This is long awaited book does not disappoint. Concluding the American Empire series started in Blood and Iron. Trutledove ends the lives of many main characters such as Sylvia Enos,Mrs. Moss, Nellie Semproches and others. However he does this in a fine fashion making they're deaths seem in the right place and replacing them with characters that compare but also differ.
He also sets the stage for WWII and builds the suspense to the boiling point until in the last tantalizing paragraphs the second World War, the one that Turtledove has been marching towards during hte entire series explodes. I heartily recommend this book to anyone who has read the series and cannot wait for the next series, Return Engagement.
Kindle Edition Verified Purchase. Worth reading The show is about to begin. War is brewing and Turtledove is a master of the long series going over decades. Some of the characters deaths were shocking but kept it interesting. Watching people change was very interesting too. I want to like this book.
Sometimes it lets me. Published in paperback and hardcover in , "The Victorious Opposition" is the final book in the "American Empire" series, detailing the rise of an alternate Nazi Party- the Freedom Party- and its hate-filled and charismatic leader, Jake Featherston.
In this book, Featherston has taken the office of President and is simultaneously cleaning house, rearming the nation, and preparing it for another war with the United States. Jefferson Pinkard, on the other hand, rises to become the Confederacy's leading man on the 'Negro problem'.
As the camp he commands becomes ever more over-crowded with black and other political prisoners, Richmond coldly tells him they are "sure you can deal with it". Forced into a corner, he comes up with a solution that shows very clearly how normal men can all-too-easily be turned into monsters. The Freedom Party is single-minded in its goals, ruthless in its efforts to achieve them. Featherston, just like Hitler, takes as much as his appeasing neighbors will give and then pushes for more. When his push is refused finally, he shoves.
And because it's peacetime, virtually none of them die. The totally uninteresting Armstrong Grimes? A number of characters are involved in a brutal US occupation of Canada, Utah, and and parts of the Confederacy arbitrarily taken away at the end of World War I- aside from the thinly veiled appearance of General "Daniel" MacArthur, none of them were interesting at all. One treats the Canadians like his pets, hoping they'll one day be grateful for his repeated efforts to get them out of jail after yet another US Army barracks gets blown up. He then gives into the hate, falls to the Dark Side and actually becomes an interesting character.
But by then he's outta the book. In reading through so many scenes of the US crushing yet another protest, uprising, whatever with enough machine gun fire to make Stalin sick, I said- these are the GOOD guys? But you know what? The Confederates may be the Nazis here, but at least they're honest about what they're killing for.
Certainly more so than the US. In Congress, the horribly boring- and annoying- Congressman-woman? But, uh, not 'cause she's trying to rock the boat or anything. Eventually, I started waiting for him to lurch his way into the next paragraph, all slimy and decayed, groaning: Jake Featherston's readying the CSA for war, the increasing sense of inevitability as that war nears, and the way that everyone gets dragged along into it one way or another is very interesting indeed.
And very well could have.
The Confederacy is a warped, corrupt mockery of all it once stood for. Lee would have been sick. But, I wonder how loyal he'd have wanted to be to the laughably hypocritical nation the USA is in here. They claim the moral high-ground but cheerfully murder every 'traitor' in sight. Maybe Turtledove is trying to make a point about the USA of our timeline Far too often this book gets lost in the twists and turns of its own mazes, but its basic idea- the rise of a dictator in a defeated CSA and, at its very end, the start of an alternate WWII- saves it in the end.
All through the proceeding volumes, he's been holding grudges and remembering those who slighted him. Now he gets a chance for payback. There's no real surprises in how that particular storylin This, the seventh book of Mr. There's no real surprises in how that particular storyline plays out. Actually, there is one, now that I think of it, but you'll have to read the book to discover it. But that's only one of the plot threads running through the series. All in all, it's a good read. My only real complaint is that, as part of a lenghty storyline, Mr. Turtledove finds it necessary to pull in a number of recaps from the previous novels for those readers who may not have read them.
I wish he could have used footnotes or something, so I could blip over them and continue on with the action. When I get around to writing an 11 volume story, I suppose I can do it whatever way I want. Jul 15, Ryan rated it it was ok Shelves: Part three of the "American Empire" trilogy show Jake Featherston and the Freedom Party taking control of the CSA, and the predictable reprocussions that happen as a result. It's clear that Turtledove knows his interwar history, and he brings all of that to bear here.
