The Star-Spangled Triangle: Second of the Blue Battalion Chronicles

By James Luce

In 2019, the United States is a changed nation. After a recent civil war and a rewritten Constitution, only forty-two states remain within what is now known as the Federated States of America. As President Meryl Montessori attempts to gain full control of a country riddled by violence, sociopathic FBI director, Beatrice Orange, begins to piece together a complex plot to overthrow the new government.

On the international front, China and Russia are at war. A deadly, incurable virus hidden by the Russians in an ancient fortress must be located and destroyed before steadily advancing Chinese armies release it on an unsuspecting world. From Washington, D.C., the president deploys her eclectic Blue Battalion team to bring down the director and destroy the virus. After crime fighter Peter Hassel and street cop Rachael Rothburg survive an attempted assassination, they join eccentric scientist, Dr. Frank Stein, and other members of the Blue Battalion team to investigate Oranges plan. But as they begin to uncover seedy secrets, an adolescent alien life form with a reputation for interfering in human affairs prepares to make a reappearance.

The Star-Spangled Triangle is the story of a new nation and its struggles to survive as a startling future history unfolds and a team of great minds attempts to bring down an evil leader.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491735428

James Luce

James Luce earned a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Yale University in 1966 and later graduated from Santa Clara University Law School. He served as a federal criminal investigator in the Office of Special Investigations (USAF) and subsequently practiced civil trial law for twenty-five years. An avid world traveler, he now resides with his wife in a small village in Spain.

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Copyright © 2014 James Luce.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Also by James Luce:

The Mount of Megiddo

First of the Blue Battalion Chronicles

and

Chasing Davis, An Atheist’s Guide to Morality Using Logic and Science

iUniverse books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

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Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-3540-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-3541-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-3542-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014909148

iUniverse rev. date: 5/22/2014

Contents

Preface

I:   New Haven/Alexandria Bay/ Saint-Joseph-de-la-Rive

II:   Caspian Sea/Aral Sea/the Five ‘Stans

III:   Kingdom of David and Solomon in 2019 AD

Chapter One: The Birthday Party(s)

Chapter Two: The Train Wretch

Chapter Three: The Scythian Situation

Chapter Four: The Twins

Chapter Five: The Blue Battalion Blues

Chapter Six: The Orange Peelings

Chapter Seven: The Stein Way

Chapter Eight: The Bones Fracture

Chapter Nine: The Latin Trap

Chapter Ten: The Tripartite Telephone Intrusions

Chapter Eleven: The Tom Turkey Shoot

Chapter Twelve: The Time Is 9:14 A.M.

Chapter Thirteen: The Blue Battalion Belle

Chapter Fourteen: The Rascally Rabbit Roundup

Chapter Fifteen: The Lo Point

Chapter Sixteen: The Woman in a Black Bodysuit

Chapter Seventeen: The Mountaintop Reunion

Chapter Eighteen: The Game Continues

Addendum A: The Constitution of the Federated States of America

Addendum B: The FSA National Anthem

Addendum C: List of Characters by First Name/Nickname

Addendum D: List of Abbreviations and Acronyms

Preface

The Star-Spangled Triangle is both a stand-alone future history novel and the second of the Blue Battalion Chronicles. It is set in 2019 AD, two years after the world-changing events depicted in The Mount of Megiddo. In all there will be five Blue Battalion Chronicles, concluding in 2420. Each of these chronicles may be read in any order that is convenient, albeit there is a continuity of characters and themes.

Two questions are often asked of future history writers: What exactly is future history? and How is future history distinguishable from science fiction and science fantasy? There are many possible responses to these excellent questions. Here are mine.

Science fiction’s emphasis is on how probable, extrapolated scientific advances might realistically alter our lives and cultures in near or distant years. Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot are good examples.

Science fantasy, such as Star Wars and Star Trek, wants us to marvel at how advanced, but improbable, scientific changes have altered our lives. For example, both of these science fantasy series assume that faster-than-light spaceships are immune from relativistic effects and that our technology has evolved sufficiently to avoid our extinction by more advanced alien cultures with which we come in contact. Both series feature a scientifically and statistically unlikely number of humanoid life forms scattered over the galaxy. Science fantasy may also involve elements of the supernatural and horror.

