,” she said with a look which he suspected was seductive.

“I note,” he said with a look to the black band around her upper arm, “you are still in mourning.  While our President has sent his condolences, may I add my personal one, as well?”

“Besides God, Bob was the most important person in my life,” she said, now looking ahead with an edge to her voice.  “He died doing what he loved:  an outdoorsman.  For reasons I shall not know until I die, it was his time.  Speaking of, let’s canter up this hill and then pause.  There is something I want to show you.”

With no perceptible movement, she was off.  He gave his horse a light tap with his stirrups and followed.  A sign they passed said Broad Run.  The land opened some hundred feet ahead and below them.  A land littered with steel.  The empress slowed then stopped.  He did, as well.

“Good Lord,” he muttered.

Bradleys, other transports, SAM launchers, Hummers, armored cars… all were littered across the ground for at least the mile he could see.  Broken.  Rusting.

“I didn’t clear it out as I see it as an open-air museum of what I will do to those who oppose me,” the empress said in a matter-of-fact tone, obviously not caring of the number of dead represented before them.  “This was the schwerpunkt, the center of battle.  Idiots thought they had the numbers to roll over my legions, who – by and large – are light infantry.  Numbers are nothing.  Training and leadership win battles and wars.”

“Your leadership,” Johnston allowed.

“And that of my legates.  Excellent men who I completely rely upon,” she agreed.

“And after all this,” he took his eyes from the scene to look at her, “you turned your attention to the civilians?”

“Everyone was given a chance to repent of their satanic-Marxism.  Some did and now are closely watched in far flung corners of my imperium.  Those who did not died.” Her eyes never left his but did seem just a bit brighter.  “And the young children, separated by race, have been fostered out.”

“I am not cruel by choice, Mister Johnston.  There are simply some things I will not tolerate.”

“Like slavery, around Tupelo?  Your man, Chesney, said you put paid to that,” he noted.

“Yes.” She eased her mare closer to his horse.  Their legs touched.  “And my cute little niece and I incinerated over a hundred thousand in St. Louis, after they shot at my subjects.  We all take loyalty very, very seriously here.”

“Empress?  I’ve done my homework.  You were hailed as empress after Savannah and the Chinese war there.  Then Vicksburg, Tupelo, and my young country.” Neither looked away or moved.  “Only then were you off to Huntsville, to, as our former president said, ‘secure your northern flank.’”

“It was Robert who got my southern flank,” she smiled with a single bat of her eyelashes, “but do go on.”

“If all that was politics, it was while your position was new, unstable.  Now,” he waved at the wreckage before them, “your imperium is secure.  Not just here, but on the moon, from what I read.”

“Mars, too.  Sorry to interrupt.”

“So why,” Johnston forced the exasperation out of his voice, “would a minor bureaucrat from a strip of land you could take with a single legion, matter to you?  There are three other empires in your Polar Alliance.  Surely there must be a marriage alliance, there?”

“The Habsburg heir?” She backed her horse away a few feet.  “Certainly.  Nice lad.  We went skiing once.  The Japs would not have a half-chink like me – you know that, right?  And there is no way, none, after the water under the bridge between me and Reina, that I would ever take a Russian.”

For the first time, he saw her head drop.  She whispered.  “Not after my step-daughter, Helena.”

I have never heard of any of this.  A step-daughter?  By whom?  When?

Her head came back up and, for once, her smile seemed real.  “I like you, Stephen.  Let’s ride on a bit to one of my camps.”

“Of course, Empress.”

“And, in private, it’s Faustina.”

“Faustina.”