‘That’s my understanding,’ she said. ‘It’s certainly the belief of those settlers we’ve already sent down there, and you’re right, it makes it very difficult to place suitable candidates into the settlement program for the Mandate. But I ask again, what are you going to do about it? A dedicated frontier militia would solve most of the problems overnight.’

A sour expression creased the Chief of Staff’s features. ‘Agreed. But our memorandum of understanding with Fort Hood does not allow us to deploy militia into the Mandate. Blackstone only agreed to waive administrative control of that land when we agreed to leave policing the interior and securing the boundaries to the TDF.’

‘Oh my god, Culver,’ she replied, clearly exasperated. ‘We just spent the better part of two hours complaining about him not keeping to the letter of that agreement. Or the spirit of it. Or anything. If he doesn’t play by the rules, why should we?’

He smiled like a mischievous child. It was amazing how someone like Sarah Humboldt would get upset about his way of describing things, demand that they do the right thing in a legal manner, and then advocate chucking the rulebook out the window when it suited her. A moralising, self-righteous, liberal hypocrite, Jed decided. At least they were far easier to manipulate into action than others.

‘Feel the power of the dark side, Sarah. I am with you one hundred per cent. But the President is a firm believer in best practices, and that does not include reneging on our agreements while we bitch and moan about other people not holding to theirs.’

The wind shrieked louder for a second, smashing a tree branch into the highest pane of his window with such force that he thought it might break. It knocked free a large clump of snow, which fell to the ground outside with a muffled thump. Secretary Humboldt jumped a little in her chair. Opposite her, Jed pushed himself back from the desk so he could open one of the drawers and retrieve a folder. He dropped it on the desk and pushed it a little way towards her. He explained as she opened it.

‘I’ve been keeping tabs on the settler situation down in Texas. Just informally. I’m sure you have much better records. Statements of interview with survivors, crime-scene photographs, that sort of thing. I have a little bit of that, but mostly press reports. They’re pretty thin, as you can see. The frontier really is the great unknown again. We’re not quite back to the pony express, but it can still take a few days for news to get from the outlying homesteads back to one of our settlement centres. And, of course, very few media organisations have the resources to send their people that far out into the badlands. Not for an unremarkable story.’