by E. E. Knight
"A dislocation's easy to fix," Valentine said. "Petrie! Keep your hand away from that phone. Broken fingers are a bitch while they heal."
"I could pop his jaw," Patel said, gripping either side of Petrie's head. "That'll cut his talking down to lOw.' "
Valentine let Petrie catch his breath.
"So, Marshal, have we reached a deeper understanding? You've got three more limbs. I don't want have to leave you in a bathtub full of ice without any of them working, but I will."
"You can have 'em," Petrie said. "Hope one of them rolls a grenade into your tent for me. That's all the thanks you'll get from those mooks."
"You're a mean, stubborn bastard, Petrie," Valentine said. "If your uncle can't find anything for you, you're welcome to join my outfit."
Chapter Four
Highbeam Assembly Area, Arkansas, November: Just outside the city Jonesboro, now notable only for its hospital, which is the only one in the northeastern corner of the state, a new camp is going up.
Southern Command believes that the best people to build a camp are the soldiers who have to eat, sleep, and train in it. Cartload after cartload of lumber, tenting, plumbing, and wiring arrives as the assembly area swells, hauled from the rail terminus to the camp by ox wagons and mule teams.
A tricky autumn dumped rain and a freak snowstorm on the soldiers as they hammered and tacked and strung. Now, with canvas roofing above their heads at last and corduroy roads made of scrub timber and wood chips, the rain blows out northeast and a cool, dry fall sets in, though the chill in the midnight-to-dawn air hints at worse to come.
Valentines company arrived after the Wolf contingent and Bear teams but before most of the Guard forces of the expeditionary brigade. They got their own corner of the assembly area, a little blister near the camp's drainage.
As far as the men were concerned, they were preparing for a "long out." Lambert had planted rumors that their destination was New Orleans or a big raid on the river patrol base at Vicksburg. Consequently the men assumed that they'd be going in the opposite direction, perhaps to Omaha or another try at western Kansas. One Wolf swore that it would certainly be Omaha, as he knew for a fact that Major Valentine was familiar with the city, as his sister had served under him on Big Rock Hill and afterward on the drive into Texas. She knew all about him. Others bet him that it was Kansas, as Colonel Seng had buried a lot of soldiers there and was going back to reclaim old ground.
Each man both hopes for and fears the coming "long out." On the return from such a campaign, promotions and awards are handed out like Archangel Day candy. Quieter, dirtier stories of the women looking for an easy out of the Kurian Zone appeal to some; others talk of strange liquors and dishes. The best of them, writing letters home or making out the public paragraphs of their wills, refer to the gratification of liberating a town or county, the fear of the residents that slowly transforms to hope, and the hard work of making individuals out of cattle.
David Valentine, looking at his motley assortment of Camp Liberty volunteers (ninety-two former Quislings and twelve refugees, of which nine are women) drawn up on a freshly cleared field within their winter encampment for their first mornings exercises, readies himself for the strain of once again being responsible for men's lives—including, in the words of his old Wolf captain LeHavre, "burying your mistakes."
* * * *
Patel was still the only NCO. Valentine's requests had disappeared into the maw of Southern Command's digestive process. What would emerge from the other end remained to be seen.
He was lined up with the other men, ahead of the massed ranks. Valentine wore his oldest militia fatigues and the men were still in their Liberty handouts. They'd divide the men into platoons later. For now they'd eat, sleep, and exercise in a big mass.
Even in the early days of their acquaintance he was already conditioning himself to the idea that some of them, even all of them, might die in the coming operation.
Valentine had made peace with his own death. He'd seen Kurian rule in all its fear and splatter. Faced with his experiences and the mixture of revulsion and hatred they inspired, he had only one option, the only option a man who wanted to call himself a man had: risking all in a fight that would end only with his death or the Kurian Order's destruction.
Why the men under him signed up wasn't strictly his concern. Whether they fought so they could look other soldiers in the eye, to take the place of a lost relative, to get an allotment, or because they thought of battle as the ultimate blood sport made no difference regarding the orders he would give: He'd do his duty the same whether a man signed for faith or money.
