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The biggest building is reminiscent of a French chateau, a former museum complete with turret and gardens, broad patios all around, and decorative walls. Though long since stripped of its valuable Audubon prints, it still has pleasant, sun-filled rooms. The Moondaggers, hurrying up from Bowling Green to cut Southern Command off from its escape into Illinois, used its comfortable rooms as a headquarters and relocated the powerful Evansville Quisling who'd occupied the place to one of the two guest homes behind the pool patio. He and his family fled to the Northwest Ordnance as Colonel Bloom's columns approached.
Southern Command occupied the building with very little alteration. Of course the prayer mats and Kurian iconography had to go-unless the former were clean sheepskin or made of precious metals in the case of the latter. Southern Command set up a permanent hospital in the old staff quarters: The cooking area and numerous small rooms fitted for two were ideal for the purpose.
The flagpole now bears Southern Command's five-pointed star and the stylized white-and-red handshake of the Kentucky Alliance-UNITED WE STAND.
Behind the estate house is a parking lot with an oversized limestone gatehouse. That became the unofficial duty office and clearing center as Javelin reorganized itself after their losses on the long retreat across Kentucky and the battles with the Moondaggers. The rich Quisling's driver and mechanics once lived at the gatehouse, and he expanded the place to add overnight accommodations for his friends' drivers and a small canteen for staff. Javelin turned the canteen into a recreation club and also a grill where any soldier could get a quick bite, on duty or off.
Valentine noticed the improvements to the camp as soon as he led his party up past the small organized mountains of debarked supplies on Henderson Landing. He checked in Lambert, his hatchet men and medical staff, and Pencil Boelnitz under the watchful eyes of the sentries on the western side of the main highway's pared-down bridges into Evansville. They walked up past artillery positions shielded by hill from direct fire from the river, and communication lines strung to observers ready to order fire down on river traffic, but the Ohio was empty that day.
As there was plenty of daylight left, Valentine sent the hatchet men and medicos under gate-guide to their appropriate headquarters and borrowed some horses to take Lambert and Pencil Boelnitz on a tour of the battlefield where they'd attacked the Moondaggers. He showed them were the guns were sighted, where the Jones boy had swum the river, the spot where Rand had fallen.
Rand had to be remembered somewhere. Valentine described him in detail to Boelnitz. Such promise, lost.
From the site of Rand's death Valentine could still see in his mind's eye his old company's heavy weapons Grogs, Ford and Chevy, gamboling forward with one long arm to add speed to what looked like an unbalanced canter, the other carrying their support weapons the way regular soldiers tote automatic rifles.
"We saw them run," Valentine said, pointing out the final Moondagger line. "After all the tough talk about reprisals, roads lined with crucified, blinded, tongueless prisoners, men who'd be burned alive in cages, they ran. They wept when they surrendered too, begged, wiped our muddy boots with their beards."
"What did you do with the prisoners?" Boelnitz asked.
Valentine smiled. Perhaps his reputation had preceded him again. "Exchanged the foot soldiers for some of ours. The Moondaggers lied in some cases and handed over dead men-one or two still warm-in exchange for theirs. According to their philosophy, we're a 'gutter people' who can be lied to if it'll help defeat us. I think they forgot how much we gutter people enjoy kicking the asses of those who label us gutter people. Evansville is keeping a few more in their county lockup for trial. There are a lot of murders and rapes in Kentucky to be answered for. Still, wish we'd bagged a colonel or two. No offense, Colonel Lambert."
Lambert just turned up the corner of her mouth, lost in the hazy sunshine. Her eyes weren't interested, her questions perfunc tory and polite.
The trees were as brown and bare as a tanned stripper gearing up for her big reveal.
"The big bugs got away, as usual," Valentine finished. He noticed that even the husks of the dead Moondagger vehicles had been hauled away. Probably melted down for scrap after every ounce of conductive metal had been torn out.
Valentine led them over to the old highway running south out of Evansville. Some of the buildings on the double-laned highway showed signs of occupation. A grease pit and a bar had opened up, and some mule wagons were parked in front of an old store. Valentine's ears picked up sounds of construction from within.
He wondered what the soldiers of Javelin were using for money. They'd probably picked up a lot of odds and ends on the retreat across Kentucky, or had looted watches and rings from dead Moondaggers-Southern Command turned a blind eye to some of the more ghoulish habits of her soldiers, especially after a victory. Valentine had seen ashtrays made out of Grog hands and rocking chairs with stretched, gray, fuzzy skin stapled to the supports, date and place of the former wearer's death inked discreetly into a corner of the leather.
After the tour of the battlefield, they turned east of the road and into the shadow of tall trees. Just outside the roadblock at the sentry post, with a fresh-painted sign identifying everything behind the gate as belonging to Southern Command and notifying all that trespassers may be treated as spies, a curious little vehicle stood. It was a cross between a chariot and a station wagon. The odd sort of tandem motorbike had a stiff bar leading back to a hollowed-out shell of a station wagon, its engine compartment hoodless and filled only with cargo netting.
A man in a rather greasy black suit, his white dog collar frayed and holes at the knees and elbows, gave them a halloo. He had a pinched look to his face, like someone had grabbed him by the ears and given a good pull.
"Free doughnuts, fresh made today. Come right over-all are welcome."
Valentine glanced at the sentry pacing the gate barrier who'd pricked up his ears at the singsong greeting. The corporal shrugged.
Valentine's eyes picked up lettering on the side of the souped-up go-cart: NUCM-I.
"What do the letters stand for?" Valentine asked.
"I'll tell you as soon as you give your opinion of this batch. Ran out of my own flour so I'm using the local stuff."
The doughnut he offered on a piece of wax paper was tasty. He'd dipped it in honey.
Valentine had read somewhere or other that the Persians had given the Greeks honey specially made from plants with pharmacological effects. He hoped that wasn't the case here.
"It's delicious," Valentine said, swallowing.
"I have iced tea to wash it down. Sorry it's not sweetened-the honey's scarce enough-but a dunk or two will sweeten her up." Valentine noticed that the pastry giver addressed himself more to Boelnitz than either Valentine or Lambert, despite the insignia on the uniforms. In the Kurian Zone, it rarely hurt to favor the best looking, best fed, and best dressed.
Lambert and Boelnitz each accepted a doughnut as well.
"You going to tell me about those letters?" Valentine asked.
"I'm with the New Universal Church Missions-Independent."
