Counterattack

by Scott H Washburn

  “All right, we’ve accomplished the first part of our mission. We’ve observed the effects of the air attack on the Martian fortress. Tomorrow we get on with the rest of it. We will head northwest to hit the White River at Newport, then swing east to Jonesboro, then up to Paragould, and then back to Memphis. Our orders are to scout and lend assistance to any civilians we might find. This includes urging them to head east.”

  “Sir?” said Lieutenant Lynnbrooke. “We’ve already had a dozen or so people come in during the day while you were gone. A couple of families from near Beedeville. They’re afraid to stay any longer.”

  “Are they on foot, or are they mounted?”

  “Horses and wagons, sir. They have forty or fifty head of cattle, too, and don’t want to abandon them.”

  Dolfen frowned. Escorting the civilians - and the livestock - was part of his job, but he’d hoped to do that on the way back. They were still outbound. “When we’re done here, go tell them our route. They might not want to go with us to Newport. If they do, let them know that if we run into trouble they may have to abandon their goods and ride fast. If they don’t want to go to Newport, tell them to head east as fast as they can and they should hit army patrols in forty or fifty miles.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They clarified some questions about the departure time and order of march and then dispersed. Dolfen washed some of the dust off himself, pulled a spare hat out of his valise for the next day, and then went to sleep.

  The next morning was refreshingly cool and crisp in the aftermath of the storm; a preview of fall. They took to the road - or what passed for a road in these parts. His squadron was a mix of new and old that Dolfen still found strange. A Troop was the usual mounted cavalry that he had spent twenty years with, but B Troop was all mounted on motorcycles, some single bikes and others with sidecars, some of which mounted light machine guns. C Troop was the biggest difference, it consisted of ten armored cars. These were strange-looking vehicles with eight wheels, each supporting an armored cab with a rotating turret on top. Some were armed with new Browning 50-caliber machine guns and a few had a two-inch quick-firing cannon. Just peashooters against a tripod, but still better than rifles. D Troop was also on horseback, but had pack horses to carry more of the 50-calibers and three of the new mortars that were just coming into service. Dolfen had no idea if they would be of much use. Still, the whole force was vastly more powerful than an old-style cavalry squadron. There was also a supply troop with motor trucks carrying food, ammunition, and gasoline. Abernathy’s battery was all pulled by trucks and had four three-inch guns. In a fight, those guns might be the best weapons they’d have.

  The column mostly stayed to the road, but he had a squad of horsemen scouting a couple of miles ahead and some of the motorcycles providing security on the flanks and in the rear. The bikes were too noisy to be leading the column. The civilians had decided they wanted to stay with the soldiers, so they trundled along just behind the supply trucks. This didn’t really slow things down because with the condition of the roads, the motor vehicles had to take it slow anyway. They couldn’t risk a broken axle here in enemy country.

  The mere fact that they had to consider this ‘enemy country’ rankled Dolfen in the worst way. This was America, damn it! How dare some invader make parts of it enemy country! We’ll drive them out! We will!

  But there was no doubt that the Martians were here, at least for the moment. Every now and then they’d come across the triangular-shaped holes the enemy tripods made.

  And there was the Red Weed.

  Dolfen could see a few patches of the damn stuff here and there as they rode. It was a red plant which resembled Earthly lichen and clung to rocks and bare patches of ground. In the winter it only grew very slowly, but in warmer weather it would expand rapidly. Finally, it would enter a period of explosive growth with the patches able to cover acres under a thick mat in a matter of a few days. Then, the stuff would die off just as rapidly, turning brown and crumbling to powder. But during its brief period of life it would choke out the local plants underneath it and worse, it would leave seeds or spores or something which would begin the cycle all over again.

  It seemed to appear close to the Martian fortresses. During the siege of Gallup, they had found it frequently and made a point of destroying it by burning. But now, with large regions under the Martians’ control, no one was making the effort to get rid of it and it was spreading at a frightening rate. Even if they did drive the enemy out, would they have to deal with this awful stuff forever after?

  They headed north until they reached a crossroad which led them to a ford on the Cache River. It wasn’t much of a river this time of year, but the land on either side was thickly wooded and the locals had said this would be the best place to get across. They got there around noon and Dolfen called a halt to water the horses. It was a good place to stop; the trees gave them concealment. He posted pickets to keep a watch.

  They hadn’t been there long before civilians started appearing. Apparently there were dozens of them living in the woodlands. They’d refused to abandon their lands during the disastrous retreat of 1910, but after a year of precarious existence, always on the lookout for Martians, many of them were ready to call it quits before another winter arrived. The appearance of the soldiers and the hope of an escort to safety made up the minds of many of them.

  Dolfen looked at these people with renewed anger. They were dirty, their clothes halfway to becoming rags, and there was a scared, hunted look in their eyes. The kids were very quiet, with none of the usual energy you’d expect. Oh yeah, the Martians were going to pay!

  “What’s it like across the river?” asked one woman, clutching a toddler to her. “Will we be safe? Where will we live?”