Speaking of duty, his first was creating a healthy environment for his men while they trained themselves into a fighting company.
The only improvement to their ground was a length of three-inch piping and some conduit extending out of the main camp. The rest of their materials were in the supply yard.
Patel stepped out of the little "command shack," the only structure standing in their blister at the end of the camp. His cane had disappeared and he looked as spry as ever.
He walked back and forth in front of the men once. He'd inked in a star on his old stripes and done a good job of it. Valentine could hardly tell the difference.
"My name is Sergeant Major Patel. You came here as a hundred and five individuals. Southern Command's going to make an army of one out of you. One well-trained, sharp brain that's always alert. One tough Reaper-eating body. One heart that fears only God and Sergeant Major Patel. You read me, slackers?"
"Sir yes sir!" Valentine shouted. A few voices behind joined in.
Patel put his hands on his hips and faced them. "Rest of you haven't finished evolving? Communication occurs when the transmitter broadcasts and the transmittee acknowledges. Try again!"
"Sir yes sir!" they shouted.
"I don't want to hear harmony—you're not a fuckin' chorus. All at once, and louder."
"Sir yes sir!" they shouted loud enough to be heard in Jonesboro. Georgia, not Arkansas.
"After morning exercise, we're going to build you all shelters. Ladies get theirs first, because we're in Southern Command. We're blessed with natural gallantry."
Morning exercises lasted until lunch. Patel took them through his "twelve labors." Again and again, he managed to find fault with the rhythm of their jumping jacks or the height of someone's buttocks during a push-up. He sent Valentine and four exhausted "slackers" off to get the meal while he finished with the rest.
There wasn't a chuck wagon available so they piled bread and beans and trays into a wheelbarrow and ate with spoons. Dessert was flaky pastry smeared with "Grog guck."
Valentine got tap detail. He turned on the spigot and filled cups and a couple of beat-up old canteens and bladders from the flow of water so the recruits had something to drink with their food.
With everyone sprawled on the cold, damp ground eating and drinking, Valentine finally got his pan full of beans. The beans tasted as though they'd once shared a tin with some ham but divorced some time back, though the molasses in the sauce was sweet and welcome.
Patel gave them thirty minutes and then roused them to get to work on the frames for the tents. Valentine was the only one to notice that Patel's breath smelled like aspirin as he bellowed. But they did manage to finish the women's tent and get a start on the showers.
That night they slept around fifty-five-gallon drum stoves burning scrap from the lumber they'd measured and cut.
The first day was nothing to the second. Everyone ached and groaned as they did the twelve labors. Some fool asked when they were going to get their uniforms and Patel showed them why they weren't yet fit to wear Southern Command issue by running across, covering in, and crawling through the noisome field where the camp's sanitary waters drained off.
"Too slow," Patel said each and every time they fell into the mud. Or crawled. Or got up. Or crossed the field. Or turned around to cross the field again.
They slept in a formid
able stench that second night, thanks to the field and two (or more—the men had had a long trip on buses) days' worth of hard-sweat body odor. The next day, eating a breakfast of biscuits and greasy gravy out of wheelbarrows again, they learned all about democracy as they voted to finish the showers before the men's shelter.
Valentine liked the decision that they'd rather sleep rough and cold than dirty. Men who wanted to get clean had pride in themselves. He also liked being under Patel's orders. It got him out of Camp Highbeam meetings and working dinners that were more social than productive.
They had the floorboards laid, the sinks running, and the shower headings up when Patel stopped them and had them line up on the camp's main road to welcome three new companies of the Guards into camp.
They must have made a strange impression, hair spiky with mud, the odd multicolor dungarees of Camp Liberty filthy with a mixture of muck and sawdust.
"Better get back to wrangling them pigs, boys," one called.
"Whew! Someone's been on shit detail," another Guard soldier called as they walked in. Catcalls and jibes were part of the Command's proud tradition. The men stared off blankly into space or looked down. They didn't have the spirit to answer back.
