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better than—most anything he’d seen in Europe.
    And despite what he’d been told, Brazil seemed no more different than any other modern country—plenty of rich and poor and middle class. He was beginning to expect the same would hold true for the Texas Freehold, despite what he’d been told and despite Rucker telling him very little.
    Another point along those lines—what he’d expected by way of treatment from someone who’d fought as a mercenary, versus the reality of how Rucker was treating him. Even if it was from a remove, Rucker was treating him without any malice.
    Rucker was the first Texan that Deitel had ever met, and, yes, there was the cowboy hat he’d first seen him in. But Deitel had expected little more than an oversized crop duster for a charter plane. The Raposa was exceptionally modern.
    To learn that Rucker was part of the militia force that so quickly brought an end to the Great War—it was a bit much.
    At twenty-three, Deitel was too young to remember a lot of the war. It started when he was just nine and ended before he turned sixteen. But he’d studied the subject extensively. The conflict began in 1913 in Europe, three years before the Freehold got involved at all.
    The worldwide conflagration started small enough. Everyone agreed on that point. Binding treaties and interventionist strategies had turned a minor regional conflict into a world war.
    At first it was a European war. Then it grew into a war that quickly burned across Africa and threatened to consume Asia and South America in conflagrations between European colonies there. The northern Union States under President Wilson joined the war on the side of Imperial Germany in 1915. The Union States still held a grudge against England and France for their recognition of the Confederate States in 1863 and their recognition of the Texas Republic in 1835.
    Meanwhile, the Confederate States sided with the British Empire and France, of course, for the same reason. The Great War never touched the North American continent, but only because the Union States and CSA both honored the terms of the Foggy Bottom Treaty of 1864, which established a demilitarized zone between the American powers. One war on their home soil was quite enough for northerners and southerners, despite their long-simmering hatred.
    The Texas Freehold—one of the nine Anglo nations of North and Central America—remained neutral.
    That changed in 1916. Sort of.
    That year, a desperate France pleaded to Austin for help. As in 1861, during the War for Southern Independence, private citizens from across the Freehold banded together to form the Texas Volunteer Group, an entirely private militia. When the French called, Texans always obliged. Mercenaries, they were called by Imperial forces of the U.S., Germany, and Russia.
    Within a few months of the call for help, tens of thousands of Freeholders were fighting in the trenches and in the skies of Europe alongside the French.
    The Freehold itself, politically and formally as a nation, still remained officially neutral, since it was only their citizens under the banner of a private militia fighting in the war.
    This unconventional state of affairs caused no end of uproar among both enemies and allies alike. For some reason most Freeholders couldn’t fathom, it was considered noble and proper to fight a war with involuntary conscripts but improper for volunteers to fight under a private banner. Freeholders asked what kind of man would make someone pay for or fight a war he didn’t want.
    â€œYou really have no qualms about dealing with Germans?” Deitel finally asked.
    â€œShould I? War’s long done, Dr. Deitel. We made war on the German military, not on German people.”
    â€œGiven how your people conducted war, we assumed you all hated Germans,” Deitel said.
    Rucker cocked his head and an eyebrow.
    â€œHow do you mean, Doctor?”
    â€œYour people were a