Jack Yeovil - Route 666

Night had come down hard on the drive-in and the Josephites were at a trestle table, singing all 48 verses of "The Path of Joseph" before launching into supper. They offered to share their meal with the patrol. The invitation was not mandatory, which Yorke considered a mercy; he'd rather eat K-rations than chow into the gray gruel the sisters were serving up. He could understand why a body would want to think up extra verses of the anthem to put off that first fateful mouthful. Maybe if you wore your mouth out on the hymn, you couldn't taste the gunk.

The sergeant squeezed himself into the cruiser and keyed in his reception sign. The two-way screen irised open and Yorke saw Captain Julie Brittles at her desk, fussing with her waves of hair and the two rows of buttons down the front of her tunic. Brittles was always fidgeting with something.

"Quince," she said, "we've got your report. Good work. Nice and concise. No words surplus to needs."

"Thank you, ma'am. It's all cleared up here. Burnside has done his best with the Josephite mechanics and I reckon the motorwagons will roll out of here come tomorrow. Not much else we can do. Just add the charges to the warrants out on the identified Psychopomps, especially this Bonney fillette."

"Quite. Ms Redd Sainted Harvest has put a bee on our tail about that specific individual. She makes it clear that she doesn't want a lacquered hair on her pointy head hurt in the arrest process."

Quincannon whistled. Brittles gave a captainly shrug.

"My guess is that Ms H wants to do all the hurting in this instance. I understand there is personal business between them…"

Yorke understood it was not a good idea to interfere in Redd Harvest's personal business. The Op was almost as fond of violence as the sort of gangfilth she tracked.

Brittles kind of smiled and said, "Also, Quince, we have polite E-mail from GenTech BioDiv, with regards to an incident in the vicinity of Canyon de Chelly."

"It's in the report, Captain. I've made suggestions as to further investigation. Those 'bots had run into something strange we haven't seen before. We should get a team out there."

Brittles's smile got tight. "GenTech respectfully request we keep our noses out. They'll do the follow-up. The remains of the Knock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots have been officially labelled property of BioDiv. We're soldiers, not scientists. No side issues, Sergeant. Remember the Thin Blue Line."

Quincannon didn't argue. He didn't talk a streak about the boiling point of water either. Rule One of the Cav was to bitch down, not up; that wouldn't be affected by alterations in the fundamental nature of the universe.

"My suggestions are in the report already, Captain."

"We'll handle the deletions, Quince. No need to bother yourself with keyboardwork. We need you in the field, not at a console."

"Yes ma'am."

Brittles wasn't saying something. Yorke saw the shifty look in her eyes. The captain was the kind of old girl who wasn't happy unless she had a long-tongued trooper under her desk working up a shine on her boots. Yorke could tell when she was gearing up to dish out a zeroid assignment nobody in their right mind would accept. Like now.

"Permission to circle back to Valens, ma'am? We've been out for five days now."

"Denied, Quincannon."

Her slight smile had a nasty twist in it. Yorke wondered if there had ever been anything romantic between the Sergeant and the Captain, and whether that had anything to do with the way Quincannon's troop, of which he was a fully paid-up member, got all the scut details. Like checking out Sodom and Gomorrah, Ariz., or escorting the Dirty Protest Skunx chapter of the Maniax to the Alcatraz Express.

"You have fresh orders coming in," Brittles said. "The cruiser will print them out directly."

Captain Brittles cut out and Quincannon said "goodbye" to dead screen. The dashprinter gurgitated a strip of paper. The Quince and Yorke looked at it curling out of its slot. The orders ended and they both sat in the cruiser, putting off the moment. Finally, with a protracted sigh, Quincannon tore the paper free and scanned it, face falling.

He swore, crushed the paper into a ball, dropped it on the floor, swore again, got out of the cruiser, kicked some sand, swore extensively – affrighting a pair of Sisters who happened to be passing – and walked off, muttering thunder and fire.

When the Quince was gone, Yorke picked up the paper, uncrushcd it. and got a sneak preview of the troop's orders. He swore too.

You could burn up by day and freeze to death at night in the desert. The Josephites built a cooking fire but let it go out. They kept warm by going to bed early, though Tyree was damned if she could see what for.

"No carnal relations," Yorke kept chuckling, "it hardly seems like living at all."

Back at Valens, Yorke had come on to her a couple of times when Nathan was out on patrol. She hadn't let anything develop as long as they were in the same troop. She didn't want to divide loyalties. Still, once she got her cruiser and had maybe a stripe or three on her shoulder, things might change, especially if Nathan dropped out of the running.

She looked into the fire and thought about the future. Everybody seemed to think it was all used up. Even the Josephites were convinced these were the Last Days.

Kirby Yorke was sort of appealing, with his fair hair and crooked smile. But he kept making remarks about the way she filled her Cav pants, and she was bored with that. Every woman in the service got fed up with cracks about her ass. Tight pants were about the only thing you could wear on a mount without risking a stray fold of cloth getting caught in the workings and causing a flip-up crash. Nobody ever passed remarks about the way sergeants and troopers of the male persuasion strained the seats of their uniforms with that species of elephantiasis of the butt so common in Americans of a certain age.

Quincannon had detailed Burnside to requisition firewood and get a pot of recaff going. He'd nastily offered a cup to Brother Bailie, but the man virtuously resisted the temptation. Tyree could tell Bailie missed recaff and probably other things too. You didn't yank out your taste buds and hack off your primary sexual characteristics when you converted to the Path of Joseph, though there were sects which went in for that sort of thing.

And there was that creepy Wiggs weaselling around. From something Sister Maureen had said, she understood he had gone for a dick-ectomy. The snip explained a lot. She wouldn't have liked to meet W. Bond Wiggs before he took the drastic surgical option. He must have been a pedigree hound.

She wondered if it was a good idea to check warrants on the Brethren. Elder Seth quite likely specialised in recruiting former sinners. Poor souls might earn the forgiveness of the Lord before troubling themselves with earthly obligations like prison sentences.

Wiggs would look mighty cute in stripes and she just bet his unusual genital arrangement would be boffo in the showers.

"Are we really stuck with these damfools, Quince?" asked Burnside.

Quincannon swilled the last of his recaff about his tin mug and threw it in the sand. "I'm afraid so, Wash. Orders from on high."

"General Haycox?"

"Higher." Quincannon stuck a Premier in his mouth and swivelled eyes to heaven. "The Prezz himself is behind Elder Seth. Hell, he practically gave away Utah. Can you imagine what'd happen if he tried that with New York? He thinks resettlement is a jim-dandy idea and is backing up the Brethren of Joseph in their scheme to rebuild Salt Lake City."

"Why didn't he send the army out to guard this wagon train instead of letting 'em get cut down like dogs by every freakin' stray comes by?"