I
The Chinese colonies, the fences of Dark, endured. Though pressed to
their last utmost need, many times beyond despair, the Chinese could
not be broken. Help arrived as all courage failed, and the Enemy was
driven back.
The assassination of Stone did not, if that had been its purpose,
intensify the Constitutional crisis under which the Commonwealth
labored. Its citizens, for the most part, knew Plant to be an
intelligent and experienced politician. And if anything, after the
disillusioning of recent events, and slow reawakening of the national
conscience (though still riddled with blind-spots), most felt that
their dilemma now rested in more competent hands.
But more than that, some intangible quality of the people themselves,
indefinable, led the Americans at such times of crisis to rally around
their leaders, united and prepared to act. Ironically, bitterly (to
those who still remembered the evils of World War II), this was a
German trait as well.
The entire military and intelligence-gathering forces of the nation
were now mobilized to head off Hayes' disastrous charge, which had left
such horrors in its wake. For now a full account of the Dracus
incident had been received, and those with any conscience at all,
realized that they had been party to a catastrophe that could never be
set right, and whose wounds would fully never heal. And while the
Americans were no more eager than any other nation to admit such
atrocities---the slave trade, and the genocide of the Native Americans
spring to mind---truth IS a naked sword, and its hard won freedom of
the press made it impossible to deny.
But the rogue (war criminal, psychopath) had not been caught,
and the Pandora's Box of chaos and violence which he (along with
others) had opened, was far from contained.