His voice was strong this time. "Shoot me, Judas."
"A pointless end to the tale of the Valentines. You'll find your Golgotha lonely."
"How lonely is your bunker, General?"
The General struck the smirk from Valentine's face. Blood began to run out from under his bandage.
"You had defeated me in battle-well, defeated the men I trusted to fight my battles, which may mean the same thing. But that is a question for the philosophers. But what is a delay to me? Do you think you have really harmed me?" he asked, his eyes beginning to light up with angry fire. "Do you? Your pathetic little gesture was spittle in a hurricane. I can afford to think in terms of thousands of years. That is why this base is being built, not for one campaign in Nebraska, but for control of a continent. It takes years to select, grow, and train a fighting pair; I began this project before you were born and have seen it through setbacks worse than the fire you started.
"The science of Kur and my leadership has proved that this system works. Men can control Reapers, Reapers who fight like soldiers, without the weaknesses and desires of the Kurian from which they sprang. First principles, my son. I proved that I can do it with one, and if I can make one, I can make a thousand, and if I can make a thousand--"
The door opened again, and another shorn Golden One in the leather uniform of the bodyguard entered, almost dragging the protesting aide. The arrival said something to the other two in their own tongue. "I'm sorry, sir," the aide apologized. "There seems to be a disturbance outside in the Grog pen. We should go to the emergency shelter at once."
Valentine looked at the panting messenger, and his heart leapt.
The former monk let out a tired breath and nodded.
Valentine tried to stand, drawing the General's eye. "That may be true, sir, from a logical point of view. But I think someone is going to have to pick up where you left off. It appears you've fucked with the wrong species."
"Wha-awk," the General managed to get out, before
Ahn-Kha wrapped his viselike fingers around his throat. The angry titan picked up the General, swung him at the shocked aide.
Valentine's chair fell over in the struggle, but he still could see the unique sight of a man being beaten to death with another man used as the murder weapon. With six blows, Ahn-Kha reduced both the General and his aide to bloody pulp. The General proved to be a poor choice of club; he began to fall apart after the third swing.
The bodyguard Grogs shrank away from the twitching corpses, as though the General might rise again in demonic fury. But it was just reflex of muscle and broken bone making wet sounds against the floor. The bodyguards exchanged a few tremulous words with Ahn-Kha and then embraced him.
The Golden One breathed hard after his exertion. "You do not look yourself, my David. Let me help you."
The bearlike face hovered over his. As the world slipped, Valentine tried to stay conscious.
Back. Feel the pain. Smell the blood. Hear the-gunfire. There's gunfire?
"What did you say to the bodyguards?" Valentine asked weakly. A few shots sounded from the hall.
" 'If you do nothing, all is forgiven.' It is a little more poetic in my tongue. I hope this does not hurt you further." The Grog's arc of muscle at his arms and shoulders tensed, and the handcuffs snapped in two.
The door opened, and Alessa Duvalier stood silhouetted in the frame, encased in Twisted Cross assault armor. The gear made her look a little absurd, like a turtle in too big a shell. She held a rifle to her shoulder, covering the hallway, and her naked, blood-smeared sword stuck blade-up in her waistband. A sweat-soaked headband kept flame-colored hair out of wild and hungry eyes.
"No time for kiss and tell, boys. Heat's on."
Valentine wondered if he were in some wild dream brought on by loss of blood. "Ali?" he said, "What are you doing here?"
She reversed the magazine in her gun, quickly substituting the full one for the empty one taped to it. "I'm milking a male ostrich! What does it look like, Val? I'm taking point for your pointy-eared friend."
Ahn-Kha scooped Valentine up in his arms and followed the female Cat out the door and down the hall. At an intersection ahead, Valentine saw another Golden One with a machine gun at his hip, spraying the corridor with fire. They turned at the corner opposite to where the Grog was firing, and Valentine got a brief glimpse of a corridor littered with bodies. Valentine felt himself being carried up some stairs, thinking that perhaps it wasn't so bad to be partnered with a mentally disordered woman-sometimes. Then he passed out.
"The hardest part was figuring out where you were," Duvalier explained the next day.
Valentine lay in his hammock in some thick woods on the Missouri River well south of the Twisted Cross base. Ahn-Kha was sleeping soundly, Valentine's PPD cradled in his arms. Valentine sipped some willow-leaf tea to ease the pain. According to Duvalier, he had the blackest black eye she had ever seen.
"I caused a little trouble with the column that hit the Eagle's Wings, but I mostly wanted to learn where their base was. It was just a matter of getting into camp and keeping my ears open. The stunts you pull are the type of thing only Bears are stupid enough to try-I'd just as soon stay out of the way of bullets, thank you very much. Not that I don't admire your balls."
She kissed the bandage over the left side of his cheek.
"Maybe I can introduce you to the twins and their big brother when I can walk again," he suggested.
"Dream on, Valentine. So I go to the rendezvous and wait, and naturally you don't show. So I leave a note and come hunting around the south end of Omaha. I pretty much mapped out the base, got an idea of the numbers the Twisted Cross had, and found out that oversize perimeter wasn't too well guarded. The General was planning for the future, I suppose. But his present couldn't do the job.