There were two main problems I had with this book: I got the feeling I could have read a synopsis of the plot online and gotten just as much as I did out of reading the book. Even things like deaths of fairly major characters happen quickly, and then we're whisked off to some other part of the story, without time to really let it all sink in. The second problem was that, even though this was the final part of a trilogy, there was no real solid end to the book.
The entire trilogy, in fact, reads a little like it's just chapters in the part serial "American Civil War" timeline that Turtledove has established. Call me old-fashioned, but I want closure in my books! Jun 11, Michael Thompson rated it liked it. Last book in this series. You've got a Hitler-like Confederate veteran firmly in control of the South, rebuilding its economy and militarizing it just like Hitler did in Germany. The sub-plot involving how the South treats Blacks is very interesting. Turtledove has them playing the role the Jews played during the Holocaust with a serious amount of Marxism mixed in.
The more that I thought about it, it is very surprising to me that Blacks in the American south didn't embrace Marxism a long time Last book in this series. The more that I thought about it, it is very surprising to me that Blacks in the American south didn't embrace Marxism a long time ago. They do in this series. This volume represents the end of the second series in this continuing timeline, and represents a period of 'time' between the equivalent of World War I and World War II. Again, I have appreciated the way in which Harry Turtledove mastery of both history and storytelling have intersected to provide a ripping yarn that has enough 'accuracy' to be both engaging and thought provoking.
The more I read of Turtledove's series, the more I am becoming a fan of the 'what if' scenario. Like all the rest this was a really good read. I will say that this series does get better the further into it you go and this one is the farthest I've read and was by far my favorite. I particularly liked the way things got handed off to a mostly new generation of characters in this book as a lead up to the war, not something that happens as the war starts. I also found the organic grouth of what are obviously turning into concentration camps in the CSA to be particularly chilling.
Apr 27, Brad rated it really liked it Shelves: After losing some faith in the previous book in the series The Center Cannot Hold , HT returns to a bit of form here and the story picks up some pace. It probably helped that a few of the older characters who were not doing much in the story got bumped off. An interesting build up to the next series Desalniettemin er ongelofelijk veel storende elementen zijn blijft hij de nieuwsgierigheid prikkelen zodat je toch wil weten hoe het verder afloopt met de personages, dus op naar boek 8.
Dec 03, Brentman99 rated it really liked it Recommends it for: Those who read the Balance series. This was a great series. The parallels are scary, but effective. The work camps are a great approximation of the Nazi's war on the Jews. Hipolito Rodriguez had planted his fields of corn and beans when the rains started, plowing behind his trusty mule. Now, with giving way to , he tramped through them hoe in hand, weeding and cultivating.
Book: American Empire: The Victorious Opposition
His two older sons, Miguel and Jorge, were big enough to give him real help: Before many more years—maybe before many more months—had passed, they would discover women. Then Rodriguez would have to work his plot by himself again. No—by then Pedro would be old enough to pitch in. Now he enjoyed the extra help. That done, he dried himself on a towel prickly with embroidery from his wife and his mother-in-law. His wife sighed but nodded. The two of them, Magdalena especially, spoke more Spanish than English. Most Sonorans, especially of their generation, did, even though Sonora and Chihuahua had belonged to the Confederate States ten years longer than either one of them had been alive.
Their children, educated in the school in town, used the two languages interchangeably. Schools taught exclusively in English. And I still say you have not told me all you could about these times you were shooting at people. He ate his supper—beans and cheese wrapped in tortillas—then walked to Baroyeca, about three miles away. He got to town just as the sun was setting.
Baroyeca had never been a big place. A lot of the shops on the main street were shuttered these days, and had been ever since the silver mines in the mountains to the north closed down a few years earlier. Except for the general store and the Culebra Verde , the local cantina, Freedom Party headquarters was the only business in Baroyeca that bothered lighting itself up after sundown. The lamps burned kerosene. Electricity had never appeared here. No matter what Rodriguez had told his wife, an armed guard with bandoleers crisscrossing his chest stood in front of the door. He nodded and stood aside to let Rodriguez go in.
