Odd that Post and Molly should both like that photo. Of course, the only other published picture of Valentine that he could remember was an old photo taken when he became a lieutenant in his Wolf days.
What Valentine guessed to be a map or recessed bookcase stood behind heavy wood cabinet doors complete with a lock. Nearest Post's desk was his set of "traveling wheels."
Valentine looked at the biggest picture on his desk: a family photo of his wife, Gail, and a pigtailed toddler. "I didn't know you had a child."
Post brushed the picture's glass with a finger, as though rearranging Gail's short, tousled hair. "We tried. It didn't work. The docs said they found some odd cell tissue on Gail's, er, cervix. Something the Kurians did to her in that Reaper mill, they think. We more or less adopted."
"Good for you."
"There's more. It's Moira Styachowski's daughter."
Valentine felt a pang. "I didn't know she had one."
"She's a pistol. Only sixteen months but we call her the Wild Thing. Jenny's all Moira. We were godparents, you see. And when that plane went down . . ."
They looked at each other in silence.
"Sunshine and rain, Val."
"I didn't know you two were that close."
"After you were hurt at the tower in Little Rock, we sort of hit it off. She found time for me while I adapted to rolling through life."
"You are rolling. A lieutenant colonel."
"I get a lot done. I'm more or less desk-bound."
Valentine wondered how much Post was leaving unsaid.
"Something to drink?" Post asked, opening a minifridge. "I have water, lemonade-er, wait, limeade this week-good old Southern Command root beer, and that awful cocoa-remember? I can order coffee. I don't keep liquor in the office. Best way not to give in to temptation is to make it physically difficult."
"Any milk?"
The bushy, salt-and-pepper eyebrows went up. "Milk? Sure."
The food arrived on a tray, under shining covers, reminding Valentine of the amenities of the Outlook resort he'd visited, and partially destroyed, in the Cascades.
"Major David Valentine, drinking milk," Post said, passing a carton. "You getting an ulcer?"
"I'm surprised I don't have one. No, I acquired a taste for it out west, oddly enough. It's . . . comforting. Ulcer or no."
"You acquire one here. Anyway, East is more my area. Speaking of which, you owe me a serious Kentucky debriefing. Between you and the Green Mountain Boys, it sounds like you cracked the Moondaggers. What's left of them are back in Michigan, licking their wounds and singing laments."
"I'm not so sure it was us. They tried the 'submission to Kur's will' routine on the wrong set of locals. In Kentucky you can't just wheel into a legworm clan and drag off the sixteen-year-old girls. Those guys know how to make every shot count, and while you're driving around the hills, they're humping over them on their worms."
"Well, we're celebrating here. Those bastards painted a lot of Kansas soil red. We call the area west of Olathe the Bone Plain now."
Valentine remembered all the little towns he'd seen, crossing that area with Duvalier. Strange that the Kurians would shed so much blood. Living heartbeats were wealth to them.
They talked and ate. Post impressed Valentine all over again with his knowledge of Kentucky. And Valentine was grateful to forget about the wheelchair.
"Did Lehman give you the bad news?" Post asked.
"What's that?"
"Javelin plus the operation against the Rio Grande Valley. Southern Command is probably going to pull in its horns for a while. No more offensives. It's all about 'consolidation' and 'de fensible resolution' these days. We've won our ramparts back, let's be sure they never fall again, and all that. We're going back on the defensive."
"That doesn't do much good for those poor souls outside the walls," Valentine said.