Upsetting the Balance

Cheers rolled up and down the skirmish line. But when some of the troopers got up and started to run toward town, the machine gun began its hateful stutter once more. The mortar wentwhump, whump, whump — three rounds in quick succession. The machine gun stopped firing again. This time, it didn’t start up when the Americans came to their feet.

Auerbach let out a Rebel yell as he advanced. Quite a few of his men echoed him; cavalry units drew a disproportionate number of Southerners. Some of the Lizards in the consolidated high school opened up with their automatic rifles. Those were bad, but didn’t have the reach or sustained firepower of the machine gun.

Mortar bombs began stalking the rifle positions, one by one. Some were silenced, some weren’t. At worst, though, not a whole lot of Lizards were shooting at the cavalrymen.

Auerbach’s confidence rose. “Boys, I think most of ’em have gone off to visit up in Lydia,” he yelled. That brought fresh cheers and more Rebel yells. Getting through the razor wire around the high school wasn’t going to be any fun, but once they managed it-

Manage they did. The Lizards lacked the defenders to prevent it. They shot a couple of men attacking the wire with cutters, but others kept up such a heavy stream of fire on their positions that they probably lost as many fighters as they wounded.

Once through the barriers, the Americans fa

The snarl of a Lizard automatic rifle said the fighting wasn’t done yet. Auerbach hurried toward the sound of the shooting. The Lizard was holed up in what had been a girls’ bathroom. “Surrender!” he shouted to it. Then he made a noise that reminded him of bread popping out of an electric toaster. That was supposed to mean the same thing in Lizard talk.

He didn’t think it would do any good. But then the door to the rest room opened. The Lizard slid out its rifle. “Hold fire!” Auerbach called to his men. He made the popping-toast noise again. The door opened wider. The Lizard came out. He knew enough to stand there with his hands high. All he was wearing was body paint; he’d left his equipment behind in the john. He repeated the Lizard word Auerbach had repeated, so it probably did meansurrender after all.

“Hagerman! Calhoun! Take charge of him,” Auerbach said. “They really want Lizard POWs; we’ll get a pat on the fa

Max Hagerman gave the Lizard a dubious look. “How we go

“Damned if I know, but I expect you’ll figure something out,” Auerbach said cheerfully, which meant Hagerman was stuck with it. Turning to Jack Calhoun, the captain went on, “Go in there and gather up his gear. The intelligence staff’ll want that, too.” The cavalryman assumed a dubious expression, too, his on account of theGIRLS sign on the battered door. “Go on,” Auerbach told him. “They aren’t in there now.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” Calhoun said, as if reminding himself.

That seemed to be the last combat inside the school grounds. Auerbach hurried to the northern edge of the school. The mortar teams and the.50-caliber machine-gun crew were already digging themselves in. “You boys don’t need me,” Auerbach said. “You could run this show by yourselves.”

The troopers just gri

“That’s how we set it up,” Auerbach agreed. “Now we find out if we’re as smart as we think we are.” If the Lizards sent a tank or two west from Garden City, instead of bringing the garrison back from Lydia to Lakin, his men were in big trouble. Sure, they’d packed the bazooka launcher and a dozen or so rounds for it, but you needed to be lucky to take out a Lizard tank with a bazooka, and you didn’t need to be lucky to smash up some cavalrymen with a tank.

One of his troopers let out a yell and pointed north. Auerbach took his field glasses out of their case. The little specks on the road swelled into one of the Lizards’ armored perso

“Get ready, boys,” he said, stowing the binoculars again. “That APC is go

He shouted for more troopers to come up and find cover in the buildings and ruins of the school. For once the Lizards were doing the dirty work, attacking Americans in a fortified position. Outside of Chicago, that didn’t happen often enough.

The sergeant dropped a fi

The trucks and the APC came on harder than ever, into the next mortar’s zone. That crew was already firing. Screams of delight rose from the Americans when a bomb landed on top of a truck. The truck slewed sideways, flipped over, and started to burn. Lizards spilled out of it. Some lay on the roadway. Others skittered for cover. The.50-caliber machine gun opened up on them, and on the other truck.

The APC had a heavy machine gun, too, or a light ca

He swore when the. 50 fell silent. The mortar teams were shooting up and over cover, but the machine gu

Fire spurted from the second truck. It stopped but didn’t roll onto its side. Lizards bailed out into the fields on either side of Highway 25. Auerbach fired at them. He came to the end of a belt and bent to fasten on another one from the ammunition box.

“I’ll take care of that, sir,” a trooper said. “I’ve done it with a.30-caliber weapon often enough. This here one’s just bigger, looks like.”

“That’s about right,” Auerbach agreed. He squeezed the triggers. The heavy machine gun felt like a jackhammer in his hands, and made a racket like a dozen jackhammers all going flat out. Even with the flash hider at the end of the muzzle, he blinked against the spearhead of flame that spat from the barrel. A stream of hot brass cartridge cases, each as big as his thumb, spewed from the breech and clattered down onto the growing pile at his feet.

He swore again when the APC’s weapon, which had gone on to other targets after wrecking the machine-gun crew, now swung back his way. “Get down!” he yelled to the corporal feeding him ammo. Bullets slammed into the wreckage all around him. Flying concrete chips bit into the back of his neck.