burned into it:
David Valentine,
Condamned Fugitive
Law and Order Is
Coming Back to the UFR
Whoever had done it hadn’t bothered to pencil out the letters before setting to work with the wood burner. “Back to the UFR” was rather crowded together.
“David Valentine,” Ladyfair said. “It sounds rather dashing and romantic, as though you should be riding around in a cloak, holding up carriages with a pistol and donating the booty to the peasantry.”
Valentine probed his teeth, checking for loose gum line or a broken crown.
“I am fond of novels when idling in bed or tub.”
Valentine wanted to keep the sign just for the interesting spelling of “condemned.” Might make an interesting memento on his office door. Maybe they’d summed up his life better than whoever would write his eventual obituary—if he died where people noticed such things. Condamned.
“I’ve troubled you enough,” Valentine said. “I suppose you’ve lost a night’s business because of this. If you’ll let me know what the clothes and bandages cost, I’ll come by tomorrow to repay you what I can.”
“Nonsense. Here’s a card. If you do find those rowdies, give us a jingle. We’ll give them a little law and order when we testify in court. Dumb sons of bitches didn’t wear those masks when they were in our parlor waiting on you. I’d like to be able to point them out in court.”
“Cheap too,” the young Texan said. “Kept complaining about not being able to run a tab for their whiskey.”
Valentine inspected his reflection in a little mirror next to the kitchen doorjamb. He’d probably have some horizontal scarring on the right side of his face to balance out the long vertical bullet furrow long since faded on his left. The asphalt had been sharp.
Well, he didn’t have much keeping him in the United Free Republics anyway. Besides, he had mail to get back to Kentucky.
He might as well abandon the guise of a militia corporal; it wasn’t doing him any good. He’d return to Kentucky in the leathers of the Bulletproof clan.
CHAPTER THREE
B ackwater Pete’s on the Arkansas River, the third week of November: Pete’s is the informal abode of the river rats—the brown-water transportation flotilla of Southern Command and the sailors of the quick-hitting, quick-running motorboats of the Skeeter Fleet.
Pete himself is long dead, killed during Solon’s tenure for theft of Trans-Mississippi Combat Corps property and smuggling supplies to “guerrilla bands” during the Kurian occupation. His widow followed him to the Reaper-gibbet soon after (hardly a word had to be changed in the indictment or the sentence), but his brother survived Solon’s occupation of Arkansas and rebuilt the old riverside bar.
Built of ancient gray cypress beams the color of a January cloud-bank, part dockyard, part trading post, part gin mill, and part museum, Backwater Pete’s is an institution. A new brown-water sailor who first sees the fireflies of tracer being exchanged at high speed while bouncing down the Mississippi comes to Pete’s for his first drink as a real river-man. Newly appointed boat commanders and barge captains fete their crews there, and retiring master mechanics say their farewells beneath the pink and lavender paper lanterns and sensually shaped neon.
The bar is decorated with grainy pictures of boat crews as well as old Sports Illustrated swimsuit models and Playboy centerfolds, immortal icons of wet-haired desire. Wooden models of famous Southern Command river craft—mostly pleasure or sport or fishing boats and tugs converted to carry machine guns and old rapid-fire twenty-and thirty-millimeter “bush guns”—rest on a little brass-railed shelf above the bar. The traditional mirror behind the bar is more a mosaic of shards now, having been broken in so many brawls and patched together with colored glass it now resembles a peacock splattered against a wide chrome bumper.
Most newcomers say it smells like
David Valentine,
Condamned Fugitive
Law and Order Is
Coming Back to the UFR
Whoever had done it hadn’t bothered to pencil out the letters before setting to work with the wood burner. “Back to the UFR” was rather crowded together.
“David Valentine,” Ladyfair said. “It sounds rather dashing and romantic, as though you should be riding around in a cloak, holding up carriages with a pistol and donating the booty to the peasantry.”
Valentine probed his teeth, checking for loose gum line or a broken crown.
“I am fond of novels when idling in bed or tub.”
Valentine wanted to keep the sign just for the interesting spelling of “condemned.” Might make an interesting memento on his office door. Maybe they’d summed up his life better than whoever would write his eventual obituary—if he died where people noticed such things. Condamned.
“I’ve troubled you enough,” Valentine said. “I suppose you’ve lost a night’s business because of this. If you’ll let me know what the clothes and bandages cost, I’ll come by tomorrow to repay you what I can.”
“Nonsense. Here’s a card. If you do find those rowdies, give us a jingle. We’ll give them a little law and order when we testify in court. Dumb sons of bitches didn’t wear those masks when they were in our parlor waiting on you. I’d like to be able to point them out in court.”
“Cheap too,” the young Texan said. “Kept complaining about not being able to run a tab for their whiskey.”
Valentine inspected his reflection in a little mirror next to the kitchen doorjamb. He’d probably have some horizontal scarring on the right side of his face to balance out the long vertical bullet furrow long since faded on his left. The asphalt had been sharp.
Well, he didn’t have much keeping him in the United Free Republics anyway. Besides, he had mail to get back to Kentucky.
He might as well abandon the guise of a militia corporal; it wasn’t doing him any good. He’d return to Kentucky in the leathers of the Bulletproof clan.
CHAPTER THREE
B ackwater Pete’s on the Arkansas River, the third week of November: Pete’s is the informal abode of the river rats—the brown-water transportation flotilla of Southern Command and the sailors of the quick-hitting, quick-running motorboats of the Skeeter Fleet.
Pete himself is long dead, killed during Solon’s tenure for theft of Trans-Mississippi Combat Corps property and smuggling supplies to “guerrilla bands” during the Kurian occupation. His widow followed him to the Reaper-gibbet soon after (hardly a word had to be changed in the indictment or the sentence), but his brother survived Solon’s occupation of Arkansas and rebuilt the old riverside bar.
Built of ancient gray cypress beams the color of a January cloud-bank, part dockyard, part trading post, part gin mill, and part museum, Backwater Pete’s is an institution. A new brown-water sailor who first sees the fireflies of tracer being exchanged at high speed while bouncing down the Mississippi comes to Pete’s for his first drink as a real river-man. Newly appointed boat commanders and barge captains fete their crews there, and retiring master mechanics say their farewells beneath the pink and lavender paper lanterns and sensually shaped neon.
The bar is decorated with grainy pictures of boat crews as well as old Sports Illustrated swimsuit models and Playboy centerfolds, immortal icons of wet-haired desire. Wooden models of famous Southern Command river craft—mostly pleasure or sport or fishing boats and tugs converted to carry machine guns and old rapid-fire twenty-and thirty-millimeter “bush guns”—rest on a little brass-railed shelf above the bar. The traditional mirror behind the bar is more a mosaic of shards now, having been broken in so many brawls and patched together with colored glass it now resembles a peacock splattered against a wide chrome bumper.
Most newcomers say it smells like
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