In contrast, future history attempts to foresee that which might occur in the years-and-centuries-to-come by extrapolating from all cultural trends and variables of which scientific advance is only one. Future history emphasizes the entirety of human cultural, scientific, and genetic evolution and what this eclectic stew might taste and smell like as time passes, not simply what it might look like. Philip K. Dick’s Blade Runner and George Orwell’s 1984 are good examples.

Future history takes into consideration not only advances in science, but also behavioral vectors from our past. Scientific change is only one of the many forces at work on human behavior. Our genes are slow to evolve. Therefore it is our cultural reaction to swift changes that drives future history rather than only our interactions with new gadgets and doodads.

Future history is free to speculate about what might happen should there be a change in the very foundations of our understanding of physics such as happened when Newton met Einstein in the 20th century. In the early 21st-century we find the theories of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics engaged in a colossal battle to the death. Future history is free to explore what will happen to humans and science when both these theories are proved to be inadequate and a new theory is triumphant. Of necessity, a Unified Field Theory will require the demise of both currently competing theories. Their concurrent funerals are likely to be celebrated before the end of this century, perhaps tomorrow.

What future history is not allowed to do is to ignore the past history of human behavior and the evolution of our mighty brains which are capable of altering our genes, destroying entire ecosystems, and also going where no person has gone before…probing into the infinitely small and infinitely large. Today’s physicists are contemporaneously trying to find the constituent particles of the minute boson while searching for parallel, gargantuan universes that may reside around us in some other dimension or that may be rushing toward us at close to light speed. Our social scientists are recording simultaneously splintering and melding world cultures-in-chaos where superstition remains in ignorant combat with reality even as our understanding of what is real mutates almost hourly.

It is this matryoschka (Russian nesting dolls) set of Pandora’s Boxes that provides the locus of political, cultural, scientific, and psychological context for The Blue Battalion Chronicles.

In The Star-Spangled Triangle the Federated States of America (a remnant of and successor to the USA) has responded to the events of the early 21st century by totally rewriting the original Constitution, a venerable document that had proved incapable of keeping the country peacefully united. The full text of the new Constitution may be found in Addendum A. The motivations and actions of the characters in this novel are frequently influenced by this experimental and radical foundational law of the land. While not necessary in order to follow the action, reading the new Constitution after you have reached Chapter Five is recommended.

There are numerous acronyms and a large cast of characters. For your assistance lists of these are included as Addenda C and D. Because the action occurs in diverse places around the globe, maps are provided just after this preface.

Welcome to the future.

James Luce

MapI.jpgMapII.jpgMapIII.jpg

CHAPTER ONE

The Birthday Party(s)

Hello again. Haven’t seen you for awhile. Not surprising since I’ve been in hibernation for almost two of your Earth’s years. I see that it’s 5:15 a.m., Thursday, July 4th, 2019. Your leader’s big 5-0 birthday! You’ve got an exciting three-day holiday weekend ahead. Since you’re up so early anyway, let’s go see what’s happening in the Blue House by way of party preparations…

The slightly short-sighted, deep-blue eyes of the President of the Federated States of America open slowly and blink twice. At first her eyes sleepily focus on an elaborately embroidered triangular silk pillow with forty-two bright-white stars against a dark-blue background. With some effort, just in view over the tip of the pillow top, she can blurrily make out the right profile of a beautiful woman lying very quietly, her body covered up to her neck with their shared deep-blue silk bedsheet.

The room is chilly, almost cold, in the always overly air-conditioned master bedroom of the Blue House living quarters. Recollections of last night’s tenderly erotic jousting are mingled lovingly and maturely with the simple joy of seeing her lying there so artfully, so calmly, so comfortably.

