Southern Command Mississippi Operational Area Headquarters, the second week of November: The architects who designed the Mall at Turtle Creek in Jonesboro would still recognize their structure, though they'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 smaller shops have been converted to training classrooms, meeting areas, offices, break rooms, a medical center with a pharmacy, even a kennel for the bomb sniffers and guard dogs. Only the food court is still more or less recognizable; if anything, it is a little more interesting, thanks to cases displaying unit histories, photographs, and citations. And some of the hardy palms planted inside by the builders have survived the mall's looting, 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 some areas to repair minor earthquake damage the mall received in 2022.

David Valentine, having passed through the security station and visitors' lobby taking up the old bookstore, idles with a yellowed copy of French military history on an upholstered chair that smells like cigars and mildew and body odor, his thumb smeared with ink for an ID record and his bad leg stretched out where it won't interfere with passersby. He had enough pocket money for a bagel and a glass of sweet tea at the little cafe for visitors waiting to be met.

He fights 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 crumbs of the bagel disappeared by the time General Lehman's adjutant appeared. The staffer might have been a living mannequin of crisp cotton and twill. Valentine felt scruffy shaking hands with him. All Valentine had managed in the washroom was to comb his hair out and wash his face and hands.

Perhaps it wasn't the chair that was so odiferous after all.

"You can just take that book if you like," the adjutant suggested. "It's all Southern Command library. I'm sure you know where to drop it."

"Thanks for the tip," Valentine said. Not that he needed it. He'd visited the quiet library and reading room in one of the mall's old stores to unwind after the quick debriefing he'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'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't strike Valentine as promising.

And he hadn't even begun to describe what he had in mind for his Quisling recruits.

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's office, and Valentine switched to American history, a biography of Theodore Roosevelt. He was experiencing the Badlands with Roosevelt after the nearly simultaneous deaths of his mother and wife when Lehman's staffer summoned him.

When Valentine finally stood before the general in command of the eastern defenses, he was surprised to see a pair of arm-brace crutches leaning against the desk and the general'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's hear it, Valentine," Lehman said. "Don't spare me; I know I sent you out there."

Lehman dipped his little silver comb in the water glass and commenced cleaning his drooping mustache in the methodical fashion a cat might use to clean its face. It was whiter and less bushy than it had been a year ago at the planning sessions for Javelin. Cover Lehman in dust and denim, and he'd pass for a cowhand straight off a Texas ranch, but he had precise, machinelike diction, weighing each vowel and consonant of his sometimes cracker-barrel phraseology. Valentine had heard that as a junior officer he'd been in signals, communicating 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 even made money by engaging in civil engineering projects or restoring machinery-but promotion to colonel and above had to be approved by the UFR's legislature.

General Lehman nodded. "The Clarion would get in a huff and their chickens in the legislature would squawk in tune and the whole list would probably be voted down. They've had a field day over Javelin. You understand."

"I do."

"Of course, there's no reason we can't pay you like a colonel."

"Under the assumed name," Valentine said. Technically, David Valentine was a wanted man and couldn't draw pay, civilian or military. Not that it would do him much good if the pay increase went through. Few colonels got rich, despite their pay-draws twice that of a major. A colonel was expected to spend most of it on entertainments for his command, and most also gave generously to families of the command who'd lost fathers or mothers. A private who was good at scouring arms and medical supplies and selling them back to the Logistics Commandoes could do better.

"There is one promotion I'd like you to make," Valentine said. "I'd like Sergeant Patel-his name is all over those reports-made a captain."

"Shouldn't be a problem. I've heard the name. Wolf, right? 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's one way to put it. You didn't hear about the election, then?"

Valentine didn't follow politics when he was in the Free Republics, beyond what filtered in to mess hall chatter and newspaper articles.

"There's been a change, as of the first week of November," Lehman continued. "President Starpe lost. Adding Hal Steiner to the ticket didn't help as much-"

"I'm sorry, General. Hal Steiner? From down south near the Louisiana border?"

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

"I met him as a lieutenant."

"Yeah, he's the one who helped keep all the Archangel forces hidden down in those swamps. The Concorde Party made a big deal about Steiner coming 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's sworn in, he'll nominate Martinez to take over Southern Command, and I suspect the legislature will approve, though the Texas bloc will be voting against him, of course, because of the bad feelings about 'seventy-three."

A piece of Valentine's brain translated the political farrago.

Archangel, of course, was the operation that ousted Consul Solon and the Kurians from his brief hold on the Ozarks. In the chaos following, 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't Be Stopped for the New Federalists-he didn't know much about platforms and so on, though 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 nickname Danger Close as an artillery spotter during the tumultuous birth of the Ozark Free Territory. He'd infiltrate Kurian strongpoints and called in artillery fire literally on top of himself. His opponent, Zachary Thoroughgood, was a scion of the Thoroughgood family, owners of the Thoroughgood markets and a several hotels and casinos in Branson. They also controlled a brewery that produced a fine spruce-tip ale that Valentine's old CO in Zulu company had been fond of as well.

Valentine had first heard of Thoroughgood as a prosecutor who busted up criminal gangs operating from the borderlands and then for improving electrification and water supply across the UFR as a legislator. Thoroughgood's friends and constituents called him "Lights," and Valentine had heard him called "Lights, Camera, Action" here and there, for he was famously photogenic and traveled everywhere with a photographer.

