The Great Martian War: The Gathering Storm - Snippet #3
Dec 3, 2019 12:27:05 GMT
Quendil and mikedski like this
Post by scottwashburn on Dec 3, 2019 12:27:05 GMT
Okay, here is Snippet #3. This is the second half of Chapter 1.
Harry looked down the street and saw the dark shapes emerging from the smoke, about three blocks away. Heat rays stabbed out and buildings on either side of the street erupted in flames. He could see that there were other groups of the enemy advancing down parallel streets, all heading for the center of the city and the vital harbor. A shudder ran through him, but he forced his fear into a dark recess in his mind and took a deep breath. You’ve fought them before. You’ve fought them before and won.
They had fought them and they had won—at least for a while. The Martians had first hit Sydney in late November, 1909. They’d hit it—and been driven back. It had been a near run thing for sure, but Sydney’s defenses held. Harry and his men weren’t really in the thick of it, but they were on the edge of the fighting and fired some shots and lost some men. Burford Sampson had proved to be one of those lucky ones who killed a tripod with a bomb and lived to talk about it. There’d been some talk about a medal for him, no one was bothering much with medals these days.
The Martians had hit them twice on two consecutive nights, but then seemed to give up. They’d retreated back into the interior and weren’t seen again for a long while. Meanwhile, the ships were evacuating the civilians. It was thirteen hundred miles to New Zealand, a ten-day round trip for a typical steamer. They left, packed with humanity and enough food and water to reach their destination, but not much more. There was no room for more than a person could carry, and mountains of abandoned belongings piled up near the docks. After the first repulse of the Martians some said the evacuations should be halted, but Harry, suspecting that things were going to get much worse, insisted that his mother and two sisters should not wait. He practically had to drag them to a ship, but in the end they had gone.
He was surely glad of that now.
Granted it was over a year since the first attack, but the enemy had put the time to better use than the defenders. More cylinders had come from Mars and the Martians already here had built factories in their remote fortresses to create more tripods. When they were ready they attacked again. A few months ago they had concentrated and hit Perth with overwhelming numbers and annihilated the defenders. Their tripod machines gave them a mobility unprecedented in warfare. Scouts and the few aircraft available had reported that the enemy host was crossing the outback heading east, heading for Sydney.
And here they were.
“Get ready, men!” he shouted. “Keep your heads down and let them get close.” His men obeyed, crouching below the parapet. He wasn’t sure how much protection the brick would provide, but it was better than nothing.
Harry popped up for a look and he saw two tripods nearing the end of the next block. They were burning each building as they came to it, their heat rays stabbing out relentlessly. Flames gushed out of windows and roared up through the roofs. This isn’t going to work, we’ll be burned to a crisp before they get close enough for us to hurt them! He looked around frantically. Should he order his men out now, while there was still a chance to get away?
A roar and high-pitched squeals from behind made him pop up again and look back toward the park. There in the street were a pair of the steam tanks, black smoke puffing out of their stacks, their caterpillar tracks making the squeal he’d heard. One was the standard brown-tan color, but the other was just rusty, bare metal; so fresh from the factory that it hadn’t even been painted.
The tanks halted and almost in unison the twenty-five pounder guns mounted in their prows roared out, filling the street with smoke. Whipping his head around, Harry saw the leading tripod stagger as the shells burst against its armor. For a moment it looked like some punch-drunk boxer who had just taken a strong blow to the head. It shifted sideways and bumped into a building and stopped, some smoke was drifting out of what might be a hole in its body. Another tripod moved forward past it and fired its heat ray.
The beam speared out to touch one of the tanks. Harry could feel the heat of it even though it passed a dozen yards away and wasn’t aimed at him. But the tanks were already in motion, backing up as quickly as they could. Their armor glowed red, but held long enough for them to haul themselves back around the corner at the end of the block and reach safety. The ray switched off and the tripod came forward. The three-legged gait of the tripods looked awkward and ungainly, but the things could move with surprising speed when they wanted to. Now the Martian sprang forward in pursuit of the tanks which had dared to hurt its comrade.
“Yes!” cried Harry. “They suckered him in! Get ready!”
The tripod was coming down the street, intent on the retreating tanks, and not bothering to set the buildings on fire. The troops in those buildings clutched their weapons and readied their bombs.
Fifty yards, thirty yards, the enemy got closer and closer. Some rifle fire rattled out, but the Martian did not pause. It was almost here…
“Now! Give it to him!”
The Maxim gun opened fire and bombs started flying out from windows and rooftops. The tripod was coming abreast of Harry, the top of its metal head almost level with him, when the bombs started exploding. He was crouching below the parapet, but the concussion still blew his helmet off. One man, a few yard from him, was still standing and tumbled backwards to sprawl on the rooftop, clutching his face which was red with blood. He hoped his men on the lower floors had found cover.
A cloud of smoke boiled up out of the street and onto the roof, he couldn’t see a thing and coughed as he tried to clear his lungs. Two more explosions shook the building. He felt around and found his helmet and put it back on his head. Men were shouting, but to his stunned ears they sounded faint and far away. He crawled back to the parapet and pulled himself up to peer over.
