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  “Another bit of potentially very good news,” Dvorak continued, “is that even though King Henry decided he couldn’t leave Bristol at this time, his Government—and especially Foreign Secretary O’Leary—has been in close communication with Prime Minister Agamabichie and President Howell. And while Bristol isn’t ready to announce it just yet, three other Commonwealth nations have indicated that they’re prepared to join us: the U.K. itself, Australia, and New Zealand.” He tapped the face of his phone again, and the three nations he’d named pulsed a lighter shade of green. “He believes most of the rest of the Commonwealth will be inclined to join in the future, but at the moment, none of the other member states have sufficiently intact national governments. The situation is particularly bad just now in the Indian subcontinent and South Africa.”

  Any hint of levity disappeared with his last sentence.

  What the Shongairi had done to India had been bad enough. New Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta, Bangalore, and Hyderabad had disappeared in the first wave of KEWs, taking almost ninety million Indians with them. Staggering as that total was, it had represented little more than seven percent of India’s total population, but it had dealt a savage blow to the union government … and it had been only the first blow. According to the Shongairi’s own records, the sheer numbers of humans in India had frightened them, given the rate of attrition their occupation forces were suffering elsewhere. That had become especially true after the organized uprising in China, however, and no one had ever accused the Puppies of excessive restraint. They’d apparently decided it would be a good idea to prune back India preemptively, before it followed China’s example. The resultant second wave of KEWs had been devastating … and then, with both nations’ central governments destroyed, what was left of Pakistan and what was left of India had apparently decided to settle their longstanding, pre-invasion animosities once and for all. And just to make a horrific situation still worse, it turned out that both India and Pakistan had possessed nuclear gravity bombs the Shongairi had missed. Two of them had been trucked into India from Pakistan and taken out Amritsar and Ludhiana.

  That had truly alarmed the Shongairi. True, the humans were using them on each other, but nothing guaranteed things would stay that way, so they’d applied yet another layer of KEWs to the entire subcontinent. The third wave had eliminated every urban agglomerate—indeed, virtually every individual city with a population above a hundred thousand—and pretty much finished off anything like cohesive government—or society—in the region.

  It was fortunate that so much of the Indian and Pakistani population had been rural, but not even that had been able to prevent unspeakable death tolls, especially when religious and ethnic ‘cleansing’ became part of the horror show which had engulfed one of the most populous areas on the face of the planet. Bangladesh had essentially ceased to exist, and by their current estimates, the population of the shattered region which had once been India was no more than two hundred million. That was a huge number by the standards of most nations, but it represented less than fifteen percent of the pre-invasion population. And Pakistan had suffered even more heavily at Shongair hands, partly because it had possessed a higher percentage of urbanization, which had put a higher proportion of its people into the first-wave KEWs’ crosshairs, but mostly because the Shongairi had realized the origin of the Amritsar and Ludhiana bombs and paid the country special attention in its third wave of strikes. Perhaps as many as twenty-three million of Pakistan’s pre-invasion two hundred million citizens were still alive.

  And, as if to prove that nothing was so horrible that it couldn’t be made still worse, the Shongair strikes had savaged the urban, richer, better educated, and more tolerant sectors of both countries. Too many of those who remained—especially in the mountains of Pakistan, where survival rates had been highest—could scarcely have been less tolerant, and fanatics on each side blamed the humans on the other side for all of their agony.

  The Shongairi’s withdrawal had only made bad worse by removing the occupying force which had gone after any concentration of armed humans, regardless of whether those humans were shooting at them or at other humans. Even that restraint had disappeared now, and there were still plenty of weapons available for humans determined to slaughter one another in the name of God or simple vengeance.

  Every person in that conference room felt a desperate need to intervene—to do something in the face of such slaughter—but the carnage was too widespread, too bitter, and too deeply ingrained. There were literally thousands of individual leaders and warlords—far too many for even Pieter Ushakov and his vampires to find a vital individual or group to neutralize. It would have taken an army of vampires to make a dent in the madness, and they had less than a hundred of them, all told. God only knew where the carnage was going to end, how long that would take, or what would be left when it finally burned itself out.

  And then there was South Africa.

  The Shongair bombardment had destroyed all three South African capital cities—Pretoria, Bloemfontein, and Cape Town—in the initial wave. Fortunately, then-Prince Harry and his family had been in Johannesburg that day, and their security detail had gotten them out of the city before the second-wave KEWs arrived. In all, South Africa had lost perhaps a quarter of its fifty-six million citizens in the first week of the invasion, and, much as in India and Pakistan, the massive casualties had exposed the ugly underside of the ethnic and racial animosities the country had worked so long and so hard to resolve. Tribal, as well as racial, hatreds had driven the bloodshed and largely finished off the authority of any surviving national government. It looked as if calmer heads were finally starting to prevail, however, and there were indications that the bloodshed had burned out—or, perhaps, burned up—the most hate-filled elements. It would be a while before South Africa as a nation was prepared to join any new world governments, yet if the current trend lines held, that might very well change within the next year or so.

