Tricia smiled. “Oh, yes.” She pointed a finger at Gina. “You already identified the opportunity, although you haven’t quite figured it out yet.”
Gina raised an eyebrow.
Tricia continued, “The bottleneck at this time is in manufacturing ships. The people with the most manufacturing ships that can build more ships are the people sitting on the biggest pot of gold.”
Dawn laughed. “How did we not think of that?”
Gina frowned. “Those ships are stuffed full of specialized equipment. Even though we’ve driven the cost of a basic isle ship down, the manufacturing ships are frightfully expensive.”
Ivy and Dawn looked at her with amused expressions that quite clearly said, “So what? Not a problem.”
Dawn turned to Tricia. “Great idea. Ahem. How do you see yourself in this undertaking? Would you like a consulting role or some such?”
When Tricia laughed, it sounded like a tinkling bell. “Oh, heavens, no. I have a serious problem, just like Ivy here.” She paused, building suspense. “I also have a few billion SC stashed away from my time in the White House. I need good investments too.”
Ivy gasped, then gave vent to her rage. “You…you personally profited from spying for Russia and stealing my husband?” Her whole body shivered. “You bitch!”
Dawn looked amused.
Gina thought about how interesting this partnership was becoming. Really, did other businesses have conflicts like this? The wife and the mistress working together while discussing live skinnings? Surely not.
Tricia looked puzzled. “Why wouldn’t I make a little something for myself on the side? Everybody else was profiting.” She gave Ivy a sidelong, knowing glance. “Even you.”
Silence filled the air for a moment. Then Tricia shrugged. “I did the best I could to help people when I had the chance. The people of West Poland should thank me, though of course they can never be allowed to know it.”
Gina laughed. “Oh, no, now you have to tell the story.”
Dawn nodded. “Indeed.”
Tricia raised her hands. “The Premier was planning to take back the Baltic states since the American President for Life had so generously twitted that he wouldn’t defend them, even though they were NATO allies.”
Gina shuddered. “It was horrible.”
Tricia nodded. “The Premier figured while he was there, why not pick up Poland as well? I mean, with NATO shattered and the Americans out of the way, why not? But he wanted to know if the Chief Advisor would step in at some point.”
She leaned forward and started to whisper. The other women leaned in as well to hear the story. “So at one point while I was servicing Chiefy in the Oval Office, while I had my surveillance bugs active, I manipulated our favorite Advisor into saying that if the Premier went any farther west than Warsaw, he’d send troops.”
Tricia sat back with a laugh. “You won’t believe what I did to trick him into saying that. I—” she stopped abruptly and looked at her listeners. “But best not to burn Ivy’s ears too much more today.” She shrugged. “Anyway, that’s why there’s a free West Poland, rather than just a Polish state in the Russian Union.”
Tricia sat a little straighter. “Let’s get back to it. Manufacturing ships are the future. You ready? Or do I need different partners?”
After they’d agreed to a next meeting and a tentative plan to repurpose the two isle ships they currently had under construction, Gina found herself thinking about Tricia’s situation. She wasn’t sure how Matt would feel about this, but…”So, Tricia, where are you staying? It’s pretty crowded out here, with all the new American refugees. Do you need a place to hang your toothbrush? You could probably stay with Matt and me for a little while. We have more than one spare bedroom.”
Tricia looked at her gratefully. “Thanks, but I’m good. I’ve got a cabin on the Elysian Fields for the moment. And I’m planning to move in with my new lover in a few days.”
Dawn laughed. “You sure do move fast. Who is your new lover?”
Tricia winced. “Well, technically, he’s not my lover yet.” She turned thoughtful. “I suppose I should tell him before I move in with him.” She shrugged. “You know men.”
The other three women all sang the chorus. “Men!”
9
Hollywood Blockbuster
If you look in the rearview mirror, all you see is the people who said it couldn’t be done.
—Craig Martelle, 2019
Cogent News, Lindsey Postrel reporting.
“The Second American Civil War continues apace, though fortunately, combat remains low-key compared to what had happened in the first one. That might be because the Reds and the Blues are somewhat more intermingled than the Northerners and Southerners were almost two hundred years ago. In today’s America, it is harder to tell where the battle lines should be and who your enemy is.
In Columbus, capital of the purple state of Ohio, gun-wielding Reds fired into a Blue protest march, killing five. A Blue drove his Prius into the shooters, killing two.
In St. Paul, Minnesota, a group of Blues brought sledgehammers to tear down a Make America Pure Again t-shirt store. All six vandals were shot dead by the store’s owners.
Perhaps most alarming was the shootout in Vail, Colorado in which the police officers sent to quell rioting wound up shooting each other, as Red police and Blue police faced off in a bloody confrontation, leaving eight dead.
Fortunately, most of the people in the nation seem willing to take a wait and see attitude. Many of them are glued to their TVs, watching the Red Cavalry cruise through Riverside on its way toward Los Angeles and the major studios. This ongoing story offers all the fascination of a train wreck proceeding in slow motion.”
