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"Possibly. But I don't think our good commander would appreci-ate me hovering around her at headquarters, feeling the staff up until the hooded hours. I'd rather not have another noose put around my neck." He tugged at his collar, as if he could still feel the rope's abrasive coil.
"No sense wasting time," Valentine said. "Come to the headquarters tent tor that glop that's passing for coffee. I need to talk to you about visiting the legworm clans anyway.
Perhaps you can help with snack table."
Luckily Valentine could lose himself in the detail of his position and his appetite's arousal as the food trays came in. As the nighttime activity commenced, his collection of officers gave Moondagger position reports from the Wolves and a Cat who'd single-handedly dispatched a three-man patrol, keeping one alive for interrogation. Clean bit of work, that. Valentine would talk that up with the companies as he passed through them on the march. Nervous pickets liked to hear that the other side suffered its own devils in the dark.
Bloom listened rather absently. She only spoke once.
"Send that prisoner back to the Moondaggers. Tell them if they'll leave us alone, we'll leave them alone."
A less Bloom-like order Valentine could hardly imagine. She earned her rank during Archangel by taking her company forward, hammering in the morning, hammering in the evening, hammering at suppertime (as the old song went) against Solon's forces at Arkansas Post to cut off the river.
Then there were more mundane announcements such as the discovery of leaking propane tanks in the mobile generator reserve-he'd put his old company on finding more-and the field kitchen was running short of cooking oil and barbecue sauce.
Legworm meat needed lots of barbecue sauce to make it palatable.
Valentine wondered if his opposite number in the Moondaggers was listening to his own briefing, worried over just what had happened to that three-man patrol and dealing with a shortage of hydrogen fuel cells for the command cars.
Brother Mark made himself useful. After giving his briefing regarding their allies'
dwindling enthusiasm, he went about the room with a coffee pot, touching distracted officers and staff and asking for refills. Now and then he shrugged at Valentine or shook his head.
Valentine passed close and noticed that Brother Mark was sweat-ing from the effort.
Tiddle took some catching, but Brother Mark finally managed to corner him and point out that his cuff and elbow were both frayed-Tiddle had spilled his bike with his trick riding.
Valentine held his breath-he liked Tiddle.
Brother Mark sighed and shook his head.
"Perhaps it is someone not on the staff," he whispered, patting Red Dog's head as they passed. "Good God," he said, shocked.
"What?" Valentine asked, but he knew.
Brother Mark led him out of the tent. "It's the dog."
"How?"
"I don't know. Perhaps they've made some alteration to the animal, modified its brain. It seems a normal enough dog."
"It's the perfect spy," Valentine said. "It can't give anything away. Dogs won't break under duress and talks."
"You're wrong there, Valentine. I got a flash of something. A little of the Kurian's mind. I broke it off. I've had enough of that to last me more than a lifetime."
"How do we break the dog's hold on her?"
"A strong endorphin response. Alarm, maybe. An orgasm might be perfect."
Valentine could just picture Duvalier's reaction to that bit of line-of-duty cocksmanship.
She'd herniate herself laughing.
"Regulations," Valentine said.
"You'll have to come up with something. Perhaps just explaining it to her, so she was conscious of it-"
"If there's some kind of connection between her mind and the Kurian, I'd like to use it, not break it. Play with the dog a little, see if you can get anything."