The freshening breeze pulled the smoke away and Harry shouted in joy at the sight which met his eyes. The tripod was collapsed in the street, a leg blown completely off. One of its arms was scrabbling at the pavement, trying to push itself up enough that it could bring the heat ray on its other arm to bear. But as he watched, a man dashed out of a building and looped a bomb around that arm with a rope, pulled the fuse, and ran for shelter. Harry ducked back an instant before the explosion, and when he looked again, the tripod’s arm with the heat ray was gone and the whole machine lay still. He could hear cheers and whoops from all around.
The cheers were suddenly cut off by the noise of a heat ray. Harry had one instant to see that the second damaged tripod had recovered and was sweeping its ray across the tops of the buildings. He stood there, frozen as the beam swept his way, and then someone tackled him and dragged him down, behind the parapet.
The bricks shattered and popped like kernels of corn, showering him with hot fragments, but the ray swept by so quickly it couldn’t complete the destruction of the parapet, nor turn Harry to ash. Still, it felt like he was about to burst into flames from the heat for a moment. Then it was passed and cooler air touched his face. But he had no doubt the ray would be back; they needed to get out of there before it did. He disentangled himself from the man who had saved him, Private Halloran, he saw it was, and struggled to his feet. They probably only had seconds to get away…
A pair of loud concussions nearly knocked him down again. Cannons firing, from close by. The tanks! The pair which had suckered in the tripod were back, clanking around the corner again and firing at the damaged tripod down the street.
He looked toward the Martian and saw it staggered again, smoke drifting away from where it was hit. It tried to fire back at the tanks, but it was clearly hurt and only blasted a glowing trench in the street before the guns roared out again. The enemy machine stumbled backward and then fell to the ground, black smoke spewing out of a hole in its head.
Gasping for breath, Harry looked for more enemies. There were none to be seen on the street passing his building, although he could not see more than a few blocks to the west because of the smoke. He saw the top of one tripod the next block over, but it seemed to be retreating. There were a few more, much farther away, which could be glimpsed through the flames and smoke, but they were no immediate threat. He was suddenly very tired. Tired and thirsty.
Harry reached for his canteen and noticed that he had dozens of tiny holes in his tunic where the red hot brick fragments had burned through. He took a gulp of tepid water and then looked to his men. Only one man on the rooftop was down, Corporal Kelly, who had been wounded by his own bomb. He had a bad cut on his forehead, but his mates were binding it up.
“Lieutenant? Lieutenant Calloway?” He turned and saw a man he didn’t recognize, although he had the 15th New Castle patch on the shoulder of his tunic.
“Yes, what is it?”
“Orders from the Colonel, sir. You’re to pull out immediately. Head for the harbor, sir!”
“Very well, thank…” but before he could even finish his reply, the man was gone. Harry blinked and turned back to his men. “All right, we’re leaving. Gather your stuff and let’s go. Spread the word.”
They quickly went down the stairs, collecting the men on the lower floors as they went. The platoon assembled at the end of the block, at the edge of the park; the other platoons of C Company collected nearby. The whole battalion was assembling and there was Colonel Anderson giving direction. Harry saw Burford Sampson with his own men a few yards away. The man always seemed energized by combat and right now his eyes were blazing.
They had a moment while they were reorganizing and Harry went over to one of the tanks. The crewmen were hanging out of the hatches trying to cool off. Those poor blighters had to contend with the heat of their own boiler as well as enemy rays. “I wanted thank you fellows,” he said, almost shouting due to his still stunned ears and the noise from the tank. “We would have been cooked but for you.”
One of the tankers glanced at him, not looking happy, and growled, “Glad to do it. Hadn’t you better be on your way… sir?”
“We’ll be moving in a minute. You, too, surely…?”
“We’ve been ordered to stay until you blokes are all clear.”
“Crikey,” breathed Harry. “Well, God bless you—and good luck. I just hope…”
Suddenly there was loud whistling and everyone froze. Artillery coming in but…
“It’s a short!” shouted someone. “Down! Get down!”
Harry threw himself down on the hard pavement and then the world blew up around him. Not just one short round but a whole salvo, at least a half-dozen all exploding so close together to almost seem like one long blast. Smoke engulfed him and stones pelted him. A moment, later there was another explosion; close by, but sounding different from the others.
He lay there tensing for more, but that was all for the moment. He slowly climbed to his feet, a pain in his left shoulder where something heavy had hit him. There were a lot of people shouting now and a few cries of pain. The smoke dispersed and Harry could see again.
Several of the buildings on the edge of the square—buildings until moments ago occupied by the 15th New Castle—had partially collapsed, there were a couple of large craters in the street, and the second tank—the unpainted one—was burning fiercely. The man he’d been talking to in the first tank was cursing just as fiercely. “Damn them! Damn the bloody navy!”
Harry had no inclination to remind the tanker how often navy guns had saved them during the long siege. Instead he went back to where his platoon was rising to its feet. None of them had been hurt, fortunately, but the tiny remnants of the hard-luck B Company had been reduced by half by one of the errant shells. Men clustered around the dead and wounded.
“Come on move!” shouted Colonel Anderson, “Let’s get out of here before we get hit again!”
