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Southern Command Mississippi Operational Area Headquarters, the second week of Novened the Mall at Turtle Creek in Jonesboro would still recognize their structure, though they&039;d be surprised to see some of the renovations caused by war and necessity

One of the anchor stores has been hollowed out and turned into a vast machine shop for the repair and renovation of valuable electronics, and the rest of the big box stores serve as warehousing The s classroo areas, offices, break rooms, a medical center with a phars Only the food court is still , it is a littleunit histories, photographs, and citations And some of the hardy palms planted inside by the builders have survived the , deterioration, and restoration

Most of the exterior doors have been welded shut, of course, and netting and silent antiaircraft guns dot the roof Barbed wire encircles the parking lots scattered with buses, trucks, and staff four-wheelers and motorcycles ready for use and dispatch

Of course, the polished floors are patched and the ceilings are being rebuilt in soe thepassed through the security station and visitors&039; lobby taking up the old bookstore, idles with a yellowed copy of French ars and mildew and body odor, his thu stretched out where it won&039;t interfere with passersby He had enough pocket lass of sweet tea at the little cafe for visitors waiting to be hts off a yawn as he waits

On the other side of the old store, security staff search and inspect those passing in and out of the headquarters, not a yawn to be seen The Kurians have their own versions of Cats

The ink had dried and the last cruel disappeared by the tiht have been a living mannequin of crisp cotton and twill Valentine felt scruffy shaking hands with hied in the washroom was to comb his hair out and wash his face and hands

Perhaps it wasn&039;t the chair that was so odiferous after all

"You can just take that book if you like," the adjutant suggested "It&039;s all Southern Command library I&039;m sure you knohere to drop it"

"Thanks for the tip," Valentine said Not that he needed it He&039;d visited the quiet library and reading room in one of thehe&039;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&039;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&039;t strike Valentine as proun to describe what he had inrecruits

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&039;s office, and Valentine switched to Araphy of Theodore Roosevelt He was experiencing the Badlands with Roosevelt after the nearly simultaneous deaths of his mother and hen Lehman&039;s staffer summoned hieneral in command of the eastern defenses, he was surprised to see a pair of areneral&039;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&039;s hear it, Valentine," Lehman said "Don&039;t spare me; I know I sent you out there"

Lehlass and co ht use to clean its face It hiter and less bushy than it had been a year ago at the planning sessions for Javelin Cover Lehht off a Texas ranch, but he had precise,each vowel and consonant of his soy Valentine had heard that as a junior officer he&039;d been in signals, co 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 evenprojects or restoring machinery-but promotion to colonel and above had to be approved by the UFR&039;s legislature

General Lehet in a huff and their chickens in the legislature would squawk in tune and the whole list would probably be voted down They&039;ve had a field day over Javelin You understand"

"I do"

"Of course, there&039;s no reason we can&039;t pay you like a colonel"

"Under the assumed name," Valentine said Technically, David Valentine was a wanted man and couldn&039;t draw pay, civilian or ood if the pay increase went through Few colonels got rich, despite their pay-draice that of a major A colonel was expected to spend ave generously to families of the coood at scouring aristics Commandoes could do better

"There is one promotion I&039;d like you to eant Patel-his name is all over those reports-made a captain"

"Shouldn&039;t be a probleht? 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&039;s one way to put it You didn&039;t hear about the election, then?"

Valentine didn&039;t follow politics when he was in the Free Republics, beyond what filtered in to mess hall chatter and newspaper articles

"There&039;s been a change, as of the first week of Nove Hal Steiner to the ticket didn&039;t help as much-"

"I&039;m sorry, General Hal Steiner? From down south near the Louisiana border?"

"Yes Of course, you&039;ve been out of the UFR Sorry, it&039;s all anyone&039;s been talking about here Steiner a friend of yours?"

