Baltic Gambit

by E. E. Knight

  She’d never told anyone about the dream. Transitory lovers, like that boy from Ohio, had sometimes questioned her about her nightmares, asking if she wanted to be woken up from them. She said no, they were brief, would pass, and she luxuriated in her sleep. Even David, who at times was some combination of partner, husband, and brother, didn’t know about the Great Machine. The meaning was so obvious it wasn’t worth discussing, especially with a man who now and then woke up sweating and calling to his dead mother, killed by some kind of Kurian Order hit team.

  She descended from her aerie early, feeling achy and anxious from the dream. Her muscles had never relaxed properly last night.

  They had an old tack room that had been converted to an extra walk-in cooler for the camp by the simple expedient of adding a heavy-duty window air conditioner and extra insulation. She went in and poured some of the camp goat’s milk, then shuffled off to the first-floor communal kitchen to find some baking soda to brush her teeth.

  Narcisse had just drained a couple of chickens for Blake and was in the process of plucking them. The feathers lay all about her feet. “You had a bad night, girl.”

  “Bad dreams,” she said. “You need help?”

  “Oh, I think you have things to do. General Martinez arrives today.”

  How did she know about that?

  She wondered about Narcisse, the old woman Valentine had picked up in the Caribbean on his mission to find Quickwood—a rare hardwood that might have served as the basis for legends about vampires being killed by stakes—and brought north. Physically, the old woman seemed more dead than alive these days. She’d seen a few people in hospitals kept alive by machines, and Narcisse reminded her of them. The same dead-looking skin, withered hands, sunken cheeks. Yet for all the decrepitude of the body, she managed to keep going somehow, some inner animating spirit occasionally showed in her eyes, especially when she was interacting with Blake. And mentally, she was still more insightful about the people in camp than even Brother Mark was.

  She washed up in a basin, ate some cold jerked chicken left over from last night, and attended to her very limited duties. Then she joined other idlers in waiting for General Martinez to arrive.

  He put on a pretty good show, she had to admit. His red-white-and-blue-painted plane circled low over the camp and made a couple of passes over the highway to make sure it was clear of traffic.

  He was a little fleshier in person than in his newspaper photos. She wondered if they were doctored. Still, he had a nice head of hair that was equally impressive whether real or fake—if real, because of its youthful thickness and luster; if fake because of the expensive craftsmanship that must have gone into it.

  She noticed there was a woman in uniform taking pictures. She looked tired.

  Sime, the United Free Republics politico who handled the Kentucky Alliance, trailed in his wake along with other staff. She’d seen Sime on one or two occasions. He’d been involved in Valentine’s troubles with Southern Command in some manner.

  Martinez bounced out of the plane and exchanged salutes with Lambert and the other officers there to greet him and pumped the hands of the Evansville and Kentucky civilians with a good deal of enthusiasm. He apparently made a compliment to one of the women; she blushed and rocked on the balls of her feet as they had the photographer take a picture. He did everything but kiss a baby.

  He got into a waiting, lightly armored four-by-four and turned up toward Fort Seng, with his official photographer riding precariously in a folding seat attached to the rear bumper. Duvalier was a little surprised at the security vehicle. She didn’t think it came from the motor pool. If not, some poor chump had had to drive it through Western Kentucky, wash off the inevitable chaff that accumulated, and have it ready in time for the general’s arrival.

  She lost interest after he disappeared into the camp. She bought a couple of small soaps and shampoos from one of the traders across the road from Fort Seng. She visited a bakery—it had once been a doughnut cart, but now it actually had a counter, although the counter was festooned with pictures of cute kids at Youth Vanguard day care doing something with flour. There were copies of the New Universal Church’s Guidon near the cash box.

  Martinez was supposed to have a quiet meeting with Lambert and her staff, then eat lunch with the soldiers, give a short speech, and depart.

