Later. His office was now 2nd story, building #3 of the old Smithsonian. Nice view of the capitol. Had been, or would be. “Good to see you Will.”
We shook hands cheerfully. “Likewise Josh.” Secretary of Energy and an old school pal, from when time-reversed pilot-waves were supposed to shatter M-theory … a different world. He now fought terminal brain cancer that had taken one eye. “Picked a new chair?”
Like … like after an impossibly ill-behaved path integral in 9-space we laughed. “I'll never make it. Rad-therapy Doc said one year … two years ago. Guess I was supposed to be a safe choice. Hillary said as much, that DOE was my tombstone. Crazy bitch. What is it now, nine to go or ten? We have been losing people.”
Christ how can you laugh at this? Casually … “Treasuries McDaniels just declared for the militia. So in Presidential succession you're one closer.”
“Citizens need energy; only 15% ever goes to public use.” Across the room a red octopus danced in a yard-high clear flask. “Never had a chance, with Hillaries appointed narco.MEX watchdog.” Josh snatched for a water-glass, popped the red pill and trembled … now quiet. Then. “Mac could have talked to people.”
“You still hoping for a truce, Fed & militia , and then …?”
Josh heaved himself up, walked to small, 18-th century walnut desk and extracted a pack of PellMell reds. I torched 'em. Tasted like heaven; he coughed, rough. “'Course I know no nigger listens to anything, but then how can they? Still, power-in-theory may move back to the DC wonkers. Politicians need our numbers.”
“They didn't when Saudi Camel-fuckers overwhelmed Wales.” There's a long silence, for the slaughtered Anglo-Saxons and Picts. Josh has lost his red Irish hair. But, not temper. “An OxBridge faggot sponsored slaughter our Irish scream. Ha'vad Law pleaded Rawlsian justice, should such exist and Hillary just pilled out.” But we agree this far. “You must know, Potus Hillary has moved her 'seat' to Philadelphia.” He reached for a silver cannister. “Ice?”
“Yeah.” Cold alcohol felt colder. “Bitch moved and already got jumped? City of leach-love, where power-jocks sniff poodle and whimper.”
“Really, a simple choice,” Josh moaned. “Damned bitch poodle was there, while whatever is the rest of the Gub'mnt stays in DC.” He stands and walks to the window. “After the Federal loss at Manassas, Jeh Johnson massed 500,000 small-arms, the creame of East Coast bangerboiz, ISIL MuJad and wetbacks as a barbed-wire chastity-belt around Phili. Some belt, eh Will? Thugs had first pillaged and raped their way through liberal Connecticut, Massachusetts and NYC. “
Beside him I say. “Most militia think the white race-traitors had got what they deserved. Hill-babe had jumped into the nest. Stupid bitch. You should have heard her scream, just before the shot!”
“You got that 1st-person info fast. Going up on HRI?”
“ASAP.”
“Hold on for an hour … I saw and re-mastered the vids; you can have a couple seconds. Fat-Ankles was dead blind stupid.” Back on the stiff oak-slat Amish chair. “Her own SUPREMES appointment shot her in the eye. Thought Billy-Bob deserved a better lay.”
“At 500K hits-per sec of the shooting vid , HRI will pay this months rent. Media coders get Mercedes.” I'm thinking skeptical. “How come I'm so lucky?”
“It's who you know ….”
“Phys Rev never asked if you knew DeBroglie.” Our private joke. “I'll try to hold off. Got a satellite voice transfer this morning. One of the Seals would write-it-up and publish this evening – that's std. Procedure and probably would be his first million-hit byline. Gonna be pissed.”
“Trust me: more to come.” Josh scowled, pulled at the bourbon. “Why did you switch from deterministic QM to news publishing?”
“I saw the long bare legs on female freelancers ...” My bourbon vanished. “Come the first SNEEZE LAWS , saw American snowflake stupidity, American grift and I saw the badbads.” This stiff chair is prodding me … what Josh might know … “and you,” I ask?”
“Damned unlucky sled-ride Will. First I built a self-modding opamp for NASA. Then an IR sensitive zener for NSA. I took over their sensors directorate. The Generals boozy daughter helped – when I fucked her brains out, drew a line and she toed it. Promotions came easy, each less technical and more ideologue. Now this.”
Head woozy, I think Federal center lay deserted. “Our cultures best wit suppressed while again we fight, the huge BigSur battle spiraling into it's own black hole.”
“You're bitching, Will,” he says painfully slow. “Don't need Alcibiades to lecture; battles are just aggravated politics.”
“Not to the men who fight them.”
Josh waved away my complaint. “Look here, Hillarys' death left what professors call a power vacuum. Betcha know she had not yet appointed a VP, and with Ryan dead-by-ropeburns, and Castro castrated exporting DOEd millions to Paraguay and now hiding out in the Mexican embassy … anything could be true.” He looks me straight. “Militia might end up fighting alongside Bluecoats . A little birdy-friend at CIA says both the Mexican el-Presidente and Canadian Prime Minister have paratroops at airfields, and have offered their …. support. But, support for whom?”
“Militias trounced Mexican troops before, at Goose Lake a big Federal loss.” Rheumy narcotic smiles lit my eyes. “Last week, if you had found me, I'd be shot dead in Baltimore. Now, what do you know,” I ask?”
“Are you really press-neutral? Ha ha ha ...” he coughed again, and sucked on the red. “Scattergun, mostly, to get a message to you.” Fell into his leather lounge. “Knew you were close. All local virgins had their knickers off.”
“Better not let Hillary …..”
A joke; just a joke. His face went pale. You know, like the last time a face goes pale. “Will, it's fuckin-A Perfidious Albion. It's the fucking Muzzi-wogged Brits gonna launch against the militia Hearst Castle camp. HMS AAKBAR is the Carrier; it will launch a Tornado strike delivering tactical nukes.”
