Valentine's Resolve (Vampire Earth #6)

Valentine's Resolve (Vampire Earth #6) Page 11

PB Camp "Sally", July: Valentine had seen dozens of compounds like these in his travels in the Kurian Zone; only the little buildings on the inside varied. Outside it was always the same: two rows of fencing topped with outward-pointing razor wire and a high observation point for the guards. Sometimes the houses were nice little prefabricated mobile homes, in other places drafty shacks where the women and children ran around on bare earth.

This one, oddly enough, was in an old church-school combination, made of stones as gray as a typical Cascade sky. The watchtower sat in the church steeple, and the fence ran in a great rhombus from the bricked-up side of the school to the old church parking lot, encompassing both the school athletic field and a small park opposite the church doors.

He came to the Sally as a Punishment Brigade convict, having worked his way through the abbreviated Pacific Command military justice system like a grain of sand passing through a worm's tract. Like the metaphoric worm, Pacific Command didn't have much in the way of brains or heart, just nerve ganglia that received Valentine as a deserter (he rode back from Mount Omega in an empty supply truck - heavily caged for transporting valuables east and malefactors west - chained hand and foot and under the watchful eye of a sentry in the cab cage) and processed him by a hearing where he admitted leaving his post without orders with the intent never to return. He gave a fine speech damning Pacific Command from the Bears following orders all the way up to Adler's Resource Denial methodology, but none in the hearing seemed particularly impressed. They convicted him and sentenced him to ten years in the Punishment Brigade. When he asked

his lawyer how many men survived that long a term, he got a quiet shake of the head.

They put him to work with some other convicts in a chain gang black-topping roads and felling trees. When they had 120 convicts together - the additions took roughly six weeks - they gave everyone a hose bath and piled them into a pair of seatless school buses for the trip to Pacific Command Military-Criminal Salvage Training - Sally.

"Okay, you cocksuckers, listen and listen hard!" the top sergeant yelled, standing at the head of the stairs with his back to the church doors. Like Valentine, he had a generous helping of Native blood and wore a mattress-ticking shirt and green camping shorts. Only the jaunty police hat had a military crest, the eagle head of Pacific Command.

Valentine and the others waited in groups of twenty, each under a police corporal. Ever since being handcuffed at Mount Omega, he'd given up on hope. He felt like a wrung-out rag, but still had enough intellectual curiosity to wonder what kind of bin he'd be tossed into.

"I'm Sergeant Kugel. You're going to hate me, this place, and every waking minute you spend here. The only way to shorten your stay is to follow orders. You stay here until I decide you're fit to leave, on the bus to the front or in a body bag. Your choice.

"We've got no officers, no la-di-da judge advocates. Just you cocksuckers and your PB training staff and some sentries with scoped thirty-aughts, who'll shoot you down from the wire just for the challenge of a tight grouping".

He took off his pistol belt and hung it on the church door behind him. "I'm going to save everyone a lot of time and mental stress. Any of you cocksuckers feel like taking a shot at me, I'll give you the chance right now. No hard feelings. Anyone swings at me after this big fat kiss of a welcome, I shoot the cocksucker dead and feed his balls to my Doberman. So now's your chance".

He stepped down to the bottom of the church steps and disappeared

from Valentine's view, thanks to the rank in front of him. Valentine could see a bit of hat and that was all.

"Well? Well? I haven't had PT today... I could use a good sweat. All right".

Sergeant Kugel trotted back up the stairs and put his gun belt back on.

"You're all standing here because you're useless. You were useless the day the bitch that whelped you squeezed you out, and you're useless now, according to God and Court, which decided you're not even worth the brass a firing squad would expend. We'd float you downriver like shit, except we don't want to give the Reapers the satisfaction. So I'm going to make sure that though you may have been born useless and lived useless, you'll be able to die in a useful manner and following orders for once.

