IN THE PAST month President Conner had lost twenty-three pounds, at least a decade off the end of his life, and four cities that were ostensibly under his protection. The death toll might never be completely known, but he was sure now that it was in the hundreds of thousands across the Confederation, and it was possible that they’d lost a million people or more in Mexico City alone.

The entire nation was in a state of total disarray, and the worst of it was that he couldn’t afford to give his entire attention to the people he was responsible for. The Drasin were digging in all across the world, and they had to be stopped everywhere, or it was all over.

The biggest power of the Confederate forces was spread across the planet, with the strongest concentrations being in the Middle and Far East, along the edges of the Block territories. Those were also the areas they were the most needed now, as the Block cities had taken some of the hardest hits of any places on Earth.

With population densities as high as a hundred times the most densely populated regions in the Confederacy, cities like New Delhi and Beijing were a near constant shooting gallery now. Confederate task groups were fighting constantly over former enemy airspace, just trying to keep the blasted aliens from hitting the ground in the hopes of giving the Block’s beleaguered ground forces some kind of reprieve.

And they’re running out of weapons to fight with.

That thought inevitably brought his attention back to the situation shaping up in Detroit and the hopes they’d all been forced to pin on Eric Weston and his rather ragtag company of police and Guardsmen turned full-time warriors.

The five factory complexes in Detroit were not the only defense industries in the Confederation, of course. But they’d already lost the three complexes in Mexico when the infestation of Mexico City turned into such a rout that the local commander called in a tactical strike on his own position.

Conner closed his eyes. The image of the nuclear mushroom over a Confederate city would never fade from his mind, of that he was sure, not least because he’d authorized it personally.

There was no telling how many people had been in the city when the strike happened, but it was certainly far too many. The maddening thing, as tragic as that was, was the loss of the manufacturing campuses that cost them the most. Without the facilities in Detroit, he doubted they’d be able to hold out another week at this point.