Chapter 33: Lingao's Counterattack (Part 3)

“I’m out of bullets!”

“Bullets! Where are the bullets?”

Before the battle, each man had been issued ninety rounds of ammunition. The SKS-D rifle used the AK’s 30-round magazine, and they had all been confident that with such firepower, even the Manchu iron cavalry would be no match for them. But this was not a movie, and the enemy did not crumple and die with the sound of gunfire. They gritted their teeth and charged forward, their wild cries a terrifying chorus. Panic set in. Some forgot to grab their spare magazines; others fumbled at their belts, unable to pull them free.

“Hold your position!” He Ming shouted, running along the earthen rampart. He knew these men were greener than new recruits, that they had never seen real combat. Their fear was to be expected. He ran back and forth, a desperate attempt to shore up their crumbling morale.

In the lull in their firepower, the local braves had pushed wheelbarrows filled with sandbags to the base of the rampart. Archers and crossbowmen, using the wheelbarrows as cover, loosed a volley of arrows. A man screamed and fell. He Ma and the medical team rushed to his aid but were stopped by a man who threw down his rifle and fled in terror.

“Come back, you coward!” He Ma roared. The rifle had glanced off his helmet; a few inches lower, and it would have cracked his skull.

As he shouted, a puff of white smoke erupted from outside the barbed wire, followed by the roar of a cannon. He Ma ducked instinctively. He felt a sharp impact on his helmet and a searing pain in his body. He looked up to see a man fall from the rampart, his face a mask of blood. He was still groaning, still alive.

The volley from the two Tiger Squatting Cannons, brought to the front of the rampart, had shattered the defenders’ fragile courage. The cannons, though small and crude, fired a deadly hail of stones and scrap iron at close range. The transmigrators, facing a real battlefield for the first time, did not rise to the occasion with calm resolve. The roar of the cannons was the last straw. Seeing the men around them screaming, their faces covered in blood, someone finally broke and ran. He Ming, his face contorted with rage, wanted to shoot them on the spot. If he had just one platoon of PLA soldiers, he thought, even with old Type 38 rifles, they could have routed this rabble in minutes. They had underestimated the enemy’s will to fight and overestimated the psychological resilience of modern men.

“Fire! Fire!” He Ming helped a man who was struggling with his magazine. “Keep firing!”

A few of the bravest local militiamen had already climbed onto the rampart. He Ming gathered the seven or eight men from the military group and laid down a concentrated, continuous fire. The 30-round magazine of the SKS-D gave them a significant advantage. Hot casings rained down, and the local braves at the breach fell in a heap. The rest scattered.

This small counterattack stabilized the line, and the volume of fire from the other camps grew denser. He Ming and the other military group members moved among the defenders, their presence calming the panicked men. Li Jun rounded up the deserters, kicking and punching them back to their posts. The medical team dragged the wounded into the houses, away from the sight of the other defenders.

“Don’t panic!” He Ming shouted, running along the rampart. “Keep your heads down! Keep firing! They can’t get up!”

Huang Shoutong wanted to press the attack. His men had reached the base of the rampart, but now they were caught in a crossfire. Men were falling all around him. The pirates’ firearms had a longer range than any of their own, and they were often firing from elevated positions, their shots devastatingly accurate. Many of his men’s skulls were simply gone after a single shot.

The gunners were wiped out in an instant. The archers and crossbowmen, who had been meant to support the assault, were cut down before they could even loose their arrows. They hid behind the carts, but the dense rain of bullets found them. The local braves held their ground for a moment, then broke and fled, many of them shot down as they ran.

When He Ming saw the rout begin, he ordered a ceasefire. But the scattered gunshots continued for some time.

“Why the ceasefire?” a man asked, running up to him with his SKS. “It was just getting exciting!”

He Ming recognized him as the man who had thrown down his rifle and run. Seeing his flushed, excited face, he could only shake his head.

“We want prisoners, not dead men,” he said, and called the mobile team on his walkie-talkie, ordering them to intercept the fleeing militia.

