Counterattack

by Scott H Washburn

  Patrick frowned and chewed on his lip, but eventually he nodded. “I understand, sir. But, sir, what if this ‘proper moment’ comes during the night? My boys won’t hesitate to fly in the dark if they have to, but they won’t be nearly as effective and I could lose half of them to accidents. And two of my airfields are up here, behind the Donnelson Line, and they could be overrun if we wait too long!” he pointed to the area in the northern bend of the rivers.

  “A valid concern,” conceded Wood. “But I’m confident we can hold them through at least one night. The crisis will be tomorrow, General. We’ll need your boys tomorrow.”

  “If you say so, sir.” Patrick clearly wasn’t happy and Wood could understand. Holding back the planes was a risk, and he hoped he was making the right decision. Patrick saluted and left.

  “Bit of a firebrand, isn’t he?” said Pershing.

  “Yes, but that’s what we need for that sort of job.” He went back to look at the sand table. The flags representing the 58th Division were being moved into their fall-back positions in the second line. More flags were being moved from the docks in St. Louis to the same area. These were the 42nd Division. It was quite a distance for them, but fortunately a railroad paralleled the defense line and they were making use of it. The flags already in the line were for the 19th Division.

  They were taking a risk here with this redeployment. The 19th was holding the entire length of the line. Not knowing just how much of the 58th would make it back safely, it had been too dangerous to have the 19th only holding part of the line and praying that the 58th could fill in the unoccupied sections. So that meant that the 58th would be intermingled with the 19th along the line. And it was the same situation with the newly arriving 42nd. There was no section reserved for them, either, and it would have been crazy to put them into a totally new location in the middle of a battle anyway. All three divisions were going to be jumbled together and that was a recipe for confusion. But there was no other real choice. Trying to shuffle troops around so each division had its own section of the line in the face of the enemy was simply impossible. Each unit would have to dig in and hold where it was. General William Weigel, commander of the 19th Division, was being given tactical command of the line, although Foltz would be looking over his shoulder very closely.

  More flags began to appear and these were the forces of the 1st Tank Division. Their ships were at the city wharfs and unloading. They would head out to form a reserve for the troops holding the Donnelson Line. Wood hoped they could get there in time. The red flags were getting close. Several other blue flags caught Wood’s eye and he leaned forward to see what was written on them. He straightened up and looked sharply at Pershing.

  “You’ve sent the Little Davids out beyond the walls?” Wood had assumed the six self-propelled twelve-inch gun vehicles would be kept as a last reserve.

  “It seemed like the proper thing, General. As tall as they are, they aren’t tall enough to fire over the city walls, at least not directly. They could fire indirectly, of course, but we have plenty of other heavy guns for that. They seem like ideal long range snipers to pick off tripods with direct fire. And with only one gate in the walls big enough for them to pass through, I felt that having them backing up the Donnelson Line was the best use for them. They can always fall back if they are threatened.”

  Wood scowled. What Pershing said was true, but they had spent so much time and money on the blasted things, he didn’t want to risk losing them unnecessarily. Still, he’d given them to Pershing to use and it was Black Jack’s command, so he just nodded and remained silent.

  Damn, war was becoming so complicated! Wood had spent most of his career with just the traditional infantry, artillery, and cavalry. Even though he had no formal military training, he had caught on how to use them - and how to lead them - quickly. He’d gone from a contract surgeon to leading an ad hoc infantry formation against Geronimo, to colonel of a regiment of volunteer cavalry, to commanding a brigade, and then a division in Cuba. Each step up had been more complicated, but the cogs of the machine had been mostly the same. But now, now there were airplanes and radios and steam tanks and huge, clanking war machines, and God only knew what else to try and keep track of and coordinate.

  But this was the only way they could hope to win.

  The afternoon dragged on. The leading elements of the Martian forces reached the Donnelson Line and recoiled, hammered by masses of artillery. This new resistance seemed to surprise the enemy and they drew back, apparently to regroup. “Surely they didn’t think the forward line was all we had,” said Foltz.

  “We have no idea what, or even how, they think,” said Wood. “But this is giving us the time to get our forces in place, so let’s be thankful.”

  “Yes, sir, except night’s coming. I’d rather not fight these bastards in the dark if we can avoid it.”

  “I doubt we can avoid it. They know we’re not as effective at night, so they’ll probably wait. I’d expect them to do the same sort of probing attacks as they did on the first line.”

  “And they’ll probably try to infiltrate those damn spider-machines again, Fred. Better alert your troops to keep a close watch tonight,” said Pershing.

  “Yes, sir, and this line is held strongly enough we ought to be able to stop them from sneaking through.”

  Wood nodded and then asked the question he always hated. “Any figures on losses? Ours and theirs?”

  Pershing called over his intelligence officer, a colonel named Dowding. He wore spectacles and rummaged through a sheaf of papers. “Reports have been coming in, General, but it’s too early to have really good figures.”

  “I know. But what’s your best guess?”

