Jaycee Woods

In my draft of Boudica and The Butcher, Cyrus as XO is The Butcher’s right hand man in the battalion. They are close friends going back to their time as professors at a small fictional Pennsylvania college before the war. Despite Cyrus working to implement The Butcher’s plan to end the war, they don’t always agree.

While The Butcher holds the rebels responsible for starting the war, Cyrus also emphasizes that he and Gideon (The Butcher’s name) failed to prevent the war when they should have. While professors (one of Business Management and the other Chemistry), according to Cyrus’ argument, they had failed to correct/oppose/confront the Leftist take over in the humanities; thus, in failing to fight the battle of ideas, they had been reduced to fighting a battle of blood. On this point, Gideon conceded, but this also increased his personal guilt over the death of his wife and son in a rebel terrorist attack at the start of the war.

In planning to besiege Pilgerruh (present day Cleveland, renamed by the rebels), Gideon became interested in the city’s chemical industry as a resource to potentially manufacture chemical weapons to use against the city (hey, I am trying to make this civil war as horrible as I can imagine). Before becoming an American chemistry professor, Cyrus was a defector from Iran’s chemical weapons program. Using his expertise, Cyrus convinces Gideon that the technical challenges of deploying such improvised chemical weapons would endanger his own troops. This convinces Gideon to instead act to secure the chemicals from use by the rebel leader Cleaver and sell them on the black market to buy supplies for his army.

After Cleaver’s counterattack on the Union rail base east of Pilgerruh, Cyrus challenges the wisdom of maintaining the siege of Pilgerruh while recommending pivoting to attack Sandusky and Port Clinton. Cyrus argues that for less risk they could still cut the east-west rail connection between rebel cities and obtain a smaller lake port for opening import/export through the St Lawrence. This time Cyrus failed to shift Gideon as for a smaller prize their army would risk getting crushed in a vice between the rebel cities of Toledo and Pilgerruh with potential reinforcements to the rebels from Detroit with their supply lines into Canada. Gideon preferred the odds of having Akron-Youngstown at his back.

Most importantly to the story, Cyrus is the mastermind behind Boudica’s efforts to save Gideon from the war by helping him to find a purpose to live after the war ends. Failing to do so himself directly, Cyrus feeds Boudica hints, information, and strategy through Olga, who is Boudica’s mentor and pregnant with Cyrus’ child. While Boudica solves the puzzle that is Gideon (The Butcher), Cyrus is figuratively her fairy godmother hidden behind Olga.