Zach Hughes - For Texas and Zed

The sun set.

He stood looking out toward the vast crater until Zed was only a glow below the horizon and the first of the seasonal Texas moons was showing over the eastern world. Death was in him, around him, was a glowing crater whose seared outer rim, flattened, barren, was within his view, adding a dim light to the Texas night He himself had risked death. He had delivered death. He had felt the sickness of it as he ordered Jakkes to kill the first of the five Empire ships which had been destroyed in the airors raid on the Empire fleet. He had seen his grandfather lying cold and still in his own bed and that was death, too, but a clean, natural death which obeyed nature's laws and was, somehow, sweet and bearable, although painful.

But Riddent dead? His unborn son dead? There was nothing natural, nothing fair, nothing acceptable about that."

For a moment, he wished them all dead, all the billions of Empireites. His rage sent him pacing, his face flaming, heat waves causing him to sweat inside his uniform. At that moment, had he been given divine power, he would have depeopled half a galaxy, but his rage faded, paled with his memories of his service in the Empire fleet to exclude the rank and file, the masses. The Emperor, then, all his top advisers, the men who directed the attack on one lonely planet far from Empire's sway.

Someone had said it once, about the Empire: "If you can't control it, kill it."

And they were trying to kill Texas as they'd killed Riddent.

They found him at midmorning, sleeping in the house with its shattered windows, sprawled on the bed in full uniform, his boots making dirty spots on the sheets.

"Damn, Lex," Billy Bob said.

He awoke slowly and his arm automatically went out to feel her next to him, then he was fully awake. They could see that he'd been weeping. He didn't care.

Arden Wal, his hat in his hand, put his other hand on Lex's shoulder. "They're reorganizing the

government, Lex." "We," Lex said, his voice cold and hard. "We're reorganizing the government. You are one of us now." He stood, ran a hand through his tousled hair.

Billy Bob, looking at him, wondered what it was that was changed. He seemed different. There was a cold, hard light in his eyes. "They want you there," Billy Bob said. "All right. Where?" "San Ann. The opera hall." "I think I should tell you," Wal said, "that the fleet is putting you up for President."

"Now why did you go and tell him that?" Billy Bob asked plaintively. "He'll not come for sure, now." Lex said nothing. He nodded grimly. His father had been President. Andy Gar had been President. Belle Resall. All of them old, wise, geared to take the demands of office.

"Now don't you say no before you hear us out," Billy Bob said. "I'll listen," Lex said softly. The opera hall was in tan. The majority of those present were in uniform. Lex sat down front listening to

but without hearing a eulogy for dead Texicans. Then the business began. Nominations. Billy Bob advanced his name and a huge cheer went up from the uniformed members of the Republic. There was a recess. There had been no other name mentioned as candidate for President. Lex went into a conference room with Wal, Billy Bob and some older members of the government who had not been in the city when the missile impacted.

"It's yours if you'll take it," Billy Bob said. "The fleet will vote for you to a man." "We need a strong, young man in the office," an old graybeard said. "In peace, when there's nothing to

do with government but keep order and count noses, a wise old head, but we're at war, son. And you've shown your metal." "Lex," Arden Wal said, "as President, you'll be commander in chief of the armed forces." "Yes," Lex said. "The Empire fleet?" "They're throwing up defense lines all along the periphery," Wal said. "They show all signs of siege. We'll

not see any metals from the galaxy." "We can find metals in the cluster," Lex said. "Son," said the old minister, who had been at his post on the opposite side of the planet when the missile

got through to Dallas City, "we've been searching the cluster for a decade and we've found not one planet.

All signs show that she's a non-planet-forming group of stars."

"We can hold them off for a year or two," Wal said, "even a decade or two, but then the metals shortage will begin to show. You can't go on recycling forever. There's always a loss factor. And while we're declining they'll be building."

"We need to hit them now, Lex," Billy Bob said, "while they're down. We want you to take us into the galaxy, finish off that fleet. The Empire has trouble with the Cassies now, so it's not likely that they'll try a direct attack again, and I don't think they'll be able to muster too many reinforcements for the periphery."

"The Cassies?" Lex asked.

"The Empire pulled off a lot of ships from the lines," Wal said. "The Cassies are making hit-and-run attacks. They've even captured a few Empire planets. The Empire is going to be busy in the next few months. We could go in, take on the rest of that fleet and grab a few planets and have enough metal to make Texas strong enough to withstand any attack from either the Empire or the Cassies."

"All right," said Captain Lexington Burns.

"My fellow Texicans," said President Lexington Burns an hour and a half later, "these are difficult times."

"Surrender," said Fleet General Lexington Burns, speaking to a single Empire Vandy acting as an advance patrol just outside the periphery.

"Surrender," said Lex speaking to a fleet guarding a five-planet star.

Behind them the Cassiopeian fleets were making dire and terrible raids into Empire territory. Before them was a force of Texicans with that terrible weapon which blinked death into the very guts of a ship. They surrendered by the ship, by the fleet.

In three months, Texas had extended a protectorate into the periphery to a depth of ten parsecs from the outlying stars. Captured ships were carrying metals back to Texas. On the inhabited planets, Texican governors were talking of true freedom, of regard for the individual, of controlled population, of good and plenty for all.

As the second line of defense was reached, resistance stiffened. There, Texas met Empire commanders who had not been present at the Last Battle of Texas and had to learn for themselves the strength of Texican weapons. Ships blazed and vaporized. A fleet supply planet refused surrender.

"There are only a few thousand men down there," Arden Wal said. "An invasion force on airorses could take it in five days."

"At the loss of how many Texicans?" Lex asked. "I've seen enough Texicans die, General Wal. There will be no more Texican deaths as the result of my orders, not if it can be avoided."

"Lex, they're just soldiers. They're just plain people down there." Billy Bob looked into Lex's cold, hard eyes.

"Send this," Lex said. "Tell them they have one hour to lay down arms and surrender."

"Lex, that's a helluva cost to take out one fleet supply planet," Billy Bob said. "Those people down there are defenseless."

"So was Dallas City," Lex said. At the end of one hour a captured Empire Rearguard moved into position and launched one missile. The missile's powerful engines sent it deep into the heart of the small planet and the detonation ruptured the shell in five places, the vast rents spewing magma. The very atmosphere burned.

The next military planet was shown trid tapes of the incident. The planet surrendered. A beleaguered Empire, with millions of stars and planets under its rule, sent an emissary to meet with President Burns of the Texas Republic as the Texican force cut through the heart of Empire, a deadly

point aimed directly at mother Earth. Behind the fleet lay thousands of subject planets, on which millions of former Empire citizens were finding that the rule of the Texicans offered certain advantages. The emissary met Lex in space, approaching under the guns of the fleet in a swift scout. She had changed little. She wore the official robes of state in purple and gold. The robes hid her body,