The Dragons of Men (The Sons of Liberty Book 2) (11 page)

“Oh, come now, Jacob,” Lukas finally replied. “We didn’t destroy the entire world. We merely set a fire and are burning away the parts that have decayed. I like to think that we have enhanced it.”

“I could not agree more,” Jacob said. “In any case, I promise to introduce you to my personal favorite composition one day when the timing is right. It is an unforgettable piece of art—like a finely aged cabernet—that I do not like to bring out but on a very rare occasion.”

Lukas nodded his head with a smile, though he tucked that conversation away in the back of his mind for later. He wondered what sort of occasion Jacob was waiting for.

Devils and kings indeed,
Lukas thought.

“Art and wine aside, I think it’s time we begin,” Lukas said. “Mr. Rosenbaum, would you like to start?”

Rupert nodded his head and proceeded with his report. Though Lukas had officially laid claim to all the land and resources that had been governed by the United States of America, the Imperium was still in its infancy and far from a borderless empire. Thus, they were only able to partially control the lands east of the Appalachian Mountains. Their control stretched as far south as Charleston, east to Charlotte, and up north to Boston. The regions the Imperium governed had been subject to months of destructive pandemonium as America collapsed. Cities dating back hundreds of years had been built upon many pillars of support, all of which relied on the systems beneath it to function. When one of those pillars crumbled to the ground—be it the police, a network of hospitals, fire departments, or local businesses and industries—everyone else felt the repercussions. Nearly every East Coast city had taken heavy blows to its base in one way or another, and it was now up to the Imperium to begin rebuilding what had nearly become ashes and dust. Rupert had been a brilliant community developer and mayor of Philadelphia prior to America’s demise, and he was more than willing to help with the reconstruction process after being approached by Jacob the day after the battle for DC. Rupert and Sandra had spent endless hours formulating a plan to coordinate the massive flood of refugees with every city’s core competencies in order to begin building a new foundation upon which the Imperium would rise.

Once Rupert and Sandra finished, Geoffrey Poteau—a onetime Swiss Ambassador who had retired to begin a lucrative firm that consulted international organizations on foreign relations—took the floor. He was a genius, able to survey the world and predict events years before they happened. He had even foreseen the collapse of America and the rise of the Imperium, though he simply called it the inevitable new world order.

Africa was completely shattered and in disarray, though this was nothing new for the historically volatile continent. Only South Africa appeared to display any abilities to hold itself together while every other country broke itself apart. Even the countries that had banded together in the Middle East were on the verge of breaking due to a lack of funds and famine. Though Geoffrey did see value in allying with the South Africans, he also saw wealth and opportunity in the broken lands north of them. He claimed whatever man or nation seized the world’s largest region of untapped resources would become wealthy beyond their wildest dreams.

In South America, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina had united against the drug lord controlled nations to the north of them. Though a newly dubbed South American Union claimed they wanted to finally rid themselves of the raw narcotics and drug crime that had plagued their streets for generations, Geoffrey suspected the likely case was that they only wished to seize those operations so they could control the main supply for themselves. With the rise in digitally delivered psychotropic injections, Geoffrey saw a nasty fight brewing between those who had established drug empires, those who had wanted to take those empires for themselves, and those who wanted to rid the world of the drug cartel completely and replace it with the new digital version.

Across the Atlantic, Europe had finally collapsed. Cities and towns had quickly begun to divide themselves according to ethnic and religious backgrounds. In the beginning, Jacob had worried that England’s royal family might serve as a beacon of courage and earn the support of the rest of Europe. Lukas had agreed that they couldn’t chance another super power in Europe and had ordered the assassination of everyone in line for any European throne. Much to his delight, Geoffrey delivered the news that the assassinations had been overwhelmingly successful. On top of that, he had already begun to use Jacob’s network of European agents to place the blame on Sigmund and the Patriarchs. Everywhere else—Asia, the Middle East, the Pacific, and India—was falling apart, the structures of yesterday collapsing under a worldwide revolution. The earth was fractured.

