第36节

t provided some semblance of cover but, as they threw themselves

down, Mute warriors' leapt out of shallow grass-covered holes in the

ground behind them and attacked them with knife-sticks and stone

flails. The hand-to-hand fighting was short, sharp and bloody.

Several linemen fell to the lightning-fast knife-work of the Bears but

in the end, the firepower and the disciplined cohesion of the Tracker

combat squads triumphed.

The suicidal attacks by small numbers of Mutes on the flank units

continued. Harried by a constantly retreating enemy, the linemen were

drawn further and further from the river bank. Captain Clay whose own

small command group had been trying to coordinate the action while

killing its own share of M'Call Bears was slow to realise that the lead

flank elements had overshot the five hundred yard radius perimeter line

ordered by Hartmann. Thus, when the main force of Mutes hit and

overwhelmed the two eight-man up-river squads and swept down the

winding muddy bed towards The Lady, the bulk of his force was spread

all over the landscape.

Hartmann, and his two field commanders, had not fully appreciated the

danger of an all-out attack from this direction. The relief they had

felt at having weathered the flash-flood combined with their

unshakeable faith in The Lady's impregnability had caused them to

overlook the fact that, with The Lady lying curved across the riverbed,

only the port-side gun positions of the first five wagons could be

brought to bear on an enemy advancing downstream. But, of the ten

revolving six-barrelled weapons pointing in the right direction only

three possessed their normal field of fire. The movement of the other

seven was partially, or totally, blocked by piled-up flood debris which

had also collected round the port-side tv cameras. The other eleven

wagons lay in a line down-river, close to the steep left-hand bank and

below the level of the ground on either side. And because of the angle

at which the front five wagons were tilted over, the guns in the

turrets on the wagon roofs could only be depressed to within seven

degrees of the horizontal and were, consequently, useless - as was the

considerable firepower on the unaffected starboard side.

Reacting with commendable swiftness, Moore, the Senior Field Commander,

led the rest of his combat squads down the ramps and attempted to hold

a line up-river of The Lady. Hartmann called up Clay and told him to

fall back to the river banks where he could support Moore with

enfilading fire, and cut off the Mutes' line of retreat.

Hartmann turned to his execs with an exultant smile. Once that was

blocked it would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

The port-side gunners in the first five wagons swept the river bed as

best they could with continuous fire and managed to cut down several

dozen Mutes. The merciless hail of bullets failed to stop the

advance.

Dozens more unscathed warriors jumped unhesitatingly over the fallen

bodies and surged forward. As Colonel Moore's linemen emerged

confidently from under the train and fanned out, firing from the hip,

the running, leaping, screaming wave of M'Call Bears burst upon them

like the flash-flood upon the train..

'Close the ramps? yelled Hartmann.

The systems engineer responded instantly, sealing the belly of the

train. In the whole history of TrailBlazer operations no Mutes had

ever succeeded in boarding a wagon train but it still remained a

nightmarish prospect that filled every wagon master with dread. The

trains, and their sterile, air-conditioned interiors were an extension

of the Federation and, as such, were sacrosanct, inviolate.

Captain Virgil Clay contacted his scattered combat squads on the east

and west banks of the river and told them to fall back towards The

Lady. The two South Side squads he had sent downstream had been pinned

down by fire from hidden crossbow snipers and had then been badly

mauled in hand-to-hand combat. Now down to half-strength it had,

nevertheless, achieved a kill-ratio of at least fifteen to one.