Valentine's Resolve (Vampire Earth #6)

Valentine's Resolve (Vampire Earth #6) Page 8

Fort Grizzly, overlooking the outer suburbs of Seattle, Washington: The men call it either "Fort Gristle" or "Fort Drizzly" depending on whether the barrack-room conversation revolves around the food or the weather. Valentine was seeing the Seattle basin in its finest month.

Grizzly is settled on the east-facing slope of a ridge, at an old mine and quarry complex with a network of tunnels dug as though designed to be confusing - which it was. The "rabbit warren" underground works of Fort Grizzly serves as armory, bomb shelter, garage, and warehouse, and, most importantly, staging area for operations against Seattle.

Mining equipment chatters away all day, slowly expanding the works, serving as exercise for men with nothing better to do, adding background noise to all conversations except those in the deeper caves. At night blessed silence reigns, broken by the sounds of training, for the Bears of Fort Grizzly operate under the cover of darkness up and down the western slopes of the Cascades, daring the Reapers to face them when their powers are at their height.

Three-foot-high letters at the entrance tunnels exhort and warn: WE DO OR DIE FOR THE FUTURE; ANYONE CAN BE A HERO; WE'LL HAVE THEIR THANKS AFTER THE VICTORY; PEACE IS FOR GRAVEYARDS.

The warren is surprisingly light and airy. Masonry walls exist in many places, cheerfully painted in soft greens and yellows. It's comfortably furnished with items taken from old houses; indeed, in some places it seems more like a furniture showroom than a bunker. There is running water in some of the caverns and electricity in all but the blind alleys and undercuts designed to fool intruders. To reach any of the high-priority caves, one has

to travel through darkness, then approach checkpoints blinded by spotlights. Almost no amount of shelling would do much but close up a few of the entrances, and an assault on the complex would be akin to bearding a horde of grizzlies in their dens.

"... to never doubt, never surrender, and never relent until our future is our own again", Valentine repeated with Gide, right hand held in the direction of the Stars and Stripes and a totem pole of the faces from assorted monetary denominations that depicted American presidents, left hand next to Gide's atop a black Reaper skull on a wooden pedestal. "I will obey the orders of my lawful superiors until victory, death, or honorable release".

The wording had a tang of blood and iron to Valentine. The oath he'd taken on joining Southern Command, administered very informally by an old Wolf sergeant holding a dog-eared Bible after his first week on the march south from Minnesota, used one similar phrase - "obey the lawful orders of my superiors" - and to Valentine, who turned the words over in his mind afterward, there could be worlds of interpretation separating the two.

He took the oath at Fort Grizzly with Gide, a final sop to their friendship, at the base of the eastern slope of "Grizzly Ridge" with the sun shining above and the pines of the western mountains blue in the sunshine.

"Smallest swearing-in I've ever attended", Thunderbird said, waving a private forward with a black bowling-ball bag for the Reaper skull. "But you're no ordinary recruit". A corporal on Thunderbird's staff named Wilson lit a cigarette and puffed eagerly.

Valentine felt Gide trembling next to him. Didn't Thunderbird recognize that this was an important moment in her life?

"You've done it, Gide", Valentine said. "Congratulations".

"Let's get you both into uniform, now that everything's legal", Thunderbird said. "Recruit Gide, they're expecting you at the fueling depot. You'll get your muster gear there. Get going".

"Salute", Valentine whispered.

"Thank you, sir", she said, saluting. He returned it.

"That entitles you to a drink on me", Valentine said. "Southern Command tradition. I'll call for you as soon as I can".

Tok tok. "This is Pacific Command, Valentine", Thunderbird said. But he smiled as he said it. "But we'll make sure you two keep your date.

"Valentine, let's get you out of that biker getup. Wilson, get Valentine over to the medical center for his capabilities physical, and see if the professor can spare an hour for a quick background lecture".

Valentine shook hands with Gide. She looked brisk and ready for anything, had been quick-witted enough to add the "sir", and she was capable enough. She'd be fine. Why this strange reluctance to let her go?

"My office is K-110, Valentine. The door is always open", Thunderbird said.

Wilson finished his cigarette with a long drag, stubbed the bright red remains out in his palm, and pocketed it. "No smoking in the warren".

"Doesn't that hurt?" Valentine said as he followed Wilson away.

"If it didn't, it wouldn't be much of a trick", Wilson said. "It'll be healed by tomorrow. Privileges of Bearhood".

The physical was more like an athletic contest against a stopwatch than a doctor's evaluation. First they tested day and night visual acuity, then color vision (he had trouble with reds and greens, as usual). Then they watched him climb a nearly vertical slope toward a red demolition flag. He ran laps and they took blood and had him breathe into a lung volume tube. He was measured for standing vertical jump (eleven feet, well short of his record of sixteen his first year as a Cat). Then they ran him through a maze of swinging tennis balls, waving back and forth at the end of various lengths of string. He had to roll, jump, and dodge at intervals measured in split seconds.

