Funny, though, that two promising officers of Southern Command both ended up serving in the same Kentucky backwater. Together they’d turned it into a whole new front of the war.
In the old rough-and-ready days when she was informally serving with Valentine’s Razorbacks in Texas, Duvalier plopped down in his bed when he wasn’t using it. Even in those days, when she was a good deal younger and of fresher skin, the men didn’t call her “Valentine’s woman” or anything like that. She was more like a mascot to the regiment, and like a brigade hound—or cat—she was expected to sleep in the CO’s quarters.
Colonel Lambert was a little more strict about such matters, so she carved a little niche for herself among the rafters of the stables. The Quisling aristocrat had built quite an outbuilding, with a limestone foundation capped by heavy beams. Along with a few horse stalls, there were little apartments sharing kitchen and bath facilities, presumably for servants, guests, security staff, grounds- or gamekeepers, and such who might need to be active over twenty-four hours, and therefore were kept outside the main house so their routines wouldn’t bother the family.
In the stables she joined quite a collection of Fort Seng’s “odd men out”—including the basset-faced former New Universal churchman, Brother Mark, a former Wolf and Kurian agent named Frat, and now Blake, Valentine’s adopted Reaper “son,” who slept in a storage basement. Despite not having even seen his tenth year yet, Blake was already Valentine’s height and stringy as angel hair pasta.
She didn’t like the little apartments. She’d shared too many kitchens and washrooms in her years. So, using a little plywood and salvaged foam, she rigged herself a space in the rafters above the horses. There was no obvious way up, which she liked—she climbed atop a stall divider, then used an old stirrup she’d nailed into an inconspicuous corner to swing herself up into the rafters. There were a lot of flies, and spiders after the flies, but she preferred insects and a bat or two to the rodents of a hayloft or feed stack. The fort’s horses just below were even better than dogs at raising an alarm against prowling Reapers. Fortunately they’d grown used to Blake, and perhaps something about his mixing with humans and using their soap for his skin and clothes gave him a more familiar smell.
She was right under a skylight, too, so on impossibly hot summer nights she could escape to the roof and sleep in the open air. Gamecock, the Bear commander who’d made a couple of good-natured passes at her, joked that she was going to roll off one night and suggested that she tie a safety line around her waist. He’d even help with the knot… .
She liked to take a little food and a big glass of milk up on the roof and watch the goings-on in the main house. She wasn’t exactly prying—she just had spent so much time as an observer, watching the action through a window and trying to piece together what was happening.
She cleaned herself up, then popped her head through the skylight. Sure enough, Lambert was still in her office, tunic off and hung on a hook in the wall. Knowing Lambert, Duvalier figured she probably ran a hot iron over the tunic quickly before hanging it up, just in case. She threw on fresh underwear and a shirt and strolled over to the headquarters for the promised chat. There were rumors that Lambert was expanding her staff to help cover the greater number of sub-posts reporting to Fort Seng. She hoped she wouldn’t be asked to serve at headquarters rather than in the field. Headquarters meant people, and people meant annoyance. She’d rather be in the boonies working alone.
The colonel had a private office, too. It had probably once been a dressing room or something in the lavish house. There was a tall window and a mirrored wall opposite the desk. A carpenter had put up organization shelves and bins for a collection of pre-2022 reference books. The mirror had delicate etching in it, curlicues of burnished, softened black running around the edges. The other wall, opposite the mirror, had a large map of Eastern North America on a pinboard to better hold the myriad of colored pins designating known concentrations of Kurian Zone forces.
Lambert was studying a map. “Just a sec,” she said, making a note. When she finished, she returned the pencil neatly to a small tray—she had two, one for pens and one for pencils of various colors—and looked at the rather ragged Cat sitting across the desk from her.
“I like the new towels in the bathroom,” Duvalier said, by way of starting a friendly chat.
“There’s an amazing little market that’s sprung up on the Evansville riverbank. All sorts of people with little barges of goods. One of the staff, Barranco, enjoys visiting it and found them for us. Dirt cheap.
“We’ve been tearing through the documents you brought out of the conference. It’s interesting stuff, all about defensive arrangements should the Kentucky Free Zone make a move north, east, or south. They seem to think the next most likely target is Memphis, in cooperation with Southern Command.”
“Is it?” Duvalier asked.
“It might be if I were our esteemed commander in chief, General Martinez. As I’m not, it’s anyone’s guess. The Kentuckians have had enough fighting these past couple of years; they’re just trying to organize what they’ve won, and Southern Command seems to have fallen into a military funk. Right now they’re fighting over force drawdowns more than they’re fighting the Kurians.”
Duvalier didn’t really follow politics, but the Free Republics must be pretty sure of themselves if they were returning troops to civilian life.
“What did you need?”
“I’d like to hear again how you came across these.”
Duvalier retold the story. She was pretty sure she’d put it in her report, but she hated paperwork, and the events at the stables didn’t have much to do with the operation against the hotel one way or another.
“Okay, we can be pretty sure they aren’t deliberate misinformation, then. Your colonel was well away from the fighting.”
“And trying to get farther,” Duvalier said.
“There is one interesting tidbit in there. You know there’s a big all-freehold conference coming up this summer.”
“Ummmm, no.”
“It’s sort of an open secret. They have one every four or five years. It’s mentioned in the colonel’s notes on the meeting. They spent a long session on what was expected from the Resistance this year, and among the details was a mention of the conference and that they were expecting a report shortly after it finishes. Do you know what that implies?”
This was a field closer to her interests. “That they have a reliable source that will tell them what happened at this big meeting. Or that they’ve managed to insert one or more agents to attend the conference personally and gather information.”
“Yes,” Lambert said. “I’m wondering if the colonel didn’t screw up and make a physical note of something that was classified. I did some quiet checking, and it appears that no one is aware of this little fact. It seems a little vague to make a big deal about it with the conference people, but if I can open a line of communication to the Baltic League I’ll tip their security people that their conference might be penetrated. I also need to send a copy of the evidence by courier, and I was hoping you’d take the trip, since you found it.”
“To the Baltic? I wouldn’t begin to know how to get there. I’d have to read a map to even find it.”
“Oh, no, I wouldn’t expect you to get there on your own. The Kentucky delegation consists of exactly one representative tagging along with Southern Command. Since the invite allows up to five, we thought we could add you on for the trip. You’d be a passenger the whole way.”
“Not interested,” she said.
“Might make a nice break. Really, you just have to have a quiet word with the head of security at the conference, show the evidence, and you’re done. You can enjoy yourself the rest of the time.”