"One last thing. I don't want to hear any talk about how anyone is innocent. That's between you and God above. I don't give a damn, and I hate you all, whether your souls are white as a virgin's sheets or black as the witch king's pits. I'm here to send you out ready to keep the Reapers busy until a Bear team can take them down. There's no sick call, no off duty, and a bullet's the only punishment. We start in five minutes. I'm not going to ask if you all understand. Like the man said, frankly, my dear cocksuckers, I don't give a damn".

Valentine spent forty-nine endless days in the confines of the training school. After two weeks of almost solid physical activity - his only break was the two days he spent in the kitchens under the equally bloody-minded sergeant who ran the laundry and larder - the men began to break down and miss orders, stupefied with exhaustion.

He kept waiting for the pistols to come out, for an execution to set an example to the rest, but they lost only one man, a rapist whom the others called "Short Eyes". Valentine woke one morning and found his bunk empty. His name wasn't called in the morning roll, and nobody asked questions over breakfast. He'd slept at the opposite end of the

bunk-littered school gymnasium, and Valentine fought hard to keep from being too much awakened by the inevitable noises of 120 men all sleeping in one room.

He made a few friends. Diaz, who had been caught raiding a Pacific Command depot - according to him, in order to feed his mother and sisters; according to Kugel, he'd been caught with copper wiring and electrical tools. Diaz never seemed to tire, and was always the first to offer a hand to help someone to his feet one more time. Then there was Smooth John Hollows, "Joho", who'd been caught peddling drugs but who had such an easygoing, friendly manner and a sharp sense of humor Valentine couldn't help but like him, or at least look forward to the next quiet quip out of his mouth, and then there was Tuber, a meaty, disproportionate Bear washout who'd lost his temper once too often and killed a man in a brawl.

After the eighteenth day, much of it spent on the broken-up old bleachers on the athletic field, which had been disassembled and turned into an obstacle course, the only way they could make it through their exercises was by teamwork. Pairs and trios of men helped one another up the shimmy poles and over the walls. Valentine divided the twenty-man team into groups of four and shoved them into places as they negotiated the course, then stayed with the slowest team. They'd get a rest break after ten circuits; the faster they got through the circuits, the longer the rest break. "His" platoon finished first.

When the mass could hardly walk without staggering, the sergeants made them crawl through everyone's least favorite stretch of the exercise yard: the mud pit and track circuit. The mud clung until it seemed that every man was carrying an extra thirty pounds for the trot around the edges of the wallow and back to the starting point for another crawl. After Valentine lost count of the circuits, he could rise only with the aid of Diaz and Joho.

"Wish they'd get some quimmies in this mud with us", Joho grunted. "I'd do some fast jackrabbit uh-uh-uh when lil' Keggo isn't looking".

Valentine remembered the shape and bob of Malia's mud-covered

breasts, felt his heart break anew. That night drying mud flaked off his hair and into his dinner.

Then, remarkably, the tyrants gave them a day off. They distributed early apples and pamphlets with the history of the Punishment Brigade, its simplified rank structure, and the various sorts of specialty fields.

The Punishment Brigade mostly did high-risk duties: disarming unexploded ordnance, clearing minefields and booby traps, and doing forward signal duty or decoy work (the Kurians had some sort of special missile called a "screamer" they lobbed into the mountains now and then that homed in on radio transmissions), sapping missions, and "river watch".

The last was one of the most dangerous jobs in Pacific Command: guarding the rivers leading up into the mountains. The Kurians employed the fish-frog creatures Valentine had first encountered in Chicago, to guard water-girthed Seattle, and sometimes small teams of the creatures foraged inland. The river-watch teams inspected nets and kept an eye on white water, looking for a glimpse of the pale green bellies and shining goggle eyes of the Big Mouths. At night there was little you could do but keep away from the banks and listen for the slee-kee, slee-kee sound of their on-land breathing.

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 LeHavre 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?

The whole 775 Company was reunited at the end of October, and in their first real operation punched a hole down "Highway 1", clearing mines that allowed a column of Bears, most likely an Action Group, to drive into the Kurian Zone. Valentine wished he'd left a mine or two.

