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Valentine advanced on him. "Sorry, Corporal, I beat the detail here. Where's that renegade, Smalls? I want you to put him under arrest for murder."
"He's being questioned now. Wait, sir, you can't-"
"You're under arrest," Valentine said. "Insubordination, for a start." The corporal shrank back as if Valentine had waved a hot poker at him.
The Smalls were already under what might be called intensive questioning. They sat in chairs, side by side, in a darkened room with a bright light shining on them from a desk set in the center of the room. Their questioners stood with backs to Valentine. He could see blood on Mrs. Smalls' hands and frock, the fear in Mr. Smalls' eyes at events spinning out of control.
An MP, three officers, Xray-Tango and the Smalls. Seven.
"Now it's not just Le Sain, it's the whole battalion? Seven hundred men?"
"Horseshit!" Valentine roared, unscrewing the bottom of his flash-bang. The trigger button popped out. Armed. "You left something behind, Smalls. Take a look, everyone."
"Le Sain, what-" Xray-Tango began, but Valentine shouldered his way through the questioners, pushing the general up against a wall, and slammed the flash-bang down on the table-triggering the button on the bottom. Three seconds.
The top was hand-painted with a vintage nude. Marilyn Monroe knelt against a red satin background, her arms behind her head, back arched, milky breasts lifted, a go-for-broke smile on her face.
He swung toward Xray-Tango, turning his back on Marilyn. He shut his eyes and shoved his hands in his pockets. "General, I'd like-" he said, and clapped his hands over Xray-Tango's ears.
Crack!
It wasn't a concussive explosion-more like someone loosing both barrels of a twelve-gauge-though even outdoors it left unprotected ears ringing. In the confines of the underground room the noise hit like a hammer blow. Even worse was the flash. Through his screwed-shut eyes Valentine still saw orange. Valentine popped Xray-Tango between the eyes with a strong jab. As the general's head thunked against the wall like a tossed coconut he followed through with a body blow to the solar plexus. Xray-Tango let loose with an asthmatic gasp and folded. Valentine slipped on his fighting claws.
He waded into the stunned Quislings. They were staggering around in ululating confusion, a six-player game of blind-man's bluff held under the influence of bad LSD. The confusion turned to screaming when Valentine opened the first throat with his claws. The questioning officer had caught himself in a corner. Valentine dug his claws into each side of the man's neck and pulled. The blood of opened arteries went everywhere. He raked another across the kidneys. The man went spinning in shrieking pain into Smalls, knocking both to the floor. Mrs. Smalls could still see; she turned her face from her husband to see Valentine advancing on her.
"You-not-no," she cried, more or less able to see what was coming.
He caught her with an elbow in the temple, and she sagged. He stabbed her husband in the Adam's apple, driving the extra-long straight middle claw into his voice-box. Maybe the Reaper would be in a forgiving mood, and delay killing him until he could tell the story in a few weeks.
But he doubted it.
It was awful, and it took too long.
Valentine looked around the abattoir. The knocked-over desk lamp illuminated walls splattered with blood, a floor painted in black and red depending on the fall of the light. The man with the slashed kidneys still twitched, in too much pain to rise again.
"General," Valentine said, lifting Xray-Tango to his feet. "General!"
"Spots. Alls I seeze spots," he said, drunkenly.
Valentine shook him in frustration.
"Scottie! Scottie!" he barked.
"Huh? Le Sain, what the hell-" The general's face fell into limp horror as he picked out a few details of the room with his damaged retinas.
"Everything the Smalls said is true. I'm a soldier with Southern Command. It's a rising, all over the TM," Valentine said, exaggerating the last a little. "I want you to join us. Fight the Reapers, instead of feeding them."
"God, the blood-"
"What'll it be, General? Fight or feed?"
"Ouch, you're hurting me, dammit."
Valentine felt a Reaper coming. Coming in anger, coming in fury, coming in haste.
"No time, General."
"Good God, they're all dead."
