Valentine's Resolve (Vampire Earth 6)

"And on land?"

"Land they move along pretty good, a fast walk. But they leave a trail like a mudslide. There's the smell and they lose scales pretty easily, so pretty much any idiot knows when some BMs have been through. When am I going to hear more?"

"What's in the buckets?"

"Positive reinforcement. The BMs go nuts for pork. Dog too, but not so much as a good fatty pig. We give them pigs' feet, snouts, heads, ears, all that stuff, when they do something right. After a successful action we'll usually roast a hog or two to treat everyone".

"I think I read somewhere that physiologically, human flesh is a lot like pig".

"They eat that too. They're always eager to go into action to get a bellyful. You've never seen creatures so eager for a fight. They don't give a damn about casualties either, just means more eating on the way home".

"Any land training going on now?" Valentine asked.

"Yeah, up by those old houses".

"Can we land this thing and take a look?"

"Sure. We'll even show you how to give a couple orders. Just watch your fingers when rewarding. Toss, don't give. These ain't a bunch of backflippin' dolphins".

* * *

Valentine spent the next six weeks training with the OXFs. They equipped him with a Chinese SG carbine, reliable enough but not

much good beyond fifty yards on autofire or a hundred shooting over open sights. They accepted him as one of their own. OXFs saw a lot of wanderers pass in, decide the work wasn't for them, and pass on again to something easier - like lumberjacking.

He answered a few questions about Catalina Island, and retreated behind the old reliable "That's classified" when probed too deeply, though most of the questions revolved around the weather and the amount of sunshine. He hemmed and hawed during a couple of equivocal probes about needing people with experience handling Big Mouths back on the island.

One of the trainers opined that the Big Mouths wouldn't do well there, as they were cool-water creatures, but another man claimed the eastern shores of Florida were thick with thriving BMs.

He spent his days cold and wet and his nights in his fish-reeking quarters on the Redeye, with his hands and arms slathered in lanolin to restore moisture and keep his skin from sliding off the bone. The creatures' odor was all-invasive, all-pervasive, and seemed to be the one thing that quieted his appetite.

As he slept he got the uncomfortable feeling someone was watching his dreams along with him.

Eventually he laid out a detailed plan for Troyd, a route into the mountains that avoided the river-watch stations. It involved a series of upriver journeys and then short overland hikes, always to the north, where a new river would be picked up for a push of a few miles more inland, then another short overland journey. By this long, counterclockwise turn, they could hit the Snoqualmie upriver from the Outlook, unguarded by dams, falls, or nets.

"The BMs can do it. It'll be hell on the men, though. That's a lot of time in some very cold water. We'll need to bring chemical heat".

"How secure is Vashon Island?" Valentine asked.

"No one hangs out there if they know what's good for them".

"Good. I'd like to use that old airfield there. It's about the right size for the target. I was poking around in it the other day to check the interior. With a little fixing here and there, block one door and put in

another, we could get the corridors right. We need to rig some lighting and get some interiors. Can you ask Silas about some drywall and some workmen?"

"Jeez, Valentine, these are BMs, not commandos".

"The less left to doubt, the better. Now, the last thing I need is a moon chart..."

While construction went on, Valentine spent his mornings on endurance swims with the Big Mouths. He practiced "driving" paired BMs behind a sea kayak, mile after mile, first up and down the coast of the sound, then up the White River.

Troyd worked out the logistics of the overland part of the raid. The BMs were used to short hauls in tractor-trailers, but the OXFs had to get them worked up to an hour or two.

Valentine agonized over the timetable with the man Troyd decided on as second-in-command, Lieutenant Burlington, another Canadian down from Vancouver. They started making test swims at night, taking forty Big Mouths up the lower end of the White, then camping on the old mudslide damage from Mount Rainier, then spending the day in a lake, then traveling overland a couple of miles more.

"What about getting them back ?"

"If they get back, they get back", Burlington said. "They're basically expendable".