Valentine's Rising

by E. E. Knight

  The sergeant took another look at the ID card dangling from Valentine’s breast pocket. “Didn’t they have transport for you on the road, uhhh, Colonel Le Sain?”

  “Too cheap. Besides, it toughens ’em up.”

  “I’ll let the general know you’ve arrived.”

  “When you do, mention that weather held us up. Hell, I’d better come along in case they have questions.”

  “Yes, sir. Corp, let the colonel and his stoop pass.” The sergeant disappeared into his guardhouse.

  Valentine dismounted and stepped over the chain hung between two concrete dragon’s teeth blocking the road. “Up from Louisiana, sir? I used to serve in Texas, myself. Can’t wait to get back.” The corporal’s face showed curiosity, not suspicion.

  “I’m here permanently.”

  The guardhouse consisted of the remains of some concrete-and-steel professional building. Men in loose dungarees were rebuilding exterior walls from the rubble, fitting together more or less intact cinder blocks around electrical conduit already laid. Others worked on a superstructure to the building, building something that looked like a miniature aircraft control tower. The workers all had bright orange zipper pockets sewn on the breasts of their overalls.

  “Forced labor?” Valentine asked the corporal.

  “You know it, sir. At first it was lots of force and not much labor, but they’ve settled down.”

  “Good.”

  Valentine smelled the wet cement and waited while the sergeant passed responsibility up to lieutenant, and lieutenant to a radio. The lieutenant, a thirtyish man missing an earlobe, hung up the field phone and approached Valentine.

  The Cat tried not to look relieved when he saluted. “Howdy, sir,” he said, revealing a mouth full of black-rimmed teeth. “I apologize for taking so long. I’m sorry, but there’s some confusion. They know about the men, but Brigadier Xray-Tango doesn’t know you, sir.” Valentine felt a cold sweat emerge on his back.

  “I got my orders a month ago. Only thing to happen since then was a last-minute change; they had me set out from Fort Scott instead of Hot Springs. That got countermanded the next day; turned out they wanted me at Station 26 to command these recruits.”

  “Looks like when you got switched back, someone didn’t follow up, sir.”

  “Order, Counter-Order, Disorder. Hot Springs had some confusion, too.”

  The lieutenant shrugged. He looked as if he was going to say something to Ahn-Kha, and thought better of it. “Brigadier Xray-Tango wants to see you and your orders before your men get billeted, sir. I suppose your Grog can go with you.”

  “Excuse me, son. ‘Xray-Tango?’ That an acronym you use up here?”

  “No, it’s a name. He’s CO for this whole New Columbia area. He’s new, too.”

  “I see. Wish they’d tell me these things.”

  “If you’ll follow me, sir.”

  Valentine smiled. “I look forward to meeting the brigadier.”

  Little Rock’s collection of warehouses and piers was Station 3, according to the sign over the entrance. Station 3 also had a motto: “Crossroads of the Future.” Or so Valentine read as he stepped up the stairs and under a pre-2022 post and lintel in the neoclassical style. The rest of the headquarters building was a cobbled-together mix of wood floors, brick walls and beam roof. Communications passed from the radio room upstairs through old-fashioned air-pressure tubes. There was an audible shoomp as a new message arrived at the desk of an officer. Another wrote outgoing messages in block letters on square-lined paper and sent them shooting back upstairs.

  “The general will see you now, sir; your assistant can wait outside,” a corporal said. He had the self-assured look of a ranker who was used to having officers at his beck and call. Ahn-Kha waited for a nod from Valentine, then went back outside.

  The brigadier general had a corner office with narrow windows filled with the first unbroken glass Valentine had seen in the Ruins. What wall space wasn’t taken up by windows had maps and bulletin boards on it. A liquor sideboard held trophies of figures in various martial arts poses instead of bottles. The desk smelled of recently applied varnish.

  “Coffee?” Brigadier Xray-Tango asked. He had a neat uniform, with the same yellow star on the shoulder, and a hearty manner, under a haircut so close it resembled peach fuzz. Friendly but harassed eyes looked out from under bushy brows. There was something wrong with the face, though, and it took Valentine a moment to see it. Xray-Tango’s left eye was open wider than the right; it wasn’t that the right was squinting, it was more that the left lid stayed a little farther open. Valentine liked to look at a man’s hands after his face, and as he poured the coffee Valentine looked at the work-roughened fingers. The nails were rimmed with a stain that matched that on the new desk, which was topped by a stenciled desk plate that read BGDR GENERAL S. XRAY-TANGO.

  “Thank you, sir.” Valentine sniffed the aroma from the thermos. “The real thing?”

  “Privileges of rank.”

  “What’s all the hardware for? Boxing?”

  “Some. Ever heard of Tae Kwon Do?”

  “That’s like kickboxing, right?”

  “A little. It’s a martial art. I fought for my old brigade out west. Retired undefeated.” He held out his left hand; on the finger next to a wedding ring Valentine saw a ruby red championship ring with “S X T” engraved beneath the “Single Combat Champion” title. “Can I see your orders, Colonel?”

  Valentine sorted them and placed them in three piles on his desk. “Marching orders. Supply requisitions. Organization Inventory for the recruits. Y’all like your paperwork up here.”

  “That’s a weak-looking OI,” Xray-Tango said, glancing through the pages.

  “Farm kids and men in from the borderland boonies. But they’re good woodsmen. They know about moving through country and shooting.”

  “That territory organized?”

  “Not as well as it should be. Most of them are the usual assortment of malcontents who chose carrying a gun over using a shovel in a labor camp.”

  General Xray-Tango’s left eye twitched; a quick three-blink spasm, the third slower than the first two.

  “You’re moving kind of stiff, Colonel. Injury?”

  “I came off a horse a couple weeks ago and broke a rib. I just got the cast off.”

  The eye twitched again and Xray-Tango took in Ahn-Kha’s formidable frame.

  “Why the bodyguard?” he asked Valentine.

  “The Grog? SOP down there for anyone above captain, sir. Bodyguard. Master-at-arms. I don’t know what you’d call it up here. He shakes up soldier and civilian alike.”

  “Kind of like your own personal Hood, eh? Not sure if I like that. A good leader shouldn’t have to dole out summary justice. How often you use it?”

  “I lost one on the way. I had to shoot a deserter. Just a homesick kid. I didn’t know what kind of paperwork I had to fill out so I just made a report, countersigned by my second in command and the dead man’s sergeant. We don’t have dog tags but his work card’s attached. That’s how we did things in Natchez.”

  “That’s the least of my worries, Le Sain.”

  “Why’s that, sir?”

  “To be honest, we’ve no record of you coming here. By Kur, I need you, that’s for sure. All this rain with the spring thaw; I’ve got a command and a bunch of warehouses that might be underwater in a day or two. Consul Solon has zero, and I mean zero, tolerance for wheeling and dealing. So I’m going to have to do some checking. No offense to how they do things in Louisiana.” The eye twitched again; blink-blink-bliiink .

  “Don’t follow your meaning, sir.”

  “I started out in the Okalahoma High Plains, Colonel. Not the most exciting place for duty. We had a captain out there, got bored with his duties and got himself a transfer to Lake Meredith. And when I say got himself a transfer, I mean he wrote one up, signed it and moved his troops a hundred miles just for a change of scenery. He figured he’d earned it after a lot of
dusty years watching railways and cattle wallows. So happens he was a good officer and the Higher Ups let him get away with it. We’ve been after Frum at Post 26 for months to meet his recruitment quota for the year—and all of the sudden he’s not just met it, he’s overfilled it, with a Louisiana colonel to boot.”

  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 s
oldier 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.