15 MINUTES LATER. ATHENS, TEMPORARY NATIONAL GOVERNMENT (TNG) DISTRICT (FORMERLY IN GEORGIA). 3:25 PM EST. THURSDAY, JULY 10, 2025.
General Lyndon Phat
was sitting in the window seat he liked; the security forces kept
people off the former golf course it overlooked. A squat, strongly
built man with salt-and-pepper gray hair and a baggy face that
looked much older than his body, with his reading glasses perched
on his nose and his legs stretched across the seat, he looked like
a professor reviewing before a lecture. “Don’t ask me how I am,
Cam, the answer is always going to be ‘Just fine except they won’t
let me go.’ ”
“Okay, I won’t ask
that. What are you reading, Lyndon?”
“Reviewing the
decisions before the Sicilian invasion.”
“General
Patton?”
“General Alkibiades.”
At Cam’s blank expression, Phat smiled. “See, this is what happened
to ambitious kids like us. The Sicilian invasion in 415 BC was a
great example of ignorance compounded by stupidity and turned to
complete hell by overconfidence. But it wasn’t on the College
Boards, so we never learned it.”
Cam sat down. “I want
to tell you about a mess. Collum Duquesne is dead, and Castle
Newberry passed to his son, who is Post Raptural. So we lost our
majority on the Board, our alliance with the biggest Castle in the
neighborhood, and all of Collum’s common sense and drive, all at
once. And for that matter I am going to miss the hell out of the
big goof and I have no time to mourn.”
Phat gestured for Cam
to sit next to him, and put an arm around him. “Had you ever had a
command job before President Pendano made you the
Natcon?”
“I’d run plenty of
staffs. It’s not the same thing.”
“No, it’s not.” Phat
leaned back, but left a hand on Cameron’s shoulder. “You feel like
every possible decision you can make is wrong and no matter what
happens you’re bound to lose out, and there are a million important
things you won’t even get to touch.”
“Read my
mind.”
“We had a lot of wars
in the teens and early twenties, Cam. I went to all of them, in
command at one level or another every time. I wasn’t kidding that
I’m glad not to have your job, and I can’t tell you how to do it.
But I always found if I could think of the one thing I could
accomplish, put everything into that, and find the nerve to let the
rest go to hell—”
“I can’t let the Post
Rapturalists have the Board,” Cameron said. “If they control that,
they’ll find a way to get rid of me, proclaim their Christian
States of America, and have a war going with Olympia in three weeks
flat.”
“Then take your Board
back,” Phat said.
“I guess that’s what
I needed to hear. I’m not sure how I’ll do it and it won’t be easy,
but now that I’ve said it out loud, I can feel that it’s what I
need to do.”
“Don’t rely on
Grayson. There is always some other purpose running through that
guy’s head,” Phat said, “and it’s never the mission. Way too much
like Alkibiades, actually.”
“Well, at the moment
his main focus is his new wife—Reverend Whilmire’s daughter with
the freak-show rack.”
“Yeah, you said. And
the rack comes with the reverend.” Phat glanced at the clock.
“Speaking of which, you have a meeting with Grayson, don’t
you?”
“Yeah.” Cam rose.
“But I needed to come by here first. You always help me feel more
ready for the world. Hey, what finally happened to
Alkibiades?”
“Best general of his
time, but no one could trust him. Every brilliant success followed
by a spectacular act of betrayal. Played for so many sides that
we’ll probably never know who assassinated him.” Phat pulled his
glasses back down onto his nose, pointedly looked at his book, and
said, “You’ll be late.”