by E. E. Knight
"He got sick of me after about a week or so and sent me back to Pa. But I learned the ins and outs of his house, and knew when the servant door in the wall was unlocked. I got me a couple of mean rattlesnakes and chopped off their rattlers. He had this little toilet room with a phone in it. Always went in there first thing in the morning. I cut the wires, broke the bulb, and put them in there.
"The snakes got him, sure enough, and he started hollering. The servant came and put down this big cut-down shotgun to drag him away from the snakes, I suppose so he could shoot them without blowing his master's leg off. I snuck up and got the gun, shot them both in the face. One barrel each.
"Funny thing is, the guy was nice enough. Really loving and gentle with me, and he gave me some kind of pill when it was over that flushed me out, made sure I got my period. The one I wanted to shoot was my father. Maybe not in the face, in the foot or knee or something. I heard later they hauled off the servants, the ones who worked there during the day, and that seemed the most unfair thing of all. A cook, a gardener, and a housekeeper, who all lived miles away and had to take a broken-down old bus even to get there. Up until then everything about the Order was scary, but in this theoretical sense. When I saw it in practice, it changed me more than getting poked by that old guy.
"I ran for Yuma, wanting to get across to Cali, and made it. But I met a nice kid in Yuma, working part-time at the store while he apprenticed at the airfield in electronics. He got purified, though, my first year there."
Valentine waited until he was sure she'd stopped talking. "What happened to your dad?"
"Dunno. I should have gotten a job in town, kept him somewhere out of the way. He wasn't on any sets of official books, I don't think— no one would have looked for him. Stupid old drunk."
"You are tough," Valentine said.
"Only on the outside. Like a bug."
Valentine nodded. "I know what you mean."
* * * *
A thunderstorm rumbled outside when higher authority called for them. Valentine put on a pair of moleskin trousers they'd given him and his only shirt with a collar, a field turtleneck.
They took them down the road to the echoing halls of the high school, where maybe thirty or forty people worked in classrooms in a school built to hold a thousand. Patched cracks from earthquake damage ran across the floors and up the walls.
It had been a long parade of death since the "turnover" of 2022, when mankind relinquished its throne at the top of the food chain....
Valentine guessed the room they brought them to had been devoted to science. A yellowing periodic table hung on the wall, and all the tables had a thick, black, chemically resistant covering. Cabinets on the wall held binders rather than test tubes and Bunsen burners. A preserved Reaper head sat in a jar on the counter, next to glass-covered trays holding molds of Grog tracks and recovered teeth.
A rather sad-looking elderly man, lost in his green uniform collar, sat on a stool, resting his back against a whiteboard. Another man, bald with a lightning-bolt-like zigzag tattooed on each temple, wore a smart steely gray uniform. Blued-steel collar tabs and matching arrowheads on his epaulets gleamed like a polished piano top as he stood talking to Walker.
The guard halted Gide outside, offered her a chair.
"She's my aspirant, Walker," Valentine protested as the other guard led him into the office/classroom.
The older man pulled at his ear. "Hmmmm . . . can't say. Can't really say, maybe around the eyes."
"Major Valentine," the bald man said. "My name's Thunderbird. You know Walker, of course, and this is Colonel Kubishev. Colonel Kubishev is semiretired. He came down as a favor to me."
"Sorry, I'm afraid I bunged things up and delayed you a day," Colonel Kubishev said. He had a faint accent. "They asked me to take a look at you. I worked with your father, briefly, in Montana. Calgary Alliance. They asked me about the name and I wanted to see for myself."
None of that meant much. Valentine vaguely remembered the Calgary Alliance being mentioned in War College; it was a short-lived Freehold that collapsed under the Black Summer Famines of the forties.
"I'm honored, sir," Valentine said.
"How is he?"
"He's dead," Valentine said.
"Oh, I am sorry. I am sorry. My wife and I will remember him."
"Thank you, sir."
"You wouldn't know whatever happened to Helen St. Croix, I don't suppose," Kubishev asked.
