The landcruiser rumbled forward. Ussmak listened with a certain malicious satisfaction to paving stones breaking under the pressure of the tracks. When Nejas ordered him to halt, he hit the brake.
He leaned forward and peered through the vision slit. It didn’t give him anywhere near the view Nejas had from the turret, but what he saw, he didn’t like. The Big Uglies had spent the night-and who could say how much time before that? — fortifying the slope that led down to the river. Belts of the spiky stuff they used in place of razor wire were everywhere. So were trenches, brown scars on green, plant-covered earth. Ussmak was willing to bet that greenery also concealed cleverly hidden mines.
“We shall begin shelling Henley-on-Thames,” Nejas said.
“Gunner, high explosive.”
“It shall be done,” Skoob said, “but we are also low on high-explosive shells. We used a good many yesterday, and, as with the hydrogen, we got no resupply afterwards.”
Before Skoob began firing, the English down below opened up with their own artillery. Whitish puffs, different from the usual clouds of smoke and dust, rose from the Tosevite shells as they burst. Nejas slammed the lid of the cupola down with a clang. “That’s gas!” he exclaimed, with less than the equanimity a landcruiser commander should have displayed.
Nor was Ussmak delighted at having to drive the landcruiser through a thickening curtain of the horrid stuff. The filters that shielded the landcruiser’s air intakes were makeshifts, and he distrusted them for no other reason than that. The Race did not think well of makeshifts. They went wrong too easily. Properly engineered solutions worked right every time. Trusting your life to anything less seemed a dreadful risk to take.
But at least Ussmak and his crewmales enjoyed, if that was the word, some protection against the poison the British spread with such enthusiasm. The poor males in the infantry had next to none. Some males wore masks, patterned either after those the Race used to fight radiation or based on Big Ugly models. But there weren’t nearly enough masks to go around, and the gas also left hideous burns and blisters on bare skin. Ussmak wondered if that was one of the reasons the Tosevites wrapped themselves in cloth.
The landcruiser’s main armament started hammering away, searching for the British guns. Not all the flying rubble came from that cannon’s shells. Radar-guided counterbattery fire also rained down on the sites from which the gas shells had been launched. Low-flying killercraft poured rockets and their own cannon shells into Henley-on-Thames.
“Forward!” Nejas ordered, and Ussmak took his foot off the brake. A moment later, to his surprise, the commander said, “Landcruiser halt.” Halt Ussmak did, as Nejas went on, “We can’t move forward, not against positions like those, without infantry support to keep the Tosevites from wrecking us as we slow down for their egg-addled obstacles.”
“Where are the infantrymales, superior sir?” Ussmak couldn’t see them, but that didn’t prove anything, not with the narrow field of view his vision slits gave. He wasn’t about to unbutton and look around, either, not with gas shells still coming in. “Have they got back into their mechanized combat vehicles?”
“Some of them have,” Nejas said. “They don’t do us much good in there, though, or themselves, either; the combat vehicles will have to slow down for the wire and trenches. But some of the males”-his voice sputtered in indignation-“are running away.”
Ussmak heard that without fully taking it in at first. A few times, especially during the hideous northern-hemisphere winter, Tosevite assaults had forced the Race to fall back. But he slowly realized this was different. These infantrymales weren’t falling back. They were refusing to go forward. He wondered if the like had ever happened in the history of the Race.
Skoob said, “Shall I turn the machine gun on them, superior sir, to remind them of their duty?” His voice showed the same disbelief Ussmak felt.
Nejas hesitated before he answered. That in itself alarmed Ussmak; a commander was supposed to know what to do in any given situation. At last he said, “No, hold fire. The disciplinarians will deal with them. This is their proper function. Hold in place and await orders.”
“It shall be done.” Skoob still sounded doubtful. Again, Ussmak was taken aback. Nejas and Skoob were a long-established unit; for the gunner to doubt the commander was a bad sign.
Orders were a long time coming. When they came, they were to hold in place until the field guns in Henley-on-Thames and the bigger British cannon farther north could be silenced. Aircraft and artillery rained destruction on the town. Ussmak watched that with great satisfaction. All the same, gas shells and conventional artillery kept falling on Wargrave.
Fresh hydrogen eventually reached the landcruiser, but the ammunition resupply vehicle never came. The males of the Race did not move forward, save for a probe by the infantry that the entrenched Big Uglies easily repulsed.
Ussmak wasn’t very happy about where he was. He would have been even less happy, though, he decided, had he been in the northern pocket. That one wasn’t just stalled. It was shrinking.
Atvar paced back and forth. That helped him to think, to some degree. It didn’t mean he wasn’t always staring at the situation map of Britain; one eye always swiveled toward it, no matter how his body was aligned. That kept the pain constant, as if it were festering in several tooth sockets at once.
He hissed in rage and frustration. “Perhaps you were right, Shiplord,” he said to Kirel. “Perhaps even Straha was right, though his egg should have addled before it hatched. We might have done better to deal with the British by means of a nuclear weapon.”
“Exalted Fleetlord, if that be your pleasure, we can still accomplish it,” Kirel said.
“Using nuclear weapons is never my pieasure,” Atvar answered. “And what point to it?”
“Securing the conquest of Britain?” Kirel said.
“The accursed island is so small, it’s scarcely worth having after a couple of these devices detonate on it,” Atvar answered gloomily. “Besides, our losses there have been so dreadful that I fear even keeping pacification forces on it will be more expensive than it’s worth. And besides-” He stopped, unwilling to go on.
