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The forces of the Northwest Ordnance had removed their barricades and some of the fencing to allow the invasion force to rumble across the bridge, its formation undisturbed. The Woolies found no resistance to their rush.
Panic struck the soldiers of Ohio's elite force. Immunization or no, an inoculation wasn't proof against one's injection arm being yanked out of its socket.
Valentine, having seen the destruction visited on Kentucky, rejoiced at like medicine being distributed among the "relief" forces parked in a long file along the highway.
He heard the drone of an engine. A plane hove into view.
"Bee!" Valentine said. He formed his hands into wings and had them crash.
Bee grinned from among her bandages, licked a bullet, and slid it into her big Grog gun. She put the gun to her shoulder and raised the barrel to the sky, as though it were a flag. The barrel began to descend as smoothly as a fine watch hand, lining up with the approaching plane, which had turned to pass directly over the bridge so that its flight path matched the north-south span.
It was a two-engine plane. She'd have to be quick to take out both as it passed over the bridge.
The plane dove, seeming to head straight for them. It hadn't started sprinkling its nerve agent yet, not wanting to lay it on their own forces.
Bee brought the gun barrel down, down, down, humming to herself. She fired.
The plane didn't so much as wobble. It continued its pass, remorseless. Valentine waited for the fine spray of nerve agent that would lock up heart and limb-
The plane shot over their heads, wingtips still, level as a board, engines roaring and flaps down, following a perfect five-degree decline to hit and skip and cartwheel into the woods of Kentucky.
Valentine heard firing from the other side of the bridge. A gasoline explosion lit up the low winter clouds.
Valentine tried to tell himself that he was killing two birds with one stone, not slaughtering civilians to confuse a military offensive.
"I know what the editorial in the Clarion would be," Boelnitz said. "Southern Command Uses Bioweapons in Indiana Massacre."
Valentine was inclined to agree: both that they'd use the headline and that the headline was true. But you had to give the enemy whatever flavor of hell they gave you. "Of course, you could add some picturesque color thanks to your firsthand experiences."
"Hell with them," Boelnitz said. "You know, the publisher used to tell me, 'It's always more complicated than a headline.' That's only so much bovine scat one can tolerate. Our headline here is pretty easy. 'Victory.' They should have offered, instead of threatened."
"I hope we can remember that," Valentine said. "You know, Llwellyn or Boelnitz or whatever you want to call yourself, Kentucky could use a newspaper. It's one of the building blocks of a civilization. What do you say? Want to bring the first amendment back to Kentucky?"
Boelnitz smiled. "I have a feeling that as long as you're here, there'll be no end of stories."
Fort Seng, February, the fifty-sixth year of the Kurian Order. The snow has melted and the winter has returned to normal. Old-timers are predicting an early spring, perhaps to balance the fierce January weather.
The losses of Kentucky are great and still being counted. But the damages from the ravies virus could have been much worse. As it turned out, the snow that the Kurians hoped would freeze Kentucky's population in place while their disease swept across the wooded hills worked against its spread rather than for it-the towns hardest hit by the virus were contained by the weather, rather than the reverse.
It was a meager, hard winter, but it is ending. The shortages and bitter cold are fading as new winds blow and new supply lines are created. Old, tattered uniforms are traded in for the new pattern, and equipment and weapons improve as equipment is gleaned and reconditioned from the fight near the Owensboro west bridge.
Also, there is the knowledge that they won a victory against the best that the Northwest Ordnance could muster, even if the ravies victims paid the tab on that victorious banquet.
Valentine never suffered even a quiver from the ravies bites.
Had the iodine and antibiotics worked? He didn't know. It hadn't done Keve Rockaway any good. When last Valentine heard, Rockaway was an invalid on the huge ranch straddling the Texas- Oklahoma border country. His mother had retired from public life to nurse him, and the real leader of the ranch was the new ex-Bear named Chieftain. Mrs. O'Coombe had arranged for three hundred head of first-class beef cattle to be brought to Kentucky in exchange for a few legworms and men with the experience to breed them. According to her, the ranch encompassed a good deal of wasteland that might support legworms.
She even spoke of establishing a horse farm or two nearby. Southern Command always needed fresh horseflesh.
But that was trivia. Valentine wondered how Southern Command had managed to have an effective vaccine to a strain of ravies that had never been deployed. Or perhaps it was just a very, very happy accident that Southern Command's latest vaccine was also proof against the Kurians' newest weapon.
So many questions that needed answering.
"I do have one piece of good news," Lambert said one morning at a meeting with Valentine. "We're in radio contact with the Bulletproof through the Army of Kentucky. They said a certain oversized yellow Grog of old acquaintance staggered into their camp pulling a cart full of kids. He had pink ribbons tied to his ears and a teddy bear riding between his ears."
It was the best news Valentine had heard since Narcisse's reply to the letter he'd had Mantilla deliver. She and Blake would await his instructions about joining him in Kentucky, once he arranged with a river rat for properly discreet transport. "Ahn-Kha is alive?"
"A little chewed up, they said. Their chief promised to send him here just as soon as a worm can be saddled this spring."