"He married her," Valentine said. "She's my mother. She died at the same time."
"That's it! He has her hair, exactly," Kubishev said, as though the observation relieved him of a burden. "That is good. That is very good. Died at the same time?" Yes.
"I'm glad you were spared."
"I was eleven. Some distance away at the time."
"Major Valentine, I'm sorry to hear that," Thunderbird said. "Were you aware that your Q-file with Southern Command lists your father as J. D. Valentine and your mother as H. Argent?"
"Argent?"
"Yes, the same as that excellent set of fake Oklahoma papers you had."
Valentine stared. "I couldn't say why that's the case. When I filled out my enlistment paperwork I put down the correct names."
"I don't have that—this is just a short version—but it does list parentage and place of birth. Oh, your birthplace is listed as Rapid City, South Dakota. Strangely coincidental error, still."
"Maximilian Argent was a family friend," Valentine said.
"We don't doubt that the man in this file is you," Thunderbird said.
"I'm glad to hear it, ummm ..."
"Colonel. The insignia for Delta Group is somewhat esoteric. I mean for you to learn it, though. I'd like to have you under my command."
"Delta Group?"
"Lifeweaver Enhanced. Delta is a symbol of change. We're mostly all Bears up here. I'm not sure if it's a regional affinity, or just that we know right where the Fangs are and we don't need Wolves and Cats and whatnot to locate them."
"I've worked with Bears," Valentine said. "If you want me to become one—"
Thunderbird clacked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, thinking. "I don't think I have a slot for you at your former rank. But we might find a job for you and that gizmo you flew in on."
"As you wish," Valentine said. "It'll be good to be back on a team again."
"Then you can satisfy my curiosity, Valentine. Why did you come all the way here? You could have made yourself useful in Denver, Wyoming, even the Caribbean, and saved yourself a lot of mileage. Why us?"
"You're winning," Valentine said.
"Damn right we are," Walker put in. "And we'll keep winning, as long as the Lord sees fit."
The old man bowed his head, and Valentine saw his lips moving silently.
"We'll give you an orientation later. I want a detailed debriefing first."
They sat down and Walker brought in coffee. For forty-five minutes or so they talked, much more conversational than interrogatory. They were especially interested in his trips to the Caribbean and the exact circumstances of his court-martial and conviction under the Fugitive Law. "Typical," Thunderbird said. "They want victory. Just don't like the color of the coin that'll pay for it." Afterward they took a short break, and Valentine saw Thunderbird pick up the phone.
Later they talked to Gide, and Valentine idled in the hall. Her interview was much shorter.
"Term in the militia," she said. "I guess it's a start for us."
Valentine went back into the classroom, where Thunderbird was on the phone again. "Yeah, that's right. I want everything north of Woodinville Road cleared. They think Redmond's next, but we'll pull back and slide the Action Group north." He looked at Valentine. "Yes?"
"My friend Gide. I was hoping we'd be able to stay together."
"We'll pick this up in ten," Thunderbird said into the phone. He hung it up. "She's a natural. And a woman besides. No room for her with the Bears of Delta Group."
"She and I—"
Tok tok, his tongue sounded. "Something warm to come home to?"
"More like mutual affinity."
"Better check the true-love meter again. She sounds eager to serve, with or without you. If you want a slice of something juicy, Delta Group gets their pick, believe me. Tell you what, I'll get her posted near our operations HQ. She'd just be a short walk away. Fair enough?"
"More than," Valentine said, wondering why his stomach was going sour.
He picked up the phone. "See you on the other side of the mountains, Valentine."
Chapter Eight
Fort Grizzly, overlooking the outer suburbs of Seattle, Washington: The men call it either "Fort Gristle" or "Fort Drizzly" depending on whether the barrack-room conversation revolves around the food or the weather. Valentine was seeing the Seattle basin in its finest month.
Grizzly is settled on the east-facing slope of a ridge, at an old mine and quarry complex with a network of tunnels dug as though designed to be confusing—which it was. The "rabbit warren" underground works of Fort Grizzly serves as armory, bomb shelter, garage, and warehouse, and, most importantly, staging area for operations against Seattle.
