Valentine's Rising (18 page)

Valentine sipped his coffee, straining to keep his hand steady. The story was so close to his own that he listened for men moving in behind to put him under arrest, but all he heard from outside the office was typing.

“Now, could be you heard, down in your Louisiana boonies, that with the Ozarks getting pacified there'd be opportunity under the Consul's new system. Could be you decided that the way to a general's star would be to make yourself useful up here. Could be you knew there were fifty-seven brass rings given out over the last year, since we went in once and for all. Not just to generals either, but we got our share.”

Xray-Tango opened his shirt, and there, hung from a golden chain, was a brass ring.
Blink-blink- bliiink
.

Valentine thought it odd. The brass ring-types he'd met usually displayed them on their right ring finger. The token indicated special favor in the Kurian Order. A wearer and his family would never be at risk of being sent to the Reapers.

“It happens that I like a man with ambition. I like an officer with initiative. I also like to hear the truth. I've got a way of knowing when someone's spoon-feeding me horseshit and telling me it's applesauce. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth. So fess up. The orders for you to come up here didn't go through Fort Scott, or Hot Springs, did they?”

Valentine's bowels had turned to liquid as he sat in the chair, as if Narcisse had spiked the coffee with her emetic, and he decided to admit to as much as possible. “You're close to the truth, sir, but I don't want to say much more. I had some help along the way and I don't want people who've covered for me to get into trouble. Least of all anyone under me. My men, except for some of the new ones, trust me. I'm responsible for them, and if someone has to go to a Hood because of this, it should be me. It's my idea.” Valentine felt strangely relieved with his confession—but would a partial truth set him partially free?

“No reason for it to go that far. I've just had over five hundred strong backs fall into my lap; I should be shaking your hand and buying you a bottle of Old Kentucky MM. You're in Little Rock—err, New Columbia, now, and I'm the lead longhorn in these parts. If your friends in Louisiana start asking about you, we'll play dumb. But I expect you to fit into the system here, or you'll wish you'd stayed in the swamp. Here's my command.”

Xray-Tango stepped over to a map on the wall. It was a copy of an old Free Territory map, redrawn to take into account the realities of the new world. “This rockheap used to be the center of Arkansas. It will be again. We're at the crossroads of the river traffic and the road artery running the eastern side of the mountains, here. Makes an ‘X,' as you can see. Within a year we'll have two new rail lines, one running down from Memphis over to Tulsa, the other down from St. Louis to Dallas. So there's a new ‘X' going to be laid over the first. A line branching down from Kansas City to Fort Scott, and Fort Scott connecting Tulsa and points south and west is already running; Consul Solon had us working three shifts till that was done. But Fort Scott was promised to the Higher Ups in Oklahoma in return for their help with this. The new capital will be right here, at the intersection of all those Xs. This'll be the nerve center of the Trans-Mississippi Confederation.”

“How many smaller states are there? I see a lot of borders.”

“Twenty-six in all. Each one has its Higher Ups. Most just have one running the show. In this system Consul Solon's got rigged, we're supposed to call them ‘governors.' But as you know, it's really Solon's land. Who's obeying who remains to be seen. He's keeping the peace between them, Kur knows how. He's even planning to set up some kind of court to work out disputes between them. You ever heard the like?”

“No. Natchez was—”

“I've heard it's a snake pit.”

“I wouldn't say. But there were feuds all the time with the New Orleans Kur. They could use a court down there, too.”

“Out on the High Plains I spent more time fighting with the boys out of Santa Fe than guerillas and saboteurs.”

“I've been bushwhacked myself for scavenging in the wrong place at the wronger time, ” Valentine said.

“Can't say how you'll figure into this just yet, Le Sain. Right now I need disciplined labor more than anything, with the river rising. These hillbillies who used to be here weren't much on civil engineering; they didn't care if a bunch of ruins flooded. I've got two regiments of infantry and a fair amount of artillery, but it's on the other side of the river; there's still fighting in the Boston Mountains, and that's Solon's reserve. I don't dare use them. Over on this side I've got a few companies of reserves, my engineers, hospital and headquarters, and I'm hip-deep in quartermasters getting the river traffic where it's supposed to go. There are military police for the prisoners working on the river banks, and I'm trying my damnedest to get more.”

