“Phil’s a good guy,” Andy insisted. “And whatever rules he bent or broke, I’m fairly certain he had his reasons for doing so. Based on what’s happening with the New Daughters of the Revolution, there were much bigger systemic problems going on here at the base.”
“Yes, well, now we come to the real reason we’ve brought you here, Mister Rook,” the General said with a heavy sigh. “Now, it should be noted that it’s taken us almost a month to get to this point, and I wish it hadn’t come down to this, but it has, as the NDR are entirely inflexible upon these terms. One of their demands involves you specifically, and as loathe as I am to ask this of you, they will be not be budged off this point. That’s why we had to have all of this scrutiny. We needed to vet you as thoroughly as we could and ensure this wasn’t some sort of trick or deception on the behalf of the NDR, and I expect your reaction to the demand will only confirm what I already believe to be true.”
“We gonna dance all night with your hand on my ass, General, or are you going to make your move?” Andy said. “What the hell are you talking about? What demands?”
“We have reached a settlement which will result in the NDR surrendering Misters Covington, Jacobson and Vikovic to law enforcement,” the Senator said. “It’s not perfect, but we didn’t expect that it would be going into it, yes? There’s a handful of things that’re… less than ideal, but it’s what we gotta do to get things back into a more manageable fashion. And as the General said, one of the demands involves you, and we anticipated… well, frankly if I were you, Mister Rook, I’d tell me to go stuff it. But it’s our job to implore you not to do that, and to find some sort of counterbalancing agent that will make their demand more palatable to you.”
“Okay, look,” Andy snapped. “Quit fucking dancing around the topic and tell me what the fuck is going on, so we can stop wasting each others’ time.”
The three members of the tribunal looked at one another, trying to silently decide who was going to tell Andy, before the General spoke again, seemingly having decided to fall on the grenade herself. “As part of the New Daughters of the Revolution surrendering Covington and the others to us, they’re all going to be reassigned and not face any retaliatory actions for what they did, although we are mandating that Dr. Rachel DeMarco engage in mandatory psychiatric counseling for a period no less than one year, because of her… demonstration of physical violence in regards to Mister Covington. But that’s not the hard part. They have a few demands about their reassignments that are… particular.”
“Oh no,” Andy heard Niko say behind him.
“Miss Lisa Davis is insisting she be reassigned to someone on the East Coast. She wants to be as far away from California as she can get.”
“I can understand that,” Andy said. “After the kind of thing I imagine Covington put her though, she’s right to want to put it all behind her and never think about it again.”
“Dr. DeMarco is insisting she be reassigned to Dr. Marcos, so that she can continue to aid in the research on the project, although she has agreed to do so under constant supervision, and with no real authority in any way, shape or form.”
“I can’t imagine Phil or Linda is particularly happy about that,” Andy muttered, mostly to himself but loud enough that the tribunal could’ve heard him. He expected Linda would be even more angry about it than Phil would, although he certainly didn’t expect Phil to be all that thrilled with it.
“They will have extremely limited contact with one another until Captain Hayes has assessed that Dr. DeMarco is no longer a threat to anyone. She will remain on the base under supervision at all times until Captain Hayes deems otherwise. There are a handful of other demands about specific people wanting to go to other places, but there’s one in particular that the NDR are adamant on, and they will not be budged from it. They want you to select one of their members to join your Team specifically, here in New Eden.”
Andy wasn’t sure how long the silent moment was between them telling him that and him speaking again, but it might as well have been a thousand years for as heavy as the time felt.
“You cannot be serious,” were the first words he could summon to his lips, and they were just a hair’s breadth away from him following it up with ‘go fuck yourselves,’ but he decided not to vocalize that last bit, at least not yet.
“Deadly serious, I’m afraid,” the Senator told him. “They’re aware of your history with House Covington, and some of the disagreements their members have had with members of your household…”
“They basically tortured my fiancée, Piper Brown, and you want me to bring one of them into my home with her? You’re insane. This is insane. It’s not inviting a wolf into the hen house; it’s laying out a fucking three-course dinner for her!”
“They’re willing to let you choose from any of the members of House Covington, House Vikovic or House Jacobson, but obviously they would prefer you take someone from House Covington. In fact, I’ve been asked to convey to you that Melody Park would like to volunteer for your Team, but that she also understands if her time with Miss Brown would be a dealbreaker. She has voiced in particular a desire to make amends for her inability to protect Miss Brown. The NDR feel like you’ve done wonders in fighting against the abuses of the system, and they believe that having someone from their organization embedded in your Team will let them all sleep a little better, since they’ll know what work you’re doing to keep the system from having any other abuses, and they can communicate that work out to the others in the NDR.”
“I’m just a fantasy writer who got lucky along the way. I don’t work on the Quaranteam serum. I don’t know a thing about how the DuoHalo virus works. I’m not in the Air Force. I’m not what anyone would call an insider.”
“I disagree,” the Representative said, a fiery anger in her tone. “When you agreed to step forward and place your liberal West Coast values forth as the new model for the American family, you took a place in the spotlight and became the sort of public figure that’s going to have a firm hand in shaping the direction of this country for the next twenty years, you and your Hollywood elite women, one of whom ain’t even from this country.”
He could hear Niko’s hands balling into fists behind him, but the taunt from the Representative from Idaho just made him smirk a little bit. “I see. So it is retaliatory, just not for them. You don’t like the fact that the President asked us to step forward and talk to ’60 Minutes’ because you didn’t get a chance to put your stake down in the culture wars. I wasn’t asking anyone else to live their lives how I live mine, just telling people how we decided to survive with each other in the new world.”
“I think you and the rest of your godless heathen sluts shouldn’t get to decide anything about how our nation does anything,” she sneered back at him. “You’ve always treated the middle of this country as ‘flyover states,’ people you turn your back on and ignore until you need something, and then suddenly it’s nothing but handout handout handout. We in Idaho have one of the lowest sales tax rates nationwide, because we don’t believe in big government.”
“Great,” Andy shot back. “Then you won’t mind us not sending you any aid or paying for any of your federal services? Californians pay a higher tax rate than anybody else in the United States, and maybe we should start making sure we’re getting what we pay for with those taxes. You’ve got quite a lot of our money coming into Mountain Home Air Force Base up there in Idaho, when all those resources could be allocated elsewhere.”
“Typical liberal talking points,” she said, rolling her eyes. “We need our military now more than ever, Mr. Rook, what with all casualties we’ve suffered as a nation.”
“Maybe you haven’t heard but we aren’t the only country who lost people, Representative. Hell, you should know far better than I do what’s going on internationally.”
“And I do, Mister Rook, and it’s not fucking pretty. But we’re going to make sure it’s America First no matter what happens to the rest of the world. So, you’re going to take one of these fucking NDR women and add her to your household because it’s what keeps this shit from getting out of hand. Because if you don’t, they’re going to make sure all of Covington’s abuses are going to be broadcast far and wide, and I think we both know how that’s going to end up, don’t you? With me and mine on top, where we belong, but by God, the amount of bloodshed it’ll take to get us there is unconscionable even to me, so we’re telling you to do this so there’s not gonna be rioting in the streets. But you will not push me and mine into a corner, Mister Rook. We’re going to keep our Second Amendment strong and we’re going to protect our people from immigrants and those who’d want to sully this great land of ours. The last fucking thing we need is you and your woke socialist family setting the tone for the rest of the country. Traditional. American. Values. That’s what this country needs and what it’s going to get.”
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