by E. E. Knight
The next weeks were a mix of classroom, lab, and exercise. Everyone paid attention during class, asked questions; anything at all was better than pounding across the athletic field for the ten thousandth time. They were tested daily on their progress.
"Right answers, and I can even read it," Kugel said, handing Valentine back his test on Eleven Ways to Kill an AV and Crew. "Where'd you get the thing about hand grenades and electrical tape in the fuel?"
"Southern Command, Sergeant."
"Didn't know you were a habitual deserter, Valentine. Thought Pacific Command was your first. You desert PB and the only direction to go is to the Kurians, where they'll turn you right in to the Reapers."
Valentine looked at the ground.
"Why don't you give us all a big fuckin' shock, follow orders, and see something through for once ?"
He passed on.
"What's the thing about electrical tape?" Tuber whispered, as Kugel yelled at some other PB—the involuntary recruits insisted it stood for "poor bastard"—about his handwriting and spelling.
"You pull the pin and wrap some electrical tape around the handle of a grenade. Gasoline dissolves the sticky. The more loops, the longer it takes. Then it blows."
Valentine glanced back at Kugel, who passed out another test and winked. Ten days ago, Kugel would have had him and Tuber jogging around the fence perimeter holding hands for talking among themselves.
* * * *
The ordnance-disposal training was the worst. They used real shells and demolition charges, with just enough dynamite hidden inside to knock you on your ass with your ears ringing. Worse, you had to work through thick gloves and plastic safety goggles that were more scratch than lens.
Tuber was clumsy, and set off a shell as he and Valentine worked. Valentine expelled a deep breath as he picked himself up, but Tuber went berserk.
"Goddamn goddamn goddamn!" he screamed, spinning, throwing off his gloves, goggles, and helmet like a whirligig expelling sparks.
"You're dead, dummies," Corporal Pope, the bomb expert at the training center, shouted, not that every man in the platoon didn't know.
Tuber charged the corporal. Half the men in the platoon, including Valentine, threw themselves at him. He tossed two men off one arm, sent another reeling with a blow, tossed a fourth through the window.
"Chill, man," Joho squeaked, Tuber's hand gripping at his throat.
Corporal Pope reached for his pistol.
"What the hell's going on in here?" Kugel yelled, poking his head in the door. "Pope, stand down."
Tuber charged at Kugel, hauling Valentine along like a backpack. Valentine couldn't say what happened next, only that he and Tuber went over like a tripped horse, knocking aside tables and classroom stools. He turned and saw Kugel with a club across the back of Tuber's neck.
"PeaBees, hold this cocksucker down!" Kugel grunted. "Pope, get your foot on his neck. Don't let him get leverage!"
Valentine threw himself across the small of Tuber's back. With two men on each limb and Pope bearing down on Tuber's neck, they just managed to keep him facedown on the floor.
Kugel hurried to the classroom slop sink and ran a pitcher of water. He returned and upended it on Tuber's head.
"Tubelow! Tubelow!" Kugel shouted. "Stand down!" Tuber continued to struggle and Kugel took out his pistol.
"No! He's giving," Valentine said, which wasn't quite true, but Valentine straddled the small of Tuber's back, putting himself between Kugel's pistol and the back of Tuber's head for a few seconds. Valentine reached up and caressed Tuber's cheek. "Take it easy, Tube. Take it easy. Itsy-bitsy spider climbed up the waterspout...."
Tuber relaxed.
"Fuckin' Bears," Pope said.
They chained Tuber in his bunk for the rest of the afternoon, just in case.
* * * *
Graduation came, and they were pared down to 105. The 14 rejects, the perpetual screwups who were the kind that got other men killed, were taken away in a barred bus. Some said they were the smart ones; they'd spend the rest of their sentence in a mine or lumber camp. Others said they were being taken off to be quietly hung somewhere. The rest got tiny tattoos on their right biceps, done quick and dirty by the corporals, a little Roman numeral V and 775 beneath.
