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She had a strange moment when putting her things together in her little space in the barn, that she would never see it again. The premonition bothered her more than she would admit to anyone.
Just in case, she had a few words to Brother Mark about a will. He was used to comforting the fearful, probed her on her concerns, and asked her about the three worst moments of her life and how she got through them. “Now, a long trip to attend some meetings doesn’t sound as bad as that,” he said, after she told him about the time she’d stomped a Quisling to death as a teen. Her first murder.
With that done, he helped her write down a few things on a standard form and they turned it in to the administrative service together.
“Good choices,” he said, as they made their farewells.
He was referring to the disposition of her assets. She had a fair amount of pay stored up, since she was out of the home areas and in the KZ so often she hardly had time to spend it. Much of it had automatically been placed with Southern Command’s bond funds. She arranged for a division between Ahn-Kha and Val, the closest she had to family, except for a few thousand dollars to build a kids’ park somewhere. Her happiest times as a child had been on a few pieces of playground equipment, and she still liked watching kids climb and slide. She wrapped an old red bra and a phony wedding ring in some tissue paper and labeled the package for Val, a little memento to remember her by.
Feeling somewhat more optimistic and lightened—odd how preparing for the eventuality of your death put a shine on the day—she ate what was for her an enormous meal at the canteen and took a last walk around the camp. The nights were growing warmer and there were a few pickup soccer and volleyball games going. She won five straight games of darts in the base lounge, listening to the Fort Seng guitar band play old rock and roll, and returned to the bugs of her attic vaguely proud that she hadn’t given in to her loins when they flared up over a pair of cute sergeants shooting pool with a Bear.
They said bullfighters always wanted sex before a fight, and sometimes in the past she’d given in to lust before an op. But Fort Seng was almost like a big extended family, and there was bound to be gossip—and if she returned, she didn’t want to deal with the are-we-or-aren’t-we questions.
In any case, this wasn’t an op with obvious dangers, like the exploit in the Hoosier National Forest. It was supposed to be a kind of vacation. Still, she worked her blades against a whetstone as a way of preparing herself for sleep. The rasp-rasp-rasp soothed and her breathing slowed and deepened, and after returning the blades to their sheaths she dropped right off, to the sound of horses stamping and swishing.
CHAPTER THREE
“Travel.” To the early twenty-first-century ear, the word is full of romanticism. Travel means delicious exotic food, sightseeing, meeting interesting people who might turn into friends or lovers, and above all, a pleasant, relaxing break from ordinary life.
To those who live in the post-2022 world of the twenty-first, however, the word has taken on a fearful aspect. Travel means danger, difficulty, and the longer the distance you intend to go, the less likely you will be to reach your intended destination. “Travel’s a curse” was a line in a very popular theatrical production set in the nineteenth century, but in the Kurian Order a journey isn’t even up to those standards. A trip of any length is closer to the pilgrimages of the Middle Ages, fraught with difficulty, and therefore something engaged in only once or twice in a lifetime.
Still, it is a necessity for certain high Quislings in the Kurian Order. While they have fewer difficulties with finding transport, the fuel to put in it, and a route to their destination, there’s still the worry of treachery at one of the stops. Many have been lost to “poaching” or a sudden switch in loyalties between Kurian factions.
While the Resistance has its betrayals, too, they are rare. Travel is more difficult from a logistical point of view, but there are several networks that allow journeys of even extreme distances to be completed. Sponsored and supported by various freeholds worldwide, they run something like the Underground Railroad of the pre–Civil War United States.
There are the Pacific Charters, able to move people and cargoes all about the Pacific Rim, and the Pan-American Viajes Azure has been able to move people from the Tierra del Fuego to Canada.
The Refugee Network is the great chain binding Old World to New in the days of the Kurian Order, mostly taking escapees out of Europe and over to Canada. Canada’s vast, often chilly wilderness offers climatic refuge from the Kurians, and while passages are often arranged for those with wealth or needed skills, there is usually room to be found for those just desperate to get away. There are many heartbreaking stories in its history of groups of families arranging for all their children to be sent across the Atlantic under the care of a single adult, with the present generation sacrificing itself so that more of a future may be brought to the Free Territory.
It was the Refugee Network that set up the travel routes from North America to the Baltic. The delegates received travel advice, but were to make it to either Vancouver or Halifax on their own, and from there departures to Europe would be arranged. Southern Command and the Kentucky Freehold both opted for the Halifax route, and as matters turned out, it was simpler for them to travel together.
On the morning of departure, she met Ahn-Kha and Valentine at the back door to Headquarters, just adjacent to the HQ parking lot. They wouldn’t have to ride the “bus” (usually an old army truck) into Evansville; thanks to the official nature of the trip to the airport, they’d get an honest-to-Martinez staff car.
Ahn-Kha was slumbering atop the duffel bag containing his odds and ends. She could see that Valentine was nervous. He was whittling a stick down to nothing with a little sheepsfoot blade he carried.
Valentine had something against timber when he was agitated. She’d seen him sweat out anxiety by reducing timber to kindling more times than she could count. The sweat equity was usually appreciated by whoever was feeding him at the moment.
“What’s up?” she asked him.
“I’m always nervous before a trip. You know I settle down once we’re on our way.”
After all these years, it was odd that he still tried to bullshit her. Her mother had once told her that men cover up their feelings more for their wives than they do for their whores. Maybe that girl he visited in town knew the real story. “C’mon, Val. You’re talking to me here. I’m not some lieutenant you have to reassure.”
He flung the stick into the soft spring ground and the point dug in, like a dart. “The last time I left on a long trip, I fathered a baby girl and returned home to find the Free Territory under Solon?
??s Quislings.”
She shrugged. “The Kentuckians were taking care of themselves before we ever crossed between the Tennessee and the Ohio with the clans. Remember that. They’ll still be here when we get back. As for fathering kids, you could break with tradition and keep it zipped up. You’re grouchy when you’re celibate, but you get more done.”
He laughed and unbent. A little. “Is my reputation that bad?”
“I’ve never heard any of your women complain. Just jealous fellow officers. They don’t have that luscious black hair, either.” Actually, he was going a little gray at the temples, but she didn’t want to mention it.
“I can’t help feeling that this will be the make-or-break summer,” he said. “The Georgia Control is building up to something.”
“Last I heard, they frittered away six thousand men trying to pacify the Coal Country again, and all they did was see to it that the rebels there are better armed than ever. They’d have to take fifty or a hundred thousand into Kentucky. They don’t have it, at least not combat-capable troops, even if they strip their other frontiers.”
“I still think it’s going to come down to Kentucky and the Georgia Control,” Valentine said. “They have all the factories and the foreign connections. All we have is home-field advantage.”
