by E. E. Knight
"Yes, sir," Moytana said, calling for his runner.
A boy of sixteen or seventeen—so it seemed to Valentine— answered the call. He carried an assault rifle that made him look even more like a child playing at war. It was a good old Atlanta Gunworks Type 3.
"Here, I'll carry that back to brigade for you, son," Valentine said, wanting the gun's angry bark.
Valentine took a slightly different path on the long road back than the boy. He angled off to the west, to see what that column marching across the ridge intended to do.
There was plenty of daylight left. If the Moondaggers were daylight fighters, it was all the better. His men would worry more about inflicting damage on the enemy and less about what might be lurking in the woods.
He topped another rise, puffing. No one was there to see him take a knee and dig around for a handkerchief to wipe off the summer sweat. His pits and crotch stuck and chaffed. Legworm leather breathed well, but there were limits to any material.
The west-most column looked to have found the road they were looking for. It wasn't in good shape at all, a broken surface with fully grown trees erupting from parts of the pavement. Of course men traveling on foot without heavy weapons could easily find a path. It looked as though the deer had already made one.
He checked his bearings and picked a target on the next ridge north in the direction of headquarters.
Valentine ran down the opposite side of his ridge from the column, firing first his machine pistol, then the deeper bark of the Type 3. Every now and then he broke up the sound with a longer burst.
The phantom firefight might just turn the Moondaggers aside from their path to investigate. How well they could track and read shell casings was anyone's guess.
What counted at this point was delay.
* * * *
Valentine came to the Turky Neck bridge, approaching along the eastern bank, and found chaos.
The river ran beneath deep, sculpted banks—Valentine guessed they were a flood prevention measure. Bluffs to the south frowned down on the slight river bend.
The old metal-frame highway bridge had been dynamited, quite incompetently, resulting in no more than the loss of some road bed and a few piles of paving. Bloom had sensibly sent several companies across to secure the far bank. But light mortar shells were now falling at the rate of one a minute all around the bridge area, keeping crews from covering the damage with timber and iron.
Legworms might be able to get across, but not trucks, vehicles, and horse and mule drawn carts. The brigade could cross, even through this shell fire, but would leave the supply train behind.
Valentine did his best not to anticipate the shells as he found headquarters, placed in a defile about a quarter mile from the east bank.
"Well?" he asked the first lieutenant he saw, ready to give someone a few choice words. Why wasn't anyone shooting back with the light artillery?
"Thank God you're here, sir. We've been under aimed artillery fire, sir. Cap—Colonel Bloom's wounded!"
"What's being done about those mortars?"
"They're trying to find a route north around the downed bridge. We're supposed to be set to move."
"On whose orders?"
"Not sure. You can countermand, sir."
"Why would I do that?"
"I think you're in command now, sir."
* * * *
If he was in command, he might as well take charge. Valentine walked over to the headquarters vehicle, a Hummer bristling with antennae like some kind of rust-streaked insect.
Valentine studied a notated ordinance map. Pins marked the positions of his various companies. His jack-of-all-trades former Quislings were up waiting to assist the engineers in repairing the bridge.
He checked the bluff where the Moondaggers—if they were Moondaggers, and not troops out of Lexington or God knew where else—had set up their pieces. It was about a mile and a half south of the bridge.
"Set up an observer post, or better, two, to call in fire on those enemy mortars, if they can be effective. I'm going to the hospital."
He issued orders for defense of the temporary camp. He directed their tiny supply of anti-armor gear to the road that would most likely see the armored cars, and gave orders for everyone to be ready to move as soon as the bridge team could go to work. As soon as Moytana arrived, he was to take charge of the rear guard.
Then Valentine grabbed a spare satchel of signals gear, made sure one of the brigade's few headsets and a flare pistol rested in the holster within, and left.
* * * *
The visit to the hospital was brief. It was the only tent the brigade had set up, mostly because of the big red cross on it. The only other casualty was what was left of a soldier who had a shell go off practically under him. The Moondaggers were dropping most of their shells on the bridge, either trying to keep the rest of the brigade from getting across or in the hopes of a lucky series of shots downing it for good.
