[b]US Capitol Building 
Washington, DC[/b]

Russell slowly walked down the aisles of the Senate chamber. He placed his hand on the polished wooden surface of a senator's desk, these desks from whihc statesmen and scallywags alike sat behind. The dim lighting cast shadows across the empty room. Nigh on six in the morning and Russell was one of only a handful of people in the Capitol at this hour. Early mornings were a matter of routine for Russell when he was Majority Leader. He arrived at six on the dot and worked twelve and fourteen hour days. 

This chamber was intimate; its little desks stretched in a semi-circle around the dais were a far cry from the huddled masses that packed the House on benches. His tenure as Speaker of the House was a success, but managing that body was akin to having a tiger by the tail. There was constant division between the parties and the various factions within those parties on nearly every single issue. On top of that, members came and went every two years at such a steady pace it became hard to keep track of who was who and where they stood on issues. That wasn’t the case in the Senate. Here ninety-six men were elected and stayed here for at least six years. A senator could be elected at the tail end of one presidency, serve through a full four year term of another presidency, and then a potential third president's first two years. Presidents came and went, but senators stayed. For Russell, those six years were plenty of time. He could get to know a man, learn his heart's desires, and learn to read him like a book.

 For ten years Russell had dominated this chamber and bent the will of the ninety-five other men he had served with. He knew all the carrots and sticks to use to get the legislation he wanted passed. For a decade he had done legislative battle in this chamber and won far more often than he had lost. At one time he had been the most powerful Democrat in the country. And now? Now…

“Missing it already,” the voice from behind asked.

Senator Dixon walked into the chamber with his hands in his pockets. The Secret Service agent shadowing Russell looked towards him before he was waved off. Russell and Dixon shook hands before the senator walked towards his desk on the right side of the aisle. Russell followed and leaned against the desk next to Dixon’s while they spoke.

“I know Kelly is an early-riser," said Russell."I wanted to scare him by being in his office when he gets here. I got distracted and ended up going down memory lane.”

“Sentimentality is unlike you, Russ. Pining for your old job?”

“Missing it,” Russell said softly. “I got promoted off the battlefield. I miss negotiating in the cloakroom, getting down to the nut-cutting with the opposition, counting votes in that last flurry before we know for certain how the vote’s gonna go. Most of all I miss the winning.”

“Well you and your boy in the White House are gonna have a win soon,” said Dixon. “I assume you’re here to harangue our fearless Leader about putting the NEWI bill on the legislative calendar.”

“Among other things.”

“Everyone wants to look good when it comes to national defense. President Fernandez’s military improvements were a great success, and Norman was a general. He wants to keep pushing further to get us stronger, as we all do. It’s a win-win for every one of us, no way it’ll fail in the Senate.”

“It’s not partisanship that concerns me. Tell me, Bill, what are the southerners saying about the president?”

Dixon raised an eyebrow at the vice president. 

“I thought those bulldogs were firmly in your pocket. Thicker than thieves, y’all were.”

Russell shrugged, “Were. Since I became vice president they act differently. I think part of it is because I’m working with the President and they fiercely guard the Senate’s autonomy from the Executive Branch… but I think they’re also afraid of what I’m going to ask of them.”

“There’s a term that I’ve been hearing through the cloakrooms and offices, really more like mutterings. Civil rights, Russ. Everyone wants to know where President Norman stands on that issue, and you yourself known what lengths the South will go to block civil rights legislation.”

He knew very well the old southern tactic. For the last hundred years the South had dominated the Senate thanks to the seniority system that governed the body’s rules and procedures. Once a southern senator was voted into office, he would be returned back to Washington six year term after six year term. Southerners liked voting the incumbent so much that only death could truly remove a southerner from the Senate. These old bulls accumulated more power with each passing year, every key piece of legislation the Senate voted on passed through southern hands either on the committee level or on the floor during debate. 

The legislative Fabian strategy involved using every modicum of that power to kill potential civil rights bills, not by meeting them head on, but by grinding the gears of government to a halt. A president would talk big about civil rights bills and try to introduce legislation; plenty of it would pass the House only to die a slow and ignoble death in the Senate thanks to the southern power inside. They would delay and filibuster and drag their feet on every other important bill that the White House wanted to see passed, they would hold the government hostage until finally the president and his allies had no choice but to rescind any civil rights bill from the floor so things like spending bills and tax reform could get passed. Russell himself had used the tactic twice when he was Leader, at the pressing of the old bulls of course. Despite his own mixed views on segregation, he owed his standing in the Senate to the old bulls. He had to do plenty of things against his nature to keep the old men who loved him happy.

“Where do the Republicans stand on civil rights?” Russell asked. 

“Indifferent at best. All the Republicans from the Northeast and the Midwest don’t really have enough Negroes in their state to really matter politically. Oklahoma has segregation, but we got more Indians than we do blacks. I probably couldn’t get away with voting for anything like that, but plenty of them could with the right incentives and promises from Norman.”

Russell’s brain went to work with lightning speed, running down every senator, his political inclinations, and allies he caucused with.

