It was the sort of fuzzy case high-priced jewelry used to come in, a purple so deep it could pass for black in all but the best light.
Valentine opened the presentation case. A shiny old piece of plastic lay inside, a cheap mockery of a police badge.
BROTHEL INSPECTOR
it read.
"I found it last summer in the ruins of a dollar store," Duvalier said. "I've been carrying the stupid thing around ever since, waiting for the right opportunity."
"Hilarious," Valentine said.
"You should go over to Orfordville and break it in," Frat said. "The Wolves say there are a couple of nice houses there. The Ordnance patrols west of Louisville sometimes de-uniform and sneak over."
"They're true Kentucky as bourbon. We get regular reports about any loose tongues."
The party chuckled.
Ahn-Kha's uneven ears were up and forward. "I do not understand."
Duvalier, boosting herself up with his axe-handle shoulder like a gymnast mounting a pommel horse, whispered something in his ear.
"Humans," he muttered, shaking his head.
ogistics Commandos: What the Ozark Free Republics can't make, they take. Southern Command has turned scavenging, black market trade, and outright theft into a science. Oftentimes, their toughest veterans retire into the freewheeling Logistics Commandos rather than retire to their allotted acreage and meager pension. Former Wolves and Cats often make the best LCs-they know the Nomansland terrain and the surrounding Kurian Zones and usually have a network of contacts.
In the field, the Logistics Commandos are wild cards, the last reserve of every commander. They'll follow behind a successful attack, grabbing everything from prisoners and intelligence and truck batteries to dropped weapons, always sorting, always prioritizing. On a retreat, they decide what can be saved and what must be sacrificed. Because nearly all of them are long-service veterans with combat experience, they can fill almost any role in a fight from artillery to signals.
Of course they can be difficult. They have an old soldier's nose for food and comfort, and the other forces of Southern Command often complain-with justification-that the Logistics Commandos grab all the best beds and let only their scraps of their ample tables and secondrate luxuries reach the rawer hands and newer heels at the front.
"These are the boats?" Lambert said.
"Everything that floats," Valentine said. He and Ediyak were taking the colonel on a tour of Evansville's waterfront with the commander of Evansville's River Guard, an ex-river patroller named Jackson.
Jackson was a very what you see is what you get fellow. He had no office, only a fast, heavy boat with twin machine guns set up on a mount that probably was supposed to be used for sportfishing. He took them on a waterborne tour of the three miles or so of Ohio River that unequivocally belonged to Evansville. The locals had many less-lethal boats, mostly used for ferrying people across the river or east-west travel between a southward loop known as the "west hill" and the heart of the old city to the east. Like many old river towns, its biggest vessel was a derelict casino barge, hollowed of all but the ceiling glitz, now used for sheltering livestock-mostly chickens and pigs-traded to the river traffic.
They had a few barges, coal and corn vessels for the most part, still held together as a city storage reserve. One was even rigged to hold freshwater. A single decrepit tugboat was still in service for pushing them around, if necessary, but by the look of the engine and the part-time crew, it wasn't up to the job of even getting a single barge to the Mississippi, let alone up it. There was also a smaller tug designed for firefighting. It could, Valentine supposed, be pressed into duty as a barge pusher, but it would need some modifications for tying itself on to a barge train.
There were plenty of men in Evansville with riverboat experience, according to Jackson. Most had fled the Kurian Zone once Evansville became known as a haven, so getting them back on the river and in hostile territory might call for an old-fashioned press-gang. Valentine didn't like the idea, but it might be their only option.
Jackson gunned his engines and weaved around a sunken wreck of a tug, sending his passengers lurching into each other. The wreck was rather picturesque, if you liked rotting wood and rusty metal. Waterfowl nests covered the wheelhouse roof. In the slack water next to it, the Evansville River Guard's other battle-ready boat sat, holding on to the wrecked tug with a boat hook, ready to dash out downriver.
A tiny brown-water navy was being put together by the city, mostly to help defend the booms and check approaching barges for enemies. Evansville's leaders decided their best chance for survival was to allow river traffic up and down the Ohio, provided it wasn't military supplies or fodder for the Reapers. Corn and coal and dry goods could pass after being checked.
The Kurians were putting extra troops on the "peace marked" barges to discourage deserters.
Valentine wasn't a fan of "hostile neutrality" or whatever the Evansville town fathers were calling their attitude about river traffic these days, but Southern Command had no business telling civilians how to run their affairs unless bullets were flying.
"Men aren't the problem," Jackson said, when they asked him what his capability was to get to the Mississippi junction. For now, grander plans weren't being discussed, even with someone in the Evansville armed service. "Machinery is. You get me the boats, I could fill them with hands."
"Can you build them?" Lambert asked.
"Marine motors are the real problem, okay. They have to be tough and reliable. What we have is cannibalized, fifty-year-old gear for the most part. We have plenty of people in Evansville who can steer a boat, read the river, fix an engine. The weapons and combat stuff, on the other hand-"
"Well, we have a lot of men who can do that," Valentine said.
"River fighting is a little different than on land," Jackson said. "It starts and finishes very quick. You need men who can put a lot of shit on target-begging your pardon ladies-fast and I mean fast, or you lose boats and the next thing you know you're swimming in an oil slick."
Lambert sat with them on an airy, upper-floor balcony of the mansion, resting in the quiet after their day on the river. Her bedroom connected with it. It had a nice view to the north.