Read Valentine's Exile for Free Online

stand out from the dirt and Texas dust of the nonlethal variety.
    Valentine called out his name and entered the van through the open side door. Two Razors looked out on the Dallas skyline and the roads and train tracks running along the western edge of the airfield. Their ready dust-hoods hung off the backs of their helmets like bridal veils. Dropped playing cards lay on the van’s interior carpet, the only remaining evidence of what had probably once been plush fixtures for road-weary vactioners.
    â€œI’ve never seen so many planes in my life, that’s for sure,” one said to the other, a bit of the Arkansas hills in his voice. Valentine knew his face but the name wouldn’t come. “Howdy, Major.”
    â€œHey, Major Valentine,” the other said, after relocating a piece of hard candy on a tongue depressor that the soldiers called a “postsicle.” Captain Post had a candy maker somewhere in his family tree, and the men liked to suck on his confections to keep the Texas dirt from drying out their mouths. “We got hit after all, huh.”
    â€œI’m glad somebody noticed. Did it break up a good card game?”
    â€œDepends. Lewis was winning,” the Arkansan said.
    â€œSorry to hear that, Lewis,” Valentine said. He vaguely knew that the tradition of canceling all wins and losses in an unfinished game had sprung up during the siege at Big Rock Mountain the previous year, and was thus hallowed into one of the battalion’s unwritten rules.
    â€œWhat do these aircutters got against the Razors, is what I want to know,” Lewis said.
    Valentine scanned the approaches to the airfield, then the sky. A larger plane, its wingspan wider than its body length, caught the sun high up.
    Whoever’s up there knows .
    The second phase of the attack came within five minutes, as Valentine reported to Meadows through a field phone line patched into the portable radio now installed in the control tower.
    â€œHoly Jesus!” Lewis barked.
    The grass between the northwest-southeast parallel runways flanking the field bulged, then dimpled, then collapsed, sending a cloud of dirt to join the smoke still coating the field.
    â€œBetween the runways,” Ahn-Kha shouted from his position at a supporting column. And unnecessarily, as Valentine locked eyes on the spot and brought up his binoculars.
    A corkscrew prow the size of one of the old Thunderbolt ’s lifeboats emerged into daylight. Striped blacks and browns on a pebbly, organic surface spun hypnotically as it rotated. Brown flesh behind the snout pulsed, ripples like circular waves traveling backward to the hidden portion of the thing. It rolled like a show diver performing a forward twist and nosed back into the earth. Overgrown prairie plants flew as the giant worm tilled and plunged back into the soil.
    â€œWhat the devil?” the Arkansan said, watching the creature dig, still spinning clockwise as it reburied itself.
    Tiny planes whipped over the inverted U of exposed flesh.
    â€œTunnels, Colonel, they’ve tunneled to the airfield,” Valentine said into the field phone. He consulted the map of the airfield and its surroundings, pinned to the carpeted wall of the observation van. “We need fire support to grid N-7, repeat N-7.”
    The tunneling worm’s other end finally appeared, another shell-like counterpoint to the prow. Valentine marked an orifice at the very tip this time, though whether it was for eating or excreting he couldn’t say.
    The two identical warcraft, turbofans bulging above their broad wings, banked in from the west, aiming directly at the parking garages.
    Valentine dropped the field glasses and the phone handpiece. Something about the crosslike silhouettes of the aircraft suggested approaching doom.
    â€œThis won’t be good,” Lewis said.
    â€œOut! Out! Out!” Valentine shouted.
    Ahn-Kha was already at the van door, perhaps ready to bodily pull