  “It seems like the 116th Brigade of the 58th took the brunt of things. Still, their losses don’t look too bad. Maybe a thousand men lost, along with a dozen guns or so. The other brigade, the 117th, got off more lightly. Maybe five hundred men and only a few guns. As for Martian losses…” he rummaged some more. “Maybe fifty tripods destroyed. We don’t have any good estimates for the spider-machines, I’m sorry, sir.”

  “Fifty? Out of how many? Do you have any figures on their total force?”

  “It’s hard to get a good count, since they can move around so quickly. Easy to count the same one twice, you know. But we are estimating a force of around five hundred tripods, sir. No idea on the spiders.”

  Wood suppressed a shudder. Five hundred tripods? It seemed an enormous force, far larger than the force which had routed the army in 1910. We’re a lot stronger now, too. And they’d killed a tenth of this force before they even got to the main defenses… except…

  “We’ve gotten reports that the Martians are recovering the pilots out of wrecked tripods and transferring them to spare machines so they can return to the fight. Your men need to make sure that they destroy the tripods completely and kill the pilots.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Pershing. “We’ve instructed the men about that and we have teams with every company which have demolition charges - much larger than what the infantry normally carry—to go out and finish off the damaged machines.”

  “Excellent.” He paused. “It will take good men for a job like that.”

  “Yes, sir, and we’ve got ‘em. Damn good men.”

  The day drew to a close without a serious attack on the Donnelson Line. It appeared that the Martians were calling up their own reserves and returning to the probing attacks they’d used before. Wood, guessing that they had a few hours before the next round would commence, went down to his own suite and lay down. Despite his exhaustion, it was hard to sleep, but he finally drifted off.

  * * * * *

  Cycle 597, 845.1, east of Holdfast 32-4

  Qetjnegartis halted its fighting machine and looked out at river 3-1. The artificial satellite had provided exact measurements of the feature, but somehow it appeared far larger than expected. Qetjnegartis had not yet seen the planet’s oceans, so it knew that there were bodies of water vastl
y larger than this river, but it had never seen so much water in one place before and it was impressive.

  And daunting.

  “Forcing a crossing will not be easy, Commander,” said Kantangnar, leader of Battlegroup 32-4, which had escorted it here. “Preliminary reconnaissance has shown the river to be deep with a strong current, and a very soft bottom. It is not known if our machines can cross it at all. We have tried to send drones across, all have been lost, either swept away, or hopelessly stuck in the mire.”

  It used the magnifier in its machine to study the defenses of city 3-37 on the far shore. They were elaborate and formidable, using huge amounts of the cast stone material which was so resistant to the heat rays. There were also very many of the large projectile throwers, both on the shore and on vessels in the river. Some of them were firing the new flares which the prey-creatures were using to provide artificial light. The approach of the battlegroup had not gone unnoticed, despite the darkness.

  The prospect of attempting to cross here was not a pleasant one. Losses could be extreme and victory by no means assured. But Group 33 to the north was launching a major attack at this very moment, and Group 32 would have to launch its own assault as soon as possible. Still, there was no absolute necessity to launch the attack at this exact spot…

  “We cannot remain here long, Commander,” said Kantangnar. “The enemy will concentrate its fire on this location if we do not move.”

  “Understood. I have seen enough.”

  Chapter Eleven

  May, 1912, St. Louis, Missouri

  Wood had managed a few hours sleep, but he still felt very tired, his head full of fog. He yawned as he rolled out of the bed and took the mug of coffee Colonel Drum offered him. Had Drum slept? Probably not. As he drank, he went over to the western window in his room and looked out. The sky was dotted with tiny lights drifting slowly earthward. Star shells the men were calling them, but even from fifteen miles away, they were brighter than any of the true stars in the sky. Wood checked his watch and saw that it was still an hour shy of midnight when the waning moon was due to rise. With the clouds he’d seen at dusk, he doubted the moon would be much help.

  There were plenty of other lights out there, too. With the enemy closing in on the main defenses, nearly all the artillery was coming into action and there was a constant flickering of the guns, most in the far distance, but some much closer by. Those nearer flashes tore away the night for an instant, lighting up the landscape and rattling the hotel’s windows.

  He went back up to the command center to see what was happening. The first thing he noticed was that Fred Foltz wasn’t there. “He’s gone out to a forward command post,” explained Pershing. “With those three divisions mixed together he wants to make sure there are no foul-ups.” Wood nodded. It was a good move; the last thing they needed now was the three division commanders arguing over who was in charge.

  “So you’ll command the rest of the corps from here,” said Wood. It was a statement, not a question.

  “Seems to make the most sense, sir.” Pershing paused and then added. “I think the main attack will start very soon. The front line troops are reporting that more and more of the spider-machines and tripods are massing.”

  “How are the star shells holding out?”

  “We’ve used a lot, but we’ve got at least enough for the rest of tonight. If it’s not settled by tomorrow night… we may be in trouble.”

  “I’ll have some shipped in from the reserve stocks of 5th Army.”

  Another hour of anxious waiting proved Pershing correct. The spider-machines began to overwhelm some of the forward strongpoints, despite scores of them being destroyed. Then three groups of tripods, each over a hundred strong, punched their way through the defense lines at different points. This was just what they had done at Albuquerque.