As to the "Texas bloc," Valentine knew that in the legislature there were constant fights between the representatives from the old Ozark Free Territory and the newer regions. 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 murder of a pair of helpful Grogs who'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 from the UFR.

Lehman got up and dug 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'll be changes once Martinez takes over. I won't be running the Mississippi front and parts east. All these boxes and such, they're not me getting set to move out; they're from the new broom coming in. There's been a suggestion of malfeasance on my part over Javelin. Preservation of evidence and all that."

"How could you know it was all a setup? They fooled Brother Mark."

Lehman chuckled. "You've changed your opinion of him, then? Back when we were organizing Javelin, I got the impression he was a stone in your hoof."

"He grows on you. Even the men are starting to confide in him. He's like the grouchy instructor nobody likes but still remembers ten years later."

"Soon I'll be a memory here. If I don't get retired, I imagine I'll be checking locks on empty warehouses and filing reports on other reports that'll end up going into my superior's report. General Martinez and I don't piss in the same direction on any number of things, starting with Kentucky. He penned an editorial for the Clarion about Javelin, Valentine. Of course, all the paragraphs featured the word 'fiasco' with the same arguments, but then the Clarion only has two tunes in their hymnal. Everyone around here's tight as a turtle's ass with the soup pot bubbling."

"What are our chances of getting some reinforcements into Kentucky? Garrison and training duty, until they can get themselves organized."

"Somewhere on the short block between Slim Street and None Boulevard, I'm afraid, Major."

Valentine stood up. "Whatever's being said about Javelin, it wasn't for nothing. Kentucky's come in on our side, more or less. The Moondaggers, the ones who bled Kansas dry, they've left bodies scattered from the Ohio to the Tennessee."

"That was just the first wave, son. The signals and intelligence staff thinks something's brewing in the Northwest Ordnance. Beyond the usual dance of reinforcements for the river crossings, 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 encompassed the old rust belt states of Ohio, Michigan, 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 more reason to send us at least something. Without their legworms, the clans in Kentucky lose their mobility and flexibility."

General Lehman leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling as he drummed his chest with his fingers. "Maybe they won't have any more luck in those hills than we did."

"A fresh brigade could make a big difference in western Kentucky. The old legworm clan alliance can take care of their ridges. With Evansville as a supply base, they have hospitals, fuel supplies, machine shops, factories. There's even a company that produces tents and backpacks."

"I hate half measures, Major. The way I see it, we either pull out completely or go all in and shove every chip we can scrape together across the Mississippi. I'd like to argue for the latter, but we're in flux right now."

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

Lehman's comb went to work again.

"But right now, in Evansville, all you have is what'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 know-how for mechanized operations."

"Yes, the staff briefed me on that. You're proposing a sort of French Foreign Legion for ex-Quislings, am I right? They do a little bleeding for us, and in six years they get a new name and citizenship in the UFR. Quite a scheme."

"I realize I may have exceeded my authority in recruiting local support."

"That's what you were assigned to Javelin for: local support."

"To hear you tell it, my locals won't have anything to support much longer."

"All in or pull out, Valentine. I'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 some materiel for my Quisling recruits? They're walking around in black-dyed versions of their old uniforms and using captured Moondagger guns. Not the best of rifles-they're mostly bolt-action carbines with low-capacity magazines. Fine for smoking out rebellious townies; not so hot when you're trying to bring down a running Reaper."

Lehman opened a notebook on his desk and jotted down a few words. "I'll see what I can do. I know some huge rolls of blanketing or bedding has shown up recently. Guns will be tougher."

"What about my offer to the Quislings, sir? Can you give me something in writing to back it up?"

"I'd be proud to. But honestly, Valentine, I don't think any of 'em will be around to collect. They'll either quit on you or be killed."

"Do you know something I don't, General?"

"It's been my experience that the top-level Quisling officers are excellent. Well trained, intelligent, motivated, cooperative. Their soldiers are brave enough. They'll stick where our guys will pull out a lot of the time. But you know as well as I that it's the quality of the NCOs and junior officers that define an army. I've not seen the Quisling formation yet that has outstanding sergeants. They're usually the best bullies and thieves in uniform."

Valentine swung through intelligence 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's office. The corporal didn't even try to make small talk.

Valentine walked through 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's office was just beyond his adjutant's. There was no door between Post's office and his adjutant's, just a wide entryway.

Valentine knocked on the empty doorframe. Post beamed as he entered. There was a little more salt to his salt-and-pepper hair and a good deal more starch in his uniform, but then headquarters standards had to be maintained.

The last time Valentine had seen Will Post, his friend was lying 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's bird these days. Even better, he looked fleshed-out and healthy. Valentine was used to seeing him thin and haggard, tired-eyed at the Chinese water torture of minutiae involved in running the 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'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's uniform. Valentine felt embarrassed, trying not to look at the wheelchair. He'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't much of a miss."

"Sit down, Val," Post said. "I was just about to order sandwiches from the canteen. They have a cold-cut combo that's really good; I think there's a new supplier. Cranberries are plentiful now too, if you're in the mood for a cranberry and apple salad. Our old friend Martinez has made some commissary changes already." He reached for his phone.

