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Valentine could see companies of Moondaggers behind the worms, following the mobile walls as they moved down the night-blue slope toward the camp.
Muzzle flashes sparked on the worms' backs. The legworm riders were shooting, sure enough, but the fire wasn't what Valentine would call intense. More like casual target practice.
"Put some air-fused shells on the other side of those worms," Bloom said. "Slow those troops."
"South line wants permission to fire," the communications tech said.
"No," Valentine said. "Hold fire. Hold fire. Wait for the Moondag-gers, sir. There's no artillery on our defensive line, sir. If the riders have spotted it, they're not telling the Moondaggers," Valentine said. "I think a lot of those riders are just play-shooting."
"If that's how you want to play it," Bloom said. "Don't fire till we see the whites of their eyes, eh?"
"They're almost on top of the Bear teams," the communications tech reported.
"And here comes the Alliance," Valentine said, looking north. The Bulletproof worms looked like fingers wearing thick green rings thanks to the tenting banding them.
"Pass the word not to shoot at legworms with the bands. They're Alliance," Bloom said.
The communications officer complied.
"Go to the south wall, there, Valentine. Get a hit on 'em," Bloom said.
"Yes, sir."
"Where are those mortars?" Bloom barked.
Valentine hurried back down the patched-up ladder. He went forward, Bee gamboling like an excited dog. He checked his gun and magazines.
Mortar shells whistled overhead. Valentine hurried toward the flashes.
Bee ooked at a sentry and Valentine identified himself to the nervous chain of command to the forward posts. Rifle fire crackled overhead.
"They're on top of us. Are we pulling back, or what?" an under-standably nervous captain asked.
"The legworms are just cover for the Moondaggers," Valentine said. "They're making the real assault. Don't let your positions show themselves until you can do some real damage."
Gunfire erupted off to the right. Someone wasn't listening to or-ders or had been knocked out of the communications loop.
Valentine crept up to a stream cut that sheltered the captain's headquarters and took a look at the southern line. The men were sheltered behind low mounds of old legworm trails, patterns crisscrossing as though braided by a drunk, creating little gaps like very shallow foxholes. Atop hummocks of fertilized soil, brush grew like an irregular hedge. The other side had a good view of gently sloped pasture ground and the oncoming parallels of legworms.
A yellow explosion flared under one of the legworms. Gamecock's Bears struck.
Valentine looked to the east. The Alliance seemed to inch forward across the hillside, turning yellow in the rising light of the dawn, still kilometers away but coming hard. This was about to get messy.
Valentine heard another bang! of dynamite going off. A legworm, cut in two, hunched off in opposite directions.
"This is it. They're coming!" the captain said.
The lines of Coonskin legworms parted, crackling rifle fire still popping away atop the mounts, but the bullets were flying off toward the church and camp, not at the line of men pressed flat behind the bushy legworm trail.
Valentine took in the loose wall of men coming forward, more tightly packed than Southern Command would ever group an assault. Were they being herded forward?
Valentine's night-sharp eyes made out a few anguished faces.
The Coonskin legworms angled off to the sides, retreating. The Moondaggers were revealed.
"Let 'em have it, Captain," Valentine said. "This is it."
"Open fire. Open fire!" the captain called. "Defensive grenades."