"You're PeaBees now," Kugel said, addressing them from the front of the church as they sat in the pews. They'd spent the morning cleaning the barrack, hanging up and cleaning the bedding, making everything spotless for the next "class."
"You're moving up to the front. The rest of your training will be in a school that'll make this look like kindergarten, the kind of school where mistakes make you dead. Ready to go make yourselves useful for a change?"
"Yes, Sergeant."
"Seven Seventy-five Company, you're finished here. Go and do right for a change, and maybe someday I'll see you back here."
He rolled up his sleeve and showed a fading blue tattoo: V with some blurry numbers beneath.
* * * *
More buses came, the same seatless wonders in which the 775 Company rode, hanging on to bars fixed to the roof for dear life, swaying like a single mass in the turns. They were dumped in yet another depot, with the mountains ending to the west and Seattle's tower-dominated horizon blue in the distance. They ate militia sandwiches in an old IHOP. The men looked at the militia women with more hunger than they did their food.
The outnumbered women understood their power and used it kindly, distributing smiles and ignoring some of the bluer catcalls. Valentine smeared some honey on a biscuit and listened to Joho's chatter. The man was as happy as a warbler on a sunny summer day, giving running color commentary every time a militia woman walked by.
An officer in a beat-up old uniform and Windbreaker appeared at the door. He had two shining circles on his collar—Valentine guessed they were buttons or thumbtacks. "Seven Seventy-five Company! My name's Mofrey and we're going to the front. Form platoons on the road, column of two. Don't make me shoot anyone. Punishment for trying to desert PB is summary execution."
Four miles later—Valentine thought he smelled the rotting-plant smell of the bay now and then, faintly on the stronger gusts of wind, but it could have been his imagination—they arrived at an old hotel in the center of a partially demolished office park that served as the headquarters for the Punishment Brigade. A couple of curious NCOs looked them over; then they were brought into a warehouse. Holes in the roof at one end offered the only lighting, and a permanent mold farm on the walls and floor near the gaps the only decor. They were instructed to sit on the cleaner concrete at the other.
"Keep it down, you slugs," a sergeant yelled. "The colonel's gonna admit you to our ranks, God help us."
The warehouse had a little office near the truck bays, and Valentine saw a man circumnavigate some old HVAC equipment to the rail so that he could look down at them. There was something about his easy stance that made him look like a pirate captain watching his crew from a quarterdeck. Valentine blinked, almost unable to believe his eyes.
"Welcome to First Brigade, Seven Seventy-five. You're a different breed of soldiers, and you'll find a different breed of war up here," he said in a loud, clear voice. It was Captain LeHavre, Valentine's old superior in Southern Command's Wolves.
* * * *
"Anyone doesn't want to fight the Kurians," he continued, "file on over toward the door and go outside. We'll find something else for you to do. It'll involve shovels."
He lost two more men that way. A few more looked longingly at the door, but seemed to feel safer staying with the rest.
"Good. Very good, Seven Seventy-five. Fourteen dumps and two shirkers. Strong bunch." He came down the stairs and joined them on the factory floor. Valentine saw three shining thumbtacks on his collar, arranged in a triangle. He still had his steady green eyes, and his belly was a little more pronounced on the otherwise muscular frame. "Who was born the farthest from Seattle?"
That was easy. A man named Bink held up his hand. He'd been
brought up in Nairobi.
"Name's Bink, sir. I was born in Africa."
"You're the new Beefeater. If anyone has a gripe, think they're being treated unfairly, they tell you and you tell me. Understand?"
"Think so, sir," Bink said.
"Only thing I don't want to hear is how you don't belong in the PeaBee because you're innocent. Fate can be cruel sometimes—deal with it or step out that door and cry over a shovelful of shit. Now, platoon leaders: Give me Diaz, Valentine, and Wasilla."
Valentine, having been through the routine before, stepped forward.
LeHavre nodded once at him. "You'll find out sooner or later that Valentine and I knew each other back in the Ozarks. We were Wolves together. I trust him and so can you. But he and the others impressed your drill team back at Sally. Stay in front, you three—the captain's got some pins for you.