  General Martinez gave a good speech; she allowed him that. Too bad more weren’t there to hear it. Most of the Bears and Wolves had found other things to do. The ones who did show up concentrated on their food.

  The slide show was nothing but self-aggrandizement. Photos of Martinez as a youth, doing hardscrabble farm labor, in a poorly-sized uniform for his frame as a new lieutenant, an entire biography. After Consul Solon’s occupation of the Ozark Free Territory and eventual defeat, the pictures suddenly became a great deal more professional than friends’ snapshots and service journalism. Martinez had evidently recruited a professional or found someone who could do a very professional job making him look good in still life.

  The second-to-last slide was just the words PURPOSE TO EVERYTHING. Martinez made a few rah-rah statements, but the audience was just as cold to it as she was.

  The final photo received some cheers and whistles. Martinez basked for a moment in the whooping and cheering; then it dawned on him that there was some laughter in the crowd, too. He turned around and there he was, in a rather grainy press photo of a banquet, asleep at the table with his head lolling back and collar unbuttoned, tie loosened and hanging like an overheated dog’s tongue. A pair of champagne ice buckets stood on the table with overturned bottles in them. In the background, the president of the UFR was speaking from a podium, though no one seemed to be paying him much attention. You could practically hear Martinez snoring in your imagination.

  Martinez turned around. His jaw dropped when he saw the photo.

  “A different slide is supposed to go there!” he thundered at the projectionist. “Go back.”

  The picture returned to the PURPOSE TO EVERYTHING slide, but the projectionist must have been having technical difficulties, because it went forward again to the picture of Martinez snoring at the table. And back. And forward, while the technician frowned and furrowed his eyebrows and pulled at his chin, peering at the slide projector. It clicked from the title card to Martinez dead-drunk at a banquet table, and back again, over and over, to the laughter of the assembly.

  The general’s face went even darker. Duvalier grew afraid that he’d stroke out or have a coronary right on Fort Seng’s main stage, so to speak.

  “Just unplug it, Corporal!” Martinez bellowed across the laughing ranks.

  One of his aides hurried to intervene. He ran up to the slide projector and pulled the plug. The screen went dark instantly. There was still a good deal of laughter in the audience.

  As Martinez left, the aide made an explanation to the men that the slide was a private joke between Martinez and his staff and had accidentally been left in the presentation. “The general has quite a sense of humor about himself,” he insisted.

  It didn’t look like it as Duvalier watched him on his way out of camp back to the red-white-and-blue plane.

  General Martinez needed to lash out and Lambert was the nearest target. Duvalier watched him pace back and forth in front of her as he dressed her down.

  “So, if I could summarize,” Lambert finally said, “somebody knew you were showing up with a slide show, had a slide manufactured, inserted it into the tray that was always in the control of your people, then manipulated the soldier working the slides—one of your staff, I might add—into making your slide projector malfunction in order to humiliate you in front of the troops?”

  She had a strange moment when putting her things together in her little space in the barn, that she would never see it again. The premonition bothered her more than she would admit to anyone.

  Just in case, she had a few words to Brother Mark about a will. He was used to comforting the fearful, probed
her on her concerns, and asked her about the three worst moments of her life and how she got through them. “Now, a long trip to attend some meetings doesn’t sound as bad as that,” he said, after she told him about the time she’d stomped a Quisling to death as a teen. Her first murder.

  With that done, he helped her write down a few things on a standard form and they turned it in to the administrative service together.

  “Good choices,” he said, as they made their farewells.

  He was referring to the disposition of her assets. She had a fair amount of pay stored up, since she was out of the home areas and in the KZ so often she hardly had time to spend it. Much of it had automatically been placed with Southern Command’s bond funds. She arranged for a division between Ahn-Kha and Val, the closest she had to family, except for a few thousand dollars to build a kids’ park somewhere. Her happiest times as a child had been on a few pieces of playground equipment, and she still liked watching kids climb and slide. She wrapped an old red bra and a phony wedding ring in some tissue paper and labeled the package for Val, a little memento to remember her by.