"I met him as a lieutenant"

"Yeah, he&039;s the one who helped keep all the Archangel forces hidden down in those swa 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&039;s sworn in, he&039;ll nominate Martinez to take over Southern Coh the Texas bloc will be voting against his about &039;seventy-three"

A piece of Valentine&039;s brain translated the political farrago

Archangel, of course, was the operation that ousted Consul Solon and the Kurians fro, Southern Command seized much of Texas and Oklahoma and a patch of bled-dry Kansas

The United Free Republics, after a messy birth, had divided into two parties, the Concorde and the New Federalists Other than their slogans-Liberty and Justice through Thoroughgood for the Concorde, Starpe Can&039;t Be Stopped for the New Federalists-he didn&039;t know h the perpetually dissatisfied Clarion supported Thoroughgood through its editorial page and its reporting

"Old DC" was a nickname for President Starpe, not because of some connection to the old United States capital, but because he earned the nickna the tumultuous birth of the Ozark Free Territory He&039;d infiltrate Kurian strongpoints and called in artillery fire literally on top of hiood, was a scion of the Thoroughgood faood markets and a several hotels and casinos in Branson They also controlled a brewery that produced a fine spruce-tip ale that Valentine&039;s old CO in Zulu company had been fond of as well

Valentine had first heard of Thoroughgood as a prosecutor who busted up cri fro electrification and water supply across the UFR as a legislator Thoroughgood&039;s friends and constituents called hihts, Caenic and traveled everywhere with a photographer

As to the "Texas bloc," Valentine knew that in the legislature there were constant fights between the representatives froions Rules of seniority favored legislators from the Missouri and Arkansas areas

General Martinez, of course, was an old enemy Valentine had put Martinez on trial for the s who&039;d followed him up from the Caribbean Valentine had always suspected Martinez had, if not an entire hand, at least a pointing finger in his own arrest after the fight in Dallas that led to his exile fro around in a pile of newsprint next to a bureau with liquor bottles lining their little rail like spectators He tossed down a copy of the Clarion

STARPE STOPPED, read the headline

"I suspect there&039;ll be changes once Martinez takes over I won&039;t be running the Mississippi front and parts east All these boxes and such, they&039;re notset toin There&039;s been a suggestion of malfeasance on my part over Javelin Preservation of evidence and all that"

"How could you knoas all a setup? They fooled Brother Mark"

Lehed your opinion of hiot the irows on you Even the rouchy instructor nobody likes but still remembers ten years later"

"Soon I&039;ll be a ine I&039;ll be checking locks on e reports on other reports that&039;ll end up going into my superior&039;s report General Martinez and I don&039;t piss in the sa with Kentucky He penned an editorial for the Clarion about Javelin, Valentine Of course, all the paragraphs featured the word &039;fiasco&039; with the sauments, but then the Clarion only has two tunes in their hyht as a turtle&039;s ass with the soup pot bubbling"

"What are our chances of getting so duty, until they can get theanized"

"Somewhere on the short block between Slim Street and None Boulevard, I&039;m afraid, Major"

Valentine stood up "Whatever&039;s being said about Javelin, it wasn&039;t for nothing Kentucky&039;s coers, the ones who bled Kansas dry, they&039;ve left bodies scattered from the Ohio to the Tennessee"

"That was just the first wave, son The signals and intelligence staff thinks so in the Northwest Ordnance Beyond the usual dance of reinforces, with armed rebellion just across the river and over Evansville way"

Valentine wondered about Evansville Technically it had been the extreme southwestern tip of the Northwest Ordnance, which encoan, and much of northern and southern Indiana (The central part of the state organized itself with the other great agricultural Kurian principalities in Illinois south of Chicago) "All the worms, the clans in Kentucky lose their mobility and flexibility"

General Leh as he druers "Maybe they won&039;t have any more luck in those hills than we did"

"A fresh brigade could wores With Evansville as a supply base, they have hospitals, fuel supplies, machine shops, factories There&039;s even a company that produces tents and backpacks"

"I hate half measures, Major The way I see it, we either pull out coether across the Mississippi I&039;d like to argue for the latter, but we&039;re in flux right now"