  “You’ll be as safe as anyone can be these days,” Dolfen told her. “We’re building some mighty powerful defenses along the Mississippi. You can live in the camps they’ve set up until they can resettle you. You’re farmers, mostly, right?” She and some of the others nodded. “Good, we sure can use you! They’re creating new farms by the thousands across the river. The country needs food. Don’t worry, you’ll get by fine.”

  “What about the weed, that red weed? Is it across the river, too? It keeps showing up here, choking out what crops we can plant!”

  “No, there’s none of it there.” Yet.

  This seemed to satisfy most of them, but one older man asked: “But when can we come back? When are you soldier-boys gonna drive these critters outta here? I’ve lived here all my life and I don’t plan to die anywhere else!”

  “The army will be back one of these days. I won’t lie to you and say it will be soon. The truth is we took a licking last year and it’s gonna take some time to build up our strength so we can beat these devils. But we will beat them! Not next week, and maybe not next year, but eventually we will. For the time being we need to get you folks to safety. So pack your stuff up and get ready to go. Those of you without horses can hitch a ride on the trucks.” His speech didn’t seem to encourage them very much, but they did as he told them.

  It took longer than he wanted, but eventually they were on the road again and reached Newport - or what was left of it - before dark. It looked to have been a town of a few thousand before the Martians burned it. It was on the banks of the White River, which while bigger than the Cache, was still only knee deep in most spots during the summer. The ruins were an all-too familiar sight these days. There weren’t enough of the Martians to occupy all the vast territories of the American heartland, but there were enough to make periodic sweeps and they routinely burned any structures they found. Single farms and tiny hamlets were sometimes overlooked, but all the bigger towns had been wrecked. And any human unlucky enough to cross the Martians’ path would be scooped up and carried back to their larders.

  The destruction in Newport looked nearly total, but despite that, they weren’t there long before another group of civilians began to emerge from the ruins and gather
from the nearby countryside. They were like the earlier group: full of questions, full of worry. It seemed like most wanted to go with them, but others, when they learned the soldiers weren’t staying, wandered away, muttering.

  They camped there for the night, Dolfen giving strict orders not to let any cook fires or lanterns show. On the relatively flat land, the light would carry for miles and they’d learned, to their cost, that the Martians operated night and day.

  But nothing disturbed them and they were up early and on the road not long after dawn. They had well over a hundred civilians and twice that number of cattle with them now. The cattle were a nuisance, but they would be needed to help feed people across the Mississippi, and they shouldn’t be left here to feed Martians. They were heading northeast now, toward the town of Jonesboro. It was over thirty miles away and they wouldn’t get there in one day. They recrossed the Cache near a little village named Grubbs. The sign at the edge of town was still hanging on a post, but nothing else was left. They camped five miles short of Jonesboro; it wasn’t a good day’s march for cavalry, but not bad for the traveling circus Dolfen now commanded.

  He and his officers gathered around a concealed fire that evening, sharing drinks and stories. As usual, Major Bridges had the most of both. The Britisher had been all over the world and had a seemingly endless supply of stories and tall tales. “I still can’t get over how flat this country is,” he said for at least the tenth time. “Parts of India and South Africa are pretty flat, but nothing like this!”

  “You fought Martians in South Africa, sir?” asked Lieutenant Harvey Brown, commander of A Troop.

  “Bless me, no! I was there in 1900, fighting the Boers! The ruddy Dutchmen didn’t seem to want the honor of belonging to the Empire. We would have taught them the error of their ways if it hadn’t been for the Martians arriving uninvited back home that spring. Threw all our plans into the midden heap, I can tell you! Kitchener was absolutely furious! Have I mentioned I’ve met the Field Marshal?”

  “A few times…”

  “Anyway, we had to call off that war, even though the Martians all died quickly enough. We couldn’t be sure there weren’t more on the way, so we had to bring the army home, just in case, you know. Gave the Boers their independence - for all the good it did them. Most of ‘em are dead now, of course - or refugees at Capetown.” He paused and took a drink from the bottle being passed around. “I fought the Martians in Afghanistan, of course.” He chuckled. “For years the government was worried about the Russians trying to invade India, but when it finally happened it was the bloody Martians, not the Russians! But Afghanistan, as different a place from this as you could imagine; Mountains and more mountains. All up and down! A good thing, too! Their machines aren’t too good at handling mountains and we stopped them in their tracks.”

  “They can do all right in the mountains,” said Dolfen quietly. “I saw two regiments of cavalry wiped out trying to stop only six of the bastards at Glorietta Pass.”

  No one made a reply to that. None of them had been there, but they all knew the story of why the 5th Cavalry had been forced to rebuild yet again. Having succeeded in dampening the spirits of everyone, Dolfen turned in. Gotta watch that, a commander can’t afford to be pessimistic—it’s contagious.

  He was awakened once during the night by a false alarm from a nervous sentry, but other than that and the arrival of a few more civilians, things were quiet. Gosling had his breakfast waiting for him in the morning, and he pushed his people to get ready to move as soon as possible. The empty, ruined land was getting on his nerves. He waited until they were almost ready to move out before using the radio to send a short message giving their location and situation. Bridges’ warning that the Martians could track the radio signals had him worried, too.

