On the broad, covered cedar back deck of my restored home overlooking the deep-water shipping channel where the naval patrol cutters and civilian passenger ferries glided clean, smooth, and free toward Green Bay...
Sitting at a long twelve-foot reclaimed chestnut trestle table with an open set of regional land surveys and a steaming ceramic mug of dark-roast chicory coffee...
Was Damon Mercer.
I was forty-three now.
I had formally assumed the permanent Chancellorship of the Sovereign Admiralty Trust six months ago, while directing strategic territorial title interdiction for the Joint Chiefs of Staff without drawing a corporate consulting dollar. The paralyzing trauma of my wife's death years ago, the sting of seeing my boy bullied on the canvas, and the heavy burden of eighty years of sovereign defense vigilance had completely metabolized into an un-shakeable, eighty-year architectural peace; my strength had completely returned, rooted in the bedrock of an un-broken command.
