Baltic Gambit: A Novel of the Vampire Earth (9 page)

Transport. Her feet could use a rest, too. The idea of not walking or bumping along on horseback appealed.

She wondered if they could shoehorn Ahn-Kha into the trip. Kentucky was more than just people now; there were a couple of thousand Golden Ones and a few hundred Gray Ones camped out south and west of Fort Seng. The Golden Ones had already scouted out a limestone quarry for building dwellings that would be more substantial than tents. His reassuring, muscular bulk sometimes prevented problems with local roughnecks from even starting. And he’d be warm at fifty thousand feet, or if the weather turned on them at the North Pole, or wherever over there they were heading.

Her closest thing to a partner, in war and in her personal life, slumbered in his loosened uniform. Only his soft, moccasin-like legworm-leather boots with their crepe-rubber soles were off.

He had a sparse little room. He had a few books, most of them histories. Valentine was a Civil War buff and swapped books with other enthusiasts. His little collection of toiletries, the expensive soap that he always managed to acquire one way or another, was arranged on a small shelf by the door, with his towel and washcloth both hanging on hooks. A wardrobe held spare and dress uniforms and a smattering of civilian stuff, and some overalls he wore when quartering logs with axe and wedge and sledge and splitting maul.

He kept himself exercised that way when at Fort Seng. Something of the old hot desire she used to feel for him could still rekindle when she watched him quartering wood. He worked relentlessly, back muscles writhing like coiling snakes as he placed his logs. Then he let the axe slide through his fingers until he swung it effortlessly around, letting the weight of the blade build momentum through the swing until it struck with a resounding
thwack!
that echoed off the barn and south hill.

Wood cutting was a metaphor for how he approached most jobs. He broke any task up into smaller pieces, then struck hard at each little piece of it. She heard him give a talk about strategy on the campaign in Texas to his Razorbacks once, where he predicted that the Kurian rule in Texas would be quartered and split into kindling.

She’d recruited David Valentine after his name had been passed to her by the Lifeweavers. She read his confidential file—it was easy enough to swipe, since in those days Southern Command’s headquarters had very little security in the personnel department—and
she’d become intrigued by him after reading a lengthy report he’d written about his experiences in Wisconsin and Chicago. Chicago was not mission-related; he’d gone there chasing after a girl named Molly Carlson who’d helped him when he was slowed by a wounded comrade.

The old-fashioned gallantry of the gambit impressed her, though she wondered if he could make a good Cat. To operate in the Kurian Zone, you had to have no more regard for those rounded up for the Reapers than you would for a livestock car full of pigs rattling toward the slaughterhouse. She had been a Cat for five years at that time—she started very young, still in her teens—and had seen his type. They usually ended up doing something courageous, suicidal, and ultimately useless.

One odd thing about his file also intrigued her, and years later she still had no idea of the real answer. His mother’s name was missing. Not missing, as in never entered, but missing, as in someone had gone in with a razor blade and cut the name out of the permanent record, then made a fresh copy so that a quick glance made it look blank.

Valentine had told her, openly enough, that his mother was a beautiful Sioux originally from the Canadian side of Lake Superior, and his father a Pan-American mutt from the San Francisco area. Easy to believe, given his features, bronze skin, and thick black hair—now with a contrasting brush of gray at the temples and an off-color strand or two up top. He didn’t seem to think his mother any big secret, so why did someone at Southern Command want it that way?

Still, the men liked him. In the field he was a fighter; back at the
fort he spent most of his time trying to make their conditions more livable. She liked him. She wouldn’t mind travelling with him again on what was basically courier duty. Maybe they’d get some of their old closeness back that they’d had down south when he was posing as a Quisling marine. She found herself more than half looking forward to the trip.

Like anything, planning helped. She thought for an hour or so; then, when she’d decided how to approach him with the job, she finally had a clear enough mind for sleep.

She found him with a corporal, laying out training gear for an excursion. Looked to her like it might be a scavenger hunt—there were plenty of bags, cutters, and tools. Even an automobile battery with a current rig that could be used to test everything from an electronic fuel injection system to an old phone.

“We’re taking a trip, Val,” she said. Who could say no to orders?

He sighed and set down his clipboard. “We are? Where?”

“Lambert is sending me along with the delegation to the all-freehold conference or assembly or whatever they’re calling it. I need you.”

“I’m needed here.”

“Hate to pull rank on you, Val, but officially you’re just an auxiliary corporal on the Fort Seng roster. As a serving Cat, I’m nominally a captain. The major thing is just a courtesy.”

“So are the captain’s bars, when it comes down to it,” Valentine said, yawning. “I bet you don’t even have a set.”

“I do, but they’re from a member of the Iowa Guard who really
should have known better than to stop and question hitchhikers. Look like ours, though.”

“Let’s see them,” Valentine said. “Otherwise the order’s not official.”

“I keep them up my ass for emergencies. You want to get a spoon?”