  But unlike Albuquerque, the line did not collapse.

  There were a dozen concrete forts, each studded with powerful guns, along the line and these served as anchors and rally points to the soldiers in the earthen trenches and bunkers. The troops on each side of the breaches folded back to the nearest fort and continued to fight. The forts were designed to fight in any direction, so their guns blasted away at the Martians moving past them, and many tripods turned to deal with the threat. This gave Foltz time to send his reserve tank battalions forward to counterattack the penetrations. The 1st Tank Division wasn’t in position yet, but XV Corps had eight battalions of its own tanks, almost three hundred of them, on hand and they rumbled forward to engage.

  Wood stared at the big sand table as red and blue flags were moved around and suddenly couldn’t stand it anymore. Maps and models! He needed to see! He found some binoculars and dragged Drum up to the roof of the hotel. The horizon in every direction was a constant blaze of gun flashes. Guns in the city, guns north of the Donnelson Line, guns from the ships on the Mississippi, Missouri, and Meramec, and even a few long range guns from across the river in Illinois were firing as fast as they could. Out there on the open rooftop, the noise was much louder, a constant deep rumble, punctuated by sharp bangs from the closer batteries.

  “God Almighty,” whispered Drum, staring at the spectacle.

  All that firepower was being directed against a few square miles of landscape about fifteen miles off to the west. Wood trained his binoculars that way, hoping to see the results of this incredible onslaught. Surely something was happening! There was smoke and flames and an almost continuous string of explosions, but it was all tiny and far away and impossible to interpret accurately. A westerly wind was coming up and a strong smell of burning was in the air.

  Wood watched for a while, but he grew increasingly frustrated. “I need to get closer,” he growled.

  “I, uh, rather thought you would, General,” said Drum. “I’ve located a secondary command post on the city walls which ought to have a better view. If you want, we can get there in half an hour, sir.”

  Wood smiled. “You’re a good man, Hugh. Get a car ready. I’ll tell Pershing what I’m up to.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They went downstairs, Drum to fetch the car and Wood to confer with Pershing. Black Jack didn’t seem surprised - or upset - that his senior would finally get out from underfoot. “I’ll have any important news relayed to where you’ll be, sir,” he said. “That post has a full set of telephones.”

  “Thanks. I’ll probably be back here before too long, John. Just need to stretch my legs a bit.”

  “I completely understand, sir. Be careful out there.”

  Wood took the elevator down to the sumptuous lobby of the hotel and then out the revolving doors onto the street. Drum was waiting there with a staff car and driver. For some reason the guns were even louder down here and the smell of burning even stronger. They got aboard and the car lurched into motion.

  “Gonna have to take a few detours, sir!” shouted the driver. “The streets are fulla trucks ‘n tanks ‘n guns!”

  And so they were. While the bulk of the 42nd Division’s fighting formations had already reached the front, the division’s logistical train was still moving through the city. Long lines of horse-drawn wagons and motor trucks heading west clogged many of the main streets. And on parallel roads were the tanks and vehicles of the 1st Tank Division, still moving up from the docks. Their driver was forced to take smaller side streets.

  At one intersection, they had to wait as a column of steam tanks, smoke belching from their stacks, clanked past. They were mostly the newer Mark IIIs, with the side gun sponsons, but following along were several behemoths which were much larger.

  “Good God!” exclaimed the driver. “Lookit those bastards!”

  “The Mark IVs,” said Wood, nodding. He’d seen drawings of them, but never in the flesh. They looked rather like the Mark IIIs, except they were about twice as large in every dimension. Easily thirty feet long, they sprouted guns from the hull, from side sponsons, and a big cylindrical turret sitting on top. They were so wide they nea
rly filled the street, and as he watched, a telephone pole was snagged by one of the guns and snapped off like a twig. He could feel the ground shuddering as they lumbered past.

  The driver looked at the column nervously and when he saw a slightly longer gap between the tanks, gunned the engine and roared across the street to the other side. Wood gripped the armrest of his seat and winced. “Easy there!” shouted Drum. “Get us there in one piece, will you?”

  “Sorry, sir. Thought we was in a hurry!”

  They wove their way through back streets and eventually emerged near a large park. It had been the site of the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition and many of the bigger exhibit buildings were still there. Millions of people had attended. Wood had missed the exposition, being in the Philippines at the time, but Roosevelt had come and described it to him several times. It had been a world’s fair with all the most advanced technology of the time on display. Now, the park was displaying some of the world’s most advanced weaponry. A dozen or more heavy artillery batteries had been sited on the open ground and were in full operation. The flashes of the guns lit up the classical facades of the buildings, and from the looks of things, had broken many of their windows, too.

  The new city walls were just beyond the park. A line of concrete, gleaming white in the gun flashes, marched across the western skyline. The walls were a good thirty feet tall with higher towers at intervals. It looked for all the world like some ancient fortification like what Hadrian’s Wall or the Great Wall of China must have looked like in their glory. If only it was just barbarians we were trying to keep out.