Valentine ignored the chief of staff and stared at the senator. "Call it what you like, it's deliberate murder of civilians. Lot easier to win battles when the other side can't shoot back".
"I don't like this", the senator said. "Staff, give me and the major here a moment of privacy. Yes, you too, Ducks. You're not in trouble... you did your job".
Everyone passed out into the hall, save the senator and the bodyguard. He wiped the rest of the lather from his face and tossed the towel in the sink.
"Major, you think we're insulated here from the world, and about as useful as your grandfather's third nipple.
We've got channels of communication all over the country, even a couple of fake ones we let the Kurians listen to going overseas. But for all the folderol, Mount Omega is still wired into the world better than most any other place I can think of. I probably know more about operations in the Cascades than you do".
Valentine felt gut-kicked. "So you approve?"
"If you're asking me if I like it, no, I don't. Do I condone it? Yes. It's a hard truth of this war. We just lost a Freehold in the Balkans and as far as we can tell, the Koreans no longer exist. If it weren't for the Australians, bits of Alaska, and the del Fuegans, the Pacific Rim would be a giant Kurian circle. Southern Command got lucky, but it's about exhausted, and Denver doesn't have electricity anymore. The only victories being won are up in Pacific Command, and he's taking on the toughest, best-organized Kurians west of the Mississippi. Now's not the time for some kind of purge. We do those kind of blood sports here, but nothing that gets said or done in Mount Omega makes a damn bit of difference. I'm under no illusions about matters here. But if we're ever going to win this thing, it'll take leadership from men like Adler. There's even talk of making him commander in chief, if his plan to drive down into California succeeds. We haven't had a president since 'twenty-two".
The gut-kick turned his meal to bile. Bile that had to come up and out.
"Some leadership. Your speech code in the guidebook says that 'no person is to be addressed in a derogatory or demeaning fashion.' But murder is just fine for someone a couple hundred miles away".
Senator Bey's face reddened. "Sure, it's a silly bit of pantomime. But we can afford the niceties of civilization here. The trick is to get the rest of the country back to the point where we can sue each other over passing gas while someone else is speaking. I'm going to paraphrase Lincoln here. The objective is to win the war. If we can win it by killing every last person in a Kurian Zone, I want to win that way. If we can win it without killing anyone, even better. If we can win it by killing some and letting others alone, I'd be for that too".
A strong knock sounded at the door. "Senator!" Decasse's voice sounded. "The Capitol Police are here".
"Now what?"
Valentine suspected he knew what. The bodyguard went to the door.
"Yes?" the bodyguard asked as he opened it.
Valentine heard Decasse's voice: "Turns out Major..."
"We need to take the senator's visitor into custody. He's a deserter from Pacific Command", an authoritative voice said.
The bodyguard turned and looked at the senator. Valentine guessed that some protocol kept police out of the office.
What could he do, unarmed? Take the bodyguard's gun and shoot his way back up through Grand Central?
"I don't suppose Mount Omega has a sanctuary policy somewhere in this?" Valentine asked, lifting the guidebook.
"Too many people here already. There are families of representatives that go hungry at night".
"I'll go quietly", he told the senator.
The senator stood up and patted him on the shoulder. "Sorry, son. I'll make sure the report about your mission gets through. We want Southern Command to know you went out a hero".
PB Camp "Sally", July: Valentine had seen dozens of compounds like these in his travels in the Kurian Zone; only the little buildings on the inside varied. Outside it was always the same: two rows of fencing topped with outward-pointing razor wire and a high observation point for the guards. Sometimes the houses were nice little prefabricated mobile homes, in other places drafty shacks where the women and children ran around on bare earth.
This one, oddly enough, was in an old church-school combination, made of stones as gray as a typical Cascade sky. The watchtower sat in the church steeple, and the fence ran in a great rhombus from the bricked-up side of the school to the old church parking lot, encompassing both the school athletic field and a small park opposite the church doors.
He came to the Sally as a Punishment Brigade convict, having worked his way through the abbreviated Pacific Command military justice system like a grain of sand passing through a worm's tract. Like the metaphoric worm, Pacific Command didn't have much in the way of brains or heart, just nerve ganglia that received Valentine as a deserter (he rode back from Mount Omega in an empty supply truck - heavily caged for transporting valuables east and malefactors west - chained hand and foot and under the watchful eye of a sentry in the cab cage) and processed him by a hearing where he admitted leaving his post without orders with the intent never to return. He gave a fine speech damning Pacific Command from the Bears following orders all the way up to Adler's Resource Denial methodology, but none in the hearing seemed particularly impressed. They convicted him and sentenced him to ten years in the Punishment Brigade. When he asked
his lawyer how many men survived that long a term, he got a quiet shake of the head.
They put him to work with some other convicts in a chain gang black-topping roads and felling trees. When they had 120 convicts together - the additions took roughly six weeks - they gave everyone a hose bath and piled them into a pair of seatless school buses for the trip to Pacific Command Military-Criminal Salvage Training - Sally.
* * *
"Okay, you cocksuckers, listen and listen hard!" the top sergeant yelled, standing at the head of the stairs with his back to the church doors. Like Valentine, he had a generous helping of Native blood and wore a mattress-ticking shirt and green camping shorts. Only the jaunty police hat had a military crest, the eagle head of Pacific Command.
Valentine and the others waited in groups of twenty, each under a police corporal. Ever since being handcuffed at Mount Omega, he'd given up on hope. He felt like a wrung-out rag, but still had enough intellectual curiosity to wonder what kind of bin he'd be tossed into.