Invasion

Femala laughed. Her position was a puzzle. The High Priest might have regarded her as a traitor, but not a willing traitor; the Takaina biology would see to that. The standard way of treating captured females would be to breed them with enemy warriors, but that wasn't possible with humans. The only possible fathers were in Nevada, with the Yankee Clan, and they…were something new.

But her dispassion and her intellectual freedom had come from her sterility.

“I don’t think so,” she said, finally. She had long ago resigned herself to life on Earth. The human space program alone would keep her busy for a long, long time. The humans had come up with ideas that even the Takaina hadn’t invented, although they had been remarkably slow about actually putting them into service. It puzzled her still; if the humans had developed their own technology, they would have won the war within hours and captured the remains of Guiding Star. “I think I’m happy the way I am.”

“If you change your mind, just let us know,” Paul said. “We all owe you a great deal. The war couldn’t have been won without you.”

“I think you’d have won anyway, in the long run,” Femala said. “Your society would have broken ours apart from the inside.”

***

The President looked tired and drawn, but oddly happy as Paul was shown into the private room. The American Government might have been dispersed, but the President had insisted on moving the seat of government to Philadelphia, with the intention of returning to Washington as soon as possible. Recovery and repair teams were already at work in the destroyed city, but everyone knew that it would take years before Washington was rebuilt, not least because of all the other demands on the workforce. The United States had come closer to collapse than anyone liked to think.

But we survived the Civil War, Paul thought, wryly. We can survive this as well.

“Thank you for inviting me, Mr President,” he said. “I understood that you survived the vote of impeachment.”

The President smiled. “We won the war, so suddenly they all decided that unseating the President wasn’t the brightest idea,” he said. The impeachment proceedings had started because of the President’s concession to allow alien missionaries to work within the United States, a face-saving gesture on the part of the aliens. Certainly, the aliens hadn’t been concerned when two of them had died within a week of arriving on American soil. “That’s politics for you, son.”

Paul nodded. “Yes, Mr President,” he said.

“I'm appointing Francis as my Ambassador to the Takaina Government,” the President said. “Ambassador Carmichael and the other Ambassadors in the occupied territories will have to be withdrawn as part of the peace treaty, which means that we’ve written them all off for the moment, as long as the oil keeps flowing.”

“Yes, Mr President,” Paul said.

“It’s a degree of realpolick that most people would be uncomfortable with,” the President said. “Have you given any thought to your own future?”

Paul shook his head. “Operation Nightwatch is hardly required any longer,” he said. “I expected that I would be reassigned to some other task within the New Pentagon.”

“I’d like you to take over the United States Space Force,” the President said. “It seems that I can do no wrong at the moment” – he smiled, rather sardonically – “and Congress is rubber-stamping everything, too scared of losing their positions to object loudly. It comes with a promotion to General and a massive budget, as much as we can spare. We need more shuttles, moon bases, orbiting weapons platforms, tactical observation systems…everything we need to defend ourselves if the next High Priest turns out to be less fond of us, or if others turn up from their homeworld.”

“I doubt that we will see any more ships,” Paul said, and outlined his reasoning. Anything could have happened back on the alien homeworld, or the other worlds they’d settled. “Still…I accept your offer, with pride.”

“Good,” the President said. They shared a meaningful look for a long moment. “And the black operations?”

Paul paused. “They’re proceeding,” he said. The mere fact that the United States – and Europe and Russia – was supporting the insurgency in the Middle East could restart the war. It wasn't something anyone wanted to discuss openly. “We should have the time we need.”

“All of this could have been avoided,” the President said, gazing into the future. “History will say that I, or Bush, or Clinton, or Bush Senior, or Reagan should have done something to prevent it. The largest cover-your-ass-and-voting-base budgets in the world won’t make up for history’s judgement on us. The best we can do now is make sure that it never happens again.”

“Yes, Mr President,” Paul said. “I will see to it personally.”

***