"I'll have both. I've an appetite today."

Post, in his efficient manner, had seen Valentine's discomfiture and acted to correct the situation.

While the Enemy Assessments Director-East called down to the canteen, Valentine glanced around the room. Post's office had two chairs and an odd sort of feminine settee that in another time and place would have been called a fainting couch.

"How's Gail?"

"Good. She does volunteer work over at United Hospital. She's good with me, with the wounded. She says she only does it to forget about what she went through, but she could just as easily do that by sitting in a corner slamming tequila. Which is how I met her, way back. Except she was reading."

Post's desk had too many file folders, reachers to help him access shelves, coding guides 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't even human. He was leading a guerrilla band in the Appalachians, doing so much damage that both sides were mistaking his little partisan band for a large army.

He'd seen that same shot on his visit to Molly and her son, ages ago. Ever since he'd brought her out of Chicago as a Wolf lieutenant, they'd been family to one another, with a family'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's desk was his set of "traveling wheels."

Valentine looked at the biggest picture on his desk: a family photo of his wife, Gail, and a pigtailed toddler. "I didn't know you had a child."

Post brushed the picture's glass with a finger, as though rearranging Gail's short, tousled hair. "We tried. It didn't work. The docs said they found some odd cell tissue on Gail's, er, cervix. Something the Kurians did to her in that Reaper mill, they think. We more or less adopted."

"Good for you."

"There's more. It's Moira Styachowski's daughter."

Valentine felt a pang. "I didn't know she had one."

"She's a pistol. Only sixteen months but we call her the Wild Thing. Jenny'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't know you two were that close."

"After you were hurt at the tower in Little Rock, we sort of hit it off. She found time for me while I adapted to rolling through life."

"You are rolling. A lieutenant colonel."

"I get a lot done. I'm more or less desk-bound."

Valentine wondered how much Post was leaving unsaid.

"Something to drink?" Post asked, opening a minifridge. "I have water, lemonade-er, wait, limeade this week-good old Southern Command root beer, and that awful cocoa-remember? I can order coffee. I don'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 eyebrows went up. "Milk? Sure."

The food arrived on a tray, under shining covers, reminding Valentine of the amenities of the Outlook resort he'd visited, and partially destroyed, in the Cascades.

"Major David Valentine, drinking milk," Post said, passing a carton. "You getting an ulcer?"

"I'm surprised I don't have one. No, I acquired a taste for it out west, oddly enough. It's . . . comforting. Ulcer or no."

"You acquire one here. Anyway, East is more my area. Speaking of which, you owe me a serious Kentucky debriefing. Between you and the Green Mountain Boys, it sounds like you cracked the Moondaggers. What's left of them are back in Michigan, licking their wounds and singing laments."

"I'm not so sure it was us. They tried the 'submission to Kur's will' routine on the wrong set of locals. In Kentucky you can't just wheel into a legworm clan and drag off the sixteen-year-old girls. Those guys know how to make every shot count, and while you're driving around the hills, they're humping over them on their worms."

"Well, we're celebrating here. Those bastards painted a lot of Kansas soil red. We call the area west of Olathe the Bone Plain now."

Valentine remembered all the little towns he'd seen, crossing that area with Duvalier. Strange that the Kurians would shed so much blood. Living heartbeats were wealth to them.

They talked and ate. Post impressed Valentine all over again with his knowledge of Kentucky. And Valentine was grateful to forget about the wheelchair.

"Did Lehman give you the bad news?" Post asked.

"What's that?"

"Javelin plus the operation against the Rio Grande Valley. Southern Command is probably going to pull in its horns for a while. No more offensives. It's all about 'consolidation' and 'de fensible resolution' these days. We've won our ramparts back, let's be sure they never fall again, and all that. We're going back on the defensive."

"That doesn't do much good 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 remember Tancredi, from the Hill? He's there. He's got it worse than me-he's wearing a colostomy bag. Our generation'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't mind the stress of fights like that one against Blitty Easy's Crew. You aimed and shot, lived or died. It was being responsible for the lives and deaths of the men under you that wore your nerves raw.

Valentine was begining to think he wasn't cut out for that kind of responsibility. But then, if he didn't do it, you never knew who might take the controls. If you were lucky, someone like Colonel Seng or Captain LeHavre. But men like General Martinez rose farther and faster.

He covered the noisy silence with a sip of milk.

Post waggled a pen between his fingers. Optical illusion gave it a rubbery flexibility. The pen stopped. He gave the old turning-key signal Valentine remembered from their days conspiring together on the Thunderbolt. Valentine rose and closed the office door.

"I'm probably breaking enough rules to merit a court-martial here, Val. They've got you on the books as militia, sure, but that's about the same as civilian under our regs."

Valentine shrugged. He'd let go of the career long ago. He enjoyed the freedom of being outside the normal chain of command.

"A friend brought in your report, and I made a temporary copy and read it first thing. All these proposals of yours about aid to those ex-Quislings out of Evansville and eastern Kentucky? It's not going to fly. I doubt it'll even hatch, to tell you the truth. We're about to undergo a 'reallocation of priorities.' As far as Southern Command is concerned, Javelin was a disaster, and the less said and done about what's going on on the other side of the Mississippi, the better."

