Counterattack

by Scott H Washburn

  But they hadn’t gone more than a few hundred yards when something tore through them from right to left. In Cuba, Wood had seen rifle fire slicing through tall grass, clipping off stalks. It was just like this now. Several tripods had arms torn away or legs amputated beneath them, and one was shattered completely, its pieces spinning off like pinwheels. “What the hell was that?” he shouted.

  “It came from over on the right…” said Drum.

  Wood swung his binoculars that way. To the north, there was a bit of high ground and several dark shapes were perched there. As he watched, there was a flash from one of them and a cloud of smoke engulfed it. The smoke billowing up was suddenly turned from gray to white as the first level rays of the dawn touched it. A moment later, the light struck the hulking vehicle which had produced the smoke. A Little David!

  The newly constructed war machines were there, on the high ground, firing into the massed Martians. And as the last of the night’s shadows were swept away, he could see that they weren’t alone. Dozens of smaller vehicles, each spewing clouds of black coal smoke, were trundling forward, down the slope, toward the enemy. Smaller puffs of white smoke came from their guns. The 1st Tank Division had arrived!

  Once again, the Martians seemed confused by this new attack. They stood there for long moments as the fire tore through them. Machine after machine crashed to the ground. Finally, some sort of decision was made and the large mass split into two, half heading north toward the tanks and the Little Davids, and the other half heading east.

  Toward him.

  There were still at least a hundred tripods and God knew how many of the spider-machines in the group headed east. They seemed much closer now, no more than three miles away, maybe less. Drum looked from the enemy back to him. “Are you sure you want to stay here, sir?”

  He almost answered automatically that he did. But did he? Really? He was the bloody chief of staff of the United States Army! Was he going to get himself killed over some point of honor? Instead, he took a deep breath and walked over to the north side of the tower and looked out.

  What he saw surprised him. While he had been watching the battle so single-mindedly, much had happened. The areas behind the walls, which had seemed nearly deserted when they’d arrived, was now teaming with activity. Hundreds of soldiers were marching up or climbing on to the walls. Mortars were being set up behind the walls while machine guns and stovepipe teams took position along the parapet. Field guns were going into battery further back, and a few hundred yards away a crane was lifting something up to one to the towers. A platoon of steam tanks clanked along, looking for some place to deploy. The disappearing guns roared out another salvo and a freshening westerly wind blew the smoke clouds back across the troops. Wood made up his mind.

  “I’ll stay.”

  Drum looked exasperated. “Then please come down to the command post, sir! It’s much better protected!”

  “In a bit, in a bit. When they get closer.” He went back to the western side of the tower and raised his binoculars again. The Martians were still coming on. The land west of the walls was mostly open, but there were patches of trees, some farms, and a few small clusters of houses. The invaders set them all ablaze as they passed, and the smoke from those fires joined that of the artillery bursts.

  Those bursts were coming faster than ever as the word of the assault was spread to the batteries. Now their crews put forth the last of their strength. They’d been working their guns for over a day, but they knew this was the decisive moment and they held nothing back. The roar, which had rarely slackened, now became all encompassing. Geysers of earth and debris shot upward all around the tripods, and he lost sight of the other group which had turned to face the Little Davids and the 1st Tanks. No way to know what was going on over there. No matter, the battle was going to be decided here!

  Two miles, one mile, the enemy continued to advance. But there were fewer of them now; they were paying for every yard. Wrecked machines littered the ground behind them. And still the artillery hammered the foe. The men at the plotting table back in the Hotel Jefferson were doing their job, calling in fire from every battery and ship within range. Wood suddenly wondered what their orders were for when the enemy got close to the walls? Cease fire? Continue firing despite the chance—hell the certainty—that some shells would land on friendly troops? He wished he’d asked. He instinctively glanced skyward, then looked to his aide.

