Winter Duty (4 page)

They ended up with two. A fifteen-year-old boy with a lazy eye and a widow of forty-one who’d learned to use a rifle as a teen in the Kurian Youth Vanguard.

“I quit when my mom got sick in her uterus and they stuck her in a van,” the volunteer explained. “Mom was right smart, could have been useful a hundred ways if they’d let her get operated on and recover.”

Of course Sergeant Patel, the senior NCO back at Javelin, could make soldiers out of odds and ends of human material. There was always more work than there were hands.

More aura for the trip home. A prowling Reaper would spot their psychic signatures from miles away, even in the lush hills of Kentucky. He and Duvalier would have to team up every night and sleep in their saddles.

Four enervating days later Valentine had his wounded across the Mississippi. The Kentucky worm drivers turned homeward, their sluggish mounts willing to move only in the warmest hours of the day no matter how much pain they inflicted with the long, sharp goads.

The Kentuckians would stay on their side of the river. Valentine felt guilty saying good-bye and wishing them luck, they’d pushed their worms on through the cold until death was assured for their mounts. Without a group of others of their kind to coil with, in a knitted cocoon to protect the fall’s eggs, the frost would take them like delicate fruit.

“These two are goners, I think,” Dorian said as they made their good-byes. He’d been quiet ever since shooting six of Blitty Easy’s Crew on that wild, clear night.

“We’ll compensate you and your father somehow,” Valentine said, signing an order and tearing it off from his dwindling sheaf of blanks.

“Wish they could give me back that night. The one with the shooting.”

Valentine felt for the young man. Dorian had stepped across a terrible threshold far too young.

“You followed orders and did what had to be done, Dorian,” Valentine said. “Better than thirty people are going to live to a fine old age because you’re a good shot. Remember that.”

The youth nodded dumbly, and his father nudged him back toward the high saddles.

Duvalier embraced him with one of her characteristic hugs, half handshake and half lover’s embrace. She nuzzled the bristle on his chin.

“I’ll see that they get back all right. Any orders for me back in Henderson?”

“Be careful. I think if the Kurians move on us, it’ll be from the Ordnance. You could check the rail lines up that way.”

“Can do,” she said.

“I won’t be gone long. I’m just going to give my report, see about supply and replacement, and return.”

She slipped away as though bored with the good-bye, and Valentine returned to supervising the river embarkation.

Javelin had left Southern Command with bands playing and people cheering and tinfoil on their heads.

Its wounded returned under cover of darkness, hauled across the Mississippi in some of Southern Command’s Skeeter Fleet—twin-engined outboards ready to make wake at the first sign of trouble.

No crowds met them on the western shores, just a deputation from Forward Operating Base Rally’s commander at the edge of the Missouri bootheel.

Colonel Pizzaro looked incredulous when Valentine announced that he’d been returned with fresh from a hard-fought victory in Western Kentucky. Valentine handed over a sealed report to Southern Command from Colonel Bloom, now in command of what was left of the expedition to the Appalachians.

“Don’t be stingy with the steaks and beer,” Valentine said. “They walked a hard trail. They deserve a few luxuries with their laurels.”

Pizzaro cleared his throat. “Tell me, Valentine. Don’t hold back. How bad was it over there? Papers are playing it down or calling it a catastrophe.”

“Could have gone better,” Valentine said. “But it wasn’t a disaster. We’ve gained allies, just not where we expected. I’d call it a major victory for the Cause.”

“He’s a good man, but kind of an oddball,” one of Pizzaro’s staff said to a corporal in a voice he probably thought too quiet for Valentine to hear. “Always full of fancy ideas about working with Grogs and stuff.”

Pizzaro snorted. “Victory? Not according to the
Clarion
headlines. Or are you aiming for a nice long rest somewhere quiet with lots of watercolor paint?”

“It was a win for the good guys, Colonel.”

“You’re selling that at headquarters?” Pizzaro asked. “I wish you luck.”

CHAPTER TWO

The ink had dried and the last crumbs of the bagel disappeared by the time General Lehman’s adjutant appeared. The staffer might have been a living mannequin of crisp cotton and twill. Valentine felt scruffy shaking hands with him. All Valentine had managed in the washroom was to comb his hair out and wash his face and hands.

Perhaps it wasn’t the chair that was so odiferous after all.

“You can just take that book if you like,” the adjutant suggested. “It’s all Southern Command library. I’m sure you know where to drop it.”