"Eighty-five percent", the doctor said as her assistant turned off the machine that agitated the wooden rigging. "You Cats are something".

"Are there any others here?" Valentine asked, watching her through the mass of waving lines and greenish balls.

"No. The last one disappeared in the KZ a couple years ago. There are some Wolves with the forward observers".

Then Wilson took him to the professor, Delta Group's archivist and resident historian, a sagging mass of a man with a neatly trimmed gray beard, who sat in an office with three humming dehumidifiers and piles of paper atop piles of file cabinets. After a short lament that he was forever being called away from the History of the Establishment of the Kurian Order, he briefed Valentine on Pacific Command's resurgence.

In the last dozen years or so they'd gone from being a shabby group of guerrillas hiding in the mountains to the Terrors of the Cascades, thanks to a single man. "Mr. Adler", now "the Old Man", walked out of the Kurian Zone, met a patrol under one of the few aggressive commanders in the "Seahawks" as they styled themselves, said something about his family being killed, and offered to guide the troops to an unattended depot where they could get better weapons and explosives, provided they'd use them on a Quisling named Doorward, who'd betrayed him. Doorward turned out to be a soldier in the Seattle Order and a recent Ringwinner. They ambushed him as he pulled into the garage of his mansion, then got away clean.

"He's one of those curious men who can sense when a Reaper's in the neighborhood", the professor explained. Valentine felt a prickle of recognition. Affinity, perhaps.

"Mr. Adler" never put on a uniform, but just directed to target after target. Success swelled their ranks, a Lifeweaver arrived to assist, and soon they were picking off isolated Kurian Towers.

"Same Lifeweaver still with th... us?" Valentine asked.

"Oh yes", the professor said. "He's an odd one, but he can make Bears, sure enough".

Then the "clearing" operations started - "Action Groups" of Bears who hit the Kurian Zone and caused so much damage their targets were unproductive for months or years to come.

"Hard on the poor SOBs under the Kurians. But that's the strength of the constrictor".

The "constrictor", as the professor explained it, was a steadily tightening ring around the Seattle area, denying resources to what had been one of the largest and best-organized Kurian Zones in North America. Now the Seattle KZ was a shadow of its former self, and the awful Chief Kurian at his refuge in the tower that dwarfed even the Space Needle was increasingly isolated. Thanks to the quick-moving and hard-hitting Action Groups, he'd been bereft of several of his key subordinate lords.

"They give up and relocate, if they get a chance. Mr. Adler's got a good sense for when one's getting set to bug out, that's for sure. He nudges them right along".

Valentine got his own room with a private toilet and shower, and eventually learned his way to the cafeteria, gymnasium, laundry, and underground range.

The Bears were a big, bluff collection. Canadians and Native Americans added their own accents and mannerisms. Several had tattoos that read doer on their upper arms, sometimes pierced by a dripping dagger. They felt more a military machine than the atavistic Bears of Southern Command, but maybe it was because there were so many of them grouped together. They were proud of their position.

"Never thought I'd make it", one told him as they sat and sweated in the gym's wood-walled sauna. "First time out, I thought my heart would burst. But I'm used to it now".

"What have you been up against?" Valentine asked.

"Mostly Seattle Guard types. They run away when an Action Column roars into town. They've seeded the waters with some Grogs - you got to watch it around rivers and so on".

"Big mouths?" Valentine asked. He'd run into them in Chicago.

"We call them Sleekees. That's the noise they make when they're hopping around on land. Sleekee, slee-kee", he wheezed in imitation.

"What about the Reapers?"

"Not so much. Sure, they'll defend a tower or a hole, if their master's inside. I've heard it's bad going up against a bunker full of those dropedcocks, but Adler's all about Jew-Ginsu. Hit them where they ain't".

Valentine's gyro arrived and after some technicians partially took it apart to learn the design, he started doing practice flights over the backcountry. An overzealous Resistance machine gunner tried to take him down - Valentine dived behind the tree line to avoid the tracers and came home with brush in his landing gear, but refueling gave him a chance to catch up with Gide.

The militia just got issued green caps with yellow safety tape at the back, and the rest of her uniform consisted of a big green field jacket, construction trousers, and some sad-looking sneakers made out of tire tread.

"Someone swiped my boots", she said. "The women have a hell of a time with the footwear. The rifle's a joke. Worn-down barrel".

"Do your duty".

"I do", she said. "Your friends from the Holes have an interesting definition of duty, byways".

"Meaning?"

She shoved her hands in her pockets. "Taking it down pipes or up the chute for the team. It'd be one thing if we were in a bar in town, but I'm just trying to do my job".