The Purge was nearly complete.

“So the EU is collapsing,” Lukas began, “Asia has splintered into dozens of factions, Africa is doing what it does best, South America has finally joined the fray, and the Middle East is struggling to survive as the Western countries they had once hated so badly ceased providing their financial support. All around the globe, new nations rise and old kingdoms fall. It is total war, my friends, and the world will soon be looking for that one leader to unify them all. Thank you, Geoffrey, for your insight. Now General Kane, I assume you’ve prepared an update on the status of the War for Unification here in North America?”

“Yes, my Sovereign,” General Kane replied. To say General Kane was enthusiastic about the new Imperium would be an understatement. Despite everything that had happened, he saw Lukas, the Imperium, and a world allied under one banner as humanity’s only logical path forward. “I’d like to begin by thanking you for the privilege to serve the Imperium as your highest ranking military officer. My life is yours.”

“Your expertise, commitment, and loyalty are all I ask of you,” Lukas replied, knowing the man’s life very well could be the necessary price in the end.

“Still, it is an honor,” the general said. “I think it would be wise to begin with what we know is certain. As we all know, the Patriarchs had three advances they were planning to use to quietly invade America and Jacob only managed to seize control of the eastern front. We’ve been creating a database of the equipment and supplies we acquired when Jacob’s team secured those shipping freighters just before the battle. My team has been working around the clock to compare those numbers to what Jacob knew was being deployed elsewhere. I think it’s safe to say that the east coast was planned to be the drop off point for the largest portion of their drone army. But as we all know, Sigmund alone is not the only threat. As a precautionary measure, we have permanently deactivated all Chambers Firearms in North America, save our own.”

“And will that be as effective as we had hoped?”

“America was the gun capital of the world,” the general replied. “While the program was widely successful, there will still be plenty of old hunting rifles and shotguns laying around. Word is that Texas secretly defied the law and hid their military firearms from your inspectors last year. Still, the good ol’ liberals of the Northeast were more than happy to adopt the program, thus castrating themselves. They have no option but to welcome us with waving flags as we roll in with Yellow Jackets and troops.”

“And what of the large populations out west?” Lukas asked.

“Reports are somewhat vague and we’ve had to rely heavily on satellite imagery, but we can tell that everywhere west of Denver is a complete no-man’s land.” General Kane looked down and shifted the map, focusing in on the lands west of the Rocky Mountains. “The west has completely buckled under the compounding weight of a harsh winter and an even more brutal chaos. Though there are a variety of more powerful factions at play west of the Mississippi, the entire western region of what had been the United States is gearing up to become something quite different.”

“And what do you think is going to happen out there?” Lukas asked.

“The west is not like the east,” General Kane replied. “There is much more defiance and far less resources. Our best guess is that those fending for tomorrow’s water will quickly band together and form fortified settlements. It will be like when Rome fractured into what became today’s European countries. Well, I suppose they are now yesterday’s countries. Regardless, the people out west are tough and they won’t take kindly to someone trying to raise a foreign flag. If the Patriarchs have landed on the California coast, I imagine they will be facing one hell of a resistance in the coming days.”

“Then let us hope they wear one another out so they have little or no fight left in them by the time we arrive in a few months.”

“A few months?” Jacob said with a laugh. “Though I appreciate your enthusiasm and believe in your abilities to grow the Imperium’s borders, I can assure you the west is more than a few months from raising our banner.”

Lukas paused, lowering his eyes for a moment and refusing to glance up. His face grew hot and his eye twitched, causing the digital map displayed before him on his nVision to shake violently. It had been the first time Jacob had insulted Lukas in front of the others and though Lukas knew Jacob was invaluable, he also knew his image was just as important.

“I meant no offense, Lukas,” Jacob replied as though he realized his words had slighted Lukas. “I am merely pointing out the fact that you have enemies at your doorstep who will need to be pacified before the west is won.”