Valentine grimaced. “That’s not regulation. Order’s still invalid.”

“Now you sound like Lambert. She can’t give an order unless her butt is clenched to regulation tension. Listen, Val, you’ve been bitching at me for a couple years now that I need a break. Maybe we both do. Don’t you want to dine on caviar and champagne for a couple weeks? Have a month of travel with someone else worrying about all the arrangements?”

“There’s no such thing as a joyride these days,” Valentine said. “This will probably be just as exhausting as an operation. If we get stranded over there, God knows how we’ll ever get back.”

“We can get in a refugee pipeline, worst-case scenario,” she said. “C’mon, man, it’ll be fun. I have a good feeling in my stomach about this. Caviar and champagne sound pretty good compared to the summer’s legworm barbecues.”

She could see Valentine melt a little at her mention of her stomach. He was always worried about the state of her digestion. “Who’s promising caviar and champagne?”

“Stands to reason. If a bunch of suit-and-ties from here to New Zealand are getting together for a gabfest, there’s going to be plenty of top-shelf food and booze. You know politicians.”

Valentine retied his hair. It was a time-buying move he liked to do when thinking something over. “There are one or two I like.
Sime, for instance. The operator. He’s a snake—smooth, quiet, and poisonous. I’m damn glad he’s on our side.”

Might as well drop bait here, she thought. The conversational waters seemed promising. “Well, I have another worry. Remember how we hit that conference in French Lick.”

“Poorly,” he said. She assumed he meant the first attempt at an assault, rather than his memory.

“I think we went too large. We should have just gone in with twenty Bears,” Duvalier said. “Spilled milk gone under the bridge, Val. Suppose the Kurians catch wind of this and try the same thing.”

“It’s more their style to try to give everyone a disease or poison the water.”

“All the more reason to drink champagne,” she said. “I think we should go up there and do a little informal security work.”

Valentine looked in the direction of the colonel’s office. “Lambert’s been burned so many times with ops blowing up on her, I’m surprised she’s even sending anyone.”

“She told me Kentucky wants to be represented, too. They’re as good as any other freehold. The Southern Command delegation is letting us tag along.”

“Hmmm. Ahn-Kha’s been dealing with a delegation from the Kentucky government for the past few days. I thought they were touring the Grog settlements, but maybe they’re the delegates and they’re getting some kind of handle on the numbers and strength of our new allies. Who are the Southern Command delegates?” Valentine asked.

“Good question. I don’t know. Your old friend General Martinez, maybe?”

“I don’t see him leaving his commander-in-chief chair for a long, cold trip. He’ll send a mini-me, though. I’d hope they’d have enough brains to send Sime; he’s plainspoken and experienced at these conferences. He had a tough job to do at the establishment of the Kentucky Alliance.”

“Well, do you want to give it a shot?” she asked.

“I’ll let you know in a day or two,” Valentine said.

Blake, the young Reaper, was hunting rats in the barn. He squatted, as motionless as a waiting spider, and then when some sound or movement attracted his hyperalert senses, he pounced, as swiftly as a striking cobra.

Big as he was, he was unsettlingly fast, even to Duvalier, who had seen plenty of Reapers in action. Perhaps the lack of a link to an animating Kurian allowed his reflexes to reach their full potential.

However physically developed he was, his emotions were still those of a young child. When he missed the rat, he kicked straw about and let out a terrifying, high-pitched howl that set all the horses to stamping.

“Boy,” Narcisse said from her walker, roused by the noise. The ancient Jamaican—and something more—who’d been Blake’s caretaker since he was a few months old let her voice do most of the chasing these days. She had a way with him. “You calm down. Horses and folks tryin’ to sleep, see?”

He finally ran down a rat and drained it with a single crunch.

Of course a rat wasn’t enough to sate a growing Reaper. Blake had a primitive digestive system that couldn’t even handle cooked
meat. He thrived on blood and could make do with animal fats, though if he had too much fat in the diet he became lethargic and craved salt water, which made him sicker. Every time an animal was slaughtered, a few gallons of blood went right to Blake and any spare was frozen for future use—though he much preferred the fresh, since sometimes the frozen separated while they were warming it up again.

Sometimes Duvalier cursed the fit of sympathy that had made Valentine keep the thing in the first place. She often thought he should have quietly throttled it shortly after it was born, or left it to starve or die of exposure. There was just so little known about Reapers—that a Kurian could conceivably detect him and somehow take control of him didn’t seem out of the realm of possibility to her. Half of Fort Seng felt the way she did; the rest went out of their way to be kind to Blake.

Word came that the delegation to the all-freehold conference would be arriving by airplane—or rather airplanes. General Martinez himself, who’d never visited Southern Command’s allies in the new Kentucky Freehold or the Southern Command’s brigade supporting them, would make a short inspection visit before seeing the delegation off as it departed from Southern Command’s most easterly outpost.