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possible, I'd think."
"Good," said Cletus. "How can you get me through, preferably with picture as
well as voice, to Marc
Dodds?"
"We're on open channel." Eachan answered. He stepped across the room and
returned with a field phone.
"This is Colonel Khan," he said into it. "Colonel Grahame wishes to speak with
Colonel Dodds."
He passed the phone to Cletus. As Cletus' hands closed about it, the vision
screen in the phone's stem lit up with the image of Marc's face, the plotting
screen of the aircraft behind him. "Sir?" Marc gazed
at Cletus. "You're in Bakhalla?"
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"That's right," Cletus answered. "And so's that company of men I had you send
to meet me at the bend of the main river. Give me a view of the board behind
you there, will you?"
Marc moved aside, and the plotting screen behind him seemed to expand to fill
the full screen of the phone. Details were too small to pick out, but Cletus
could see that the two main bodies of Neuland troops were just beginning to
join together on the sandy plain that began where the river bluffs on adjacent
banks of the converging Blue and Whey rivers finally joined and ended in a
sloping V-pointed bluff above the town. Behind the forward scouts, the
advancing main line of the Neulanders was less than half a mile from the
forward Dorsai strongpoints defending the town. Those strongpoints and the
defending Dorsais would be firing into the enemy at long range, even now.
"I've got men along the tops of the bluffs all the way above the Neulanders on
both rivers," said the voice of Marc, "and I've got at least two energy-rifle
companies down on the flats at the foot of the bluffs behind their rear
guards, keeping up fire into them."
"Pull those rifle companies back," Cletus said. "There's no point in risking a
man we don't have to risk. And I want you to have your men on top of the
bluffs stay there, but slacken off on their firing. Do it gradually, cut it
down bit by bit until you're just shooting into them often enough to remind
them that we're there."
"Pull back?" echoed Marc. His face came back into the screen, frowning. "And
slacken fire? But what about the rest of you down in the town there?"
"We're going to attack," said Cletus.
Marc stared out of the screen without answering. His thoughts were as visible
as though they were printed in the air before him. He, with better than three
thousand men, was being told to back off from harassing the rear of an enemy
force of more than six thousand so as not to risk casualties. Meanwhile,
Cletus, with less than six hundred men, was planning to attack the enemy head
on.
"Trust me, Colonel," said Cletus softly into the phone. "Didn't I tell you all
a week ago that I planned to get through this battle with as few men killed as
possible?"
"Yes, sir & " said Marc, grudgingly, and obviously still bewildered.
"Then do as I tell you," said Cletus. "Don't worry, the game's not over yet.
Have your men slacken fire as I say, but tell them to stay alert. They'll have
plenty of chance to use their weapons a little later on."
He cut the connection and handed the phone back to Eachan.
"All right," he said. "Now let's see about mounting that attack."
Thirty minutes later, Cletus was riding with Eachan in a battle car that was
sliding along on its air cushion ten inches above the water flooding the town,
water that was now ankle-deep, even here at the upper edge of the town. He
could see, moving ahead of him, spaced out in twenty-yard intervals and making
good use of the houses, trees and other cover they passed, the closest half
dozen of his Dorsai troopers in the first line of attack. Immediately in front
of him, in the center of the control panel of the battle car, he could see a
small replica plotting screen being fed with information by a remote circuit
from the main plotting screen under Eachan's control at Dorsai HQ in the town
behind him. It showed the
Neulanders forming up at the base of the vertical wall of stone and earth
where adjacent river bluffs came together. Their line stretched right across
the some six hundred yards of sandy soil making up the neck of the land that
connected the foot of the bluffs with the broader area of slightly higher
ground on which the town of Two Rivers was built.
Only the apparent width of the neck of land showed on the plotting screen,
however. Its actual width was lost now in an unbroken sheet of running water
stretching from the bluffs on what had been the far side of the Whey River to
the opposite bluffs on what had been the far side of the Blue. Under that
gray, flowing sheet of liquid it was impossible to tell, except for the few
small trees and bushes that dotted the
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neck of land, where the water was ankle-deep and where it was deep enough for
one of Wefer's Mark
V's to pass by on the bottom, unnoticed. Cletus had warned the attacking men
to stay well toward the center of the enemy line, to avoid blundering into
deeper water that would sweep them downstream.
The attackers paused behind the cover of the last row of houses and dressed
their line. The enemy was only a few hundred yards away.
"All right," said Cletus into his battle phone. "Move out!"
The first wave of attackers rose from their places of concealment and charged
forward at a run, zigzagging as they went. Behind them their companions, as
well as the strongpoints with a field of fire across the former neck of land,
opened up on the enemy with missile weapons.
The Neuland troops still standing on the dry footing of the slightly higher
ground at the foot of the bluffs stared at the wild apparition of rifle-armed
soldiers racing toward them, in great clouds of spray, with apparent suicidal
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