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"Your eyes. They are your grief. They say, when you leave that place, you were dipped in blood."
"Enough with the juju stuff, Sissy. What have you been putting in Nail's soup?"
"Sausage, rice, celery, no chilies or nothing; the doctor, she say keep it mild-"
"That's not what I mean. He had nerve damage. It's healing. I'd heard Bears recovered from stabs and bullet wounds fast, but I've never known of a higher animal doing this."
" 'More't'ings in heaven and earth," Daveed. If I knew how to make a gumbo that make cane-man walk again, I use him on myself and get new legs."
"Colo-Major, passing the word for Major Valentine," a soldier called in the hospital.
"Down here," Valentine yelled back.
A private from the command company made a noisy descent to the kitchen, a signals patch on his shoulder. "Major! Sergeant Jimenez needs you in the radio room. Priority broadcast from Southern Command. For all troops."
"Did you say broadcast?"
"Yes, sir, not direct communication. The Sarge said you needed to hear it."
"Thank you, Private. I'm coming."
Valentine stole a fresh heel of bread and dipped it in honey.
"You too bad, Daveed," Narcisse said. "This galley supposed to be for hospital."
"Impossible to resist your cooking, Sissy," Valentine said, moving for the stairs.
Word had passed among the men that something was up. There were a couple of dozen sandbag-fillers trying to look busy in front of the Federal-style command building. A new long-range radio mast had gone up atop its molding-edged roof since the previous day. The signals private held the door for Valentine.
"Does Jimenez have the klaxon rigged yet?"
"I helped him, sir. Klaxon, PA, he can even kill electricity."
"Quick work."
"To tell you the truth, sir, it was mostly rigged already. We just added the kill switch for the juice."
The radio room was a subbasement below the conference room where Solon had laid out his scheme for finishing off Southern Command. Solon had a sophisticated radio center. A powerful transmitter, capable of being used by three separate operators, was surrounded by the inky flimsy-spitters capable of producing text or images from the right kind of radio or telephone signal. Sergeant Jimenez had a pair of earphones on, listening intently.
"What's the news, Jimenez?"
"Oh, sorry, sir. Lots of chatter. Something big is going on down south. I'm scanning Southern Command and TMCC. Chatter north and south, but it sounds like mere's action somewhere on the banks of the Ouachita."
"What about west? Anything from Martinez?"
"Not a word, sir. Like we don't exist."
"What did you call me here for, then?"
"There's going to be a broadcast from the governor. Thought you might like to hear what he had to say."
"I'm not the only one, Jimenez. Can you put this on the PA?"
"Uhh ... wait, I can. Just give me a sec."
The radio tech rooted through a box of tangled cords in the corner, pulling up wires and examining the ends. He pulled out a snarl of electronics cable and unwound what he was looking for. Valentine put an ear to the headphones, but just picked up a word or two amongst the static. His eyes wandered over the Christmas-like assortment of red and green telltales, signal strength meters and digital dials. The apparatus was a Frankensteinish creation of three mismatched electronic boxes, placed vertically in a frame and patched together. The electromagnetic weapons that darkened so much of the world in 2022 took their toll on everything with a chip; the more sophisticated, the more likely to be rendered useless by an EMW pulse. Sets like this were an exception-restored military com sets with hardened chips. The Kurians frowned on any kind of technology that allowed mass communication; radios were hunted down and destroyed as though they were cancers. An illegal transmitter was a dangerous and practically impossible thing to have in the Kurian Zone. Only the most trusted of the Quisling commanders had them for personal use. Southern Command made transmitter/receivers by the hundreds, and receivers in even greater quantity, in little garage shops for smuggling into the Kurian Zone, and of course had encouraged the citizens of the Free Territory to own them as well, even if they were on the telephone network. Caches of radios had probably been hidden along with weapons when Solon's forces overran the Free Territory. If Governor Pawls was about to make a statement, chances were he had in mind speaking to those of his former citizens who still possessed theirs, and if they still had radios they probably had weapons. Valentine hoped for a call to rise. The Ozarks, especially near the borders, were full of self-reliant men and women who knew how to organize and fight in small groups. With his guns at the center of the Quisling transport network, the Kurians would have difficulty stamping out fires.
"We're live, sir. Just let me know when you want to pipe it through," Jimenez said. Valentine heard a voice through the padding on the earphones. He picked up another pair.