"I&039;ve got an ad hoc battalion of Evansville volunteers-I guess you&039;d call them There&039;s more than that in western and central Kentucky We could put the brigade back together and have near a division"

Lehht now, in Evansville, all you have is what&039;s left of Javelin and your volunteers"

"The Kentuckians chased down the Moondaggers before settling in for the winter Their legworms have to hibernate, remember But the Evansville volunteers have the kno for mechanized operations"

"Yes, the staff briefed ion for ex-Quislings, a for us, and in six years they get a new name and citizenship in the UFR Quite a scheme"

"I realize Ilocal support"

"That&039;s what you were assigned to Javelin for: local support"

"To hear you tell it, er"

"All in or pull out, Valentine I&039;m sorry to say it, but all in is just not in the cards this year That leaves pull out"

"Can I at least get so around in black-dyed versions of their old uniforuns Not the best of rifles-they&039;re azines Fine for s out rebellious townies; not so hot when you&039;re trying to bring down a running Reaper"

Lehman opened a notebook on his desk and jotted down a feords "I&039;ll see what I can do I know so has shown up recently Guns will be tougher"

"What aboutin writing to back it up?"

"I&039;d be proud to But honestly, Valentine, I don&039;t think any of &039;em will be around to collect They&039;ll either quit on you or be killed"

"Do you know so I don&039;t, General?"

"It&039;s beenofficers are excellent Well trained, intelligent, h They&039;ll stick where our guys will pull out a lot of the time But you knoell as I that it&039;s the quality of the NCOs and junior officers that define an ar foreants They&039;re usually the best bullies and thieves in uniforence next He had to place a call and be signed in by the security officer at the duty desk in the hall

A corporal escorted him to Post&039;s office The corporal didn&039;t even try to h a bullpen of people at desks and occupying cubicles, passing maps filled with pins and ribbons and whiteboards covered with cryptic scrawls on the walls, and arrived at an office beyond Post these days rated his own adjutant, and Post&039;s office was just beyond his adjutant&039;s There was no door between Post&039;s office and his adjutant&039;s, just a wide entryway

Valentine knocked on the empty doorframe Post beamed as he entered There was a little ood deal more starch in his uniform, but then headquarters standards had to be maintained

The last ti in his hospital bed after the long party celebrating the victory in Dallas and the retirement of the old Razors

Post sported a lieutenant colonel&039;s bird these days Even better, he looked fleshed-out and healthy Valentine was used to seeing hiard, tired-eyed at the Chinese water torture ofthe old battalion, especially the ad hoc group of odds and sods that had been the Razors

When Valentine had first met him in the Kurian Coastal Marines, his uniform bore more permanent sweat stains than buttons Now he looked like he&039;d wheeled out of an award-banquet picture

"Hello, Will," Valentine said, saluting Post, as a lieutenant colonel, now outranked a mere major-especially one who usually walked around Southern Command in a militia corporal&039;s unifor not to look at the wheelchair He&039;d seen it in pictures, of course

"Good to see you What happened to your ear?"

Valentine had left a hunk of lobe in Kentucky If he could find the right man with a clipper, he should really even them up, even if it would make him look a bit like a Doberman

"A near miss that wasn&039;t much of a miss"

"Sit down, Val," Post said "I was just about to order sandwiches froood; I think there&039;s a new supplier Cranberries are plentiful now too, if you&039;re in the mood for a cranberry and apple salad Our old friend Martinez has es already" He reached for his phone

"I&039;ll have both I&039;ve an appetite today"

Post, in his efficient manner, had seen Valentine&039;s discomfiture and acted to correct the situation

While the Enemy Assesslanced around the room Post&039;s office had two chairs and an odd sort of feminine settee that in another ti couch

"How&039;s Gail?"