The appearance of the agricultural vehicles sent a fresh wave of terror through the remaining local braves. They had brought bottles of gunpowder and oil, and had even sprinkled chicken blood on them, in preparation for a battle with the “demon vehicles.” But now, all thoughts of fighting were gone. They ran for their lives. But on the flat riverbank, they were no match for the four-wheel-drive vehicles. After a few were shot down, the rest were herded together. Xiong Buyou shouted, “Those who surrender will be spared,” and most of them knelt and surrendered. Only a few of the fastest runners and best swimmers escaped.

The rout had been so swift that they had not even had time to signal a retreat with the black smoke. He Ming left a small force to clean up the battlefield and dispatched eight agricultural vehicles with over fifty men to cut off the enemy’s retreat at Bopu.

The attack on Bopu had begun at noon. Forewarned, the logging teams and the labor groups had already retreated to the camp. Fu Baiwen had ordered his men to wave their flags and fire their three-eyed blunderbusses, while beating gongs and drums to create a great clamor. As he was directing the “battle” from a what he thought was a safe hillside, the attendant beside him suddenly crumpled, a hole in his chest. Fu Baiwen turned and fled. The militia, seeing their leader run, dropped their weapons and scattered. They had run earlier than Huang Shoutong’s men, and had not sent the retreat signal.

It made no difference. The two-pronged attack had ended in a complete rout. If there was any silver lining, it was that Fu Baiwen’s timely escape had saved most of his men from capture. He Ming’s mobile team only managed to round up a few of the old and weak.

After the battle, the air at Bairen Tan was thick with the smell of blood. The ground from the administrative area’s rampart to the edge of the trench was littered with corpses. The otaku, having survived their “fierce battle,” wandered about in a daze, their rifles hanging limply from their hands. Did I kill someone? they thought, a sense of disbelief warring with the gruesome reality before them. Some vomited, some wept, some laughed hysterically.

It seems the issue of psychological intervention for the transmigrators also needs to be put on the agenda, Xiao Zishan thought as he walked towards the administrative area. He had watched the battle from the vehicle and material yard. In the past few days, they had implemented an emergency system, dispersing the executive committee members among the different camps to avoid being wiped out in a single blow.

On the battlefield, the members of the military group, their SKS rifles with bayonets fixed, cautiously turned over each corpse. The wounded were moved to the side, but only the lightly injured received immediate treatment. The others would have to wait. Many of the transmigrators had also been injured.

“Any casualties?” Xiao Zishan asked Shi Niaoren.

“No deaths, but many injured,” Shi Niaoren said. “Most were hit by the Tiger Squatting Cannon. Many have injuries to their faces and limbs.”

“Oh?”

“They all have stab-proof vests and steel helmets. What’s the use of a small iron cannon like that?” Shi Niaoren said, gesturing contemptuously at the two ugly little cannons that had been overturned at the base of the rampart.

“We were lucky. No one’s eyes were injured. The most serious injury was an arrow to the arm,” Shi Niaoren said, gesturing. “He won’t have much use of it in the future.”

Xiao Zishan was silent. It was better than being disabled, but he couldn’t say that.

The casualty report came out soon: twenty-one transmigrators injured, including one who had burned his hand on the barrel of his rifle.

The attacking local braves had left over a hundred corpses on the battlefield, and more than thirty wounded had been abandoned. Most of them would die within a day or two. Over one hundred and thirty had been captured and were now detained on the riverbank, their faces a mask of despair.

A large quantity of weapons and equipment was captured: swords, spears, bows, crossbows, two Tiger Squatting Cannons, gongs, drums, flags, wheelbarrows, and even several carts of gunpowder and scrap iron. The weapons would be used to arm their future native troops, or melted down. The cannons and scrap iron would be raw materials for the future steel group. The wheelbarrows were put to use on the construction site. The gunpowder, though scorned by the chemistry group, was stored away.

The biggest prize was the capture of three horses. Hainan did not produce horses; they were all imported from the southwest. They were small, not suitable for cavalry, but they could be used as draft animals. Five or six dead horses were also recovered and handed over to the agriculture group for disposal.