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Bloom, who slept just off the headquarters tent, barked orders to a succession of couriers and confused junior officers.
"Legworms coming through the pickets to the south. They'll be on top of us in a few minutes," she said.
"Already over the south ridge," a corporal at a radio receiver reported.
"I'll take a look," Valentine said. He spotted Tiddle, the lieutenant with the motorbike.
"Your bike gassed up?"
"Yes, sir, always."
"Get to the Alliance. Tell them the Coonskins have turned on us. They're not, repeat, not to come into the camp. They'll get shot at."
"What about some kind of marking, so we can tell the difference?" Rand asked. He'd been hovering, waiting for orders for his company.
Valentine gritted his teeth. He should have thought of that.
"Good thinking, Rand," Valentine said. "Have them drape a couple of sheets over the side of their legworms, anything we can make out in bad light," Valentine told Tiddle.
"How do you know the others haven't turned too?" a Guard lieutenant asked. He looked like he should be leading a high school football team rather than a company. "You've got a direct line to the Bulletproof?" he asked.
"He's got a line on that Alliance girl," Bloom said. "I'd reel her in, if I was you."
A few chuckles lightened the mood.
"Save it for the mess hall. There's no shooting to the north, is there?" Valentine said.
Tiddle ignored the byplay and Valentine heard the blat of the motorbike starting up.
"I'm heading for the OP," Bloom said, slipping a pack of playing cards into the webbing on her helmet. According to mess hall gossip, her father, a soldier himself, had given her the pack to aid passing the time, but she'd never broken the box's seal. Her eyes looked luminous in the shadow of the brim.
He barked at the communications team to set up a backup for communicating with the camp observation post, and then turned to Gamecock.
"Form your Bears into two-man hunter-killer groups. Give them explosives-a couple of sticks of dynamite will do. Have them keep to cover until a legworm comes near. Try to get the bang under the things. They're sensitive there."
"I've heard that. The middle, right?"
"The nerve ganglia's there. But if they can't get near enough to be precise, just under the thing will do. They'll reverse themselves."
Valentine braced the camp for impact. He relocated headquarters to the old graveyard behind the church, where there was a good wall and tree cover.
Artillery shells began to fall, hitting the motor and camp stores and the camp's former headquarters with deadly accuracy.
Of course the Coonskins wouldn't turn on their own-they'd coordinated it with the Moondaggers. Someone in the Coonskins had giving the Moondagger spotters a nice little map of camp. Valentine wondered how the brand rank and file felt about the switch in alle-giance. Sure, the leadership might decide to bet on the winning team, but what threats would have to be used on the men to turn their guns against erstwhile comrades?
Valentine climbed to the church steeple, so narrow it used a lad-der instead of stairs. Bats had taken up residence in the bottom half, hawks higher up.
He felt a little like the proverbial candlestick maker trying to wedge into a shower stall with the butcher and baker. Bloom and her communications tech had a tight enough squeeze in the tiny cupola.
"Valentine, if a shell hits here now, it'll be a triple grave."
"Had to take a quick glimpse," Valentine said.
Bloom slapped him hard on the shoulder. "Moondagger troops are advancing behind the legworm screen."
Valentine watched the lines of crisscrossing legworms. The Kentuckians fought their worms differently than the Grogs of Missouri, who hurried to close from behind shields. He'd seen a Kentucky leg-worm battle before. The riflemen and gunners hooked themselves to one side of their worms and protected the beasts with old mattresses and sacks full of chopped-up tires on the other. Legworms were notoriously resistant to bullets, but machine-gun fire had been known to travel right through a worm and hit the man on the other side.
A new wrinkle had been added this time-classical siege warfare. The legworms zigzagged forward, acting like the old gabions and fas-cines that sheltered approaching troops and guns.
