Winter Duty (39 page)

Chieftain raged among a group of Moondaggers who’d found a wooded dimple in the landscape from which they returned fire. Pieces of men flew this way and that as he swung and stomped and swung again.

The forward motion stopped at the crest of the hill. The Kentuckians threw themselves down and began to pick off retreated targets.

“Let ’em have it,” yelled Rockaway into his field radio from his new hilltop post.

Mortar shells whistled down into the trees at the riverbank, detonating in showers of splinters or foaming splashes of water.

A Kurian machine gun opened up on Rockaway’s position, guided by his antenna. Valentine dropped to a knee and returned fire with the Type Three.

“Silvertip, try to do something about that gun” was the only order Valentine gave that day that had anything to do with the progress of the battle. He felt like a bit of a fraud, watching shells detonate on the western riverbank among the Host’s boats. Maybe Southern Command needed Kentucky more than Kentucky needed Southern Command.

“Pre-ranged fire missions,” Rockaway said. “Hope they brought a lot of tweezers.”

The Kentuckians ended up with a few prisoners and a lot of big canvas-sided motorized riverboats.

As the battle sputtered out, Valentine found Tikka.

“Brilliant retreat and counterattack,” Valentine said.

“Oldest trick in the book,” Tikka said.

“I didn’t know you’d studied Scipio Africanus, Tikka.”

She frowned. “I’m not big on astrology. No sir, I learned all my tactics reading Bernard Cornwell. It’s an old Wellington maneuver: Get on the reverse slope out of the line of fire, and then blast away when the Frenchies come over the crest, and advance to throw them back. We just didn’t blast them quite as much as they approached; we wanted them to scatter a little bit as they advanced.”

“So you swapped out the artillery and vehicles last night during the party,” Valentine said.

“Too noisy for you? That was the idea. To cover sound while we were building the fortifications. We parked old wrecks and set up black-painted fence-post mortars to replace the real ones.”

“Would have been nice to be let in on the secret. I might have been able to offer a few suggestions. We have some experienced snipers in our group. They could have trimmed the Moondaggers down by a few more.”

“I’m sorry, Valentine, but after Utrecht I’ll never trust Southern Command’s security again.”

Valentine must have had an air of command about him, because all through the day members of the Gunslingers who’d fought with Javelin across Kentucky kept coming to him for orders, probably out of habit more than anything. Whether to bind prisoners or just march them with their hands up. What to do with captured weapons and equipment. How to organize a search party for a missing officer. Valentine issued advice rather than orders and sent a constant stream of problems to Tikka’s headquarters on the ridge.

For just being an observer, he had an exhausting day.

That night he found Boelnitz scribbling away with the remains of a meal around him as Chieftain and Silvertip told war stories about the fighting in Kentucky.

“You should know better than to ask Bears about a fight,” Valentine said to Pencil. “To hear them tell it, the rest of us are just there to keep the fried chicken and pie coming while they do all the fighting.”

Boelnitz chewed on his pencil, apparently not hearing.

“So, how’s the story coming, Boelnitz?”

Valentine had to repeat himself before the journalist looked up from his leather-covered notebook.

“Story? Not the one I was expecting, Major.”

“You’re getting some good tall tales out of these two, I hope.”

“Kentucky’s been interesting enough, but I don’t know if my editor will want travelogue. I wish I had the guts to go inside one of those legworm tangles and get a few pictures, but the locals say that until the worms are born, it can be dangerous.”

“That’s right,” said a nearby Gunslinger who’d plopped down to listen to the Bears spin their yarns. “Make any kind of disturbance and they’ll snip you in half easy as you might pull a weed.”

“To be honest, Major Valentine, I was expecting you to be a little different, more of the legend and less prosaic. Where are the raids into the estate homes in Indiana? You haven’t even interrogated any of those Moondaggers or the Kentucky Host or whatever they call themselves to see what’s in store for Kentucky.”

“The Kurians never tell their foot soldiers their plans. They like to keep everyone guessing, including the other Kurians. I wouldn’t be surprised if the reason they’re so desperate is because they’re afraid Atlanta will just end up taking over Kentucky the way they have much of Tennessee.

“Besides, if you were expecting a war in Indiana, you need men for that kind of job. Our ex-Quisling recruits need training. Most of them are experienced in handling weapons and vehicles and equipment due to a smattering of law enforcement or military duty, but they’ve got to learn to act as a team somewhere less predictable than a city street. More important, learn to trust each other and their officers. Trust doesn’t come easy to someone brought up in the Kurian Order. They’re so scared of making a mistake that they all stand around waiting for orders, and then for someone else to go first. There’s a story for you.”

“Problem is,” the neighboring Gunslinger said, “they ain’t even human in anything but shape. All the spunk’s been bred right out of them, the way a team horse reacts different from a Thorough-bred lead mare or a wild stallion.”