Yet.
That was his job. And Patel's. And the rest of his NCOs, if he ever got any. To make up for the jokes, after dinner that night he told them a little more about what they would be doing in the Kurian Zone— scouting and trading for food, scrounging up replacement gear, and interacting with the local resistance.
Unfortunately for his company, he learned the next day that the second name stuck. Maybe it was their odd bubo placement in the camp's layout, but Valentine's company became known as the "shit detail" in everything but formal correspondence.
He discussed the problem the next morning with Patel in the little command shack as the men slept—clean now, thanks to the functioning showers but still in tiny field tents or bags in the cold clew—as they planned the day's training.
"What do you think of promoting from within?" Patel asked. "There are several ex-sergeants. You've even got a busted-down captain in your ranks."
"I'd like to see talent rewarded," Valentine said. "It's more of a mind-set than technical and leadership skills that I'm worried about. In the Kurian Zone, it's enough to just issue an order. Here the men like to know the whys and hows so they feel a part of something larger. I'd like to see initiative—intelligent initiative—from privates on up."
"I don't think that's possible in a few months. If you want some sergeants taught to be Southern Command sergeants, I may be able to help. Can you get me any money?"
"I can try. What are you talking about?"
"About thirty thousand dollars."
"I don't have a pension to borrow against anymore, Patel. I'll try Lambert. She might have access to a slush fund. Tell me what you have in mind."
They worked out the deal with Lambert, the general, and Southern Command in three days. When Valentine pointed out that in the long run it would be cheaper than adding more men to the "long out" with bonuses and land grants and so forth, they agreed.
Plus it would be good for the "shit detail's" morale to be led by their own.
Naturally, there were staffing orders to cancel. As luck would have it, one position filled as the order was transmitted: a heavy weapons expert named Glass, rank of corporal and with a spotty record of wanting to do things his own way, showed up at camp and reported to the command shack as everyone was eating their lunches out of wheelbarrows again.
A small man with a big pack, he looked like some kind of beetle with an oversized carapace of pack and camp gear. He also sported the world's scraggliest beard. It looked like Spanish moss Valentine had seen in Louisiana.
Valentine stood up to welcome him and Patel trailed behind.
"Very glad to see you," Valentine said, shaking Glass' hand.
"Thank you, sir," he said rather sullenly.
"Don't want this assignment, Glass? You didn't get someone twisting your arm to volunteer, I hope."
"No. Nothing like that, Major. Tell the truth, I'm glad to be back under General Lehman. Just tired from the trip."
Glass was one of those compact, wiry men in what looked to be his late twenties. Judging from his qualifications list on his Q-file, he didn't look to be the type to wear down. Valentine let it rest.
"You're early, so you get to pick the most comfortable corner in the NCO tent. It's just you and Sergeant Major Patel for now."
They sized each other up, Patel in his Wolf leathers, hand sewn and patched, Glass in his ordinary Guard cammies. Glass stared vacantly at Patel, not so much challenging his superior as transmitting indifference.
"What's the company's support weaponry?" he asked.
"It's not here yet," Valentine said. "As you can see, everything's late to arrive, even uniforms. You might as well learn early, we're the shit detail of this outfit. Eat up."
"Will that be all, sir?"
"For the moment," Valentine replied.
"I'll get myself squared away, then," Glass said. He turned for the tent with Patel's name painted on the old bit of traffic sign next to the door.
"Brittle," Patel commented. "Just hope he's not about to break."
"He's got outstanding references for his competency. Leadership's lacking. His last CO called him 'prickly.' "
"Wonder how the guys who had to share a tent with him would have put it," Patel said.
"We're not going across the river to have a harvest bonfire and sing-along," Valentine replied. "I'm willing to wait and see."
* * * *
Valentine's company first lieutenant finally arrived late at night as Valentine caught up on paperwork in the one-bulb shack. He tripped on the doorstep coming in, straightened, saluted, and handed Valentine his orders.
