Issue In Doubt - By David Sherman Page 0,4
Mexico merged into the NAU, none of the three would accept either of the other’s national capital for the capital of the new Union. They settled on Omaha, Nebraska because it was situated roughly in the middle of the continent. Moreover, Omaha was cold enough in the winter to satisfy Canadians’ yen for the Great White North, and hot enough in the summer for the Mexicans to fondly remember the deserts of Sonora and Chihuahua—or so it was said. As for the USA, Omaha was a major part of the Great American Heartland, being an established city of the second tier. It and Douglas County were fully adequate for a capital city. Sarpy County, directly to the south, was the home of Offutt Air Force Base, one-time headquarters of the Strategic Air Command, an ideal location for the new Supreme Military Headquarters. And Pottawatomie County, Iowa, directly across the Missouri River from Omaha, provided more than ample space for the buildings needed to house what was sure to be a massive central bureaucracy. Some in Nebraska strenuously objected to losing Douglas and Sarpy, and Iowa to losing Pottawatomie to the new Federal Zone. They were reminded of the benefits previously enjoyed by the parts of Maryland and Virginia adjacent to the District of Columbia—not to mention the additional taxes garnered by those states from the increased population of government workers who lived in adjacent counties—and graciously agreed to losing those population centers.
Competitions were held to design the new Union’s legislative capitol and the presidential residence and office. Nobody other than the bureaucrats who selected it was happy with the monumental faux sod-house design of the president’s residence and office, christened “The Prairie Palace,” although nearly everybody outside government came to agree that it was appropriate that the legislative Capitol was erected on what had once been the stock yards for the South Omaha slaughter houses.
It was to the Prairie Palace, located on the site of what had once been Central High School, that Secretary Hobson, Chairman Welborn, and Deputy Director de Castro went to see the President of the NAU.
The Round Office, The Prairie Palace
Albert Leopold Mills, tall and lean, in his late fifties, was a distinguished, mild-mannered gentleman. Until he got behind closed doors.
“What the fuck is the meaning of this!” he demanded as soon as the door to the Round Office closed behind his visitors from military headquarters. “I have more important things to do than sit around in a circle jerk with you. I should have all of your resignations on my desk within the hour!”
“Sir, if you don’t agree that what’s on this,” Hobson held up a crystal, “is worth disrupting your schedule, you’ll have my resignation as soon as I can scribble it out.”
“We’ll see about that.” Mills snatched the crystal from Hobson’s fingers. He popped it into his comp and scanned the text report. Then reread it more slowly. “Who did it?”
“Sir, we don’t know for certain who they are, but there are images,” Hobson said.
“Show me.”
Hobson nodded to de Castro, who stepped to the President’s desk and took control of the console to show the images.
“They aren’t all of the best quality, sir,” de Castro said as he activated the first image. It was an eleven-second vid, bouncy as though the person shooting it was trembling and had forgotten to stabilize the view. It showed armed—creatures—racing along a street. Heavily muscled legs ending in taloned feet propelled them faster than a human could run, even a human augmented with military armor. They were bent at the hips, their torsos held parallel to the ground. Sinuous necks triple the length of a human’s held their heads up, and whipped them side to side. The faces jutted forward, with long jaws that seemed to be filled with sharp, conical teeth. Arms little more than half the length of their legs held weapons that could have been some kind of rifle. A crest of feathery structures ran from the tops of their faces all the way down their spines, where fans of long, feathery structures jutted backward providing a counterbalance to the forward thrusting torsos. Their knees bent backward, like birds’. They appeared to be naked except for straps and pouches arrayed around their bodies. Packs of smaller creatures that might have been juveniles of their kind sped among them.
Mills was expressionless looking at the vid to the end. “Next.”
De Castro activated the second image. This one was a grainy still shot, showing one of the