Valentine spent the next forty-five minutes on and off the radio. Frat had returned by then, having volunteered to scout across the river, looking thoughtful. After he secured his rifle and gear, he sat down by Valentine, eager for news.

“Where’s the Kentucky Host?” Valentine asked. “Run out for more ice?”

“Left the party early,” Frat said, milking the joke. He became serious. “Are we going down an evolutionary blind alley, sir?”

“Where does that come from?”

“They left some of their literature behind. There was a magazine I hadn’t seen before, comparing various kinds of testing before and after the Kurians came. Of course the article proves there’s been improvement in human mental acuity after their arrival.”

“An article saying it doesn’t make it true. Don’t read Kurian intellectual porn; it’s all lies anyway.”

Frat dug around his satchel and tossed the magazine at Valentine’s feet. “Well, I thought it was interesting.

“We’re more moral than the enemy, right?” Frat continued. “Isn’t that a hindrance? They’ll do anything to win. We won’t. Doesn’t that make them the ‘fittest’ in a Darwinian sense?”

“Fittest doesn’t mean strongest or most brutal. Loyalty confers an evolutionary advantage. So does sacrifice. You get all this from those traditional morals the brutes dispense with. Mountain gorillas trample strangers. That’s about as brutal as you can get. For all I know, mountain gorillas no longer exist.”

Frat looked down. For a moment he seemed to be summoning words, but they never made it out.

They convinced Rockaway to leave his guns and return to the Gunslinger camp. Now that the A-o-K had arrived, there were some experienced artillerymen to take over the mortar sections in any case, but he was still strangely reluctant, even though he admitted he hadn’t seen his mother in years.

Tikka finally ended up ordering him to leave. “Show some consideration for your poor mother,” she said.

So they rode back with Doc and his nurse in the Boneyard. The medical workers were more exhausted than even the Bears, having worked on the wounded of both sides in the late Battle of the Kentucky River.

They were not the first to arrive back at the Gunslinger camp, so the news of the victory on the riverbank, and the losses, had already been absorbed, celebrated, or mourned.

Valentine, wanting to be a bit of a showman, had the driver back the overloaded Boneyard back toward the little circle of Mrs. O’Coombe’s convoy. Valentine and Duvalier hopped out of the cab, and he opened the doors for the assembled Hooked O-C staff.

“Mrs. O’Coombe,” Valentine said, “your son.”

The effect was spoiled somewhat by the fact that Chieftain and Silvertip were dressed only in their rather worn-through underwear.

“We’ve come some way to find you, Corporal Rockaway,” Valentine said. “I’ve brought a familiar face.”

The corporal jumped down out of the back of the ambulance medical truck.

“What’s the matter, Mother?” Corporal O’Coombe said. “Sorry to see me still breathing?”

It wasn’t the reunion between a son who served under his mother’s name and his devoted parent that Valentine had imagined.

Mrs. O’Coombe stiffened. “You know I’m pleased to see you alive, Keve. Please be civil in front of your fellow men in uniform. Don’t disgrace the uniform you wear.”

“Respect the people beneath the uniform too, Mother.”

“If you’re going to be this way, perhaps we should talk in private.”

“Do you have something you want me to sign, Mother, now that you’ve recovered from your disappointment that I’m still alive? Produce it. You know I’m not interested in running a ranch, however large.”

“I’m glad your father isn’t alive to hear this.”

“Yes, yes:
The good sons died, the bad one lived. God must have a plan; all we can know is that he gives burdens to those strong enough to handle them.
”

Rockaway turned to Valentine. “My mother probably left out a few details. Like that the ownership of the ranch was willed by my father to his sons, and Mother only would own it if we were all dead. What is it, Mother? Do you want to sell off some of the land, or riverfront, or water rights?”

She extracted some surveys and a blueprint from her bush jacket. “I am building a home for the disabled in the Antelope Hills, on the Canadian River. I need to deed the necessary acreage to Southern Command.”

Rockaway didn’t even look at the papers.

“I’ll do you one better, Mother. I’ll sell you the whole ranch—lock, stock, and the old man’s cutest little whorehouse in Texas—for a grand total of one dollar. I’ll accept Southern Command scrip if you aren’t carrying your usual smuggler’s gold.”

“That’s very generous of you, Keve, and I am happy to accept. The problem is that you’ll have to do this in a UFR courtroom, in front of a judge. My beloved husband’s will was most specific on points of ownership.”

She turned toward Valentine and the others. “You probably think I’m a grasping, conniving woman. Nothing of the sort. It’s just extremely hard to run a business interest of this size when you can’t enter into contracts without the owner’s approval, and the owner is seven hundred miles away from a lawyer, a notary, and witnesses. My son, as you can see, is uninterested in a business that provides a quarter of all Southern Command’s meat and that employs a permanent staff of over a thousand and seasonal help three times that.”