Valentine didn't like the sound of that. He'd been in too many Kurian Zones where the soldiers exerted certain "prerogatives".

"Let's go into town. I'll buy you a beer". "Town" was a little row of saloons, a cafe, and two theaters, one that showed movies on an old presentation projector, and the other with little rooms playing pornography.

"Duty tonight".

"Breakfast at the Coffee Grinder, then".

"Sure. I should tell you, though, I'm asking for a transfer to one of the ranch towns. Being a pump jockey isn't my thing. And I don't like those guys from the Holes. They remind me of the Circus flyboys".

Tuesday nights there were political and social lectures about the miserable lives of those in the Kurian Zone. Valentine hadn't seen anything of the Seattle area, but it must be a hellhole in comparison with some of the most wretched corners of the Caribbean, so black did they paint the picture.

"Their only relief is death", Thunderbird boomed, backing up the mousy little refugee who gave that week's lecture. Foot-high letters painted on the wall under the ceiling read, Are you a SHIRKER or a DOER? "We'll pick this up in the conference room in fifteen for those who want to know more. Card tournament tonight, grand prize is a four-day weekend at the next quarter-moon party at the Outlook".

"What's the Outlook?" Valentine asked Thunderbird as the Bears rearranged their folding chairs to make room for the poker tables.

"That's a big resort in the mountains. Beautiful area. Sort of a retreat and conference center for the Free Territory. Sometimes we even get visits from the Old Feds at Mount Omega".

"I thought that was a myth", Valentine said, though he knew differently. The last refuge of the old United States government was part El Dorado, part Camelot, in Freehold urban legendry.

"No, it's real enough. Going there's a bit of a letdown, though. It's not as impressive as it sounds".

The poker tournament got going, a fairly basic game of five-card draw with jokers wild. Each player started out with small stakes, a hundred dollars in chips, and when he accumulated five hundred dollars he could move to the five-hundred-dollar table.

The "grand prize" table required a three-thousand-dollar buy-in.

The laurels would go to whoever managed to reach the ten-thousand-dollar mark.

Valentine was lucky - first in betting and then in card strength - for his first two hands and shifted to the five-hundred-dollar table. Other men who'd abandoned the tables made sandwiches and passed out low-grade beer, apple ciders, and "Norridge Cross", a wine from some pocket in the Cascades. Valentine stuck to coffee.

The men at the five-hundred-dollar table were serious players, and Valentine languished there until after midnight, until he got a feel for their respiratory tells. Using the hearing he'd acquired as a Wolf gave him an unfair advantage, he supposed, but a card table knew no law but Hoyle.

He was the last of six seats to join the championship three-thousand-dollar table.

His luck returned the first two hands, thanks to three kings and then a dealt flush. After that promising start, he began to fight a long, slow, losing battle against a Bear named Rafferty, who called him on a bluff. Rafferty's black ringlet hair, long as a pirate's, brushed the felt-covered championship table as he gathered the lost chips.

Thunderbird checked in occasionally to offer a joke and console the losers, and then returned to the bull session in the corner of the conference room.

With a full house Valentine assayed forth, and Rafferty folded. Valentine played the next hand cautiously, and eked out a win with three of a kind, causing two others to drop out. Another Bear demolished all of them the next hand, and then retired to bed, yawning, as a winner in his own mind but unwilling to hang in for the grand prize.

The Bears ate, drank, played, ate, and drank some more. Bear metabolisms could tear through six thousand calories or so a day and still feel underfed.

Card playing provides its own kind of late-night tension, and Valentine gave in to it as the advantage shifted between him and Rafferty, both built up enough so that they could not hurt each other. The other two at the table just played along out of interest.

Valentine drew into a straight, judged Rafferty doubtful, gulped down the last of his second glass of wine, and went all in. Rafferty laid down four of a kind, plus a joker.

"Good night, David", Rafferty said, gathering the chips and draining a tankard of beer. "I'll give your regards to the Outlook". He whipped a thong off his wrist and gathered up his hair, then did the same with his chips.

"I don't know anyone there who can accept them".

Rafferty cocked his head. "Never been?"

"No".

"Oh hell, well, take the prize", he laughed. "You hear that, Thun-derbucket? I'm offering up my poor winnings to our newcomer".

"Don't you always get thrown out after half an hour anyway, Riffraff?" Thunderbird called back. "But duly noted".

"Give me a ride in your whirlybird sometime, eh?" Rafferty said.

"Gladly", Valentine replied. "Interested in flight?"

"No. I want to take a crap over downtown Seattle from a whizzing great height".

"Spoken like a patriot", one of the losing Bears commented.

