President Powell Washington DC

January 10th.

"How bad is it?"

My intel offficer cringed.

"It's going to take at least a year to repair all of the oil wells that got destroyed, all of our satellites, commercial, spy and otherwise are gone now, the moonbase was destroyed."

"We evacuated that years ago."

He shrugged.

"It's still worth mentioning, casualties were high, the Palestinians lost all of their capes."

"Israel's Arab community?"

He pointed to three large sections of a map.

"Breaches here, here, and here."

"And we didn't see over 5 hundred thousand people leave, how?"

He shrugged.

"It wasn't that many, the Thinker on site was wrong there were quite a few defections by some very stupid people but the vast majority of Israel proper's arab community is still there, the crazies did die off but that's a good thing, no the vast majority of palestians who came from the outside came from the refugee camps on the jordanian side."

"So now what?"

"Well Israel came out with most of their population intact, Jordan lost quite a few people but the government has bigger problems right now, w-

"I'm honestly surprised the UN-"

"Worked as quickly as it did, went as hard as it did? People were angry, really angry, and they want to make an example so that this doesn't happen again."

"And the palestinian refugee program?"

My aid shrugged.

"There are a lot of refugees and not a lot of funds, that program was going to get scrapped sooner or later. So what's the damage?"

"Politically speaking? Riots are taking place in pretty much every country from Jordan to Afghanistan, several countries look like they're going to collapse and the price of oil has gone up...again."

I sighed, it looked like we were going to have to start rationing again.

"How's the biodiesel project doing?"

"We have a bipartisan agreement for a crash program, the oil companies are pitching a fit but the country has had over 20 years to get really tired of high gas prices."

18 more endbringers to go, it sounded so easy a few months ago when Leviathan died.

"How's project World tree going?"

"Going pretty well, the portal to Pluto finally opened, Ironwood says it will be finished by March."

Thank god some good news, he had that sour look on his face.

"What's going on?"

"Ironwood says that the Simurgh has completly dropped off his senses, invisible whatever she built she's completly cloaked now, we might not be able to predict future attacks, or at least her future attacks."

And it gets worse.

"The Japanese, Koreans, and pretty much all of Europe is asking for samples."

"Of what?"

"The algae."

"Let them have it, it was going to get out eventually."

The mood was somber and depressed, I decided to talk.

"Well it's war, we spent three years being told that the bitch was the most evil one of the bunch, we can't be surprised that she proved it."

I leaned back.

"That's the leader of the enemy side, we're playing for all the marbles now, let's win."

There were plans to make, budgets to approve and a war to win.