Almost reflexively the president’s hand reaches across the pillow to stroke the woman’s honey-beige, porcelain smooth forehead. Her fingertips register the to-be-expected slightly chilly temperature of the woman’s face and the flickering twitch of her right eyelid. Slowly the president’s hand glides under the sheet and registers the warming softness of a small, firm breast, the nipple reflexively erecting. As the hand moves down to the firm belly, the woman’s eyes open and she says, Happy birthday, Meryl. I’ve got your present right here", while sliding her sheet-covered left hand over to gently grasp and guide Meryl’s right hand down onto her short, sparse, tangled pubic hairs.

Should I unwrap it now, Krissy?

"Of course! You’ve got to be up at six for some reason, and it’s probably full speed ahead the rest of the FSA day."

Half an hour later President Meryl Machiavelli Montessori is taking a quick shower with her very personal physician, Dr. Kristin Koo.

So now that you’re fifty and have opened your present, what’s next on your agenda?

"Tom’ll be in my office in ten minutes and then we’re going down to the Bunker for a hopefully brief DoDD briefing, followed by a gathering of the Blue Battalion at 10:00. I hope Rachael and Peter made it back from Chicago last night. I need their first-hand report on Operation Rind and you’re probably more than ready to hand back Chickee and the twins."

Kaleb and Kefira are only thirteen months old, nowhere near the terrible twos. And besides, it’s nice having more than one patient, even if my pediatrics isn’t as good as my geriatrics.

Thanks, Krissy. You’re the cruelest birthday present I ever opened.

After drying each other off, Meryl and Krissy go to their respective armoires located on opposite sides of the tall, elegant sixteenth-century Villefranche pendulum clock occupying the only wall in the bedroom not covered with books and bookshelves. Meryl opts for an austere, almost authoritarian, black suit/blouse combo while Krissy dons her usual playfully professional skirt and sweater ensemble. The only jewelry they put on is matching filigreed gold bands which slip easily onto their respective ring fingers. Neither of them bothers with makeup, neither of them needing any adornment to make them more strikingly gorgeous. Their one concession to vanity is high-heeled shoes to elevate them above their identical five-foot three-inches.

A knock on the side door in Meryl’s bedroom that leads to her private office signals that Meryl’s genuine genius of a national security advisor, Tom Yager, has arrived for their pre-DoDD briefing preparations. Taking inventory of her purse, Meryl shouts in the general direction of the door.

Be there in a minute, Tom. What’s top of the agenda on my birthday?

"The Sino-Russian Front is spilling over into Uzbekistan and the Tyrant of Tashkent is burning up my phone demanding we do something. We’ve got a problem along the California section of our border with the United Kingdom of Western America. It’s that damn ambiguous Piedra Blanca land grant near San Luis Obispo. The descendents of Mariano Pacheco and Jose de Jesus Pico are at it again. You’d think after a hundred and forty-three years they could work things out. Happy Birthday!"

Thanks, Tom. I’ve already opened my present from Krissy. You should have kept yours under wraps.

I’ve saved the best for last. It’s a Blue Battalion special, so I won’t broadcast it to you. I’ve postponed the Joint Chiefs’ meeting. Tell you why when you get in here.

Giving Krissy a parting hug, President Montessori heads for her office while her doctor takes the main-door exit down the wide hallway lined with silk Japanese boxwood topiaries, passing the semi-somnolent Secret Service agent-of-the-month sitting on his surveillance post, an early 19th-century Regency mahogany elbow-chair, located discreetly a few yards from the bedroom and just before the open door to Meryl’s reception room. Krissy can never walk by that antique chair without a flicker of recollection of the time almost two years ago she’d raced by it on her way to deal with what turned out to be a real nightmare in Meryl’s bedroom.

Sandy Vogelhäuschen, Meryl’s more alert watchdog/personal assistant, looks up from behind her antique oak desk, sees Krissy passing by, and motions for her to come in.

Good morning, Mrs. President, got a minute?

I wish you’d stop that. It’s very confusing.

Sorry, Krissy. I still get a kick out of you and Meryl getting hitched. Now we’ve got two ‘Mrs. Presidents’.

I understand but don’t forgive. What can I do for you, Sandy…or should I say ‘Miss Birdhouse’ instead?