That in itself set him apart from a lot of English-speaking Confederates, who treated men of Mexican blood as only a short step better than Negroes. Good manners alone had been plenty to gain Quinn several new Party members. He nodded to his friends as he took a seat. First, I am glad I see before me men with many sons. President Featherston is beginning a Freedom Youth Corps for boys fourteen to eighteen years old.
They will work where work is needed, and they will learn order and discipline. The Party and the state of Sonora will join together in paying the costs of uniforms. Those will not cost any Party member even one cent. A pleased buzz ran through the room. Quinn nodded to him. These boys will be able to join, but their families will have to pay for the uniforms. This seems only fair, or do you think differently? Rodriguez liked it very much, too. Not only that, backing a winner was proving to have its rewards. By the smiles on the faces of the other Freedom Party men, their thoughts were running along the same lines.
Their replacements will be Freedom Party men. Putting Freedom Party men in those places did a couple of things. And, unless Rodriguez missed his guess, it would also make sure several Freedom Party men now down on their luck had jobs that paid enough to live on. Now we see the Freedom Party does the same thing. We can rely on these people. Sonora is our state. Several men stirred at that. Carlos Ruiz put their worries into words: What good are they? They would only be followers.
They never fought for the Party. They never shed their blood for it. He tapped the pin he wore in his lapel. They will show you followed the Freedom Party before that was the popular thing to do. The others, the latecomers, will have a black border on the pins they wear. Most of the other Party men nodded.
We deserve to be singled out, Rodriguez thought. We paid our Party dues in blood. The Freedom Party is for everyone in the Estados Confederados. Everyone, do you hear me? The Party is here to help all the people. It is here for all the people. And it is here to make sure all the people do all they can to make the Estados Confederados a better country, a stronger country. We will need all our strength. All of you who are old enough fought in the war. We were stabbed in the back then. If we ever have to fight again, we will win.
Down here in southern Sonora, the United States had seemed too far away to worry about. Even Confederate states like Alabama and South Carolina had seemed too far away to worry about. Things were different now. Men from the United States had spent a couple of years doing their level best to kill him. Then, when the fighting finally ended, the men from the United States had taken away his rifle, as if he and his country had no more right to defend themselves. One country, one party—all together, on to. Not so long ago, in this very room, Carlos had asked what would happen when the Freedom Party lost an election after gaining power.
Robert Quinn had thought that was very funny. Now maybe he did. If there is no other business, amigos, this meeting is adjourned. Stars shone down brightly when Rodriguez and the other Freedom Party men left Party headquarters. The wind blew off the mountains to the northeast. Of course, the walking itself would help keep him warm. Some of the Freedom Party men headed for La Culebra Verde , from which light and the sounds of a guitar and raucous singing emerged.
His friends laughed at him. And, though he had no intention of admitting it to them, they were probably right. C incinnatus Driver pulled over to the curb, hopped out of his elderly Ford truck with the motor still running, and trotted to the corner to buy a copy of the Des Moines Herald-Express from the deaf-mute selling them there. The fellow tipped his cap and smiled as Cincinnatus gave him a nickel, and smiled wider when the Negro hurried back to the truck without waiting for his change.
He flipped the paper open to the inside pages and read whenever he had to stop for a sign or a traffic cop or one of the red lights that had sprung up like toadstools the past few years. That was full of the anti-U. Sometimes several days would go by without one of the stories that worried him turning up. Today, though, he found one. The story told how the blacks—men, women, and children, it said—had tried to cross from Confederate Tennessee into U.
They claimed intolerable persecution in their own country, the reporter wrote, but, as their entrance into the United States would have been both illegal and undesirable, the officers of the Border Patrol rejected their pleas, as is longstanding U. He came down on the clutch so clumsily, he stalled his truck and had to fire it up again. That made him realize how furious he was. The USA had only a handful of blacks, and wanted no more.
A lot of people here would have been happier without the ones they already had. He was glad to live under U. The race riots sweeping through the CSA were the main reason Negroes were trying to get out, of course. Jews had run away from Russian pogroms to the USA. Irishmen had escaped famines and English landlords. Germans had fled a failed revolution. Poles and Italians and Frenchmen had done their best to get away from hunger and poverty.
Negroes from the Confederate States? Men and women who had desperately urgent reasons to leave their homes, who already spoke English, and who were ready to work like the slaves their parents and grandparents and some of them , as youths had been? Could they make homes for themselves here? He supposed he should have been glad U. But he could see reasons. The Confederates could have got good use from the labor of colored refugees. Here were the railroad yards, a warren of tracks and switches and trains and fragments of trains scattered here and there over them, apparently—but not really—at random.