  Australia and New Zealand, on the other hand, had taken far lighter losses from the Shongairi, at least in absolute terms. Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide were lost in the first wave of strikes, taking with them nearly half the total Australian population, but there’d been very few secondary strikes, and New Zealand had escaped almost unscathed. Between them, they still mustered almost seventeen million citizens, which was a higher percentage of their pre-invasion populations than almost anywhere else on the planet.

  Despite that, unfortunately, the Shongair decapitating stroke had been even more successful in Australia than most places outside the United States. The prime minister, his cabinet, and the governor-general had all been in Canberra, trying to cope with the implications of the unprecedented, world-wide computer hack which had been the first phase of the Shongairi’s attack. Parliament had been in session, as well, while the Joint Committee for Intelligence and Security pondered the same information, which had put all of the federal government neatly into a single crosshair. The good news, such as it was, was that the state and territorial governments had survived much closer to intact, and the Shongairi had seemed content to let the huge island stew in its own juices until they had secured control of the rest of the planet. As a consequence, Australia was reassembling itself even more rapidly than the United States and needed less outside assistance than most while it did so.

  Malaysia should have been an even brighter story.

  It wasn’t.

  Kuala Lumpur, Seberang Perai, and George Town were part of the grim totals of the first-wave KEWs, but the best estimates were that twenty-two million—almost seventy percent of its pre-invasion population—had survived the strikes. There’d been an unfortunate tendency to slide into warlordism among the survivors, however, and long-simmering religious tensions had flared into ugly, violent life. The death rate was lower than that in the subcontinent, but that was about the only good thing to be said of it. No one knew how long it was going to take for something like stability to return or what that stabilit
y was going to be like. No one expected it to return anytime soon, however, and some of the early indications suggested the emergence of an even stricter and less tolerant variety of Islam. In particular, many of the imams were demonstrating a strain of Luddite thinking, casting the Shongairi as Allah’s punishment on Western ways and technology, which scarcely seemed promising for the future. Worse, the same sort of conflict had spilled over into Indonesia—especially on Borneo—and the southern Philippines. All in all, the situation didn’t look good, and given the poisonous religious component in the strife, inserting vampires into that mix seemed … strongly contraindicated, just at the moment.

  Dvorak shoved that thought back into its cubbyhole. He was sure it would crawl out again—probably when he was trying to get to sleep—but for now he had more pressing matters.

  “According to Foreign Secretary O’Leary, it’s very likely the Republic of Ireland will be joining along with the rest of the U.K. In fact, we should end up with all of Great Britain, although she says some of the Scots are being—I believe her exact words were ‘bloody difficult’—about it.” He quirked a brief smile, then sobered again. “We already knew the U.K. had been hit badly, but I’m afraid it was even worse than we’d thought. Foreign Secretary O’Leary estimates the current population at no more than twenty-seven million.”

  Someone inhaled sharply, although, to be fair, that was about forty percent of the pre-invasion population, which was a higher percentage of survivors than in other places … like China and India.

  Or, for that matter, the United States of America.

  “On the other hand, the Foreign Secretary’s informed us that the King believes it might be wiser to delay any announcement that the U.K. or Australia and New Zealand intend to join the Union.” President Garçāo’s eyebrows rose in surprise, and Dvorak shook his head quickly. “I don’t think there’s any doubt about his ultimate intentions. It’s more a matter of timing, and, frankly, I think he’s right.”

  Garçāo frowned slightly, and Dvorak understood at least part of what was probably bothering him. The Brazilian, Howell, and Agamabichie all agreed that the Continental Union had to hit the ground running, and adding three more nations to the original ratifiers of the Union Constitution, especially spread so broadly around the globe, would have to help in that direction.

  “The King’s feeling is that while our ultimate goal has to be to create a planetary union, and while there’s a great deal to be said for striking while the iron is hot, there’s also a great deal to be said for growing the ultimate union as … organically as possible. For letting it, as Foreign Secretary O’Leary put it, coalesce out of the chaos rather than take on the form of something imposed upon the world. And, as the King pointed out to the Foreign Secretary, Australia, New Zealand, and the U.K. are all primarily English-speaking nations who, despite the vast geographic distances between them, are generally perceived as part of the white, Anglo-Saxon world. To be blunt, it’s King Henry’s view that it will be far better for us to begin as the Continental Union President Howell first envisioned, with as many of our South American neighbors onboard as possible, before ‘overloading’ the new edifice with those same white Anglo-Saxons. If India and South Africa—even Nigeria—were better positioned to ratify the new Constitution at this time, it might make sense to move directly towards the Planetary Union. As it is, I think His Majesty has a pretty fair point.”

  And, interestingly enough, it would seem that it was, indeed, His Majesty’s point. Dvorak very much doubted that Prince Henry Charles Albert David had ever expected to become King Henry IX, especially after his and his wife’s decision to remove themselves from the U.K. and “step back” from their royal duties, but now that he had the job, he intended to do it. He’d returned to Bristol as quickly as he could, sneaking back onto the island by small craft while the Shongairi were still interdicting air travel, and judging by the firm, no-nonsense approach he’d taken where warlords and looters were concerned, he clearly hadn’t wasted his time in the Army. He’d been forced to walk a fine line between restoring local order and provoking a Shongair intervention, but he’d managed to keep his balance. In terms of organized, functional infrastructure, North Carolina was still well ahead of the U.K., but Great Britain was making up for lost time under the King’s energetic leadership. And, given the way most citizens of the U.K. had come to regard the youthful monarch who’d done so much to bring some sort of order out of chaos, it seemed likely the Crown was going to be rather more actively engaged in shaping British policies than it had been.

