Prologue

 

We know from modern scientific theory that there are an infinite number of alternate universes, and therefore that there exist an infinite number of alternate worlds where history has taken a different course from the one we know. Some of these alternates must be so strange as to be unrecognizable, while others would be almost identical to our own. This story is set in a world where the United States military gained the upper hand early in the history of the Republic, and reduced the civilian government to a mere a tool of the generals.

The United States of that world became the world’s leading superpower after the Second World War, as here. However, a dangerous rival arose in Communist China in the 1990’s after the collapse of the Soviet Union. That China, having built up its industrial base to become a leading economic power, used its new muscle to create a huge, powerful military establishment to carry out an expansionist foreign policy. The United States and its allies sustained a series of defeats, beginning with the loss of Taiwan in 1993. The Chinese went on to absorb the small nations to the south and southeast over the next few years with monotonous ease, as Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Burma were occupied one after the other, so that by 2002 the Chinese armies stood on the border of India. Thereafter came a successful invasion of the Philippines in 2004. Japan fell into China’s orbit without a fight the following year. In 2009, China crushed a combined U.S, Australian and Indonesian army and occupied the entire archipelago of Indonesia in the largest amphibious operation in history. This disaster led to the removal of the United States Chief of the General Staff who had presided over this string of disasters, and the elevation of General Bernard Grant Cafferson to the top spot

Under Cafferson, women were permitted to serve in the U.S. Army for the first time in history, in 2009 (Cafferson was unable to obtain the cooperation of the other services). For the first two years, women were limited to the rank of non-coms: there were no female officers. Not, that is, until the National Women’s Military Academy was opened on the grounds of an abandoned Army base in the Pocono Mountains at High Point, Pennsylvania. As told in the first book in the series, Cadet: The Academy, the NWMA was established at the insistence of the Chief of the General Staff. The purpose of the Academy was twofold: to train beautiful, intelligent women to be efficient staff officers to top generals and admirals, but also to teach them to be submissive sexual playthings for those same high-ranking officers. Cafferson adopted this scheme as the only way to gain agreement from the rest of the General Staff to allow the commissioning of female officers. He hoped to eventually place women in all three major services and every type of position, including the command of combat troops, because he believed the country could not afford to waste half its population if it hoped to defeat Red China.

The NWMA was a success, graduating a class of young women who were efficient aides-de-camp and highly trained sexual partners for the Army and Air Force general officers to whom they were assigned. But far more important than this was the one completely unexpected product of the academy, a cadet who proved to be a military genius on the level of a Robert E. Lee, a Count Belisarius or an Alexander of Macedon, by the name of Jodie Lawrence. Recognizing Lawrence’s unique abilities, General Cafferson, gave her the responsibility for devising a plan to turn back the expected Chinese invasion of New Zealand. She did, and her plan handed the Chinese their first major defeat in over twenty years. As a result, Lawrence enjoyed an unprecedented, lightning rise to the top of the U.S military establishment. She was promoted to Lieutenant General within a year of her graduation from the NWMA, and named as Cafferson’s second in command on the General Staff.

There was a cabal within the General Staff that had originally opposed allowing women to serve in the armed forces, and had never accepted their presence (this story is told in full in Cadet 2: Duty, Service, Country). The leaders of this group were all senior naval officers, and they had attempted to overthrow Cafferson by creating a scandal at the NWMA. The Revolt of the Admirals was foiled, and the leaders of the junta were forced to resign their commissions and retire from the service, but even after they were forced out, these men continued to work with other discontented elements still in the military, as determined as ever to destroy Cafferson’s legacy, bring down his successor, and seize power for themselves. They were only waiting for the right moment to make their move…