Valentine's Exile (8 page)

“What do you need from me?” Valentine asked. If he couldn't do anything about the Razors dying, he could at least see to the burial.

“We need a bunch of transfer orders written. I've got a skills priority list; match it up with the men. Wish we had Will. For the party, I mean.”

“Seems wrong to have it without him. I just told him the Razors were waiting for his return.”

“Sorry about that. I didn't want to tell you until you had a night or two to rest up here.”

“I'll sleep tonight. I intend to have a couple of sips of whatever Ruvayed is passing out.”

“Consider yourself off duty for the next twenty-four.”

Valentine had a thought. “Could you take care of one thing, sir? Pass something up? The general's signature would be helpful.”

“What is it?”

“I'd like Post to be able to say farewell to the Razors too.”

Roast pig is a mouthwatering smell, and it penetrated even the back of the ambulance. The vehicle halted.

“What's up your sleeve, Val?” Post asked. No fewer than four nurses and one muscular medical orderly sat shoulder to shoulder with Val, crowded around Post's bed on wheels.

“You'll see.”

The doors opened, giving those inside a good view of the Accolade's renovated parking lot. The brush had been chopped away, tents constructed, and paper lanterns in a dozen colors strung between the tent poles and trees. Some nimble electronics tech had rigged a thirty-foot antenna and hung the Razor's porcine silhouette banner—DON'T FEED ON ME, read the legend—to top it off.

Bunting hung from the Accolade's windows, along with another canopy of lanterns. Music from fiddles, guitars, and drums competed from different parts of the party. A mass of soldiers—probably a good third of them not even Razors, but men who knew how to sniff out a good party and gain admittance by performing some minor support function—wandered in and out of the various tents and trader stalls.

“Jesus, Val,” Post said as Valentine and the orderly took him out of the ambulance. He looked twice as strong as he had on Valentine's visit the previous day—Post made a habit of coming back strong from injury.

“Hey, it's Captain Post!” a Razor shouted.

“Some secret debriefing,” one of the nurses said.

“As far as the hospital's concerned none of you will be back for a day,” Valentine said. “The only thing I ask is that someone attend Will at all times.”

“SOP, Val. I can just holler if I need some water. John, set this thing so I'm sitting up, alright?”

The attendant and a nurse arranged his bed.

“If I'd known this soiree was going full blast,” a nurse said, rearranging the cap on her brunette hair, “I would have brought my makeup.”

Valentine pulled some bills out of his pocket and passed them to the head nurse. “For additional medical supplies. You can probably find what you need at the PX-wagons. If not, it looked like the strippers had plenty to spare.”

“Ewwww,” another nurse said.

“Oh, lighten up, Nicks,” the head nurse said. “You're on first watch, then. I'll bring you a plate.”

The men were already clustering around Post. “Great, great,” Valentine heard Post saying. “Food's good. Only problem is, I was wounded in my right leg. They took the healthy one off.”

“Just like 'em,” one of the more gullible Razors said, before he saw what the others were laughing at.

The male attendant kept various proffered bottles and cups away from Post's mouth. “I want to hear some music,” Post said. “Let's get Narcisse's wheelie-stool out and we'll dance.”

“Razors!” the men shouted as they lifted the gurney and bore it toward the bandstand.

“That's a nice thing you're doing for your captain, Major,” the nurse they called Nicks said. “He's lucky to have you.”

“I'm the lucky one,” Valentine said.

Black Lightning lived up to their reputation. Valentine wasn't sophisticated enough with music to say whether they were “country” or “rock and roll” or “fwap” to use early-twenty-first century categories. They were energetic—and loud. So much so that he kept to the back and observed. The crowd listened or danced as the mood struck them, all facing the stage, which was just as well because the men outnumbered the women by six to one or so.

The nurses kept close to Post, who had a steady stream of well-wishers, but seemed to make themselves agreeable to the boys.

