Thinking about Val and Alisha's lunch made me hungry! Mmmm, mix a little rice with some stewed black beans, some wilted greens, a little garlic, and some bacon bits and you are in heaven, hot sauce optional of course. A few years ago I got interested in prepping, you know when people store food and supplies for some future apocalypse. Pinterest is full of lists of things people insist you need and plans for how to rotate supplies before they go bad. Some people spend small fortunes on MREs and camp food and then have to eat it before it expires. I tossed that idea out the window. My current plan involves some sealed buckets of rice and dried beans, plus wild greens, ramps, garlic, herbs, and mushrooms from my gardens...and all the bacon we can get our hands on until we lose refrigeration. So, in the event the Red Flu ever comes to pass...come on over to my house. We can live large farting it up around the campfire and making fun of the neighbors trying to reconstitute their little freeze dried packets.

**People Need People, Henry Townsend**

After they recorded and broadcast his address, which mentioned nothing about Dr. Scott's death but instead invited people to come to St. Louis and to volunteer for training to spread it as widely as possible, he left them to repack their equipment.

"You didn't have to insult the President, you know." Alisha couldn't help but glare at the other woman. "Like him or not, he is our boss now." She wondered how Val continued to get away with her behavior. It wasn't simply because she was a civilian, there was some reason that people let her say exactly what she was thinking without taking offense that went well beyond her unconventional appearance or obvious intelligence.

Val slammed the lid of her laptop shut. "You know what? You've been giving me the high and mighty treatment ever since I came onto the ship and I am sick of it." Alisha felt every pound of Val's hand against the desk like a blow to her midsection. "Yes, I made the mistake to follow the Ramseys. I was desperate and I believed what they said a little too easily. But you know what? I had other job offers. There are other enemies out there even worse than the Ramseys. So, I'm glad I went with them because in the end someone did defeat them and I got to live another day." She stood and began shoving cables into a bag. "I've forgiven my myself so that I can move on to something better in whatever time I have left. Maybe it's about time you figure out what you need to forgive yourself for so that you can do the same." She flicked her hair over her shoulder, grabbed the laptop off the desk, and stormed out leaving Alisha to stare slack jawed in her wake.

Alisha huffed to herself, not sure if she was more stunned or angry, or maybe a little excited? She pushed down anything other than anger, refusing to give any other emotions her attention. Clicking the latch on the camera case shut, she scanned the room to be sure she had cleaned up everything. Sure enough, there was a power cable running under the President's chair to an outlet. She stepped behind the desk and gathered it into a neat bundle, securing it with a rubber band.

Pushing in the chair she paused to take in the richly appointed room from this side of the desk. This was the official desk of the President of the United States now, sort of a new oval office. Her mother had wanted to be president one day but she'd always said she was born 20 years too early. "We've just barely had a black president and we've never had a woman president. This country couldn't handle someone like me, even if it was clear I would make all the right decisions and lead us to a better place." She remembered her mother saying that once. And when she had once asked her if she would run her mother said "No, the cabinet and councilors and judgeships are for the politicians with skeletons in the closet that keep them from being good candidates for elected offices. Our family's best hope is you. If you're going to break into that eschelon you'll need to beat them at their own game. An impeccable personal history, a military education, leadership experience, good looks, and the best speech writers my money can buy will get you elected. That and my connections of course. Don't you ever forget, baby girl, that I'm paving the way for you with everything I do."

She hung her head as her mother's words of long ago echoed in her ears again. The familiar old fear that she would ultimately disappoint everyone rose in her throat like the aftermath of a bad burrito. She'd let her mother think she would follow in her footsteps for so long. The only thing she'd ever defied her on was loving a woman. "Well," Her mother had even tried to fit that into her plans. "If you don't grow out of this phase, then I guess you'll be able to draw in more undecided gay voters too." She'd given up trying to argue with her long ago, never mind expressing what she really thought. Maybe that was why giving the President an honest opinion was so hard. She wondered if her mother was right though. The President would have never risen so far in ordinary circumstances.

She looked at the cord in her hand. Either way, she owed Val an apology. She replayed their conversation in her head. To be honest, she didn't disagree with much of what she'd said. And she had to admit it took courage for Val to fess up to the President that she'd chosen the wrong side.

As she carried the video equipment back over to the ship something kept nagging at her conscience. Something about what Val had said hadn't made sense. She lugged the camera case up the gangplank and found an ensign to check it back into the storage locker. "Did Val already return the cable assembly?" She asked the young man.

