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Valentine tapped the clipboard. "Son, the war's over here. We're reorganizing. It's better to be reorganizing than reorganized. I'm at full complement, but your brother asked very nicely. He's a smart man, and I always have room for another smart man."
Clipton Abica shook his head, looking at his brother rather than Valentine.
"Six years in and you'll get an allotment if you want. I'm about to make your brother a corporal, and I'm sure you'd rise too. Find a nice gal, or you can have your pick out of the pens waiting to go. It's hard but it's life. Any POWs we don't assimilate-" Valentine waved his hand out at the dripping water.
Abica broke in on the rain. "Do it, bro. Don't forget about Ma and Sinse and our cousins. They're caught up in this somewhere. Us being dead won't help them."
Clipton Abica picked up the brimming shot glass and smelled the whiskey appreciatively. "Better than strained brake fluid."
"You know it," Abica said.
The parolee tipped it into his mouth, put down the glass next to the clipboard, then with a lunge spat it at his brother and Valentine. He sent the clipboard skittering across the table at Valentine, who blocked it with his palm.
"Fuck both of you! Throw me-"
Ahn-Kha grabbed the man in a bear hug and dragged him out of the tent screaming and kicking. Valentine heard a few faint obscenities as Roybesson put him in handcuffs.
Abica looked out at the sight of his brother thrust into the mud, Ahn-Kha's sheep-sized thigh pressing into the small of his brother's back.
Ahn-Kha and Roybesson dragged him off.
"Why didn't we just tell him-"
"The truth?" Valentine asked. He refilled the glass and pushed it toward Abica. "We could have. But your brother's doing more for us back behind barbed wire."
"How's that?"
"They have spies among the prisoners. I'm sure of it. Your brother talking about what a rotten, traitorous, son of a bitch he's related to backs up all our stories."
Abica smelled the whiskey, looking more morose than his brother. Valentine thought he'd be sprayed a second time, but Abica drank it with a grimace. He shook his head. "I'm proud of Clip, sir. I'm proud of him. Dunno if I'd've done the same. I'm damn proud."
"How do you feel about yourself?"
"Like a shit."
"Welcome to the Cats, Abica."
* * * *
"You don't owe me an explanation, sir," Post said later, in Valentine's tent. Valentine sighed, exhausted and wrung out. The faint smell of his whiskey shower made him feel like a barfly at last call. "But why didn't you just let the levee breach?"
The river was under control; the water level had stabilized.
Reports from upriver said within a day it should fall. The rest of the struggle would be a holding action. Valentine wanted to be on his back in his bunk, but he couldn't be that discourteous to a subordinate, friend or no. He sat on the edge of his cot, rubbing the prickly growth on his skull. Ahn-Kha made a clattering noise outside as he fashioned an oil-drum cook-stove that could double as a water heater.
"We're being watched. No, it's not one of my feelings, it's logic. It may be Xray-Tango, or the bat-winged bastards in the tower. I don't know if they're suspicious, or just trying to figure out what kind of officer I am. But I had to go above and beyond. Xray-Tango said he liked initiative; he's getting it. Not that I'm going to cry another river if the levee falls; it's just not going to happen on my watch, or in my view."
Post looked out the tent flap. The drizzle had finally stopped. "Back on the old Thunderbolt I swore I'd never wear their uniform, or help them, again. But I'm killing myself to save racks of shells so they can be fired on my new side. It gets stuck in my craw, Val."
"Have the men said anything?"
"Not even jokes, at least in my hearing. They're scared of giving anything away. I would be too, surrounded by an army and minus a gun."
"They're working as hard as they would have if they'd been captured and put in a labor camp."
"They're better fed. I've been over to the prison camp."
Valentine shot a glance up at Post, who looked like someone had just stepped on his corns. "When were you there?"
