“How the fuck did you get the entire 432nd Operations Group?” General Richard’s seat crashed to the floor a second after he bolted to his feet. “Did you just walk into an airforce base and walk out with it?”
“More or less?” Dan shrugged while William snickered next to him. “People keep forgetting that we have a spaceship. William had heard that the entire force walked off the base once they ran out of food. Some local toughs took it over. We knocked them off and walked off with the drones and equipment. It took a couple trips, but let’s be honest. We’re the only people on Earth that have the ability to do heavy transport without being intercepted by another warlord.”
“Can someone explain to me what’s going on?” Mayor DuBlanc frowned slightly, looking back and forth between General Richard and Dan. “Both of you are in MY office, so I don’t really appreciate you talking past me. At least let me know what the 432nd Operations Group is.”
“A whole lot of drones.” Richard righted his chair and sat down shakily. “Six squadrons of Reapers, if I recall correctly. In short, more than enough to provide air support for an entire unit the size of our self-defense forces. God, how many of them do you have? 80? 100?”
Dan smiled. “Some of them were vandalized or damaged by the people we nabbed them from, so we only have 72. It took us a while, but we’ve hauled all of them out to that compound we’re building outside of town along with spare parts, ammunition, and control installations. Of course, that’s not the best news.”
“Is a Reaper like a Predator Drone?” DuBlanc asked, cocking her head. “I’ve mostly been working on police operations budgets and traffic load management for the last decade or so. Give me some context here.”
“They’re bigger and they hit harder, Mayor.” Dan fiddled with the sheaf of papers in his hands. “The Reapers have a pretty decent operational range, but we’ve converted one of the Viceroy’s cargo bays to launch them. Doctor Weathers could probably explain it better, but we basically have a magically powered steam catapult that lets us launch them while we’re in the air. It’s a bit slow, and we can only handle one at a time, but right now we have the ability to more or less appear over any city in the world and launch a handful of remotely operated bombers.”
“I asked for context,” DuBlanc massaged her temples. “I suppose that’s what you provided, but it mostly just sounded like a whole lot more jargon to me.”
“They aren’t going to take a city over like that.” Richard chewed on his lip while he eyed William’s smug grin. “But they’re going to be able to show up and demolish a couple tanks or strategic sites pretty easily. Especially if radar won’t be able to see them coming.”
“It can’t,” Dan agreed, sliding the papers in his hands across the table to the Mayor. “Even better, the Viceroy’s Pride is armed. The entire thing is run on a mana generator, and we’ve only been able to figure out how to work it with the help of the technicians we rescued from the elves, but the setup is pretty impressive. It doesn’t use ammunition, so logistics aren’t a major concern. We can’t fire it as often as we’d like, there’s some sort of crystal that we have to charge and use as a mana capacitor, but we can manage two shots in the first minute and about once a minute after that. That’s hardly a machine gun, but the shots pack a punch. We haven’t measured the yield in kilotons or anything, but it’s turned some pretty big boulders into gravel during our test shots.”
“How impressive.” General Richard leaned forward, his fingers impatiently drumming on the wood of Mayor DuBlanc’s desk.
“A whole lot of light and noise followed by an explosion,” William interjected, grinning. “About fifty percent bigger than a tomahawk cruise missile. It’s got pretty good range on it, too. Our test shots were blowing chunks out of mountains almost two miles away.”
“That sounds like it can level a building with functionally no notice. I don’t think the other Warlords are going to be happy that you have that capacity.” General Richard frowned.
Dan nodded at the papers that the Mayor was reading. “As for leveling a building, we’re counting on it. If the rest of the warlords have a problem, we can literally relocate to space with a couple hours notice. Even if they take over New Orleans, we can reappear at a moment’s notice and tear their armed forces apart.”
“I’m really not sure how I feel about you stating to our faces that you plan on abandoning us if we get attacked by an overwhelming force brought on by your antics.” Richard pursed his lips.
Dan opened his mouth to respond, but William raised a hand. Shaking his head, he fixed a steely glare on Richard.
“I don’t think you get how this works.” William leaned over the table, waving his index finger in the General’s face. “Right now the only reason someone more powerful than you hasn’t taken you over is that you were more trouble than you were worth. They’re interested in taking over chunks of the country that will help them play their little game of Risk without costing them much. The bayou is what kept you safe because they want to fight each other, not the Orakh or that nutcase Bowman.
“Most of them have proper air forces,” William leaned back, his eyes still fixed on Richard. “Trained paramilitary groups and ex soldiers using equipment they’ve nabbed from the army as well as whatever science fiction bullshit they’ve cooked up. Hell, I half expect a couple of them have probably gotten their hands on the nuclear codes. They’ve bribed half of the military’s leadership.