No one was inclined to argue and in moments the battalion was heading across the park and toward the harbor, carrying their weapons and kits and their wounded. The lonely steam tank remained behind, guarding the rear.
They made it across the park and onto a street heading the right direction. This part of town hadn’t been damaged at all, but it had a sad and shabby look to it. The streets hadn’t been swept in months and all manner of things had been abandoned along it; pieces of furniture, clothing, luggage, books, papers, a baby’s pram…
More artillery fire screamed by overhead, but it all passed well to the west before exploding. Harry hoped none of it landed on the poor crew of that tank. How long would those men hold their position? Would they even have a chance to run? Would he ever know what happened to them? Sampson’s right, I think too much. Stop it.
As they neared the harbor they encountered more troops falling back. The rear guard had been composed of several whole brigades and they were all converging on the only way out. To Harry’s dismay, some of them seemed to be in a state of complete disorder and off to the north he could hear the sound of heat rays. A few of these other men were shouting something about being flanked, cut off from the harbor. Some alarming new clouds of black smoke were rising up in that direction, and the sound of heavy guns was growing in intensity.
They instinctively picked up their pace, but the other units started crowding into them, intermingling, and order was being lost. Harry could almost see a ripple of fear passing through the ranks of the 15th New Castle. What if they couldn’t reach the ships in time? “Steady lads!” he called. His voice sounded shrill in his ears and he forced himself to sound calm. “Keep together!”
It wasn’t quite a mob which emerged from the streets at the waterfront, but it didn’t look much like a military organization, either. Sydney’s harbor was built around a small bay that extended southwards from the larger bay to the north which connected to the sea. Most of the docks and wharfs were on the eastern shore, although there were a few on the western side as well.
The ones on the west were in flames and Martian tripods walked among them.
“Oh bloody hell!” snarled Burford Sampson. “The bastards must have waded across Iron Cove when the navy pulled back!” Warships had been holding that flank of the defense line all through the siege, but they must have left too soon, leaving the way open for the Martians.
The harbor was in bedlam. There had been four large transport ships waiting to take off the rear guard, but Harry only saw one tied to a pier. Another was just turning out into the main channel to the sea and a third was on fire from stem to stern, drifting a few hundred yards from shore. A navy warship, a light cruiser it looked like, was at the head of the bay slugging it out with a dozen tripods at point blank range.
As the stunned soldiers watched, the cruiser’s guns blew a tripod to bits. But this was not the sort of fight the navy wanted. Their guns had a vastly longer range than the Martians’ heat rays and they liked to engage from a safe distance. This was definitely not a safe distance.
The Martians were all firing back and the heat rays were burning through the ship’s thin armor with ease. Fires were breaking out all over and there some explosions as the secondary armament’s ready-use ammunition was ignited.
“Get out of there, you idiots!” cried Sampson. “You can’t win this fight!”
But it was too late. The warship destroyed another tripod, but then a ray found its way through to a magazine and the cruiser blew up in a fiery explosion which leapt hundreds of feet into the air. The concussion smote Harry’s ears even from a half mile away. The ship broke in two and settled quickly, its bow and stern sticking up almost vertically. The wreck blocked the harbor exit so that the last transport couldn’t get out even it could run the gauntlet of the enemy rays.
“So now what?” cried someone. Every man there was wondering the same thing. More tripods were emerging from the smoke on the west side of the harbor. Sampson was right, they must have gotten across Iron Cove and made their way here through… Balmain. The neighborhood where his house was. It’s probably not there anymore. A feeling of profound sadness passed through him, despite his peril. But what to do? As he stood there, people started pouring down the gangways of the ship tied to the dock. They knew they weren’t getting out that way.
“South! Head south!” shouted someone. An officer was forcing his way through the mob, shouting and pointing. “Head for Botany Bay! The navy will pick us up there!”
The soldiers seemed to sway like a forest before a strong wind and then turned almost as one and surged southward, even the ones who could not possibly have heard the officer’s shouts. Later, Harry would be appalled at how quickly disciplined fighting men, men who not long before had been fighting Martians from close enough to spit at, could disintegrate into a frenzied mob.
But a mob they had become and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it except be swept along with all the rest. He made one futile attempt to keep his own platoon in a group around him, but it was hopeless; within moments everyone around him was a stranger.
So south he went. Botany Bay was a good five miles from where they were, but the street grid of the city provided a half dozen wide boulevards heading that direction and the crush of the mob soon lessened as men turned down side streets to find less crowded paths. Some men were running flat out, but most, like Harry, moved at a sort of jog, all casting fearful glances to the west. The main Martian attack force was still coming from that way. Would they be able to cut off their retreat? Catch them before they made it to the water? The smoke was thickening in that direction and while the sound of heat rays to the north was fading, he thought he could hear some to the west.
While looking west, he bumped right into a man, who wasn’t moving. He started to move around when he realized the man was wounded. He had bandages covering his face and his eyes, but the top of his head was exposed and badly burned, not a trace of hair on the purplish, blistered flesh.
Harry grimaced. He’d seen this sort of wound all too often. Some poor sod who had ducked a heat ray quick enough to avoid being vaporized, but not quite quick enough to escape entirely. The bandages had been hastily applied, the wound was fresh. Why was he here alone? Had his mates lost him? Abandoned him?
