And Dead is All the Innocence of Anger and Surprise

The Colombian-Bolivian War (2022-2025) was an invasion by the People’s Republics of Gran Colombia, resulting in the unconditional surrender of the Plurinational State of Bolivia and its annexation as the Bolivian People’s Republic. The Politburo of Gran Colombia cited as casus belli only the 1967 summary execution of Ernesto “Che” Guevara by Bolivian forces. For its duration and up to the time of writing, the war has been an object of media attention regarding alleged human rights violations committed by the Revolutionary Army of Gran Colombia and Colombian Ministry of the Interior, especially the use of civilian populations both during and after the war in programs of forced labor.

–New Cornell Encyclopedia, Cornell University Press. Ithaca, 2026.

Admiral Castro, his wife, and his teenage son sat on the edge of their living room couch, taking full advantage of the paterfamilias’s Politburo privileges to watch the ruling on the latest match live. Most Colombians would find out about the ruling through an anchor for the state news outlet reading a carefully-worded script, but the admiral’s family had unrestricted access to Northern television channels and websites, and watched the Nigerian lawyer who had been brought in as one of the Duel’s referees deliver the findings on NBC.

“While the Treaty of Budapest does allow for a draw or even a loss to occur in scenarios where the losing pilot survives and the winner does not, that is not what happened earlier this week. A match is over when at least one Duelist is completely incapacitated, one pilot has yielded or both have agreed to a draw, or one or both have ceased to live. Major Quispe’s intent was, most likely, to induce a draw in place of a loss. If this worked as intended, he would have guaranteed that Colombia would not need to honor its promised indemnities, even if his replacement had lost the final match and failed to secure Mexico City. While Quispe’s death and Don Juan de Austria’s complete immobilization were simultaneous, as far as can be measured, we have concluded that, under the definitions and parameters provided in the treaty, the Don Quixote was completely immobilized the moment its cockpit was ejected, before either of these other two events. The victory goes to Don Juan de Austria and the California Shogunate.”

The family paused, all of them grasping English well enough to understand, but the message not quite sinking in until the live-translated Spanish closed captions caught up.

“Bullshit!” the youngest Castro yelled, his voice cracking. As his mother chided him, the admiral rose, pulled out his phone, and selected Minister Fernandez’s contact card.

Fernandez was in his recliner watching the announcement on the BBC when his phone rang. He took one last draw on his pipe before answering. “Comrade Admiral, I presume you’ve seen what has come of Major Quispe’s heroic sacrifice?”

“A shameful ruling, Comrade Minister. The damned–”

“The Nigerian has the right of it, I’m afraid. Quispe was a true believer in the cause, and will be given the Champion of the Proletariat award posthumously, but he did have a temper, and a sacrifice made in a fit of rage is rarely calculated. He was a bear, but I think now we need… a jaguar, perhaps even a viper. How many other pilots do you have trained up?”

“Half a dozen, Minister, but none who learned the Quixote design half as well as Quispe. I do not think any will stand a chance against that aristocrat Hernandez, unless we can secure some enormous advantage elsewhere.”

“I see. Pity, I was hoping we could take that city without being too obviously underhanded. At least we get a home field advantage, this time.”

“Selecting a battlefield bisected by a giant cliff was an inspired decision, I’ll give the feudalists that. Perhaps we can do something similar? There may be some valley in the Andes we can use as a killbox for the autocannon…”

Holding his phone between cheek and shoulder, Fernandez thumbed through a report on his end table, forwarded by his counterpart in Cuba’s Intelligence Directorate. He noted a comment about an EMP weapon deployed by the rebels– something that, in hindsight, he should have paid more attention to on his first readthrough– and came to notes on the slow but steady progress of a counter-encirclement of the rebel forces in Santiago de Cuba. “Actually, Comrade Admiral, I have quite another idea. I’ll need to run it by some officers and diplomatic types, before I waste your time with the details of it. You’ll be needing every second, Sancho. I’d start with onboarding the new pilot… perhaps that Interior Ministry lass you mentioned in your last report.”

“The counterinsurgency officer? I’m not sure she’s mentally stable.”

