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"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."
Gunfire broke out all along the line, sounding like a sudden heavy rain striking a tin roof.
Screams sounded from the ranks of the Moondagger assaulting column.
Valentine saw a field pack radio antenna, an officer crouching next to it on the slope.
"Bee," Valentine said, pointing. "That one."
Bee swung her hockey stick of a rifle around and dropped him. Good shooting, that. Uphill fire took a good eye.
Rand reported in. Bloom had sent Valentine's old company up to support the line with Glass' machine guns.
Valentine issued orders for them to create a fallback line at the stream cut as though on autopilot. His mind was on the assault. The first lines fell under withering fire, hardly shooting back, and a second wave, better dispersed and disciplined, came forward.
Grenades exploded, deeper thuds that transmitted faintly through the ground.
The Moondaggers broke through and it was rifle butts and pistols along the line. Valentine realized he'd put his gun to his shoulder without thinking about it and fired burst after burst into the second wave, knocking them back like target cans. He ducked and slid along the stream cut as he reloaded.
Bee grunted and the hair atop her head parted. Valentine saw white skull. She ignored it and kept shooting.
"Medic," Valentine called.
Bear teams at the assault's flanks, like tiny tornadoes at the sidelines, bit off pieces of the Moondaggers that Valentine's line chewed up.
The Moondaggers fell back, tripping over their own dead as they backed away, shooting and reloading.
"Keep the heat on!" the captain called.
"Send back to Bloom: Repulsed. For now," Valentine ordered.
A medic was wrapping up Bee's head. He gave Valentine a thumbs-up. "Good thing this old girl doesn't set much store by hairstyle. She's gonna have a funny part."
"You all right, Bee?" Valentine asked.
