by E. E. Knight
The four big guns were spaced out like the bases on an oversized baseball diamond in the open ground in front of Solon’s Residence, each in its own pit, dug by the bulldozer, and ringed with sandbags. The backhoe was still making trenches to the ammunition dump, buried deep beneath a layer of sandbags, dirt, railroad ties and rail beams. This last came from the dismantled rail line the now-destroyed train had run on to the station near the old interstate.
Apart from the occasional shell from Pulaski Heights, the only military action to take place in the last forty-eight hours was a skirmish already going into the Free Territory folklore as the Great Howling Grog Chicken Raid. Ahn-Kha had led two platoons into the outskirts of North Arkansas and snatched up every chicken, goose, goat, piglet, calf, sheep and domestic rabbit they could run down and stuff in a sack—at the cost of the commanding officer getting a buttock full of birdshot from a twenty-gauge—while a third platoon blasted away at the men guarding the partially blown bridge from a thousand yards. Ahn-Kha had been running from a henhouse with a pair of chickens in each hand when the birdkeeper peppered him with shot that had to be dug out by a medic named Hiekeda with sterilized tweezers. In tall-tale fashion, the circumstances of Ahn-Kha’s wounding and subsequent extraction of the pellets were exaggerated until, in one version already being told over the radio, Ahn-Kha was sneaking past a window with a sow under each arm and six chickens in each hand when an eighty-year-old woman stuck a gun out the window and gave him both barrels as he bent to tie his shoe. The shot, in that particular version, had to be dug out by a Chinese tailor working with knitting needles used as chopsticks. But the raid was the Big Rock Mountain garrison’s first offensive success of the campaign. As a bonus, a baker’s dozen of forgotten milkers were rustled from their riverside pasture and driven up the two hairpins of the switchback road on the south side of the Big Rock Mountain.
“Men,” Valentine said. “You’ve been following orders that haven’t made much sense for three days straight. You’ve done your duty without questions, or answers that made any sense. I’m going to try to straighten you out now. Please pass on what I say to everyone who is on watch at the skyline.”
The “skyline” was the men’s name for the edge of the hillside, where a series of foxholes and felled trees traced the military crest: the point where the slope could be covered by gunfire. They didn’t have a quarter of the trained men they needed to man the extended line; by using three companies he could place a soldier about every fifteen yards along the line, if he didn’t cover the cliffs above the quarry with more than sentries.
“We were the first move in an effort to take back the Ozarks from Kur.”
He couldn’t get any farther; the men broke into cheers and the corkscrew yip of the Southern Command Guards. Valentine let the cheers stop. He said a silent prayer of gratitude for the high spirits of the men, tired as they were.
“We’re about as far behind the lines as we can be. There are divisions of Quislings between us and the forces north and south, which will soon be driving for us.”
Valentine knew he’d be roundly damned for what he was telling them; by the men if they found out he was lying, by his conscience if it was successfully kept from them. It was a guess at best. For all he knew, Southern Command was going to move toward Fort Scott or Pine Bluff. Since the men holding the Boston Mountains were a charade of an army, there wasn’t a snowflake’s chance in hell of being relieved from the north, and as for the south . . .
“We’re in radio contact with Southern Command. They know about the blow we struck the night before last. We threw a wrench into the gears of the TMCC. You know it, I know it and the Quislings will know it when they start going hungry and running out of bullets to shoot at your comrades.”
All that was true enough. With only Post in the basement radio room, he’d made a report to Southern Command, and after an hour’s pause they contacted him only to say that he’d been promoted to major and was now part of “Operations Group Center” under the titular command of General Martinez. They told him that he was to tie down as many troops as possible and be prepared to operate without the direct support of Southern Command for an “indeterminate time frame.” Valentine didn’t think that clumsy phrase, or the mention of Martinez, would bring cheers.
