AllFreeNovel
Share Us
For relaxation he played chess with Rand. Rand won most of the time. He was such a talented, cold player that Valentine wondered if he made intentional mistakes out of curiosity to see what his CO would do when presented with an opportunity, just to give his brain a new set of data points and challenges. Rand apparently never let anyone behind the shield of his professionalism, even when they chatted after their chess games about the progress of the company.
They weren't close, but he was as fine a junior officer as Valentine could ever want.
Then came the spring storms. The camp began to buzz. As usual, the men had somehow picked up that something was about to happen and soon, days before Valentine got his orders to report to a final briefing.
* * * *
The camp grapevine proved to be right. All future leaves were canceled, the day trips into town ended, and last-minute munitions arrived, including a small supply of Quickwood bullets.
With the gear, the important men and women who came equipped with bodyguards, advisers, secretaries, and drivers began to arrive the next day. Valentine gave the same status report for his company three times in one day.
It would have been four but General Lehman cut him off as Valentine spoke to him in the base officers' club that never really got going. The dusty chairs, old movie posters, and license plates from the states making up the UFR all looked like they wanted to be put out of their misery.
"Javelin's under step-off orders, Major. Any reason your men can't go with it?"
"No, General."
"Heard good things about you. Gage says your men have been giving him hell playing OPFOR."
"That's kind of him, General."
"Not sure I like you training Grogs though. Sniffer dogs have their purposes, but you don't want them juggling grenades." He stopped, waiting for an answer.
"Of course not, sir."
An aide appeared and handed Lehman a flimsy. Lehman excused himself, scanned it, and nodded his head yes as he handed it back.
"They'll add a bit of verisimilitude to the, what is it, technical crew your men are supposed to look like."
"That's the idea, sir."
"A good one. Yours?"
"No, one of the Liberty recruit's. She's company clerk now."
"I don't trust ex-Quislings much farther than I can throw them. They caused us a lot of trouble before. Hope it works out for you. See you at the briefing tonight, Valentine.
Dismissed."
The briefing, held in the guarded mess hall and using chairs begged and borrowed from every headquarters tent in the brigade, was mercifully brief. Which was just as well; the blackout curtains killed airflow as well as light. More than a hundred bodies burned a lot of calories over a couple hours. The tent quickly became stuffy.
Lehman opened it with a few words about how javelins were used in ancient warfare to strike troops behind the front ranks. Lambert and Sime and a few new faces were there, politicians most likely. In the throng of uniformed aides and assistants stood one man in hunting gear who took a lot of notes and a few pictures. Valentine guessed he was from the Battle Cry, Southern Command's military newspaper.
Conspicuously absent, at least to Valentine, were Brother Mark and Moytana's senior Wolf lieutenant. Rumor had it they were already in the Kurian Zone, somewhere north of Memphis.
What combination of diplomacy and guerrilla havoc might be already under way? If Valentine had had his choice of assignments for this operation, he would have been with them as well. But support and logistics would be critical in an operation this far from Southern Commands bases.
Seng gave some final instructions for the movement to Rally Base, the terminus for the operation's communications with GHQ and what would one day, hopefully, be a routing station for troops staging trips to or back from the new Freehold on the northern Cumberland Plateau and Appalachians.
The campaign map had a few new notations. Three Cats had been dispatched to Kentucky, spaced out along their line of march. Logistics Commandos had infiltrated in behind the Cats.
Valentine wondered what they'd been told about Highbeam, or Javelin, or whatever false information they'd been fed in case of capture.
Lambert look strained. But she collected her old briskness for a few words to the assembled officers.
"Yes, this operation is a risk," she said. The junior officers and senior NCOs had just found out their true destination from Colonel Seng. The news was still sinking in.
"But the coal country of Virginia, and the legworms of Kentucky, are both key to the Kurian Order. Civilization needs electricity and the people living in that civilization need protein."