A couple of railroad dicks, billy clubs in their hands, pistols on their hips, recognized Cincinnatus and his truck and waved him forward. As he bumped over railroad crossings toward a train, he watched the two dicks in his rear-view mirror. Cincinnatus would have bet the fellow was bound for somewhere else, probably somewhere out West. Not many folks wanted to stay in Des Moines. There stood the conductor, as important a man on a freight train as the supercargo was on a steamboat. Cincinnatus hit the brakes, jumped out of his truck, and ran over to the man with the clipboard in his hand.
Cincinnatus wondered how many conductors came through Des Moines. However many it was, he knew just about all of them. By now, they knew him, too. They knew how reliable he was. Only a handful of them refused to give him business because he was colored. He pointed down the train to a couple of boxcars.
The conductor read off the addresses. Cincinnatus spread his hands, pale palms up. I got to ask four dollars.
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Oughta say five—I might not make it back here to git me another load today. I get honest pay for honest work there. But he was more efficient now than he had been—and prices on everything had come down since money got so tight. He loaded what seemed like nine million flowerpots into the back of the Ford, using ratty old blankets to keep one stack from bumping another. Anything he broke, of course, he was stuck with. He winced every time the truck jounced over a pothole.
The couple of minutes he spent probably saved him an hour of travel time, for he worked out the best route to take to get to all six nurseries and department stores. That was part of what being efficient was all about. It let him get back to the railroad yard just past two in the afternoon: With the sun setting as he finished the second load, he drove home, parking the truck in front of his apartment building. When he walked into the apartment, his daughter Amanda was doing homework at the kitchen table, while Elizabeth, his wife, fried ham steaks in a big iron spider on the stove.
Grace Chang lived in the apartment right upstairs from his own. Her father ran a laundry and brewed excellent beer a very handy talent in a state as thoroughly dry as Iowa. No one at all could deny that she was a Chinese girl. It made Cincinnatus acutely nervous. Having the two of them go out together also made Mr. She flipped the ham steaks over with a long-handled spatula. His wife used the spatula on a mess of potatoes frying in a smaller pan. Even though Achilles and Grace had been going out for more than a year, nobody outside their families had said a word to either one of them about their choice of partner.
That meant Cincinnatus had to head out before Achilles got up. He had told Achilles an education would come in handy all sorts of ways. Now, to his chagrin, he discovered just how right he was. The Chevrolet started when Galtier turned the key. One thing any Quebecois with an auto soon learned was the importance of keeping the battery strongly charged in winter—and, up there by the St. Lawrence, winter lasted a long time. He looked it—a life outdoors had left his skin wrinkled and leathery—but he was still vigorous, his hair no lighter than iron gray.
The motorcar made a less satisfying partner for such things than the horse had, but enjoyed certain advantages the beast lacked. No horse yet had ever come with a heater. The highway was a black asphalt line scribed on the whiteness of fresh snow. By now, with so many years of weathering behind them, the shell holes from the Great War were hard to spy with snow on the ground.
Oh, here and there a pockmark gave a clue, but little by little the earth was healing itself. Healing, however, was not the same as healed. Every so often, the cycle of freeze and thaw brought to the surface long-buried shells, often rotten with corrosion.
Demolition experts in the blue-gray uniforms of the Republic of Quebec disposed of most of those. The spring before, though, Henri Beauchamp had found one with his plow while tilling the ground. It was a market town, a river port, and a railroad stop. It was the biggest town Galtier had ever seen, except for a few brief visits to Toronto while he was in the Canadian Army more than forty years before. As he usually did, Galtier parked on a side street and walked to the church.
On Sunday mornings, a lot of horse-drawn wagons kept them company. He came to the church at the same time as his oldest daughter, Nicole; her husband, Dr. Getting new grandchildren came as close as anything he was likely to find at his age. His second daughter, Denise, and her husband and children came up as he was greeting his sons. With Georges in the lead, maybe the world did need to look out for the Galtiers.