“Plenty of wiggle room,” he said after nearly five seconds of silence. “It could go either way if someone managed to get it out of committee and on the floor. But any talk about that bill is hypothetical at the moment. Right now I’m worried about them hijacking the NEWI bill, extorting the administration for a definite deal on no civil rights bills. I’ve told the president and everyone else at the White House they need to pass everything important to them before they even try to introduce a bill like that.”

“So the president is interested in passing something?”

Russell threw his hands up. “It’s about time, Bill. You’ve seen the news from Mississippi the past few days, Nantchez or Natchez or however the hell you pronounce it. It’s nineteen eighty, nearly a hundred and twenty years since they were freed and we have to give them something.”

“You sound like a damn idealists,” Dixon said with a chuckle. “The Russell Reed I used to know valued pragmatism over everything.”

“Well…," he said with a creeping grin. "A Norman desegregation and voter rights act means a solid Negro vote for him going into ’84… or his successor in ’88.”

“That’s more like it.”

Russell laughed and leaned back on the desk with a smile on his face while he looked around the chamber.
“Before you got here I was thinking... Remember three years ago, when Fernandez had that bill abolishing oil depletion allowance tax.”

A smile broke out on Dixon’s face as he remembered.

“I swear to God I have never seen a man’s face get that red in all my life. It turned the same color as his tie when he found out his bill was going down in flames.”

“Democrats and Republican working together to give the White House the middle finger.”

“When we were kings, Russ.”

When I was a king, Russell thought to himself. Now he was on the outside looking in and hoping he could keep his promises to the president.

****

[b]Cascadia Territorial Police Force Headquarters
Vancouver[/b]

“Sergeant Brian Shea,” Mark Echols said to himself.

He looked at the photo of the US Army soldier and compared it with the morgue photos of his John Doe. The personnel photo was from a few years ago, but it was a solid match to the dead body Echols was responsible for. Brian Shea, according to the thin report Mark had, was a technical sergeant based out of Fort Dixon. Dixon was one of five military bases the US Army installed after the war to house the US’s occupying force.

Fort Dixon put out an AWOL alert on Sergeant Shea a week before his body was found in that field in Surrey and he left his post at the base a week before that. Mark placed the picture down and leaned back in his char to think. Two weeks in the wild for Sergeant Shea that ended up in that field, naked with a bullet in the back of his head.
Echols picked up his files hobbled across his office, leaning on his cane with one hand while the other hand worked on placing files on his corkboard. The corkboard had tacked to it every scrap of information on the murder. Shea’s photo went at the center of the board, wedged between the crime scene and morgue photos. Near the edge of the board were the autopsy and crime scene reports, both he kept coming back to over the past few days. 

The only detail worth mentioning in the medical examiner’s report was concerning Shea’s aroused state. Fluid samples indicated that he was in the middle of intercourse when he was killed. Coupled with that nugget was the additional findings from the crime scene techs that indicated Shea was shot elsewhere and dumped in that field. The slug pulled from the back of his head was a .38 round in some kind of weird-ass wide wadcutter variety. The slug would be easy to run evidence against if he could find a murder weapon. At this point, there were a lot of ifs before he could even get to that point.

Mark checked his watch. It was a little after five in the morning. He had called Fort Dixon and left a message with a major on night duty, concerning Shea’s disappearance. The major gave his assurances he would run it up to the colonel when he arrived that morning at six. Fort Dixon was situated outside of town, a good twenty minute drive. Mark hobbled out the office and decided to eat breakfast before calling on the good people at Fort Dixon that morning.

*****

[b]North Vancouver[/b]

Arthur looked at the device in his hands before placing it on the workbench beside the plastique. His heart pounded so hard he could hear the pulse in his ears. He spent a week on it, wiring it together and soldering between classes and hanging out with Alex and the rest of the Friends. Chris was gruff, but he was starting to come around to him and he wasn’t sure but he felt like Joanna liked him. What Alex was planning was… stark and Arthur was unsure if he could do it, but it was a necessary task to set up their future. The Friends were just that to Arthur, something he hadn’t had in a long time. Not since before the war.

“Still working?” 

Joanna stood at the top of the steps leading down to the basement. The apartment the three, now four, of them lived in was furnished by Alex. He was cool about letting Arthur move his tools and equipment down to the basement and using it as a work room. 

“Just doing some last minute soldering before I call it a night. I want to make sure it’s ready to go before tomorrow night.”

She walked down the steps while Arthur wiped his hands off on a rag. He was preparing to stand up when he felt her arms wrap themselves around his neck and her warm breath on his neck. 

“Are you ready for tomorrow,” she breathed into his ear, her lips caressing his earlobe. “Are you ready to do what needs to be done for the cause?”

Alex stood and looked down at her. He wasn’t sure if it was genuine love, infatuation, or just plain lust, but he felt his heart, and something else, swell at the sight of Joanna. She leaned in and they shared a brief, passionate kiss.

“I’ll do what I need to do,” Arthur said steadfastly. 

“Good. Come on, it’s time for bed.”

Arthur looked back at the mess of wire, electronics, and plastic explosives before turning off the workbench lamp and heading upstairs, hand in hand with Joanna.