The Airlords of Han Read online

  CHAPTER II

  The "Ground Ships" Threaten

  One of our Wyoming girls, on contact guard near Pocono, blundered into ahunting camp of the Bad Bloods, one of the renegade American Gangs,which occupied the Blue Mountain section north of Delaware Water Gap. Wehad not invited their cooperation in this campaign, for they were undersome suspicion of having trafficked with the Hans in past years, butthey had offered no objection to our passage through their territory inour advance on Nu-Yok.

  Fortunately our contact guard had been able to leap into the upperbranches of a tree without being discovered by the Bad Bloods, for theirdiscipline was lax and their guard careless. She overheard enough of theconversation of their Bosses around the camp fire beneath her toindicate the general nature of the Han plans.

  After several hours she was able to leap away unobserved through thetopmost branches of the trees, and after putting several miles betweenherself and their camp, she ultrophoned a full report to her ContactBoss back in the Wyoming Valley. My own Ultrophone Field Boss picked upthe message and brought the graph record of it to me at once.

  Her report was likewise picked up by the Bosses of the various Gangunits in our line, and we had called a council to discuss our plans byword of mouth.

  We were gathered in a sheltered glade on the eastern slope of FirstMountain on a balmy night in May. Far to the east, across the forestedslopes of the lowlands, the flat stretches of open meadow and the rockyridge that once had been Jersey City, the iridescent glow of Nu-Yok'sprotecting film of annihilation shot upward, gradually fading into astarry sky.

  In the faint glow of our ultronolamps, I made out the great figure andrugged features of Boss Casaman, commander of the Mifflin unit, and thegray uniform of Boss Warn, who led the Sandsnipers of the BarnegatBeaches, and who had swooped over from his headquarters on Sandy Hook.By his side stood Boss Handan of the Winslows, a Gang from CentralJersee. In the group also were the leaders of the Altoonas, theCamerons, the Lycomings, Susquannas, Harshbargs, Hagersduns, Chesters,Reddings, Delawares, Elmirans, Kiugas, Hudsons and Connedigas.

  * * * * *

  Most of them were clad in forest-green uniforms that showed black atnight, but each had some distinctive badge or item of uniform orequipment that distinguished his Gang.

  Both the Mifflin and Altoona Bosses, for instance, wore heavy-lookingboots with jointed knees. They came from sections that were not onlymountainous, but rocky, where "leaping" involves many a slip and bruisedlimb, unless some protection of this sort is worn. But these boots werenot as heavy as they looked, being counter-balanced somewhat withinertron.

  The headgear of the Winslows was quite different from the close-fittinghelmet of the Wyomings, being large and bushy-looking, for in theWinslow territory there were many stretches of nearly bare land, withoccasional scrubby pines, and a Winslow caught in the open, on theapproach of a Han airship, would twist himself into a motionlessimitation of a scrubby plant, that passed very successfully for the realthing, when viewed from several thousand feet in the air.

  The Susquannas had a unit that was equipped with inertron shields, thatwere of the same shape as those of the ancient Romans, but much larger,and capable of concealing their bearers from head to foot when theycrouched slightly. These shields, of course, were colored forest green,and were irregularly shaded; they were balanced with inertron, so thattheir effective weight was only a few ounces. They were curious too, inthat they had handles for both hands, and two small reservoirrocket-guns built into them as integral parts.

  In going into action, the Susquannas crouched slightly, holding theshields before them with both hands, looking through a narrow visionslit, and working both rocket guns. The shields, however, were a greathandicap in leaping, and in advancing through heavy forest growth.

  The field unit of the Delawares was also heavily armored. It was one ofthe most efficient bodies of shock troops in our entire line. Theycarried circular shields, about three feet in diameter, with a visionslit and a small rocket gun. These shields were held at arm's length inthe left hand on going into action. In the right hand was carried anax-gun, an affair not unlike the battle-ax of the Middle Ages. It wasabout three feet long. The shaft consisted of a rocket gun, with anax-blade near the muzzle, and a spike at the other end. It was aterrible weapon. Jointed leg-guards protected the ax-gunner below therim of his shield, and a hemispherical helmet, the front section ofwhich was of transparent ultron reaching down to the chin, completed hisequipment.

  * * * * *

  The Susquannas also had a long-gun unit in the field.

  One company of my Wyomings I had equipped with a weapon which I designedmyself. It was a long-gun which I had adapted for bayonet tactics suchas American troops used in the First World War, in the TwentiethCentury. It was about the length of the ancient rifle, and was fittedwith a short knife bayonet. The stock, however, was replaced by a narrowax-blade and a spike. It had two hand-guards also. It was fired from thewaist position.

  In hand-to-hand work one lunged with the bayonet in a vicious, swingingup-thrust, following through with an up-thrust of the ax-blade as onerushed in on one's opponent, and then a down-thrust of the butt-spike,developing into a down-slice of the bayonet, and a final upward jerk ofthe bayonet at the throat and chin with a shortened grip on the barrel,which had been allowed to slide through the hands at the completion ofthe down-slice.

  I almost regretted that we would not find ourselves opposed to theDelaware ax-men in this campaign, so curious was I to compare theefficiency of the two bodies.