"Yes Ma'am. She just dropped it off. Hoping to find her in the wardroom, Alisha thanked the ensign and hustled down a p-way. She was in luck. Val was just sitting down to a plate of rice and beans. A few other officers were eating and acknowledged Alisha's presence. With only a skeleton crew on board during repairs, it was surprising how busy the wardroom always seemed.

"Any more of that left?" She figured a friendly tone could set the stage for an easier conversation. She was her mother's daughter after all.

Val looked up, her eyes widening when she saw it was Alisha. "You back to harp on me some more?" She took a large bite of rice, wincing when she found it was too hot.

Alisha sighed and took the chair next to Val. No easy entrance then. "No, You were right." She kept her voice low. "I have been so busy trying to make up for the last mistake I made, that I haven't trusted my judgment when it comes to you. I am here to offer an olive branch."

Val took a long sip of her drink and then paused, her cup suspended in midair, watching Alisha out of the side of her eyes. "What was that? I couldn't hear you Lieutenant." Her infuriating smirk caused a rush of anger to surge through Alisha's veins but she quickly fought back her urge to grab the cup and hurl it across the room.

In an even tone she replied. "You heard me." She raised a brow but kept the rest of her expression neutral. Val didn't budge. Fine, she'd give in on this but after that, it was no more nice guy. In a firmer voice she repeated her words from before. The two ensigns at the other end of the table were staring openly now.

This time Val set down her drink and turned in her chair to face Alisha more fully. "If you're looking for someone to keep you warm at night, save it. You're not my type." Ugh! Alisha wondered how she knew to push all her buttons so well. She wondered what it would be like to kiss that self satisfied …Goodness, where had that thought even come from?

"That's not funny." She fought to keep her cool. Better to get this business over with and get away from her before Val realized how close to the mark she might be. "I just want to know what you meant earlier when you said you had other offers, other job prospects. Who else wanted to hire you?"

Val leaned closer, ticking her head toward the ensigns at the other end. "That's not a conversation for here. Get a plate and if they are still here when we're done, we can go somewhere more secure." Unused to Val issuing orders, Alisha weighed her options. If she insisted Val told her now it could very well spread beyond the two of them which would be irresponsible. And she had no doubt if she insisted Val hurry up so they could take the conversation elsewhere the obstinate woman would probably take twice as long to eat, all the while staring Alisha down with those deep brown eyes that seemed to trap her whenever she found herself looking into them.

She pushed her chair back with a huff and gathered her own plate and a drink from the counter. Returning to her seat she tucked a napkin in her lap. Wordlessly Val passed her the salt and pepper and added hot sauce to her own rice. The smokey bacon flavor soothed Alisha instantly and she ate neatly and efficiently, doing her best to ignore the woman beside her. But the silence was almost oppressive and she found herself itching to talk.

Val finished scraping the hot sauce off her plate with what remained of her beans and pushed her plate toward the middle of the table, a pile of little bacon bits all that remained of her lunch. "Do you know how bad that stuff is for you?" She wrinkled her nose and stared at Alisha's near empty plate.

"What? It tastes too good to worry about what it is." Alisha squished a few beans with the tines of her fork and then scooped up a some greens to pair with them. "I love how Bernie cooks rice and beans."

Val rolled her eyes. "No, rice and beans are good. That's just about all I ate on the rig. It's the bacon. You know that stuff is basically dead animal fat rolled in salt, right? It's terrible for you."

Alisha couldn't help but smile then, but she didn't give in to the urge to defend herself. It seemed that Val was picking a fight with her just to avoid the silence. As soon as she started to feel full she laid her fork down neatly, took a final sip of her soda and rose. "The comms room will be quiet this time of day. Come on."

She led the way to the comms room. Most communication while in port was conducted over the regular phone or internet so she wasn't surprised to find it empty. Closing the door as Val swept in Alisha got a whiff of patchouli and.. She sniffed again. "Please tell me you haven't been smoking pot on the ship?"

Val grinned widely. "Don't get your panties in a bunch. It was just a spliff on the walk back from the courthouse. I highly doubt that's going to land me in jail these days." She slouched into a wheeled chair and began twirling first to one side and then the other.

"Those things will kill you faster than my salty sauce." Alisha stood with her hip against the table. She hadn't meant to attack Val again but the woman put her so on edge.

"You military people make me too uptight. The health benefits of the relaxation outweigh the risks." Val gave her a cheeky wink. "But it's sweet that you care."

"Arggg!" Alisha had never wanted to throttle anyone more, besides her mother. "Just tell me who else contacted you. We need to know who all the threats are and especially if there are other legitimate claims to the Presidency."