Lehman had given him the same impression, if not so directly worded.

Valentine shrugged. "We've friends in the legworm clans. We can operate as guerrillas. I'm only looking for a gesture of support. Some gear, boots, and a few boonies to train the men."

Southern Command's trainers of insurgent or counterinsurgent forces no longer wore the old US Army green berets. They'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'd say take it to your friend in special ops, Colonel Lambert, but she's under a cloud right now. Investigation pending court-martial. Gross neglect of duty-Martinez is making her the scapegoat for Javelin. That giant staff of his has quite a few Jaggers."

Jaggers were Southern Command's military lawyers.

"Any more good news?"

Post spun, tossed his sandwich wrapper in the regular garbage pail. Security refuse went into a locked box with a slot at the top. "Lots. Well, not so much good as puzzling. We're getting odd reports from the underground, both in the Northwest Ordnance up in Ohio and the Georgia Control-they're very influential in Tennessee."

"I don't know much about the Georgia Control, other than that it's based in Atlanta. They make some great guns. Our guys will carry Atlanta Gunworks rifles if they get a chance to pick one up. Remember those Type Threes?"

Post nodded. "Good guns. 'A state run along corporate lines' is the best way to describe Georgia Control. Every human a Kurian owns is a share. Get enough shares and you get on the board of directors. Here's the odd feature: They let people buy shares too. By people, I mean brass ring holders, so I use the term loosely."

Valentine had to fight the urge to touch the spot on his sternum where his own brass ring hung 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 know what I mean. Anyone who's served in the Coastal Marines is half alligator anyway.

"But back to the chatter our ears are picking up. Here's a helluva tidbit for you: Our old friend Consul Solon's on the Georgia Control board of directors. Would you believe it? Five years ago he's running for his life with Southern Command howling at his heels and half the Kurian Order wanting to see him dead for fucking up the conquest of the Trans-Mississippi, and damned if he doesn't wash up on a feather bed. The guy's half mercury and half Ralvan Fontainbleu."

Valentine chuckled. Fontainbleu was a nefarious importer/exporter on Noonside Passions, the Kurian Zone's popular soap opera. Valentine never did get the soap part, but operatic it was. Fontainbleu ruined marriages and businesses and sent more than one good man or woman to the Reapers. Oddly enough the drama was fairly open and aboveboard about the nature of the Kurian Order, though it towed the Church line about trimming the sick branch and plucking the bad seed. Fontainbleu was the particular nemesis of Brother Fairmind, the boxing New Universal Church collar who wasn't above busting a few heads to keep his flock on the straight and narrow. Valentine hadn'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't heard the last of former consul Solon. What are the underground reports?"

"Scattered stuff. You'd think with Kentucky in turmoil the Kur would be grabbing 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's just not happening. To the north, the Ordnance has called up some reserves and shifted troops to support Louisville or maybe move west to hit your group at Evansville. But as for the usual apparatus of the Kurian Order, we're getting word of churchmen leaving, railroad support people pulling out. . . . If anything, they've pulled back from the clans, like they're a red-hot stove or something."

"Their troops in Evansville revolted. Maybe they're afraid the infection will spread."

"I'd like your opinion on that. What's Kentucky like now? Every legworm rider who can shoulder a gun shooting at the Kurian Order?"

"Nothing like that. The Moondaggers came through and just tore up Kentucky and hauled off any girl they could grab between fifteen and thirty. Really stirred the locals up. The place is in flux now; hard to say which way it'll go. They might just revert to their old semi-independence, as long as the Kurians don't aggravate the situation."

Post knitted his fingers. "We were hoping the Control was pulling back to more defensible positions and assuming there's a new Freehold being born."

"I don't think much will happen until spring," Valentine said. "That's the rhythm of the legworm clans. They settle in close to their worms for the winter until the eggs hatch."

Post nodded. "I wish I had more. You know the underground. They have to be very, very careful. What they get me is good; there's just so little of it. Kurian agents are-"

"Dangerous," Valentine said, rubbing his uneven jaw. The fracture hadn't healed right. A reminder of his encounter with a Kurian agent working for the Northwest Ordnance when he'd found Post's wife in a Reaper factory called Xanadu.

"Yeah," Post agreed. "I wonder how many we have in this headquarters. We tend to win the stand-up fights. Yet more often than not, they figure out a way to make it seem like a loss. Walk down the street in Little Rock-"

"And one out of two people will agree that Texas and Oklahoma were defeats," Valentine said. He'd heard about the famous Clarion war poll just after the Kansas operation, repeated endlessly in articles and opinion columns since. That had been the last operation he and Post had shared-a blazing offensive that tripled the size of the old Ozark Free Territory. But it just gave the Clarion more cities to report bad news from. "So what do you think I should do?"

"Get as many as you can back across the Mississippi," Post said. "We can use them here."

"And leave the legworm clans hanging? They threw in with us in Javelin."

"They might be all right. The Kurian Order needs that legworm meat for protein powder and cans of WHAM."

They exchanged grimaces. They'd both eaten their shares of WHAM rolls in the Coastal Marines. WHAM was a canned "meat product" produced in Alabama, filled out with bean paste, and sweetened with an uninspiring barbecue sauce to hide the tasteless, chewy nature of legworm flesh. Three tastes in one!, the cans proclaimed. The joke with WHAM is you got three chews before the flavor dissipated and you were left with a mouthful of something about as succulent and appealing as week-worn long johns. It went through the digestive system like a twenty-mule-team sled. Three chomps and run, the cook on the old Thunderbolt used to recommend.

