The room had once been a ceremonial chamber, marble floors and gilded moldings entirely at odds with the exhausted, filthy men and women now arguing across its length, most of them still in uniform though the insignia meant considerably less than it had weeks ago.
General Harlan Voss stood at the head of the long table, maps spread out beneath a scattering of battery-powered lanterns, watching the argument unfold with the particular weariness of a man who'd stopped expecting consensus days ago.
"We have functioning units in six regions still," Voss said, raising his voice to cut through the overlapping shouting. "Six. That's not nothing. If we coordinate now, before command structure fully dissolves, we can still establish protected zones. Safe corridors. Something."
