Guardian of Night by Tony Daniel

same admiration he always had for the Extry legend. Tillich was the Extry in the minds of many. He’d built the first fleet after the service had broken away from the U.S. Navy and Air Force to form its own branch of the U.S. armed forces ten years ago.
    Tillich literally put the X in Extry.
    It had been Tillich who’d insisted that Space Navy sounded too Buck Rogers—and conceded too much to the blue-water rub-a-dub-dubbers. What was needed was a new name, one that suggested extraterrestrial, experimental, new—and Tillich had come up with it.
    Actually, he’d called it the Xtry , thought Leher. And he’d never really agreed that his original formulation might be confusing to pronounce.
    Eight years ago, Tillich had pushed for the name outside official channels using his friends in Congress, and eventually gotten it adopted, with the e added as a sop to the opposition.
    Since the Extry was a baby that Tillich named himself, was it any wonder he thought he owned the child now, lock, stock, and barrel?
    Another sullen glance in Leher’s direction.
    Jesus, had this guy mastered the quick, baleful glance. Leher touched his postcard pocket, felt the square of cardboard under the fabric. Hang on.
    Tillich turned back to his small talk. Leher saw he was chatting with the National Security Advisor and the SECEX, both his mortal bureacratic enemies, politicking till the end. Or what Leher hoped would be the end of the man’s influence.
    Look who’s talking. You’re not exactly Mr. Naïve. You’ve been known to do a bit of maneuvering yourself.
    Leher turned to the coffee urn. It sat on a folded cloth padding that shielded the reception room’s mahogany table. The table was gorgeous, a piece of furniture that had been brought down from the ruins of Washington. It had been through the firebombing, been lovingly refinished. Smoothed. Seamless. Good.
    But the coffee cups were antiques as well and had not been so lucky. Why had the staff put them out? They ought to be locked away.
    Not only were they out, someone had stacked them two-high on a red, scraped plastic tray. China cups, dainty, thin porcelain. Set with the presidential seal. Priceless treasures now.
    The very cup Leher reached for had a jagged line running from the brim and down, down the curve of its flowery shape, disappearing around the curve of the base.
    A hairline crack. Suddenly Leher was convinced that the cup would shatter in his hand. That another bit of history—of innocence—would be lost. Leher jerked his fingers back.
    Not soon enough. He’d touched the cup. It clattered off the second tier of cups and onto the mahogany table.
    It did not shatter but landed on its side—and rolled over one turn before coming to rest against its own handle.
    Leher let out a quiet exclamation, set his hands in palm-up supplication to the cup to stop, please don’t fall off the table.
    Shit.
    The world, constantly on the verge of falling apart.
    Into Leher’s mind flooded something he must, absolutely, write down. Something he needed to tell Neddie.
    I will compose and write the postcard as soon as this meeting is over, Leher told himself. I promise I will do this. I will do it by this afternoon, the evening at the latest. I will mail it before the night is done.
    Leher breathed deeply and stepped back from the table, away from the coffee cups. Damn, and he’d needed a cup of joe badly. But then he felt his left hand—his writing hand—reaching into his inner coat pocket for a pen.
    How did the hand get there? He glanced down at it. It moved with its own autonomy.
    The hand took out pen, then postcard. Placed the card on the table’s surface near the edge.
    Motion for continuance denied. He was going to write down his thought now. Leher put the postcard on the table, bent over it, and began to write in the tiny letters that his ex-wife had once said looked like “squashed bugs.”

    Dear Neddie, people get the idea that just because they’ve managed not to get