<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></SPAN>CHAPTER XV<br/> The Counter-Attack</h2>
<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">The</span> news which caused me to
change my plans was grave
enough. As I have explained, the
American lines lay roughly to
the east and the south of the city
in the mountains. My own Gang
held the northern flank of the
east line. To the south of us was
the Colorado Union, a force of
5,000 men and about 2,000 girls
recruited from about fifteen
Gangs. They were a splendid organization,
well disciplined and
equipped. Their posts, rather
widely distributed, occupied the
mountain tops and other points
of advantage to a distance of
about a hundred and fifty miles
to the south. There the line
turned east, and was held by the
Gangs which had come up from
the south. Now, simultaneously
with the reports from my scouts
that a large Han land force was
working its way down on us from
the north, and threatening to
outflank us, came word from Jim
Hallwell, Big Boss of the Colorado
Union and the commander
in chief of our army, that another
large Han force was to the
southwest of our western flank.
And in addition, it seemed, most
of the Han military forces at Lo-Tan
had been moved out of the
city and advanced toward our
lines before our air-ball attack.</p>
<p>The situation would not have
been in the least alarming if the
Hans had had no better arms to
fight with than their disintegrator
rays, which naturally revealed
the locations of their generators
the second the visible
beams went into play, and their
airships, which we had learned
how to bring down, first from
the air, and now from the
ground, through ultrono-controlled
projectiles.</p>
<p>But the Hans had learned
their lesson from us by this time.
Their electrono-chemists had devised
atomic projectiles, rocket-propelled,
very much like our
own, which could be launched in
a terrific barrage without revealing
the locations of their
batteries, and they had equipped
their infantry with rocket guns
not dissimilar to ours. This division
of their army had been expanded
by general conscription.
So far as ordnance was concerned,
we had little advantage
over them; although tactically
we were still far superior, for
our jumping belts enabled our
men and girls to scale otherwise
inaccessible heights, conceal
themselves readily in the upper
branches of the giant trees, and
gave them a general all around
mobility, the enemy could not
hope to equal.</p>
<p>We had the advantage too, in
our ultronophones and scopes, in
a field of energy which the Hans
could not penetrate, while we
could cut in on their electrono or
(as I would have called it in the
Twentieth Century) radio broadcasts.</p>
<hr />
<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">Later</span> reports showed that
there were no less than 10,000
Hans in the force to our
north, which evidently was
equipped with a portable power
broadcast, sufficient for communication
purposes and the local
operation of small scoutships,
painted a green which made
them difficult to distinguish
against the mountain and forest
backgrounds. These ships just
skimmed the surface of the terrain,
hardly ever outlining themselves
against the sky. Moreover,
the Han commanders wisely had
refrained from massing their
forces. They had developed over a
very wide and deep front, in
small units, well scattered,
which were driving down the
parallel valleys and canyons like
spearheads. Their communications
were working well too, for
our scouts reported their advance
as well restrained, and
maintaining a perfect front as
between valley and valley, with
a secondary line of heavy batteries,
moved by small airships
from peak to peak, following
along the ridges somewhat behind
the valley forces.</p>
<p>Hallwell had determined to
withdraw our southern wing,
pivoting it back to face the outflanking
Han force on that side,
which had already worked its
way well down in back of our
line.</p>
<p>In the ultronophone council
which we held at once, each Boss
tuning in on Hallwell's band,
though remaining with his unit,
Wilma and I pleaded for a vigorous
attack rather than a defensive
maneuver. Our suggestion
was to divide the American
forces into three divisions, with
all the swoopers forming a special
reserve, and to advance with
a rush on the three Han forces
behind a rolling barrage.</p>
<p>But the best we could do was
to secure permission to make
such an attack with our Wyomings,
if we wished, to serve as a
diversion while the lines were
reforming. And two of the southern
Gangs on the west flank,
which were eager to get at the
enemy, received the same permission.</p>
<p>The rest of the army fumed at
