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	"A Connecticut Yankee in the Archon's Court"
Contact author			Chapter 1				Last Updated: 2005-10-14

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Backward to Prologue

Chapter 1: The Dead of the Night

Challenge everyone you don't recognize! Inconvenience now or give away the store?
Alliance for Democracy security awareness poster 72-4E, 1972 (available in Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi and Japanese as special order item)

"It's ratha funny, that the Yankees turned into the kinda paper-checkin' security tight-asses they made so much fun of the Nazis fo', all on account of us."
Cohortach Deanna Viljoen, Domination Embassy to United States, 1952

Sandia Air Base, Alliance Air Force
Albuquerque, New Mexico
United States of America¹
Alliance for Democracy
27 March 1998
2341 hours

Technical Master Sergeant² Lucia Garcia peered in the grimy window, rattled the old doorknob to make sure the door was still locked, then turned to trudge down the ancient steps of the outside staircase. Her left hand pointed a flickering flashlight down at the stairs she was about to walk down, and she reached for the railing with her right for support in case one of the old boards broke. She was angry at the whole chain of command that had ordered her roused from bed, after a full duty day doing computer network administration, to augment the base security forces for another night infiltration defense exercise. If she'd been posted to a foxhole on the base perimeter with an enlisted person or another NCO, she would have had a good chance of outranking them, and grabbing some more shuteye. But no. This time it was inspecting buildings, especially offices empty at night, looking for signs of forced entry. She was sure she wouldn't find anything, the whole thing tonight known to be a drill, but sometimes the higher-ups set up a simulated Draka infiltration just to keep you on your toes. And heaven help those who weren't on them. A Draka commando team, or even one Citizen, could ambush a weary Alliance soldier and carve them up in seconds. In fact, the barracks scuttlebutt was that these patrols by non-Security personnel were unarmed and given minimal equipment, just flashlights and a two-way radio, because Security didn't expect them to do anything more than fail to report in, because they had been killed, if they found a Draka. So none of the cermet armor, comm/sensor helmets, and Springfield-15 assault rifles that were issued to the base Security Force. Just fabric camouflage uniforms, flashlights and radios as if this were 50 or so years ago, and you could yell "Stop!" at a Citizen and expect to be obeyed until the real soldiers arrived. The alternative would have been to train everybody in the Air Force in weapons and unarmed combat, and provide proper equipment to all of them for these security exercises. But the Alliance Air Force had to spend their money elsewhere, on aircraft and the facilities that kept them running, now that the Space Force got the lion's share of the funding and all the glamour.³
But the door there at the top of the stairs was secure. It was also so old and fragile that she could have opened it in a few seconds to a minute, depending on if she had wanted to leave marks of forced entry. A few years at an all-girl Catholic boarding school in Monterrey had given Lucia an education in some areas her parents hadn't intended; evading the patrolling nuns, picking locks, and rough-and-tumble catfighting with bullies using anything from sharp fingernails to broomsticks to knives. The view through the glass had shown an empty hallway, no lights and no recent footprints visible in a thick layer of dust. And she knew that this old building, once the base personnel office until a year ago, was vacant and due to be torn down soon. She had stepped around a wooden sawhorse blocking access to the base of the stairs before coming up here, a piece of cardboard tacked to the sawhorse reading "BUILDING CONDEMNED — DO NOT ENTER." She was sure only a madman would take a chance on the dangers within, but it would have been a perfect hideout within the base for infiltrators. The stairs seemed sturdy, but she was taking no chances on the ability of the old wooden treads to support even her 55-kilo⁴ frame.
As she turned away from the door, a bright light from ground level momentarily blinded her. The other member of her two-person team, a young Brazilian Captain, had been nothing but trouble, trying to "help" by pointing his flashlight wherever she went. Lucia was sure it was just so he could watch her rear move in the camouflage pants. She raised her left hand to shade her eyes, and started down the stairs without even the ability to see where her feet were going, cursing under her breath at the Brazilian, the Draka, and her decision to join the Alliance military 12 years earlier. "Join the Air Force and soar with the eagles indeed! Estupido puta!" Her exhalation billowed out before her as white vapor in the cold night air. The Brazilian's voice began "Team Nine reporting in, completed inspection of…", speaking to the Base Security Force communications center over the two-way radio that he held.