“From this hill, with the guns and mortars taken in our raid, we command a vital rail, road and river crossing. Consul Solon had to give up his old headquarters at Fort Scott to the Kurians of Oklahoma. He was in the process of transferring it here. Now we’ve taken his new one, right down to his personal foam-cushioned toilet seat, which I placed under new management this morning.” The men laughed.
“We’re in a strong position with plenty to eat and shoot. I hope you like the view; you’re going to be enjoying it for a long time. But the work has just begun. I’m going to put every man in this command under the temporary command of Captain Beck, the officer commanding the prisoners we brought out of Little Rock. I served, and chopped, and dug, under him. He’s been in two corners as tight as this one, outside Hazlett and commanding me at Little Timber Hill, and I’m still breathing because he knows how to fortify. He’s going to work you until you drop. Then he’ll wake you up and work you some more, but you’ll be alive at the end of this because of it.”
Liar.
Beck pulled Valentine aside as Lieutenant Colonel Kessey took over the assembly.
“Major Valentine needed a trained artillery officer,” she said, “and I, for my sins, happen to be one. I need more crews. The one I put together to set up the guns won’t help me much to shoot the other three. Anyone who’s got experience as a gun-bunny, cannon-cocker, or ammo-humper, please raise your hand. Not enough. Anyone who knows what those words mean, raise your hands . . . anyone who thinks they might know. Finally. Good news, you’re all in the artillery now.”
“What are the latest regs on friendly fire casualties?” Beck asked sotto voce.
“Be thankful they don’t have to counterbattery the mortars on Pulsaki Heights just yet.”
“We won’t hear from them for a while. They shot their ready reserve and we’ve got the rest. That, or they’re saving it for a charge up our hill.”
“What do you need, Captain?” Valentine asked.
“Valentine, what happened after Little Timber . . . I’m sorry. This arm meant no more duty in the Wolves.”
“It meant no more duty in the Wolves for me, too, Captain.”
“That’s my fault.”
“Doesn’t matter now. You’re a helluva fortification engineer. The best officer I ever served with was Le Havre in Zulu Company, but if I had my choice of him or anyone else in Southern Command for this job, I’d want you.”
Beck swallowed. “Thank you . . . sir.”
“It won’t be easy. We don’t have anything like the men we should have to defend this position. You’ve got to make it look like we do. Sooner or later they’re going to get around to trying us.”
“The firepower we have is better than what we had in the Wolves. Supports, heavy weapons, mines. That counts for a lot.”
“When the construction equipment is done with the artillery, it’s all yours.”
Beck nodded. Valentine saw his jaws tighten. Back in his days as senior in Foxtrot Company he’d known that meant Beck was thinking. Valentine reminded himself to give Beck Consul Solon’s humidor of cigars. Beck enjoyed a good smoke while working.
“Rough out what you want and run it by Styachowski. She’s sharp. I’ve told her and Mr. Post that you’re in charge of getting us ready. They’ll follow your orders. If there’s anything I can do, let me know.”
“You’ve done more than enough. How long are we going to have to be here?”
“How long were you going to hold that road to Hazlett?”
Beck thought it over. “It’s like that, sir?”
“We’ve got to keep as many troops occupied as possible for as long as we can. We’re right at the nexus of river and rail traffic in the Ozark
s. We need to make sure they can’t use it. At least not easily. We’ve got to protect the artillery covering the river and rail lines.”
“Then I’ll build a redoubt around these buildings and foundations. We have to figure on them getting on the plateau. More railroad rails and ties would be nice.”
“There’s the line running to the quarry. The Pulaski Heights boys might have something to say about us working right across the river from them.”
“Maybe the 155s can say something back to them if they do.”
Nail was a little pale, but he was eating and sleeping well.
“Better than I’d’ve expected,” Dr. Kirschbaum said. Valentine didn’t think she looked old enough to be a doctor, but wasn’t about to ask her for a diploma. “Could be that kidney’s in better shape than the triage report says. You should see this.”