Valentine grew to like their captain, a Canadian named Mofrey, whose grandfather had served with a regiment he called "the Princess Pats". Captain Mofrey still clipped his grandfather's little badge on his steel PeaBee helmet. Every time a Pacific Command regular told him to remove it, he did, only to put it back on as soon as the regulars had passed out of eyesight. All Valentine could learn of his reasons for being in the PeaBees was a conviction for "gross insubordination". Could an affection for an old badge land someone in the PeaBees?

He even saw Gide once or twice, usually on picket duty. She'd made it into the Pacific Command regulars, and they'd trained her as a scout/sniper. She still carried his carbine. The PeaBees were watching the Quisling positions from a railroad culvert in the predawn when they heard the password whispered.

They came just as alert as if they'd heard a rifle bolt being worked, but waited, and then next thing Valentine knew there was Gide, crawling through a plant-choked culvert with a scout in front and a scout behind.

She seemed as astonished as Valentine at the meeting, but for the moment pretended not to know him, and Valentine went along with it.

"Made it right to the edge of downtown", Gide said as they warmed themselves in a basement a hundred meters back from the railroad tracks, Valentine's platoon headquarters. All he could offer them was a hot mush trying to be oatmeal, with a couple of pieces of dried fruit broken into it. "Tough to get there. Water's out, because of the Big Mouths. Bridges are too well guarded".

Valentine was tempted to tell her that some of the bridges were watched by the Resistance, but they didn't cooperate with Pacific Command because of the depredations of the Action Groups.

"Were you just there to look?" Valentine asked.

"We can't discuss operations", one of the other scouts said. "Need to know, you know".

"Except to say girlfriend here is deadly with that gun of hers", the other scout said. "One time a Reaper picked up on our smell or whatever. She killed it with one shot. It just fell over and froze up. Never seen the like".

"Robie!" the senior one warned.

The scout shrugged. "Shit, PeaBees are still Pacific Command. Don't tell me you weren't happy to see the uniform comin' out of that ditch".

"Kinda friendly with the Pee-Pants, aren't you?" the senior said to Gide as she sat next to Valentine, back against the cold concrete brick wall.

Gide took off her helmet. She'd cut her hair almost down to the skin. "I knew him in another life. It's been too long, David. You can get in touch through Ranger Group, if they let you write".

Joho churned rather than stirred the mush on the little camp stove. "I'll do a damn sight more than write if you like. I've got six months' lead in my pencil, wantin' to get out", he muttered.

"Hey, Snakes", Robie piped up. "Whaddya call your gun again? 'Big David'? Any relation? This PeaBee packin' 'Little David' maybe?" The other scout chuckled.

Gide warmed her hands on the hot bowl of mush. "Need to know, guys, need to know. And speaking of secrets..." She turned toward Valentine, unzipped her camouflage Windbreaker, and unbuttoned the top of her uniform shirt. Valentine saw a leather thong around her neck, holding a little modified wallet. She opened it and showed the four remaining Quickwood bullets resting between her breasts.

"I think of them as four little guardian angels", she whispered.

November came in dark and blustery. Up in the mountains they had snow, but on the rim of Seattle's suburbs the brief days and lengthening nights of the season just saw more drizzle, only now it was a little colder and a lot more uncomfortable.

Like a branch snap that starts an avalanche, the next disaster in Valentine's illfated trip began with a sound. In this case it was the muffled roar of tires on wet pavement outside another church.

Valentine, Mofrey, and eleven "trustees" of First Platoon were waiting out the wee hours of the morning in the basement of a church that had been converted to a New Universal Church Community Center, but abandoned thanks to its nearness to the war zone. Valentine rested his head against the orange silhouette of a child. A border of colorful kids holding hands ran around the basement wall.

Mofrey always took Valentine on the trips when they were assigned to 775 Company. To the men, Valentine was just an officer who had a good "nose" for the enemy, pulled them back if he felt there was a Reaper in the neighborhood, and usually could be relied on to find a gap in the Quisling positions.