  “Hugh, why don’t we go down to the command center?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  They went down the stairs, Wood giving a backward look at the men who remained behind. What orders did they have? The command center on the floor below was much busier than it had been before. The commanders of some of the newly arrived units had congregated there and they were clearly surprised to find Wood there, too. They snapped to attention when they saw him.

  “Carry on, gentlemen. Carry on. We’ve all got jobs to do so let’s do them.” The men went back to work. Major Hase was looking out through one of the embrasures with a pair of binoculars in one hand and a field telephone in the other, apparently directing the fire of his big guns. A pair of infantry captains appeared to be arguing about where their men should be posted. Another officer with ordnance tabs was talking excitedly with one of the artillery officers. Other men, the spotters for the artillery, peered through other embrasures, feeding their observations back to those plotters at the Jefferson. Everyone had a task - except Wood.

  He moved to one of the view slits, trying not to crowd the spotter, and looked out. The Martians were much closer now, a thousand yards or less. Their bulbous heads reflected the sunlight and their long spindly legs propelled them forward with a gait that simply looked wrong. And now their heat rays were firing again—firing at the walls. Blasts of pure heat leapt out from the devices they carried and sprayed across the human defenders.

  The men at the embrasures cried out in alarm and began to slam closed the metal shutters. Nothing hit the command center yet, but the observers, and Wood, peered hesitantly through the small but thick quartz vision slit built into the shutters. Theoretically, they would protect a man long enough to duck, but as far as Wood knew, they had never been tested.

  The urge to be able to see was irresistible and Wood squinted through the quartz. His field of view was narrow and the smoke was getting thicker, but he could still dimly make out the enemy in the distance. On and on they came. Five hundred yards, four hundred, and the smaller spider-machines - God they do look like spiders! - stayed with them, a horrifying mass of legs and waving tendrils.

  Now some of the tripods came to an abrupt halt. One fell over completely, even though Wood had seen no shell strike it. The pit traps! Out in front of the walls, the men had dug traps to snare the legs of the machine. Skillfully hidden, the enemy hadn’t seen them until it was too late.

  “Yes!” screamed Major Hase. “Hit the trapped ones! Before they can get free!” Wood glanced aside to see the coast artilleryman shouting into a telephone receiver. He looked back at the Martians, and a moment later, one of them was blasted to fragments as a twelve-inch shell tore through it. After a few seconds, two more were destroyed. Hit them! Hit them!

  Suddenly, the world turned red.

  A blinding red glare filled his vision and a terrible heat seared his face. He flung up his arm, turned away, and ducked down. Around him, men were crying out, but Wood could see nothing but red, despite blinking furiously. Damn! Was he blind?

  “General! Are you all right?” He heard Drum next to him and felt him grab his arm and drag him a few feet to one side. Tears were filling his eyes and streaming down his cheeks and he wiped his face with his sleeve. It hurt. He gasped in relief when the red faded and he could see blurry images in front of him. More blinking and wiping and the blur turned into the grainy concrete of the command center’s floor. He could see! “General! Are you hurt?”

  “I’m… I’m all right.”

  “Sir, your face is burned!”


  Yes, he could feel the pain now. He imagined all the skin around his eyes had been burned. He touched it gingerly, but it didn’t seem too bad. “I’m all right.”

  “I’ll send for a medic.”

  “Later. What’s happening?” He looked around and saw several other men who had been injured. The red glow in the vision slits was gone. He went over to the one he’d been looking through and swore. The quartz was cracked and discolored and not transparent at all anymore.

  But the battle was going on. He could hear it and feel it. He needed to see it! He reached out to open the metal shutter but jerked his hand back. He could feel the heat radiating off the metal. No, he couldn’t open them. He turned toward the door.

  “Where are you going, sir?” demanded Drum.

  “Up to the roof.”

  His aide swore a remarkable oath, but didn’t try to stop him. Swaying on his feet slightly, he went into the stairwell and nearly collided with a man helping a badly burned soldier down the steps. “You sure about this, sir?” shouted Drum.

