The biggest problem facing America wasn't lack of electricity, it was the economic crash that followed the attack. My father lost his job when the paper mill shut down. Loggers didn't have enough gasoline to run their trucks or even their chainsaws. Without wood pulp, the mill couldn't produce paper. The market for paper had collapsed anyway along with the rest of the global economy. Industrial nations like the US, Japan, China and across Europe were hurt much harder than lower-tech areas of the planet, which was ironic. The greater the level of a nation's technology, the worse it was hit by the crisis. The value of technology companies went straight into the toilet, and not just due to lack of demand from the overall economy. Who wanted to invest in Silicon Valley, when our new allies the Kristang were going to share incredibly advanced technology with us?

Except they didn't. The Kristang said we weren't ready, that we couldn't be trusted with their level of technology, and that we needed to focus on rebuilding our current infrastructure. Really, our new allies were a disappointment, other than chasing the Ruhar away. The bulk of the Kristang battlegroup jumped away within a week after defeating the Ruhar, because Earth didn’t have space docks or warship servicing facilities, or pretty much anything else the Kristang needed. They didn’t fight the Ruhar for the benefit of humanity, they fought to deny the Ruhar a base in our little corner of the galaxy. Earth was Guadalcanal in WWII, that’s how one of the National Guard officers described it. Neither side cared about the place, except as a steppingstone to somewhere more important. The US and the Japanese hadn’t cared about the island of Guadalcanal or the natives living there, all either side had wanted was to use that island as a base to push on to the next conquest. The Kristang and the Ruhar felt the same way about Earth. Being American, the world’s only superpower, strongest military force in history, it was hard to think of ourselves in the role of the native primitives, watching the Kristang and Ruhar forces do battle over our land, with weapons we could barely comprehend.

“Hey! Bishop! Hey!”

I spun around, disoriented, to find my self face to face with a guy from my fireteam, a guy I never thought I’d see again. “Cornpone!” I shouted.