The doctor led him over to Nail. The Bear lay on a bed now; they’d taken mattresses from the construction huts and moved them into the hospital—along with the generator and a refrigerator that had been holding beer.
“Lieutenant, you’ve got another visitor,” Kirschbaum said.
Nail managed a tired smile. “I’m about visited out, Doc. Unless he’s got more of Narcisse’s gumbo.”
“You need a second nurse to handle your dishes and bed-pans as is, soldier.”
Nail drained his canteen and handed it to the doctor. “More.”
“Do your trick first, Lieutenant.”
“What trick is this, Nail?” Valentine asked.
“Check out my toes, sir.”
They were wiggling.
“You don’t have a battery under here, do you?” Kirschbaum said, pretending to check under Nail’s bed.
“Ever treated a Bear before, Doc?” Nail asked.
“I’ve seen some DOAs. You boys take a lot of killing, judging from the holes. I’ll leave you with the lieutenant, Major. Or are you going to ask him for a quickie, too?”
Nail winked.
Valentine swung around the chair next to Nail’s bed. “I’m glad you’re feeling better. What’s in that gumbo?”
“Part of being a Bear.”
“This isn’t healing, Nail. This is more like regeneration.”
“You know Lost&Found, sir? You know why he’s called that? He’s got me beat. He was dead, like body-getting-cold dead, and he came back. He was in the fraggin’ body bag, sir. Zipped up and in a pile. He came to when the gravediggers picked him up. It’s like a legend, this story. Sat up and asked his mom for griddle cakes. Three men there had simultaneous heart attacks. He kept the twist tie on the tag they stuck through his ear. We try to keep it quiet. In case we ever get captured, we don’t want some Quisling cutting a notch in our arm just to see how quickly it heals.”
Valentine found Narcisse in the basement of the hospital, pouring honey down the center of loaves of bread, risen and ready to go into the oven. She was organizing the kitchen with the help of one of the pregnant POWs and a former Quisling soldier, one of the three from the captured bunch at the warehouse, who looked about fifteen.
“Where’s Hank?” Valentine asked. “I thought he was helping you out.”
“He volunteered for the artillery. That woman Kessey came through earlier today, she adopted the boy.”
“How’s he doing?” Valentine had avoided Hank since the night they broke out of New Columbia.
“He told me he hated his parents. He hopes they’re dead.”
“No, he doesn’t. Would it help if I talked to him?”
“Daveed, I don’t know what you did when you went off that night. I don’t want to know. I think it’d be best if Hank, he never know either. You tell him his parents, they run away.”
“What makes you think they didn’t?”
“Your eyes. They are your grief. They say, when you leave that place, you were dipped in blood.”
“Enough with the juju stuff, Sissy. What have you been putting in Nail’s soup?”
“Sausage, rice, celery, no chilis or nothing; the doctor, she say keep it mild—”
“That’s not what I mean. He had nerve damage. It’s healing. I’d heard Bears recovered from stabs and bullet wounds fast, but I’ve never known of a higher animal doing this.”
“ ‘More t’ings in heaven and earth,’ Daveed. If I knew how to make a gumbo that make cane-man walk again, I use him on myself and get new legs.”
“Colo—Major, passing the word for Major Valentine,” a soldier called in the hospital.
“Down here,” Valentine yelled back.
A private from the command company made a noisy descent to the kitchen, a signals patch on his shoulder. “Major! Sergeant Jimenez needs you in the radio room. Priority broadcast from Southern Command. For all troops.”
“Did you say broadcast?”
“Yes, sir, not direct communication. The Sarge said you needed to hear it.”
“Thank you, Private. I’m coming.”
Valentine stole a fresh heel of bread and dipped it in honey.
“You too bad, Daveed,” Narcisse said. “This galley supposed to be for hospital.”
“Impossible to resist your cooking, Sissy,” Valentine said, moving for the stairs.
