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Mr. Lincoln, the only man killed, had been running to jump in the river when the charges in the legworm went off. There was some bickering when his underage daughter, who had accompanied him to the Assembly, was given his place in the voting. Some said her sobs swayed a few critical votes.
He heard the commotion, the yells and firearms being discharged after the vote was tallied.
Some security. There weren't supposed to be firearms in the conference center. Well, Valentine's men were responsible for the streets; it was the sergeant at arms of the Assembly who'd been negligent. That, or after the bomb attack, they'd allowed the delegates to arm themselves.
Valentine sent a detail under a formidably tall Texan to get the delegates to unload their pieces and opened up a line of communication to Lambert at Fort Seng, which could radio relay to Southern Command.
Tikka herself was the first out of the convention center. She had a red streamer tied to the barrel of her rifle. The streamer matched the flame in her eyes.
"The vote was 139 to 31!" she said, leaping into Valentine's arms and wrapping her hard-muscled legs around his back. Her lips were hot and vital. "Five blanks in protest," she said when she was finished kissing him. "Cowards."
"For the Cause?" Valentine asked.
"I wouldn't have run otherwise," she said. "I want to fuck, to celebrate. You had a hand in this."
"That's all I can afford to put in at the moment. I'm on duty."
"Isn't part of your duty to maintain close contact with your Kentucky allies?"
"The closest kind of cooperation," Valentine said. "But we've just had a bomb explode, and no one seems to have any idea who brought a forty-foot legworm into town and how it was parked next to the Assembly."
She slipped off. "Too bad. May I use your radio? I want to communicate with my command."
Energetic Tikka. Denied one piece of equipment, she'll requisition another.
Valentine nodded and led her to his radio operator. Tikka almost bodychecked him out of his chair in her eagerness to put the headset on. Valentine knew he should really get it confirmed and look at an official roll count for his own report, but he trusted Tikka.
Valentine noted the time and vote on his duty log, and carefully covered the page so the cheap pencil (taken from the narthex of a New Universal Church, where lots are available to write "confessions," which were, in practice, accusations against a relative or neighbor) wouldn't smear. You never know what might end up in some museum case.
"Yes," Tikka said over the radio. "Put Warfoot into effect and open up the training camps." She pressed her earpiece to her head. "Oh, that's a big affirmative. Couldn't have gone better. Lost one delegate, but every cause needs a martyr."
Valentine, when he later considered her words over the radio, wondered just how large a role Tikka had in Mr. Lincoln's martyrdom. He hoped Tikka was just being her usual, brutally direct self. What he'd seen of the birth of the Kentucky Freehold was bloody enough, without adding deliberate political murder to the tally.
boro, December: Kentucky's third largest city, though a little smaller than nearby Evansville, has a vaguely Bohemian air to it. Long a riverfront town, Owensboro had its moments of fame: Its courthouse was burned by Confederate raiders during the Civil War, and once, at the turn of the twenthieth century, it had been shaping up to be one of the pivot points of the new automobile industry before being eclipsed by Ford in Detroit. It was also notable for being the site of the last public hanging in the United States, that of Rainey Bethea for the rape and murder of a septuagenarian named Lischa Edwards in the 1930s.
If Lexington is more bustling thanks to its status as a transport hub linking the Georgia Control and the rest of the middle and deep south Kurian Zones with the Ordnance and others to the north, and Louisville more industrious because of the huge legworm-rendering plants that turn quasi-insectoid flesh and a corn syrup sauce into WHAM!, Owensboro is proud of its cultural heritage. It prides itself on barbecue and bluegrass and, even in the reduced circumstances of the Kurian era, still manages to hold a few festivals a year dedicated to food and drink.
Now it is a popular watering hole for wealthy members of the Northwest Ordnance visiting from their vast homes and ranches in the delightful hills of southern Kentucky and the bluegrass outside Louisville. They enjoy the nominally illicit thrill of a visit across the river to dine and shop. The backdoor and under-the-table nature of the commerce along Owensboro's main street is the sizzle for goods that are often counterfeit, courtesy of the wily Kentuckians. The "Greek" olive oil is from Georgia, the "Colombian" coffee from Alabama, and the "Swiss" chocolate could be bought ten times cheaper in Pennsylvania. The gold in the quarter bars allegedly taken from Fort Knox is real enough; the identifying stamps aren't.
The bourbon, musical instruments, and barbecue sauce is real, however, as is the Kentucky weed. For some reason, plants that have been grown from seeds that passed through the digestive tract of a legworm are considered more valuable.
The giant sassafras tree-according to the locals the largest in the world-is still standing. It was recently the site of another public hanging, that of one of the Moondaggers from the nearby power plant who'd gone over the fence only to be run down by the city's impromptu militia, mobilized to render aid to Southern Command in the return of their plant workers.
The city is quieter than usual this December. Though often subdued in the winter, this time around the city is in lockdown. It's not the troubles at the power plant, or the revolt in Evansville, or the proximity of the forces of Southern Command that has closed the bridge and wharf to Kurian Order traffic. It is the great groups of strangers of all varieties coming in, from long-haired legworm ranchers to statuesque urbane females with gleaming leather courier bags and attractive wool suits.
There's a good deal of speculation about who the strangers are. The locals, for all their guitar picking and hurdy-gurdy cranking and trucks with smuggling compartments over the axles, are keener observers of Kentucky politics than it might seem. They suspect that they're playing host to the Kentucky Assembly but are willing to let history be made before they start talking about it in the main street's many cafes and bandstand joints.
The Crucible Legion, as it was now being styled, had its first field operation providing security on the streets of Owensboro. Valentine had a standing order to put anyone who called it "Valentine's Legion" to work filling potholes, and it didn't take many days of punishment with wheelbarrow and shovel before the name disappeared.
Both the informal name and the formal request to go to Owensboro had come through Brother Mark, who'd decamped without a moment's rest to the Assembly at Elizabethtown and engineered its move to Owensboro.
Valentine and Lambert allocated two companies to the security detail, one to provide a presence on the streets in town and a second in reserve just to the west, ready to move to the west bridge or travel on the Owensboro bypass as needed. Valentine gave the street detail's command to Ediyak, and Patel's company had the reserve duty. Ediyak had an intelligent charm about her that would mix well with civilians, and Patel could be relied upon to get his men from A to B in a hurry if it became necessary.
Valentine had little to do but get to know the town and keep his men from talking too much in the bars or being too high profile on the streets. The soldiers of the legion had the unusual orders to keep out of the establishments of the downtown they were guarding.
He felt odd patrolling a town not in Southern Command control, but as the Owensboro Emergency Council explained it, the delegates didn't trust some of the hotheads in the more vociferous clans not to try to storm the convention center and force the vote their way at gunpoint.
While the forces of Southern Command couldn't be called "neutrals" in Kentucky politics, they were famous for letting the civilians carry out votes without anything more than a soldier's fatalistic interest in the events of elected officials.