“Jacob may be right,” the General began, “but the Imperium’s numbers swell by the hour and we are far more organized than anyone else at this point. I am currently restructuring our military into a fighting force that will be easily managed compared to the clumsy beast that was the United States Armed Forces. With luck and proper planning, perhaps we will find ourselves conquering the west far more quickly than any of us could have hoped.”

Lukas wanted to nod and reply as cordially as possible, but he also wanted the others to know disrespect would not be tolerated.

“Thank you, General Kane. And though I appreciate your humble apology Jacob, I would kindly ask that you do not speak against me again. I am the Sovereign. Not you.”

As though to disrupt the tension between her husband and her father, Maria broke the silence.

“What of those at our doorstep?” she asked as she moved the map back to the central states. “What of the Republic of Texas?”

“Though the influx of refugees coming to the Imperium is impressive, Texas has begun to rival our numbers,” General Kane replied. “They are growing faster than a dry sponge tossed to the sea. They’ve annexed much of New Mexico and most of Oklahoma. It will only be a matter of time before they expand eastward into Arkansas and Louisiana, northward into Kansas and Colorado, and possibly even west toward the Pacific coast, depending on how great the power vacuum becomes out there. Despite the fact that they are spread thin, there has been virtually no resistance in the cities and regions they’ve occupied. Reports say that most towns welcome the Lone Star Nation with open arms. Though they lack the advanced weaponry we hold from the Patriarch’s seized equipment, I must note that there are many military bases now within their reach.”

“What of their nuclear arsenal?” Lukas asked.

“We can thank our predecessors for diminishing that arsenal long before we arrived,” the general said.

“But what’s to stop Texas from parking a sub off of DC?” Lukas asked.

“The fact that there are no more nuclear submarines to patrol your waters,” Jacob replied. “As you were taking the throne, my team contacted each NATO submarine capable of launching nuclear warheads. Embedded in that message was a code that overrode their systems and caused each sub to blow their oxygen tanks and descend to the sea floor. A messy solution, but a solution that leaves us to deal with only land-based missiles.”

“Quite a costly decision,” Lukas said.

“And a wise one,” General Kane replied. “I’d very much prefer we do everything we can to prevent this war from becoming nuclear. Nuclear war is a slippery slope and I’d much rather defeat those who hate us by all other means. Regardless, such rapid growth in Texas is not something we can afford to leave unchecked. If we leave them be, who is to say they won’t cross the Mississippi within the matter of a month or two. With time they will—”

“Texas is not my concern,” Lukas said abruptly. “Not yet, at least.”

“I beg your pardon?” Jacob replied, clearly swallowing whatever else he had been about to say before continuing. “That is, would the Sovereign care to elaborate on why he believes Texas is not a problem? I’d hate to win us all of Europe only to have you lose America.”

“That won’t happen because the Republic of Texas will help me mend a fractured land,” Lukas said with a grin. “Yes people join them, but why? Is it for security?”

“And you think it’s not?” Jacob replied.

“Honestly, no. I think every town, every city, every military instillation that joins Texas does so with the hope that they may one day see that which they once were restored to its former glory.”

“Which is what?”

“The United States of America,” Lukas said. “As you said, the Republic of Texas fights to instill order and expand their borders by peacefully converting towns, cities, and military bases that had been part of the United States up until its collapse. And honestly, we should be grateful for that.”

“Do explain, my love,” Maria said.

“You see, we have enemies aplenty from foreign rulers and furious old allies, but they are only men. They can easily die with the proper gauge of war and violence. But a tried and true ideal could live on in the hearts of millions, festering for generations and refusing to go away completely. The Republic of Texas…that is a new idea, unproven and easily infected once those who had been peacefully annexed realize that their new guardians can’t deliver on their promises for protection. As I said, Texas is brittle like hot steel. The United States of America, however, was an idea that had centuries to cool and harden. That country was like an unbreakable rod and if that flag begins to fly again, then we will be dealing with much more than a new nation that can be pacified with a little corruption and terrorism.”