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Chieftain raged among a group of Moondaggers who'd found a wooded dimple in the landscape from which they returned fire. Pieces of men flew this way and that as he swung and stomped and swung again.
The forward motion stopped at the crest of the hill. The Kentuckians threw themselves down and began to pick off retreated targets.
"Let 'em have it," yelled Rockaway into his field radio from his new hilltop post.
Mortar shells whistled down into the trees at the riverbank, detonating in showers of splinters or foaming splashes of water.
A Kurian machine gun opened up on Rockaway's position, guided by his antenna. Valentine dropped to a knee and returned fire with the Type Three.
"Silvertip, try to do something about that gun" was the only order Valentine gave that day that had anything to do with the progress of the battle. He felt like a bit of a fraud, watching shells detonate on the western riverbank among the Host's boats. Maybe Southern Command needed Kentucky more than Kentucky needed Southern Command.
"Pre-ranged fire missions," Rockaway said. "Hope they brought a lot of tweezers."
The Kentuckians ended up with a few prisoners and a lot of big canvas-sided motorized riverboats.
As the battle sputtered out, Valentine found Tikka.
"Brilliant retreat and counterattack," Valentine said.
"Oldest trick in the book," Tikka said.
"I didn't know you'd studied Scipio Africanus, Tikka."
She frowned. "I'm not big on astrology. No sir, I learned all my tactics reading Bernard Cornwell. It's an old Wellington maneuver: Get on the reverse slope out of the line of fire, and then blast away when the Frenchies come over the crest, and advance to throw them back. We just didn't blast them quite as much as they approached; we wanted them to scatter a little bit as they advanced."
"So you swapped out the artillery and vehicles last night during the party," Valentine said.
"Too noisy for you? That was the idea. To cover sound while we were building the fortifications. We parked old wrecks and set up black-painted fence-post mortars to replace the real ones."
"Would have been nice to be let in on the secret. I might have been able to offer a few suggestions. We have some experienced snipers in our group. They could have trimmed the Moondaggers down by a few more."
"I'm sorry, Valentine, but after Utrecht I'll never trust Southern Command's security again."
Valentine must have had an air of command about him, because all through the day members of the Gunslingers who'd fought with Javelin across Kentucky kept coming to him for orders, probably out of habit more than anything. Whether to bind prisoners or just march them with their hands up. What to do with captured weapons and equipment. How to organize a search party for a missing officer. Valentine issued advice rather than orders and sent a constant stream of problems to Tikka's headquarters on the ridge.
For just being an observer, he had an exhausting day.
That night he found Boelnitz scribbling away with the remains of a meal around him as Chieftain and Silvertip told war stories about the fighting in Kentucky.
"You should know better than to ask Bears about a fight," Valentine said to Pencil. "To hear them tell it, the rest of us are just there to keep the fried chicken and pie coming while they do all the fighting."
Boelnitz chewed on his pencil, apparently not hearing.
"So, how's the story coming, Boelnitz?"
Valentine had to repeat himself before the journalist looked up from his leather-covered notebook.
"Story? Not the one I was expecting, Major."
"You're getting some good tall tales out of these two, I hope."
"Kentucky's been interesting enough, but I don't know if my editor will want travelogue. I wish I had the guts to go inside one of those legworm tangles and get a few pictures, but the locals say that until the worms are born, it can be dangerous."
"That's right," said a nearby Gunslinger who'd plopped down to listen to the Bears spin their yarns. "Make any kind of disturbance and they'll snip you in half easy as you might pull a weed."
"To be honest, Major Valentine, I was expecting you to be a little different, more of the legend and less prosaic. Where are the raids into the estate homes in Indiana? You haven't even interrogated any of those Moondaggers or the Kentucky Host or whatever they call themselves to see what's in store for Kentucky."
"The Kurians never tell their foot soldiers their plans. They like to keep everyone guessing, including the other Kurians. I wouldn't be surprised if the reason they're so desperate is because they're afraid Atlanta will just end up taking over Kentucky the way they have much of Tennessee.
