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"Good thinking, Bee," Valentine said.
She said something in return. Valentine recognized the Grog word for "fire."
"She heard you say that they needed to be killed with fire," Ahn-Kha said. "A propane tank makes the most fire she's ever seen."
"Well, they sure blew the hell out of that barbecue, suh," Gamecock said, surveying the smoldering ruin of cookout, helicopter, and giant Reaper the next morning.
The salvage teams crawled over the corpses of the helicopters, uniformed ants on mechanical carcasses wielding wrenches, tin snips, and screwdrivers.
Pellwell, meanwhile, had forgotten her ratbits for a moment. Or if not forgotten, was at least ignoring them in her haste to examine the beastly mega-Reapers. She'd scared up a camera from somewhere and was taking pictures and writing notes with each frame.
"Hey, they did us a favor. Maybe we can fill the craters with wood and roast a couple pigs."
"Dangers of a night attack. There might be confusion."
Valentine shook his head, wondering. "I'll give this to Atlanta. They learned who hit them. They struck back, and meant it. Both had some bad luck tonight. They attacked a barbecue rather than our main buildings. We lost months' worth of work."
"Let's hear from observation points. North, south, east and west. All of them, and send out patrols. The air raid might have been a setup for the finish."
"If they want us out of Fort Seng," Valentine said. "I wonder if it might be best to accommodate them."
ets: Southern Command is famous for holding feasts at the drop of a hat. There are always a few volunteers ready to drop a hat themselves, if a better reason isn't on the calendar or out-box.
Word of a "feed" passes quickly, even before the barbecue smoke rises. In this case, the smoke was from one of the winter hogs raised on camp food waste and the inevitable spoiled food brought in on the irregular supply runs up the Ohio River by Southern Command's "Mosquito Fleet."
Fort Seng's were never as resourceful as Southern Command regulars at scrounging "grits, grease, and gluss"-the first two being traditional Transmississippi staples, the third liquor mashed, heated, and dripped out of any stray carbohydrates at hand. Gluss, another of the many names for army busthead, was a variant on Mosquito Fleet acronym General Liquor Unspecified, Standard Ration. Southern Command's boatmen were legendary in the aptitude for acquiring alcohol-strictly for purifying questionable river water, of course-and, to cut down on the cases of ethanol poisoning, their captains took to issuing a small daily ration unit.
The captured boats were returned briefly to the Ohio, but only to be taken up a short length of river to Evansville, where they were again hauled up out of the water and brought into riverside workshops. One boat, kept fully intact and armed in its drag across Western Kentucky, was tied up next to the old casino, to be used for training.
The battalion was in the best spirits Valentine had ever seen. Upon returning from the operation, the companies that had gone out to get the boats immediately set to laundering and cleaning and polishing their bodies, uniforms, and equipment as though they couldn't wait to be sent out again.
They'd proved themselves before, certainly, in the fight against the ravies outbreak of the winter. But that had been purely reactive. The raids on Site Green and Respite Point were their idea, successfully carried out by the battalion.
Colonel Lambert decided they needed a reward. The first of the spring vegetables were in, along with a bountiful amount of strawberries, so she decided to sacrifice a few head of cattle for a big steak fry.
They used the big open field to the south where the brigade's horses grazed. It was the largest stretch of flat, open ground in the confines of the fort. With the horses cleared away, it served as an athletic field for football, soccer, and baseball-and conditioning sprints, of course.
Glass volunteered to miss the festivities-he was no social animal, and stayed with Ford and Chevy, his heavy-weapons Grogs, and the company left on security. Especially at a celebration like this the Grogs sometimes caused trouble. They believed the greatest warrior ate first and most and had trouble with the human tendency to share out by the plateful.
Lambert skipped it as well, though she gave Ediyak the night off. Valentine filled a tray with steak and sauce, strawberries and clotted cream, and some tender spring vegetables (asparagus was early and plentiful in Kentucky, leaving the fort's latrines more pungent than usual) and brought it up to her. Even if the ascetic workaholic in her was currently reining in her appetite, he could eat both their shares. He could still smell the grill on the steaks and his mouth watered at the hot, fatty smell.
"I've been studying this map of the Eastern United States," Lambert said as he set down the tray on an empty chair. Lambert's desk was unusually cluttered with notes and colored grease pencils for writing on the plastic overlays that lay on the maps.
The bright light of her desk lamp reflecting off the map hurt Valentine's eyes and gave him the beginnings of one of his headaches.
Valentine glanced over it. Old maps were interesting but of limited use. Most of the roads were overgrown and broken up and the towns run back to kudzu and scrub oak.
"If we only had something comprehensive and up-to-date," Lambert said.
"I know, sir," Valentine said. "Someone really needs to make some new maps," Valentine said. "The Kurians have good local ones, but beyond their regions-"
"Here be dragons," Lambert said.
"Basically, sir."
"Maybe we can team up with the Kentuckians and get something accurate of at least the zones surrounding us. If the Georgia Control is going to come after us, it would help to know what roads and rail lines they still have up and running. What bits are full of bad guys and where the hostile neutrals and Grog tribes are. But the rivers are still the same."
"Yes, sir," Valentine said.