Valentine, with a routine established, felt the days fly by while tension mounted at the warren. Late one afternoon he watched an Action Group set out at the next full moon. Various hidden, revetment-shielded doors opened and belched men and machinery from the depths of the caverns. Armored cars led a long line of pickup trucks towing oversized horse trailers behind, followed by a few military trucks hauling light artillery.

Valentine watched, leaning on the empty mount of a machine-gun nest high on the ridgeline. He'd volunteered to go, but Thunderbird had declined. "It'll be a tough one. We want to start you out on something easier. Besides, I'm setting up something for you and your whirlybird".

So he had to watch.

"Make the poor dumb bastards die for their country!" a legless Bear who manned a communications relay shouted as they passed. His voice boomed over the sound of the engines.

A long arm and hand reached out from the cave mouth and patted him on the back. Long, scraggly hair dripped from it like Spanish moss.

A captive? The Lifeweaver?

Valentine hopped down the shaft leading up to the machine-gun nest, ignoring the iron rungs, and hurried down to the "Gathering Deck", as the extensive level at the valley floor was called. He took a wrong turn, and had to retrace his steps, and arrived at the right cave mouth only as the legless Bear wheeled himself back into the communication center at the cave mouth.

"Excuse me". Valentine fumbled the man's name. He turned and read the man's name tag. "Pop-Tart?"

"Yeeeees?" he said, holding a headset to his ear.

"I was above and saw someone pat you on the shoulder. Funny-looking arm".

"That's the old hairy-ass himself. Came up to see the guys off".

"I've just never met him".

"How'd you rate that uniform?"

"Import from Southern Command".

He put down the headset and looked at the gauges on the master radio relay. "Hairy-ass is the only one we got left. Our others disappeared after the big raid up Interstate Pass in 'sixty-one, where I earned these wheels. He lurks under a blanket of Bears ever since".

One Lifeweaver left. And from the sound of it, even he's not all there.

"Still like to meet him".

"Talk it over with T-bird when he gets back", Pop-Tart advised.

"Hey, Pops", an assistant called from the radio.

" 'Scuse me", Pop-Tart said.

Valentine went down to the reading room to await the Action Group's return.

They came back, almost unscarred. They'd lost one Bear to a booby trap, and another to "overexertion" (Valentine had once heard a story in Arkansas about a Bear dropping dead as he and his teammates worked themselves into a battle frenzy over a Bearfire) and still more suffered wounds and contusions Bear metabolisms would soon overcome. Valentine watched them eat before they even cleaned up.

They were a strangely taciturn bunch. Maybe it was the gloomy climate. A group of Southern Command Bears back from action chattered like magpies, though the conversation usually limited itself to light subjects, like unusual vehicles they'd seen or how much quality toilet paper they'd managed to loot.

Thunderbird, looking drawn, walked among them, passing out candy bars and bags of greasy peanuts.

"New-moon party this weekend", Thunderbird said. He had a fresh uniform on, but Valentine saw dried blood on his boots. "Have they issued you a dress uniform yet?"

"No".

"I'll make a call".

"What's a PB?" Valentine asked. He'd heard the acronym tossed around as the soldiers talked.

"Punishment Battalion or Brigade. We've got a Brigade, unfortunately. Two combat battalions and a short support".

"What, hard labor, that sort of thing?"

"More like Reaper fodder. They're our first line, out in pickets about three klicks west. Their commander's not a bad sort... they've really shaped up under him. They're criminals. There's some shady types in these mountains, preying on both sides. If they don't like the feel of the noose, they can opt to PB their term. Of course a lot try to desert as soon as they get their bearings. They get shot, of course".

"How did the fighting go?"

"Well. Adler was right, as usual. We caught them pulling back. Got a fair bit of booty - they dropped everything and ran when we showed up".

"I've never seen Bears operate in those numbers before. They're usually used at platoon strength at most where I come from. Accidents".

"They divide up pretty quick when we go into action, cuts down on the chances of two teams attacking each other. We're careful about getting them revved up and pushed into the redline. You'll see. Have a good hurrah up at the Outlook".

"I'd like to bring Gide. She could use a little cheering up".

"You're loyal. I like that. I'll authorize her transport, but she'll have to clear it with her militia duty".

Gide cleared it easily enough. Perhaps Thunderbird made an extra call or two. In any case, they hopped on a horse-wagon train bringing captured scrap for salvage or to be melted down and recast. It was bottom-of-the-barrel stuff, mostly cookware and gardening supplies for civilian use. Hardly worth hauling away.

"How's the transfer coming?" Valentine asked. The dress uniform hadn't shown up after all, so he cleaned and pressed his daily as best as he could.

Gide wore a summer-weight sweater and skirt. "Denied. They want me to spend at least a year", Gide said. "I think it might move along if I fucked old D. B., the militia chaplain. He can arrange about anything".