“Brit nukes you say -- old, but dirty.” Casual, my head reels. I didn't know the looming battle was so casually public, and a quick calculations runs out of comtrol. “Tornados on a Brit carrier. How can they launch and return?”
“They can't return; it's a one-way trip to Allahs 70 virgins, but the Brit pilots get veiled-fems with big tits?”
“Our Airforce F-22s and F-18s?”
“Useless against a determined attacker, and Islam is nothing if not a determined buttfucker. American Air Force interceptors are lucky to have radar support one combat mission in five. Carefully manicured Tornados and a few Harriers for laughs, that's how the tidy fags will do it. Plenty of Tera-joules to bake Agros and Mobsters into hot neutrinos and turn militia expansion into a stalemate! That's good for … for us.” His face turns away and Josh breaks into a groaning pain-excursion only another red can knock down.
I wait. Then. “You know …?”
“Everybody knows everything. Some godforsaken desert shithole named Mission Ridge. Who said that first? The carrier is now 400 miles off Carmel, edging south-east at 12 knots under a fog-layer. American Gofasts avoid fog, at 100 knots! Tomorrow the Brit strike will be ready for launch.”
“A Brit carrier? Fuck! Ancient seaware, Perfidious Albion floats a rust-bucket two generations old! Won't the military, our Navy stop them? Why haven't they, since the Chi.coms got sent packing? ”
“Well that was part BORIS effort … Admirals will talk. Our Navy brass is pissed off cause the militia sank peanut-boys carrier off Jacksonsonville. Admirals want some payback.”
“But, the Federals controlled Mayport base, and controlled that carrier … most sailor-boys were foreign mercenaries basing gunship missions from it against militia swamp units. I know. I was there when Peanuts junior hull got punched open.”
“So you say, Will ….” Josh tried to rise; pain pushed him back. “Though stolen, the Navy had agents onboard and figured to get back that hardware. A carrier's lots to lose twice! Admirals are not your pals.” Josh pours two tall bourbons from 18-th century quartz. “You're right about one thing, that floating Brit shit-house barely navigates. Last year we had to rebuild her two main propulsion turbines.”
'Repaired? Muslim-infested Brit hardware ? Just damned fucking great,' I thought! “The Russians … the French? Both have attack squadrons. Why don't they sink that Brit bitch?”
“France? Yes their two carriers do vacation sweeps in the Med. Haven't tried broaching Gibraltar, but that would cost nuclear suppression and Muzzi-Brit retribution. How can France act globally, squeezed between Islamic-bent Germany and putrefied England, with citizens forced to make their own weapons or scavenge Ukraine rifles from the Russian war? They can't exert any foreign pressure for pure surviving.”
Deal, got to be like lions and crocs when two ex-physics guys meet at the same watering hole. Shadows have grown long on Washington Mall. “What do you want.” I ask bluntly.
Pain pain eye-blinking pain … “A special HRI edition calling for a truce at Mission Ridge.”
Ice cold. “In exchange for …?” Presuming fucker I thought and thought until Josh spoke again.
“When DOE special-projects rebuilt those Brit carrier turbines, we installed malware into the control system. We can stop that carrier dead-in-the-water in twelve seconds. Unfixable , out-of-port as the queered code is hardwired into four different speed-regulating chips, each crimped and soldered into systems boards.”
“Sure thing?”
Josh removes a 38-special from his desk drawer. It's 6” barrel lays on his desktop, splitting the angle between us. “I'd bet my life … you know Rosie died seven years ago, and our son's a Blueboy Major, leading a paratroop company. They and a medical unit dropped into Mission ridge last night.” Josh proud smile belonged to him only. “Brave as a lion, my son and stupid as a patriot.”
“You think one HRI spread will bring peace to the West Coast, after the Muslim, bangerboi and Negro massacres? Instead I might get shot. ”
“You shot? Ha! Now there's a message everyone would understand!” Josh refills our bourbons. “No .. no … not peace and not to the left-coast. But bring a truce to Big-Sur. Time for wit, time for mercy. My boy leads from the front – that's his way so a truce means he lives another week.”
“And then … ?”
“And then G*d is merciful. Who knows?” Josh has called up a database front-end to his HP 30” monitor. Stuff appears about fingerprints and self video. He types some permissions to reach a plain yellow page with a red pop-up plaque.
“Here!” It's funny , say you understand how a world ends not with bang or whimper, but with two men talking.“Now.”
I stand, turn, walk to the window looking out on the Capitol Building. It's bright white dome is marred by anti-aircraft frags dug deep into the limestone. The building a measure of our republic. Used to be. Sometime. I take out my Blackberry, choose loudspeaker and punch in hex. Call should not go anywhere on an American controlled data system. But, the satellite is not American controlled. A voice comes over. I give one pass-code, then another.
A second voice. “Charlie Baker alpha.”
“Copy.” Speaking briskly, I can finish the post in 3 minutes.
Comeback. “WTF?”
Tush – one hard bitch. “Put Driscal on.” The 2nd Seal hired by HRI to edit, he'd lost a leg and arm getting his squad into a Gofast. Wrote like Shelley.
“Dris, fill it in as needed; use S&L rules if you can't be punchy. Don't take more than an hour, wedging all the boilerplate pussy images we store away. Use kittens and cheerleaders tits for pull.”
Another request for pass-word. I give it. “Publish ASAP … better before dinner.”
My connection whistles hex. Then: “Fuck knows what you think is a reason.” Background shouting. “This once bastard.” Hangup. I turn to Josh.
What if the militia don't follow HRI clue?
CLICK.
We're home with another HRI. Returning to port, Ladies and gentlemen good night. .