  It sure as hell had been this far, at any rate.

  President Garçāo’s frown had eased as he digested Henry’s reasoning. Now he nodded, but his expression remained troubled.

  “As the president of one of those South American neighbors, I heartily approve,” he said. “The problem is which of my fellow South American countries we nominate.”

  “Venezuela is … not a promising prospect,” Dvorak replied, and Garçāo’s nostrils flared. The arrival of the Shongairi—and the destruction of Caracas, Maracaibo, and Barquisimeto—had finished toppling “the Sick Man of South America” into a black hole that appeared bottomless. “The situation there has spilled over into eastern Colombia, as well, but despite that, it appears Colombia is probably a more promising proposition. Unfortunately, they’re still trying to put their national government back together, and we haven’t had much luck getting into contact with it at this time. Peru took an awful pasting along the coast, and it was the middle of their winter when they got hit. President Izquierdo is making a lot of progress, and we’re providing as much humanitarian aid as possible, but it’s going to be at least another eighteen months before he could even consider something this significant. Ecuador and Bolivia are in better shape than Peru physically, but politically—” He shook his head. “We don’t have anyone in either of those countries who can speak for more than a few thousand people, and this has to be something that’s done on a national basis if it’s going to have any legitimacy going forward.”

  All three heads of state nodded gravely at that. That was another reason they were the ones beginning this.

  More and more local governments in the shattered United States were acknowledging Howell’s legitimacy as president. It would be entirely too long before the nation’s physical infrastructure could catch up with its political infrastructure, but something that was still recognizably the United States of America was emerging from the ruins. There were still places where anarchy governed, and it was likely military force would be required to sort out quite a few of them, but no one seemed to doubt any longer that they would be sorted out.

  Agamabichie and Garçāo had smaller populations, but both of them had been the legal successors—through a somewhat strained procedure in Agamabichie’s case, perhaps—to their dead heads of state. That gave them a degree of legitimacy that was simply lacking in places like Bolivia or—even worse—Venezuela, where it was very much a matter of every man for himself, bullets counted far more than ballots, and God help the hindermost.

  “We’re not sure about Argentina,” Dvorak continued. “Ancieta Montalván seems to have some serious reservations about how close she wants to get to us. That could be a problem.”

  “How great a problem?” Agamabichie asked.

  “Well, as Vice-President and President of the Senate, she was clearly President Salcedo’s legal successor when Buenos Aires got hit, so she’s got a lot of legitimacy,” Dvorak replied. “And so far as we can tell, she’s doing a damn good job of putting things back together. They’re down to about sixteen million people, and it’s taking her longer than I’m sure she’d like to reestablish the federal authority, but starvation was never a big problem for them. They had more problems with the winter weather, frankly. But Jorge Medrano—he’s the Navy commodore who’s become Minister of Defense—doesn’t much like or trust the United States, and it sounds like he has a lot of influence with her. Hopefully, that’s not goi
ng to be an insurmountable problem in the long term, but at the moment, it clearly is. The good news is that we think he’s an honest, forthright fellow who just doesn’t like us very much, so we’re hoping we’ll be able to change his mind in that regard in time. Or that’s the way it looks from here, anyway.”

  “I met President Montalván before the demônios, although I’m not certain she would remember it,” Garçāo said. “She is a determined woman, and one who thinks for herself. I very much doubt that anyone’s influence with her would be strong enough to overcome her own judgment.”

  “That’s our feeling as well, Mister President. It’s just that like too many of us, right this minute she has a little too much on her hands to be worrying about new supranational constitutions.”

  “And then there is Mexico.” Garçāo sighed.

  Mexico had become, in many ways, the Americas’ South Africa, although for rather different reasons. The cartels had seen their opportunity … and taken it. The Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion had actually negotiated a deal with the Shongairi, acting as the Puppies’ local enforcers in Colima, Guerrero, and Michoacán. None of the others had been quite as blatant as the CJNG, but all of them had possessed copious stores of military-grade weapons, and they’d seen the invasion primarily as an opportunity to increase their own power. With the collapse of the Federal authority after the initial KEW strikes, Mexico had disintegrated into feudal territories ruled over by the druglords who ran the cartels.

  “Yes, there is, Mister President,” Dvorak agreed. “The good news is that in part because of the CJNG, Mexico’s total casualties were actually lower than they might’ve been. The Puppies had more pressing problems elsewhere, so they were content to let the cartels—who, unlike Pakistan or India, at least didn’t have nuclear weapons—finish off the last vestiges of the Federal authority. After all, the process simply divided the country into smaller, more readily digestible bites under the control of humans who’d at least indicated they were willing to ‘be reasonable’ by Shongair standards.