by E. E. Knight
Meanwhile, Valentine's denim-covered file folder grew ever thicker as they worked out variants on the basic plan involving weather and enemy countermoves. Highbeam was taking shape, and Valentine approved. He learned there was even a network of Cats in place to wreck rail lines in Tennessee and a bridge or two across the Ohio to delay any countermoves with large formations of troops. There was only one functioning rail line through central Kentucky anyway, and it would be easy enough to disable it.
Then it was time for them to disperse. They'd meet again outside Rally Base in a gradual buildup. The regulars wouldn't arrive until the last moment. They'd marshal farther to the south to preserve the illusion of the move on New Orleans.
* * * *
Lambert walked around the square one last time and handed each of them a folded sheet of paper the size of a small piece of stationery. Lambert's neat handwriting was a little blotchy. Obviously the ink she used to write the forty notes wasn't the best quality. The note read:
The code name for this operation is now Javelin. Any changes to the blue-book plan will be marked javelin. Everyday correspondence and orders will still be marked Highbeam, as will certain messages from me designed to bring confusion to the enemy. Please ignore any Highbeam order from my office dated with an even number. This message is printed on sweet rise paper. It's tasty—enjoy.
Valentine smiled. Confusion to the enemy.
* * * *
A week later he stood before a house well outside Russellville, Arkansas, wearing civilian clothes and carrying his Maximillian Argent identification.
The imposing brick house had a rebuilt look to it, with a newer roof and windows added to something that had probably stood vacant and deteriorating since 2022. There was paper over the upstairs windows and Valentine saw a pile of sawdust in the garage. A big garden stood out back, and melon patches flanked the house. Household herbs grew under the sills.
Valentine scanned around with his ears and heard soft clicking out back.
He walked through the nearer of the two melon patches and found Nilay Patel next to a small mountain of stacked river-smooth rocks, digging what looked like a shallow trench connecting two foxholes but judging from the roll of waterproofing might be a sizable artificial pond. Patel had put on a little weight since he'd last seen him.
"Sergeant Patel!" Valentine called.
"No need to shout. I heard you come off the road," Patel said, fiddling with some tools in a bucket.
Valentine took a closer look. There was a revolver handle in there.
Patel's bushy eyebrows shot up. "Lieutenant Valentine!"
Valentine felt pleased to be recognized. He wondered if he'd recognize himself. "How are you, Sergeant?"
"Come across the hedge, just that away. Nadi," he called to the rear screen door. "Drinks! An old comrade is here to visit."
He picked up a curve-handled cane and limped to some garden furniture with hand-sewn cushions.
Nadja Patel, whom Valentine had once met as Nadja Mallow, emerged with a tray. Though she kept her glorious head of hair, she'd aged considerably, but then Solon's takeover of the Ozarks had taken her first husband.
She turned her back on Valentine as she set down the tray. Valentine smelled spicy mustard. "I thought I might as well bring you your lunch," she said to her husband. "Would you like something . . . ummm—"
"David," Valentine supplied. "Yes, it's a good walk from Russelville."
"I like it that way," Patel said. He used his cane to help himself sit. "Ahhh. The knees. I stayed too long a Wolf," Patel said.
"You're not listed as a disable."
"If there's a crisis, I don't want to be stuck behind a wheel or a desk," Patel said, rubbing his kneecaps. "I have good days and bad ones. I've been working since morning, so this will be a bad day."
Valentine heard a clatter from the kitchen and the woman's voice, quietly swearing.
"Can I help in there?" Valentine called.
"No," Nadja called back.
"I know this is not a social call," Patel said. "She has guessed too."
"Nilay, you were the best sergeant I ever knew in the Wolves, which makes you the best I ever knew, period. I saw you listed as inactive. I would have called, but—"
We don't have a phone," Patel said, smiling. His teeth had yellowed. "I keep a radio. For emergencies."