  Feeling somewhat more optimistic and lightened—odd how preparing for the eventuality of your death put a shine on the day—she ate what was for her an enormous meal at the canteen and took a last walk around the camp. The nights were growing warmer and there were a few pickup soccer and volleyball games going. She won five straight games of darts in the base lounge, listening to the Fort Seng guitar band play old rock and roll, and returned to the bugs of her attic vaguely proud that she hadn’t given in to her loins when they flared up over a pair of cute sergeants shooting pool with a Bear.

  They said bullfighters always wanted sex before a fight, and sometimes in the past she’d given in to lust before an op. But Fort Seng was almost like a big extended family, and there was bound to be gossip—and if she returned, she didn’t want to deal with the are-we-or-aren’t-we questions.

  In any case, this wasn’t an op with obvious dangers, like the exploit in the Hoosier National Forest. It was supposed to be a kind of vacation. Still, she worked her blades against a whetstone as a way of preparing herself for sleep. The rasp-rasp-rasp soothed and her breathing slowed and deepened, and after returning the blades to their sheaths she dropped right off, to the sound of horses stamping and swishing.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Travel.” To the early twenty-first-century ear, the word is full of romanticism. Travel means delicious exotic food, sightseeing, meeting interesting people who might turn into friends or lovers, and above all, a pleasant, relaxing break from ordinary life.

  To those who live in the post-2022 world of the twenty-first, however, the word has taken on a fearful aspect. Travel means danger, difficulty, and the longer the distance you intend to go, the less likely you will be to reach your intended destination. “Travel’s a curse” was a line in a very popular theatrical production set in the nineteenth century, but in the Kurian Order a journey isn’t even up to those standards. A trip of any length is closer to the pilgrimages of the Middle Ages, fraught with difficulty, and therefore something engaged in only once or twice in a lifetime.

  Still, it is a necessity for certain high Quislings in the Kurian Order. While they have fewer difficulties with finding transport, the fuel to put in it, and a route to their destination, there’s still the worry of treachery at one of the stops. Many have been lost to “poaching” or a sudden switch in loyalties between Kurian factions.

  While the Resistance has its betrayals, too, they are rare. Travel is more difficult from a logistical point of view, but there are several networks that allow journeys of even extreme distances to be completed. Sponsored and supported by various freeholds worldwide, they run something like the Underground Railroad of the pre–Civil War United States.

  There are the Pacific Charters, able to move people and cargoes all about the Pacific Rim, and the Pan-American Viajes Azure has been able to move people from the Tierra del Fuego to Canada.

  The Refugee Network is the great chain binding Old World to New in the days of the Kurian Order, mostly taking escapees out of Europe and over to Canada. Canada’s vast, often chilly wilderness offers climatic refuge from the Kurians, and while passages are often arranged for those with wealth or needed skills, there is usually room to be found for those just desperate to get away. There are many heartbreaking stories in its history of groups of families arranging for all their children to be sent across the Atlantic under the care of a single adult, with the present generation sacrificing itself so that more of a future may be brought to the Free Territory.

  It was the Refugee Network that set up the travel routes from North America to the Baltic. The delegates received travel advice, but were to make it to either Vancouver or Halifax on their own, and from there departures to Europe would be arranged. Southern Command and the Kentucky Freehold both opted for the Halifax route, and as matters turned out, it was simpler for them to travel together.

  On the morning of departure, she met Ahn-Kha and Valentine at the back door to Headquarters, just adjacent to the HQ parking lot. They wouldn’t have to ride the “bus” (usually an old army truck) into Evansville; thanks to the official nature of the trip to the airport, they’d get an honest-to-Martinez staff car.

  Ahn-Kha was slumbering atop the duffel bag containing his odds and ends. She could see that Valentine was nervous. He was whittling a stick down to nothing with a little sheepsfoot blade he carried.

