The athletic, 220-pound descendent of the Nobel-Peace-Prize-winning  politician-environmentalist of the previous century stepped off the conveyor belt at Jenna Jameson Square, the center of Level XXX. He walked one hundred yards north and entered a theme brothel called “Rococo.”
“Hello, Danton,” Nana Pavlov greeted him. “How are you?” the busty, American-Russian beauty of twenty-eight years enquired. She wore a period-piece dress of dark red silk; it hugged her tight about the waist and chest, billowing below the hips.
“Fine, thanks. Can we talk here?”
“No, let’s go to my office.” Pavlov led him past authentic Louis XV furniture and original Jean-Antoine Watteau paintings and into her private office, from where she ran the business affairs of the ten brothels she owned on Level XXX.
Danton Gore had known Pavlov for two years. Since then, for a thirty-three percent fee, she found him clients. Although Gore was a captain in the Tunnels Protection Division of the Defenders of the Light, he moonlighted as a high-class, male escort when he was not busy patrolling the tunnel transportation system in the city. In this way, he made some extra money and sometimes had great sex with beautiful women. More importantly to Gore, he met women with insider information on the powerful, influential men at the highest levels of business and politics. Gore gladly performed sexual services for these women regardless of beauty in order to pump them for information that furthered the cause of Free Vegas.
The Bush dynasty and its nepotistic business and political cronies possessed immense wealth derived from the sale of She-Hun crude oil and American-made weapons of mass destruction. They earned additional billions of dollars through obscenely high-percentage returns on private equity investments and hedge funds. One of Free Vegas’s primary goals was to disempower these plutocratic families and see to a fair redistribution of their financial and material wealth among the world’s people.
Pavlov sat down behind her desk and Gore took a seat across from her. He mouthed the words “is it safe to talk here?”
“Yes,” she answered him out loud. “Cloud Base’s technical lab has just modified my multifunctional device,” she held up her wrist, showing Gore the mechanism that she wore there, “to also scan for listening spy bugs.”
“Are you sure it works? Those little bastards are smaller than mosquitoes and can fly anywhere. Just last week, they used them to expose a Free Vegas revolutionary cell in the Tunnels Protection Division, Northeast.”
“Yes, Danton, I’m sure. The head engineer worked on my MFD himself. I think he knows what he’s talking about.”
“Ok. It’s just that I’m a bit anxious about everything lately. The She-Huns have been more aggressive recently in their attacks against the city’s tunnel system. And I feel like something big will happen with our revolution soon as well.”
“Well, you just might be right!”
“What do you mean, Nana? What are you talking about?”
“Well, you’ll need to clear it with Cloud Base first, but it looks like next Wednesday Free Vegas could make some truly historical international headlines, with the word ‘assassinate’ appearing on newspaper front pages all around the globe!”

The Royal Hun-Vee Arrives

Inside the presidential battle tank, driver Han Yong Yee shouted, “Sirs, there they are! Ten miles out. Check the main monitor.”
Bush, Cheney and the two tank crew members looked at the main monitor with awe; the storm had abated temporarily and the exterior zoom camera was showing them the biggest Hun-Vee any of them had ever seen. The gigantic battle fortress rolled along on two rows of twenty-foot diameter tires.
“My Lord, Beem, have you ever seen such a huge Hun-Vee?”
“Never. I guess it must be the royal Hun-Vee. It stands to reason that it would be the biggest, best one in their military fleet.”
“That thing must be three hundred feet long and a good hundred feet wide,” guessed Bush.
“A hundred feet tall, as well,” added Cheney. “That bastard must hold a thousand warriors, at least.” He pointed at the front of the Hun-Vee displayed on the screen and counted, “One, two, three, four, five, six cannons. It looks like three eight-inchers and three twelve-inchers.”
“Excuse me, sir,” said the gunner, Takeshi Ling, “but I believe those bigger guns are at least sixty feet long, making them sixteen-inch barrels firing three-thousand-pound shells up to a distance of twenty miles.”
“Good eye, soldier. I think you’re right. Not bad for a bunch of lesbian wenches with archaic, late 20th-century military hardware and capabilities.”
The four men continued to study the mammoth vehicle, its black and silver colors half-covered in kicked-up sand. Its general outline resembled an ellipsoid shape cut in half lengthwise.
“Corporal Yee,” Bush addressed the driver, “take us to meet the She-Huns half way.”
“Yes, sir.” replied Yee, “I estimate rendezvous in five minutes. Maintaining radio silence as per top-secret mission protocol.”
Bush turned to Cheney. “Beem, will you join me in a quick prayer? It has already been a rough day, and I want His help in the meeting with Khan.” The president was a devout, fundamentalist Christian, like all of his ancestors. In 2040, the fourth Bush president of the dynasty banned the teachings of Charles Darwin and evolutionary theory in all schools nationwide, both public and private. Since that time, all mainstream Americans believed that the world and all of its inhabitants, from dogs to dinosaurs, had been created in only six days a mere 6,000 years earlier, on the morning of October 23rd, 4004 B.C.