Word had passed among the men that something was up. There were a couple of dozen sandbag-fillers trying to look busy in front of the Federal-style command building. A new long-range radio mast had gone up atop its molding-edged roof since the previous day. The signals private held the door for Valentine.
“Does Jimenez have the klaxon rigged yet?”
“I helped him, sir. Klaxon, PA, he can even kill electricity.”
“Quick work.”
“To tell you the truth, sir, it was mostly rigged already. We just added the kill switch for the juice.”
The radio room was a subbasement below the conference room where Solon had laid out his scheme for finishing off Southern Command. Solon had a sophisticated radio center. A powerful transmitter, capable of being used by three separate operators, was surrounded by the inky flimsy-spitters capable of producing text or images from the right kind of radio or telephone signal. Sergeant Jimenez had a pair of earphones on, listening intently.
“What’s the news, Jimenez?”
“Oh, sorry, sir. Lots of chatter. Something big is going on down south. I’m scanning Southern Command and TMCC. Chatter north and south, but it sounds like there’s action somewhere on the banks of the Ouachita.”
“What about west? Anything from Martinez?”
“Not a word, sir. Like we don’t exist.”
“What did you call me here for, then?”
“There’s going to be a broadcast from the governor. Thought you might like to hear what he had to say.”
“I’m not the only one, Jimenez. Can you put this on the PA?”
“Uhh . . . wait, I can. Just give me a sec.”
The radio tech rooted through a box of tangled cords in the corner, pulling up wires and examining the ends. He pulled out a snarl of electronics cable and unwound what he was looking for. Valentine put an ear to the headphones, but just picked up a word or two amongst the static. His eyes wandered over the Christmas-like assortment of red and green telltales, signal strength meters and digital dials. The apparatus was a Frankensteinish creation of three mismatched electronic boxes, placed vertically in a frame and patched together. The electromagnetic weapons that darkened so much of the world in 2022 took their toll on everything with a chip; the more sophisticated, the more likely to be rendered useless by an EMW pulse. Sets like this were an exception—restored military com sets with hardened chips. The Kurians frowned on any kind of technology that allowed mass communication; radios were hunted down and destroyed as though they were cancers. An illegal transmitter was a dangerous and practically impossible thing to have in the Kurian Zone. Only the most trusted of the Quisling commanders had them for personal use. Southern Command made transmitter/receivers by the hundreds, and receivers in even greater quantity, in little garage
shops for smuggling into the Kurian Zone, and of course had encouraged the citizens of the Free Territory to own them as well, even if they were on the telephone network. Caches of radios had probably been hidden along with weapons when Solon’s forces overran the Free Territory. If Governor Pawls was about to make a statement, chances were he had in mind speaking to those of his former citizens who still possessed theirs, and if they still had radios they probably had weapons. Valentine hoped for a call to rise. The Ozarks, especially near the borders, were full of self-reliant men and women who knew how to organize and fight in small groups. With his guns at the center of the Quisling transport network, the Kurians would have difficulty stamping out fires.
“We’re live, sir. Just let me know when you want to pipe it through,” Jimenez said. Valentine heard a voice through the padding on the earphones. He picked up another pair.
“When’s the broadcast?”
“Soon, sir.”
“I’m just getting static.”
“I’ll fix that,” the technician said. He sat and worked the tuner. “Code messages again. Something’s happening.”
“Why aren’t they doing it in the dead of night?”
“They usually do; reception is better. Maybe they want to get it rolling today, before the Kurians can react.”
“Or tonight.”
“Could be, sir. Oh, just a sec. Five minutes.”
“Give me the microphone.” When Jimenez handed it over, Valentine tested the talk switch. He heard an audible click outside. “Lend an ear, men. Lend an ear. We’ve got a broadcast coming in from the governor. I’m not sure what it’s about, just that it’s a general broadcast to what used to be the Ozark Free Territory. I figured you’d want to hear it. We’ll pipe it over as soon as it comes on.”
“They’ve got cassettes, so I can tape it,” Jimenez whispered.
