Valentine stood in front of the men, with Styachowski on her crutches to the right, Post to the left. A pair of motorcycles came around the corner from the direction of the headquarters, followed by an enormous black something, as wide as a Hummer but higher. Valentine had never seen a prewar sport-utility vehicle in such good condition before. Another truck followed, this one roofless, various subordinate officers arranged in the open seating. A diesel pickup rigged with benches in the bed brought up the rear.
The miniature column pulled up before Valentine's battalion. The cyclists lowered their kickstands. Valentine tried to look into the restored black behemoth, but the windows were darkened to the point that nothing could be seen from the side. The passenger door opened, and a man hopped out.
“Attend! Consul Solon is present.”
A speaker on top of the SUV blared out an overamplified version of “Hail to the Chief” and Valentine stood at attention. The soldiers behind followed his example.
There was something childlike about the Consul, though he had the lined skin of a man in his fifties. He had the delicate features of someone who has survived extreme malnourishment, or even starvation, as a child. Overwide eyes, sparse brown hair, and rather thin lips looked out from a fleshless face bobbing on a scarecrow frame wrapped in a heavy coat and muffler despite the warmth of the spring morning. Valentine had not seen many movies in his life, but there had been a theater in Pine Bluff that showed old pre-2022 films on some kind of projector, and Consul Solon reminded him of a character in an old Bogart picture called
Casablanca
. There was a wariness to the eyes that reminded Valentine of the black-and-white image of Peter Lorre looking around the café.
Valentine took a single step forward, and Xray-Tango got out of the rear of the SUV. He trotted to join the little big man.
“Consul Solon, this is Colonel Knox Le Sain. You'll remember he and his troops were a godsend during the flood.”
“Yes,” Solon said with a nod to Valentine. None of the other officers were saluting the civilian coat, so Valentine didn't either. “The new battalion. You left the bayous for a healthier climate, as I hear it, Colonel. I like officers with initiative, Le Sain. I trust you'll restrict yours in the future to carrying out orders, rather than inventing your own.” The Consul had a clipped manner of speaking, biting off the words. Solon's retinue carried out a small portable microphone, and strung a wire from the SUV to power it.
“Yes, sir,” Valentine said.
He began introductions. Solon shook hands with Styachowski, thanking her for her injury sustained in saving the new capital of the Trans-Mississippi. He was polite with Post, but cut the interview short when Post hemmed and hawed out his respects. The lieutenants of each company stepped forward to meet him. Only one forgot himself so far as to salute Solon, but the Consul returned it in good humor.
As Valentine walked him back to the mike, Solon raised an eyebrow. “You have a big Grog there, Colonel.”
“He's a good officer, Consul. Smart as a fox, and he tracks like a bloodhound. The men follow his orders.”
“I'm not a fan of Grogs, Colonel. Putting them in any kind of position of responsibility, well, it's like Caligula putting his horse into the Senate.”
“He's not like the gargoyles or the gray apes. He reads, writes and beats me at chess.”
“Indulge yourself, then. But don't allow him to issue orders. The Grogs have no place in the Trans-Mississippi. There's already trouble with them further north.”
He stepped to the microphone and faced the men. Post returned to his place in front of the infantry companies, and Styachowski her spot before the headquarters company, Valentine halfway between the two.
“Men of the Light Infantry Battalion, Third Division, Army of the Trans-Mississipi Combat Corps. Your comrades in arms welcome you. The civilized order you are part of thanks you. But before you can call yourself soldiers, with the pride and honor that title entails, you are required to take an oath to the Order I represent. Together we'll build a happier and more hopeful world. Please raise your right hands and repeat after meâ”
Solon waited until he saw the hands in the air before continuing. Valentine spoke the empty words, listening to Ahn-Kha's booming voice behind him. “I do now solemnly swear allegiance to the Articles of the Consular Law of the Trans-Mississipi Confederation, to guard its integrity, to obey the orders of those officers placed above me, and to hold it above my life and those of its foes, foreign or domestic, or all I am and hold will be forfeit, until I am released from duty or am parted from service in death.”