the caution of the council, but it
spoke well for their discipline
that they did not take things in
their own hands, for in the eyes
of those forest men who had
been hounded for centuries, the
chance to spring at the throats
of the Hans outweighed all other
considerations.</p>
<p>So, as the council signed off,
Wilma and I turned to the eager
faces that surrounded us, and
issued our orders.</p>
<hr />
<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">In</span> a moment the air was filled
with leaping figures as the
men and girls shot away over the
tree tops and up the mountain
sides in the deployment movement.</p>
<p>A group of our engineers
threw themselves headlong toward
a cave across the valley,
where they had rigged out a
powerful electrono plant operating
from atomic energy. And a
few moments later the little
portable receiver, the Intelligence
Boss used to pick up the
enemy messages, began to emit
such ear-splitting squeals and
howls that he shut it off. Our
heterodyne or "radio-scrambling"
broadcast had gone into
operation, emitting impulses of
constantly varying wave-length
over the full broadcast range
and heterodyning the Han communications
into futility.</p>
<p>In a little while our scouts
came leaping down the valley
from the north, and our air balls
now were hovering above the
Han lines, operators at the control
boards near-by painstakingly
picking up the pictures of the
Han squads struggling down the
valleys with their comparatively
clumsy weapons.</p>
<p>As fast as the air-ball scopes
picked out these squads, their
operators, each of whom was
in ultronophone communication
with a girl long-gunner at some
spot in our line, would inform
her of the location of the enemy
unit, and the latter, after a bit
of mathematical calculation,
would send a rocket into the air
which would come roaring down
on, or very near that unit, and
wipe it out.</p>
<p>But for all of that, the number
of the Han squads were too much
for us. And for every squad we
destroyed, fifty advanced.</p>
<p>And though the lines were still
several miles apart, in most
places, and in some cases with
mountain ridges intervening, the
Han fire control began to sense
the general location of our posts,
and things became more serious
as their rockets too began to hiss
down and explode here and there
in our lines, not infrequently
killing or maiming one or more of
our girls.</p>
<p>The men, our bayonet-gunners,
had not as yet suffered, for
they were well in advance of the
girls, under strict orders to
shoot no rockets nor in any way
reveal their positions; so the
Han rockets were going over
their heads.</p>
<hr />
<p class="cap"><span class="dcap">The</span> Hans in the valleys now
were shooting diagonal barrages
up the slopes toward the
ridges, where they suspected we
would be most strongly posted,
thus making a cross-fire up the
two sides of a ridge, while their
heavy batteries, somewhat in the
rear, shot straight along the
tops of the ridges. But their valley
forces were getting out of
alignment a bit by now, owing to
our heterodyne operations.</p>
<p>I ordered our swoopers, of
which we had five, to sweep
along above these ridges and
destroy the Han batteries.</p>
<p>Up in the higher levels where
they were located, the Hans had
little cover. A few of their small
rep-ray ships rose to meet our
swoopers, but were battered
down. One swooper they brought
to earth with a disintegrator ray
beam, by creating a vacuum beneath
it, but they did it no serious
damage, for its fall was a
light one. Subsequently it did
tremendous damage, cleaning off
an entire ridge.</p>
<p>Another swooper ran into a
catastrophe that had one chance
in a million of occurring. It hit a
heavy Han rocket nose to nose.
Inertron sheathing and all, it
was blown into powder.</p>
<p>But the others accomplished
their jobs excellently. Small, two-man
ships, streaking straight at
the Hans at between 600 and
700 miles an hour, they could
not be hit except by sheer amazing
luck, and they showered
their tiny but powerful bombs
everywhere as they went.</p>
<p>At the same instant I ordered
the girls to cease sharp-shooting,
and lay their barrages down in
the valleys, with their long-guns
set for maximum automatic advance,
and to feed the reservoirs
as fast as possible, while the
bayonet-gunners leaped along
close behind this barrage.</p>
<p>Then, with a Twentieth Century
urge to see with my own
eyes rather than through a viewplate,
and to take part in the action,
I turned command over to
Wilma and leaped away, fifty
feet a jump, up the valley, toward
the distant flashes and
rolling thunder.</p>
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