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"There are other ways. No shortage of pigs and dogs. Pigs are more emotionally developed than we think. I met one of their archons, Japanese and Korean guy; he was born in the 1920s and he lives off pigs."
"You think that offer is still open? Suppose I order a couple companies of your Grogs to go burn some towns in Iowa."
"Their officers know better. They'd march right back here to see what was wrong."
"Well, either way, you're coming with us. When we get back to the bootheel country, I'll let you make up your mind-a Southern Command military prison or freedom in Kentucky."
"Bootheel country's a long way off. That's a tough march with all these Grogs."
"We'll manage."
"Now you're the one jerking off, Valentine. You think everyone's just going to settle down, happy? A couple of lambs will go missing, and there'll be bloodshed, and somebody's going to get their head chopped off. Then it's all-out tribal warfare. Just wait and see. You want to build something that'll last, I'd suggest a permanent hierarchy. Humans on top, then the Golden, then the Gray. That's what I was working toward."
"You left out the Kurians."
"I said working toward, Valentine. Till you screwed everything up."
Valentine left the Baron in an evil mood matching his own.
"I have a message for you, sir," the Wolf said. "Repeat from Colonel Lambert at Field HQ."
Valentine read the block pencil letters. The coms tech had lined out the code phrases beginning and ending the message that acted as filler to make decryption more difficult.
GENERAL HEADQUARTERS TO SENG/ LAMBERT THROUGH EASTERN OPERATIONS. PERMISSION FOR GG TRANSPORT AND SUPPLY DENIED. PRESENCE OF NONHUMAN FORCES CONSIDERED DANGEROUS AND PROBLEMATIC FOR CIVILIAN MORALE. RIVERINE ELEMENTS WILL PROVIDE LIMITED SUPPORT FOR TRANSFER TO KENTUCKY. CONGRATULATIONS ON ACTION IN N. MISSOURI-SIGNED MARTINEZ
Valentine wondered if the scrambler chatter at the end was a simple mistake or the headquarters code clerk sending his own secret message.
Anger throbbed, tightening his chest. The general had done it to him again. That bastard. Maybe he knows I'm involved, somehow.
"Well, my David?" Ahn-Kha asked.
"We can't land in the Ozark Free Territory," Valentine said.
"Odd that they'd be so nervous about it. Chances of more than a few civilians seeing them are slim, there's not much civilian presence near the river in the bootheel country."
"We must still go ahead. My people's dice are cast. They are trapped between enemies."
rog Auxiliaries: the Kurian Order keeps its place through its Church, police forces, riot squads, troops, and of course the Reapers. Some might say the paperwork and permits of existence in the Kurian Zone is a form of control, a little less obvious and more debilitating than the policeman on the street or the riot cop at his fire hose. Fear has its role too.
Of course, the Kurians sometimes have difficulty getting men to shoot down other men, especially in the early days of their advent. They brought the Grogs over through the Interworld Tree, telling them that a rich planet was theirs for the taking if they'd evict an indolent and degenerate infestation of scrawny humans.
So the Grogs came, though where they expected to frighten and herd away the humans (as their scouts who'd gone among the confused, starving multitudes in a few devastated areas had reported) they found resistance. But Grogs take to new modalities of warfare like ducks to different-sized bodies of water, and soon modified human weapons for their own use.
The Gray Baron's "Missouri Division" is a recent construct. The Grogs in central Missouri now recognize no law but their own, and are quite happy to raid north, south, east, or west-and the rich lands of Iowa have valuable cattle and swine worth stealing. Starting with nothing but a starving, co-opted Western Missouri clan of Grogs known as the Wrist-Rings, he built them up into a formidable fighting band over the course of a decade, absorbing bands of Grogs along the Missouri Valley with promises of easy duty-when not fighting.
He kept that promise. His warriors enjoy an enviable lifestyle, only chieftains south of the river live in the manner of his lowliest fighter. As for the clan chiefs, some believe they've died and returned to Earth as demigods, so much wealth and wives and slaves do they have at their command.
The next generation of fighting Grogs and their human masters is training even now, while a third is being selected and bred. What plans the Gray Baron has for them perhaps not even his human lieutenants may say.
Valentine wondered if Snake Arms's comment was a plant, to make him anxious. Or perhaps it was a warning about crossing the Gray Baron.
If he hadn't seen him in his command car, Valentine would have suspected the Gray Baron was a creation, a boogeyman developed by the Kurians to keep both their Grogs and soldiers in line.
Ahn-Kha was true to his word, as always. Two nights later Valentine was awoken by the discreet scratch of Patches. The ratbit had a little pack made out of a zip-up eyeglass case, and in it was a pad and paper.
Valentine had spent some time thinking about the vulnerabilities of the Baron's human/Gray One legion. For the first message, he just passed word of the supplies he needed them to gather from Brostoff's forward Wolf base. They might not be able to spare guns, but they had plenty to eat and drink ...
Valentine puzzled out why there were no Grog overseers. Men ordered, and sometimes struck men; the Grogs did the same for and to their own kind.
