"Gentlemen. Forty-eight hours ago we did not know what we were looking at. We know now. Tell me what the war looks like."
Hammond's voice came over the secure-video conference room at 0600 on the morning of day ninety-eight at the cadence of a man who had been at his desk since 0312 and had eaten a banana for breakfast standing up. The room's LED panel above the table cast the even white that made every man in the room look one shade more tired than he was. Daniel's hands on the table looked bloodless. Jack's jaw had the small tightness it got when he had not shaved in two days. Sam's hair was tied back at a tightness I had only ever seen her use at engineering consoles. I had not slept since 0411 the morning before. I had eaten a granola bar in the car at 0541.
I gave the situation report in eleven minutes.
I gave it cleanly. I gave the SG-13 four names by rank and surname. I gave the front's contraction status — stable as of midnight, twenty-three blocks on the agricultural territory's perimeter, Kawalsky's ground response holding with rolling shift rest, Sam's disruption protocol cycling every nine minutes, three Asgard interface units mounted and stable. I gave the AURORA-7 tactical-layer corruption-risk on the Replicator-front as a permanent operating constraint and recommended ATHENA-3 as primary tactical asset on all Replicator-front engagements going forward. I did not mention the 0548 override. I did not mention Walter's folder. I did not mention HORROR PROTOCOLS by name; I framed it as AURORA-7 has surfaced an unprompted directive recommending pre-emptive readiness posture, which I have accepted at tier one.
I closed at 0613.
Hammond pulled the room into the recommendation phase at 0614.
I made the recommendation in five sentences.
"The ATHENA-3 disruption-protocol path. We accelerate its development and authorize Tok'ra technical exchange to deepen the protocol library. The Pentagon-favored weapons-acceleration path is the floor we already have through Sam's template; the disruption protocol is the only ceiling that scales. I am asking the Pentagon to authorize protocol-first with weapons as a backstop. The vote needs to land today."
The room held.
Daniel was the first to speak.
"Drew," he said. His voice was steady. His hands had not moved on the table. "If we weaponize this, we are not better than the Goa'uld who created the original Replicator-substrate. We are just better-funded."
Sam answered before Hammond could pull the room.
"Daniel, the Goa'uld did not create the Replicators. That is the point. The Replicators are autonomous, and they will consume the planet you are trying to keep moral about."
"I am aware of the threat assessment, Sam—"
"Then act on it."
"I am acting on it. I am saying that accelerating weapons-grade development on an information asymmetry we cannot independently verify is the floor of bad precedent for every other emergent threat we will face for the next eighty years. We weaponize fast, we never un-weaponize. We weaponize the wrong thing, we have a treaty problem with the Asgard inside a year. You want a treaty problem with the Asgard, Sam?"
"I want a planet, Daniel."
"You will not lose the planet to the Replicators by spending six more weeks on the disruption protocol before pulling weapons-acceleration."
"You don't know that."
"Neither do you."
Hammond did not pull the room.
I let them run.
Daniel: "Fine. Then we accelerate the disruption protocol. Not the weapons."
Sam: "I am with you on the protocol. The weapons are the floor, not the ceiling. The disagreement is which is foregrounded, not which exists."
Daniel: "Foregrounding matters."
Sam: "Yes."
Daniel: "Drew, you've thought about this for forty-eight hours. Tell me you've considered the Asgard treaty cost."
I held his look.
"I have considered it. Thor committed countermeasure tech yesterday at oh-seven-twelve, provisional. He named it a partnership. The partnership will be tested in the next sixty days. If we accelerate weapons over protocol, the Asgard read the partnership as Earth choosing the easier path, and the alliance does not seal."
"Then we go protocol-first."
"Yes."
"And weapons are the backstop, not the public recommendation."
"Yes."
"I can sign onto that."
Sam: "I can sign onto that."
The exchange had run eleven minutes. The disagreement had not closed. The disagreement had been bracketed.
Hammond, at 0741, finally pulled the room.
"We will defer the ethics question to the next briefing, gentlemen. We have a war today. Mr. Ramsey. The vote will run at oh-eight-thirty. Pentagon-side. I will be on the call. You will be on the call. Daniel, Sam, prepare written positions for the record. Jack."
"Sir."
"You and the ground response — what do you need."
"More augmented teams. Two more disruption-protocol cycles per perimeter. A second Tok'ra cell in rotation."
"Approved. Drew, route through Selmak."
"Yes sir."
"Dismissed."
We stood.
Daniel caught my eye on the way out. He nodded once. The nod was small. The nod was a Daniel nod. I am not done with this. I am with you for now. He left.
The Pentagon vote ran at 0830 over secure-video. It went four to two. The two dissenters were Daniel and a civilian-oversight representative whose name I did not catch. The protocol-first path was authorized. The weapons-backstop was authorized as a sealed parallel track. Hammond closed the call at 0917 and stayed on the line with me for one minute after.
"Mr. Ramsey."
"Sir."
"That cost capital."
"I know."
"Post-charter reserves are at roughly sixty-five percent of where they were on day seventy-three."
"I know."
"Are you sleeping."
"No, sir."
"Get an hour. That is an order. Walter will hold the office for two."
"Yes sir."
The line cut.
I went to the small adjacent quarters where the cot was. I lay on the couch — I had a couch in the quarters because I had moved a couch in from the apartment on day forty for reasons I had not articulated to myself — and I closed my eyes at 0930.