Val stopped twirling and put both feet on the floor, leaning forward on her knees. The woman who only moments ago had been engaged in some kind of passive-aggressive flirting was gone. In her place was the young scientist who had survived the plague alone on an oil rig while masterminding the Deadman communication network. "It's more a matter of what than who. These kinds of deals are never made face to face."

Alisha sat heavily in the chair across from her. "So you don't know who? What did they want?"

Val pursed her lips and waited a moment, as if she was deciding something. "Do you remember when the Internet first went public and chat rooms were all the rage?" Alisha nodded. "And everybody loved it because on the Internet you could be a totally different person if you wanted?" Alisha nodded again. Of course she remembered. She'd come out online two years before she had in real life. "Well, those kind of chat rooms still exist and they are still heavily used by the script kiddies and neophytes. But before the plague anyway, there was a whole other level for the real deal making."

"And you're on that level?"

Val raised a brow and pressed her lips together as if to say "Please." She continued. "The thing of it is, you aren't truly anonymous in that sphere. Well, people might not know who you are in terms of name, age, and occupation, but they know you by your work. Most of the jobs are negotiated through brokers who act like agents so that the foreign governments and companies can say they had no connection to the worker bees who do the actual hacks." Alisha nodded. Somehow it didn't surprise her that Val knew these things. "Well, a lot of work came through really fast in the last couple of weeks before the virus became public knowledge. People were being hired left and right to do things like hack the CDC, the WHO, and the ECDC. And the clients were all over, Russia, Israel, New Zealand, China..you name it. They were flooding the market with jobs. That was when I hatched my plan to get onto the rig because I knew something was up. I sold everything I had for a lousy boat and then floated around for two weeks before I got on that rig. My broker was supposed to meet me, but they never made it. Within three weeks, almost all the job offers dried up and the rooms went silent."

"Okay." Alisha narrowed her eyes. "But I still don't see what this has to do with other enemies."

"I'm getting there." Val huffed. "It sucked on the oil rig. It was lonely and I never knew if the noises and mechanical things were normal. I spent most of my time on the Internet but it was a mess. Servers were disrupted and whole countries went dark. The chat rooms slowly went down, one by one. I started waking up every morning and going through the remaining rooms one by one, looking for signs that anyone was still alive. And then, after nearly ten days of total silence there was a user I'd never seen before. I stayed dark so they didn't know I was observing. A few days later there were more new users. Many of them I could tell were newbies, but a few were experienced and probably had hung out in other corners of the dark web before the flu broke out. But they were taking these crazy jobs from the new guy. Hack into banks and move money, erase databases, not hard work, just stuff that was too public for the black market rooms in the past." She met Alisha's eyes. "I was so glad there were still people out there, but I kept silent, not wanting to give myself away."

Alisha nodded. She'd felt that way when they first approached the US coast in September. They needed to get out and see what had happened but that meant leaving the relative safety of the ship. "Then this new broker reached out to me specifically, said he'd known my friend who didn't make it to the rig. Initially he said he was a French citizen living in Montreal and wanted me to hack some European satellite. I took the job, although in the end I was pretty sure he wasn't who he claimed." Alisha watched amazed as Val swiped at one eye with the ratty cuff of her thermal shirt.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because he slipped a few times and used some joual that a Parisian speaker would never use."

"You speak French?"

"Mhum. My mother's influence. She used to say that growing up bilingual was one of the reasons she thought I took to computer languages so easily." She sighed and hung her head. "There were other jobs like that, with dubious clients, that's how I got connected to the Ramseys. Initially I took their job because it was more than simply cracking, although the work was far from challenging. The game communication system was based on something I caught some students using to cheat on exams once."

She looked up from her knees and Alisha nodded. "I understand the lure of a challenge."

"Well, then I wished I hadn't taken the job because the Ramseys might have been sociopaths but they were good at business. They had me agree to a non-compete before they would explain what they were trying to do. They paid in 5000 dollar increments. There are other Immune groups around the world too. Groups the Ramsey's directed my way. Hopefully the contagious cure will shut that down quickly." She gave a closed lipped smile. "I was never interested in their cause really, just in remaining alive myself."

"But this other job, the one you should know about, came in from a user named EagleAztec. Offered me $20,000 to hack some government servers from both the US and Mexico to find out where a bunch of government people went into hiding. The fee was outrageous compared to the complexity of the job but they asked the broker for me specifically. I got suspicious when they wouldn't answer any questions. And when I told them all my time was already contracted and declined they told me we'd be in touch again.