Eight Seattle residents were readying themselves for a run into Free Territory, two parents and their five kids, and a older aunt, the sister to the patriarch. They were divesting themselves of their bright-colored KZ clothing and flimsy galoshes for heavier outdoor work clothes, boots, hats, and jackets for the run to their safe house. Ordinary civilians in the Kurian Zone got only the thinnest kind of outerwear, perhaps to discourage exactly this kind of attempt.

The parents were obedient, the kids wary and asking questions as soon as they forgot that they'd been told to keep quiet. The Resistance Network member, a pinch-faced woman with nervous eyes, kept flitting back and forth between Mofrey and the family. Once they were properly dressed and fed, they'd cross no-man's-land under the guidance of the short platoon.

"They couldn't tell the kids until they left. Too much chance of letting something slip at what passes for school nowadays", the Network woman explained. "They're confused, naturally".

Valentine watched Joho clown for the kids, but expected he really had eyes for the oldest teen, a well-blossomed young woman with lovely hair who even made the shapeless KZ overalls look good.

Valentine heard the tires outside before the others, found his hand falling to the butt of his wire-stocked assault rifle. The rest of the platoon had to make do with hunting weapons or shotguns, little better than the weapons issued to the militia.

A sound echoed downstairs, an impressive rendition of an alley-cat screech. That was the signal for trouble from Spencer, a PeaBee with a talent for imitative noises, who was keeping watch from the choir balcony.

"I'll go, sir", Valentine said. He signaled two men to their feet and they hurried upstairs. Valentine wondered if his spell in Pacific Command's Punishment Brigade would start and end in a church.

Valentine saw Spencer framed against the balcony window, next to a pane of glass that had been replaced by cardboard and plastic. Valentine went to a different window, saw Pacific Command soldiers - worse, Bears - piling out of a pickup and setting up a clean alley of fire from what had been a bakery.

Valentine hurried down to the basement, waved Mofrey over.

"It's an Action Group", he reported.

"Here? Someone got their wires crossed. LeHavre wouldn't send us into an operation. Better run for it". He lifted off his helmet, ran his fingers through his hair. "Contact One", he said to the Resistance Network woman.

Now the civilians looked alarmed. Picking up on the anxiety, one of the kids began to cry.

She approached. "We've got to get out of here now, and quiet..."

Now wasn't soon enough. The door upstairs crashed, shouts followed.

Mofrey looked around.

"Get them ready", Valentine told the Network woman. He shoved his assault rifle into Joho's hands and hurried back for the stairs.

"Follow me", Mofrey told the First Platoon PeaBees behind him.

"Easy there, Delta Group", Valentine called to two Bears covering the stairs. "There are friendlies down here with Two PeaBee One. Understand?"

He came up and found the Bears lugging in communication equipment. Spencer was under guard, kneeling facing the wall, with his palms on top of his head. Another Bear urinated on an NUC Birth Drive banner. Valentine went to what he guessed to be a platoon headquarters, a radio being set up on the altar with a knot of Bears around it.

A Bear elbowed a lieutenant - Valentine vaguely knew him, Hanley - no, Handley, Valentine read from his Velcro name tag.

"Lieutenant Handley", Valentine said, coming up and saluting. "Reporting the presence of a squad of PeaBees from Second Punishment Battalion here, carrying out salvage operations, plus prisoners".

"We didn't know any of you were in this area", Handley said.

"You're just as much a surprise to us", Valentine said. "With your permission, we'll get out of your hair and get back east". Hopefully Handley was the type who'd gladly accept the offer to have one less worry on a field operation.

Mofrey brought the rest of First Platoon up.

Valentine silently willed him to stand there. He tried to make a little "stop" gesture with his hand. Mofrey saw Spencer, still under guard in the corner, and hurried up.

Mofrey came up the center aisle. "I'm Captain Mofrey. Why's that man under arrest?"

Delta Group wasn't into saluting, and PeaBee troops didn't rate the honor from regulars anyway. "We thought he might be a deserter. Charlie, let him up".

