Lake finished it, put a star in the upper righthand corner. "That means 'interesting,'" she explained. "I'm kicking it higher in the food chain."

"What would two stars mean?"

"Immediate threat," Lombard said.

"I don't see anything like that here. Southern Command has other fires nearer its foot to piss on. But thank you for bringing it to our attention. I'll see if I can find that Cat's report; I'll send them on together. Thanks for bringing him up, Bone."

Valentine had done all he could. Perhaps he'd given his story enough inertia to keep the Twisted Cross moving through Lake's millstones. He thanked her for her time, and Lombard escorted him to the door. A calico cat rubbed itself against his boot as Lombard fumbled with his key.

"What's with the cats, Bone?"

"Mice. They love to eat paper. We've got a lot of it here."

"Do you think what I came in with is important?"

Lombard took off his glasses and cleaned them with his shirttail. He didn't bother tucking it back in. "Yeah. Anything that can surround and kill a platoon of Wolves is dangerous. But your Cat's story-it's hearsay, kinda. Operating out in the KZ for months on your own, it's enough to queer anyone's judgment. I've read a few Cat reports.... Some sound like the products of a disordered mind."

"Will you make sure the paper trail stays in view?"

"I'm just a filter, like I said. I'll do what I can."

They shook on it at the museum door.

The weather turned sunny, almost hot. Valentine sweated on his walk back to the boarding house.

"You missed a courier, Valentine," Donna Walbrook said when he returned to the Den.

She handed him a sealed envelope. "Bad news when it comes special delivery." .

He read the sender's imprint. It was from the colonel's office, Second Wolf Regiment. Maybe they'd cut his survivor's leave short so he could take command of a reborn Foxtrot Company. Foxtrot deserved to live after the fight they'd put up at Little Timber. He broke the seal.

Mrs. Walbrook watched him, saw his face, patted him as he read. "Sorry, son. Someone you know die?"

"I've got orders to report to Montgomery next week." The rest of the words were hard to say; he had to force them out of a thick throat. "Under escort. There's a court of inquiry being formed to investigate my actions. I'm subject to court-martial."

Smith on the Arkansas River, March: hell on the border reads the sign hung just beneath the foot-tall stencils of the post's official marker. The slogan goes back to Fort Smith's days as a station at the edge of the Indian Territory, when prisoners brought in from the Nations waited in a dank series of cells for their turn before the Honorable Judge Parker, U. S. Grant's "hanging judge."

Now the buildings around the Reynolds Bell Tower-the bell still serves as the post's alarm system; it last rang in the fall of '66 during an air raid by harpies-still see their share of prisoners. Runaways from the Gulag, deserters, captured Quislings, and troublemakers from the western half of the Free Territory are brought here to be interrogated, and either sent downriver into the Free Territory or brought up before a military court.

Fort Smith is the responsibility of the Guards, the uniformed defenders of the Free Territory. It marks the end of the commercial line on the Arkansas River and four eastern roads. There is a civilian presence supporting the soldiery and schools and a hospital to accommodate them. It is a hard-duty station. Only the posts south of St. Louis on the Free Territory's border see more alerts and action. Hardly a month goes by without the departure of a regiment or two of Guard infantry with their supports to cover some portion of the border against a real or threatened attack out of the Kurian Zone. Lesser patrols depart and return at reports of everything from Reapers to horse thieves, downed telephone wires and hayloft arsonists.

The graveyard south of Belle Point is filled with the Guards who came back in the morgue wagons.

Duty at Fort Smith is not without its diversions. Traveling performers entertain at the Best Center-singing groups and acting companies inevitably called the "Worst Enters" by the sarcastic soldiers. The women at Miss Laura's, the most opulent of Fort Smith's brothels, provide assorted horizontal refreshments, but unlike the free Best Center, it takes a week's pay to enjoy a few hours of diversion. The local beer, Smith-Knoble, is well thought of throughout the Territory, and entrepreneurs who don't mind the occasional sound of artillery fire operate restaurants and pubs.

Hunters in from the KZ stick to a few boarding houses and pubs that welcome their kind. Neither civilians nor Guards, they are nominally subordinated to the Officer Commanding Fort Smith while within the broad boundaries of the post. But something about the Hunters, even in civilian dress, makes the civilians wary and Guard hackles rise. Perhaps it is the intense stares or the too-quick-for-the-eye flinches at unexpected movement or the tribal clannishness that sets them apart. But when word comes that a Reaper is on the border, Hell on the Border is glad to have them there.

The orders in Valentine's dispatch pouch that read "Survivors leave ending 9MAY2067" amounted to an epitaph to Foxtrot Company.

It meant the Second Wolf Regiment considered the company destroyed as a fighting force; even those still un-wounded after Little Timber would be distributed to other units. If they decided to rebuild the company, he'd get a second set of orders soon enough. As the senior unwounded officer, he might even be selected for command. If so, he'd try to get a few of the veteran NCOs, perhaps arguing that "third time's the charm" for ill-fated Foxtrot, now decimated twice in three years.

After getting the flimsy, Valentine decided to spend his leave in Fort Smith. It would be easy for orders and mail to find him there; he could visit the library; perhaps he'd even be able to spend a few days fishing in the river or one of the lakes around the post if he could obtain a skiff, rod, and reel. He needed quiet and solitude to help the memories of Little Timber settle.

He'd thought about spending his leave in Weening. Molly had invited him to visit in her letter, but she was no doubt enmeshed in a celebration of her engagement or wedding plans-he'd seen in the spring issue of the Service Bulletin that her swain had been promoted. Molly didn't need Valentine hanging around like the proverbial skeleton at the feast. Her beau might even consider it an insult.

The part of him that wanted to get away was strong enough that he considered fleeing to Hal Steiner's enclave in the Arkansas bayou country. Frat had written that Steiner's unusual community of man and Grog had thrived since he'd first visited it years ago. But Steiner's independent land wasn't part of Southern Command's communication system. He'd have to journey to the nearest post to check for orders.

So he settled on Fort Smith. Besides, he had another report to make. This time he'd do it in person.

Tags: E.E. Knight Vampire Earth Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net