It was a staple of Kurian work camps and military columns operating far from their usual supply hubs.

"There has to be some good news," Valentine said.

"Full list and details, or just bullet points?"

Valentine poured some more milk. "I need cheering up. Give me the full list," Valentine said.

"I won sixty bucks this week at poker," Post said. "It's a short list."

Valentine tossed back the rest of the glass of milk. "I think you're right about that ulcer."

Post's advice was absolutely correct. Javelin hadn't worked. It hadn't died; in a way it had won, dealing a deathblow to the vicious Moondaggers. But it hadn't worked out as planned. Give it up and move on, the way you folded when you drew into a promising poker hand and came up with nothing.

Except the pieces were scattered across Kentucky along with his bit of ear, and they included a big, hairy Golden One named Ahn-Kha; Tikka, brave and lusty and vital; and the former Quislings who'd put their lives and the lives of their families into jeopardy by switching sides. Southern Command had run up a big bar tab in blood.

The next day Valentine sat through a second series of debriefings with Southern Command personnel and civilians whose professional interests included the function and capabilities of the Kurian Order. He was questioned about political conditions of the legworm tribes and the organization and equipment of the Moondaggers. He even had to give a rough estimate of the population of Kentucky and the Appalachian towns and villages he'd seen.

He had to watch his words about the Kurian manipulation of Javelin's COs through a mutt they'd picked up named Red Dog, the strange doubt and lassitude that temporarily seized even as aggressive a woman as Colonel Bloom, who was back with what was left of Javelin in Kentucky just south of Evansville. It sounded too fantastic to be true, but he did his best to convince them.

Finally, a researcher from the Miskatonic queried him again about the flying Reaper he'd seen.

"You sure it wasn't a gargoyle?" she said as Valentine sorted through sketches and photographs. They had one sketch and one blurry, grainy night photo of something that resembled what he'd seen. She had the air of someone used to talking to soldiers who'd seen bogeymen on lonely watches.

It had been wearying, answering questions from people who weren't interested in his answers unless they fit in with the opinions they'd had when they sat down in the tube-steel office chairs. Valentine let loose. "I've seen gargoyles, alive and dead. They're strong and graceful, like a vulture. This was more spindly and awkward. It reminded me of a pelican or a crane taking off. And it wasn't a harpy either. I've seen plenty of those snaggletooths up close."

"Yes, I know." Valentine thought he recognized his thick Miskatonic file in front of her.

"So do you have a theory?" he demanded.

"The Kurians made Reapers by modifying human genetic code. They could have done the same with a gargoyle."

All very interesting, but he wanted to be back with his command.

His last stop on his tour of headquarters was Operations Support. General Lehman had come through with logistics: There was a barge on the Arkansas river being loaded with supplies for his new recruits and to replace the most vital materiel used up in the retreat across Kentucky. Valentine would accompany it back to Kentucky.

He picked up mail-presorted for the survivors of Javelin. Valentine wondered what happened to the sad little bundles of letters to dead men and women.

The mail had been vacuum-wrapped in plastic to protect it from the elements, but it still took up a lot of room, especially since the locals used all manner of paper for their correspondence. The mail office had a variety of bags and packs for the convenience of ad hoc couriers such as himself, and Valentine just grabbed the biggest shoulder bag he could find. Judging from the waterproof lining and compartments, it might have once been meant to hold diving or snorkel gear.

He made a trip to the PX and picked up some odds and ends: Duvalier's favorite talc, a bottle of extra-strength aspirin for Patel, and a couple of fifty-count boxes of inexpensive knit gloves. If there was one thing Valentine had learned over the years of commanding men in bad weather, it was that they lost their gloves, especially in action. He liked carrying spares to hand out.

Valentine needed peace, quiet, time to think. He caught an electric shuttle and wandered into Jonesboro and found a cafe by the train station-a family-owned grill with three gold stars in the window. He learned from photos and boxed decorations inside that they'd lost two sons and a daughter to the Cause.

He pleased the owners by ordering eggs accompanied by the biggest steak on the menu rather than the Southern Command subsidized "pan lunch." The steak was sizable and tough, but his appetite didn't mind, and the cook had worked wonders with the sauteed onions. The young waitress-very young waitress, make that; only a teenager would wait tables in heeled sandals-chatted with him expertly. Almost too expertly, because he didn't know any of the local militia outfits, and his equivocal answers made her wrinkle her trifle of a nose. How many single, lonely young uniformed men did she wait on in a month? He tried not to stare as she sashayed back and forth with iced tea in one hand and coffee in the other.

Whether she was family or no, it would be unseemly to ogle the help under the eye of the mother at the register clucking over her regulars like a hen and the muscular father behind the grill. He couldn't think with her friendly pats on the back of his shoulder as she refilled his iced tea, so he paid his bill-and left an overlarge tip.

The little park in front of the courthouse beckoned, and he was about to take a bench and read his mail when he heard faint singing. He followed the sound to a church where a children's choir was rehearsing and grabbed a pew at the back. Women and a few men sewed or knit while their kids screeched through the Christmas hymns.