"Good She does volunteer work over at United Hospital She&039;s good with et about what she went through, but she could just as easily do that by sitting in a corner sla tequila Which is how I "

Post&039;s desk had tooguides and a battered laptop to have much room for pictures He had citations and unit photos-Valentine recognized the old picture of himself and Ahn-Kha on the road to Dallas

Ahn-Kha Probably his closest friend in the world other than Duvalier, and the big golden Grog wasn&039;t even huuerrilla band in the Appalachians, doing sohis little partisan band for a large army

He&039;d seen that sao Ever since he&039;d brought her out of Chicago as a Wolf lieutenant, they&039;d been family to one another, with a family&039;s mix of joys and heartbreak

Odd that Post and Molly should both like that photo Of course, the only other published picture of Valentine that he could remember was an old photo taken when he became a lieutenant in his Wolf days

What Valentine guessed to be a map or recessed bookcase stood behind heavy wood cabinet doors complete with a lock Nearest Post&039;s desk was his set of "traveling wheels"

Valentine looked at the biggest picture on his desk: a fatailed toddler "I didn&039;t know you had a child"

Post brushed the picture&039;s glass with a finger, as though rearranging Gail&039;s short, tousled hair "We tried It didn&039;t work The docs said they found so the Kurians did to her in that Reaper mill, they think We more or less adopted"

"Good for you"

"There&039;s hter"

Valentine felt a pang "I didn&039;t know she had one"

"She&039;s a pistol Only sixteenJenny&039;s all Moira We were godparents, you see And when that plane went down"

They looked at each other in silence

"Sunshine and rain, Val"

"I didn&039;t know you tere that close"

"After you were hurt at the tower in Little Rock, we sort of hit it off She found tih life"

"You are rolling A lieutenant colonel"

"I get a lot done I&039;m more or less desk-bound"

Valentine wondered howto drink?" Post asked, opening a e "I have water, leood old Southern Command root beer, and that awful cocoa-remember? I can order coffee I don&039;t keep liquor in the office Best way not to give in to temptation is to make it physically difficult"

"Any milk?"

The bushy, salt-and-pepper eyebroent up "Milk? Sure"

The food arrived on a tray, under shining covers, re Valentine of the amenities of the Outlook resort he&039;d visited, and partially destroyed, in the Cascades

"Major David Valentine, drinkingan ulcer?"

"I&039;m surprised I don&039;t have one No, I acquired a taste for it out west, oddly enough It&039;sco Ulcer or no"

"You acquire one here Anyway, East isof which, you oweBetween you and the Green Mountain Boys, it sounds like you cracked the Moondaggers What&039;s left of the laments"

"I&039;m not so sure it was us They tried the &039;sub set of locals In Kentucky you can&039;t just wheel into a legworuys kno toaround the hills, they&039;re hu over the here Those bastards painted a lot of Kansas soil red We call the area west of Olathe the Bone Plain now"

Valentine re that area with Duvalier Strange that the Kurians would shed soheartbeats ealth to them

They talked and ate Post ie of Kentucky And Valentine was grateful to forget about the wheelchair

"Did Lehive you the bad news?" Post asked

"What&039;s that?"

"Javelin plus the operation against the Rio Grande Valley Southern Co to pull in its horns for a while No more offensives It&039;s all about &039;consolidation&039; and &039;de fensible resolution&039; these days We&039;ve won our raain, and all that We&039;re going back on the defensive"

"That doesn&039;t do ood for those poor souls outside the walls," Valentine said

"We tried our damnedest You should see all the workshops There are more tires and artificial limbs than shoe soles You reot it worse than eneration&039;s used up I think younger, stronger bodies will have to see the rest through We need a rest You need a rest"

Valentine admitted that He was so very tired He didn&039;t ainst Blitty Easy&039;s Crew You ai responsible for the lives and deaths of the men under you that wore your nerves raw

Valentine was begining to think he wasn&039;t cut out for that kind of responsibility But then, if he didn&039;t do it, you never kneho ht take the controls If you were lucky, so or Captain LeHavre But men like General Martinez rose farther and faster