"Some chaplain", Valentine said.

"Back in Arizona I would have dropped my drawers in a heartbeat. But I don't want it to work that way here".

"Think you made a mistake?"

She rubbed the bottom of her nose. "Shit no. Free air, you know ?"

"That's a good way to put it".

"I don't feel like I'm being watched all the time, except maybe through the peepholes in the showers. There's a rumor going around that I've got something exotic tattooed around the ol' chute, and everyone's trying to verify. Just fucked luck. I'll do my year. There's

another girl there who isn't too bad - it's better if you've got someone to talk to".

Valentine nodded. She understood, and patted his hand. He squeezed in return.

The Outlook was beautiful under its sickle moon.

It hung out next to, and partly over, a waterfall. Two long blocks of rooms, two stories tall and covered with balconies, looking out over the spill. At the center a great A-framed prow of glass and rough-hewn timber arched like an eagle's head.

The carpeted inside was hunting lodge overlain on luxury hotel. Clean as an operating room, it even smelled like evergreens within. A small army of staff in jet black with immaculate white aprons scuttled around at the edges of the rooms and corridors.

A clerk in a neat, gold-buttoned black shirt and pants admitted them, verifying their presence on an old computer. Valentine tried not to stare. He couldn't imagine Southern Command wasting a functioning computer on a hotel. But then he hadn't spent much time in the higher-class social circles.

The clerk issued them alligator-clip name tags, with first names and designations. Gide's had her name in large letters and volunteer militia in smaller type below. Valentine's read david/delta group.

He tried to decline having a porter carry their small bags, but when the clerk said, "It's his job, sir... he needs it", he relented.

Luckily the scrip he'd won on poker night was accepted at the Outlook. He overtipped the porter as the bags hit the floor of their room.

"King-sized", Gide commented with a smile.

Old beaver traps decorated the walls, and the lights were made to simulate ironmongery holding candlesticks. The candlesticks were topped with small but ordinary-looking bulbs. A painting of a farmhouse surrounded by wildflowers adorned the wall above the dresser; a nude of a strategically disrobed seated woman drinking hot coffee,

looking out her window at ice and snow, hung next to the bed by the window. Another sleeping nude hung above the bed.

If it was a brothel, it was the plushest one he'd ever been in.

Valentine checked the view. The waterfall was obscured by a deck from their room, but he had a good view of the river running west. He tried to guess how high it went in the opening minicanyon below the falls in the spring flood, but even with Cat eyes it was hard to judge.

"Cocktails, dinner, dance party", Gide said, reading a schedule on the desk. "Looks like we missed cocktails and part of dinner. Tomorrow: breakfast, exercise, lecture on the glory of heroism, games, cocktails, dinner, party. Sunday: services, brunch, departure".

Valentine despaired at a grease stain on his uniform. He must have brushed against a greasy pot in the wagon. "Let's get cleaned up and eat.

There were two galleries showing movies on the biggest televisions Valentine had ever seen, colors impossibly bold and bright in the dimly lit rooms. A small casino added that special thick, nervous air unique to gambling dens, and some kind of art exhibition was going on in one of the lobbies, well-crafted patriotic pieces that Valentine liked better than the four-color slogan posters of Southern Command.

Attractively dressed women lounged in the bars and in front of a gallery autopiano, ready to talk or dance or be taken back to a room. Valentine watched one military-haircut man in civilian clothes head for the rooms, his hand resting lightly on his companion's buttock. Valentine examined her eyes as they passed. She'd popped or smoked something to get up for the evening.

Valentine suppressed a shudder. He kept expecting the maitre d' from the Blue Dome to appear at his elbow.

Gide, now dressed in a borrowed little black dress and heels, eyeliner running up the backs of her legs to simulate stocking seams, tracked down a late-night buffet and they ate.

"I poked my head in the gift shop while you were looking at the pictures", she said. "Nice booze. Perfumes even".

"Bonded whiskey, but they can't get you a decent set of boots".

"Speaking of which, there's a shoe store on the gallery. If you'll loan me thirty bucks, I can sign for the rest. I have to hurry - they close in ten minutes".

Valentine gave her the cash.

He went out on the balcony and enjoyed the summer night, watched the roar of the fountain. He fell into a conversation with another falls gazer, an artist in an ill-fitting sport coat and trousers.

"My piece is called Hope and Glory" he said. "I won a new-moon party here with it".

Valentine quietly raked his memory. "The two rising... what are they, angels?"

He seemed pleased that Valentine had remembered. He started talking about the difficulty of getting good paints, when he looked up. "That's Adler. He gave a quick talk at the reception for the artists".

Valentine looked up at the peak of the A-frame. There was a small balcony, hanging over their own, and muted light glowed within. A man stood looking over the edge, his face in shadow thanks to the backlighting. He turned and leaned and Valentine got a better view.