Mining equipment chatters away all day, slowly expanding the works, serving as exercise for men with nothing better to do, adding background noise to all conversations except those in the deeper caves. At night blessed silence reigns, broken by the sounds of training, for the Bears of Fort Grizzly operate under the cover of darkness up and down the western slopes of the Cascades, daring the Reapers to face them when their powers are at their height.
Three-foot-high letters at the entrance tunnels exhort and warn: WE DO OR DIE FOR THE FUTURE; ANYONE CAN BE A HERO; WE'LL HAVE THEIR THANKS AFTER THE VICTORY; PEACE IS FOR GRAVEYARDS.
The warren is surprisingly light and airy. Masonry walls exist in many places, cheerfully painted in soft greens and yellows. It's comfortably furnished with items taken from old houses; indeed, in some places it seems more like a furniture showroom than a bunker. There is running water in some of the caverns and electricity in all but the blind alleys and undercuts designed to fool intruders. To reach any of the high-priority caves, one has to travel through darkness, then approach checkpoints blinded by spotlights. Almost no amount of shelling would do much but close up a few of the entrances, and an assault on the complex would be akin to bearding a horde of grizzlies in their dens.
* * * *
"... to never doubt, never surrender, and never relent until our future is our own again," Valentine repeated with Gide, right hand held in the direction of the Stars and Stripes and a totem pole of the faces from assorted monetary denominations that depicted American presidents, left hand next to Gide's atop a black Reaper skull on a wooden pedestal. "I will obey the orders of my lawful superiors until victory, death, or honorable release."
The wording had a tang of blood and iron to Valentine. The oath he'd taken on joining Southern Command, administered very informally by an old Wolf sergeant holding a dog-eared Bible after his first week on the march south from Minnesota, used one similar phrase—"obey the lawful orders of my superiors"—and to Valentine, who turned the words over in his mind afterward, there could be worlds of interpretation separating the two.
He took the oath at Fort Grizzly with Gide, a final sop to their friendship, at the base of the eastern slope of "Grizzly Ridge" with the sun shining above and the pines of the western mountains blue in the sunshine.
"Smallest swearing-in I've ever attended," Thunderbird said, waving a private forward with a black bowling-ball bag for the Reaper skull. "But you're no ordinary recruit." A corporal on Thunderbird's staff named Wilson lit a cigarette and puffed eagerly.
Valentine felt Gide trembling next to him. Didn't Thunderbird recognize that this was an important moment in her life?
"You've done it, Gide," Valentine said. "Congratulations."
"Let's get you both into uniform, now that everything's legal," Thunderbird said. "Recruit Gide, they're expecting you at the fueling depot. You'll get your muster gear there. Get going."
"Salute," Valentine whispered.
"Thank you, sir," she said, saluting. He returned it.
"That entitles you to a drink on me," Valentine said. "Southern Command tradition. I'll call for you as soon as I can."
Tok tok. "This is Pacific Command, Valentine," Thunderbird said. But he smiled as he said it. "But we'll make sure you two keep your date.
"Valentine, let's get you out of that biker getup. Wilson, get Valentine over to the medical center for his capabilities physical, and see if the professor can spare an hour for a quick background lecture."
Valentine shook hands with Gide. She looked brisk and ready for anything, had been quick-witted enough to add the "sir," and she was capable enough. She'd be fine. Why this strange reluctance to let her go?
"My office is K-110, Valentine. The door is always open," Thunderbird said.
Wilson finished his cigarette with a long drag, stubbed the bright red remains out in his palm, and pocketed it. "No smoking in the warren."
"Doesn't that hurt?" Valentine said as he followed Wilson away.
"If it didn't, it wouldn't be much of a trick," Wilson said. "It'll be healed by tomorrow. Privileges of Bearhood."