Colonel Bloom seemed likely to live, at least long enough for the damage sustained by her pancreas to kill her. She sat up in bed, giving orders.
After hearing the medical report, he sent a messenger for Gamecock.
"Valentine, thank God you're here," she said, pushing away a nurse. "Silence those mortars, fix the bridge, and get the brigade across. These cutters want to sedate me and open me up. Don't let them stick anything in me until the brigade's safe."
"I think you should do what the doctors ask. I'll take care of the brigade. We'll wriggle out of this fix. The Moondaggers seem to be trying again."
"Yes, I heard the Wolfs report. Right before the world flipped over on me."
"Sorry about that, sir."
She looked like she was trying to smile. "Couldn't be helped. Don't worry about me. Go do your duty."
"If you'll let them get that shrapnel out."
She nodded. Then she opened one eye. "Oh, Valentine?"
"Yes, Colonel?"
"Get a hit."
He smiled. The old Bloom was back. "Their infield's in. I think I can poke one through."
Valentine found the doctor he'd first talked to.
"Have you ever tried transfusions from a Bear?" Valentine asked.
"I've read about some amazing results. But I believe it must be done quickly, while there's still living tissue and nerve impulses."
Gamecock arrived, breathless from a run across the bridge. His Bears were sheltering on the opposite side.
"What's Bloom's blood type?" Valentine said.
"O positive, suh," the doctor said. "Fairly common."
"Gamecock, get your Bears' blood type,"
"I've kept up with the research too, Major," Gamecock said. "You might say I have needle-in experience. I spent a week at Hope of the Free hospital, passing blood to critical cases. They bled me white and kept trying to refill my veins with orange drink."
"I need an—no, make it two—two Bears with either O positive or O negative blood. Right away. Doctor, give Colonel Bloom a transfusion as soon as one can be arranged. Then a second in twelve hours. Is that clear?"
"If the Bears are willing, I am. I've heard stories about injecting one and getting your jaw rewired in return. I want willing and, more important, calm subjects."
"I'll watch over them myself, suh," Gamecock said.
"I'm going to need you for a few hours, Lieutenant," Valentine said. "We're going after those mortars."
"Did you take a look at that bluff, sir? It's a steep one. I'd hate to waste Bears taking it."
"The Moondaggers will have to prove they know how to hold off a Bear assault. I still think they don't know what to do about someone who fights back."
"It's still a steep hill. It'll look a lot steeper with bullets coming down."
"I know a way to get up it."
* * * *
Valentine got a report from the artillery spotters. The height of the bluff made it impossible to accurately spot fire, so Valentine told them to save their fireworks.
&
nbsp; "Infantry strength?"
"All we can see is perhaps platoon strength on this side. They're right at the top."
"Right at the top?"
"Yes, sir. I don't think they can see jack at the base of that hill."
They really didn't know how to fight. Or they just liked the view. No matter, Valentine had to take advantage of the error quickly, before a more experienced Moondagger arrived and corrected the matter.
The hardest part was getting one of the Bulletproof to agree to ride the legworm.
"Up that?" Swill, the Bulletproof veep in charge of their contingent, said. "If the footing's poor, you could roll a worm right over on you, especially if men are hanging on it in fighting order."
"I'll take mine up that hill," Tikka said, stepping forward. "I'm the best trick rider in the clan."
"There's trick riding and there's getting shot at. You don't know enough about the other," Swill said. "I'm not risking our senior veep's sister."
"So you told me. You're afraid to take your worms across under this shell fire. Watch this."
They did watch as she hurried to her worm grazing in some brush farther downstream. Digging her hook into its hide and using the spurs on the inner ankle of her boot, she mounted her worm and prodded it toward the bridge.
Swill ran in front of her worm and tried to divert it, looking a little like a rabbit trying to stop a bus. The worm nosed him aside, off his feet, and Swill threw off his hat in frustration.
"Watch those shells!" Swill yelled. "It'll rear back if one comes too close!" He turned back on Valentine. "The exec told me to keep her from doing anything stupid. Lookit me now. I'm going to have to go back and admit I couldn't keep a rein on one little female."
