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"He's also been prominent in the Kurian Order longer than I've been alive."
The sorrowful spaniel in black rose.
"I'm not sure the guerrillas rate a term like 'army' from such professionals," Brother Mark said. "May I call them partisans without offending anyone? Good. The partisan army in the Virginias-Kentucky borderland triangle isn't like the military as you understand it. It is a small cadre of leaders who go from place to place, where they temporarily swell their numbers in order to destroy a specific objective, be it a mine or a tunnel or a garrison house.
With the job done the guerrillas return to their homes and remove and telltales of their participation. Still with me?"
Valentine could tell from the exchanged glances and squeaking shifts in weight the officers were uncomfortable being addressed by a churchman. Or maybe it was the patronizing tone.
"There's a potential in that part of the country for a true Freehold. With regular soldiers such as yourselves to handle external threats, the populace could organize its own defense on a county-by-county basis. I'd say the population is six-to-one in favor of the guerrillas, though they've seen enough reprisals to be chary of rising up en masse. Not the best specimens in that part of the country, either physical or mental."
He paused again to let his gaze rove over the room. He settled his stare on Captain Moytana, who had the thumb of his fist pressed to his mouth as if to keep his lips from opening.
"Yes, we all know what happened when a rising like this was attempted in Kansas. Unlike Kansas, we already have local fighters in place who've lost their fear of the Kurians. This time the rising won't take place until your forces arrive and are integrated with the locals."
Lambert spoke again: "It's not Kansas. The Kurians are holding on to their mines by their fingernails. A couple strikes on key Kurian held centers, destruction of the local constabulary, and a few Reapers burned out of their basement lairs would greatly further the Cause in North America."
A hand went up, and Lambert nodded.
"That's awfully near Washington," a lieutenant colonel named Jolla with the big bugs said.
He was perhaps the oldest man at the briefing other than General Lehman. Campaign ribbons under his name lay in neat rows like a brick wall. "They're tender about that, what with all those Church academies and colleges and such. The Kurians in New York and Philly and Pits would unite."
"The Green Mountains are just as close," Lambert said. "There's a Freehold there. Smaller than ours, but they're managing."
"Can we count on them to take some of the heat off?" a youngish Guard major named Bloom asked.
"You won't be alone," Brother Mark said. "God sees to that."
Valentine glanced around the assembly. Some eyes were rolling, expecting a mossbacked homily.
"You'll have a friends to the west," Brother Mark said. "The guerrillas are getting help from some of the legworm ranchers in Kentucky. About four years ago the Ordnance-that's the political organization north of the Ohio, for those of you unfamiliar with the area ... as I said, the legworm ranchers have grown restive, especially since the Ordnance began conducting raids into their territory, coming after deserters and guerrillas."
Valentine, who had fled into Kentucky from the Ordnance as something between a guerrilla and a deserter, could tell the assembly didn't like their renegade churchman. The officers were keeping their faces too blank when they listened.
"Some of the troops won't like it," a Guard captain said. "That's a long way from home."
"Their forefathers went ten times as far against lesser evils," Brother Mark said.
This time General Lehman came to his rescue. "Tell 'em what the gals in Kentucky look like, brought up on milk and legworm barbecue. You know that area, Valentine."
"They're pretty enough. Tough too," Valentine said, thinking of Tikka from the Bulletproof.
"All that time in the saddle. The backhill bourbon's smooth. Everybody and his cousin has a recipe. Some of the older ones will want to allot out and become whiskey barons."
"Whiskey barons," someone chuckled. "They'll like the sound of that."
* * * *
The second day they broke into working groups. The big bugs from the one end divided assembly into three groups: "combat," "support and liason," and "hunter."
Valentine ended up in the support and liason group, under the bald lieutenant colonel with the wall of campaign ribbons who'd asked the question about how the Kurians would react to a new Freehold. Valentine wondered if the question hadn't been prearranged by Lambert.
"Don't be fooled by all this," Jolla chuckled, tapping the campaign ribbons. "Just means I'm old. I don't know much more about Highbeam than you. They called me in because I know how to keep the soup pots full for an army on the march." Valentine couldn't help liking him.
Some of the other officers who knew him from other campaigns called him "Jolly." Jolla told those in Valentine's team to do the same.
There were study guides to go through about Kentucky, the Virginias, and the surrounding areas. Every day Valentine lugged around two hundred or more pages of text and maps in Southern Command's battered three-ring binders, with tabs for future additions as the operational plans were developed. An artist, or maybe just a bored student, had sewn a denim cover on Valentine's binder at some point or other. Valentine smiled when he saw William Post's name as one of the intelligence staff who'd prepared background. Post was at Southern Command's general headquarters now, studying and tracking Quisling military formations and assessing their capabilities.