Suddenly, the brilliance of the annoying flashlight was dwarfed by a sun-bright burst of light coming from the same general direction. Only Sergeant Garcia's shading hand kept her from being completely blinded as a momentary flash, accompanied by a loud "crack" like thunder next door, shattered the night's stillness. The stairs shook as if kicked by a giant, and began to collapse to the ground. A short cry of agony came from below, maybe the Brazilian had been injured, but Lucia couldn't see for the next few seconds while spots danced before her eyes. She dropped her flashlight and clamped both hands on the L-shaped metal stair railing, determined to hold on even if the stairs collapsed, until she could see again and assess the situation. "Grenade?" flashed through her shocked brain, but she shook off that initial conclusion until she knew more. She began long slow blinks, hoping her vision would clear quickly. If it had been a grenade, it must have been a "flash-bang" one rather than fragmentation, for she felt no pain from fragment injuries. In fact, there had been no noticeable blast, just light and sound.
With a loud groan of bending metal, the stairs sagged towards the ground even further. As her vision began to clear, Sergeant Garcia could see a circular line of smoldering red glow about 3 meters across, near the base of the stairs. There was a body-sized thing in the middle of it, and a something about the same size, about where the Brazilian had been standing, at the edge of the red circle. A nearby streetlight and the faint red glow from the edge of the circle were the only visible light sources now. Her flashlight had apparently finally given out, and was probably one of the dark objects on the ground nearby. The staircase seemed to have stopped settling, and she was a good two meters up. Easily close enough to the ground to jump though, given her physical training. She flexed her knees and jumped off, making sure to avoid the pieces of metal strewn on the ground. Given the extra bounce from her jump, the stairs completed collapsing behind her.

Coming to her feet on the grass beyond the concrete near the building, Sergeant Garcia looked around for the hand-held radio the Brazilian had been carrying. As the senior member of the team, he had appropriated it, and the working flashlight, and told Lucia to walk in front of him at all times during this inspection. Macho bastard, or whatever they called his obsolete attitude in the jungles of Brazil nowadays. But it was a reasonable and valid order nonetheless, and had to be obeyed. Even though she was sure he was doing it just to make her do all the work while he got to ogle her. If he weren't an officer, she'd have shook that toothy grin off his face, and kneed him in the cojones to show him she was no shy señorita to be leered at.
She found and retrieved her inferior flashlight, but even after a few slaps it refused to operate. Only the nearby streetlight helped her see the scene, as the glow from the edge of the circle provided no real illumination. The body in the circle wasn't the Brazilian. In fact, that spot where the other dark thing was, it was about where he had been…
Lucia felt her gorge rise as she realized that the dark mass was most, but not all, of his body. It lay prone across part of the glowing red circle, as if he had fallen into it. From the camouflage jacket on the back, the markings on its shoulders, and the straight dark hair on the head, it was definitely the Brazilian. But both arms were gone, they just ended somewhere around the elbow. The good flashlight and the radio were nowhere in sight. He must have been holding both when it happened. She turned over the corpse with a booted foot, and saw a look of surprise and pain on the Brazilian's frozen face, the last expression before the shock of losing limbs killed him. A faint stench of smoldering uniform fabric rose from the corpse, augmented now that she had turned him over onto his back. The edges of the arm wounds looked like charbroiled steak, extremely well done. A few glowing embers still lurked in the stumps, winking like evil little eyes. Faint wisps of white vapor - steam or smoke - drifted up and vanished into the cold night air. One foot seemed to end midway, and there was a divot taken out of that leg encompassing the knee. Apparently whatever had caused this circle of destruction… No, a hemisphere, judging by the damage to the stairs… Maybe the other body in the middle of it held some answers.
She stepped away from the corpse, and turned to regard the hellish circle on the ground. The edge was still faintly glowing, but the reddish embers were winking out as time passed. The interior of the circle didn't look burnt, just the edge, and it was slightly raised above the rest of the concrete. The circle contained a prone body, and crumpled metal from the stairs. Whatever had made the circle on the ground had cut through the stairs and the Brazilian, cutting both so they had collapsed. The body in the circle was lying in a semi-fetal position on one side, the arms in front and hands opened as if grasping or trying to let go of something. No weapons visible. Civilian clothes, blue denim jeans⁵ and a green patterned flannel shirt, black tennis shoes, no hat on his head or visible nearby. Some kind of badge on a white string or strap around the neck, dark glasses covering the eyes, a small watch of gold and black on a black strap on the left wrist. Dark hair with streaks of gray, mustache and full lips, a man of medium height and slightly protruding belly. The gray made him look older at first glance, but probably in his late 30s and gone gray early, not in good physical shape. Definitely not a Draka or even a serf. She took a second look and murmured to herself "black tennis shoes?" The dark glasses began visibly clearing as she watched. The man's eyes were closed, but his face was contorted in pain. As she approached, he groaned and his legs and arms feebly flailed. But he stopped moving with another groan and slumped, still apparently unconscious while lying on his side.
Lucia's instincts to rush to somebody's aid were tempered by caution. Who was this stranger? There had been nobody else near the building when she had climbed the stairs. And the sawhorse she had stepped around was nowhere in sight. Deciding, she stepped back out of the circle and away towards the street. Real security troops should be arriving in the vicinity soon to investigate the interrupted radio call, and she wasn't qualified to render more than first aid, even if she had had a kit. No, she'd leave this mysterious stranger for somebody else. He probably hadn't killed the Brazilian officer, but he was in the center of what had, and that made him a hot potato. Not her problem really.