“I'll put my men to work right away. I have a few with engineering experience. Sooner the job's done, the sooner we get activated.”

“You
want
a combat command?”

“You bet.”

Xray-Tango's droopy eye narrowed. “We'll see, Colonel. I'll have a lieutenant show you to a clear spot. You'll be in tents for a while, but I can get you running water and some gas stoves. If your men want better quarters, you'll be building them. You'll have more water than you can imagine, shortly. Now you get to spend the rest of your day filling out paperwork. This time it'll get stamped by me.”

“Any chance of getting north of the river and seeing some action, sir?”

Xray-Tango smiled, triggering his eye again. “You are eager, aren't you?”

“Want one of those rings. You could give another brigade a break, sir. If they've been in the mountains all winter they'd appreciate time to refit.”

Blink-blink-bliiink
. “Let me run my command, Le Sain. You'll get your chance.”

“Of course, sir.”

“What kind of action have you seen?”

“Small-scale stuff, General. Skirmishes here and there. I've done a lot of ambushes and guerilla hunting. I've only heard cannon fired in training.”

“Let's take it one step at a time. According to your OI, most of your command is green. Or is that falsified too?”

“They're a mixed bag, but I have some good NCOs. The men can shoot. You'd be surprised.”

“I'll look forward to finding out what you can do, when the river's back under control. One more push when spring comes and things will be over with. It'll just be a matter of smoking out the remnants. I'm a busy man, otherwise I'd pour you another cup of coffee and warm it up with a touch of bourbon. I'd like to hear stories about life in the swamp. Do you have any questions?”

“Not a military one, sir. Your name, sir. It's—”

“Different, isn't it? My mother was a POW when she had me. I got put in an orphanage in Amarillo. There were a fair amount of us. The orphanage was run military-style, it even had a military name. ‘Youth Recovery Center Four' was where I spent my salad days. They used the initials of our mothers. So I was always Xray-Tango. I never found out if I had been given a first name.”

“The ‘S'?”

The general's eyebrow trembled, but only for a second. “My wife used to call me ‘Scotty.' She said I looked like one. The dog, I mean.”

“Used to, sir? I apologize, sir. That's personal.”

“It was quick. Heart attack. That's why I transferred to Solon's command. Couldn't take the flats out there anymore.”
Blink-blink-bliiink
. “Too much empty.”

An adjutant entered with a clipboard full of flimsies of radio communiqués. Valentine resisted the urge to glance at the top one as the soldier passed.

“That'll be all, Le Sain.” General Xray-Tango lifted an order off his desk and dashed off a signature, then stamped it. “Corporal, give this to Lieutenant Greer.

“Oh, Le Sain. Good thing you were honest with me and I liked the shape of your shadow. I had two orders on how to deal with you sitting on my desk. The one going to Lieutenant Greer says he's to feed and uniform you and your command. The other said to shoot you and your officers. It's staying in my desk, just in case.”

 

Lieutenant Greer was a sandy-haired monosyllabalist with the intent features of an owl. Though a young man, he was hard of hearing.

“Still lots of junk near the river at your camp, sir,” Greer said. He spoke accentless English as though it were a foreign tongue. He walked beside Valentine, leading the column through the Ruins. Structural steel beams and plumbing fixtures poked out from the debris like leaning crucifixes in an old frontier cemetery. “Not all bad. Flat ground, good drainage. Old sewers, too.”

They passed what must have once been multistory office buildings at the heart of the old downtown. One remaining spindle of girders had been left, and most of a tower clung around its central support. The spiral minaret reminded Valentine of the long, pointy shells of turret snails he'd seen on the beaches of the Caribbean. Laborers walked up the endless stairs winding around the structure, bearing bricks to the top.