  Valentine had something against timber when he was agitated. She’d seen him sweat out anxiety by reducing timber to kindling more times than she could count. The sweat equity was usually appreciated by whoever was feeding him at the moment.

  “What’s up?” she asked him.

  “I’m always nervous before a trip. You know I settle down once we’re on our way.”

  After all these years, it was odd that he still tried to bullshit her. Her mother had once told her that men cover up their feelings more for their wives than they do for their whores. Maybe that girl he visited in town knew the real story. “C’mon, Val. You’re talking to me here. I’m not some lieutenant you have to reassure.”

  He flung the stick into the soft spring ground and the point dug in, like a dart. “The last time I left on a long trip, I fathered a baby girl and returned home to find the Free Territory under Solon’s Quislings.”

  She shrugged. “The Kentuckians were taking care of themselves before we ever crossed between the Tennessee and the Ohio with the clans. Remember that. They’ll still be here when we get back. As for fathering kids, you could break with tradition and keep it zipped up. You’re grouchy when you’re celibate, but you get more done.”

  He laughed and unbent. A little. “Is my reputation that bad?”

  “I’ve never heard any of your women complain. Just jealous fellow officers. They don’t have that luscious black hair, either.” Actually, he was going a little gray at the temples, but she didn’t want to mention it.

  “I can’t help feeling that this will be the make-or-break summer,” he said. “The Georgia Control is building up to something.”

  “Last I heard, they frittered away six thousand men trying to pacify the Coal Country again, and all they did was see to it that the rebels there are better armed than ever. They’d have to take fifty or a hundred thousand into Kentucky. They don’t have it, at least not combat-capable troops, even if they strip their other frontiers.”

  “I still think it’s going to come down to Kentucky and the Georgia Control,” Valentine said. “They have all the factories and the foreign connections. All we have is home-field advantage.”

  “Maybe we’ll make some foreign connections at the conference.”

  “So we become best friends with a resistance faction in the Ukraine. They won’t be able to provide much effective support.”

  “We could give them a handful of Quickwood seeds. Maybe they’ll have something similar for us.”

  “Those went out ages ago.
By the time the trees have matured to usable age, they’ll have reengineered their Reapers to be less vulnerable.”

  “David, even if the Georgia Control comes with everything it has, will you being here make a difference? Let’s say it’s the biggest debacle since Indianapolis—how does you dying or getting captured with the rest change much?”

  “I helped them get this started. If there’s a finish, I want to be with them.”

  The car pulled around. Captain Patel was at the wheel, there to see the kid he’d trained as a very young junior lieutenant in the Wolves off on another long op.

  “Talking to the women instead of loading your gear, Valentine,” Patel said. “You never change. C’mon, kid, I’m not working for tips here.”

  They woke Ahn-Kha and as they stowed their gear in the back of the camouflage-painted all-wheel drive, she thought of one more thing to tell him: “You did more good by showing up with the Quickwood when you did than you would have if you’d been just another guy runnin’ and gunnin’ when Solon invaded. Don’t forget that.”

  They covered a vast distance in a gray two-engine plane, the largest aircraft Duvalier had ever ridden in—not that she had much experience in the sky. It was named the Bucking Bronc and had some vividly colored nose art of a brunette with bangs and leg-revealing chaps riding a man in exaggerated cowboy gear. The cowboy seemed vaguely familiar to Duvalier. The pilot, a Texan named Silas A. Montee whose only insignia was a perfectly scratch-free set of golden wings on his chest, told her the cowboy was a film icon from the twentieth century. Montee was by far her favorite of the Southern Command group. Sadly, he would be with them only to Newfoundland, where they’d transfer to a ship with the delegates representing the Green Mountain Boys.

  Before they boarded Montee’s plane, Patel slipped Valentine a box with something that clattered faintly. She suspected alcohol. The veteran captain had good connections with the Kentucky legworm pack traders, thanks to his endless overnight training hikes with the men.