Valentine liked the look of him. Tanned - maybe the altitude of the Outlook helped - and lean but not gaunt, with gray white hair that set off the tan, a father figure in the twilight of middle age stood looking at the western horizon beyond the foothills of the Cascades. He held a lit cigar in his hand.

Late-night diners trickled out of the dining room and joined in the waterfall watching. Gide returned, wearing low black-heeled shoes and real stockings.

Adler set down his cigar on the railing. It rolled and he stopped it with a digit.

"Liquor holding out?" he called down to those below. He had a clear, fast speaking voice, like a radio news announcer.

A few men raised their glasses. A couple applauded.

"I'm here for the night air, not a speech. Enjoy". He lifted his finger and the cigar rolled off the balcony rail. A muttonchopped officer in a black dress uniform grabbed it as it fell.

By the time Muttonchops was showing his trophy to his escort, a blonde who had the body of a seventeen-year-old and the eyes of thirty-five, Adler had vanished indoors.

"He's shy", the artist said. "I like that".

Valentine looked out into the clear night, wondering what the shy military genius had been looking for to the west. Sulfur-colored light painted the distant clouds above Seattle.

"I thought you were going to buy boots", Valentine said as they returned to their room. The bed had been turned down, and the room carried a floral, elegant fragrance.

"I did", she said, pointing to a box. "Socks too, lots of them. Great quality. I picked up a few pairs for Julia. She loaned me this dress I'm not really fitting".

"Who's Julia?" Valentine asked.

"My roomie. She takes a little getting used to - she was born a slave to some Grogs in Oregon. They caught her poking around in a larder and chopped off her nose with a set of tin snips. Though she's always joking about it... really a lolly person once you get to know her. When she goes out, she wears this silk veil and calls herself' the Phantom.' The guy gave me a great deal on the shoes, because they were used. You can hardly tell".

Valentine looked at the label in the bottom, something in Italian, as he took off his tunic. It added to the air of fantasy in the lodge.

"Mmmmm, they spritzed the sheets with lavender water", Gide said.

"It's supposed to relax you", Valentine said.

"They had tabs of Horny in the gift shop, can you fuckin' believe it? KZ aphrodisiacs? Here?" She let her two-tone hair fall, though the roots were now coming in an even walnut brown, and flopped back on the bed, her hair spread out like a fan.

Valentine adored her for a moment. Her hard-bitten, tattooed

beauty, her profanity, and the military acronym somehow complemented one another. But a moment was all he allowed himself. Much more and his self-control would go.

"I think I might take a walk before I shower", Valentine said.

"Going to buy some Horny?"

"You wish", Valentine said, and winked.

Her upper lip twitched rightward. "I'm not so sure anymore".

The cool, clear air took the lavender out of his nose and replaced it with the mountain smell of pine and cedar. Valentine walked out in front of the resort, where a winding road ended in a dark oil slick of the parking lot. In the distance the green light of the military checkpoint glowed. At one end of the lot by a couple of bright outdoor lights - insects flashed like shooting stars as they whizzed by - a drunken game of pickup basketball proceeded noisily. Valentine watched the players try to dribble with one hand and hold a beer with the other, then turned toward the river.

He caught a little music from the small dance club at one end of the Outlook, but even that was soon drowned out by the quick-flowing river, rushing out of the mountains in a white froth. Some kind of cable contraption hung over the waterfall downstream, a gondola basket providing both a crossing for the river and a unique way to view the spectacular falls. Valentine saw motion across the river, just a sentry out to have a look at him.

He returned to the patio.

Most of the parties had broken up. A few people still smoked, or chatted over hot drinks in the chilly air; Valentine had to remind himself it was June, as in the mountains it felt more like an Arkansas March.

Valentine couldn't shake the feeling that something bad loomed out there, watching the hotel. He turned over in his mind ways he might try to assault the place. There were sentries at the door, and Valentine suspected some kind of security reserve lurked in the basement, as he'd seen uniformed soldiers disappear into the doors marked service use only leading down.

Or was he just talking himself into a breakdown? Not enough stress in this getaway, so you have to bring some along?

Or are you scared of what's in that king-sized bed?

He undressed and got into bed quietly, the vast bed giving him a margin of error.

She rolled, faced him. "This is different", Gide murmured. "I'm glad you brought me".

"Nice to have a familiar face around", Valentine said.

She took a deep breath, closed her eyes. "Good to be just in bed with a man. Lavender and guy. Someone needs to bottle that".

"What did you mean when you said that you weren't so sure anymore?" Valentine asked, curiosity getting the better of him. Or maybe it was a game he was playing with himself, with her as the prize. Or the other way round.