Nadja Patel emerged and dropped a sandwich in front of Valentine. "You're welcome," she said, before Valentine could thank her. A quartered watermelon followed.
"Now, Nadi," Patel said.
"I know what he's here for. A sandwich he's welcome to. Another husband he's not."
Valentine thought it best to keep silent.
Nadja returned to the house.
Valentine didn't touch the sandwich. "I'll leave. You two enjoy your lunch. It's a beautiful garden, by the way."
"Sit down, sir! Let me hear what you have to say. You came all this way."
"It's an op. Outside the Free Terr— Republics. I can't say any more. But your legs—"
"Are still fit to carry me. David, I've been retired just long enough to feel the grave close in. With nothing to do I've started smoking again. I should like very much to help." Patel tossed the cane he'd been using into the diggings.
"Here I thought I'd have to convince you," Valentine said, getting up and retrieving the cane. "I've got warrant papers for a star to go in the middle of the stripes. You'll be my top."
"I do not need convincing. She does. That would help."
"Don't you want to talk it over with her first?"
"For three years I have done my best to give her whatever she wants. This, I want. She is upset because she knows me. I said no once before to Captain LeHavre and came to regret it."
"He's still alive, as far as I know. He made it to the Cascades. He's fighting out there now."
"I always suspected there was more to you."
"Tell her it would raise your pension. You'd get a sergeant major's land grant too. You could sell it or add to this spread."
"Thank you, sir. Not for the land; for the chance to get back to important work."
Valentine raised his voice, hoping the woman inside was listening. "It's just for a few months' work, all in the Free Territory. Training. When we step out, you'll come back here with your rank permanently raised. I'll promote someone else into your place."
"We shall see. You say you need men trained? Not Wolves?"
"Unfortunately, no. Regulars, more or less. I'm due at Camp Liberty in six days. Is that enough time to get your affairs in order?"
"Camp Liberty? Yes, if I have the written orders."
Valentine opened his rucksack and extracted his order book. "I pre-filled out most of it. Except your . . ." He lowered his voice. "Next of kin. That kind of thing."
"I know where to submit the copies," Patel said.
"Thank you, Nilay. It'll only be a few months. I can promise her that, if you like."
"Don't. It would be better coming from me. She knows promises don't mean much where the Cause is concerned."
"I could find housing for her, you know. You wouldn't have to be separated so much."
"I think she would prefer to keep fixing this place. She's a better carpenter and painter than me anyway. When it comes to homely matters I'm fit only for ditch digging. Besides, she has a sister in Russelville. She will be better here."
Valentine ate his sandwich, wondering if she'd spit in the mustard. They talked about old friends until it was time to leave.
Patel's eyes shone with excitement as they shook hands. Odd that Valentine was now the reluctant one. Maybe it was the faint sobbing from inside the house.
Chapter Three
Camp Liberty, November: The word "camp" implies a certain bucolic simplicity, but Camp Liberty is anything but. It is in fact a small town once named Stuttgart: "The Rice and Duck Capital of the World."
A few old-timers remain in town, "making do" as the locals say with the constant influx and outfl
ow of people picked up from the banks of the Mississippi. Everything from exhausted, half-starved families to rogue river patrol units who beached their boat and ran for it are funneled into Liberty.
The former Camp Liberty, which stood just south of town, headquartered at the old high school just off Route 79, was destroyed during Solon's takeover. Much of Stuttgart's housing was demolished and populace was herded into "temporaries"—prefabricated homes designed for easier concentration of a populace, a Kurian specialty. Solon had great plans for the rice-growing region, and construction materials were hauled in for apartment buildings, a New Universal Church Community Apex, even a theater. When Solon's Trans-Missippi order collapsed, most of the residents fled the wire-bordered housing, happy to abandon the roof over their heads for wider horizons.
Southern Command was not about to let the construction gear, raw materials, and prefabricated housing go to waste, so Stuttgart became the new Camp Liberty and work began on a new hospital, training and orientation center, and combined primary I secondary school for children who escaped the KZ with their parents.