Boys. Valentine startled at the appellation. At twenty-seven he could hardly be labeled old, but he sometimes felt it when he passed a file of new recruits. Southern Command had filled out the Razors with kids in need of a little experience—the regiment had never been meant to be a frontline unit in the Dallas siege—and they'd gotten it at terrible cost.

Or maybe it was just that the younger folks had the energy to enjoy the band. Most of the older men sat as they ate or smoked or drank, enjoying the night air and the companionship of familiar faces. A photographer took an occasional picture of those who'd been decorated that morning. Everyone had taken the news of the Razors' breakup well—

“What a surprise. Major Valentine alone with his thoughts,” a female voice said in his ear.

Valentine jumped. Duvalier stood just behind him as though she'd been beamed there from the
Star Trek
books of his youth. She wore a pair of green, oversized sunglasses, some cheap kid's gewgaw from the trade wagons, and when the photographer pointed the camera at them, she had a sudden coughing fit as the flash fired.

“Didn't know you were back.”

“After all this time, you still haven't figured it out, have you? I don't like my comings and goings to be noticed.” Valentine noticed her slurring her words a little. He'd never known Duvalier to have more than a single glass of anything out of politeness—and even that was usually left unfinished.

“I thought you hated parties,” Valentine said.

“I do, but I like to go anyway, and hate them with someone. ”

“You dressed up.”

Duvalier wore tight shorts, a sleeveless shirt, and what looked to be thigh-high stockings in a decorative brocade. Her battered hiking boots just made the rest of her look better. “Wishing I hadn't. Some of your horntoads thought I was here professionally.”

“Serves you right for getting cleaned up. Any bloodshed? ”

“All the ears and noses in your command are accounted for, Major. Colonel Meadows asked me to find you.”

“Speaking of finding people, I've yet to find anyone who saw you during our fight at the airfield.”

She wrinkled her freckled nose. “I should hope not. Everyone but me was busy being a hero. As soon as the bombs started dropping I hid deep and dark next to a storm sewer leading off-field. You can't outsmart a rocket.”

“If they gave out medals for survival you'd have a chestful. Speaking of which, is that the legendary red bra I see peeping out?” He reached for her cutoff shirt—

“Dream on, Valentine.” She grabbed his hand and gave his wrist a painful twist, then pulled him toward the barbecue pit, her hand warm in his.

Colonel Meadows was carving pork, heaping it onto plates, and handing them out, at which point Narcisse would slather the meat with barbecue sauce and hand the plates out to the lined-up soldiers. Judging by their sticky lips, most were back for seconds.

“Daveed!” Narcisse said, spinning on her stool. “This recipe I learned on Jamaica—they call it ‘jerked.' Have some!”

“In a second, Sissy,” Meadows said. “We're getting a drink first. Spell me, Cossack.”

A soldier prodding the coals stood up and took the carving knife out of Meadows' hand. Meadows tossed him the apron.

They filled pewter mugs from a barrel at the beer tent—it was poor stuff, as Southern Command had better things to do with its soil than grow hops—and found a quiet spot away from the band. Duvalier followed with a plate at a respectful distance. She had good hearing, if not quite Valentine's Wolf ears, and positioned herself downwind, back to the men but undoubtedly able to hear every word said.

Some fool fired off a blue signal flare to add to the festive atmosphere. It turned the beer black inside the mugs and added deep shadows to Meadows' eyesockets.

“Great party, sir,” Valentine said, and meant it.

“We deserve it.” Meadows was a
we
kind of officer. He held out his mug and Valentine touched his to it, the faint
klink
sounding a slightly sour note thanks to the pewter.

“An interesting letter in the courier pouch hit my desk the other day. This is as good a moment as any to tell you: They're offering you a Hunter Staff position.”

Valentine felt his knees give out for a moment, and he covered with a swig of beer. “Staff?”

“Easy now, Val. It's a helluva honor.”

Duvalier brushed past him on the way to the beer tent, and gave his hip a gentle nudge with hers.