They told a curious tale in the dates and checkboxes and comments. Valentine spent sixty seconds reading through.
Lieutenant (militia) Rowan Rand was Kentucky-bred; his parents made the run for Free Territory when he was fifteen. His father disappeared one night while scouting what looked like a vacant farmhouse and he'd helped his mother and sisters the rest of the way to the Ozarks, crossing the Mississippi on barrels a la Bilbo Baggins.
"Stint in the militia, and then right into Logistics Commandos?" Valentine asked, looking up from the file.
Rand blinked back at him through glasses that the ungenerous might call Coke bottle. "Bad eyesight. Astigmatism. I'm bat-blind without my eyewear plus I don't see so well in the dark. They never put it down on my record beyond 'needs glasses.' "
Southern Command's recruiters had the sense to weigh shortcomings against strengths, almost always in favor of giving a candidate a chance to prove their mettle. "You tore through the SC Intelligence and Aptitude tests. Your test scores make mine look like an illiterate's."
"Six years in a Church academy in Columbia District," Rand said.
"Church background? I'll introduce you to Brother Mark. How'd you like it?"
"The schoolwork was fun. And there were all the outings and marches and drives, singing the happy tunes as we worked. I'm embarrassed to think about it now."
"You were eleven. How could you know?" Valentine said.
"Same for you? You kind of choked up there, sir."
"I grew up in a different church, luckily."
"I would have run on my own during summer leave if my parents hadn't decided to try."
Valentine read over the file again. "Platoon leader and then a lieutenant in the militia. Five trips into Kentucky, three into Tennessee with the LCs. No combat?"
Rand shrugged. "Logistics Commandos think that if you get into a fight, you're a screwup."
The Logistics Commandos were odd units. They went into Kurian Zones to beg, borrow, or steal items Southern Command had difficulty manufacturing or maintaining. Mostly they were made up of veteran Hunter members, Wolves and Cats primarily, but Valentine had heard that with Hunter training slowed to a t
rickle, more and more regulars had been doing the hazardous duty.
Valentine read to the bottom of his assignment orders. Lambert herself had placed Rand with his company. If she believed in the man, there was no need to probe further.
"Welcome to Delta Company," Valentine said. "At the moment Sergeant Major Patel is running the show, turning the men into a team. When we're on the parade ground, he's in charge."
"Yes, sir," Rand said.
"I'll introduce you to the company. You'll stick close to me for a week or so until you find your feet, then you'll take over. I'm going north into Grog country. I'll be back in a few weeks, barring catastrophe."
* * * *
Rand sank into his duties easily enough. To Valentine's delight, he soon swam lustily. He was all knees and elbows in the field and had a tendency to trip. After a sprawl he had a way of pushing his thick glasses back up his nose that disarmed the laughers and charmed the more sympathetic.
He accepted formal command of the company from Valentine with a nod and a yessir, then took off his glasses and cleaned them with his shirttail.
Valentine had a final word with Patel as the groom from the brigade stables held his horse, a sturdy Morgan named Raccoon. A packhorse stood just behind. Valentine hung his baggage and the odds and ends he'd been collecting on the packhorse.
"Keep up the good work, Sergeant Major," he said as Patel helped fix a clip.
"Enjoy your leave, sir."
"It won't all be fun. I'm going to see if I can do a little more recruiting in Missouri."
"You don't mean . . ."
"Yes. Grogs."
The horse holder snorted. Valentine took the reins and Patel shot the groom a look and growled: "Thank you, Private."
Valentine and Patel walked toward the gate. Well, not so much a gate as a big chain with a Southern Command postal number hanging from it and blocking the camp's entrance.
"Since you got out of the Wolves, sir . . . any head injuries?"
"The Cowardly Lion says it wasn't so much a head injury as Bud ringing my wake-up bell."
"Bud? Ah, yes, my old friend who tried to climb up a tree to God. Your memory's still on target. I was going to ask who was the first governor of the Ozark Free Territory."