Meanwhile, their elders were put to work in the rice mills, when they weren't attending class to acclimate them to life in tougher, but freer, lands.
When David Valentine visited Liberty, it was the finest facility of its kind in the Texas and Ozark Free Republics—and it was still under construction.
* * * *
After checking their luggage at the station, Valentine paid for a horse cart so he and his new sergeant major could ride through town—or the camp, rather—saving Patel's legs from the walk.
They passed through two checkpoints—there were no wire, towers, or searchlights at least visible from Main Street, as Valentine learned. There were guards watching from a balcony or two, and more mounted officers riding horses chatted and swapped news with the locals.
They held handkerchiefs over their faces as they passed through construction dust. Men in dungarees with sleeves and trouser legs of different colors were digging a foundation.
"POWs?" Patel asked.
"Doesn't look like it. I don't see a single guard," Valentine said.
"Look at all the signage," Patel said, gesturing to a general store. A universal white stick figure pushed a wheeled basket across a plain green background. Iconography for beds, phones, and even babies and animals hung over other doors or were stuck into second-floor windows. The streets, too, were color coded and marked with animal-cracker outlines.
Valentine had visited more Kurian Zones than even an experienced soldier like Patel. He was used to signs both written and in iconography. It hadn't registered this time for some reason.
"It's for illiterates," Valentine said. "Shopping cart for store, dollar sign for bank, syringe for medical center . . ."
Of course in the Free Territory there wouldn't be a smiley face for the NUC building.
They ate in a diner, killing time until Valentine's appointment with the camp supervisor. Which was just as well, as the service was slow to the point that Valentine got their own coffee refills.
Valentine helped the attendant at the register make change for his bill, when Valentine threw him off by paying a $12.62 tab with $13.12.
"I'm all muddled up from multiplication and division, sir," the attendant said, tucking his head in that old Kurian Zone gesture of submission. "Clean forgot my subtraction."
"Take your time," Valentine said. "I just wanted a couple of dollars to buy a paper."
"Always amazes me that they can even find their way to the Territory," Patel said once they were back on the street.
"West to the big river and freedom," Valentine said. "The underground helps some of them along."
Valentine turned a wet paint sign right side up as they walked down the sidewalk, and the gap-toothed painter gave them a Morse-code grin and a thumbs-up.
Liberty's administration building looked like an old town hall or possibly a courthouse. They got directions from a bright and attentive young woman in another strange dual-color outfit.
Supervisor Felshtinsky had a nice corner office with a view of the towering rice mills and a staff of three. One was arguing over the phone with someone about duck poaching and the other two were buried in paperwork.
"My name's Argent," Valentine said. "Southern Command. I've got a two o'clock appointment."
"The super is out on the grounds," an older woman said. "I can page him on the walkie-talkie."
"I'd appreciate that."
"Sorry he's out, but you never know with the trains," she said, smiling. "He's a very busy man."
The other put down his pencil and turned around and took a plastic bag off a bureau.
"Welcome to Camp Liberty. Visitor ID tags and a house key," he explained, handing the bag to Valentine. "You can use the ID tag to eat in any of the cafeterias. Your trailer's in the southeast quadrant, just behind this building. Go in through the green arch. You can see it from the south side of this building. You're lucky: As guests, you have a kitchen with a fridge and everything. We'd appreciate it if you didn't wear pistols, and you can check any other guns in at the armory. It's in this building's basement."
"Why no pistols?" Patel asked.
"Most of the folks here, they just wilt when they see someone with a gun," the older woman with the walkie-talkie said. She spoke into it again and then returned her attention to Patel. "Might as well put on a pair of lifts and a Reaper's hood."
Patel looked at Valentine and glanced heavenward.
Valentine changed the subject. "I'd asked for an index of your current residents who came out of Kentucky and Tennessee. Even the Virginias."