“Keep moving, boy!”
The familiar voice startled him. There was Burford Sampson grabbing him by the arm, trying to pull him along.
“We can’t leave this man!”
Sampson stopped, looked at the man, cursed, and shook his head, but he then went to the other side of him, grabbed one arm, while Harry took the other. “Come along, mate,” he said as calmly as if inviting the fellow for a stroll, “we need to get moving.”
The man didn’t say anything Harry could hear through the slit in the bandages where his mouth was, but he did move. They hustled him down the street as quickly as they could, but not nearly as fast as Harry would have liked. The noises to the west were getting louder. One block, two blocks, three blocks, they hurried along. The street was littered with discarded gear; helmets, backpacks, a machine gun and ammo boxes.
When they reached the end of the fourth block, Harry gasped when he spotted a tripod down the street to the west. It was still a few blocks away, but much too close. Many of the men, seeing it, too, immediately turned east and ran down the street directly away from the threat. Few of them seemed to even have a rifle anymore.
Sampson dragged them across to the next block and kept going. Harry was getting very tired and was stumbling almost as much as the blind man. At the next street there were no Martians in sight, but they had to keep going. There were fewer men around them now, they were being left behind, due to their slower pace.
Two more blocks, three, and the buildings were getting lower and more spread out as they left the center of Sydney behind. Harry thought he could see the sparkle of sunlight on water in the distance. Maybe they’d make it…
“Bloody hell! Look out!”
A tripod emerged from the next intersection ahead. Right in front of them. It wasn’t fifty yards away, towering over them, its gray, metallic skin glistening like it was wet. Before they could even move, it fired its heat ray—but not at them. It was shooting at something farther south. It hadn’t seen them yet. Burford dragged them up against the wall of a building. “We’ve got to get around it!” he hissed.
They slid backwards along the wall until they came to a narrow alley between buildings. Pushing and pulling the wounded man, who still had not made a sound, they made their way around to the rear of the building and then through a small back yard with a weed-filled garden and an empty clothesline that swayed forlornly in the breeze. More heat rays could be heard to the west and smoke was swirling around them now. They were running out of time.
Passing through several other yards they finally made it to the next street—the one the Martian had come down. Peering out, they could see that the tripod had continued moving and was half a block away with its back to them. Nothing but smoke could be seen to the west. “All right,” said Sampson, “Across we go.”
Gathering themselves, they sprinted through the open space, half-carrying the man until they reached an alley on the other side. They all stumbled to their knees, gasping for breath. “Got to keep going, Harry. They won’t keep those boats for us.”
“If there are any boats.”
“Yeah, well let’s go see if there are.” He pulled them up and they stumbled on.
At the end of the next block some of the buildings were on fire—and a tripod was there burning them. They looked this way and that, but there was no way to get through. And how long before the building they were sheltering behind had a heat ray turned against it?
“Maybe we can…” began Sampson.
He was cut off by the howl of incoming shells. The navy guns had almost stopped since they fled from the harbor, but now they started again. A salvo exploded the next block over, shaking the ground.
“Damn, that’s the big stuff,” said Sampson. “A battleship maybe.”
More howls, louder than before…
An enormous roar, the air was pulled from his lungs, and Harry was knocked flat. A sharp pain stung his arm and debris came raining down on him; for a moment he couldn’t see a thing but smoke.
He tried to get up, but there was stuff pinning him down. “Harry! Harry! You all right?” Then Sampson was there, pulling him free from the wreckage.
“I’m… I’m okay, I think. Hurt my arm…” The smoke wafted away and he could see again. The building they’d been next to had partially collapsed. There was a big crater out in the street—and a wrecked tripod right next to it.
Sampson grabbed his arm and peered at it. “You’ll live,” he declared. “Unlike our poor friend here.”
For a moment Harry thought he was talking about the Martian, but then he realized it was the wounded man he was talking about. He wasn’t wounded anymore, he was dead. A large splinter of wood was protruding from his chest.
“Damn… didn’t even know his name…”
“No time to worry about it, boy. We gotta move.”
“Don’t call me boy.”
“Shut up and run.”
They couldn’t run, but they could trot. Without the wounded man to slow them, they could trot. Harry cast a glance backwards, but he could not spot him among the debris.
They went down the street toward the bay, many of the buildings were on fire, and they had to stay in the middle of the street, perfect targets. But they didn’t meet any more tripods. Shells were falling, seemingly at random, but the tripods appeared to be drawing off to the north. Maybe they didn’t think killing a mob of fleeing soldiers was worth the risk of getting hit by the navy’s big guns. He hoped so.
After what seemed like hours, they came out of the smoke and past the last of the closely set buildings and there was Botany Bay in front of them.
There were a few small docks sticking out into the water, but it was mostly just open beach. The initial settlers had not bothered to develop it once they found the vastly superior harbor just a few miles north. Now that beach was filled with men wading out to small boats which bobbed in the gentle surf. Ships waited out in the bay. Harry sighed in relief.
They had made, but just barely. As they stumbled across the sand, the last of the men climbed into the boats and they began to shove off. Someone shouted to them and he and Sampson stumbled a little faster. Water splashed around his feet, up to his knees, and then strong hand grabbed him and pulled him aboard.