  He wasn’t really, but to stay locked up in that concrete box was intolerable. He went up the steps and then paused just below the opening to the roof. There was the noise of explosions and the shriek of the heat rays and the cries of men, but no blasts of heat were sweeping the rooftop just at the moment. He edged out, crouching low. The men who had been up here were all huddling below the parapet, bobbing up now and again to see. A headless body with a smoldering tunic lay sprawled on the concrete. Working his way to the north wall, Wood popped up to take a look.

  The Martians had reached the wall.

  Their machines were clustered in front of it and spread out for hundreds of yards to either side of Wood’s tower. Some were down in the water-filled ditch, scrabbling and splashing futilely with claws and legs to pull themselves up and over it. Others stood back beyond the ditch, firing their heat rays against the wall or at any human bold enough to show himself above the parapet. Wood saw a ray swinging in his direction and ducked down as it passed. The top of the concrete glowed redly for a moment and he could feel the heat radiating off of it.

  He dared to look again. The troops on top of the walls were tossing their dynamite bombs over the parapet and they were exploding among the Martians. One of the tripods had a leg blown off and it topped over into the ditch. Bolder men were rising up to fire off their stovepipe rockets. The disappearing guns still rose up to fire, but Wood wasn’t sure what they were aiming at with the enemy so near. The scream of artillery shells was very close now and some were bursting just a few dozen yards beyond the ditch. The mortar crews down below were firing frantically with their tubes pointed almost straight up, trying to drop their bombs just on the other side of the wall.

  He had to duck again as another blast of heat swept across the top edge of the tower. Fortunately, the tower was taller than the enemy, and they couldn’t hit the men on top - unless they were foolish enough to expose themselves.

  He looked again, careful not to touch the hot concrete, and saw a tripod pick up one of the spider-machines and fling it over the wall. It landed among the mortar crews and scrambling up on its metal legs, began firing a small heat ray and lashing out with a razor-tipped tentacle. Men screamed and began to run.

  An infantry squad appeared, firing rifles into the horrid thing. It fired back with its ray, but a well-aimed Springfield shot shattered the device and the ray sputtered out. The Martian killing machine advanced on the troops with its red-stained tentacle flashing about in front of it, but then there was a whoosh and a cloud of smoke, and a stovepipe rocket exploded against it, blowing off a leg and tumbling it onto its back. A trooper ran forward, placed a bomb on the machine’s belly, and then darted aside. The blast blew the thing to pieces.

  But the other Martians had gotten the same idea and more and more of the spiders came flying over the wall. Some landed heavily and were damaged, but most sprang up and attacked. He saw one land among the crew of one of the twelve-inchers and the poor gunners didn’t have a chance.

  More troops came up to reinforce the line and some of the steam tanks as well. The noise of battle rose to a crescendo and Wood vaguely realized the cotton balls had fallen out of his ears somewhere. The melee behind the walls was mesmerizing. Men died and spiders were crushed. But this wasn’t good. If the Martians could clear a section of its defenders, how long until they could rip open a hole they could get through? If the tripods and spiders got loose into the city…

  “General! General Wood?” Someone was shaking him. He slumped back behind the wall and saw it was the ordnance officer he had seen earlier. “General! Do I have your permission to fire?”

  “What?”

  “General, can I open fire?”

  “With what? What are you talking about, son?”

  “The heat rays, sir! They’re set up but I can’t use them without an order from headquarters! I can’t get through to General Pershing, but I was just told that you were here!”

  “What?! You have them here?” A thrill went through him.

  “Yes, sir! We’ve got them hooked up in five locations along this section of wall. But I can’t fire them without your orders, sir!”

  “Well God in Heaven, fire! Fire the damn things!” The man grinned and ran for the stairs.

  Still the battle raged. More and more spiders were making it across the wall and they quickly proved that they could take out a steam tank if given the chance. Reserves in this area were getting used up and the tripods were hammering at the wall with their claws and starting to rip chunks of concrete loose. The artillery fire was slackening, too, out of shells or their crews exhausted.