“You did mention her… excesses, yes. But, if it's cold cruelty she's prone to, and not manic rage, then I’m not sure mental stability would be an asset. Fair is foul, and foul is fair.” the minister quoted in English, before hanging up.
Follow-up calls went out to Colombia’s ambassadors to Cuba and the United States, the theater commander for Central America, and the fleet admiral for the Caribbean. By the time they finished, it was past Fernandez’s usual bedtime, but he checked the time difference between Bogotá and Salt Lake City. Yes, his agent was almost certainly still awake. He made sure the encryption software on his phone was running, then gave Francisco Alejandrez a ring.

“Y’ello?” a tired voice asked in NorCal English.

“Frankie,” Fernandez purred in the genteel Received Pronunciation his English had absorbed at Cambridge, “a pleasure to speak with you directly. I believe you know me as Arthur.”

“Arthur!” From his position hunched over the laptop where he was writing up a contact report, Alejandrez shot bolt upright. Javier Fernandez? My boss’s boss’s boss? The hell’s he doing contacting me directly? “Did I really screw up that badly?” His nerves showed through the attempt at levity more than he would have liked.

“Au contraire, my good man. I have a special task I wished to hand down directly. You will have access to whatever resources you can so much as conceive of needing. I even have a sleeper agent I’d be willing to activate to help you, a Gendarme in San Francisco. Just so long as the job gets done; I simply won’t be able to abide failure in this.”

“Of course, Comrade Minister.”

“I need you to fetch Aldonza for me. Bring her to Bogotá, that’s a bird we need to get singing again. Do whatever is necessary to her intermediary to get the intel you need for the job, he is not a meaningful asset by comparison.”

“She will not come willingly, and doubt she’ll arrive with a loose tongue. My interrogation methods should be adequate for the broker, but I hope you have a welcoming party ready for us in Bogotá.”

“It happens I have just the person for the task. I trust you’ve learned of Cervantes’ death.”

“Who hasn’t? It’s been all over the news.”

“His replacement has a remarkable record of service to the State in this sort of business. We will send Aldonza straight to Project Windmill.”

Just as Fernandez was making plans to reassign her, over two thousand kilometers away, Captain Rafaela Hoffmann Muñoz, Colombian Ministry of the Interior Counterinsurgency Division, was finally starting to have some fun with her assignment. She and her team were deep in the Bolivian Amazon, in a camp that just earlier that evening had belonged to counterrevolutionary guerrillas. Most had been taken in their sleep, without a fight, and she had started the interrogation by having them draw lots. One-third drew losing twigs, and she had them impaled on sharpened saplings and boughs, suspended by different parts of the body that would see them die at different speeds, some in minutes, some in days. Their screams set just the ambiance she was looking for, this fine evening.

Most of the rest were bound and gagged, a few were taken off by her NCOs for side interrogations or for target practice, and she selected two– similar-looking, but one middle-aged and the other a teenager– and had them tied to chairs on either side of what had been the insurgents’ map table. The younger one grinned defiantly.

“You know torture doesn’t work, right? Only gets people babbling, telling you what you want to hear.”

“Very true,” she said, leaning forward, “if you don’t do it right.”

His smile widened as his eyes traced her form upward, until they met her own eyes, at which he frowned. Yes, her icy blue eyes, never quite smiling with the rest of her face, often had a very different effect on men than the rest of her.

She tousled his hair. “You to are relatives, no? Father and son? Uncle and nephew?”

“How did you–”

“I have something of an eye for phenotypic detail.” She tossed a blonde braid over her shoulder. “Runs in the family, from the great-grandparents who came over after the German Crisis.” She placed a device not unlike an AED on the table, and taped two electrodes each onto the chests of her victims. “Here’s a trick my pa's old opa used on partizans in Poland. Hold this.”

She placed a remote with a single button in one of the hands tied behind the youth’s back, secured it in among the ropes binding him, then switched on the device.

He screamed, spasms running up and down his back.

“Press the button to stop it.”

“What… AH… are you going to do… when that happens?”

“Nothing, I just don’t want you to take more than you can handle.”

The pain showing in his face overtook the suspicion, and he pressed the button. Immediately, his torment stopped, but the older man began lurching and screaming.

The young rebel looked on in horror, then released the button. He kept his hand away from it until foam ran down his chin, then pressed again, agony instantly replaced by shame.

Yes, it would take them all night, but she would make him actively, willfully, give one of his loved ones a slow and miserable death. And if she could make him do that, then he would understand there was nothing she could not make him do.