Nothing major. I just wanted to let you know that Peter and Rachael may be a little late. Seems their plane was diverted to New York. Lo and Frank are already in the conference room and Bill’s somewhere around, of course. Anyway, Abe’s with the twins, but maybe has to leave soon on some errand for Meryl.

No problem. I haven’t been asked to the Battalion gathering this time, so I’ll tell Abe he can take off. Any idea what the flap’s about?

No, Krissy. But if you’re not invited to sit in then it doesn’t have anything to do with MOMMY and that’s a relief.

Thanks. See ya later. Her unspoken thought is ‘Sandy’s so sweet. Who’d guess she’s got a .45 automatic hung on her belt and knows how to use it?’

Krissy continues briskly down the hall. On her right she sees through a large window in the Treaty Room three still not-quite-familiar flags undulating in a gentle breeze, plus someone has attached a large hand-painted HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MERYL banner to one of the guy wires.

Flying in the middle and tallest pole is the strikingly triangular flag of the Federated States of America, forty-two white stars scattered randomly over a field of dark blue. Although born in battle as had been the United States, Meryl had insisted that there be no red in the new nation’s flag, no symbolic blood. To the left from Krissy’s perspective is the flag of the United Kingdom of Western America, the new country carved out of the former USA by the Latino Armies which had assisted in defeating the rebel forces of the self-styled, now defunct Federated States of the Two Washingtons. To the right hangs the flag of the República Nueva de México in recognition of Mexico’s role in defeating the FSTW during the 2016-17 Second American Civil War.

In two days all three flags will be flying at half-mast to mark the third anniversary of the San Diego Holocaust and the beginning of the Rebellion.

As she is about to open the door to her office, Krissy hopes that Peter and Rachael will arrive soon and also that they’re not going to be sent off again immediately by Meryl on another Orange peeling mission.

•      •      •

An excited and sad, almost-eight-years-old, tall-for-her-age girl’s long, thick, black hair is blowing and flapping in the eighty-mile-per-hour wind, emulating the pennant-shaped flag flying over the Stanton County Pioneer Museum on the southern end of town. Dorothy Chamashgete Johnson-Krestos is hanging on tightly to the top strut of the Johnson City, Kansas open-frame water tower. From her thirty-three-foot altitude she can easily make out the forty-two white stars scattered randomly over a field of dark blue because the flag is only ten blocks distant and longer than she is tall. The rusty 2,000 gallon water-tank above her head partially obstructs her almost 360º view of the monotonous grey street-grid blending into the monochrome amber waves of grain that spread out for miles under spacious skies.

Dorothy vaguely remembers seeing a striped, red, white, and blue, star-spangled banner flying over the post-office three years ago, but that was in La Junta, Colorado where she’d been born. The prior flag she remembers better is the tattered, shell-and-bullet-torn one that had flown over the former La Junta Regional Military Headquarters of the Federated States of the Two Washingtons. That one had been lowered for the last time and forever in late September 2017.

Dorothy would be a remarkably pretty girl but for a five-inch jagged beige scar marring her otherwise smooth, beige-brown forehead. She had not acquired this flaw because she’d negligently fallen off a slide or dived carelessly onto the hidden rocks that lurk just under the water at John Martin Reservoir where her parents would take her swimming. Rather, she’d traveled the 135 miles from La Junta to Johnson City in October 2017 and been ambushed by a remnant of the rebel FSTW Army of the West. The piece of grenade shrapnel that had severed her mother’s trachea continued unabated and did not quite avoid striking Dorothy’s skull.

The aftermath of any civil war usually includes incidents of revenge and reprisal between militants of the opposing camps. In 1947, sixty years before Dorothy’s mother was killed, the two-way exodus corridors between India and Pakistan were soaked in blood and offal as caravans of displaced Hindus moving east parallel to displaced Muslims heading west slaughtered each other by the many hundreds of thousands. The partition of British India had been both just and inevitable, but that did not mean it was loved or accepted.

