by E. E. Knight
“For those on watch, we’ll tape it and play it back tonight. That is all.”
To pass the time Jimenez took Valentine through the shortwave spectrum. There were notes on a clipboard about where to find the bands for the Green Mountain men, the Northwest Command, even overseas stations like the Free Baltic League.
“Well have to set up a canteen where you can play the news,” Valentine said. “Solon has enough office space down here; we can knock down some of these walls—”
“Just a sec, sir. He’s coming on.” Jimenez nodded to himself, then flicked a switch. Faintly, Valentine heard Governor Pawl’s voice from the loudspeakers outside. Jimenez unplugged the earphones and the sound went over to the old set of speakers bracketed to the wall. Valentine had heard the old Kansan’s rather scratchy voice on occasions past, explaining a new emergency measure or rescinding an old one, eulogizing some lost lieutenant or passing along news of a victory against the Kurians overseas.
“—and all our friends and allies who may be listening. Late last night, after speaking to Lieutenant General Griffith, my interim lieutenant governor, Hal Steiner, and what members of the Ozark Congress are with me at Comfort Point, I gave the order for the counterattack you’ve all been wating for in this, the darkest year of the Free Territory. A combination of weather, enemy movements and a fortuitous raid on the Quislings at the old Little Rock Ruins—”
“Hey, that’s us,” Jimenez said, smiling. Valentine nodded, listening.
“—I took as portents that it is time for the storms and shadows to disperse. Therefore I gave the order for ‘Archangel’ to begin.”
“Archangel” must have meant something to the men outside; Valentine heard cheering.
“The first shot was fired before dawn this morning. As I speak, in the south we have seized Camden and are on the march for Arkadelphia; in the north we descend from the mountains and onto the plateau. So now I ask the men and women of the militia, when they hear the sound of our guns, to gather and smash our enemy, hip and thigh. Smash them! Smash them to pieces, then smash the pieces into dust. For the outrages inflicted on us, smash them! For the future of your sons and daughters, smash them! As you are true to your heritage of liberty, smash them! For the honored dead of our Cause, smash them! Now is our time. With courage in your heart, you will know what to do. With steel in your arm, you will have the means to do it. With belief in your spirit, you will not falter but shall see it through. We have lived through the night. Now let us make a dawn, together.”
The broadcast switched over to a marching song of Southern Command, based on an old marching ditty. Valentine left the radio room and went out to see the men, the song ringing in his ears:We are a band of peoples, granted through our creed
The Right to Life and Liberty: our Founding Fathers’ deed.
But when those rights were taken, our duty then as one:
Cry “Never!” to the Kurian Kings, and take up arms again.
Never! Never! Our sacred trust . . . Never!
“Never!” to the Kurian Kings, we’ll take up arms again . . .
Outside, Valentine heard the men join in the song. It spread across the hill, even to the pickets on the crestline. Though most of them couldn’t carry a tune with the help of a wheelbarrow, they did slap their rifle butts, or shovel blades, in time to the “Never!” It was a rythmic, savage sound. He hoped the Quislings across the river were listening.
Valentine found Hank Smalls learning his duties as a “runner.” The boy’s job was to pass oral messages between the guns and the main magazine, headquarters, or the forward posts in the event of a hard-line breakdown with the field phones. He and a handful of other young teenagers were being escorted around the hilltop and taught the different stations still being put together by Beck and his construction crews.
“Can I borrow Hank a moment?” Valentine asked the corporal walking the teens around.
“Of course,” the corporal answered. She had the nearsighted look of a studious schoolgirl entering her senior year, despite the “camp hair” cropped close to her scalp. Valentine stopped the children as they lined up, as though for inspection.
“Excuse me, Corporal.” He drew Hank aside. “How are you getting on, Hank?” Valentine asked the boy. Hank wore a man’s fatigue shirt, belted about the waist so it was more of a peasant smock. Mud plastered Hank’s sandal-like TMCC training shoes, but the old tire treads were easy to run in and then clean afterwards.
“Busy. Lots to remember about fuses, sir.”