“Yer a pair o’ lucky blokes!” said someone. “Ye nearly got left behind!”
Harry looked down the street and saw the dark shapes emerging from the smoke, about three blocks away. Heat rays stabbed out and buildings on either side of the street erupted in flames. He could see that there were other groups of the enemy advancing down parallel streets, all heading for the center of the city and the vital harbor. A shudder ran through him, but he forced his fear into a dark recess in his mind and took a deep breath. You’ve fought them before. You’ve fought them before and won.
They had fought them and they had won—at least for a while. The Martians had first hit Sydney in late November, 1909. They’d hit it—and been driven back. It had been a near run thing for sure, but Sydney’s defenses held. Harry and his men weren’t really in the thick of it, but they were on the edge of the fighting and fired some shots and lost some men. Burford Sampson had proved to be one of those lucky ones who killed a tripod with a bomb and lived to talk about it. There’d been some talk about a medal for him, no one was bothering much with medals these days.
The Martians had hit them twice on two consecutive nights, but then seemed to give up. They’d retreated back into the interior and weren’t seen again for a long while. Meanwhile, the ships were evacuating the civilians. It was thirteen hundred miles to New Zealand, a ten-day round trip for a typical steamer. They left, packed with humanity and enough food and water to reach their destination, but not much more. There was no room for more than a person could carry, and mountains of abandoned belongings piled up near the docks. After the first repulse of the Martians some said the evacuations should be halted, but Harry, suspecting that things were going to get much worse, insisted that his mother and two sisters should not wait. He practically had to drag them to a ship, but in the end they had gone.
He was surely glad of that now.
Granted it was over a year since the first attack, but the enemy had put the time to better use than the defenders. More cylinders had come from Mars and the Martians already here had built factories in their remote fortresses to create more tripods. When they were ready they attacked again. A few months ago they had concentrated and hit Perth with overwhelming numbers and annihilated the defenders. Their tripod machines gave them a mobility unprecedented in warfare. Scouts and the few aircraft available had reported that the enemy host was crossing the outback heading east, heading for Sydney.
And here they were.
“Get ready, men!” he shouted. “Keep your heads down and let them get close.” His men obeyed, crouching below the parapet. He wasn’t sure how much protection the brick would provide, but it was better than nothing.
Harry popped up for a look and he saw two tripods nearing the end of the next block. They were burning each building as they came to it, their heat rays stabbing out relentlessly. Flames gushed out of windows and roared up through the roofs. This isn’t going to work, we’ll be burned to a crisp before they get close enough for us to hurt them! He looked around frantically. Should he order his men out now, while there was still a chance to get away?
A roar and high-pitched squeals from behind made him pop up again and look back toward the park. There in the street were a pair of the steam tanks, black smoke puffing out of their stacks, their caterpillar tracks making the squeal he’d heard. One was the standard brown-tan color, but the other was just rusty, bare metal; so fresh from the factory that it hadn’t even been painted.
The tanks halted and almost in unison the twenty-five pounder guns mounted in their prows roared out, filling the street with smoke. Whipping his head around, Harry saw the leading tripod stagger as the shells burst against its armor. For a moment it looked like some punch-drunk boxer who had just taken a strong blow to the head. It shifted sideways and bumped into a building and stopped, some smoke was drifting out of what might be a hole in its body. Another tripod moved forward past it and fired its heat ray.
The beam speared out to touch one of the tanks. Harry could feel the heat of it even though it passed a dozen yards away and wasn’t aimed at him. But the tanks were already in motion, backing up as quickly as they could. Their armor glowed red, but held long enough for them to haul themselves back around the corner at the end of the block and reach safety. The ray switched off and the tripod came forward. The three-legged gait of the tripods looked awkward and ungainly, but the things could move with surprising speed when they wanted to. Now the Martian sprang forward in pursuit of the tanks which had dared to hurt its comrade.
“Yes!” cried Harry. “They suckered him in! Get ready!”
The tripod was coming down the street, intent on the retreating tanks, and not bothering to set the buildings on fire. The troops in those buildings clutched their weapons and readied their bombs.
Fifty yards, thirty yards, the enemy got closer and closer. Some rifle fire rattled out, but the Martian did not pause. It was almost here…
“Now! Give it to him!”
The Maxim gun opened fire and bombs started flying out from windows and rooftops. The tripod was coming abreast of Harry, the top of its metal head almost level with him, when the bombs started exploding. He was crouching below the parapet, but the concussion still blew his helmet off. One man, a few yard from him, was still standing and tumbled backwards to sprawl on the rooftop, clutching his face which was red with blood. He hoped his men on the lower floors had found cover.
A cloud of smoke boiled up out of the street and onto the roof, he couldn’t see a thing and coughed as he tried to clear his lungs. Two more explosions shook the building. He felt around and found his helmet and put it back on his head. Men were shouting, but to his stunned ears they sounded faint and far away. He crawled back to the parapet and pulled himself up to peer over.