The aftermath of the Second American Civil War followed this usual course but with a twist. The partition of the USA that created the Federated States of America and the United Kingdom of Western America righted a two-hundred year old perceived injustice by giving to the Western Latinos the territories wrested from the Mexicans in the 19th-century. The war itself had made the partition inevitable because without the support given to the USA by the Latino armies the rebels would have won and any chance for a truly free America lost. The defeated but not yet fully subdued rag-tag FSTW army accepted neither the justice nor the inevitability. Unable to vent their rage directly against the newly-established FSA government, they instead ravaged the caravans of citizens moving through the last rebel strongholds in the Midwest.

Unlike the partition of British India, the Latinos resident in the FSA and the Anglo/African Americans in the UKWA were not compelled by religious or racial prejudice to move from their former homes. Those who caravanned in either direction were simply expressing their preferences, not their compulsions. But the slaughter was the same. The FSA Armed Forces eventually isolated the remaining FSTW rebels into a small region comprising portions of Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, and eastern Kansas. But that was not until November 2017, too late for Dorothy and her mother.

Since she was three, Dorothy has evidenced an almost adult maturity, speaking from the first in complete sentences and displaying sincere empathy for those around her. She even avoided the terrible twos. As a result, her mother and father were the envy of every parent of young children in the greater La Junta area, even though her parents were a strange couple in many ways.

Dorothy’s father is Ethiopian by birth, immigrating as an orphaned, Jesuit-educated child to America from a small village on the northern coast of Lake Tana in the Amhara highlands. He’d insisted on keeping his original name, Yemrehana Krestos, even after he’d been adopted by a Jewish family in Colorado. He was and is proud that his name dates back to the first Christian Ethiopian emperor of the 12th century Zagwe Dynasty. The historical irony unknown to Yemrehana is that Ethiopia is the only country in sub-Saharan Africa where the Christian faith arrived before the Jewish one. Now in the year 2019 Yemrehana is the only ethnic-Ethiopian psychologist employed in the Department of Domestic Psychology created by President Montessori in early 2017 as a means to deal with the terrible stress on the mental and social fabric of a country engaged in brutal civil conflict.

Dorothy’s mother, Dorothy A. R. Johnson, had been a native of Johnson City. Her middle initials and last name came from the town’s founder, a colonel in the Union Army of the First American Civil War. In 2009 she had moved to La Junta with her partner, Krestos, whom she had met at Colorado State University in Fort Collins where they both were engaged in post-graduate cognitive research on the physiological causes and cures of stress-related mental illness.

Their joint parental decision to preserve little Dorothy’s dual ethnic heritage in her given-names is consistent with their shared views on diversity. That her middle name, Chamashgete, means ruby slipper in Ethiopian is consistent only with her father’s sense of serendipity.

Somehow the Johnson-Krestos family survived the many battles in and around La Junta during the last days of the war. The FSTW’s capital city, Denver, had been attacked respectively from west and east by Latino/FSA armies. Many civilians were executed by the rebels as perceived traitors to the cause. Dorothy’s parents were known for their anti-rebel views, but were spared because their professional skills were in short supply. Both Dorothy senior and Yemrehana were impressed with President Montessori, so when the time came to choose between UKWA and FSA citizenship the choice had been easy. The date chosen to join a caravan east had been tragic.

After two years, Dorothy is now plagued more often by the scar on her forehead than by the scars on her heart. Her daily pain is getting her teachers to spell and pronounce her full name correctly. Dorothy’s frequent- but-not-daily torment arises when any of her contemporaries discovers what her middle name means, followed by rude comments about wicked witches and Munchkins. However, she actually does share one similarity with the fictional Dorothy. Although not born in Kansas, she certainly arrived there in a cyclone of violence and death.

Today, July 3, 2019, the day before her birthday, Dorothy is on top of the water tower for the first time because she wants to view all of Johnson City for the last time. She is flying with her father this afternoon to Newark, NJ and from there tomorrow morning taking the train from Newark’s Penn Station on to Washington, DC. Her father has been personally appointed by President Montessori to be the new Director of the Department of Domestic Psychology. Unfortunately, there are no direct flights from Stanton County Municipal Airport to the nation’s capital. Indeed, direct flights to Washington from anywhere are restricted under relaxed, but still onerous, wartime regulations not yet revoked due to continued, shadowy rebel activity.