"Not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the fight in the dog," a handsome Guard sergeant detailed to the Bulletproof said. He rubbed his jaw ruefully. "That gal has her own mind about things."
Valentine sent a field-radio message to Gamecock to move his Bears toward the bluff, and then trotted up and joined his company, waiting for their chance to fix the bridge. They had all the tools and materials resting in the ditch next to the road.
"How's the shell fire, Rand?"
"Poor, if they're trying to kill us. I think they're just trying to keep us off that bridge. The fire's slackening, so I think they're running out of shells. Excuse me, sir, but is that worm rider crazy?"
"Feisty, more like," Valentine said, watching the legworm glide up the road on its multitude of black, clawlike legs, ripples running the length of its thirty-yard body as it covered ground. "Someone suggested she couldn't handle her worm."
Valentine watched Tikka fiddle with the gear on her saddle. She extracted another pole with a sharp hook, this one with a curve to the shaft.
"What's that for?"
"Legworms aren't very sensitive anywhere but the underside. She gives it a poke now and then to keep it moving."
Tikka aimed her mount straight for the hole. A shell landed near her and the legworm froze for a second. She goaded it forward again.
When it came to the hole in the pavement, she gripped the reins in her teeth, used one pole to goad her beast forward, and swung the other under what might be called its snout. It was where the food went in, anyway.
She poked it good at the front and it reared up, twisting this way and that. Tikka clung as another shell whistled down. It must have dropped straight through the hole in the pavement, because it exploded in the water beneath the bridge.
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.
He trotted back to the head of the worm and tapped Tikka on her spiked boot.
"Still think you can get it up?"
Tikka winked. "I'm five and oh, Blackie. Wanna be six?"
"This isn't the time—"
She laughed. "I don't quit that easy. If I get you all up so you can cork those guns, you going to finally give me a taste?"
Just get it over with. "A three-course dinner."
"With dessert," she added.
"I think that's included in the price."
"Sir, how am I supposed to go red when an episode of Noonside Passions is running at the other end of the fuc
kin' worm?" a Bear named Chieftain asked Gamecock.
They started up the hill, sidewinding on the long worm. Tikka found some kind of path, probably an old bike or hiking trail. The worm tilted.
A shot rang out.
"You all better side-ride—it's going to get nasty here," Tikka called.
"Can you keep the worm upright?" Valentine asked.
"Do ticks tip a hound dog? Grab netting."
The Bears slipped down the side of the worm facing downslope. Valentine heard bullets thwack into the worm, and Tikka shifted her riding stance, clinging on to the saddle and fleshy worm hide like a spider on a wall. Somehow she managed to work the reins and goad.
The mortars fired again, blindly, sending their shells down to explode at the base of the hill.
Valentine heard shouts from above, cries in a strange warbling language.
"Drop off now. They'll keep shooting at the worm," Valentine told Gamecock, seeing a cluster of rocks trapping fallen branches and logs.
The Bears scrambled for cover. Preville pulled out his field radio.
"Whenever you're ready, Lieutenant," Valentine said.
Gamecock took out a little torch and heated his knife. "Uh, sir, if I'm not mistaken, you're the brigade commander now. I don't think it's your place to be at the forefront of a hill assault. Let me and the Bears—"
"There's a good view from that bluff. The Moondaggers are on their way, and I need to assess the situation."
"Red up, red up," Gamecock cried.
Each of Gamecock's Bears seemed to have their own method of bringing the hurt, and with it the willed transformation into fighting madness that made the Bears the killing machines they were. One punched a rock, another stamped his feet, others cut themselves in the forearm or ear or back of the neck. A Bear, perhaps more infection-minded than most, made a tiny cut across his nose and dabbed iodine from a bottle on it.
Valentine heard fire following the worm.
"Time to fuck them up," the one with the iodine rasped, wincing.
Gamecock pressed the hot knife under his armpit, clamped down on it hard.
Preville looked around, gaping. Valentine knew what his com tech was thinking: If this is what they do to themselves, what the hell's in store for the enemy?