"Easy, now, son. South Bay isn't really our ground-not that it's Kurian. If we ride in armed for Reapers and offload you, someone will talk. If this stuff is important as you say it is, we might want to keep it as a surprise for the bloodsuckers. Major, let's put Harbormaster into effect."
Zacharias made a note on a clipboard as the colonel spun his wheels back to Valentine. "You get back to your ship and bring it across the bay to the entrance to the old intracoastal shipping channel. There's a white lighthouse there, manned by some of the Corpus Christi crew. We've got a spy there, and this sounds important enough for him to break his cover. He'll knock out their radio and make sure our Rangers grab the place. We'll make it look like a simple hit-'n'-loot. When you see two blue lights burning, one on top of the other, bring your ship in as close as the tide'll let you, and we'll start loading up your cargo. This will happen twenty-four hours after you get safely back to your vessel. Questions?"
"Two blue lights vertically." Valentine sagged into his chair in exhausted relief. The colonel's quick mind relieved him of his last few worries about getting his prize to the Rangers safely. He shook himself back to the present.
"No questions, Colonel. Some food and a few hours' sleep, and I'll be ready to go."
"You'll get more than that. There's still some things we have to organize. You'll have until dawn tomorrow to eat and rest up. That okay by you?"
"Better than okay."
"Major Zacharias, you'll have operational command. Put Flagstaff in charge of trains and logistics, use Three-Feather's reserve riders for the main force. I want plenty of scouts, too. Send two couriers now and get Harbormaster going. Ranson, you'll take our friend back to his ship and go onboard as liaison."
"Can I bring Colorado along, Colonel? 'Bout time he started working on a longer line."
"Sure, how often does a man get a chance to go to sea nowadays-even if it is just a ride across the harbor. Mr. Valentine, we'll meet again when your cargo is here, safe and sound."
Night on the harbor. The old lighthouse near the wrecked causeway had two lights burning.
Valentine watched from his familiar bridge-perch as the ship's boats, and a commandeered shrimp boat, moved quickwood, men, and material from ship to shore. There was nothing for him to do on shore, save hear Flagstaff give gruff orders to the Rangers and contingent of laborers he commanded. Oxen stood in their traces, and smaller horse-wagons held supplies for the two hundred riders Zacharias brought to guard the precious cargo. The eight-man garrison of the lighthouse was under lock and key, though five of them expressed an interest in moving inland with the Rangers. Valentine idly listened to the sound of waves lapping against the ship as he pulled his tiny collection of books from its railed shelf, lulled by the hint of motion as the Thunderbolt rocked at anchor. He felt melancholy. The Thunderbolt had become a home.
And it was time to leave.
He would miss the sound of the sailors talking as they washed down the decks in the morning, the smell of good coffee, the wide horizons of the sea. He thought of his father, and his description of the charm of naval service: "Duty at sea, especially when you were out months at a stretch, sounds like you're away from everything, that you'd be lonely and homesick, but you aren't. To a sailor, the ship is a home he takes with him. It's like traveling with your job and all your neighbors. There's nothing like it." His father had been right.
He also liked being able to hit the Kurians where he chose, instead of spending all his time parrying blows. Moving men, their food, and equipment was simplified by the tonnage a ship could carry. A real navy, well handled, could make the Kurian seaboard spend far more of its time gar-
risoning harbors and seaside towns, out of fear that a occupying force would appear over the horizon. The Free Zones in the Appalachians, the Ozarks, and the Rockies would be given breathing room. But he was just one officer, a spy-saboteur trained to work inside the Kurian Zone. Putting together real sea power would take combinations of time and resources the Kurians took pains to prevent. The great ports of the world were solidly in Kur's grip. But with quick-wood...
"The quickwood beams are going now, Captain," Post reported. "These Texans are organized."
Valentine nodded. "They have to be. This pocket doesn't have any Lifeweavers. They're going up against the Reapers with small arms and guts, and a lot of people on farms and in towns slipping them news and supplies. They're smart, they don't fight over the Rio Valley or the coast, nothing that's important to the Kurians. Texas is a big place, they've got distance on their side as long as they stay mobile."
"I'd always heard they were just bushwackers in uniform."
Ranson, who'd approached and caught the tail end of the conversation, cut in to elaborate. He described how the Rangers would go into some one-horse village and relocate the residents. "Then a few Reapers and Quislings come riding in, lifesign reads normal, they think it's just another town. But it's a town armed to the teeth with men who know how to use their guns. We've got a heck of an intelligence network, most everyone between the Rio and San Antonio city limits knows what to do if they see a column coming into the area. We use a lot of heliographs, since the sun's almost always shining. The Kurians have been burned too many times-now they only roll through with big pacification raids. When that happens, the Rangers scatter."
"How much do you know about the quickwood?" Post asked. Farther back on the ship, proof of the efficacy of the weapon stood on the upper deck. A dead Reaper, frozen as a statue with skin hard as tree bark, stood gripping the ship's
rail and canopy-though not truly lifeless, at least in the vegetable sense. The Reaper was beginning to sprout tiny green leaves.
"Everything," Valentine said. "I'll give another briefing to their weapons people. I'm going to leave them some lumber and saplings. Want to throw in your seed-pouch?"
"They'll need it more in the Ozarks."
"I'll carry it there for you, Will."
"You've got enough equipment, what with that ugly-assed gun you tote, Val, and there's still a lot of miles ahead of us. I'll bring it myself. You'll need somebody around to carry out your godawful plans anyway, won't you?"
Valentine felt his eyes moisten. "Why the change of mind?"
"More of a change of heart. When I was watching the Chief and his girl on Jamaica, and you and-well, I got lonely for a woman. The beach beauties were willing, but I want to find my wife. Tell her I was wrong and she was right."
"About the system?" Valentine asked, remembering their conversation before the mutiny.
"When we first got married, we didn't know each other that well. I was in uniform then, but it was for the food and the security. Gail was a sharp girl, and figured out I didn't really like them, or my job. We talked about us getting a posting way out on some frontier, and running for Arkansas. We used to talk like that a lot.
"Funny thing was, after I got married to her, all of a sudden I wanted to do better, have better housing and better food for us, or her really. I went officer, mustanged up from a sergeant to a junior lieutenant. Part of the process was indoctrination, of course. Lectures at the New Universal Church building-you know the routine. Then I had to spew the same stuff to my men: all about mankind poisoning and ruining the Earth, crime and overcrowding and starvation and homelessness. Then the shit that came down in '22 and how the Kurians came to restore 'natural order,' all