Valentine watched the kids for a few minutes. Typical Free Territory youth, no two pairs of jeans matching in color or wear, rail thin and tanned from harvest work or a thousand and one odd jobs. You grew up fast here on the borderlands. So different from the smoothed, polished, uniformed children of the elite of the Kurian Zones, with their New Universal Church regulation haircuts and backpacks, or the wary ragamuffins of the "productives."

The boys were trying to throw one another off-tune by surreptitiously stomping one another's insteps or making farting noises with their armpits in time with the music; the girls were stifling giggles or throwing elbows in response to yanked ponytails.

The frazzled choral director finally issued a time-out to two boys.

Valentine thought better on his feet, so he remained standing at the back of the church, shifting weight from one foot to the other in time to the music like a tired metronome.

Pull out or go all in for Kentucky? Pull out or go all in for Kentucky? Pull out or go all in for Kentucky?

Valentine spent an evening enjoying a mock-Thanksgiving dinner with William Post and his wife, Gail. She looked strained by Valentine's presence-or perhaps it was the effort involved in cooking a turkey with the sides.

Jenny resembled her mother, white-haired and delicate-skinned. Maybe Valentine's imagination was overworked, but she crinkled her eyes just like Post when she smiled. The little three-year-old had two speeds, flank and full stop.

She was shy and wary around Valentine, standing in the protective arch of Post's legs, but she ate as though there was a little Bear blood in her.

The two old shipmates talked long after Valentine cleared the dishes away, Post had sorted and stored the leftovers, and Gail and Jenny went to bed. Valentine told the whole story of Javelin's trek across Kentucky, the sudden betrayal in the Virginia coal country, the Moondaggers and the strange lassitude of first Colonel Jolla and then Cleveland Bloom. He described the victory at Evansville, where the populace had successfully revolted, thinking that deliverance was at hand.

Valentine chuckled. "The underground was so used to parsing the Kurian newspapers and bulletins, assuming that the opposite of whatever was being reported was true, that they took all the stories about a defeated army being hounded across Kentucky to mean it was a victorious march along the Ohio. When the Kurians called up whomever they trusted to be in the militia to guard the Moondaggers' supply lines from the Kentuckians, they acted."

A cold rain started down, leaving Valentine with an excuse to treat himself to a cab ride back to the base's visiting housing. Post asked him to spend the night, but Valentine declined, though the accommodations given a corporal of militia couldn't match up to Post's cozy ranch-style. If he spent the night, they'd just be up all the while talking, and he wanted to get back to the logistics and support people about more gear on the alleged barge.

The "cab" showed up after a long delay that Post and Valentine were able to fill with pleasant chitchat. They shook hands and Valentine turned up his collar and passed out into the cold, rainy dark.

The cab was a rather claptrap three-wheeled vehicle, a glorified motorbike under a golf-cart awning that had an odd tri-seat: a forward-facing one for the driver, and two bucket seats like saddlebags perched just behind. The rear wheels were extended to support the awning and stabilize the vehicle. They reminded Valentine of a child's training wheels.

Valentine buckled himself in rather dubiously, wishing Post had offered him a drink to fortify himself against the cold rain. Another soldier, a corporal, slouched in the seat with his back to Valentine, his backpack on his lap and clutching the seat belt white-knuckled as though his life depended on it.

"Don't mind sharing, do you now, milly?" the driver asked.

"No. Of course not."

He gunned the engine, and it picked up speed like a tricycle going down a gentle grade. Valentine wondered why the other passenger was nervous about a ride you could hop off a few seconds before an accident.

"Of course you don't mind. Cheaper for both; gotta save fuel and rubber. Speaking of rubber, if you've a mind to expend one in service, I know a house-"

"No, thanks."

"I'm taking the other corp. It's right on the way."

That accounted for the nervousness. Worried somebody he knew would spot him. The awning wasn't like a backseat you could slump down into and hide. "Bit tired, thanks."

"Suit yourself. It's clean and cheap. Only thing you'll go back to the wife with is a bangover."

"A what?"

"Like a hangover, only your cock's sore instead of your head."

Valentine wondered what percentage the house gave the cabbie.

They pulled up to the house, a big old brick foursquare in the older part of town. Most of the houses here were vacant, stripped skeletons with glass and wiring removed, metal taken right down to the door hinges. The one remaining had either been under constant occupancy or been restored-Valentine couldn't tell which in the dark. It had a pair of friendly red-tinted lights illuminating the porch. Candles flickered from behind drawn curtains.

Seemed a popular place: A party of four was just leaving-

Valentine felt a sharp tug and his windpipe closed up. He realized a rope had been looped around his throat, and he was jerked out of the seat backward.

A quick look at looming figures framed frostily against the red porch light of the house. They had on ghoulish rubber Halloween masks. Then the ground hit him, hard.

The tallest and heaviest kicked him hard in the stomach, and Valentine bent like a closing bear trap around his neck. He opened his mouth to bite, but someone hauled at the rope around his neck, pulling his head away hard.

"David Valentine. You murderous, traitorous bastard. Been looking forward to this meeting," one of the masked men said.

"You hauled my little brother all the way across Kentucky to get him killed," another kicker put in.