“Thanks for the tip,” Valentine said. Not that he needed it. He’d visited the quiet library and reading room in one of the mall’s old stores to unwind after the quick debriefing he’d undergone on his arrival yesterday afternoon. Three paperbacks, one with a duct-tape spine—the illustration of the dripping-wet bikini girl on the cover reaching up to undo her top did wonders for circulation—were already stuffed into his duty bag beneath the reports and Javelin correspondence.

They’d talked about Javelin, good and bad. When Valentine gave them his assessment for the addition of Kentucky to the United Free Republics, his interviewers had exchanged a look that didn’t strike Valentine as promising.

And he hadn’t even begun to describe what he had in mind for his Quisling recruits.

He saved that for the end, and they told him to take it up with General Lehman the next day.

There was another wait outside Lehman’s office, and Valentine switched to American history, a biography of Theodore Roosevelt. He was experiencing the Badlands with Roosevelt after the nearly simultaneous deaths of his mother and wife when Lehman’s staffer summoned him.

When Valentine finally stood before the general in command of the eastern defenses, he was surprised to see a pair of arm-brace crutches leaning against the desk and the general’s right leg encased in plaster and a Velcro ankle brace on the left.

“Bomb beneath my command truck,” Lehman said. “Flipped us like a flapjack.”

He looked paler than Valentine remembered, thin and strained.

“Let’s hear it, Valentine,” Lehman said. “Don’t spare me; I know I sent you out there.”

Lehman dipped his little silver comb in the water glass and commenced cleaning his drooping mustache in the methodical fashion a cat might use to clean its face. It was whiter and less bushy than it had been a year ago at the planning sessions for Javelin. Cover Lehman in dust and denim, and he’d pass for a cowhand straight off a Texas ranch, but he had precise, machinelike diction, weighing each vowel and consonant of his sometimes cracker-barrel phraseology. Valentine had heard that as a junior officer he’d been in signals, communicating with other Freeholds around the world.

“Should really make you a colonel, Valentine,” General Lehman said.

“What about the confirmation vote?” Southern Command was allowed to run its own affairs within the confines of its budget—and parts of it even made money by engaging in civil engineering projects or restoring machinery—but promotion to colonel and above had to be approved by the UFR’s legislature.

General Lehman nodded. “The
Clarion
would get in a huff and their chickens in the legislature would squawk in tune and the whole list would probably be voted down. They’ve had a field day over Javelin. You understand.”

“I do.”

“Of course, there’s no reason we can’t pay you like a colonel.”

“Under the assumed name,” Valentine said. Technically, David Valentine was a wanted man and couldn’t draw pay, civilian or military. Not that it would do him much good if the pay increase went through. Few colonels got rich, despite their pay-draws twice that of a major. A colonel was expected to spend most of it on entertainments for his command, and most also gave generously to families of the command who’d lost fathers or mothers. A private who was good at scouring arms and medical supplies and selling them back to the Logistics Commandoes could do better.

“There is one promotion I’d like you to make,” Valentine said. “I’d like Sergeant Patel—his name is all over those reports—made a captain.”

“Shouldn’t be a problem. I’ve heard the name. Wolf, right? Twenty years or more.”

Valentine noticed there were archival boxes all against the walls, and two locked file cabinets hung open.

“Moving to a new office, sir?” Valentine asked.

“That’s one way to put it. You didn’t hear about the election, then?”

Valentine didn’t follow politics when he was in the Free Republics, beyond what filtered in to mess hall chatter and newspaper articles.

“There’s been a change, as of the first week of November,” Lehman continued. “President Starpe lost. Adding Hal Steiner to the ticket didn’t help as much—”

“I’m sorry, General. Hal Steiner? From down south near the Louisiana border?”

“Yes. Of course, you’ve been out of the UFR. Sorry, it’s all anyone’s been talking about here. Steiner a friend of yours?”

“I met him as a lieutenant.”

“Yeah, he’s the one who helped keep all the Archangel forces hidden down in those swamps. The Concorde Party made a big deal about Steiner coming out of the KZ and treating Grogs like people, and between that and the bad news out of Kentucky and the Rio Grande, the New Federalists were plastered. Anyway, old DC is out and Thoroughgood is in. Once Lights’s sworn in, he’ll nominate Martinez to take over Southern Command, and I suspect the legislature will approve, though the Texas bloc will be voting against him, of course, because of the bad feelings about ’seventy-three.”