Southern Cross by Windstar

The litany continued, on and on, over and over again cycling through her brain as she argued
with herself. The result was the same as it had been for the previous four days, the First Guardian
leaned back in her chair and tried to ignore her pounding headache. Her temper was short, she'd
nearly ripped the head off her com officer this morning, and it had been a struggle to resist
pummeling Birk.
I need a distraction.
Straightening, she reached for the first data pad she could get her hands on and started reading
the report.
Perfect, a report on President Fairchild.
General Whittecker's files had provided no end of embarrassments for the President of the U.S.
Once Winston had leaked selected parts of those files to the world press, something that
reminded Emily of a feeding frenzy took place.
One thing you can say for Whittecker, he kept a lot of records.
Records which specified the private arrangements which had been agreed upon by a certain
Senator Fairchild before he accepted the offer by then Presidential candidate Blake to run as his
Vice-Presidential candidate. They also traced the large amount of money, which had gotten
Fairchild his seat as a Senator. Emily could just imagine how tempting it would have been to be
offered the position of Vice-President on a silver platter. Even more, how it would have been to
have a chance to be President. She knew Fairchild's kind; they lived for power, and how much
more power could you get than the President of the U.S.?
Other than being a Guardian of course.
Emily smiled wanly at her own little joke and scanned through the rest of the report to the
attached findings at the bottom. Whatever the results of the upcoming impeachment hearings,
President Fairchild was a lame duck. He couldn't authorize a stamp without being hounded by
the media now. There was no way he was going to survive the upcoming Presidential elections.
The strained relations between the Empire and the U.S. Government had eased considerably
nearly overnight. The no-fly orders had been dropped like a, what is it they call it, ah yes, a hot
potato. Things were getting back on track, but for once the U.S. was behind the rest of the world.
Even the third world countries had a month long head start on the U.S. now.
The intelligence report on the two candidates was interesting, as was the in depth background
searches that had been done on both. She read those with a bit more attention, still she found
herself thinking often of a certain short redhead. The two main political parties, it seemed, had
gotten sideswiped by the Imperial Senate elections, which had already been held. Neither had
done a good job of getting candidates ready for those uniform elections.