  They made it to Jonesboro in a couple of hours. It was a bigger place than Newport, but it had been just as thoroughly wrecked. They picked up a few more families who wanted to go, but they didn’t linger long. They pushed on northeast, heading for the town of Paragould. With luck, they would get there by the next day and then they would turn back to Memphis.

  It was about two o’clock when they spotted the Martians.

  A man from B Troop roared up on a motorcycle to give the word: tripods sighted to the southwest. Dolfen took out his field glasses and climbed atop one of the armored cars and swept the horizon to their rear. At first he didn’t see them, but then he realized that four tiny specks were not trees. He looked for a few more minutes, but there didn’t seem to be any others. Four, we might be able to take four. Were they coming this way? Yes, no doubt. Coming fast, too…

  “Lynnbrooke! Get on the radio. Tell Colonel Selfridge where we are and what we’re facing. We’ve got a job for his flyboys!”

  “Yes, sir!” replied his aide, who dashed off.

  “Bugler! Sound Officer’s Call.” The tones rang down the length of the column and shortly, all of his officers arrived. He looked them over, still standing atop the armored car.

  “Well, gentlemen, for the last eight months we’ve been training and drilling, and organizing. Today we’ll find out if all that work was worthwhile. We’ve got four tripods on our trail, coming fast. We can’t outrun them, not with all the civilians. And in any case, we’re through running from these bastards. Today we are going to make them run! Harvey, you will detail one squad to escort the civilians and the extra supply trucks. Head due east toward the river. Forget about Paragould. Push them, you understand?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “The rest of your troop will form a skirmish line across our rear, just like we’ve practiced. We will continue moving east, but slowly. I’ve sent for the aircraft, but God knows how long it will take them to get here. So we take our time engaging them. Wait for my signal to dismount. Bill, I want your bikes deployed per the plan: one squad with A Troop, another on either flank, and one more in reserve. Got it?”

  “Got it, sir,” said Lieutenant Bill Calloway, commander of B Troop.

  “C and D Troop and Mister Abernathy’s guns will maintain a position back near me until I decide how and when to deploy them. If we keep moving, it will probably be at least an hour before they catch up with us. With any luck, that’s about when the aircraft will arrive. The key is to hit them with everything at once! Don’t use up our men piecemeal!” He reined himself in. They all knew this. He’d been drilling them on it for months. “All right, let’s get to it.”

  His officers dispersed to issue orders to their commands. Dolfen climbed down off the armored car, wincing as his feet touched the ground. He’d broken his leg at Glorietta Pass and it still bothered him at times. He got back on his horse. There were already shouts - and a few screams - from the civilians, but Harvey’s troopers soon had them moving east as quickly as they could be made to move. Lieutenant Lynnbrooke returned to tell him that he’d gotten the message sent off and even received a reply. “Colonel Selfridge says to hang on, sir. He’s on his way.”

  “Liar,” said Dolfen. “It’ll take him at least a half hour to get his crates in the air and another forty minutes to get here. Still, at least he’s on the move.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And we need to get on the move, too.” C and D Troop and the artillery started first, taking the same path as the civilians. A and B Troops waited until they were about a half mile ahead before following. The tripods were still six or seven miles behind them, but closing. They were probably the smaller and faster scouts. Well good; they’d be easier to kill.

  An hour later there was still no sign of the airplanes, but the Martians had closed to less than three miles from the mounted screen. He’d have to make his move soon, airplanes or no airplanes. He waited a bit longer and then waved to Lieutenant Calloway. “Go to it, Bill!” Calloway waved back and then sent one of his bikers racing out to give the order to the skirmishers.

  As soon as he got there, bugles started ringing out and immediately the squad of motorcycles who were with the horsemen roared
off directly toward the Martians. They deliberately kicked up as much dust as they could. They closed on the enemy very fast and Dolfen was afraid they would get too close too soon. But they spun about and came racing back the way they’d come.

  Meanwhile, three quarters of the cavalry dismounted, the men disappearing into gullies and patches of tall grass. The land was mostly flat, but it was cut up with numerous little creeks and ravines and there were plenty of hiding places for a man. The remaining quarter towed the empty horses back toward Dolfen. With any luck the Martians wouldn’t notice all the men now waiting in ambush for them. Luck. We’re gonna need all there is today!

  While this was going on, Lieutenant Abernathy was getting his guns into battery, and D Troop was setting up their mortars and machine guns. The armored cars of C Troop were spreading out into a line facing the oncoming enemy. They were doing it like they were on the drill field and Dolfen looked on in pride and satisfaction. Now if it just works!

  Abernathy came trotting up. “We’re ready, sir. When should I open fire?”

  “As soon as you’ve got even the faintest chance of hitting them, Lieutenant. We need to keep them as busy as possible.”

  The young lieutenant took a look through his glasses. “All right, sir, I’ll open up at thirty-five hundred yards. Normally that would be a waste of ammo, but we might get lucky.”

  “Get lucky, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, sir.” The man dashed off. Lieutenant McGuiness came up just as the other man was leaving.

  “Ready, sir,” he reported.

  “Good, have the mortars open up when the bastards are five hundred yards in front of our skirmish line.”