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Tikka clung, shifted the forward pole down the legworm's belly, and then poked it again. It reared up, and she released the painful spur. It came down again, a good thirty legs on the other side of the hole. The legs over the gap twitched uncertainly, like the shifting fingers of sea anemones Valentine had seen in the Jamaican reefs.
"I didn't know they could do that," Rand said.
"I expect they can't, usually."
Tikka hurried her worm forward, a living bridge over the hole in the pavement. As she passed across, the beast's rear dropped into the hole, but with the rest of it pulling, it got its tail up and out.
Valentine checked his pack ot signal gear again. How long until the Moondaggers got here?
"Preville, you've just been attached to headquarters," Valentine said. "You get to come on an assault with the Bears. Bring your radio."
"Er-yes, sir," Preville said, blinking.
"Red, then blue if we clear the hill. Understand?"
"Red, then blue," Rand repeated. "Got it, sir."
"Every minute counts. The opposition is on its way."
"They picked a good time to turn on us."
"I'm not so sure they picked it. The Kurians have long tendrils."
Valentine slapped his lieutenant on the shoulder and then ran up the extreme right of the bridge, Preville trailing, trying to run while folded in half. Another shell fell into the water.
Valentine marked the glimmer offish bellies bobbing in the current.
Someone downstream would collect a bounty of dead sunfish.
Tikka rested her mount on the other side, letting it graze in a thicket. Valentine watched brush and bramble and clumps of sod disappear into its muscular lipped throat. Valentine waved the Bears forward.
They came, three groups of four, in the variegated mix of Reaper cloth, Kevlar, and studded leather the Bears seemed to favor. Valentine even saw a shimmer of a chain mail dickey over one Bear's throat and upper chest. Their weapons were no more uniform than their attire.
Belt-fed machine guns in leather swivel slings, deadly little SMGs, grenade launchers, assault shotguns, an old M14 tricked out with a custom stock and a sniper scope . . . never mind the profusion of blades, bayonets, and meathooks taped or clipped onto boots, thighs, forearms, and backs. Most of Gamecock's team favored facial hair of some kind. All wore a little silver spur around their neck-a team marker, Valentine guessed.
The Moondaggers, used to slaughtering rebellious farming collectives armed with stones and pitchforks, were in for a surprise.
"We're riding to the bluff. Can your worm hold them all?"
"It's young and strong," Tikka said. "As long as we're not riding all day."
Tikka unrolled a length of newbie netting from the back of her saddle, where it served as a lounger while coiled up. Gamecock's dozen picked Bears climbed uncertainly onto the creature.
"I've blown a few of these up but never ridden one," a Bear with a shaved, tattooed scalp said.
Another, who'd somehow stretched, teased, or sculpted his ears into almost feral points, wiggled his legs experimentally as he gripped the netting. "Not bad. Ride's smooth, like a boat.
You could sleep while traveling."
"We do," Tikka said.
She kept them in the trees, keeping leafy cover over their heads whenever possible as they approached the bluff. The hills closed in between them and the riverbank. Then, suddenly, the steep slope was before them.
Valentine dismounted, carefully went forward, waiting for the sniper's bullet or the machine-gun burst. Every twig and leaf seemed to stand out against the blue Kentucky sky.
Nothing.
The Moondaggers had erred. Or at least he hoped they had. They'd put all their troops at the top of the hill, rather than on what was referred to as the "military crest," the line of the hill where most of the slope could be covered by gunfire. Even experienced troops had made the mistake before.
