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terror. My nation fought the French and Englanders to a standstill. It was bloody and ugly, but the war was stable. Then you came. According to the histories I have read, you did not fight as we knew. You simply went around the trenches and fortifications. You attacked us from every side but the front. Your horse troops cut off entire regiments. Your rangers crawled into trenches at night and scalped our machine gun crews. They organized and trained French villagers behind our lines to conduct war, arming the old, women, and even children. You appeared from nowhere and faded back into the dark and the wilds. It was the stuff of nightmares.”
    There was a long silence.
    â€œIt wasn’t personal,” Rucker finally said with a shrug. “We just wanted to get it done with.”
    Deitel couldn’t have looked more confused and insulted if Rucker had stood and relieved himself in Deitel’s coat pocket.
    â€œLook, you bring us to a fight,” Rucker said, “don’t expect us to come with our dancin’ shoes.”
    â€œGermany didn’t bring you,” Deitel said. “You came at the request of the French.”
    â€œMais oui,” Rucker said.
    â€œI never understood the nature of the Freehold’s ‘special relationship’ with France,” Deitel said.
    Rucker shrugged.
    â€œThey had our backs in the first revolution in 1776. Convinced Jefferson and the Founders to get rid of slavery. They were the first to recognize Texas in 1835. Hell, they gave us the Statue of Liberty. You seen the picture postcards—that lady standing on the shore off New Orleans. The French been with us in good times and bad,” Rucker said.
    â€œMany say that your people conducted themselves like war criminals.”
    â€œDo you want off the plane? I can arrange that,” Rucker said.
    â€œOh come now,” Deitel said.
    â€œI’ve got the captain hat right here.”
    Deitel gave a nervous laugh.
    â€œI wasn’t joking,” Rucker said. “We have parachutes and everything.”
    Deitel opened and closed his mouth silently, then chose his words carefully.
    â€œI don’t mean to offend you personally, Herr Kapitan. It’s just that, from what I’ve been taught, your people were like the savage Indians in the western American nations. And therefore I am shocked you’d allow one of my people here.”
    â€œStrange definition of savage. We didn’t make war on civilians and shell cities. Merde. We didn’t bomb towns or use gas and dragon belchers. Besides, Far Ranger’s company motto is ‘Anything, Anytime, Anywhere.’ That includes Huns, I reckon.”
    Deitel sniffed. There was more than a language separating the two.
    â€œYou’re saying you have no ill will toward Germans now?”
    â€œI haven’t thrown you off the plane. War’s done, like I said. Fair to say I’m not too keen on what’s been happening since that coup by the Austrian corporal in 1922. But I don’t concern myself with politics. If there’s politics, it ain’t my business. And I’m not offended. I just don’t like being reminded about that time in my life.”
    Deitel looked quizzically at the Mighty Fireflies patch.
    â€œThem that I flew with is the one good thing to come out of that sorry mess,” Rucker said. “Also, your check didn’t bounce.”
    The smirk on Rucker’s face was a poor disguise, Deitel thought.
    Deitel considered silently: the English still called the various North American nations—the Union States, the Confederate States, the Texas Freehold, the Pacific Commonwealth, the Northwest Alliance, and so on—the “colonies.” He could see why. These people held an almost charmingly colonial view of modern geopolitics and the state. Isolationist. As if turning one’s back on the world made it go away.
    Then again, it didn’t take all his medical training