Something struck him hard on the kidneys with a crack. "Few more officers like you and the Kur won't need no army."

Valentine roared back an obscenity and tried to get his hands up to fight the rope pulling his neck, but two of the attackers closed, each taking an arm above and below the elbow.

"All your idea. You and that dumb bitch from headquarters," an accuser continued.

"Cuff him good-he's slippery," someone with a deep voice advised from the darkness. He was too far away be delivering punches and kicks.

Or maybe his vision was going and it just seemed as though the voice was coming from a great distance. There were painful stars dancing in his vision like a faerie circus. Valentine felt kicks that might have just as well been blows from baseball bats, so hard were the assailants' boots.

"You've made enemies, Valentine. Now it's time to settle up."

The rain stung; it must be washing blood into his eyes.

"We don't like criminals walking our streets, bold as black."

They took turns punching him in the face and stomach.

"Grog lover!"

"Renegade."

"Murderer!" The last was a crackling shriek.

They added a few more epithets about his mother and the long line of dubious species that might have served as father. Valentine's mad brain noted that they sounded like men too young to have ever known her.

"You bring any of those redlegs into our good clean land, they'll get the same. Be sure of that."

"Hell, they'll get hung."

"Like you're gonna be-huck-huck-huck!"

"C'mon-let's string this fugitive from justice up."

They dragged Valentine by the rope around his neck. He strained, but the handcuffs on his wrists at his back held firm.

The old street in Jonesboro had attractive oaks and elms shading the pedestrians from summer heat. Their thick, spreading boughs made a convenient gibbet above the sidewalk and lane.

The noose hauled Valentine to his feet by his neck. His skin flamed.

Valentine knotted the muscles in his neck, fought instinct, kicking as he strangled. The rope wasn't so bad; it was the blood in his eyes that stung.

Vaguely, he sensed that something was thumping against his chest. An object had been hung around his neck about the size and weight of a hardcover book.

One of them wound up, threw, and bounced a chunk of broken pavement off his face.

"Murderer!"

"Justice is a dish best served cold," that deep voice said again.

They piled into the little putt-putt and a swaying, aged jeep that roared out of the alley behind the red-lit house. With that, they departed into the rain. Valentine, spinning from the rope end as he kicked, bizarrely noted that they left at a safe speed that couldn't have topped fifteen miles an hour, thanks to the odd little three-wheeler.

Valentine, increasingly foggy with his vision red and the sound of the rainfall suddenly as distant as faint waterfall, looked up at the rope hanging over the branch.

For all their viciousness with boot tips and flung asphalt, they didn't know squat about hanging a man. And he'd purposely kicked with knees bent, to give them the illusion that he was farther off the ground than he actually was.

He changed the direction of his swing, always aiming toward the trunk of the tree. The rope, which his assailants had just thrown over the thick limb, moved closer to the trunk. He bought another precious six inches. Six inches closer to the trunk, six less inches for the rope to extend to the horizontal branch, six inches closer to the ground. With one more swing, he extended his legs as far as they'd go, reaching with his tiptoes, and touched wet earth.

The auld sod of Arkansas had never felt more lovely.

Valentine caught his breath, balancing precariously on tiptoe, and found the energy to give himself more slack. He got the rope between his teeth and began to chew. Here the wet didn't aid him.

His blood-smeared teeth thinned the rope. He gathered slack from his side and pulled. He extracted himself from the well-tied noose and slumped against the tree. There was a wooden placard hung around his neck, but he was too tired to read it.

Even with the rope-standard Southern Command camp stuff, useful for everything from securing a horse to tying cargo onto the hood of a vehicle-removed from his neck, Valentine could still feel the burn of it. He swept his hand through the gutter, picked up some cold wet leaves, and pressed them to the rope burn.

They might come back to check on his body. He lurched to his feet and staggered in the direction of the door of the bordello.

He missed the porch stairs, rotated against the rail until he tripped over them, and went up to the door on hands and knees. Blood dripped and dotted the dry wood under the porch roof.

His head thumped into the doorjamb.

"He's made it," someone from within called.

He didn't have to knock again; the door opened for him. He had a brief flash of hair and lace and satin before he gave way, collapsing on a coconut-coir mat and some kind of fringed runner covering shining hardwood floors.

"He's bleeding on the rug. Get some seltzer."

"Lord, he's not going to die on us, is he?" a Texas accent gasped.

"Uhhhh," Valentine managed, which he hoped she'd interpret as a "no."

"What if they come back to check on him?"

"They told us not to come out. Didn't say anything about us not letting him in," another woman put in. "He made it in under his own power."

"They still might do violence, if'n we help him. Toss him in the alley."

"Hush up and quit worrying while we got a man bleeding," an authoritative female voice said. "I've never refused a gentleman hospitality in my life and I'm too old to change now. You all can blame me if they do come back. Don't think varmints like that have the guts, though, or they would have watched till he was cold. Alice-Ann, iodine and bandages."

Valentine blinked the blood out of his eyes. The women were of a variety of ages and skin hues and tints of hair, mostly blond or red. He counted six, including what looked and sounded like the madam-or maybe she just catered to the certain tastes in experienced flesh. A gaunt old man moved around, pulling down extra shades and closing decorative shutters with a trembling arm. The doorman? He didn't look like he could bounce a Boy Scout from the establishment.