Cheney took a healthy swig of Kentucky bourbon from his hip flask, belched, and replied, “Okay.”
The two men held hands and Bush chanted out loud, “Jesus, I belong to the chosen dynasty. You have blessed us and our friends since you first made us millionaires almost two hundred years ago. I’m part of your divine plan for world rule by the righteous. Please help us to prevail today. Amen.”
“Amen,” Cheney chimed in.
Although Bush prayed to the New Testament Christian god, in reality, he answered to other gods: those of power, money, oil, black ice, and S&M. These were the gods that he truly coveted, those that enslaved him and ruled his entire life.
Bush calmly pulled a custom-made, hand-crafted, solid-platinum pillbox from his uniform and pulled out a crystal of black ice. He held the pea-sized, black, crystalline drug under his nose and inhaled deeply; the crystal vaporized as it shot up his nostril, leaving a faint, dark stain on his upper lip. This illegal synthetic substance produced the narcotic effects of cocaine and ecstasy, toned down by opium.
All four men returned their attention to the main monitor, which showed open desert covered in avocactus plants bending slightly in the increasing wind. They could just discern the silhouette of the Chocolate Mountain ridge to the south through the sandstorm. The plants thumped against the undercarriage of the hull as the tank sped towards the meeting point. Metal pings sounded all around them, the winds showering the tank with small stones and desert debris.
“Corporal Yee,” commanded Bush, “stop the tank! We’ll wait here for those pagan bitches.” The president studied the monitor. “Beem, do you see that?”
“Wow!” Cheney looked at the herd of She-Hun battle boars displayed on the monitor. “What do you think, Negon? Should we blow off a little steam? Besides, we haven’t killed anything in a few days.”
“And how!” affirmed Bush.
“Those boars make far better targets than agritube-raised pheasants.”
Bush looked at the monitor and studied the image of the six-legged, one thousand-pound genetic inventions of the women warriors as the animals stood chewing lazily on avocactus fruits. Measuring five feet to the shoulder and nine feet long, these boars could cover open ground at a speed of forty miles per hour.
“Beem, just make sure you don’t shoot anyone by accident again. How much bourbon have you had today?” Bush joked with his friend, who had suffered a media grilling after having shot a fellow hunter while pheasant hunting a few weeks earlier.
Cheney immediately looked at Bush, rage building on his face. “Negon,” he began, trying to control his temper in front of his soldiers, “you’re hardly one to criticize.” The veins were now popping out of his neck. “If you had finished off the She-Huns when you had the chance ten years ago when we occupied their capital city of Hunzania, we wouldn’t even be here today negotiating. After that, we would never have lost the southern half of New Mexico and Arizona to these gun-toting lesbians. All you had to do was control your desire to be the sex-slave of a fifteen-year old princess. How many times have you met with her in the last ten years, anyway? It’s a real addiction for you.”
“Careful, Beem, we’re great friends and colleagues but I won’t tolerate any criticism from anyone, no matter how valid. I’m still the president here.” Bush paused and considered a moment. “But you’re right, I shouldn’t have joked about that incident. Sorry.” Bush put his hand on Cheney’s shoulder; they had been friends since attending the South Point Christian Military Academy for Young Men together thirty-five years earlier. “Let’s shoot us some battle boar bacon!”
Cheney looked hard at Bush, and then softened his gaze. “I’m sorry too, Negon. I guess I’m a bit more nervous than I realized. After all, you’ve never brought me along to one of these covert meetings with these women before, and that royal Hun-Vee has some serious firepower going for it.”
“Have a drink,” encouraged Bush.
Cheney took a swig of bourbon, opened the hatch and climbed out onto the hull of the tank, squatting in the wind shadow of the turret. Bush climbed the ladder, the upper half of his torso sticking out of the vehicle; he also wanted to release some stress.
Cheney kneeled and raised his pulse pistol, taking aim at the large animals. Squinting to stop the sand from blowing into his eyes, he opened fire. Inside the gun’s barrel, an ultra-powerful battery generated an electromagnetic pulse that silently hurled light-weight, high-density bullets at a rate of 3,000 rounds per minute towards the battle boars. Cheney emptied his entire clip of sixty rounds in less than two seconds, as did Bush beside him.
“Yeeeeeee-haaaaaww!” both men yelled in unison.
Instantly, twenty animals fell to the ground, hit by bullets travelling at 10,000 feet per second. The other boars ran away, snorting in terror, their feet slamming loudly into the ground. Cheney quickly put in a new magazine and squeezed off another sixty shots, smiling as he watched another eight animals fall to the ground.
“Ooooow-eeeeee. Nice shootin’ Tex!” commended the president.
Both men entered the tank, without a second thought for the corpses they left behind. Cheney closed the hatch behind him.
“I feel much better,” said Cheney.
“Me too, Beem. Now, let’s focus.”
“Excuse me, sirs,” interrupted Yee. “The She-Hun vehicle is only two miles away.”
Bush and Cheney took their seats. “Hold your position, corporal. We’ll wait for them here,” ordered Bush.