  But both the Delawares and my own men were elated at the news that theHans intended to fight it out on the ground at last, and the prospectthat we might in consequence come to close quarters with them.

  Many of the Gang Bosses were dubious about our Wyoming policy ofproviding our fighters with no inertron armor as protection against thedisintegrator ray of the Hans. Some of them even questioned the value ofall weapons intended for hand-to-hand fighting.

  As Warn, of the Sandsnipers put it: "You should be in a better positionthan anyone, Rogers, with your memories of the Twentieth Century, toappreciate that between the superdeadliness of the rocket gun and of thedisintegrator ray there will never be any opportunity for hand-to-handwork. Long before the opposing forces could come to grips, one or theother will be wiped out."

  But I only smiled, for I remembered how much of this same talk there wasfive centuries ago, and that it was even predicted in 1914 that no warcould last more than six months.

  * * * * *

  That there would be hand-to-hand work before we were through, and inplenty, I was convinced, and so every able-bodied youth I could musterwas enrolled in my infantry battalion and spent most of his time invigorous bayonet practice. And for the same reason I had discarded theidea of armor. I felt it would be clumsy, and questioned its value.True, it was an absolute bar against the disintegrator ray, but of whatuse would that be if a Han ray found a crevice between overlappingplates, or if the ray was used to annihilate the very earth beneath thewearer's feet?

  The only protective equipment that I thought was worth a whoop was avery peculiar device with which a contingent of five hundred Altoonaswas supplied. They called it the "umbra-shield." It was a bell-shapedaffair of inertron, counterweighted with ultron, about eight feet high.The gunner, who walked inside it, carried it easily with two shoulderstraps. There were handles inside too, by which the gunner might moreeasily balance it when running, or lift it to clear any obstructions onthe ground.

  In the apex of the affair, above his head, was a small turret,containing an automatic rocket gun. The periscopic gun sight and thecontrols were on a level with the operator's eyes. In going into actionhe could, after taking up his position, simply stoop until the rim ofthe umbra-shield rested on the ground, or else slip off the shoulderstraps, and stand there, quite safe from the disintegrator ray, and workhis gun.

  B
ut again, I could not see what was to prevent the Hans from slicingunderneath it, instead of directly at it, with their rays.

  * * * * *

  As I saw it, any American who was unfortunate enough to get in thedirect path of a "dis" ray, was almost certain to "go out," unless hewas locked up tight in a complete shell of inertron, as for instance, inan inertron swooper. It seemed to me better to concentrate all ourefforts on tactics of attack, trusting to our ability to get the Hansbefore they got us.

  I had one other main unit besides my bayonet battalion, a long-guncontingent composed entirely of girls, as were my scout units and mostof my auxiliary contingents. These youngsters had been devotingthemselves to target practice for months, and had developed a finetechnique of range-finding and the various other tactics of TwentiethCentury massed artillery, to which was added the scientific perfectionof the rocket guns and an average mental alertness that would have putthe artilleryman of the First World War to shame.

  From the information our contact guard had obtained, it appeared thatthe Hans had developed a type of "groundship" completely protected by adisintegrator ray "canopy" that was operated from a short mast, andspread down around it as a cone.

  These ships were merely adaptations of their airships, and were designedto travel but a few feet above the ground. Their repeller rays wererelatively weak; just strong enough to lift them about ten or twelvefeet from the surface. Hence they would draw but lightly upon the powerbroadcast from the city, and great numbers of them could be used. Aspecial ray at the stern propelled them, and an extra-lift ray in thebow enabled them to nose up over ground obstacles. Their most formidablefeature was the cone-shaped "canopy" of short-range disintegrator raysdesigned to spread down around them from a circular generator at the tipof a twenty-foot mast amidship. This would annihilate any projectileshot at it, for they naturally could not reach the ship without passingthrough the cone of rays.

  It was instantly obvious that the "ground ships" would prove to be the"tanks" of the Twenty-fifth Century, and with due allowance for the factthat they were protected with a sheathing of annihilating rays insteadof with steel, that they would have about the same handicaps andadvantages as tanks, except that since they would float lightly on shortrepeller rays, they could hardly resort to the destructive crushingtactics of the tanks of the First World War.

  * * * * *

  As soon as our first supplies of inertron-sheathed rockets came through,their invulnerability would be at an end, as indeed would be that of theHan cities themselves. But these projectiles were not yet out of thefactories.

  In the meantime, however, the groundships would be hard to handle. Eachof them we understood would be equipped with a thin long-range "dis"ray, mounted in a turret at the base of the mast.

  We had no information as to the probable tactics of the Hans in the useof these ships. One sure method of destroying them would be to burymines in their path, too deep for the penetration of their protectingcanopy, which would not, our engineers estimated, cut deeper than aboutthree feet a second. But we couldn't ring Nu-Yok with a continuous mineon a radius of from five to fifteen or twenty miles. Nor could we becertain beforehand of the direction of their attack.

  In the end, after several hours' discussion, we agreed on a flexibledefense. Rather than risk many lives, we would withdraw before them,test their effectiveness and familiarize ourselves with the tactics theyadopted. If possible, we would send engineers in behind them from theflanks, to lay mines in the probable path of their return, providingtheir first attack proved to be a raid and not an advance to consolidatenew positions.