He covered the noisy silence with a sip of ers Optical illusion gave it a rubbery flexibility The pen stopped He gave the old turning-key signal Valentine reether on the Thunderbolt Valentine rose and closed the office door

"I&039;h rules to ot you on the books as militia, sure, but that&039;s about the saed He&039;d let go of the career long ago He enjoyed the freedo outside the norht in your report, and IAll these proposals of yours about aid to those ex-Quislings out of Evansville and eastern Kentucky? It&039;s not going to fly I doubt it&039;ll even hatch, to tell you the truth We&039;re about to undergo a &039;reallocation of priorities&039; As far as Southern Command is concerned, Javelin was a disaster, and the less said and done about what&039;s going on on the other side of the Mississippi, the better"

Lehiven him the same impression, if not so directly worded

Valentine shrugged "We&039;ve friends in the legwor for a gesture of support Soear, boots, and a few boonies to train the ent or counterinsurgent forces no longer wore the old US Arreen berets They&039;d taken to simple boonie hats, usually dressed up with a brown duck feather for NCOs, a larger eagle quill for officers

"Not my area I&039;d say take it to your friend in special ops, Colonel Laation pending court- her the scapegoat for Javelin That giant staff of his has quite a few Jaggers"

Jaggers were Southern Coood news?"

Post spun, tossed his sandrapper in the regular garbage pail Security refuse went into a locked box with a slot at the top "Lots Well, not soodd reports froround, both in the Northwest Ordnance up in Ohio and the Georgia Control-they&039;re very influential in Tennessee"

"I don&039;t know ia Control, other than that it&039;s based in Atlanta They uys will carry Atlanta Gunworks rifles if they get a chance to pick one up Reuns &039;A state run along corporate lines&039; is the best way to describe Georgia Control Every huet on the board of directors Here&039;s the odd feature: They let people buy shares too By people, Iholders, so I use the tere to touch the spot on his sternu from its simple chain "I picked one up a couple years back It comes in handy"

Post chewed on his lower lip "Oh, yeah Well, you knohat I mean Anyone who&039;s served in the Coastal Marines is half alligator anyway

"But back to the chatter our ears are picking up Here&039;s a helluva tidbit for you: Our old friend Consul Solon&039;s on the Georgia Control board of directors Would you believe it? Five years ago he&039;s running for his life with Southern Co to see hi up the conquest of the Trans-Mississippi, and dauy&039;s half mercury and half Ralvan Fontainbleu"

Valentine chuckled Fontainbleu was a nefarious importer/exporter on Noonside Passions, the Kurian Zone&039;s popular soap opera Valentine never did get the soap part, but operatic it was Fontainbleu ruined ood h the drama was fairly open and aboveboard about the nature of the Kurian Order, though it towed the Church line about tri the bad seed Fontainbleu was the particular ne New Universal Church collar asn&039;t above busting a few heads to keep his flock on the straight and narrow Valentine hadn&039;t seen an episode since he returned from the Cascades-odd how he could still remember characters and their plots, relationships, and alliances The desire to check up on the story plucked at him like a bad habit

Back to Post

"I had a feeling we hadn&039;t heard the last of forround reports?"

"Scattered stuff You&039;d think with Kentucky in tur pieces off of Ohio and Tennessee, guarding bridges and invasion routes, putting extra troops into the rail arteries north through Lexington and Louisville But it&039;s just not happening To the north, the Ordnance has called up some reserves and shifted troops to support Louisville or roup at Evansville But as for the usual apparatus of the Kurian Order, we&039;re getting word of church outIf anything, they&039;ve pulled back fro"

"Their troops in Evansville revolted Maybe they&039;re afraid the infection will spread"

"I&039;d like your opinion on that What&039;s Kentucky like now? Every legwor at the Kurian Order?"

"Nothing like that The Moondaggers cairl they could grab between fifteen and thirty Really stirred the locals up The place is in flux now; hard to say which way it&039;ll go Theyas the Kurians don&039;t aggravate the situation"