The freshening breeze pulled the smoke away and Harry shouted in joy at the sight which met his eyes. The tripod was collapsed in the street, a leg blown completely off. One of its arms was scrabbling at the pavement, trying to push itself up enough that it could bring the heat ray on its other arm to bear. But as he watched, a man dashed out of a building and looped a bomb around that arm with a rope, pulled the fuse, and ran for shelter. Harry ducked back an instant before the explosion, and when he looked again, the tripod’s arm with the heat ray was gone and the whole machine lay still. He could hear cheers and whoops from all around.
The cheers were suddenly cut off by the noise of a heat ray. Harry had one instant to see that the second damaged tripod had recovered and was sweeping its ray across the tops of the buildings. He stood there, frozen as the beam swept his way, and then someone tackled him and dragged him down, behind the parapet.
The bricks shattered and popped like kernels of corn, showering him with hot fragments, but the ray swept by so quickly it couldn’t complete the destruction of the parapet, nor turn Harry to ash. Still, it felt like he was about to burst into flames from the heat for a moment. Then it was passed and cooler air touched his face. But he had no doubt the ray would be back; they needed to get out of there before it did. He disentangled himself from the man who had saved him, Private Halloran, he saw it was, and struggled to his feet. They probably only had seconds to get away…
A pair of loud concussions nearly knocked him down again. Cannons firing, from close by. The tanks! The pair which had suckered in the tripod were back, clanking around the corner again and firing at the damaged tripod down the street.
He looked toward the Martian and saw it staggered again, smoke drifting away from where it was hit. It tried to fire back at the tanks, but it was clearly hurt and only blasted a glowing trench in the street before the guns roared out again. The enemy machine stumbled backward and then fell to the ground, black smoke spewing out of a hole in its head.
Gasping for breath, Harry looked for more enemies. There were none to be seen on the street passing his building, although he could not see more than a few blocks to the west because of the smoke. He saw the top of one tripod the next block over, but it seemed to be retreating. There were a few more, much farther away, which could be glimpsed through the flames and smoke, but they were no immediate threat. He was suddenly very tired. Tired and thirsty.
Harry reached for his canteen and noticed that he had dozens of tiny holes in his tunic where the red hot brick fragments had burned through. He took a gulp of tepid water and then looked to his men. Only one man on the rooftop was down, Corporal Kelly, who had been wounded by his own bomb. He had a bad cut on his forehead, but his mates were binding it up.
“Lieutenant? Lieutenant Calloway?” He turned and saw a man he didn’t recognize, although he had the 15th New Castle patch on the shoulder of his tunic.
“Yes, what is it?”
“Orders from the Colonel, sir. You’re to pull out immediately. Head for the harbor, sir!”
“Very well, thank…” but before he could even finish his reply, the man was gone. Harry blinked and turned back to his men. “All right, we’re leaving. Gather your stuff and let’s go. Spread the word.”
They quickly went down the stairs, collecting the men on the lower floors as they went. The platoon assembled at the end of the block, at the edge of the park; the other platoons of C Company collected nearby. The whole battalion was assembling and there was Colonel Anderson giving direction. Harry saw Burford Sampson with his own men a few yards away. The man always seemed energized by combat and right now his eyes were blazing.
They had a moment while they were reorganizing and Harry went over to one of the tanks. The crewmen were hanging out of the hatches trying to cool off. Those poor blighters had to contend with the heat of their own boiler as well as enemy rays. “I wanted thank you fellows,” he said, almost shouting due to his still stunned ears and the noise from the tank. “We would have been cooked but for you.”
One of the tankers glanced at him, not looking happy, and growled, “Glad to do it. Hadn’t you better be on your way… sir?”
“We’ll be moving in a minute. You, too, surely…?”
“We’ve been ordered to stay until you blokes are all clear.”
“Crikey,” breathed Harry. “Well, God bless you—and good luck. I just hope…”
Suddenly there was loud whistling and everyone froze. Artillery coming in but…
“It’s a short!” shouted someone. “Down! Get down!”
Harry threw himself down on the hard pavement and then the world blew up around him. Not just one short round but a whole salvo, at least a half-dozen all exploding so close together to almost seem like one long blast. Smoke engulfed him and stones pelted him. A moment, later there was another explosion; close by, but sounding different from the others.
He lay there tensing for more, but that was all for the moment. He slowly climbed to his feet, a pain in his left shoulder where something heavy had hit him. There were a lot of people shouting now and a few cries of pain. The smoke dispersed and Harry could see again.
Several of the buildings on the edge of the square—buildings until moments ago occupied by the 15th New Castle—had partially collapsed, there were a couple of large craters in the street, and the second tank—the unpainted one—was burning fiercely. The man he’d been talking to in the first tank was cursing just as fiercely. “Damn them! Damn the bloody navy!”
Harry had no inclination to remind the tanker how often navy guns had saved them during the long siege. Instead he went back to where his platoon was rising to its feet. None of them had been hurt, fortunately, but the tiny remnants of the hard-luck B Company had been reduced by half by one of the errant shells. Men clustered around the dead and wounded.
“Come on move!” shouted Colonel Anderson, “Let’s get out of here before we get hit again!”
No one was inclined to argue and in moments the battalion was heading across the park and toward the harbor, carrying their weapons and kits and their wounded. The lonely steam tank remained behind, guarding the rear.