One of the many horrors of the first American Civil War was the splitting up of families. One brother would fight for the South, the other for the North. They even shot at each other across the battlefield.
In the Los Angeles Police Headquarters, Troy Sullivan and Travis Sullivan faced each other in the middle of a room full of office cubicles. Neither held his sidearm, but both had their holsters unsnapped for a quick draw.
Travis, the chief of police, barked in his full command voice, “Stand down!”
His younger brother Troy, however, had been listening to his brother’s command voice since they were teenagers. He hadn’t been impressed then, and he sure wasn’t impressed now.
Troy’s eyes flicked to his brother’s sidearm. “You know, you wouldn’t even have that thing if it weren’t for me and mine.” He tilted his head back at the dozen or so officers at his back.
Troy looked past Travis at the dozen or so officers at the chief’s back. “None of you would.”
The officers with Travis had the good grace to look away for a second in acknowledgment.
Generations before the White House Riot, the LAPD’s nine-thousand-man police force had included people of all different kinds of political affiliations. While the out-and-out racists captured all the media coverage, the people who wanted to help victims and the folks who wanted to serve justice outnumbered them.
Indeed, since the force was fully unionized, and since they were selected from a solidly Blue community, the force had gravitated toward a Blue political affiliation.
The only problem was, Blue politicians tended to spit on cops. Every time a black man got shot by a cop, the politicians showed solidarity with the black voters and treated the police like criminals. As identity politics hardened into the basis for all opinion formation, the facts of individual cases ceased to matter. If the police shot someone and you said it was a good shoot, you were a tool of the cops. If you said it was another example of police abuse, you were a tool of the liberals. Courtroom trials held little sway in a city where every person was tried and convicted in social media within twenty-four hours of the incident.
So every time there was a shooting of a black kid, everyone castigated the police, causing the force to turn a little bit more Red. And e
very time there was a shooting of a policeman and the politicians remained silent, the police force turned a little more Red.
So a force that should have been mostly Blue wound up evolving into something more politically complicated. It changed forever after a last straw was added: in a fit of outrage after a particularly shocking shooting incident, the government decided to ban officers from carrying any weapon more dangerous than a taser.
The entire force fought this with every weapon (short of their pistols) at their command, led by Troy and the troopers who backed him. They’d carried the day, but most of the men who turned Red during that incident never went back.
So as Travis and Troy faced off, roughly half the force supported each one.
Travis held up both hands to plead with his younger brother. “Dude, you can’t let those maniacs run through the streets killing people. This is not their city, it’s ours.”
Troy shrugged. “It’s our country too, and they’re just as much a part of it as you and I are.” He pursued a pet peeve of his brother’s. “Besides, I know for a fact that you’d be just as happy if they made fewer movies where the crooked cop is the bad guy. Don’t try to lie to me.”
Travis rolled his eyes. “Still…”
Troy spoke more softly. “Let them be. They haven’t killed anybody yet. They haven’t even fired their guns. Don’t call it a riot, call it a protest march, and let them get to the studios.” His expression soured. “Let the movie guys get a taste of what it’s like defending yourself with a taser from some yahoo with a shotgun.” He looked around the room. “And besides, the last thing any of us wants is for all of us to start shooting at each other. Nobody wins then.”
Travis compromised. “If they start shooting bystanders, we have to stop them.”
Troy hesitated, then nodded. “Fair enough.”
So Jason’s Cavalry passed through the city unmolested.
Jason stood in the back of his pickup truck, the Blyton sheriff driving, while his Cavalry thundered behind him. He almost wished he had a cowboy hat he could wave as they rolled along since it would complete the city folks’ image of him as a hick, but he’d left it at home.
He wasn’t quite sure where he was since the city was a maze, but the sheriff had assured him he knew how to get to the studios, even though the studios were strewn around LA like children’s toys.
In any event, he saw the entrance to their first target ahead of them—a huge white double arch, each arch soaring over a double lane, one arch for inbound traffic, one arch outbound.
Beyond the arches, he saw a small white guardhouse partially surrounded by palm trees. Beyond the guardhouse, he could see large numbers of buildings of diverse shapes and sizes between the trees.
He hadn’t appreciated how difficult it would be to destroy a movie studio before this moment. It was a huge sprawling thing, practically a city in itself.
Fortunately, he had brought a lot of friends with him.
His eyes swept back to the guardhouse. He didn’t expect much opposition, but if they were going to meet any resistance, the gatehouse would probably be the first line of defense. Jason lifted his Ruger mini-14 and plinked a few rounds at the guardhouse to encourage anybody in there to reflect on their situation.
When the bullets hit the window, Jason noted that the glass was bulletproof.
Even as Jason started swearing, the gates swung closed and locked.
This might have irritated Jason even more under other circumstances, but here and now, it just made him chuckle. He got on his cell. “Jeff, you’re up.”
Jeff came hurtling past in his tow truck, which had a thick steel grill welded to the front. He rammed the gate with all the speed he could muster. The gate shrieked as it bent into a twisted structure of tortured metal.
It did not, however, quite give way.
Jason grunted, then yelled excitedly into his phone, “Again!”