"Before you throw me out, could you please get these handcuffs off? If you don't have a key, I'll show you how to do it with a nail." The speech exhausted him more than the trip to the door. He put his head down to catch his breath and managed to roll over on his pack.

"Are you kidding?" a fleshy older woman said, showing a brilliant set of perfectly aligned teeth. "In this place? Standard equipment, hunneh."

They helped him up and took him back to the kitchen and performed first aid at the sink. Valentine embraced the sting of the iodine. It proved he was alive.

When he had stopped the flow of blood from face and lip, he looked around the homey kitchen. Baskets of onions and potatoes lined the floor, rows of preserved vegetables filled racks in the kitchen, and bulbs of garlic and twisted gingerroot hung from the ceiling, fall's bounty ready for winter.

The madam introduced herself as Ladyfair, though whether this was a first name, a last name, a stage name, or a title, she didn't say.

"There's a little washroom just off the back door, next to the laundry room and past the hanging unmentionables," the madam said as Valentine rubbed his free wrist. "You just make use of it. There's a flexible shower hose. Just the thing for a fast cleanup."

Valentine, feeling a little more human, realized he stank. An unpleasant presence was making itself felt in his underwear.

It's not just an expression. They really kicked the shit out of me, Valentine thought.

When he came out, a towel around his waist, he glanced into the front parlor and noticed that the porch light had been turned off. A thick head of hair looked through the heavy curtains from the edge of a window.

Valentine rubbed his sore neck. The attempted hanging wasn't so bad; the pain was from the hard jerks from the rope during the fight. He wondered if he had whiplash.

They presented him an old pair of generously cut khaki trousers and some serviceable briefs. "We have a little of just about everything hanging in the basement," Ladyfair said. "You'd think we were a community theater. We do everything but produce Shakespeare."

"I'm surprised you haven't. The Bard had his bawdy side."

"You just come back now when you're up to it. You seem like a better quality than that rabble, and a smart business is always looking to improve the clientele. Seeing as that disgrace took place right on my front lawn, I'll offer you a freebie when you're feeling more recovered."

"I appreciate you taking me into your house."

"Oh, it's not my house. We're a limited liability partnership, young man. Quite a few make that mistake, though. I suppose I'm the old lead mare of the house, though I'm still very much involved on the cash generation side of things. There are some that have learned to appreciate a woman without teeth."

She winked.

Bordello co-ops. What will they thing of next? Valentine thought.

"Then I'm grateful to the whole partnership. Novel idea."

"Not really. I'm surprised. Your necktie party insisted you were a fan of professional gentlemen's entertainment. Said you used to visit a place called the Blue Dome. They said it was only fitting that you get hung up on the doorstep of a whorehouse, so to speak."

Valentine shrugged. "I don't suppose you could give me their names," Valentine said.

"You'll remember we haven't even asked yours."

"David will do," Valentine said.

"Well, David, if you want names, nobody gives a real name here. You should really hurry on. Mr. C, our banker and lawyer, is removing the rope from the tree, but if they come back . . ."

"Were they Southern Command?"

"They were in civilian attire but had fabric belts with those clever little buckles our heroes in uniform wear. One of them was drinking and kept talking about General Martinez and about how things are going to change for the better once he gets in, so I suspect at least some of them were."

A prettyish young "entertainer" came into the kitchen with the placard that had been hung about his neck. "You want this as evidence?" she asked with a strong Texas accent.

It was an ordinary wood bar tray, much ringed and weathered though carefully cleaned, with black letters burned into it:

David Valentine,

Condamned Fugitive

Law and Order Is

Coming Back to the UFR

Whoever had done it hadn't bothered to pencil out the letters before setting to work with the wood burner. "Back to the UFR" was rather crowded together.

"David Valentine," Ladyfair said. "It sounds rather dashing and romantic, as though you should be riding around in a cloak, holding up carriages with a pistol and donating the booty to the peasantry."

Valentine probed his teeth, checking for loose gum line or a broken crown.

"I am fond of novels when idling in bed or tub."

Valentine wanted to keep the sign just for the interesting spelling of "condemned." Might make an interesting memento on his office door. Maybe they'd summed up his life better than whoever would write his eventual obituary-if he died where people noticed such things. Condamned.

"I've troubled you enough," Valentine said. "I suppose you've lost a night's business because of this. If you'll let me know what the clothes and bandages cost, I'll come by tomorrow to repay you what I can."

"Nonsense. Here's a card. If you do find those rowdies, give us a jingle. We'll give them a little law and order when we testify in court. Dumb sons of bitches didn't wear those masks when they were in our parlor waiting on you. I'd like to be able to point them out in court."

"Cheap too," the young Texan said. "Kept complaining about not being able to run a tab for their whiskey."

Valentine inspected his reflection in a little mirror next to the kitchen doorjamb. He'd probably have some horizontal scarring on the right side of his face to balance out the long vertical bullet furrow long since faded on his left. The asphalt had been sharp.

Well, he didn't have much keeping him in the United Free Republics anyway. Besides, he had mail to get back to Kentucky.

He might as well abandon the guise of a militia corporal; it wasn't doing him any good. He'd return to Kentucky in the leathers of the Bulletproof clan.

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