The Bear lifted Spencer to his feet as easily as he would lift a toppled two-year-old.

Valentine heard gunfire a couple of blocks away. Handley checked his watch.

"Spencer, back with the others", Mofrey said. "Lieutenant, I have some civilians in charge. They're my responsibility, and I've no intention of letting you shoot them".

Valentine sagged, glad of the sentiment but gut-punched at how Mofrey went about it. Now the Delta Group lieutenant's decision was framed as a matter of disobeying orders or not, rather than simply seeing a minor headache disappear into the predawn.

"What makes you think you could stop us, PeaBee?" the Bear who'd lifted Spencer to his feet asked.

"They're a technical crew, hydraulics", Valentine lied, desperate to defuse the situation. "We've got a backhoe and a shovel loader we're trying to rebuild..."

"Voorhees, get me Thunderbird", Lieutenant Handley said.

Valentine moved. He chambered a round in the assault rifle, pointed it, not at anyone, but at the field radio. "Don't transmit. I'll disable the radio".

Bears and PeaBees all went for their weapons. Gun muzzles pointed in every direction but up.

"Chill, brothers", Joho called, sighting on the lieutenant. "Nobody's shot yet".

"Valentine, what the hell are you doing? Put that weapon down!" Mofrey said.

"Lieutenant, this could get crazy really fast", Valentine said, loudly enough so the church acoustics bounced his voice off the back pews. "I've no intention of hurting your valuable piece of equipment, as long as you let the PeaBees and the civilians walk out of here. Bitch to Thunderbird, bitch to Colonel LeHavre, bitch to Adler himself

after we're gone. The alternative is killing all of us and maybe one or two of you. Would you rather spend your debriefing bitching or explaining?"

Reports began to squeak in over the communications system.

"I need to answer these", the radioman said.

"Go ahead", Valentine replied.

"Valentine, you're under arrest", Handley said. "The rest of you, get the hell out of here. Take your prisoners, if they mean that much to you. Torgo, make sure they get out of the kill bottle".

"If you're going to place anyone under arrest, Lieutenant, it should be me", Mofrey said. "I'm in charge of this mission".

"Leave well enough alone, sir", Valentine said. Then to Handley: "I'll surrender my weapon as soon as they're out of here, Lieutenant".

Joho grabbed Mofrey, pulled him back. "Listen to the man. We got daylight coming fast".

When they were gone, Valentine put the gun on the desk and submitted to being patted down and restrained with plastic cording. The stress brought with it a hunger that gnawed at him. Being a Bear meant living with one's appetite as a constant companion.

Bears came and went, but the only one Valentine waited for was goat-bearded Torgo, who returned to report that the PeaBees had left the operations area.

He tried not to listen to the comm chatter. Then he saw a familiar pair of boots step up in front of him.

"Valentine, you're like a bad twenty that keeps showing up in my till", Thunderbird said. "Handley said you were here, but I had to see it for myself. You've done yourself in this time".

"Tell me something, Colonel. How did my father get all this started?"

"You've got more important worries".

Valentine found the courage to beg. "Please".

He clucked his tongue. "Oh, it wasn't here, not in Pacific Command. Kubishev told me about it, actually, never gave me any details. Don't know that you'll get the opportunity to look him up".

"Going to shoot me with the rest of the folks you're murdering?" "God bless 'em, every one", Thunderbird said. "We'll pick this up

in a few hours, Valentine. You'll be traveling, a lot farther than a trip

to the nearest brick wall".

They threw him in a truck with a hood over his head, chained hand and foot and nudged by what felt like a shotgun barrel every time he rolled too far away from the side of the bay. But he could still hear. There were babies crying all around.

They traveled at a good speed for what he guessed was a little over two hours. To occupy his mind, he counted minutes and scored them off into hours. Routine soaked up fear like a sponge.

Then they parked and quiet women's voices talked as the babies were passed out of the truck, soothing and cooing over the "poor little things". He was the last to leave.