* * * *
The physical was more like an athletic contest against a stopwatch than a doctor's evaluation. First they tested day and night visual acuity, then color vision (he had trouble with reds and greens, as usual). Then they watched him climb a nearly vertical slope toward a red demolition flag. He ran laps and they took blood and had him breathe into a lung volume tube. He was measured for standing vertical jump (eleven feet, well short of his record of sixteen his first year as a Cat). Then they ran him through a maze of swinging tennis balls, waving back and forth at the end of various lengths of string. He had to roll, jump, and dodge at intervals measured in split seconds.
"Eighty-five percent," the doctor said as her assistant turned off the machine that agitated the wooden rigging. "You Cats are something."
"Are there any others here?" Valentine asked, watching her through the mass of waving lines and greenish balls.
"No. The last one disappeared in the KZ a couple years ago. There are some Wolves with the forward observers."
Then Wilson took him to the professor, Delta Group's archivist and resident historian, a sagging mass of a man with a neatly trimmed gray beard, who sat in an office with three humming dehumidifiers and piles of paper atop piles of file cabinets. After a short lament that he was forever being called away from the History of the Establishment of the Kurian Order, he briefed Valentine on Pacific Command's resurgence.
In the last dozen years or so they'd gone from being a shabby group of guerrillas hiding in the mountains to the Terrors of the Cascades, thanks to a single man. "Mr. Adler," now "the Old Man," walked out of the Kurian Zone, met a patrol under one of the few aggressive commanders in the "Seahawks" as they styled themselves, said something about his family being killed, and offered to guide the troops to an unattended depot where they could get better weapons and explosives, provided they'd use them on a Quisling named Doorward, who'd betrayed him. Doorward turned out to be a soldier in the Seattle Order and a recent Ringwinner. They ambushed him as he pulled into the garage of his mansion, then got away clean.
"He's one of those curious men who can sense when a Reaper's in the neighborhood," the professor explained. Valentine felt a prickle of recognition. Affinity, perhaps.
"Mr. Adler" never put on a uniform, but just directed to target after target. Success swelled their ranks, a Lifeweaver arrived to assist, and soon they were picking off isolated Kurian Towers.
"Same Lifeweaver still with th—us?" Valentine asked.
"Oh yes," the professor said. "He's an odd one, but he can make Bears, sure enough."
Then the "clearing" operations started—"Action Groups" of Bears who hit the Kurian Zone and caused so much damage their targets were unproductive fo
r months or years to come.
"Hard on the poor SOBs under the Kurians. But that's the strength of the constrictor."
The "constrictor," as the professor explained it, was a steadily tightening ring around the Seattle area, denying resources to what had been one of the largest and best-organized Kurian Zones in North America. Now the Seattle KZ was a shadow of its former self, and the awful Chief Kurian at his refuge in the tower that dwarfed even the Space Needle was increasingly isolated. Thanks to the quick-moving and hard-hitting Action Groups, he'd been bereft of several of his key subordinate lords.
"They give up and relocate, if they get a chance. Mr. Adler's got a good sense for when one's getting set to bug out, that's for sure. He nudges them right along."
Valentine got his own room with a private toilet and shower, and eventually learned his way to the cafeteria, gymnasium, laundry, and underground range.
The Bears were a big, bluff collection. Canadians and Native Americans added their own accents and mannerisms. Several had tattoos that read doer on their upper arms, sometimes pierced by a dripping dagger. They felt more a military machine than the atavistic Bears of Southern Command, but maybe it was because there were so many of them grouped together. They were proud of their position.
"Never thought I'd make it," one told him as they sat and sweated in the gym's wood-walled sauna. "First time out, I thought my heart would burst. But I'm used to it now."
"What have you been up against?" Valentine asked.
"Mostly Seattle Guard types. They run away when an Action Column roars into town. They've seeded the waters with some Grogs— you got to watch it around rivers and so on."
"Big mouths?" Valentine asked. He'd run into them in Chicago.
"We call them Sleekees. That's the noise they make when they're hopping around on land. Slee-kee, slee-kee," he wheezed in imitation.