"We'll start you off easy here for a couple of weeks. We'll rotate out platoons to train with experienced companies. There's no weekend passes for PeaBees, but we make our own entertainment, usually on Monday and Friday nights. Calisthenics in the morning and then sports. More good news: You've got the rest of the afternoon off. We're going to get cards on all of you and then you'll see the Brigade doc. Be polite to her—she's the only woman in the PeaBees and she'll be cupping your nuts at the end of the exam."
* * * *
That night Valentine dined alone with Colonel LeHavre in one of the hotel's "extended stay" suites. He hadn't changed much. The brisk, intelligent officer had slowed down a little physically in the intervening decade.
LeHavre, as colonel of the battalion, rated a personal orderly. He still ate the same food as the rest of the men; it was just brought to him and Valentine on a tray.
"Vodka?" LeHavre offered. "The best of the local hooch is called Grand Inquisitor. Made by a bunch of Russians who escaped to Canada from Vladivostok. It's pretty good."
"No, thank you, sir."
"Eat first. Then we'll talk."
They polished off the hot food—smoked ham, applesauce, some dispirited green beans, and honey-glazed biscuits—in silence.
"I miss the fresh veggies from Southern Command," LeHavre said as they finished. "Going to say no to the Grand Inquisitor again? I'm going to put a little in that powder crap that passes for orange juice. Rad, an Orange Wallop please. Privileges of rank."
The servant went to the refrigerator and clinked glasses. He returned with the iced drink.
"We each want to know how the other got here, I guess," LeHavre said.
"They told me you led a party up this way, but you never arrived."
"My report must have been—oh, what's a polite word? Intercepted. You're the junior—let's hear your story first. That way I can enjoy my drink."
Valentine tried to keep the tale short, and concentrated on events from the point when he arrived in Pacific Command.
"It's still a group of warlords here. You know one of them, Thunderbird. There are others. Adler's united them, probably because he gives the appearance of victories."
"What do you mean, appearance?"
"What's he replacing the Kurians with? Nothing. He's just scorching earth in front of him, rather than behind.
"How did you end up in the PeaBees, sir?" Valentine asked.
LeHavre had Rad bring him another flavored vodka. "I'm not a drunk—two's my limit. My story's not all that different from yours. I came up along the coast, out of Grog country in Oregon. I was brought to the Outlook first. Lots of speeches and maps about areas cleared of Kurians. There was another Southern Command liaison there— he'd ... oh, how would you put it? ... He'd gone native. Singing Adler's praises. He introduced me to the man himself. I'll confess, even I liked him at first. Quiet, unassuming, but confident. Able to make a decision, suck up a wrong move and move on—you remember, I look for that. Eager to remain a civilian. Yeah, he impressed me enough so I joined. There was no one waiting for me in the Ozarks."
"Not even that little girl, Jill?"
LeHavre massaged his kneecaps. "Wolf duty really catches up to you when you get older. My knees are shot. But Jill would be tickled that you remember. I was told she sorta fell for a young, good-looking Quisling. Yeah, I know. I wish I could have been there to look after her and her mom. But maybe it was the only way she could stay alive. She retreated with them."
"So how did you end up a PeaBee?"
"I saw the results of one of the Action Group sweeps. I suppose I had it better than you—I didn't see the Bears in action, just the results, an old foundation full of bodies. I had to use a pole to figure out how deep they went. Some of them were pretty torn up. Bear bloodlust."
"You blame the Bears?" Valentine asked.
"No, of course not. The Bears are just a better tool for this sort of thing. I know how easily it spins out of control. Again, not just Bears. I heard something about your massacre in Little Rock. You'd been arrested and then escaped, right?"
"Yes," Valentine said.
"Where've you been since? Keeping clear of the Ozarks?"
Valentine decided to tell him. Sooner or later the pain had to work itself to the surface and come out like a splinter. LeHavre was the closest thing he had to a guide in life anymore, and the colonel had lost someone he was more of a father to than Valentine had ever been to Amalee.
