Iron Dynasty Chapter 1009

"Dah dah dah—"

The machine guns did not stop.

The sound was unlike anything the British soldiers had ever heard on a battlefield. It was not the asured crack of rifle fire, not the rolling thunder of cannon — it was continuous, chanical, utterly indifferent to the human bodies it was cutting through.

The front line of the British formation collapsed in seconds.

Not a retreat. Not a rout. A collapse — n simply ceasing to stand, row after row, as though so invisible hand were sweeping them off the beach.

The soldiers behind them had trained for this mont. Fill the gaps. Maintain the line. Advance.

But there were no gaps small enough to fill. The machine guns swept left, then right, then left again, and the n who stepped forward to fill the gaps fell before their boots had settled in the sand.

"Fall back!" Alden's voice cracked as he scread from the rear. "Fall back, regroup—"

It made no difference. The soldiers in the middle of the formation could not hear him over the noise. The soldiers at the front were already dead. The soldiers at the rear, seeing what was happening ahead of them, were already running.

In four minutes, eleven thousand n beca a broken tide washing backward up the beach.

Chang Yuzhu watched from behind the machine gun line, his expression quiet.

"Cease fire."

The guns went silent.

The beach ahead was carpeted with red coats.

"Advance," Chang Yuzhu said.

The pursuit was thodical rather than frenzied.

The imperial soldiers moved in coordinated skirmish lines, their Han-style rifles picking off stragglers with the calm efficiency of n who had done this many tis before. The British, stripped of their formation and their discipline with it, scattered into the scrubland beyond the beach.

So made it to Wales City. Most did not get that far.

Alden found himself running with a group of perhaps two hundred n — all that remained of his organized force. His uniform was torn at the shoulder where a splinter had caught him. His hat was gone. Around him, n who had marched out of Wales that morning with squared shoulders and polished buttons were gasping and stumbling through brush they had never expected to be running through.

"Hold here," he said, when they reached a shallow ridge line. "Hold here and count the n."

He already knew the count would be bad.

Kenneth appeared at his shoulder, breathing hard. The older man's face was gray. "The machine guns," he said. It was not a question or a statent. It was simply the only explanation that made sense of what had just happened.

"I've read about them," Alden said. His voice was very flat. "I didn't believe the reports. I thought the reports were exaggerated."

Kenneth said nothing.

"We need to get word to the navy," Alden continued. "If they can bring their ships around and shell the beach—"

"The navy is already gone," a soldier said from nearby. His voice carried the particular emptiness of shock. "I saw them turn north when the landing began. They weren't going to sit in range of those warships."

Alden closed his eyes for a mont.

When he opened them, Wales City was visible in the distance, its familiar outline unchanged, as though this morning had been an ordinary morning.

"Fall back to Wales," he said. "We regroup inside the walls."

He did not say what he would do after that. He did not know yet.

Lei Ming stood on the beach and watched his soldiers pursue the scattered British forces toward Wales City.

Around him, engineers were already at work — asuring tide lines, assessing the terrain, marking positions for artillery emplacents. A landing beach was only useful if it could be held and supplied, and Lei Ming had no intention of taking Wales only to lose it to a counterattack from the interior.

"Casualties?" he asked.

Shi Yanjun checked the report that had just been handed to him. "Thirty-one dead, one hundred and twelve wounded. Mostly from the shore battery fire during the landing."

Lei Ming was quiet for a mont.

Thirty-one n. Against a British force that had numbered close to twelve thousand.

"The machine guns perford as expected," he said finally.

"Better than expected," Shi Yanjun said. "The British had no answer for them. None at all."

Lei Ming nodded slowly. He looked out at the bay, where his warships sat at anchor, and beyond them at the horizon.

Australia was a vast continent. Wales was one city on its edge.

But every campaign began with a single city.

"Send the infantry forward," he said. "I want Wales secured before dark."