They kept him blindfolded as someone, a woman by the smell of her, fed him, stripped him out of his uniform, and gave him a quick sponge bath. They let him use the toilet. Then they sat him in a room with a ticking fan, hands and legs cuffed to brackets in an electric-chair-like frame. Valentine kept waiting for them to wire his genitals or fillings, but the silent workers left him alone.

Finally he heard someone enter. "Major Valentine?" a precisely clipped voice asked.

"Yes".

"Do you know my voice?"

"Can't say that I do".

"I'm Adler".

"Now I see why I'm tied down", Valentine said.

"Why's that?"

"So I don't go for your throat".

Adler chuckled. "Three experienced Bears with me".

"Okay, I can't kill you. Are you going to kill me?" Valentine wanted it out in the open, to know.

"Me? No. Another? Quite likely. Unless".

"Unless?"

"You see reason".

"I can't see much in this mask", Valentine said, trying to work it off with his jaw muscles and his cheeks.

"I don't want you to identify this place to the Kurians. We're turning you over to them".

Valentine felt his pulse quicken. "What does 'seeing reason' involve?"

"Forgetting all this ever happened. Rejoining Delta Group. I'll put you in a position where you can fight the good fight. As you see it. You'll hardly even know the Action Groups exist. You can fight the old-fashioned way, the useless way, wading into the enemy with banner unfurled. I have need of skilled officers who can keep the Kurian forces busy. You might be of use with the Big Mouths. They've been destructive as they've grown in familiarity with the waterways around Seattle".

"Let me see your face".

Valentine sensed a mass shift behind him, heard curtains being drawn. The mask came off, and there was the real heart and soul and mind behind Pacific Command.

Adler wore the patient face of a teacher, calm as a death mask, just old enough to be fatherly, just young enough for a spark. He had sad mortician's eyes, but there was a power behind them. Valentine felt the loom of the Bears behind, though what he could accomplish shackled hand and foot...

Maybe worst of all, Valentine liked him on sight.

"What did Seattle do to you? You're laying waste to everything he owns".

"I served him. On a whim ... on a moment of appetite he destroyed my children".

"So now you're killing other people's children?"

"It's better than the alternative. A bullet ends the matter. Having your soul pulled apart, shred by shred,

memory by memory, every awful act laughed at, every joy mocked... no one deserves that".

"I've always thought one's soul belonged to God".

"Maybe. Nevertheless, they partake of the distilled experiences of a life. Sip by sip. Stand with me. Or I fear you'll find out".

"How do you know so much about it?"

"He made me watch. He relished every detail. All because of a careless thought against him".

"I am sorry", Valentine said.

"Then you'll rejoin our war?"

"Your war".

For the first time he looked exasperated. "Word games. Fine. My war".

"I pound on the door while your murderers slip through the window".

"Not how I would put it. May I promise you one more thing? When Seattle is destroyed, my war ends. I will retire, disappear, live quietly somewhere. Pacific Command may fight on or hang itself".

Valentine bowed his head. "You've been polite with me, so I won't tell you where you can stick your offer".

"Now it is my turn to feel sorry for you. As to my 'offer,' I doubt it would fit. My staff calls me all sorts of colorful names having to do with anal retentiveness".

They stared at each other.

Valentine broke first: "So we're both too phlegmatic to get angry. Just out of curiosity, what's with the heroism stuff? I missed the chance at a lecture".

"The Action Groups can't get everywhere. We regularly send propaganda deep into Seattle, along with certain painless, lethal pills, encouraging the populace to do the right thing. I understand you even flew some to a very difficult-to-reach area. With luck, many of them will be used. Their names will be added to the hero lists and read out in our broadcasts. I still have a friend or two west of here. But my time

is nearly up. I should have liked to bring you to another new-moon party at the Outlook. I believe you attended one before".

"I kept to my room".

"I'm sorry we didn't meet there. Better circumstances might have made our association a happier one.

"Farewell, David Valentine. Your theory about the inviolability of one's soul is about to be tested".