But to be sure, she carefully reached down her right leg and pulled up the pants slightly to expose the hidden knife sheath. While listening and peering about intently, she pulled the unauthorized knife out of the sheath, and held it at the ready before her. Then she slowly turned from side to side while backing toward the building wall. If this was some kind of infiltration simulation, it was a truly bizarre one that had gone deadly wrong, and who knew what else could happen. The dazed Technical Master Sergeant welcomed the sound of a light armored aircar approaching. She squinted, held up her left hand to shade her eyes, and slid her right hand around her back to conceal the knife, now that help was here. The searchlight beam swung around to illuminate her for a heartbeat, then fixed on the bizarre scene she stood near.

---

Hospital of the Sacred Heart
New York City
Federal Capital District
United States of America
Alliance for Democracy
February 7, 1998⁶

The door closed behind Brigadier Lefarge, and he turned to walk away down the hospital hallway toward the elevator. A blue light mounted over the door to room A17, the room he'd just left the soon-to-be "late" General Stoddard in, began blinking. Several hospital personnel appeared out of a room halfway down the hall, one of them pushing a large cart loaded with even more medical equipment to add to that already surrounding the patient. They charged down the hallway at him, and he stepped aside to let them pass. The group skidded to a halt before the door marked by the light, and rushed inside. Lefarge sighed and resumed making his way out of the hospital. While he was certain their efforts were futile, that was the same dedication to life that had saved Cindy and the girls so many years ago, and he couldn't argue with it. He'd ask Donovan House later for information about the funeral. With Nate Junior out in the Belt, Fred Lefarge suspected that as a protégé of the General all these years, he was on the short list to give Nate Stoddard's eulogy. Fred was amazed that Nate Senior had held onto life long enough for a rare visit in-system from the Belt to pass on his warning, then literally given up the ghost. Few enough reasons to stay on Earth for very long, one less now.

Room A17 had previously resembled a mechanical spider web, with a host of noisy medical machines surrounding the man in the bed. After the crash team arrived in response to the nurse's call, their frenzied activities looked like a multi-pronged assault on the machines and the body at the center. But after only a minute or so, activity momentarily halted at an announcement coming over the room's overhead speaker, "Knock it off, he's in the elevator."

The members of the medical team suddenly relaxed, and they began disconnecting lines and cables from the body at a relatively leisurely pace compared to their actions before. Stoddard's body suddenly jerked, and he cried out forcefully, "Ow! Careful how you're pulling on those, or you really will kill me!"