She thought for a moment. "I used to just be able to... turn everything off and enjoy fucking. But I'm starting to know you better. There's a lot of stuff in there I think I like. That weird little smile you wear".

She touched the corner of his mouth.

What the hell.

He reached up, took her wrist, kissed her gently on the back of her hand, then turned it over and kissed the palm. He released it and she reached up to play with his hair.

"Shit, now I've done it", she said. She lunged across the bed as quickly as one of the snakes tattooed on her arms, kissed him.

The rest came in a frenzy of pent-up desire, effervescent as champagne and just as intoxicating.

Valentine woke with a start in the predawn. Reapers! He found he was sitting up listening in anxious silence. No ... the

strange cold place on his consciousness wasn't there, wasn't real; it was echoes of memory and nightmare.

"You okay?" Gide murmured.

"Cramp", Valentine lied.

"You're sweating".

"Yeah. I'll be right back".

He washed his face in the bathroom, still listening. Then he went out to the balcony, looked around at the darker-than-ever world under a pinkening sky. He heard someone sweeping on the balcony below, smelled fresh bread, the feminine musk of Gide on him.

He returned to bed and slept hard.

They spent the rest of the weekend mostly in the bedroom, trying something Valentine had never experienced before: room service.

Saturday passed in brilliant sun and wandering clouds, and they restored themselves from bouts of lovemaking with coffees and teas on the balcony, sitting on an old bench with one of the bed pillows cushioning their backs. Gide, like her father in his better days, was also a big reader and they poked through worn, yellow-paged books collected from the hotel's small library together. They dressed for dinner and later discovered a second night together more delectable than the first.

They hitched back west on Sunday, riding in the bed of a king-cab pickup carrying a trio of captains who reminded Valentine of one of the poker hands that brought him up.

Saying good-bye to Gide was hard. But like all such days pried from the routines of war, the brevity made the memories that much sweeter.

Four days later he saw his first action. "Courier duty", they called it. Valentine buzzed out over Seattle's waters in the dead night, low

and slow as he dared. Any watching Reaper might mistake him at a distance for a fast-moving patrol boat.

They'd modified the exhaust of the PAAT to lower the noise and make its voice resemble the oversized motorcycle it was. Valentine sensed a slight loss of horsepower but it just meant he couldn't do much in the way of fancy climbing turns.

The entrance to Seattle's harbor now had two tall lights marking it, constructed from old radio masts. The north rose up from an island and the other was on the coast. Allegedly some poor bastards made the long climb to the top of each four times a day, keeping watch on the water approaches to the city.

He wondered if they'd mark him as a potential smuggler.

He kept well clear of the southern tower but used it as a waypoint. He picked up a little altitude over the southwestern peninsula, saw the three lights, one blue and two red, laid out in an equilateral triangle.

Two of the lights went out as he passed overhead, leaving only the blue. He banked the autogyro and made his approach.

Heart pounding, he set the craft down on the little field by the signal. He was on a grassy flat next to some manner of drainage canal. Foundations of cleared houses lay under a carpet of weeds, and young pines shielded him from a road. A man left two companions, one with a rifle, the other with a big sporting bow, and ran up to the craft.

Valentine popped the canopy.

"Stop", the man called, crouching.

"Light", Valentine responded.

The stranger hurried up, face concealed behind a scarf and a hat pulled down to his ears. Valentine reached around and took out the duffel bag. Whatever was inside didn't weigh much more than plastic. It rattled vaguely as he handed the sealed case over.

"There you go".

"Tell 'em not to worry, plenty of heroes on this side of the sound". He offered his hand.

They exchanged grips. "I'm sure there are".

He handed over a heavier case that probably contained radio equipment or explosives and the man hurried off.

Valentine checked his map again. His next waypoint was the old Sea-Tac Airport, but he was to keep well south of it; they had searchlights that could blind him and guns that could bring him down.

He shut the canopy and gunned the engine. As he bounced away across the field, the men were already picking up bicycles and hurrying to meet over the bag. He marked a little flag and some piled-up dirt at one end of the field, and rose in the air. A target on a post flapped in the sea breeze.

They'd met him on a rifle range.

The flashes of gunfire looked like sparks from the air. They left little ghosts on his retinas for a split second.

Valentine had never seen a battle from the air. The sporadic gunfire seemed to be coming from spots along a long, ragged line stretching over perhaps a mile and a half of ground. They were fighting in what looked like a residential zone, long lines of what he guessed to be post-'22 housing - from what he'd heard, a good deal of the southern areas of the city had suffered badly from earthquake and volcano damage.

He passed over a street filled with bodies, tightly packed, around a pair of buses. The Bears must have caught reinforcements arriving in a deadly ambush to have the corpses laid in windrows like that...

No wonder the Seattle Guard didn't care to take on an Action Group.