“Not that you'll have a lot of time to show off your swagger stick. I hear they work you to death.”

Valentine understood that well enough. Southern Command operated on a general staff system that selected and then trained a small group of officers in all the subsidiary branches of service: artillery, logistics, intelligence, and so on. The highly trained cadre then served as staff inspectors or temporary replacements or taught until promoted to higher command or, in the event of a crisis, they took command of reserve units.

The Hunters—the Wolves, Cats, and Bears of Southern Command that operated as special forces outside the borders of the Free Territory—had their own identical staff system that trained with the others and then performed similar functions with the smaller Hunter units. A couple of hitches in Wolf and Bear formations was enough for most; the veteran soldiers usually transferred to support units—or the Logistics Commandos if they still had a taste for operating in the Kurian Zone. But most still served Southern Command by belonging to ghost regiments that might be called up.

Captain Moira Styachowski, one of the most capable officers he'd ever met, had been on the Hunter Staff.

Valentine might end up in command of one of those formations. The role was wryly appropriate; he'd been nicknamed “the Ghost” when serving in the Zulus, his first Wolf company.

Meadows broke in on his thoughts. “Valentine, it's official enough so I thought I'd tell you. You're better than two years overdue for a leave. It'll take them a while to get your training schedule worked out. When we're done here you'll be cleared to take a three-months' leave. I'll miss you. It's been a pleasure.”

And Valentine would miss the Razors. They seemed “his” in a way none of the other organizations he'd served with or commanded ever had. Seeing them broken up was like losing a child. “Thank you, sir.”

He didn't feel like thanking anyone, but it had to be said.

He wandered back among the Razors, accepted a few congratulations with a smile, but all he wanted was quiet and a chance to think. Meadows had tried to add a sparkle to a bittersweet party, but all he'd done was ruin Valentine's enjoyment of the festivities.

Stow that, you dumb son of a grog.
You're
ruining your enjoyment, not Meadows
.

Back in his days visiting the opulent old theater in Pine Bluff, they'd show movies now and then. He remembered sitting through part of one when arriving early for the evening's movie; the smell of popcorn and sweat on the seats all around him, unable to shut out even the blood from a tiny shaving cut on the man next to him with his inexperienced Wolf's nose.

The early show for the families was a kids' cartoon, full of bright primary colors even on the shabby little projector rigged to an electronic video-memory device. He recalled a bunch of kids' toys in a machine, and a mechanical claw that came down and selected one of the dozens of identical toys now and then. The toys responded to the mystical selection of the claw as though at a religious ceremony.

Life in the creaky, stop-and-start mechanism of Southern Command had never been so elegantly summed up for him. “The claw chooses!” Orders came down and snatched you away from one world and put you in another.

Duvalier proffered a fresh, cool mug filled with colder beer. “Guess that's it for Cat duty, far as you're concerned, ” she said. Her eyes weren't as bright and lively as usual; either her digestive troubles were back or she'd continued drinking. Valentine sniffed her breath and decided the latter.

The swirl of congratulatory faces wandered off after he took the mug, offered a small celebratory lift of the brew to the north, south, east, and west, and took a sip.

“Did you run down that Lifeweaver?” On second taste, the beer wasn't quite so sharp.

“No. There was a rumor one'd been killed by some kind of agent the Kurians planted last year. Guess Kurs' got their versions of Cats too.”

Valentine had heard all sorts of rumors about specially trained humans in Kurian employ. That they could read minds, or turn water into wine, or redirect a thunderstorm's lightning. Everything from mud slides to misaddressed mail was blamed on Kurian agents.

Valentine shrugged.

“They'll get word to us. They always do, one way or another. Right?” Duvalier asked.

The last sounded a bit too much like a plea. Duvalier thought of the Lifeweavers as something akin to God's angels on Earth; the way the Kurians' estranged cousins presented themselves added to the effect. This cool and deadly woman had the eyes of a child left waiting on a street corner for a vanished parent.