I did not sleep.
I counted the ceiling tiles. There were forty-eight. I counted them three times. The count came out the same each time. AURORA-7 ran soft strategic-summaries through my ear every twenty minutes — front stable, contraction rate steady, no new contact reports. I did not respond to the summaries.
At 1014 the dream started.
It was a kitchen I had not stood in for a long time, the wallpaper a yellow I had not chosen and Hana had bought without asking on a Saturday two years before everything else, and Hana was at the kitchen counter with her hair pulled back the way she pulled it back when she was working at the laptop and not the standing desk. She was eight years younger than the last time I had seen her. She was wearing a t-shirt I had thrown out fourteen months before the transmigration. She was looking at her phone, smiling at something on the screen, and she lifted it and turned it so I could see what she was looking at.
It was the Gantt chart from a project I had been running at the consulting firm in the third year, the chart she had teased me about for a week because the milestone names had all been food puns.
She had been about to text me a reply at the time.
She had not texted the reply.
In the dream she texted the reply now. She held the phone up so I could see her thumbs moving. The reply came up on my screen — the screen of the phone I was holding at the kitchen counter across from her in the dream, the phone that was not the SRD-priority phone, the phone that was a phone from the life before. The text said project plan accepted, will require additional croissants.
I started to laugh in the dream.
I woke up at 1101.
I was not laughing.
I lay on the couch for one minute and then I sat up. AURORA-7 catalogued the heart-rate signature and did not raise it. The dashboard heads-up on the small monitor across the room read FRONT STABLE. I did not feel rested. I did not feel grieved. I felt the way you felt after a dream that was a gift the dreamer had not asked the dreaming brain to give and the brain had given it anyway.
I drank a glass of water from the small fridge in the corner.
I left the quarters at 1118.
I went home at 1220. Janet's home — not the apartment. I had spent two of the last fifteen nights at the apartment and the rest at her place by silent agreement we had not yet articulated as an arrangement. Cassandra was at school. Janet was in the kitchen. She had the percolator off and a small fresh pot brewing the second time on a different burner, which meant she had been on her feet since 1130.
She turned when I came in.
She did not ask what the brief said.
She did not ask how I was.
She poured a cup of coffee, handed it to me, and sat down at the table by the east window. I sat across from her.
We drank for two minutes without speaking.
At 1232 she set her cup down.
"Let's announce the engagement after."
I held her eyes.
"Yes."
She did not move for a beat.
"This is not because I'm afraid we won't be alive after."
"I know."
She leaned across the table. She kissed me on the temple — the right temple, where the contraction headaches had been, where her thumb had sat at the SRD office during the silent visit on day seventy-one, where her thumb had sat again at her door on day eighty-two when she had told me to be careful. The kiss was brief. It was the kind of kiss couples in their seventies gave each other at the end of long marriages on quiet Tuesdays. It was the most married thing she had done with me to date.
She sat back down. She drank her coffee. She did not look at me for a count of five.
"I have to be back at the infirmary at fourteen-hundred," she said.
"I have to be back at the office at thirteen-thirty."
"Cass has her physics test Friday."
"I know."
"She wants to take it from a different desk than the one she normally sits at. She thinks the desk is unlucky."
"Did you let her?"
"I told her she could take it from any desk in the room."
"Good answer."
"I thought so."
She smiled at the coffee, not at me. The smile was the third on the small private arc I had been tracking. The first had been at the Denver restaurant in week eight. The second had been at this same kitchen yesterday morning over the project-plan joke. The third was now and was different — smaller, slower, the smile of someone who had decided what she was doing and was no longer asking herself whether to do it.
I left the kitchen at 1304. Janet walked me to the front door. She did not kiss me again. She put her palm flat on my chest for two seconds and let it drop.
"Drew."
"Yeah."
"Whatever the dream was."
"It was nothing bad."
"Okay."
I drove back to the mountain. AURORA-7 was at the cool register. The dashboard heads-up read FRONT STABLE. The contraction headache that had not bothered me since day seventy-five was a faint pressure at my right temple where Janet's thumb had sat.
I parked at the SRD checkpoint at 1349.
Walter was at his console when I came through. He looked up. He did not say welcome back, sir. He said:
"Sir. Sergeant Siler at P3X-512 is asking for a structural-engineer rotation. Tok'ra-Vorash casualty list is updated, twelve names confirmed for the wall. Major Carter is requesting a meeting with you and Doctor Rothman at sixteen-hundred regarding the next-phase disruption protocol. Ms. Fraiser asks me to remind you to eat a real dinner."
"In order. Authorize Siler's rotation, route through facilities. Bring me the Tok'ra-Vorash list at fourteen-hundred. Confirm Carter at sixteen-hundred. Tell Ms. Fraiser I will eat a real dinner."
"Yes sir."
He went back to typing.
I went into my office.
⚜ ━━━━ ROYAL PROCLAMATION ━━━━ ⚜
Read more chapters for free in the public library:
unwrittenrealm.com
⚜ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⚜
By order of the Crown.
The royal vault holds chapters the public throne room has yet to receive. Those who pledge fealty on Patreon may read ahead of the realm:
Noble — $7 — Twelve chapters ahead.
Royal — $11 — Nineteen chapters ahead.
Emperor — $17 — Twenty-six chapters ahead.
New chapters added weekly. Full schedule posted in the war room.
patreon.com/Kingdom1Building
Long live the Kingdom.