Jeff backed up, then backed up some more when he figured how much space he’d need to get an adequate head of steam.
Then gunfire sounded. Jason looked around to see which fool was shooting while Jeff was trying to deal with the gate. When another round whizzed by him—Churchill had been right, it really was exhilarating hearing a bullet miss—Jason realized the fire was coming from inside the studio.
He turned to look for Lance, whose family had the most firepower of all his troops.
Lance was nowhere to be seen.
Jason hunkered down and shouted to the sheriff, “Where’s Lance?”
The sheriff shouted back in exasperation. “He said he’d gotten a line on one of the socialist bloodsuckers, and he took off. I have no clue where the idiot went.”
Jason started swearing. He’d been unsure from the beginning whether he should include Lance in this expedition. The guy had barely avoided being put into Leavenworth for atrocities against civilians. Jason only wanted to send a message, not commit a massacre.
But Lance had the heavy gear and the awesome explosives. Jason had figured the risk was worth it. Now it seemed likely he’d made an error.
Jason looked around at the disposition of his forces once more.
Jeff was holding his position, uncertain of what to do in the face of the unexpected opposition. More pickups were piling up behind him, and folks with rifles and shotguns were coming up, taking cover behind the trucks, and returning fire.
Then he saw, just for a second, what might be a guy with a camera and a telescopic lens poking out from behind one of the palm trees deeper in the facility. What the hell? Someone was filming this?
Another shot sailed by, and he saw a black guy with a pistol duck back behind the guardhouse.
Jason swore. Who the hell was that? These people were Blues, after all. They had all rooted for the banishment of firearms, and in following their own precepts, had effectively disarmed themselves.
So who was shooting back?
In normal times, Trey sold drugs on his corner in Compton. He used small drones to deliver opioid medications to his more distant customers in the suburbs.
The Great Crash had had uneven effects on the illegal drug trade. On the one hand, a majority of his opioid customers were seniors on Social Security, so they had a steady income and a comparably steady need for pain relief.
But the ones who were not that old were losing their jobs and canceling their subscriptions.
Meanwhile, the sales of crack and cocaine had also undergone some change. As unemployment rose, more people wanted to escape reality, but they had less money to spend on that escape. Since crack was less expensive, sales of coke had plunged, while crack had risen almost as much.
Bottom line: Trey’s revenue had fallen, but not as much as, say, the revenues of a washing machine manufacturer.
The jittery revenues also meant his customers were precious to him, now more than ever.
So when he heard that the Red Cavalry was heading for Hollywood, he knew he had to act. He called the other drug dealers, particularly—with much trepidation—the more violent ones. Everybody had agreed that something needed to be done.
When he’d led a couple dozen young black men to the gates of the studio where the Cavalry was headed, the guard had nearly had a heart attack. Trey waved his hands to calm him. “We’re here to help. You know the Red Cavalry is on its way, right?”
The guard gulped, then called his boss.
The drug dealers had spent the time waiting for someone to show up looking around, sizing up opportunities to take cover and fire. Since many of them had gotten into firefights with each other from time to time, they were expert in their analysis.
A golf cart came zooming up the road toward them, and a guy in a suit hopped out. He straightened his tie. “Good afternoon. I’m Kent Jennings, producer of action-adventure movies.” He picked Trey out of the crowd, instantly recognizing him as the leader, and handed him a card. “I understand you’re here to help us deal with the redneck dirtbags on their way here?”
The d
rug dealers chuckled. Trey answered. “Someone has to.” He pointed at the guard, who kept growing paler as he listened to the media reports on the progress of the Cavalry.
Kent looked at the guard and nodded. “Why don’t you go home? I think this is outside the scope of your job description.”
The guard nodded and departed.
Kent rubbed his hands together. “Okay, then. What’s your plan?”
As the dealers scattered to take up defensible positions, Kent stayed on the phone, making calls.
Trey looked at him uncertainly. “You have more people to help with the defense?”
Kent nodded vigorously. “Oh, yes! I have a dozen cameramen on their way.”
As Trey stared, Kent continued, “We’re going to get some great footage.”
One of Jason’s friends with a spotter scope, peering at the gate and its defenders from a position a little back from the front line, finished his report on the cell. “There’s nobody over there with anything heavier than a pistol. They’ll be lucky to hit Jeff’s tow truck with those things. We could probably dance at the gate without getting hit.”
Jason responded with a wicked edge in his voice. “And if they come out of cover to get better aim, we’ll turn them into meat pies.”
Jason stood up and waved at Jeff, still hunkered in his truck. “Hit the gate! We’ve got your back!”
Jeff gave him a partial salute, then revved his engine.
Two things happened approximately simultaneously.
Jeff slammed into the wrecked gate, making it fly off its hinges.
A missile sailed down the avenue from deep within the studio and hurtled into the hood of Jeff’s truck, blasting through the heavy metal grill and exploding on contact with the engine block.
Now the gate was gone, but the wrecked tow truck blocked the way. At least Jeff was alive, crawling through the mangled door and away from the ruins.
Braintrust- Requiem Page 15
