“Maybe we’ll make some foreign connections at the conference.”
“So we become best friends with a resistance faction in the Ukraine. They won’t be able to provide much effective support.”
“We could give them a handful of Quickwood seeds. Maybe they’ll have something similar for us.”
“Those went out ages ago. By the time the trees have matured to usable age, they’ll have reengineered their Reapers to be less vulnerable.”
“David, even if the Georgia Control comes with everything it has, will you being here make a difference? Let’s say it’s the biggest debacle since Indianapolis—how does you dying or getting captured with the rest change much?”
“I helped them get this started. If there’s a finish, I want to be with them.”
The car pulled around. Captain Patel was at the wheel, there to see the kid he’d trained as a very young junior lieutenant in the Wolves off on another long op.
“Talking to the women instead of loading your gear, Valentine,” Patel said. “You never change. C’mon, kid, I’m not working for tips here.”
They woke Ahn-Kha and as they stowed their gear in the back of the camouflage-painted all-wheel drive, she thought of one more thing to tell him: “You did more good by showing up with the Quickwood when you did than you would have if you’d been just another guy runnin’ and gunnin’ when Solon invaded. Don’t forget that.”
They covered a vast distance in a gray two-engine plane, the largest aircraft Duvalier had ever ridden in—not that she had much experience in the sky. It was named the Bucking Bronc and had some vividly colored nose art of a brunette with bangs and leg-revealing chaps riding a man in exaggerated cowboy gear. The cowboy seemed vaguely familiar to Duvalier. The pilot, a Texan named Silas A. Montee whose only insignia was a perfectly scratch-free set of golden wings on his chest, told her the cowboy was a film icon from the twentieth century. Montee was by far her favorite of the Southern Command group. Sadly, he would be with them only to Newfoundland, where they’d transfer to a ship with the delegates representing the Green Mountain Boys.
Before they boarded Montee’s plane, Patel slipped Valentine a box with something that clattered faintly. She suspected alcohol. The veteran captain had good connections with the Kentucky legworm pack traders, thanks to his endless overnight training hikes with the men.
Ahn-Kha was the official delegate representing Kentucky. He was a last-minute change; the original delegate was to have been the leader of the Gunslinger legworm clan, but when he learned he would have to cross the Atlantic, he judged his chances of ever seeing the back of the clan beasts again to be slim, and withdrew his name.
Ahn-Kha was more than willing to travel once more with Valentine and her. “With the three of us together, let the mountains of Europe tremble.”
“We don’t know we’re going to the mountains,” Valentine said.
“Glaciers, then.”
“For all we know, the meeting’s on a ship anchored in some fjord,” Valentine said.
Duvalier wouldn’t mind that at all. She’d seen pictures of fjords in old books and would enjoy the opportunity to visit one in person.
Duvalier really wasn’t that surprised by the decision to select Ahn-Kha for the honor. He was impressive to look at, and had a reputation that extended from the Virginia tidewaters to beyond the Mississippi and Missouri. He was “Golden”—meaning lucky—to the coal miners of West Virginia and Kentucky, and there was no question about his loyalties.
The Kentucky Alliance, practical as always, knew that the Baltic League would not be able to offer any real help to their allies on the other side of the Atlantic. Even under a best-case scenario, a trickle of weapons might make it over, or valuables that could be used to buy black market items of similar quality, say some of the production of Atlanta Gunworks that “fell off a truck” passing through the Cumberland Gap.
What exact powers and instructions he received from the Kentucky government Duvalier never learned, but Ahn-Kha described his brief as “to assess the situation and use my best judgment.”
Fair enough.
Sime gave a sly smile when they met at the Evansville airfield. “I’ll be the voting delegate for the United Free Republics,” he said. “We’ll have to check, but you are probably the first Xeno to attend as a delegate.”
“The Lifeweavers always are there, right?” Duvalier asked him. She was looking forward to a chance to have a talk with them, if she could ever corner one. They’d almost vanished from the middle of the United States. The ones Val had brought out of the Pacific Northwest were being hidden in a vault somewhere, apparently, and without a few Lifeweavers to guide them in the war against the Kurians, things would continue to go the same piss-poor path they’d been on the last few years.
Sime shrugged. “I would think so. I have never been to one of these, but I’ve read all the available reports of the previous delegates from Southern Command.”
The group from Southern Command was the same size as Kentucky’s. Sime’s group made the Kentuckians seem like bumpkins. As always, Sime was dressed immaculately in colors flattering to his dark skin. To her he reeked of KZ apparatchik with his finger-bowl manners and careful talk that said very little.
He shook her hand as she climbed into the plane. “Welcome aboard,” he said, as though he were personally flying them to Europe. His hand was as strong and hard and cool as tortoiseshell. He didn’t seem the type for manual labor, so she wondered where the calluses came from.
With Sime was an executive assistant named Alexander—it seemed to be his first, last, and only name. He gave her a card with an address at a contractor’s office in Texarkana that read only “Alexander” with “Capabilities Enhancement” beneath it. Shadowing Sime was a bodyguard named Postle who wore a civilian fishing vest. He must have had either very bad acne or a terrible case of chicken pox as a child, for he was dreadfully pockmarked and scarred. Everyone save Sime called him Pistols, as he wore no fewer than three visible guns and, she suspected, had a couple more concealed. Within two hours of meeting him, she knew that he had fifteen years in Southern Command’s Guard and had washed out from Wolf candidacy because of flat feet. The heaviest of the guns, kept on his hip, was “the Judge,” which could fire shotgun shells, but he’d fitted it with Reaper-killing distillates of Quickwood, which were, sadly, unobtainable in Kentucky. A stiff leather shoulder holster held “the Jury,” which he named because it was a 12 + 1 .45 Colt. Finally, there was “the Executioner,” a snub-nosed .357 revolver worn on a belly band rigged for a ten o’clock cross draw. “Killed six Quislings with it without reloading, all shot in the back of the head in graves I made them dig,” he said. She was more interested in his utility knife, which had a built-in flashlight and a deadly-looking backstabber that he claimed was an old commando dagger.
Sime’s other companion was a woman named Stamp skilled enough with cosmetics and hair coloring that it was hard to determine her age, but Duvalier’s best guess was that she was just about ready to turn fifty but able to keep up appearances for ten years younger. Like Sime, she had the air of limo service about her. She didn’t seem the personal secretary type; indeed, she spoke to him as if she were giving orders, though Sime had been named publicly as being in charge of the delegation from Southern Command. Duvalier thought she looked like some duchess or baroness from a painting in an art museum save for her modern—and very stylish, from what little she knew of such things—clothes.
Duvalier found that she liked her instinctively. Stamp always knew what to do with her hands. If they weren’t doing something, they were casually crossed in her lap. Duvalier disliked fidgety women who were always fretting at hair and attire.
As they found their seats, Postle looked at her small backpack and his mouth dropped open. She wasn’t sure if the astonishment was feigned or not. “That’s all you’re taking, girl? I’ve never known a woman to travel so light. I think I’m in love here, Sime!” He poked her square in the right breast with two extended fingers. “Just put some meat on those bones and I’ll call a preacher.”