AllFreeNovel
Share Us
"Thank you, sir. Not for the land; for the chance to get back to important work."
Valentine raised his voice, hoping the woman inside was listening. "It's just for a few months' work, all in the Free Territory. Training. When we step out, you'll come back here with your rank permanently raised. I'll promote someone else into your place."
"We shall see. You say you need men trained? Not Wolves?"
"Unfortunately, no. Regulars, more or less. I'm due at Camp Liberty in six days. Is that enough time to get your affairs in order?"
"Camp Liberty? Yes, if I have the written orders."
Valentine opened his rucksack and extracted his order book. "I pre-filled out most of it.
Except your . . ." He lowered his voice. "Next of kin. That kind of thing."
"I know where to submit the copies," Patel said.
"Thank you, Nilay. It'll only be a few months. I can promise her that, if you like."
"Don't. It would be better coming from me. She knows promises don't mean much where the Cause is concerned."
"I could find housing for her, you know. You wouldn't have to be separated so much."
"I think she would prefer to keep fixing this place. She's a better carpenter and painter than me anyway. When it comes to homely matters I'm fit only for ditch digging. Besides, she has a sister in Russelville. She will be better here."
Valentine ate his sandwich, wondering if she'd spit in the mustard. They talked about old friends until it was time to leave.
Patel's eyes shone with excitement as they shook hands. Odd that Valentine was now the reluctant one. Maybe it was the faint sobbing from inside the house.
Camp Liberty, November: The word "camp" implies a certain bucolic simplicity, but Camp Liberty is anything but. It is in fact a small town once named Stuttgart: "The Rice and Duck Capital of the World."
A few old-timers remain in town, "making do" as the locals say with the constant influx and outflow of people picked up from the banks of the Mississippi. Everything from exhausted, half-starved families to rogue river patrol units who beached their boat and ran for it are funneled into Liberty.
The former Camp Liberty, which stood just south of town, headquartered at the old high school just off Route 79, was destroyed during Solon's takeover. Much of Stuttgart's housing was demolished and populace was herded into "temporaries"-prefabricated homes designed for easier concentration of a populace, a Kurian specialty. Solon had great plans for the rice-growing region, and construction materials were hauled in for apartment buildings, a New Universal Church Community Apex, even a theater. When Solon's Trans-Missippi order collapsed, most of the residents fled the wire-bordered housing, happy to abandon the roof over their heads for wider horizons.
Southern Command was not about to let the construction gear, raw materials, and prefabricated housing go to waste, so Stuttgart became the new Camp Liberty and work began on a new hospital, training and orientation center, and combined primary I secondary school for children who escaped the KZ with their parents.
Meanwhile, their elders were put to work in the rice mills, when they weren't attending class to acclimate them to life in tougher, but freer, lands.
When David Valentine visited Liberty, it was the finest facility of its kind in the Texas and Ozark Free Republics-and it was still under construction.
* * * *
After checking their luggage at the station, Valentine paid for a horse cart so he and his new sergeant major could ride through town-or the camp, rather-saving Patel's legs from the walk.
They passed through two checkpoints-there were no wire, towers, or searchlights at least visible from Main Street, as Valentine learned. There were guards watching from a balcony or two, and more mounted officers riding horses chatted and swapped news with the locals.
They held handkerchiefs over their faces as they passed through construction dust. Men in dungarees with sleeves and trouser legs of different colors were digging a foundation.
"POWs?" Patel asked.
"Doesn't look like it. I don't see a single guard," Valentine said.
"Look at all the signage," Patel said, gesturing to a general store. A universal white stick figure pushed a wheeled basket across a plain green background. Iconography for beds, phones, and even babies and animals hung over other doors or were stuck into second-floor windows. The streets, too, were color coded and marked with animal-cracker outlines.
Valentine had visited more Kurian Zones than even an experienced soldier like Patel. He was used to signs both written and in iconography. It hadn't registered this time for some reason.
"It's for illiterates," Valentine said. "Shopping cart for store, dollar sign for bank, syringe for medical center . . ."
Of course in the Free Territory there wouldn't be a smiley face for the NUC building.
