Arthur Zagat - The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume IX

Somewhere, someone had cut loose with a Banning and its high whine drowned out the clack of the spring guns. With a quick look around, Terrence started at a run for the next building which was the native schoolhouse. He didn’t make it. There was a clack, clack from off to his left and he threw himself forward, skidding and sliding in the dust and gravel of the street. A warehouse across the square was on fire and three Rumi had darted from behind it. In one brief glance he saw those long barreled spring guns of theirs and the tall, graceful bodies and the feline faces under the plastic protective clothing.

He snapped four shots at them and saw one fall. Then he began to slither along the ground raising enough dust to mask his movements. There were half a dozen of them in the square when he reached the rear door of the schoolhouse. Several gleaming plastic bolts smashed into the wooden outer door a second after he had raised up to open it and then had dropped back down.

Norton fired from the residency and momentarily scattered the Rumi and Terrence was inside the school room and racing for the side window from which he could get a clear line of fire at the raiders. He had a brief glimpse of Joan Allen, the school teacher, standing in a corner of the room with the tiny green figures of native children huddled around her. Then he was at a window and had beaten out the heavy protective glass and was firing into a mass of the catmen, firing and cursing as his gun emptied. He cursed in a stream of Martian, English and Greenback profanity as he forced another clip into the gun.

“Lieutenant O’Mara, if you’ll be so kind as to restrain your language in front of these children,” a voice said from over his shoulder.

Terrence reached back and felt something soft and forced it over against the wall out of the line of the window. Then he risked a quick look which was almost his last. A spring gun bolt burned a groove in the windowsill next to his head and smashed into the blackboard across the room.

“Lieutenant O’Mara, would you mind telling me what this is all about?” came the same calm determined woman’s voice from beside him. He fired again at a darting figure across the square and saw it stumble before he had to drop to his haunches as the window above him was smashed and scattered by bolts and glass rained down about his head.

He put another clip into his gun and cursed because he had only two left. He turned his head briefly and had a quick glimpse of a white face framed in straight dark hair and a small, neat figure in a yellow dress.

“Rumi attack. One of their patrols must have gotten around the battalion.”

A husky, whimpering little sound made him look down. A native child or pollywog as the Terrans called them was clinging desperately to the teacher’s skirt. His tiny webbed feet clutched at the cloth as he buried his face against her leg. From behind her peered still another child, its baby frog face working spasmodically in the beginnings of a sob. Six or seven others were lying flat on the floor their bodies trembling in terror.

Terrence took another look outside and what he saw sent him into another stream of cursing. The Narakan Rifles were hurrying to the scene of action. Down the middle of the street they came in a column of fours with their drums and bugles blaring out a poor imitation of The Wearing of the Green. Their standard bearer was running at the head of the column beside Sergeant Major O’Shaughnessy.

“Oh, my God! He wouldn’t…!”

“Lieutenant, please!”

“Teacher, will you shut up!” he roared as he leaped across the room toward the front door. At the harsh tone of his voice, the whimpering sounds in the room suddenly burst forth in full volume as the ten pollywogs raised their hoarse voices into full throated croaks.

Terrence braced his body against the wall and held his gun ready as he pulled open the door. In parade formation his men were moving up the street and in a moment they would be away from the buildings’ protection and directly in the Rumi line of fire.

“O’Shaughnessy, you idiot!” he roared above the croaking from behind him and the rattle of firing outside.

O’Shaughnessy came to a skidding halt almost directly in front of the schoolhouse but his men kept on going, their faces set and determined. O’Shaughnessy came to attention and snapped a salute.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Lieutenant.”

“Halt! Damn it, HALT!” Terrence yelled at the column of greenbacks. Their formation crumbled as they ran into each other, stepped on each other’s feet and pushed and shoved. But they halted.

“O’Shaughnessy! Break ranks… take cover… line of skirmishers!” Terrence shouted and hit the dirt behind a sandbox in the schoolyard as the Rumi resumed firing. There was a mad scramble among the Narakans as they scattered behind walls and into buildings, moving with an incredibly rapid jumping motion which they used when in a hurry.

Terrence was so glad to see only one sprawled figure in the dust of the street that he just lay there for a few seconds spitting dust before he realized that he had forgotten to close the face visor of his radiation clothing.

There was a slight clucking sound from beside him and when he turned he found O’Shaughnessy lying almost beside him, squinting along his carbine. The Narakan’s face split into two replicas of the map of Ireland and he saluted flat handed, his webbed fingers at just the proper angle.

“O’Shaughnessy, you don’t have to salute when you’re lying down!” O’Mara tried to keep his voice as calm as possible.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Lieutenant. Pretty quick we fight now?”

His lieutenant ignored him and searched for signs of life in the houses across the square. There wasn’t a Rumi in sight except for one on the roof of a shed next to the burning warehouse. He tried a couple of shots with his automatic and missed. He grabbed O’Shaughnessy’s carbine and dropped the creature as it tried to scramble off the shed.

“Pretty soon we fight with bayonet?” O’Shaughnessy asked as Terrence handed back the carbine.

“O’Shaughnessy, why do you do things like this to me, me who took you out of your damn mud hole and made a soldier out of you?”

O’Shaughnessy’s mouth formed a huge round moon, “Not understand, Lieutenant….” he began but he was ignored again as Terrence stared across the street in pained disbelief to where the heavy weapons squad of the Narakan Rifles was gathered in a huddled group behind a native house, struggling to set up their Banning Automatic Blaster and two machine guns. One of the men was down on his hands and knees balancing the heavy barrel of the blaster on his back while two others were attempting to push the ponderous breech onto it by main strength. The two machine guns were half on and half off their tripods. The leg of one of them had been bent in the wrong direction and the other was so covered with grease that the parts wouldn’t fit together.

“Oh, Lord!” moaned Terrence and was bracing himself for a dash across the street when a figure in Terran battle armor came around the building on the run, dodging and crawling as spring bolts raised the dust in front of him. It was the short, stout Gunnery Sergeant, Polasky. Terrence breathed a sigh of relief.

He turned to O’Shaughnessy, “Now, Sergeant, this is our problem. Those buildings over there are filled with Rumi. They have automatic weapons… spring guns… firing a clip of twenty plastic bolts. They’re deadly at close to medium range. They can penetrate our battle armor.” He looked at the thick, knobby skin of the Narakan, “Yours too. Now, they are probably just a patrol about the size of one of our companies. They don’t seem to have any heavy weapons and ours will be in action in a few minutes. Then, O’Shaughnessy….” The Narakan was squinting along the barrel of his rifle.