True to her word, Faustina declares herself and accompanying cohort to just be tourists, something not seen in those parts since the Breakup. The spontaneous self-organization of local capitalists is one of the miracles of the free market.
After some autobiography, Dysart takes liberties with the Empress’s head.
I particularly enjoyed Faustina’s non-denial denial of what happened to the refinery. And how she uses Alene as a conduit to let Dysart know she is sincere. As readers, we know, via Thaad, the hole she dug for herself and her army. The GSS President doesn’t know that. He only knows this freak led 10,000 soldiers into his backyard. I find their jockying for position to be very interesting!
As I suspected, Dysart gets the low-down on Faustina. The Gulf Shore States may be 90% maritime but that does not mean their landward army cannot have a decent staff. And it looks like they are blessed with a very capable intel officer in the form of Captain Alene, a careful and thorough man. He gives his best summary of the empress and the imperium to his commander-and-chief, saving the worst for last.
From her personal mistake of going on recon nearly by herself in unknown territory, it is now pointed out to our genius that she has done the same thing to her entire command, putting thousands of lives at risk.
Her other family, in the form of her god-mother and her sister-in-law’s father, take Faustina to task on this point to make her older. At least there is some good news at the end.
General Hartmann gets some human intelligence back and is told that for the safety of her army, she needs more. Time to get back to the scifi elements of my future history. It’s just been difficult to do in her current low-tech environment.
It’s been a big day for Faustina but there are thousands of details to resolve after a battle, as she is discovering. One thing she has learned from history is that speed is an army’s great strength: if you can appear where you opponents never expected you to be, you are inside their OODA and halfway home to winning.
That’s about all I can do for the war-war stuff. Now we get to what’s called mop-up, although there are going to be two parts of it, lest I subject my long-suffering readers to a 2500-word installment. Sure, I know I’m an asshole, but I try to not be that big an asshole.
Your present is one of my rare battle scenes. Although, given my notes, I think we’re going to see several more of them unfold in the near future. As confusing as a battle is by itself, I have made a concerted effort to not “head-hop,” that is, change who’s story this is. Used to be a very bad habit of mine when young as a writer and I am much better at catching it when it crops up. If I missed any, please let me know.
Below the fold, things go *pew*pew* and *boom*boom*.
A bit of a long-ish addition. I wanted to wrap up Part One of Empress’ Crusade, at about 18k words, and get on to the campaign itself. For the historically minded, it will be loosely based on Caesar’s Gallic Wars, always a good read. In the meantime, I have some research to do about the populations of former Alabama and Mississippi and how that extrapolates one generation on into the Breakup.
Below the fold is a family who loves one another but find it increasingly hard to like one another. That is probably an odd concept for my younger readers but is something we in our dotage just nod at. Thanks for everyone’s support!
Faustina, awash in emotion, does something stupid. On the heels of that, she takes a walk to murmur a song. We are both older for this transitional scene.
machciv 