Serenity and Rissa didn’t pay attention to Ita until they were startled by the door opening behind Serenity. It was Janice with the food, and it couldn’t have been more than five minutes since she dropped Serenity off. Once they were out of the doorway, Serenity turned to her and asked, “If it was that close, why didn’t you just take me with you?”

Janice was carrying a large sack with an image of a dog on the side; there was a red logo as well, but Serenity couldn’t see the words. What she pulled out of the bag seemed odd; Serenity wasn’t used to restaurant food coming in a covered aluminum tray, but there were two of them, as well as four fountain drinks. “Sometimes they’re ready when they say they will be; other times they can be off by half an hour. I didn’t want to make you wait if it was one of the slow days.”

When the trays were open, one turned out to hold thick slices of toast, while the other held strips of fried chicken. There was also a pale orange-brown dipping sauce that Serenity didn’t immediately recognize. It looked more like a dressing than something he’d expect to put on chicken, but it was clearly intended to go with the chicken.

“So many different foods.” Ita spoke in English as she picked out some bread and meat for herself. “Strange.”

“What do you mean?” Rissa picked up her own food as she turned to Ita.

“Different,” Ita repeated. “Each food different.” She was clearly having trouble finding the right word.

Serenity had a guess what she meant. “Do you mean that every meal is different, and we haven’t repeated one yet even though you’ve been here for a couple days?” He knew that with the Shared Understanding spell, she could understand far more than she could speak.

Ita nodded. “And different.”

This time, it was Rissa that caught her meaning. “Yes, they’re all pretty different from each other. Different bases and different spice mixes. We like variety, and it’s easy to get here.”

Ita was already halfway through her first piece of chicken wrapped in bread. “Good different. Sterath same.”

Serenity smiled; it was good to see her relaxed and happy. It was unfortunate that he was about to change that, but as long as he was here, he might as well ask. “Speaking of other Sterath, we found some today. And it looks like there will be more. Would you be willing to work with us to find them and defeat them? We can capture some but I doubt they’ll all survive. You don’t have to, I know how hard it can be to fight your own kind-”

“Kaelitha.” Ita interrupted Serenity. “Kaelitha me enemy. Not kind. Kaelitha-” Ita paused for a moment, thinking, before she switched back to Sterath. “The Kaelitha are my enemy, not my kind. They killed my Clan and enslaved me. You are my Lord; I would do what you wanted even if they were kin to me, but they are not. Capture and humiliation would be better but death is acceptable. Please let me help defeat them.”

Ita had a large grin as she finished speaking and rested a hand on the mark on her chest.

Serenity nodded. “I’m glad you’re eager to help.” It wasn’t the reaction he’d expected, but it made sense. It also made her earlier actions clearer; she’d probably submitted to him partly because she thought he was an enemy to the Kaelitha Sterath, and that was definitely why she’d been so helpful in figuring out where the safe houses were.

The rest of dinner was relatively uneventful, and after dinner the four of them sat down for some “English language lessons”. Rissa tuned the television to one of the science channels, which was showing a program on “food science”. Ita was fascinated, but one show was all the time Serenity wanted to give; he still needed to talk to Nightwitch and his parents.

“Serenity? I wasn’t expecting you to call. Or is this Rissa again?” Nightwitch’s voice was clear and calm.

“It’s me. I’m trying to put together a group to deal with the Sterath in DC. I thought your magic would make you a great addition to the group.” Serenity hoped that would be enticing enough.

“I’d love to, but I can’t.” Nightwitch sounded wry as she turned him down. “We’re under strict rules of engagement for all of the invaders right now, and going to somewhere I know they might be is definitely outside them. I hope all of the people you’re pulling in are currently civilians?”

“Yes?” Serenity scrambled as he thought about it. He and Rissa definitely were; Raz was as well. Katya was a mercenary, though, and Ita … “I think I’ll have a Rising Phoenix mercenary and a member of an opposing Sterath faction…”

“As long as they’re not from our military - hold on. Opposing Sterath faction? Spill.”

“I found an abandoned building they were using as a portal waystation. The portal mage was from another faction; she’d been captured and enslaved. I freed her and she’s agreed to help. She seems pretty eager.” It was the shortest explanation of Ita he’d given yet, but he thought it covered everything important.

There was a pause while Nightwitch digested the information. “You’d better have a plan for when she’s seen. Because it won’t be if, it’ll be when.”

Serenity had forgotten to mention that, hadn’t he. “My mother and Janice have put together a plan. They’re going to deliberately leak that we have a former slave helping us against the invaders.”

“Run what you’re planning by them before you go. Make sure you’re not about to put a big spike in their plans, okay?”

“I can do that.”

“Good. Now don’t tell me anything more; I can’t be responsible for anything I don’t know. Before you hang up, you should know that we’re coordinating all the Sterath interrogations, because the people conducting them are soldiers. It’s all being collated and turned into maps. I don’t know where you can get a copy.”

Before Serenity could reply, Nightwitch hung up.

Serenity decided he was two for two in the category “not even close to predicting how the conversation would go” for the evening.