They made it across the park and onto a street heading the right direction. This part of town hadn’t been damaged at all, but it had a sad and shabby look to it. The streets hadn’t been swept in months and all manner of things had been abandoned along it; pieces of furniture, clothing, luggage, books, papers, a baby’s pram…
More artillery fire screamed by overhead, but it all passed well to the west before exploding. Harry hoped none of it landed on the poor crew of that tank. How long would those men hold their position? Would they even have a chance to run? Would he ever know what happened to them? Sampson’s right, I think too much. Stop it.
As they neared the harbor they encountered more troops falling back. The rear guard had been composed of several whole brigades and they were all converging on the only way out. To Harry’s dismay, some of them seemed to be in a state of complete disorder and off to the north he could hear the sound of heat rays. A few of these other men were shouting something about being flanked, cut off from the harbor. Some alarming new clouds of black smoke were rising up in that direction, and the sound of heavy guns was growing in intensity.
They instinctively picked up their pace, but the other units started crowding into them, intermingling, and order was being lost. Harry could almost see a ripple of fear passing through the ranks of the 15th New Castle. What if they couldn’t reach the ships in time? “Steady lads!” he called. His voice sounded shrill in his ears and he forced himself to sound calm. “Keep together!”
It wasn’t quite a mob which emerged from the streets at the waterfront, but it didn’t look much like a military organization, either. Sydney’s harbor was built around a small bay that extended southwards from the larger bay to the north which connected to the sea. Most of the docks and wharfs were on the eastern shore, although there were a few on the western side as well.
The ones on the west were in flames and Martian tripods walked among them.
“Oh bloody hell!” snarled Burford Sampson. “The bastards must have waded across Iron Cove when the navy pulled back!” Warships had been holding that flank of the defense line all through the siege, but they must have left too soon, leaving the way open for the Martians.
The harbor was in bedlam. There had been four large transport ships waiting to take off the rear guard, but Harry only saw one tied to a pier. Another was just turning out into the main channel to the sea and a third was on fire from stem to stern, drifting a few hundred yards from shore. A navy warship, a light cruiser it looked like, was at the head of the bay slugging it out with a dozen tripods at point blank range.
As the stunned soldiers watched, the cruiser’s guns blew a tripod to bits. But this was not the sort of fight the navy wanted. Their guns had a vastly longer range than the Martians’ heat rays and they liked to engage from a safe distance. This was definitely not a safe distance.
The Martians were all firing back and the heat rays were burning through the ship’s thin armor with ease. Fires were breaking out all over and there some explosions as the secondary armament’s ready-use ammunition was ignited.
“Get out of there, you idiots!” cried Sampson. “You can’t win this fight!”
But it was too late. The warship destroyed another tripod, but then a ray found its way through to a magazine and the cruiser blew up in a fiery explosion which leapt hundreds of feet into the air. The concussion smote Harry’s ears even from a half mile away. The ship broke in two and settled quickly, its bow and stern sticking up almost vertically. The wreck blocked the harbor exit so that the last transport couldn’t get out even it could run the gauntlet of the enemy rays.
“So now what?” cried someone. Every man there was wondering the same thing. More tripods were emerging from the smoke on the west side of the harbor. Sampson was right, they must have gotten across Iron Cove and made their way here through… Balmain. The neighborhood where his house was. It’s probably not there anymore. A feeling of profound sadness passed through him, despite his peril. But what to do? As he stood there, people started pouring down the gangways of the ship tied to the dock. They knew they weren’t getting out that way.
“South! Head south!” shouted someone. An officer was forcing his way through the mob, shouting and pointing. “Head for Botany Bay! The navy will pick us up there!”
The soldiers seemed to sway like a forest before a strong wind and then turned almost as one and surged southward, even the ones who could not possibly have heard the officer’s shouts. Later, Harry would be appalled at how quickly disciplined fighting men, men who not long before had been fighting Martians from close enough to spit at, could disintegrate into a frenzied mob.
But a mob they had become and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it except be swept along with all the rest. He made one futile attempt to keep his own platoon in a group around him, but it was hopeless; within moments everyone around him was a stranger.
So south he went. Botany Bay was a good five miles from where they were, but the street grid of the city provided a half dozen wide boulevards heading that direction and the crush of the mob soon lessened as men turned down side streets to find less crowded paths. Some men were running flat out, but most, like Harry, moved at a sort of jog, all casting fearful glances to the west. The main Martian attack force was still coming from that way. Would they be able to cut off their retreat? Catch them before they made it to the water? The smoke was thickening in that direction and while the sound of heat rays to the north was fading, he thought he could hear some to the west.
While looking west, he bumped right into a man, who wasn’t moving. He started to move around when he realized the man was wounded. He had bandages covering his face and his eyes, but the top of his head was exposed and badly burned, not a trace of hair on the purplish, blistered flesh.
Harry grimaced. He’d seen this sort of wound all too often. Some poor sod who had ducked a heat ray quick enough to avoid being vaporized, but not quite quick enough to escape entirely. The bandages had been hastily applied, the wound was fresh. Why was he here alone? Had his mates lost him? Abandoned him?
“Keep moving, boy!”
The familiar voice startled him. There was Burford Sampson grabbing him by the arm, trying to pull him along.