Valentine's orders were to check in at the Action Group's field headquarters for the operation. He could evacuate up to two wounded on the stretcher fittings added onto either side of the PAAT. It would be a hard load to fly, because carrying one meant carrying two, or the unbalanced autogyro would crash on takeoff. He hoped that if he had to carry two, they'd be of similar weight, preferably both light.

The Action Group lit the road he was to land on with headlights

from the reserve Armed Truck force. Two smaller dune-buggy-like craft, one with a recoilless rifle and the other a heavy machine gun, crouched at the intersection with the command Hummer pulled into a half-collapsed brick storefront. An observer and a temporary aerial had a precarious perch at the steeple.

Remember to refuel if you've got wounded. Remember to refuel if you've got wounded.

Of course the high-octane gasoline they were supposed to be carrying with the medical inflammables was probably misplaced.

He puttered the autogyro up to the command vehicle. At the other side of the half-collapsed building, the white medical bus idled, the men sheltering in a doorway.

Valentine popped the canopy and got out, the sweat on the back of his uniform turning cold in the night.

He did see a wounded man, his arm dressed and in a sling, waiting by the command vehicle. Valentine wondered if they'd demand that he be flown out, just to test the system. From the other direction soldiers herded a group of civilians into a dark recreation center, judging from the basketball courts and running track outside. They kept them jogging, despite the age of some of the men, several of whom were gasping for air and supporting themselves on the runner in front.

A sudden burst of gunfire sounded in the distance.

Valentine extracted his carbine and approached the command vehicle. He was waved in by the man with the long, night-sighted sniper rifle keeping watch on the road. He found Thunderbird there with some of his subofficers, talking intently to Rafferty with a noncom behind carrying two rifles. Rafferty had his helmet off, showing his ringlets bound up like a hairy handle sticking out of the back of his head.

Behind Thunderbird they'd set up an easel with a carefully drawn map. The radio reports were translated into visual form by putting red slashes over depictions of buildings. Some of the slashes had been turned into an X.

Two corporals relayed information over radio to the officers.

"Bravo block cleared, eighty-one".

"Bravo, eighty-one", a lieutenant said in a bit of a singsong, finishing an X on the easel.

The ruined building had once been a hair salon. The man with his arm in a sling tried leaning back and resting his head in a debris-filled washbasin.

"Scouts are reporting traffic on Five-One-Five southbound", one of the radiomen said in a loud but calm voice.

"Rafferty, we'll pick this up tomorrow", Thunderbird said. "You dumb bastard. I told you I'd court-martial you". He turned to the men at the radios, clicking his tongue in thought. "Sound recall to all teams. Delay red column if possible".

"Recall, repeat, recall", the men at the radios echoed.

"Tell the scouts to mine the roads and haul ass", Thunderbird added.

Valentine saw a camouflage-painted pickup truck roar up the road. Two soldiers in back sat in a sea of children. Baby carriers with squalling infants stood in a crash cage.

The sergeant marched Rafferty out. "Rape", the sergeant muttered to Valentine under his breath as he passed.

"Anything for me?" Valentine asked.

Thunderbird looked startled for a second. "Valentine. How was the drop?"

"Completed".

"No, we're good. You can get out of here".

A long rattle of gunfire from across the street dropped Valentine behind cover, but no bullets zipped the headquarters. Valentine saw the athletic building the civilians had been run into alight with the reflection of gun flashes.

The hell? Were they ambushed?

The men at the vehicles guarding the headquarters didn't so much as change the covered arc of their weapons.

"Gamma-Gamma, forty-four", one of the men at the radios said.

"Gamma-Gamma, forty-four", the singsong lieutenant repeated, drawing a big X on the map. Valentine blinked.

He'd just put an X through the athletic building. Yes, three concrete apartments around it in a U. Jesus Christ!

"What kind of op is this?" Valentine asked, knowing, not wanting to know.

"We're clearing this housing complex", Thunderbird said. "Dee Oh Ee Ar".

Valentine heard isolated shots as the executioners in the athletic building finished off the wounded.

"Team Kostwald is loaded and leaving", one of the radiomen said, and an officer made a note on a clipboard.

"Of what?" Valentine asked.

"Destruction of enemy resources", Thunderbird said. "Can't stand to actually see a DOER?"

Enemy resources. "Enemy resour... you mean the population?"

"Without a population to feed on, the Kurians pull out", one of the lieutenants said.

Valentine looked at the Xs on the map.

"No objections, I hope", Thunderbird said. His subordinate officers tensed, and Valentine saw the man with the busted arm shift his rifle around.

"Objections? Hell yes! For starters..."

Tok tok tok. "Hop off that high horse, Valentine. Clearing operations work. Your old man invented 'em, after all".