Solon spoke the words well. “Congratulations, soldiers, and welcome to the privileges of your new position. General?”
Another man stepped forward, part of Consul Solon's entourage. Solon handed him the microphone. He had streaming gray hair tied in a loose ponytail, and the same blue-black uniform as the guard Valentine had seen outside the Reaper's door, though his legs from polished boot-top to knee were wrapped in black puttees. The thinness of his legs and clear, hard eyes made Valentine think of some kind of predatory bird.”
“Officers and men of the light infantry,” the man said. “I'm General Hamm, of the Third Division. I'm your new commanding officer. We're the best division in the Trans-Mississippi, both now and once we're through mopping up that hillbilly rabble.” Valentine wondered briefly how his hillbilly rabble felt about that choice of words. “You'll find I expect a great deal, but when this is all over, you'll get a great deal in return. In my old grounds in Texas, those who served me well in war found security in peace.
“Ãlan, right down to the company level, is important to me. Especially in my light infantry. You'll move fast and fight hard, grabbing ground and holding it until supports arrive. As a sign of your special bravery you'll carry a symbol, your bolo knife.”
He looked over his shoulder. The diesel ground forward and stopped before Valentine. Hamm hopped up into the bed. “Help me, will you, Colonel? I like to hand these out personally.”
There were long green crates within, like footlockers. Valentine lifted the hinged lid on one. Rows of sheathed machetes rested within. General Hamm picked one out and handed it to him. “Yours, Colonel. A handy little tool. Got the idea from those blades some of the âWolf' guerillas carry. You'll find I've improved the design.”
“All the troops carry these, General?”
“No, just you lights. The heavy infantry get flak jackets and masked helmets. Consider yourselves saved a heart attack. That armor's Pennsylvania-built; it's hotter than hell down here.”
Valentine unsheathed a blade. It was long and rectangular, a blade on one edge and saw teeth on the other. It widened slightly near the handle, which had a wire cutter built into the guard just above the blade. The metal was coated with a dark finish for night use.
Solon had retired to his SUV. Valentine, with the help of a corporal, handed up knife after knife to the general, who passed them out, each with a little word of commendation to the files of men brought forward to receive them. They returned to their company positions. The general took up a blade as well.
“You've got your blades. Your bolos. It was an old war cry, and soon you'll be shouting it again, when we go up into the mountains and get the poor bastards unlucky enough to be facing you. Let's try it out, shall we?
“Bolo!” he shouted, then lifted his hands to the men.
“Bolo,” they shouted back.
“Not good enough!” Hamm said. “Booolo!”
“Bolo!” the men screamed back. “Booolooo!”
“Louder!” the general bellowed. He unsheathed the blade, brandishing it in the air. “BOLO!”
“BOLO!” it came back to him, a wall of noise. Valentine joined in, the scream so long repressed escaping. With it went some of his pain. He looked out at the thicket of waving, blackened steel. The general was right. He wouldn't care to be up against them either.
Â
The next item on Solon's itinerary was a train ride. They took the ferry across to the north side of the river. Above them workmen and prisoners fixed I-beams to the pilings of the old bridge. Xray-Tango was rebuilding the railroad bridge first; the road bridge would come later. They stepped out of the ferry and took the short walk to the old rail yard.
The officers, a mélange of three generals, eleven colonelsâincluding Valentineâand an assortment of accessory captains and lieutenants, ate a buffet served on the platform before boarding the flag-festooned train for its inaugural ride. The beginnings of the line to run, once again, west from the Little Rock area to Fort Scott had only been cleared a few miles northwest, but in those few miles it went to a station near Solon's prospective Residence, even now being constructed on a hill thick with trees, where once a golf course, lakes and the houses of the well-to-do stood. The nukes had flattened and burned house and bole alike, but a grander estate would rise from the ashes.
