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"You're with the liberation, right? Underground says that all of Kentucky's rising. We're listening on the AM radio. Some of us made crystal sets. They took the transmitter at Bowling Green and are talking about all those Moondagger throats that got cut at their supply depot south of Frankfort."
"How do we know you're telling the truth?" Duvalier said.
The boy looked shocked, as if his long swim across the river should be proof enough.
"There's street fighting in Evansville. Some of the OPs came over to our side. Hit the downtown armory. We burned a representative when it ran into the mayor's city house.
They're looking for its bones now."
"You say Kentucky is rising?"
"Of course. We thought you were part of that."
Valentine felt hope, real hope, for the first time since the catastrophe at Utrecht.
"Are we part of it?" Valentine asked Bloom.
"If we're not, we sure as hell will be by dawn," Bloom said.
"What else can you tell us?" Valentine asked the boy.
His eyes were so bright and white in the gloom of the headquarters tent, Valentine was almost hypnotized as the boy looked around. "Except for the river guard, there's not much in the way of troops in town, just some riot police holding the Kur Pinnacle. They called up most everyone they could trust from the area into the militia and sent them across the river.
Hospitals in Frankfort and Lexington and Louisville are bursting with wounded. The Ordnance is mobilizing; they're skeered legworms'll be crossing the Ohio and into their state. My chief says to tell you that he's got boats and a couple of old barges. We can rig lines from the bridge and get you across if your guns can clear the river."
He was an intelligent youth. Valentine could see why they sent him.
"What's your name, kid?"
"Jones, H. T. Youth Vanguard, but I'm only in it for the sports trips. Quit now, I hope.
Vanguard service is just a rotten apple, shiny on the outside."
Bloom studied the brigade's defensive positions on her map. A few of the companies had been bled down to little more than platoons. A careful assessment of the mortar readiness status sheet would bring either tears or laughter. "Valentine, can we get one more fight out of the brigade, do you think?"
"I'll ask them," Valentine said.
Duvalier shook her head. "It's another gaslighting. This greasy little squirt's eyeing up a brass ring."
"Hey," the boy said, but Valentine held up his hand.
Bloom thought it over.
"Valentine, take your old company and go across the river and offer assistance. If we can catch a break in the city, safely tuck away our wounded. We can make that dash into Illinios and get to the mighty Miss."
"Define assistance, sir." Valentine hated to sound like he was crabbing out from under orders. "If it's to be combat to clear the city, I'd like a Bear team at least. If they're holed up in the manner this boy describes, I'll need demolition gear too."
"Just get over there and make an assessment. Use your judgment. We've got those two big guns we captured. Might as well use them for something other than blind fire on crossroads behind us."
* * * *
They came across in the dead of night in an unlit barge, downriver, and marched through a muddy, overgrown tangle of long-dead industry on the riverbank to the west side of town.
Evansville itself burned and rattled with the occasional pop of gunfire.
Bodies hung from the streetlamps. One torn-frocked churchman still clutched his Guidon in the grip of rigor mortis as he twirled in the fall breeze.
He made contact with the local resistance, a trio of a butcher, a teacher, and the man who ran the main telephone office. All introduced themselves first as belonging to the Evansville Resistance Lodge.