Even though they will be on the road, Dorothy is looking forward to celebrating a double birthday tomorrow, hers and the President’s. Meryl and Dorothy were both born on the now no-longer-observed anniversary of the former United States. But there will still be fiery celebrations on the 4th so long as Meryl Montessori is president of the FSA. Dorothy loves fireworks.

Climbing down carefully and reluctantly from her pre-nostalgic visual farewell to her funny little town, Dorothy hops and skips the half-block to her home on Weaver Avenue, just across from the high school she will now never attend. Every few hops she looks back at the water-tower tank with its six-foot tall rendition of a Trojan soldier in honor of the football team she will never again see defeat the rival Wildcats. But she’s also excited about the move.

Stopping in front of her two-bedroom traditional ranch home in need of a new roof, Dorothy stares introspectively at her old climbing buddy, a thirty-foot paperbark maple. Opening the always unlocked front door, Dorothy sees her beloved father crouching in the middle of the almost empty living room. He’s banging away on his truly ancient Olivetti that’s perched precariously on an unstable stack of suitcases.

What’cha doing, Daddy?

Just finishing up my spontaneous remarks for tomorrow’s investiture program.

How can remarks be spontaneous if you’re typing them up now?

Adjectives, as I’ve taught you, are flexible in the English language. They’re not boring like that French you always spring on me.

Oui, Monsieur Papa. Mais j’aime la musique des mots français.

I love the musical sound of French also, my little cabbage, but that’s not relevant to my point.

Speaking French always makes me hungry. Anything left in the fridge?

Everything always makes you hungry. Speaking of which, the last of the oatmeal is warming up on the stove. There’s even a nice squashy banana to mush up in it as you so disgustingly like to do.

It’s not ‘disgusting’, it’s ‘yucky’. But thanks, Daddy. I’ll clean up after and then we can get the heck out of Dodge.

That’s a hundred miles from here. How about we try our airport? It’s only two.

Dad, if that’s an example of your spontaneous remarks, maybe tomorrow you should just say ‘Thanks’ and sit down.

You’ll get your chance to critique my work, as usual, beforehand. I hope the President doesn’t find out I have an eight-year-old assistant. You violate the old child labor laws, let alone the new ones.

No I don’t. Under Article IV, Section-something of the FSA Constitution you can’t invidiously discriminate on the basis of age.

What’s invidious about the new child labor law?

Nothing. There’s an exception to the minimum age of twelve if you are enrolled in a qualification course for fast track citizenship.

So?

So my acceptance into the program arrived yesterday, Dad! I was keeping it as a surprise gift for you on my birthday.

Well, I’m sure tomorrow will hold a lot of surprises for us.

It does. Their flight is delayed by reports of a cyclone. Nothing novel there, but then the flight gets diverted to Chicago by bad weather and sits on the ground for many hours. Not surprising either. They finally arrive at Newark International on July 4 at 4:04 a.m. in plenty of time to catch the 6:20 Silver Star bullet train to DC, but then can’t find a taxi to take them to the Newark rail station because there’s a taxi strike. Nothing unusual there. Then a very congenial New Yorker in a large Cadillac takes pity on them and drives them, luggage and all, to the Newark station and doesn’t charge them anything. That’s the smaller of two big surprises they will experience today.

The automatic ticket machine for the Silver Star is busted, so they have to wait for the 8:24 a.m. local for which the sign says you can buy tickets on the train. Father and daughter are now both sitting at the crowded counter of a Dunkin’ Donuts, sort of kitty-corner from the station, because the station’s coffee shop doesn’t open until 8:30. It is now 6:30. Dorothy has a birthday bowl of oatmeal she’d ordered, laced with the very squashy banana she’d brought along. She’s blowing out the candle her father playfully stuck into the steaming bowl when the second surprise of her day appears in a flash.

CHAPTER TWO

The Train Wretch

Peter Hassel and Rachael Rothberg are going to be a little late for the Blue Battalion gathering in the Bunker due to no fault of their own. For one thing, during the very early morning the power had gone out,