Trepidation | Trepidation Trilogy | The Empty World Sequence

Twenty-Eight

By the end of May, hundreds of thousands of nouvotech computers were built and in route to their destinations in Russia, Spain, Gaul and Switzerland. Claudia was glad things were settling.  She'd played at being Roman's business partner, and had been his partner in crime long enough. It took so many hours of the day. Now his factory was working and had enough trained employees thankful for training and jobs when both were so rare.

      Now, if Claudia came into more ill gotten money she could have more machines sent to whoever she wanted. Thanks to training offered by Claudia, her crew, and other contacts of Roman's, Nouvotech now offered repair services for nearly all common computers and communication devices, no small profit could be earned repairing what others had long since built and no longer offered to repair.

      Other news was not all so good. In the new Union of States formed from Poland and Germany, it had come to sending troops against the Russians. Other tactics had made some progress but not enough. Rather than control all of the south of what had been Poland, Russia now controlled all the east of what had been Poland, so that recently spared territories in the lakelands had been invaded. The most southern and eastern parts of Germany were also still at risk. The Russians had made a path through the Sudetes into the CR and broken right across the province of Moravia and into Austria from another angle.

      Russia was making progress in the Balkans, and new troops from Egypt were arriving on the continent to meet them. Now, the Arab States were debating joining the war. The Swiss were still held by the VC, but had not surrendered or given in so much that the Vampire City troops were free to take on other armies. The Spanish and Gaul now were circling the much impoverished remainder of France, and were attempting to take Belgium and the Netherlands. Japan and North China were speaking to Alexandria about sending troops, and England had joined on the Union side as Belgium was invaded.

      As before, there were Americans in Europe on the side of the Union, but their numbers were relatively small, spent keeping order in France and backing up various Union forces. It was they, who with the DG, kept even further parts of Europe from being invaded.

      While the war continued without slowing, or lessening in conflict, the new United Duetch-Polski States were in the midst of their internal political shifting. They had asked to renegotiate with the Union, and had thus far been stalled by arguments that wartime postponed such procedures. Now, parties were campaigning for the next leader of their union, but it was difficult for the voters to believe any one person could stop the war. As much as things had looked up when the Goth had been in Berlin, they now looked quite down.

      Rumors were all about. If one believed any, there was a submarine war being fought in the North Atlantic, and fighter jets were flying over the Arab States, the Union was performing genetic experiments on prisoners-of-war in a secret base in Africa, Russia had just funded a program to give free computers to millions of their school children, and the Pope was dying of an incurable form of cancer.

      The months turned to June, and the Goth were moving again, and again larger than last they had stopped. They were moving slowly through the forests and cities of central Germany. The tribe moved west in a general way, not toward any particular location.

      Claudia and all the crew were lying low as it were, showing less of a net presence, for the present, to better watch for the movements of others. They had the ability to monitor some of the traffic that went through the computers they had made, and continued to use methods of listening and capturing transmissions originated by Leonore or Marcus. As well, there was the Alexandria Mainframe.

      The mainframe computer's system was immense and intricate, but Claudia was always making slow steady progress at identifying new banks and programs. So far, much of it was irrelevant and involving either the Library of Alexandria or the more mundane activities of a government with large territory to manage. Claudia had found the area devoted to military applications, but it was protected by further layers of password and encryption she had yet to crack. Sasha and Marek were both good at code cracking, as good as Marcus and Leonore were with hardware and communications systems; Claudia had left the two of them try to get to the military data.