Quebecois ran to lots of children and to close family ties, so plenty of brothers and sisters and cousins paraded in as units for their friends and neighbors to admire. Filling a couple of rows of pews was by no means an unusual accomplishment. Bishop Guillaume presided over Mass. No breath of scandal attached itself to him, as it had to his predecessor in the see, Bishop Pascal. Pascal had been—no doubt still was—pink and plump and clever. Galtier found it highly unlikely that Bishop Guillaume would ever father twins. He was well up into his sixties, and ugly as a mud fence.
He had a wart on his chin and another on his nose; his eyes, pouched below, were those of a mournful hound; his ears made people think of an auto going down the street with its doors open. He was a good man. Who would give him the chance to be bad? He was also a pious man. Guillaume preached sermons that were thoughtful, Scriptural, well organized. It might not have anything to do with the church, but it was always interesting.
His long, fair face marked him as someone out of the ordinary in this crowd of dark, Gallic Quebecois. My favorite subject was never Pascal. His family, or those among them old enough to understand the joke, groaned in unison. That was absurd enough to draw another round of groans from his kin. Incorrigible Georges did an impersonation of a chicken after it met the hatchet and before it decided it was dead and lay still. He staggered all over the sidewalk, scattering relatives—and a few neighbors—in his wake.
He managed to run into Charles twice, which surprised Lucien very little. When they were younger, Charles had dominated his brother till Georges grew too big for him to get away with it any more. Georges had been getting even ever since. He had a good-sized house. But it could have been as big as the Fraser Manor—the biggest house in town by a long shot—and still seemed crowded when Galtiers filled it.
Lucien found himself with a glass of whiskey in his hand. He stared at it in mild wonder. He sipped his own whiskey, with appreciation. Fire ran down his throat. But if I have a choice between drinking something that tastes of apples and something that tastes of burnt wood, I know which I would choose most of the time.
For now, for a change, the whiskey is fine. Once you distill whiskey, you have to put it somewhere unless you drink it right away. Where do you put it? In a barrel, especially back in the days before glass was cheap or easy to come by. If someone decided he liked it when it tasted that way, the flavor would have been easy enough to make on purpose.
I think you think like a man born of French blood. He also recognized what a compliment Galtier had paid him. Lucien shook his head. Maybe the whiskey made him notice fine shades of meaning he might otherwise have missed. I love the people here—and not just you mad Galtiers. He knew perfectly well how the American had come to town.
Thinking of that, Galtier gulped his whiskey down very fast and held out his glass for a refill. Her coffeehouse had had plenty of Confederate customers ever since the days of the Great War. And Confederates were always coming to Washington for one reason or another: Sixty soon, she thought. On long afternoons like this one, she felt the weight of all her years. A man could easily lose his hair and gain a belly in twenty years. Her hair was gray, her long face wrinkled, the flesh under her chin flabby.
To her, that was a relief. Some coffee sloshed out of the cup and into the saucer on which it sat. The Confederate nodded, conceding the point. He lit a cigar. When he did, Nellie took out a cigarette and put it in her mouth. She smoked only when her customers did. He struck another match and lit it for her. And if anybody gets in his way, he knocks the.
And people are cheering, too, all the way from Sonora to Virginia. Nellie was cynical enough to wonder how much people were encouraged to cheer. But if you know you can win, you will.
Truth is, we were stabbed in the back. Like I said before, they need paying back for that. He did eventually get up and leave. Nellie stared at her in bemusement, as she often did. And part of her simply marveled that Clara was there at all. Nellie had never intended to have a baby by Hal Jacobs.
All he wants to do is get your undies down! As she knew—oh, how she knew! But if she made a big fuss about it, she would just make Clara more eager to taste forbidden fruit. Is he the skinny blond kid with the cowlick? That sigh did almost make Nellie yell, No! But Nellie made herself think twice. You have to promise. Skirts were long again, for which Nellie thanked heaven. That was asking for trouble, and girls between fifteen and twenty had an easy enough time finding it without asking.
As things were, the skirt swirled out when Clara turned, showing off shapely calves and trim ankles. Do I want to be swell? Nellie had her doubts. Hal Jacobs had died a couple of years before, of a rare disease: Nellie absently lit a fresh cigarette, and then had to stub it out in a hurry when a customer came in. Clara served him the coffee he ordered. She could handle the coffeehouse at least as well as Nellie, and why not?
