Chapter 11

"All right, Aunt Ruth," Sophie said as she waved at the woman standing in the door of the cafe. "I will. I'll see you when I get back!"

She fitted the helmet carefully over her head, fastened the strap under her chin, and turned the bike eastward. The Mountain Road, as it was now called, had recently been re-paved, and it still got her out of the clutches of the Traffic Control System faster than the road through town.

To stave off the thoughts that had been careening around her head since Jamaal talked to her, Sophie cranked the throttle open and threw the bike through turn after turn, thrilling once again to the adrenalin rush of a fast bike on a winding road, as sparks flew from the foot pegs each time she laid the bike over. By the time she hit the relatively flat, open Phoenix-Coronado highway, she was hooked on the feeling and twisted the throttle to its limit, whizzing past slower vehicles as if they were standing still.

Sophie's first stop, on returning to the base at Coronado was, naturally, the Infirmary. She was more than a little nervous as she walked down the corridor to Linda's room. There were a lot of unanswered questions about their relationship, and she wasn't sure how Linda would be taking the loss of her leg. She decided that, for the moment, her best course would be to act as if nothing had changed between them.

"Okay," she said, on finding Linda propped up on pillows, reading, "Enough laying around here! Haven't they got you out of that bed yet?"

To her delight and relief, Linda's face lit with the old familiar smile on seeing her.

"Sophie! Damn, I missed you girl! Oh, hey! Check this out!"

She reached down beside the bed and pulled up a complex mechanical device that unfolded to become a skeletal caricature of a leg.

"I'm still learning how to use it, but it's damn near as good as the ones they used to make before the Sickness," she beamed. "Few weeks, I'll be doing my morning run again."

Sophie leaned over and kissed her tenderly on the lips, then held her, whispering, "That will be wonderful!"

Linda's embrace held nothing back, and a lot of weight seemed to lift from Sophie's shoulders. They held each other for a long moment before Linda pushed her back to talking distance.

"So, what's your new assignment?"

"I haven't been over to HQ yet," Sophie replied. "I had to come see you first."

"I'm glad you did, babe," Linda told her. "I think we kinda left some things up in the air last time."

"Yeah," Sophie nodded. "There was one thing in particular I wanted to ask you."

"What's that?"

"When you and Kyle get married and set up housekeeping somewhere," Sophie asked, "will you be, you know, exclusive?"

"We already talked about that," Kyle's voice told her from the doorway, "and we agreed that we won't need a guest room when you come to visit. We'll just need a really big bed in our room."

Sophie's glance shuttled back and forth between the faces of her two best friends, but their expressions confirmed what Kyle had told her.

"I'd like that a lot," she told them simply.

"Good," Linda said, "and now I've got a question for you. We thought we'd have a simple ceremony in the tradition that was started at the Citadel - you know, just exchanging our vows to each other with a few witnesses. Problem is, I want you to be my maid of honor, but Kyle wants you to stand up for him, too. Kind of a 'best woman' I guess. So you've got to choose. Which one?"

"Come on, guys," Sophie replied. "You ought to know me better than that by now. This is the New World, and we're creating our own traditions, so why should I choose? Why don't I stand up for both of you? I never saw the sense in starting a union by dividing your friends up between bride and groom, anyway."

Linda smiled and held out her hand, palm up.

"Pay up, buster!" she told Kyle.

"Damn!" Kyle said, digging in his pocket for a credit note which he slapped into Linda's open palm. "I thought sure you'd pick her!"

"And I knew you'd find a compromise," Linda laughed. "That's always been your style: Steel diplomacy. You won't give an inch to an aggressor, but you always make sure your friends are treated fairly."

"Maybe I'll use that as my campaign slogan," Sophie laughed, "if I decide to go along with Jamaal's harebrained scheme."

"What harebrained scheme is that?" Linda asked.

"Oh, he wants me to run for President when Gav's term is up," Sophie shrugged.

"You told him 'yes', of course," Kyle said.

"No! I'm a soldier for crying out loud! I'd think we'd had enough of dynasties before the Sickness. I really don't want to perpetuate a Thompson dynasty for Phoenicia."

"So you told him no?" Linda asked, sounding disappointed.

"I told him I'd think about it," Sophie said, "and I will, while I'm on my next assignment."

Kyle and Linda exchanged smiles, and Kyle said, "She's going to do it!"

"I didn't say that!' Sophie protested. "All I said was that I'd think about it!"

"Uh huh," Linda said sardonically. "Like we don't know you well enough to understand how that mind of yours works. You may not realize it yet, but you'll come around."

"You guys may not know me as well as you think you do. Anyway, I need to report in. Let me know when the big day is going to be!"

"Okay, but you let us know when you start your campaign!" Linda told her retreating back.

"Yeah, yeah," Sophie waved off her teasing comment as she headed for the door. "Hey, I'll try to stop by and let you know where I'm going, okay?"

"You'd better!"

Sophie was baffled at her friends' insistence that she was going to run for President. She hadn't decided one way or the other, but right now, she was feeling like the world was spinning too fast for her. At her quarters, she changed into her uniform with the new maple leaf insignia, then walked to the HQ building and Carson's office.