"So you think someone wants to find government officials? That could be good or bad."

"Well in this case I'd guess it was not for good. Michener was on that list as well as Ross and Fournier who were numbers 10 and 13 in line in front of him. A newbie took on the job, passed on some info about Ross, and both he and Ross were dead a few days later."

She let that sink in. Someone was potentially tracking presidential replacements and possibly killing them. "Do you think it was Michener?" The question had to be asked and she was coming to realize that Val had a strong sense of right and wrong, even if she had a complete disregard for protocol.

"No. As much as I don't trust the guy, I don't think he's that cold blooded." Alisha nodded. She felt the same. She genuinely liked him as a person, even if she doubted his capabilities. She couldn't imagine him harming a flea. Val stood to pace the room. "Actually, I am almost 100% sure. I got similar offers, $20,000 cash each, no questions asked to get access codes for some Mexican military installations, to hack the California state tax assessor's accounts, and to set up a private network, like the kind a bank would use, between a number of western US and Mexican cities."

"And you didn't take any of the jobs?"

"No."

"Why not? 20K could have bought you a lot of supplies to stay out on that rig." It wasn't that she didn't believe Val, more that she didn't understand why.

"I've been hacking since my early teens. Believe me, Valkyrie is a very profitable business and money is not motivation for me anymore. And besides, it points to something bigger. All these jobs were in the same part of the country and the offers looked very similar. Same format letters, same system for collecting the money afterward. So I did a little digging about the usernames and IP addresses used to contact me and found out something very interesting. All the IP addresses originate at Fort Bliss, just outside El Paso. So I cracked their servers and found out what's what."

"You cracked the Army's secure servers?"

"Sort of. More like opened a backdoor I left unlocked a long time ago. And they aren't the US Army's anymore."

"Then who's are they?"

"They belong to the Mexicali Federation, or MCF, and they are currently laying claim to eleven US states and 15 Mexican states as a new nation." Alisha felt her blood start to thrum in her ears. What exactly was she saying?

"What do you mean a new nation?"

"I mean in the absence of the US and Mexican leadership much of the former Mexican and Spanish territory of the US is being claimed under another flag."

"Mexico?" She still couldn't believe what she was hearing. How could they not have known this? Why would people leave the US?

Val shook her head vehemently, the beads embedded I her dreads clacking in some together. "That's what I thought at first but no. It is claiming to be a new, independent country. I just figured this out yesterday and I'm still trying to piece together where and who and how it happened." Alisha strode rapidly toward the door, gesturing for Val to follow. But to her irritation, Val just returned to twirling in her chair. "Hey, where are you going?" Val's voice rose in alarm.

Alisha stomped back and grabbed her hand to pull her to her feet. "We need to go. We need to tell Chandler and Michener about this right now. And it can't be over the comm."

Val snatched her hand back, her eyes wide. "No way! I heard how Chandler got all Mr.-we-follow-the-letter-of-the-law with Dr. Scott even though everyone knew he loved her and that Borwegian guy had it coming. No way I am talking. If you tell him, I'll deny everything and few people in the world have the skills to get in where I did." She backed away, deeper in the room, shaking her head.

"You'll be bringing information forward to help the United States. It will be considered electronic warfare. They'll probably want to hire you as our one woman NSA." She extended her hand toward Val again. "Come on. You know I'm trust worthy."

Val stared at the hand for a long moment. Finally with a sigh she began to extend her own. Alisha felt a wave of relief. She would have informed Chandler herself, but this was big and they were going to need more information, information potentially only Val could get. Just before their palms met Val snatched her hand back a few inches. "I want your assurance that if it doesn't go well for me you will protect me. I'm the one taking the risk here. Somehow the MCF killed off the other worker bees and I intend to live to a ripe old age."

Alisha felt her eyes bug out. "You know I can't make that promise. I am an officer of the Navy!"

"No promise, no deal." Val crossed her arms back over her chest in a way that reminded Alisha of a small child. After a minute of staring into those brown eyes she realized that Val would never give in. If she had the will to spend months alone on an oil rig, she could wait Alisha out too.

"Fine." She extended her hand to shake on it and Val unfolded her arms to accept. "I promise to defend you as a citizen trying to help, if it comes to that."

"Good enough." They met eye to eye, hands still clasped. An unspoken agreement forged to look out for each other. "If this doesn't work out, I have no where to go. I'll be hunted by the Immunes and if the MCF figures out I'm the one who spied on them, I'll be toast." Val kept her hand in Alisha's and began leading her way toward the door. "Let's find Chandler and get this over with."