“We can’t leave this man!”
Sampson stopped, looked at the man, cursed, and shook his head, but he then went to the other side of him, grabbed one arm, while Harry took the other. “Come along, mate,” he said as calmly as if inviting the fellow for a stroll, “we need to get moving.”
The man didn’t say anything Harry could hear through the slit in the bandages where his mouth was, but he did move. They hustled him down the street as quickly as they could, but not nearly as fast as Harry would have liked. The noises to the west were getting louder. One block, two blocks, three blocks, they hurried along. The street was littered with discarded gear; helmets, backpacks, a machine gun and ammo boxes.
When they reached the end of the fourth block, Harry gasped when he spotted a tripod down the street to the west. It was still a few blocks away, but much too close. Many of the men, seeing it, too, immediately turned east and ran down the street directly away from the threat. Few of them seemed to even have a rifle anymore.
Sampson dragged them across to the next block and kept going. Harry was getting very tired and was stumbling almost as much as the blind man. At the next street there were no Martians in sight, but they had to keep going. There were fewer men around them now, they were being left behind, due to their slower pace.
Two more blocks, three, and the buildings were getting lower and more spread out as they left the center of Sydney behind. Harry thought he could see the sparkle of sunlight on water in the distance. Maybe they’d make it…
“Bloody hell! Look out!”
A tripod emerged from the next intersection ahead. Right in front of them. It wasn’t fifty yards away, towering over them, its gray, metallic skin glistening like it was wet. Before they could even move, it fired its heat ray—but not at them. It was shooting at something farther south. It hadn’t seen them yet. Burford dragged them up against the wall of a building. “We’ve got to get around it!” he hissed.
They slid backwards along the wall until they came to a narrow alley between buildings. Pushing and pulling the wounded man, who still had not made a sound, they made their way around to the rear of the building and then through a small back yard with a weed-filled garden and an empty clothesline that swayed forlornly in the breeze. More heat rays could be heard to the west and smoke was swirling around them now. They were running out of time.
Passing through several other yards they finally made it to the next street—the one the Martian had come down. Peering out, they could see that the tripod had continued moving and was half a block away with its back to them. Nothing but smoke could be seen to the west. “All right,” said Sampson, “Across we go.”
Gathering themselves, they sprinted through the open space, half-carrying the man until they reached an alley on the other side. They all stumbled to their knees, gasping for breath. “Got to keep going, Harry. They won’t keep those boats for us.”
“If there are any boats.”
“Yeah, well let’s go see if there are.” He pulled them up and they stumbled on.
At the end of the next block some of the buildings were on fire—and a tripod was there burning them. They looked this way and that, but there was no way to get through. And how long before the building they were sheltering behind had a heat ray turned against it?
“Maybe we can…” began Sampson.
He was cut off by the howl of incoming shells. The navy guns had almost stopped since they fled from the harbor, but now they started again. A salvo exploded the next block over, shaking the ground.
“Damn, that’s the big stuff,” said Sampson. “A battleship maybe.”
More howls, louder than before…
An enormous roar, the air was pulled from his lungs, and Harry was knocked flat. A sharp pain stung his arm and debris came raining down on him; for a moment he couldn’t see a thing but smoke.
He tried to get up, but there was stuff pinning him down. “Harry! Harry! You all right?” Then Sampson was there, pulling him free from the wreckage.
“I’m… I’m okay, I think. Hurt my arm…” The smoke wafted away and he could see again. The building they’d been next to had partially collapsed. There was a big crater out in the street—and a wrecked tripod right next to it.
Sampson grabbed his arm and peered at it. “You’ll live,” he declared. “Unlike our poor friend here.”
For a moment Harry thought he was talking about the Martian, but then he realized it was the wounded man he was talking about. He wasn’t wounded anymore, he was dead. A large splinter of wood was protruding from his chest.
“Damn… didn’t even know his name…”
“No time to worry about it, boy. We gotta move.”
“Don’t call me boy.”
“Shut up and run.”
They couldn’t run, but they could trot. Without the wounded man to slow them, they could trot. Harry cast a glance backwards, but he could not spot him among the debris.
They went down the street toward the bay, many of the buildings were on fire, and they had to stay in the middle of the street, perfect targets. But they didn’t meet any more tripods. Shells were falling, seemingly at random, but the tripods appeared to be drawing off to the north. Maybe they didn’t think killing a mob of fleeing soldiers was worth the risk of getting hit by the navy’s big guns. He hoped so.
After what seemed like hours, they came out of the smoke and past the last of the closely set buildings and there was Botany Bay in front of them.
There were a few small docks sticking out into the water, but it was mostly just open beach. The initial settlers had not bothered to develop it once they found the vastly superior harbor just a few miles north. Now that beach was filled with men wading out to small boats which bobbed in the gentle surf. Ships waited out in the bay. Harry sighed in relief.
They had made, but just barely. As they stumbled across the sand, the last of the men climbed into the boats and they began to shove off. Someone shouted to them and he and Sampson stumbled a little faster. Water splashed around his feet, up to his knees, and then strong hand grabbed him and pulled him aboard.
“Yer a pair o’ lucky blokes!” said someone. “Ye nearly got left behind!”