hat men
could be proud to die for, a place where family could mean something,
and women grow old without feeling lost. To watch a young maid walk
here among the fields, to see the depths in her eyes that reflected the
melancholy of her soul, and hear the Gaelic accent touch lightly on the
stones of moss-covered walls, was to know that God gave love to Man.
Life flowed in its every vein, and the minor modes of Baroque ballads
seemed to form a living chain to many pasts.

It was also a place coveted by the French Elite, who knew all that the
Irish knew of love and land and harvest, but knew it better, and
therefore contrived to take from these coarse, uncultured folk what
could more fruitfully be employed by themselves.

And so a siege was laid, in which the Free French took no part, and
even loudly decried. But due to a peculiar Dual Constitution enacted
late in the twenty-first century---at which time the French, desiring
to show their independence, frank difference, and superiority to the
rest of the world, had created a political structure wholly new and
untried---their approval was not needed for a military venture
utilizing French Elite forces.

New Belfast was surrounded and cut off. And as the Irish had only one
other major holding, the green homeland of Earth, and few outposts
close at hand, it was unlikely that sufficient help would arrive before
the colonists were overthrown and new, foreign defenses erected---new,
foreign erections defended.

And United Ireland* as well, for reasons no foreigner could quite
comprehend, had established few ties or alliances with the vast expanse
beyond its islands, except for a continuing dialogue with their many
descendants living in the Commonwealth, which they had always, until
now, considered protection enough.

..........

*The province of Northern Ireland had been restored in time by the
British not because the mindless violence of the IRA had succeeded, but
because it had failed. The bitter cycle of hatred had finally, toward
the mid 22nd Century, diffused, and both sides forgotten their
indisputable righteousness long enough to come to the bargaining table,
where a mutually acceptable agreement had been reached.

...........................

But at the moment the Americans had other things on their minds. Hayes
was still on the loose, the Soviets were brewing mischief of their own,
and Stone had been assassinated.

The protective shields and out