Valentine tried to keep his hand off his holster as he exchanged pleasantries with the braided Quislings. Solon was a gracious host, and introduced him to a few others as “Colonel Le Sain, a protégé of Xray-Tango.” Xray-Tango introduced him to others as an officer nominated to command by Consul Solon himself. As the new officer in the coterie, Valentine received a sort of reserved attention. The generals nodded to him, the colonels seemed suspicious of him, and the lesser officers watched him. One lieutenant in particular pursued him, popping up at his elbow and clinging to him like a wart.
“Your Colonelcy would care for some more wine?” the unctuous lieutenant, a man named Dalton, asked.
“I'm fine, Lieutenant.”
The man looked at the turned backs all around them, and lowered his voice. “A man in your position deserves a few comforts to forget the hardships of command. Ask anyone; I'm the sort that can make good things happen. I can make bad things disappear.
Pfssssht
.” He punctuated his conversation with sound effects. “You'd find me good company, and I'm looking for a good billet.”
Valentine had already brushed off one captain angling for a staff position; he didn't want a Quisling with aspirations toward pimphood hanging around his camp. He asked Xray-Tango about it when they got a moment together on the train.
“Solon's at fault for it, really,” Xray-Tango said. “He hands out promotions like a parade marshal throwing candy. They join his military advisor's staff until he can fob them off on someone. A lot of them are sons of important men in Dallas, or Tulsa, or Memphis. Anyone who helped him. Some of the officers had trouble fitting in back home, but they've done good service to the Higher Ups, so here they are. We've got generals who are illiterate, colonels who are pederasts; you get the picture.”
“They should have gone down to New Orleans, then. They'd've fit right in.” Valentine looked out the window as the train crawled west, blowing its whistle every minute on the crawling, festive trip. The official one. Another train with construction supplies had gone out on a test run a few days before.
“The bad ones have an unerring instinct for not getting themselves killed, have you ever noticed it? Colonel Forester took a bullet in the ear on the banks of the Black. General Cruz was sharing a foxhole with three men when a 120mm mortar round paid them a visit. Three privates got a helluva funeral, we had to bury them together because we couldn't tell who was who. Hamm's predecessor, General Patrick O'Connel, our best division commander last summer, had a birthday party and someone decided signal flares would really set off the cake. Six officers died when the house burned down.”
“Idiots. But six? Fumes get them?”
“The fire spread fast. There were a lot of papers in there; they tried to fight it to save them. The general traveled with his own supply of gasoline. They locked it up good. Too goodâno ventilation.
Whoof
.”
“The fire took a house full of people?”
“One or two made it. The general had an eye for the ladies. They traveled with him. He had this redhead. A real saddlebredâa little on the bony side, but pretty. She got passed on to Hamm like it was in the will.”
“Privileges of rank,” Valentine said, trying to sound as nonchalant.
Ali?
A fire would be just like her. But the rest didn't fit. Pillow recon, as Alessa Duvalier used to call it, wasn't her style.
The train swung and jerked as it crawled along the points. The track needed some work.
“What's Hamm like?”
“Third Division is a hell of an outfit, though they've really caught it since O'Connel died. They're scattered on the north side of the river now, refitting for the big push.”
Valentine looked out the window. Ali would understand, if he could just talk to her. She'd been a Cat almost since puberty, had seen and done things that would turn a tough man's hair gray. He had been planning to put Gabriella Cho's bullet between General Hamm's eyes, right after removing Solon's head with Caroline Smalls', but now he was having second thoughts. After turning them over in his mind, he discarded his hopes. It was wishful thinking, to expect Alessa Duvalier to be wandering almost the same camp he was, even if she was a Cat.
The train finished its short run at a notch in the hills above what had been North Little Rock. Solon's party disembarked, more trucksâthis time, hosed-down pickupsâmet them to take everyone up the steep grade to the estate grounds. Judging from the roadside placement of the posts marking where the fence would be, Solon had great plans for the grounds, if sheer acreage was any indication. A marble block the size of a crypt already bore the words STATION ONEâCONSULAR RESIDENCE in meter-high letters.