"Major Chen-Thompson to see General Carson," she told the clerk who sat at the desk outside the General's office.

"Come on in, Major," the General's voice came through the partially open door before the clerk could respond.

Sophie approached the General's desk, hat folded under her belt and snapped to attention. She had had some informal meetings with General Carson, but they were still in the military and she was damned if she would presume upon that familiarity.

"Have a seat, Sophie," Carson told her, waving in the general direction of the only other chair in the room. "How was your leave?"

"Mostly relaxing," she told him, "but a little troubling."

"Nothing serious, I hope."

"Not really. I had a disagreement with my brother, and somebody's pushing me to do something I'm not sure I'm ready for."

"Well, that's one of the great things about Phoenicia. You get to make your own decisions - at least about non-military things."

"Yeah, but people still have expectations," Sophie said. "So, have you decided what my new assignment's going to be?"

"I have indeed," Carson replied, turning to the map of Phoenicia and its neighboring areas. "You see this area up here in the northeast of what used to be the United States? That all came under the rule of a gang out of old New York. In fact, that's what they're calling themselves: 'New New York'. Down here in the southeast spreading northward, we have a much larger, but less densely populated area that's also recently consolidated, calling itself 'The Confederacy'. These two gangs now control the entire eastern coast. Inland a few hundred miles is this much smaller strip of territory that extends along the Mississippi river from what used to be Tennessee to the great lakes. It's calling itself 'Middle America". These people see the problem they're facing with two larger, stronger rivals on their eastern border and us in the west, and they've made overtures about being annexed."

"That's good news, isn't it?"

"For us," Carson replied, "maybe not for them. We know that both of these other states are in an expansionist mode, and the next logical step for either of them would be to take over Middle America, since it's maybe an easier target than one of the east coast nations would be, and would give the winner extra strength to go after the other. If they find out these folks are wangling for annexation to Phoenicia, though, one or both of them might accelerate their timetable for invasion."

"I don't understand," Sophie said, looking at the map. "What's so special about that little area?"

"It encompasses old Detroit and old Chicago and old Milwaukee, as well as a bunch of the smaller cities that were industrialized before the sickness. Detroit, in particular, was a large manufacturing center for automobiles. It also gives the Noo-noos access via the Great Lakes if they can get the old lock system working. For the Confeds, it would give them access from the Mississippi river all the way up to here. Right now, Middle America can only make local use of both waterways since the other two groups control their ocean access.

"So, do any of them have the ability to restart those plants?"

"We think either the Noo-noos or the Confeds could, eventually, get those plants working," Carson told her. "The Northeastern group is known to have resurrected at least one steel mill in this area. This used to be called Pittsburgh, and though a lot of the steel industry went overseas before the sickness, a lot of the machinery is still there. They've apparently found a way to get it back in operation, and are busy smelting old cars and other metal that they find. Right now, they're just making crude blades and spears and such, but we've been seeing signs that they're experimenting with working that stuff into more complex tools and weapons."

"What about the southern group?" Sophie asked.

"They have somebody with them who knows something about engineering. They've come at us with some homemade weapons straight out of medieval Europe," the general told her, shaking his head. "They can't hold a candle to our weapons, but they're smart about setting ambushes and using their stuff to good advantage."

"Wait a minute," Sophie said, "Ancient weapons? You wouldn't be talking about ballistas and trebuchets and that sort of thing, would you?"

"Why yes," Carson's eyebrows went up in surprise, "that's exactly what I'm talking about."

"Son of a bitch!" Sophie cursed. "I knew I should have killed that bastard!"

"Huh?" the General said. "Explain yourself Major."

"That last S&R mission I commanded before I signed up for Level Nine training, the ringleader was an ex-professor of something or other. He and his scavs had built a bunch of medieval weapons that they were planning to use against our base in Arkansas. We destroyed his weapons, but because it was the first time we came up against him, we had to let him go. Gunny said something about shipping him off to Florida."

"Well, our best intelligence says this bunch is headquartered there, so you might be right. It might be the same guy."

"Okay," Sophie shrugged, "at least I know who I'm dealing with in the south. What's our mission?"

"We're going to reassign Colonel Wyndham to coordinate the security for Middle America. Besides a regiment of regulars, he's going to have a regiment of irregulars and a full SO Team. Your primary duty will be to act as advisor on Special Ops tactics and capabilities and liaison with the SO Team."

"An HQ job?" Sophie said disappointedly, then stiffened to attention and said, "Yes sir! When do I report?"

"You're being given this assignment because it's important to the security of Phoenicia, and you're the only SO officer we've got who not only knows our capabilities, but has the ability to back off and look at the big picture. Don't kid yourself, Major, this is going to be one tough assignment, even if you never fire a shot. It wasn't only our assessment that got you the assignment, though. Wyndham asked for you."

"He asked for me? After my insubordination and the dressing-down I gave him in the islands?"

"He said he needs somebody who's not afraid to tell him when he's screwing up," Carson replied, smiling. "He was also impressed with the way you and your platoon handled the situation there."