The nurse who had first entered the room turned to the old man and cooed, "You've still got a few years left, Sir. But we have to get your face cleaned up, and you out of that bed, in the next few minutes or we won't fool anyone. Now hold still."

The man wearing the nametag "Suharto" directed two of the crash team in a singsong voice, "Now move those machines away, and it will be a lot easier to move the body from the bottom of the cart into the bed. Ah, I see we have the machine that goes bing!"

Stoddard lifted a wavering hand to momentarily push away the nurse removing makeup from his face, and grumbled, "That one's the worst. Nearly made me forget my lines, making that silly noise all the time. And get these damned shaking things off my hands!"

In a few minutes, the false medical team removed makeup and devices to transform Nate Stoddard from a man at death's door into a much healthier looking — but still ancient — old man. After helping him out of the bed, they pulled a body out of a compartment in the bottom of the crash cart, and placed it on the bed in Stoddard's place. The old man leaned over the corpse and whispered, "Sorry old-timer, but you were too good a match to pass up. I'm sure Fred will give you a lovely eulogy. Tell him that I'm sorry I had to… Nelson's eye patch…"

His voice faltered, and he quickly rubbed at his eyes, then straightened up and cleared his throat. He then turned to the others and barked, "You've put enough of my cloned hair and skin on this guy that samples taken from the open casket will have my DNA, right?"

One of Suharto's body movers wearily nodded and said, "It took hours, but it will fool anyone that doesn't do an autopsy."

Stoddard growled back, "Well, the fun is only beginning. Help me into that conjurer's box on wheels and let's get out of here before the real doctors show up to declare me dead. And be careful, because this is supposed to be the start of an enjoyable retirement, not the real death of me. You're all going to get sick of guarding me, but your only job for the OSS from now on is to keep me safe and a secret from everyone — including the rest of the OSS."

The team members signaled their assent in various ways, but Stoddard was too busy getting into the large empty compartment in the crash cart to notice. Command of and trust in his subordinates was second nature after all these years. He'd picked this team specifically for their abilities to pull off this melodrama and then safeguard him around the clock for however long he had left. A bit too late to second-guess the choices.

Forward to Chapter 2

Footnotes:

1. Although the Alliance for Democracy merged sovereignty after the Indian Incident in 1976, according to "The Stone Dogs," the internal political boundaries still exist, i.e. names of US states and the Federal Capital District around New York City. (back)
2. Technical Master Sergeant is a "dead-end" rank, created to retain the senior technically proficient NCOs in the Alliance military at a level superior to Technical Sergeant yet without the same command responsibility as Master Sergeant; often called "Tech Master Sergeant" in speech. Equivalent to an E7 in the OTL US military. (back)
3. The Alliance Air Force saves money by using ill-trained and practically unequipped base personnel on occasional base security duties, hoping that frequent radio check-ins will locate an infiltration so that the "real" base security forces can close in. A proposal to make the unarmed patrols wear "deadman" transponders was almost fielded, but the risk of the enemy exploiting the system to locate patrols was too high. The Air Force and the other Alliance for Democracy armed forces are briefly discussed in Appendix B. (back)
4. The Alliance uses the metric measurement system, although a few values may still be quoted in the English system, e.g. aircraft altitude in thousands of feet, or submarine depth in fathoms. (back)
5. Denim jeans are popular with youngsters and outdoor workers in the Alliance, but not widely accepted as adult informal wear on Earth, and even less visible off-planet. Alliance civilian male informal attire is buttoned collared shirts, creased pants, and a cap or fedora (hat), often using bright colored patterns. Sneakers are still called "tennis shoes", rare outside sports or youngsters, and by no means specialized as they are in OTL. (back)
6. "The Stone Dogs" has General Nathaniel Stoddard converse with Brigadier Fred Lefarge and then apparently die on April 7, 1998. However, the text following that has earlier dates in March for at least one incident that has to follow in time. Therefore, "April 7" is an error, and should probably be "February" instead, to give Lefarge time to return to New America before March 31. That one change is easier than fixing all the other "March" events in the book. (back)

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