“Are you getting enough to eat?”
Hank looked insulted. “Of course. Two hot and one cold a day.”
Valentine had a hard time getting the next out: “Worried about your parents?”
“No.” But the boy’s eyes left his this time. Valentine went down to one knee so he was at the boy’s level, but Hank’s face had gone vacant. The boy was off in a mental basement, a basement Valentine suspected was similar to his own.
“Keep busy,”Valentine said, summing long experience into words. The boy looked like he needed more.
“Hank, I’m going to tell you something a Roman Catholic priest told me when I lost my parents. He said it was up to him to turn me into a man since my father wasn’t around to do it. He’d never had kids, being a priest, so he had to use the wisdom of others. He used to read a lot of Latin. Roman history, you know?” For some reason Valentine thought of Xray-Tango and his groma.
“They had gladiators,” Hank said.
“Right. A Roman statesman named Cicero used to say that ‘no Roman in any circumstance could regard himself as vanquished.’ You know what vanquished means?”
“Uhhh,” Hank said.
“What Cicero meant was that even if you were beat, you should never admit that you were. Especially not to the people who’d beaten you.”
“Like Southern Command keeping together even after all this,” Hank said. The boy’s eyes had a sparkle of interest, so Valentine went on.
“Cicero said a man had to have three virtues. Virtus, which meant courage in battle. Not minding pain and so on. You also have to have gravitas, which means being sober, aware of your responsibilities, and controlling your emotions. Even if someone has you madder than a stomped rattlesnake, you don’t let them know they’ve got you by the nose, or they’ll just give you another twist. Understand?”
“Virte—virtus and gravitas,” Hank said. “I see. But you said there was another.”
“This is the most important one for you now. Simplicitas. That means keeping your mind on your duties, doing what most needs to be done at the moment. In fact, I’d better let you get back to yours. I don’t want to keep the corporal and the rest waiting.”
“Yes, sir,” Hank said, saluting. The vacant look was gone.
Valentine wanted to hug the boy, but settled for a salute. Gravitas required it.
All through the following day the sound of distant trucks and trains could be heard.
That night, though the men were exhausted from laboring on what was now known as the “Beck Line,” they danced and cheered at the news that Arkadelphia was liberated, and the Quislings were falling back in disarray. Southern Command would soon be knocking on the hilly gates of Hot Springs, barely fifty miles from New Columbia.
They’d had their own successes. The mortar crews had prevented repair gangs from working on the rail lines during the day, and the occasional illumination shell followed by 4.2-inch mortar airbursts slowed the work to a crawl at night.
But strongpoints with machine guns were now all around the base of the hill, and the mortars on Pulaski Heights had begun to fire again, scattering their shells among the buildings of Solon’s Residence. Two men laying wire for field phones were killed when a shell landed between them.
Big Rock Mountain added a life when one of the women gave birth. The eight-and-a-half-pound boy was named Perry after one of the dead signals men.
“That’s pretty damn arrogant of them,” Valentine said, taking his eye from the spotti
ng scope the next day. It was late afternoon, and the shadows of the hills were already stretching across New Columbia. “Bringing a barge up the river in daylight.”
“I’d say the river’s too tricky to do it at night,” Post said.
“Then we’ll make it too tricky for them to do during the day.”
They stood at an observation post above the switchback road running up the southeastern side of the hill, looking through a viewing slit with the protection of headlogs. There were snipers at the base of the hill good enough to get them, even with an uphill shot. There had been minor wounds among the work parties until three-man teams of counter-snipers had been sent down the hill to hunt out the marksmen. Valentine knew there was a gritty war of precision and patience being waged through scoped rifles two hundred feet below, but he had to keep his mind on the river, or rather denying its use to the enemy.
“They’re trying to time it so they can unload at night,” Post said. The barge was still far from the docks, behind the old brush-covered roadway of the interstate loop.
“I’d like to see if Kessey’s guns can make a difference. Durning, you’re forward observer for this side, I believe?”
The corporal in the post looked up. “Yes, sir.”
“I want that barge sunk. Can you do it?”