  A sudden commotion from the west parapet of the tower made him jerk his head around. A metal leg had appeared on the edge of the parapet. A second one joined it and they scrabbled to find a hold.

  “A spider-machine, sir!” cried Drum. “We need to get out of here!” Drum hauled him up and dragged him toward the stairs. One of the observers grabbed a metal leg and tried to shove it loose, but the machine’s tentacle came over the parapet, striking like a scorpion’s stinger and skewered the poor devil. Wood stopped resisting Drum. Yes they had to…

  The sound of a heat ray pierced the air. There were dozens of them already firing, but this one sounded different somehow. Looking north, Wood saw a ray stab out from one of the towers which had been built so they could enfilade the walls, firing down their length. The ray struck a tripod standing on the edge of the ditch, catching it at the narrow spot where the head met the strangely shaped hip joints. It flared brightly for a moment and burst into molten fragments, and the machine crashed to the ground.

  The ray shifted to the next tripod in line.

  The Martians did not react at first. Perhaps they thought it was some mistake, an errant shot by one of their own. Perhaps they just didn’t believe it. But they hesitated for long fatal seconds as the ray claimed a second tripod and then a third. The ray ceased and Wood knew that it couldn’t fire continuously without overheating. Finally, the Martians responded, turning toward where the ray had come from, but still they seemed confused.

  “Look, sir!” cried Drum. He was pointing at the spider-machine. It had pulled itself up nearly over the parapet, but it had stopped, frozen in place. Not moving at all. Looking down, Wood saw that all the spiders had stopped moving. Soldiers stared at them for an instant and then attacked. Bombs and stovepipes and steam tank cannons ripped into them.

  “Push that thing off!” shouted Wood. A half dozen men sprang into action. They grabbed the spider’s legs and with brute strength toppled it off the tower.

  The heat ray in the other tower blazed to life again, claiming another victim. The surviving Martians finally fired back, and after a moment there was an explosion in the tower, but not before a fifth tripod crashed to the ground.

  There were still a half dozen tripods along this section of wall, and after a few more seconds the spider-machines, the ones which hadn’t been wrecked, came
back to life; but the tripods were backing away, not renewing the attack. As the wind blew a hole in the smoke, Wood could see out far to the north, and it looked as though the enemy which had turned that way were now heading south. Retreating?

  Yes!

  The ones in front of him turned and moved away as fast as they could. There were only a handful of the spider-machines with them and they were quickly left behind. Wood walked to the western parapet, stepping around the man who’d been gutted by the spider and looked out, fumbling for his binoculars. He brought them up, but his hands were shaking and he couldn’t focus them. He gave up on that and just looked out. All along the walls, the Martians were falling back. At first, the defenders seemed as stunned as the Martians had been when their own heat rays had been turned against them, but they soon went back to work. The 112th’s guns claimed at least three more of the tripods before they disappeared. Damn fine shooting.

  The enemy drew off to the west and the south, pursued by the remains of the Little Davids and the 1st Tanks. And the artillery and the aircraft. Explosions and airplanes chased the enemy into the distance. Wood couldn’t tell how many of the tripods had gotten away, but it wasn’t nearly as many as had come in the first place. We stopped them. They hit us with everything they had and we stopped them. A wave of relief and exaltation swept through him.

  He was very tired, he realized, and he didn’t resist when Drum had a medic put some ointment on his burned face and apply some bandages; it was starting to hurt quite a bit now.

  “We should get back to headquarters, sir,” suggested his aide.

  “Yes, yes, we should…”

  But he couldn’t leave until he’d thanked the men who’d won this victory. He wandered through the command center shaking hands, and then down to the ground level and along the walls, talking to gunners and tank crews and infantrymen. There were wrecked spiders everywhere along with wrecked tanks and a great many casualties. The spiders left a lot more wounded than the big tripods did. Ambulances were arriving near the wall now and doctors, nurses, and medics were working to save those who could be saved. Wood talked with the wounded and thanked the medical people.