"I went back to the Caribbean, really to beach myself there. I'd met a woman there, with the Jamaica pirates. She ended up with a daughter out of it. But in the years I was gone, she took up with another man, both for her own sake and our daughter's. Good man, I shipped with him, and as far as Amalee is concerned, Elian Torres is her father. Malia, her mother, still... still feels something for me, but I can't say whether it's love or hate. I've got no business busting up a family. Malia wanted me gone, so I left."
He felt for Malia Carrasca. He'd shown up with Narcisse and Blake—heavily disguised, of course. What woman in her right mind wouldn't balk at such an arrival? It was easier to go than to stay. And after that, the long angry hunt for the killers of Mary Carlson.
"How'd your kid look?"
"Happy," Valentine said. "Little. But God, she can run."
"You did the right thing. I know you've got problems, Valentine, and hurts, but there's a long list of people who'd gladly switch with you.
Valentine had told himself that before, but it helped to have Le-Havre say it. Valentine still respected him.
LeHavre took a breath. "Why'd you go down there in the first place? You didn't strike me as the type to give up on the Cause."
"The Cause abandoned me first," Valentine said.
"Whoa, there, Valentine. How can the Cause abandon a man?"
"You said yourself you'd heard about my trial. I ended up a fugitive from the place I'd given up ... everything, everything to defend."
"C'mon, Valentine. You're mixing up people and places with an idea. I asked you this once before: What's making you take up the rifle instead of a tractor wheel or a book or a fishing rod? What's the Cause?"
"Being free of the Kurians," Valentine said.
"There you go. It's an idea, not a person or a place. People, well, people can be awfully little. I've covered a lot of land in my life. There's beauty and ugly, fertile and sterile everywhere. It's ideas that matter. Good ideas, right ideas. Ideas are bigger than any of us. They don't get old, and they sure don't issue orders to get anyone court-martialed. You think I've given up on the Cause?"
"I don't see how you're helping it as much here as you did back home," Valentine said.
"Valentine, I didn't get put here. I volunteered to be an officer in the PeaBees. Remember your first time out on your own? The Red River operation?"
"Distinctly," Valentine said.
"You told me that when you got those folks out, you really felt like you'd accomplished something. Even more than the Reaper you and your Wolves snipped."
Valentine didn't mention his spell in the Coastal Marines, when he was working as a mole in the uniform of a Coastal Marine
Quisling, the refugees he'd rounded up ... canceling whatever karma he'd built getting the Red River families out, or the Carlsons.
"I like PeaBee work. Being the picket line between the Seattle KZ and Pacific Command has its dangers, but there are opportunities too, if you ever heard that Chinese philosophy."
Valentine thought he saw the light beginning to break through the clouds.
"I'm still getting people out and up to Canada, or down into Oregon and east. It's a little trickier—in a way it's like threading the needle between two Kurian Zones—but it can be done. There's a Resistance Network in Seattle, a damn good one. They've got members at some key checkpoints. They get the people to me, and I take it from there. Every once in a while one of my PeaBees really distinguishes himself and then he goes too. There are advantages to being the one who signs the casualty reports. Want to help?"
"Can do, sir."
"My ears must be going too. That voice sounds like my old lieutenant."
* * * *
Valentine spent the next few months leading his platoon through the different operational assignments as they trained under real conditions. Five veteran PeaBees joined his platoon to help the men learn, but even under their guidance there were losses. A man was electrocuted on a raid against an electrical substation. Even worse, on river watch, three men just disappeared, probably lost to Big Mouths, judging from the crushed plant life leading back to the Snoqualmie River.
But there were rewards to PeaBee work too. Valentine guided dozens of individual families—perhaps a couple of brothers, a wife, and child one time, grandparents with a cluster of grandchildren another, and two sisters with their collective broods—from rendezvous points in the Kurian Zone, then across to the PeaBee positions. From there they were brought to hiding spots, where the PeaBees fed them—who knew what kind of three-card monte shuffle LeHavre's Brigade Supply staff was playing with Pacific Command?