“A crawling target like that? Yes, sir!”
Valentine listened to him talk into the field phone to Kessey, acting as fire direction controller, and the far-off squawk of the alarm at the gun pits. Kessey had decided that, because of the lack of experienced crews, she could only put two guns into effective action at once. The other two would be used once some of the raw hands gained experience. Within three minutes the first ranging shot was fired as the barge negotiated the wide channel around the swampy turd shape of Gates Island.
“Thirty meters short,” the observer called, looking through the antennae-like ranging binoculars. Kessey tried again. Valentine heard her faint “splash” through his headset, letting him know another shell was on the way. Through his own spotting scope, Valentine saw the white bloom of the shell-fall well behind the barge. He took a closer look at the tug. Thankfully, it didn’t belong to Mantilla. The observer passed the bad news about the miss.
“Sir, it’s the damn Quisling ordinance. Their quality control sucks sewage.”
“The target’s worth it. Keep trying.”
The Quislings on Pulaski Heights tried to inhibit the crews by raining shells down on the battery. Valentine heard the crack of shells bursting in the air.
The observer was happy with the next shell, and he called, “Howizer battery, fire for effect.”
The shells traveling overhead whirred as they tore through the air. Valentine stepped aside so Post could watch.
“Keep your heads down, boys. Nothing to watch worth a bullet in the head,” he called to a pair of men resting concealed behind rocks and earth along the crestline to his left.
“I think there were two hits to the cargo, sir.”
“Secondary explosion?”
“No, sir.”
“Probably just a cargo of rice then. Worth sinking anyway. Corporal, keep it coming.”
The sun was already down beneath the trees behind them. Three more times the guns fired, with the forward observer relaying results.
“Another hit!” Post said.
“Sir, the barge is turning,” the observer said.
“They cut loose from the cargo,” Post said. “There’s a fire on board. Black smoke; could be gasoline.”
Even Valentine could see the smear of smoke, obscuring the white tug beyond. “Forget the cargo, sink that tub.”
It was getting darker. Tiny flecks of fire on the sinking barge could be made out, spreading onto the surface of the water. There had been some gasoline on board.
The observer cursed as shells continued to go wide. Valentine could not make out anything other than the guttering fire.
“Illuminate!” the observer called.
A minute later a star shell burst over the river.
“Hell, yes,” Post chirped.
Under the harsh white glare, Valentine squinted and saw the tug frozen on the swampland shallows of the northern side of Gates Island. The pilot had misjudged the turn in the darkness.
“Fuze delay, fuze delay . . .” the observer called into his mike.
Shells rained down on the barge. Its bulkheads could keep out small arms fire, but not shells. The star shell plunged into the river, but an explosion from the tug lit up the river. Another illumination shell showed the hull torn in two.
“We got her,” the forward observer shouted. “Cease fire. Cease fire.”
“Pass me that headset, Corporal.”
Valentine put on the headset. “Nice work, Kessey.”
“This isn’t Colonel Kessey, sir,” the voice at the other end said. “It’s Sergeant Hanson, sir. She was wounded by the mortar fire. Permission to redirect and counterbattery.”
The mortars on Pulaski Heights were scattered and in defilade; the number of shells required to silence even one or two was prohibitive. “Negative, Sergeant. Get your men to their shelters. I’m promoting you to lieutenant; you’ll take over the battery. What’s the situation with Colonel Kessey?”
“Blown out of her shoes, sir, but she landed intact. I’m hoping it’s just concussion and shock. She’s already on her way to the hospital, sir.”
Valentine kept his voice neutral. “Thank you, Lieutenant. Over and out.”
Later that night Valentine went through the solemn, and rather infuriating, ritual of composing his daily report to General Martinez. He labored over the wording at the end of the report.
At approximately 18:20 we sighted a barge moving up the Arkansas River. Our howitzer battery took it under fire. After ten minutes sustained shelling the tug cast off from the sinking cargo. The battery shifted targets to the tug, which ran aground and was subsequently destroyed by howitzer fire.