"And we haven't got to it yet," the man on the phone said, covering the mouthpiece. "We've got only one computer allocated to admin and only one man who knows how to work the database. Our old printer runs on curses and tears."
"Ho dog," Valentine said, letting out a deep breath. "Hammer's going to go red as a baboon's butt."
Patel's eyes widened, then he nodded. "Tell me about it."
"Who's Hammer?" the man with the key packet asked.
"My CO," Valentine said. "Ex-Bear." He tapped the scar running the side of his face for emphasis. "He'll probably be here by tomorrow to get things moving."
"You think the file cabinets will fit through that window?" Patel asked Valentine.
"Eventually," Valentine said.
"You'll have your list delivered to the trailer this evening," the man with the phone said, clicking off his call and dialing a new set of numbers.
* * * *
They met Supervisor Felshtinsky out front. He had a tall, muscular assistant and rode in an electric golf cart.
Valentine had never seen a golf cart fitted out with a gun rack. A beautiful over/under shotgun rested in its locks, and Felshtinsky had flying ducks painted on the back of the low-riding vehicle. Its rear was filled with plastic file folders.
"You'll excuse me not standing," Felshtinsky said as he turned in his seat to shake their hands. He looked relaxed and tan in a polo shirt. "I've been on wheels since 'fifty-eight."
He had a strong grip and heavy shoulder muscles. Valentine guessed he lifted weights; you didn't get muscles like that just dragging your body around. Valentine felt humbled and apologetic, as he always did when meeting someone who'd lost a piece of themselves.
"Hop in back there. I'll give you a tour."
As they drove around to the cart's smooth, almost silent engine whine, Felshtinsky told them about his post. He was proud of his operation. He had close to four thousand people under his charge, temporary residents acclimating to the Free Territory, or permanents who'd settled around Liberty.
"We've got as many teachers here as Little Rock or Dallas," Felshtinsky said.
"How long do they stay?" Valentine asked.
"Depends. Sometimes a young couple meets up here, decides to get married and start fresh, and leaves right away. We get some not much smarter than a well-trained horse. They count on their fin
gers and can recite a few Church verses about flushing only once a day. Try learning to write at forty-three."
Felshtinsky explained how all the residents earned "Liberty bucks" doing training. Liberty bucks could buy them furniture and appliances for their homes or beers at the camp's bowling alley, and most of the merchants in town let them use the scrip to buy from a limited selection of toiletries and merchandise provided by Southern Command's warehouses at a discount.
They passed the first wire Valentine had seen. It was ordinary fencing, and a military policeman with a pistol stood in a guardhouse at a gate.
The tightly packed trailers inside the fence looked too numerous for a prison compound, unless the residents of Liberty were unusually lawless.
"What's that?"
"That's for Quislings. They stay there until they're cleared by Southern Command. They're worried about another big sabotage outburst, like just before Solon showed up, so they make sure."
Valentine saw one of the residents pushing a wheelbarrow with a yellow plastic water keg in it. He wore that alternate-color scheme Valentine had seen here and there.
They drove around the hospital and the ethanol plant, the rice mill and the cane fields. Arrowheads of ducks and geese flew overhead.
"Lots of waterfowl in this part of Arkansas," Felshtinsky said. "If you want to get up early and go for a duck, I've got the best blind in the county. Privileges of rank."
"Sergeant Major?" Valentine asked Patel.
"I would like that. If I could have the loan of a birding gun. What about you, sir?"
"I'll spend the morning going over the printouts. Assuming they showed up and we don't have to sic the Hammer on our host's staff."
* * * *
Everything about the next day, save for Patel's ducks—simmered in a homemade korma sauce all afternoon in their tiny cabin oven and served over (what else?) rice—disappointed.
Their first order of business, after dressing the morning ducks, was to check out Liberty's militia training camp. The young men and women were sad specimens, mostly undersized, undertrained, and undereducated. Valentine had never seen so many hollow chests, flat feet, bad eyes, and rickety knees.