At least he’d finished sending out invitations. If Raz and Katya both accepted, he’d still be fine. If either of them turned him down, he’d need to figure out who else to invite. Which might be more difficult than he’d initially assumed; he’d thought he could ask his father or Lancaster to help him find someone, but it seemed like military and police were both off the table.

Perhaps he should advertise? The problem was simple: a team of all Tier Ones would likely die if they ran into a Tier Three, and there seemed to be a reasonable number of Tier Three Sterath. Weapons like Lieutenant Smith’s magic-enhanced pistol would help, and swarm tactics would definitely work, but Serenity didn’t want to be responsible for that level of death.

No, the best solution was a smaller group of more powerful people who could handle the fight. Rissa was the weak link in the group he was putting together, but she was also the healer; at Tier One or even Three, a healer was unlikely to draw too much heat. They simply couldn’t do much to change the course of a battle; healers were expected to be useful after combat, not in it.

Perhaps he’d even leave her outside with Janice. It wasn’t like she was on a combat Path right now any more than he apparently was.

Lex Rothmer ran back over the estimates. He knew them by now, of course, but it was still worth reviewing.

By population, there should be twenty-one or twenty-two portals in the United States. If he went by city population, there were only nine US cities in the top 512. He had people continually watching the news from the six cities on that list that didn’t yet have confirmed portals, but the Wyoming portal wasn’t even near a city and Washington DC wasn’t large enough to make the list, so he also had people watching the country as a whole.

They knew of five portals in the continental US: the closed Hegemon Worm portal in New York City, the Sterath portal in Washington DC, the Traa portal in central Texas, the rockfin portal in Wyoming, and a portal in the ocean near San Diego that seemed to be spitting out giant boat-eating starfish. Serenity had mentioned a portal with blue centaurs near Denver; Lex had people out looking for it, but they didn’t even have blue horse sightings to start from. At least the DC portal had kangaroo sightings!

Like the kangaroos, the “giant mutant starfish” were initially reported only locally as a hoax.

Realistically, Lex was expecting somewhere between nine and twenty-two. He’d be happy to close the San Diego portal the same way the Chinese had closed their Tianjin portal. Depending on how fierce the resistance was, he might even have the submarine include a small nuclear present.

However much he wanted to, Lex doubted he would actually follow through on that idea. If it served no purpose other than making future enemies, there wasn’t a point. Never mind the fact that he’d require the President’s authorization; if President Stewart were angry enough to allow the use of military force in US coastal waters, he’d probably be willing to allow the use of a small nuclear device.

Lex’s mouth quirked a bit at the thought. He might even end up arguing against it! It all depended on the circumstances.

[Global Quest: Permanently deal with all Invasion Portals and remove the threat of the invaders]

[Quest Status: 28/512]

The number of closed portals had gone up again. One of them was probably the Traa gate; Bethany had said that they’d reached an agreement. As far as her negotiators were concerned, it was heavily in the favor of the US, which probably meant that the Traa knew something her negotiators didn’t.

On second thought, it might not include the Traa. Did that require the agreement to be signed? If it did, it wasn’t there yet; that required an act of Congress, and President Stewart was highly unlikely to sign any such law, much less hold a ceremonial signing with a lizard the way most were publicized.

At least that was Bethany’s problem and not his. His problem was that not only was the President completely refusing to accept the new reality, a good portion of his party was as well. They were losing every time something actually came to a vote, but not by enough to override a Presidential veto, and that meant nothing had actually been sent to the President, since he’d declared he’d veto anything that was.

The President was the Commander-in-Chief. As long as he refused to allow a change to the rules the military was operating under, Lex Rothmer was stuck. He couldn’t even defend his own capital.

He could liaison with the police; that was how they’d found out how easy it was to gain information from the Sterath. He could send scientists out with experimental equipment to hunt for portals. He could share information with the police and carefully not tell them to keep it secret; it wasn’t covered under any of the existing classification rules, after all. He just couldn’t send soldiers out to fight, the way they were supposed to.

He was going to have to depend on his son to take care of the invaders; it was far from ideal. The military was supposed to protect civilians, not the other way around, and Thomas had never been military.

It was too bad there wasn’t a legal way to remove a President from office for making terrible decisions; Lex Rothmer spared a moment of envy for countries with a mechanism for recall elections. President Stewart was a good man and a good President; he was simply the wrong President for the moment. In many ways it was too bad; this was only his first term and until the Tutorial appeared, it’d looked likely he would cruise to a clear victory, but elections were only about a month away and his opponent had gained a lot of ground already.

Lex doubted he’d be Secretary of Defense for long after January 20. Perhaps that was just as well; the world was changing and he should change with it. He wasn’t interested in a combat role; he’d served his time and that part of his life was over. That didn’t mean there weren’t things that interested him; magic was an entirely new field for him.

Perhaps he’d even dig out some of the old family heirlooms that were supposed to be the key to a treasure. Treasure hunting might be a lot of fun. It would certainly be less stressful than not being allowed to defend his country!