“What's that suppose to be?” Valentine asked.

“The Residence,” Greer said. “Eleven floors.”

“Of ”—Valentine paused and glanced around—“the governor?”

Greer averted his eyes and hunched his shoulders as they passed wide of the building. Valentine saw armored cars parked before it, covering the cleared streets outside the beginnings of a wall. A Kurian Tower, sticking there like a knife in the heart of the Free Territory. Valentine's throat went dry.

Greer murmered something so quietly Valentine thought he was talking to himself. “Two in the city. Brothers, or maybe cousins. Don't know names. Eight and five.” Valentine guessed this last to be the number of Reapers each controlled, respectively. Reapers that needed feeding.

“Thirteen. Unlucky,” Valentine commented.

“Don't worry now. Still plenty of prisoners. Much work to do. For now, they take only hurt and bad sick. This big state. I come from Indianapolis. Six years ago, bad drought, many farms die. Other Bloodmen from hills in south came, stole people. Then they fed on us in army.”

“That's a hard piece of luck. This is a sweeter situation. That's why I came.”

“Yes, sir. Duty with a future, here.”

They continued north, almost to a little finger of a hill separating river from city, and reached their camp. It was a former city block now called “Dunkin Do,” according to the old sign propped up among the rubble. The street had not even been cleared yet, and among the bulldozer tracks there were little piles of debris in hummocks, but it was still preferable to the mountains of shattered concrete elsewhere in the city. The block was circled by nine-foot posts, and rolls of barbed wire had been left out to rust in the rain.

“Was to be prison camp, sir,” Greer said. “For after last push this year. But you can use.”

Valentine wondered if this wasn't another warning from Xray-Tango that any nonsense would convert him and his men from allies to inmates in short order. He and Post trailed Greer around as he pointed out the water taps, already flowing, and the sewer outlets.

“Provisions tonight, sir, uniforms tomorrow, maybe stoves and fuel day after,” Greer said. “Here's paperwork, sir. I fill some, you do rest, please, sir. Mostly just signatures. Officers can billet in garage, or stay in tents with men, up to you.”

“Garage?” Post asked.

“You see soon. Underground parking. Like bunker, you know? Meet others. Good food, good times.”

“We'll drop by,” Valentine said. “Let us know when happy hour starts.”

Greer's owlish eyes rolled skyward. “Happy hour, sir?”

“Never mind. I'll be here tonight, getting the men settled in.”

They watched the men file into the camp, followed by the wobble-wheeled wagons. Jefferson cursed a blue streak, trying to get his team around a clump of reinforced concrete, its rods threatening horse leg and spoke alike.

“Questions, sir?”

“Who's in charge of supplying us?”

“Commissary Sergeant Major Tucker, in Quonset hut behind headquarters. Good man. Answer all questions. Usually answer is ‘yes.' ”

 

Tucker was more than just a good man. He appeared that evening like a horn of plenty, playing a sprited version of Beethoven's “Ode To Joy” on a silver concert flute. He showed up in the shotgun seat of a roofless, antiquated Hummer, interrupting the men as they were setting up their tents in military rows.

“General's orders,” Tucker shouted, pointing with his flute at his cargo. “Fresh bread, fruit and veggies just up from the Gulf. Spring potatoes, winter cabbage, first peas and even apples. We've got beer in cask, but before I can issue that, we need to see what kind of workers you are.”

The men forgot they were in the heart of an enemy camp enough to start cheering as he handed out the bounty. Cured side meat lay in baskets revealed as eager hands took the food.

“Whee-ooh, y'all need the showers rigged pronto, boys,” Tucker said. “Ever heard of field hygiene?”

“We've been on the road for three days,” Valentine said, stepping forward to help hand out the foodstuffs.

“You're up from Louisiana, they tell me.”

“Sergeant Tucker, the smell's unfortunate, I know. They need some washtubs and soap more than anything.”

“Coming tomorrow, sir.”

“I'm only about half armed as well. I'd like to see that rectified.”