A few minutes after the customer left, Edna walked into the coffeehouse. Armstrong, on the other hand. Yes, he was her grandson. Yes, she loved him on account of that. Clara reacted to Armstrong the way a cat reacts to a dog that has just galumphed into its house.
Now, at thirteen, Armstrong was as tall as she was, and starting to shoot up like a weed. She gave her attention back to her older daughter. Nellie knew what that meant. She drew on the cigarette again. No matter how smooth the smoke was, it gave scant comfort. J ake Featherston turned to Ferdinand Koenig. You can let Chief Justice McReynolds come in now. Featherston got only the briefest glimpse of his secretary before James McReynolds swept into the room, slamming the door behind him. He wore his black robes. They added authority to his entrance, but he would have had plenty on his own.
Though a few years past seventy, he moved like a much younger man. His long face was red with fury. McReynolds shook his head. How dare you, Featherston? How dare you abolish the Supreme Court? Before answering, Jake chose a fine Habana from the humidor on his desk. He made a production of clipping the end and lighting the cigar.
Just like that is right. Then he turned to Ferdinand Koenig. But Koenig could keep things straight once the lawyers had set them out for him—and he had notes to help him along. He had the whip hand, and he knew it. Jake Featherston leaned back in his chair and blew a perfect smoke ring, enjoying the show.
There was no Supreme Court when the Confederate States started out. But you better listen to me. Nobody tells Jake Featherston what to do. McReynolds stared at him. The Whigs and the Radical Liberals will make you pay for your high-handedness. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a five-dollar goldpiece, and let it ring sweetly off the desktop. That was the key question. The answer, of course, was nobody. No matter how true it was, better to keep it quiet. In the tradition-minded Confederate States, that was an even more serious charge than it might have been in other lands.
McReynolds started to laugh. Then he took a second look at the president of the Confederate States. The laughter died unborn. No one around the office would fuss if it went off. And he could always persuade a doctor to say McReynolds had died of heart failure. McReynolds, I always mean what I say.
Ferd there asked you a question. He asked if you thought getting rid of you black-robed buzzards was legal. You going to answer him, or do I have to show you I mean what I say? The jurist licked his lips. But how often did a man meet someone who showed in the most matter-of-fact way possible that he would not only kill him but enjoy doing it?
Jake smiled in anticipation. Later, he thought that smile, more than anything else, was what broke McReynolds. As he opened the door, though, he nervously looked back over his shoulder. Was he wondering if Jake would shoot him in the back? I would if I had to, Jake thought. Now McReynolds had backed down. How many papers and wireless stations have burned down the past few months? Koenig raised a forefinger.
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Too bad for the D. Trouble, and nothing else but. Now he reckons he can make us sweat instead. We can use as many of them as we need. He already knew, in broad terms. But Ferdinand Koenig was the man with the details. Gives us practice making big motor vehicles, you know? C olonel Irving Morrell was elbow-deep in the engine compartment of the new barrel when somebody shouted his name. I may come up with nasty ideas, but you have worse ones. That made Morrell look up from what he was doing.
It also made him look down at himself—in dismay. He wiped them on a rag, but that was hardly more than a token effort. The messenger—a sergeant—shook his head. When Brigadier General Ballou said immediately , he meant it. Houston had always been the most reluctant of the United States, even more so than Kentucky, and looked longingly across the border toward the country from which it had been torn. It had a Freedom Party of its own, which had swept local elections in and sent a Congressman to Philadelphia.
Every day seemed to bring a new riot. Tossing the rag to the ground, Morrell nodded to the messenger. Brigadier General Charles Ballou, the commandant at Fort Leavenworth, was a round little man with a round face and an old-fashioned gray Kaiser Bill mustache. Morrell saluted on coming into his office. I believe you know Brigadier General MacArthur? He made an odd contrast to Ballou, for he was very long, very lean, and very craggy. Nothing like armor, I would say, for discouraging rebels against the United States.
Who better than yourself, Colonel, to command such a force? His voice had a certain edge to it. With barrels, Morrell had succeeded. Does he want me to fail now?
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But he could answer only one way, and he did: I wish I had more modern barrels to place at your disposal, but even the obsolete ones will serve against anything but other barrels. He stubbed out the cigarette, then put another one in the holder and lit it. The modern ones need only a third as many men as the old-fashioned machines.
Now I expect you to live up to your promise. You may go, Colonel.