Counterbattery fire from the Pulaski Heights mortars caused two casualties. A loader was wounded in the foot and the battery Fire Direction Officer, Lt. Col. Kessey, suffered head trauma resulting in a concussion when a shell exploded near her. I hope to report that she will return to duty shortly, as she was still training and organizing her crews. The battery is now under the command of a first sergeant I promoted to lieutenant. Lt. Hanson completed the battery action.
Enemy troops continue to concentrate in front of us. Eventually larger weapons will be moved to Pulaski Heights, making our current position untenable and offensive action impossible. The mortar tubes are dispersed and guarded from the river side, but I believe the New Columbia area to be open to attack from the hills in the west. I respectfully suggest that a movement by your command in our direction will allow us to control central Arkansas and pressure Hot Springs from the north as other commands push up to join us.
My staff has a detailed plan worked out. Establishing closer contact would go far toward coordinating the actions of our commands to the benefit of Southern Command in general and the detriment of Consul Solon and the TMCC in particular.
Writing Martinez was an exercise in futility, but it had to be done, no matter what taste the task left in his mouth.
Valentine put a code card in the envelope and sent it to the radio room. He looked around the basement room that served as his office and sleeping area. If a man’s life could be measured by his possessions, his life didn’t amount to much. A little leather pouch of Quickwood seeds. A toothbrush that looked like an oversized pipe cleaner. Field gear and weapons. A report from Styachowski on her progress in organizing the POWs from the camp into battle-ready infantry. Pages of notes. A terrain sketch on the wall. He was a man of lists. Lists of officer rotations. Lists of Quisling brigades and regiments identified in the area—it had doubled in length in the past week. A list of needs for the hospital—God knew where he’d find an X-ray machine, why did they even ask? Xray-Tango. A man who wanted and needed to switch sides thanks to
intelligence and conscience, but who couldn’t bring himself to do it.
He collapsed into his bunk, palms behind his head. His scalp was getting past the prickly stage, and the returning black hairs on his head made him look rather like someone on a long walk home from prison; the visible skin of his scalp made even more odd-looking thanks to their presence. He let his hearing play around the headquarters building. Fresh construction made the most noise: hammers and electric saws turning Solon’s future meeting rooms and art galleries into living space, with fainter splats from the ground floor above as windows were bricked up into firing slits. Typewriters clattered as clerks catalogued and allocated the stores from the warehouse raid. He could hear Post and Styachowski talking with the top sergeants and a smattering of lieutenants as they worked out the organization of the hilltop’s men; many of the prisoners were getting their strength back after a few days of balanced rations and could now be blended into other units. From the communications center he heard field phones buzzing or jangling—they’d come away with two kinds, the ones that buzzed doubled as short-range radios, the jangling ones had been used by Solon’s construction staff—now shakily melded together in a single network rather like Valentine’s ad hoc command.
The Consul hadn’t reacted to his seizure of the Residence as quickly, or as violently, as he’d expected. The Quislings under Xray-Tango had just concentrated on keeping him where he was rather than prying him off the hill. The forces they’d assembled could overrun him, at no small cost, but so far they hadn’t moved beyond the engagement of dueling sniper rifles. Perhaps they couldn’t afford a Pyhrric victory with Southern Command still on the move in the south.
Did they want to starve him out? He had just under sixteen hundred soldiers and captured Quislings—the latter were digging and hammering together log-and-soil fortifications under Beck’s direction—that he could feed for months, if necessary, at full, balanced rations. After the canned meat and vegetables ran out he could still manage beans and rice for another ten or twelve weeks. They must have known the contents of the divisional supply train he’d made off with. Of course, the food would run out eventually, but not before Solon had to send most of his boys back to where he’d borrowed them, or Archangel had been decided one way or the other. A few shady Quislings had made contact with the forward posts, offering to trade guns and small valuables for food. Valentine’s hilltop forces were, temporarily at least, better off than the besiegers. He could just wait for Southern Command to move up after taking Hot Springs, or the less likely relief from Martinez. If he were Solon, he’d destroy the the forces in his rear as quickly as possible, before turning his attention to the new threat from the south.
