supporting the Kurians will be used against them. Some are last-second “bolters” who’ve failed in some colossal manner and fear a visit from the Reapers. Others can no longer live with themselves as cogs in the dreadful system. Service with Southern Command’s odd-lot battalion at Fort Seng for six years promises a new identity with an honorable military record. Those with grievous sins they wish to escape, forget, or expunge show up at Fort Seng, give their assumed name, take the oath, and are escorted to the showers and supply depots.
A few who support the Kurian Order even wash up somewhere between Evansville and Fort Seng. Kentucky was long a region of wellarmed neutrality and there are those who would have it return to that condition. They would bring Kentucky back with tactics drawn from Shakespeare: “When lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner.” A missionary who ran a little one-man doughnut shop led the way. He had quickly become a fixture, not just because his doughnuts were tasty, but because of his zeal and friendliness with all who crossed his path. A few others have followed in his foot-steps, unarmed and professing only peaceful intent, including a doctor and a dentist and a couple of teachers who provide services for little or no charge but pay for their necessities in silver and gold. Their offices are littered with Kurian tracts, their professional chatter full of careful probes and discreet offers. Not quite enough have arrived so that there’s a “Kurian Quarter” in “Desperation Row” as the little strip outside Fort Seng is now called, but enough so that they too have a place in the remarkable collection gravitating to this corner of Vampire Earth.
Every time Valentine left Fort Seng, even for a few nights, the camp changed by the time he returned.
This time his return was from the south, mounted on a legworm, a sort of giant caterpillar introduced to the area by the Kurian allies in 2022. Atop the worm’s back, riding at about the height of an old tractor-trailer driver and moving at a steady pace a little slower than a dog trotted—Valentine idly calculated it at nine miles per hour by dropping a weighted line and pacing the worm’s back in a fashion not dissimilar from the way old sailing ships measured their speed—he could stretch out, sleep even, while the worm’s driver prodded it along with pokes from a long hook.
The young worm and its driver were on loan from the Gunslinger Clan. The Kentucky legworm raisers were the closest allies of Southern Command’s forces locally. He’d travelled with them, fought alongside them, saw victory and defeat beside them. They contributed a “troop” of legworm cavalry to support their allies at the base, with a few more available in a pinch. For now, they had five legworms providing slow, but all-terrain, transport and cargo haulage, and were training the fort’s garrison to handle a dozen more. Southern Command’s forces, which up to the Javelin operation had been only on the receiving end of legworm-mounted attacks, were learning fast—at least in Kentucky.
Back across the Mississippi, any species that had “appeared” since 2022 was considered suspect at the very least.
It was Colonel Lambert’s doing of course. She liked her camp the way she liked her desk: neat, organized, everything in its place. Valentine had never actually seen her pencil drawer, but he suspected all her leads were sharp and facing the same direction.
Outside Fort Seng, there was a new sign up at the vast New Universal Church relief tent:
NO FOOD TODAY
SUPPLIES INTERCEPTED
Valentine had heard that once the sign claimed Southern Command had intercepted and confiscated their shipment. A few of the Bears visited the tent, tore it down, and bounced the churchmen on an improvised trampoline made out of the tent, explaining that if Southern Command had intercepted a food shipment, they’d be eating it.
Since
A few who support the Kurian Order even wash up somewhere between Evansville and Fort Seng. Kentucky was long a region of wellarmed neutrality and there are those who would have it return to that condition. They would bring Kentucky back with tactics drawn from Shakespeare: “When lenity and cruelty play for a kingdom, the gentler gamester is the soonest winner.” A missionary who ran a little one-man doughnut shop led the way. He had quickly become a fixture, not just because his doughnuts were tasty, but because of his zeal and friendliness with all who crossed his path. A few others have followed in his foot-steps, unarmed and professing only peaceful intent, including a doctor and a dentist and a couple of teachers who provide services for little or no charge but pay for their necessities in silver and gold. Their offices are littered with Kurian tracts, their professional chatter full of careful probes and discreet offers. Not quite enough have arrived so that there’s a “Kurian Quarter” in “Desperation Row” as the little strip outside Fort Seng is now called, but enough so that they too have a place in the remarkable collection gravitating to this corner of Vampire Earth.
Every time Valentine left Fort Seng, even for a few nights, the camp changed by the time he returned.
This time his return was from the south, mounted on a legworm, a sort of giant caterpillar introduced to the area by the Kurian allies in 2022. Atop the worm’s back, riding at about the height of an old tractor-trailer driver and moving at a steady pace a little slower than a dog trotted—Valentine idly calculated it at nine miles per hour by dropping a weighted line and pacing the worm’s back in a fashion not dissimilar from the way old sailing ships measured their speed—he could stretch out, sleep even, while the worm’s driver prodded it along with pokes from a long hook.
The young worm and its driver were on loan from the Gunslinger Clan. The Kentucky legworm raisers were the closest allies of Southern Command’s forces locally. He’d travelled with them, fought alongside them, saw victory and defeat beside them. They contributed a “troop” of legworm cavalry to support their allies at the base, with a few more available in a pinch. For now, they had five legworms providing slow, but all-terrain, transport and cargo haulage, and were training the fort’s garrison to handle a dozen more. Southern Command’s forces, which up to the Javelin operation had been only on the receiving end of legworm-mounted attacks, were learning fast—at least in Kentucky.
Back across the Mississippi, any species that had “appeared” since 2022 was considered suspect at the very least.
It was Colonel Lambert’s doing of course. She liked her camp the way she liked her desk: neat, organized, everything in its place. Valentine had never actually seen her pencil drawer, but he suspected all her leads were sharp and facing the same direction.
Outside Fort Seng, there was a new sign up at the vast New Universal Church relief tent:
NO FOOD TODAY
SUPPLIES INTERCEPTED
Valentine had heard that once the sign claimed Southern Command had intercepted and confiscated their shipment. A few of the Bears visited the tent, tore it down, and bounced the churchmen on an improvised trampoline made out of the tent, explaining that if Southern Command had intercepted a food shipment, they’d be eating it.
Since
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