“No.” William smiled smugly. “What you need is a deterrent, and that’s us. They’re all stuck at each other’s throats, any of them that reaches a hand out to smack you down will need to be quick, or another warlord will take them out. If we can just disappear and periodically reappear in the middle of their cities, blowing up things that look important, attacking you suddenly becomes more trouble than it’s worth.”
“Enough banter, General Richard,” Mayor DuBlanc interjected, passing Dan’s papers to him. “It looks like Mr. Thrush has a plan to take over Florida. Their theory is that his forces want to revolt, but that Colonel Bowman is keeping them in line through threats and fear. I’m not sure how keen I am on hedging an entire operation on that theory, but I will admit that he was rather quick to push the boundaries of our non-aggression pact. Already, his forces ‘happen’ to be much deeper in the neutral zone between our two spheres of control than we agreed to.”
She frowned slightly, indicating the papers. “On that point, I must say, I’m a bit surprised at the detail in that intelligence dossier. The notes on his leadership’s movements as well as the aerial photographs of his units around the edges of the bayou were quite detailed.”
“We have access to a spaceship and drones.” Dan shrugged. “We’re probably the best-equipped force to perform recon left in the United States. As for the details on Bowman’s command structure and movements? Half of his elite forces have already defected and joined us. He might have changed things up in the meantime, but at least as of the Battle of the Bayou, those are accurate.”
“I get that this is a simplification.” DuBlanc steepled her fingers. “But I think it’s a fair one. Your plan seems to boil down to you inserting operatives that would figure out where Bowman and his inner circle were staying. Then you’d show up without any warning and blow them straight to hell. After that, you expected us to move in and mop up your mess.”
“Not exactly,” Dan responded nodding toward the papers in Richard’s hands. “We will be dropping ourselves into Miami and our operatives should prepare the locals to transfer power to us. I’m still hopeful that a spaceship blowing up an office building and landing on its remains to disgorge a bunch of science-fiction-style robotic armored suits will be enough to scare everyone into submission.”
“Is…” DuBlanc struggled to finish her thought. “Are you seriously saying that your plan is to bluff the entirety of Florida into surrendering to you?”
“Yes?” Dan asked, chuckling slightly.
“There’ll be a power vacuum.” William leaned forward, his eyes flashing. “It’ll be just like the invasion of Jarkarta. If nobody likes the guy in power, they don’t step up to avenge his death. Sure, they’ll fight over scraps, but if you look imposing enough, they usually won’t take a crack at you until you get a chance to cement your gains.
“I mean,” William frowned. For the first time that meeting, his manic expression slipped for a moment. “That’s basically what took America apart. They kept things just confused enough that everyone who didn’t know what was happening just stepped aside and waited to see what would happen when the dust settled.”
Shaking his head, William motioned at the papers. “Here. We would take over Miami and see which sections of Bowman’s army would sign up with us from the get go. At the same time, the Army of New Orleans would set out, letting everyone know that they represented law and order. So long as your soldiers act very sure of themselves that Bowman is dead, I’m hoping that an inability to get orders from Miami should be enough to keep any resistance minimal.”
“This might work.” General Richard interrupted Mayor DuBlanc as she opened her mouth to object again. “I don’t have as good of intelligence as Thrush, but we’ve been hearing rumblings out of Florida for a while. The people don’t like Bowman and neither do the soldiers. He’s ruling by fear right now, and the minute people aren’t afraid of him, I’m not sure how much fight they’ll have in them. Especially if we make it clear that our main goal is just to reestablish civil authority.”
He put the papers down on the table before making eye contact with Dan. “My real concern is making sure we wrap up our loose ends. The Colonel is a piece of work, as is this Merella and a couple of his top Lieutenants. If we can’t assure the people of Florida that we’ve killed all of them, I’m not sure we’ll be able to secure their cooperation.”
“Well, my concern is that you’re taking the entire goddamn army as part of the deal,” DuBlanc interrupted stuffily. “You’re asking for almost all of the military material we retrieve from Florida. I don’t like the idea that you can just take over New Orleans if you get upset with me.”
Dan looked at General Richard and shrugged slightly. For a second, emotions warred across the General’s face before a helpless smile won out.
“With the capabilities Mr. Thrush has revealed, “I think we’re a bit past that point. He’s more than capable of just hovering over the city and reducing the important bits to slag until we surrender.”
“Oh.” She threw up her hands, rolling her eyes. “Great. I’m glad someone bothered to tell me that I’m having a business lunch with a threat to the existence of my burgeoning city-state.”
“If it makes you feel any better,” Dan smiled apologetically at DuBlanc. “We actually think you’re doing a really good job. Most of the reason we’re approaching you about taking over Florida is that we think you’d do a better job running it.”
“Well,” William interjected, his voice a laconic drawl. “That, and we don’t want to touch that headache with a ten-foot pole.”