Kirel, a reliable subordinate, did it for him: “And besides, now that the British have introduced the use of these vile poisonous gases, every Tosevite empire still in the field against us has begun employing them in large quantities.”
“Yes.” Atvar made the word a hiss of hate. “They were not using them against one another when we came to this miserable iceball of a world. Our analysis leaves no possible doubt as to that point. And yet all their leading empires and not-empires had enormous quantities of these munitions stored and ready for deployment. Now they know we are vulnerable to them, and so bring them out. It seems most unjust.”
“Truth, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel agreed. “Our historical analysis unit has perhaps uncovered the reason for the anomaly.”
“Seeking rational reasons for anything the Big Uglies do strikes me as an exercise in futility,” Atvar said. “What did the analysis unit deduce?”
“The Big Uglies recently fought another major war, in which poisonous gases played an important part. Apparently, they were so appalled at what the gases did that, when this new war broke out among them, no empire dared to use them first, for fear of retaliation from its foes.”
“One of the few signs of rationality yet detected among the Tosevites,” Atvar said with heavy sarcasm. “I gather this unwillingness to use the poisonous gases did not keep them from producing such gases in limitless quantities.”
“Indeed not,” Kirel said. “No empire trusted its neighbors not to do so, and no empire cared to be without means of retaliation should its neighbors turn the gases against it. And so production and research continued.”
“Research.” Atvar made that into a curse. “The blistering agent the British threw at us is quite bad enough, but this stuff the Deutsche use-Have you seen those reports?”
“I have, Exalted F
leetlord,” Kirel said. His tailstump curled downward in gloom. “First a male finds the day going dim around him, then he has difficulty breathing, and then he quietly dies. I am given to understand, though, that there is an injectable antidote to that gas.”
“Yes, and if you inject it thinking you have breathed the gas but are mistaken, it makes you nearly as ill as the gas would without treatment.” Atvar hissed mournfully. “A perfect metaphor for Tosev 3, would you not agree? When we do nothing, the Big Uglies wreck us, and when we take steps against them, that presents problems just as difficult in a different way.”
“Truth,” Kirel said. He pointed to the map. “In aid of which, what are we to do about the northern pocket in Britain? We have not been able to suppress British artillery, and it can reach every spot within the pocket. The closer our males get to London, the more built-up areas they have to traverse, and fighting in built-up areas means heavy losses in males and materiel both.”
“That’s not the worst of it, either,” Atvar said. “Flying transports over Britain gets riskier by the day. Not only do the British seem to keep pulling aircraft out from under flat stones, but the Deutsche in northern France strike at our machines as they fly back and forth to Britain. We have lost several transports, and cannot afford to lose many more.”
“Truth,” Kirel repeated glumly.
“If we have to start using starships instead, and if we start losing starships in significant numbers-” Atvar didn’t go on. He didn’t need to go on. If the Race started losing starships in significant numbers, the war against the Big Uglies would be within shouting distance of being lost along with them.
“What then is our course in regard to the northern pocket in Britain, Exalted Fleetlord?” Kirel asked.
Atvar hissed again. He heartily wished the northern pocket did not exist. If the British kept pounding on it, it wouldn’t exist much longer. That, however, was not what he’d had in mind as a means for disposing of it. Bitterly, he said, “If only the sweep around London to the west from the southern force hadn’t been halted at the river line, we could have withdrawn the males north of London without undue trouble.”
“Yes, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel said dutifully. Although he had every right to, he didn’t remind Atvar that ifs like this had no place in military planning.
“Bringing the males out from the north would be feasible,” Atvar said, “but with the heavy transports having such difficulty there-with all manner of fixed-wing aircraft having such difficulty there-we would be compelled to leave behind a great deal of equipment.”
Not until the words had left his mouth did he realize he’d abandoned all hope of salvaging the northern pocket. The battle there was one the Race would lose, and he couldn’t do anything about it except make the defeat less costly.
He hoped Kirel would contradict him. He’d phrased his comment hypothetically; the shiplord might well find reason for optimism where he saw none. But Kirel said, “Exalted Fleetlord, if we stay in the pocket we shall lose not only the equipment but the males as well. We should do our best to deny the materiel to the British, lest it be turned against us.”
Now Atvar said, “Truth.” In a way, acknowledging defeat was liberating. In another way, it was terrifying. The fleetlord said, “If we withdraw from the northern pocket, the political consequences will be unpredictable but surely unfortunate.”
“They shouldn’t be as bad as that, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel said, his voice soothing. “We will have kept the British from meddling on the main continental mass for some time to come, and other Tosevite empires opposing us can hardly be stimulated to more effort than they are already making.”
“Those were not the consequences to which I was referring,” Atvar answered. “I was thinking of possible developments within the ranks of the shiplords themselves.”
“Ahh,” Kirel said. “Now I see.” He paused thoughtfully. “My view is that, with Straha gone, it will likely be too divisive an issue for any male to raise. His defecting to the Big Uglies has worked to your advantage, because it discredits in advance those who would rebel against your leadership.”
“Yes, I have made a similar calculation,” Atvar said. He carefully did not send Kirel a suspicious look. Straha had also been Kirel’s chief rival for leadership among the shiplords. Now Kirel had no chief rival among them. After only himself, Kirel was supreme. If he took it into his head to claw aside the fleetlord… Kirel hadn’t played that role when he’d had the chance, but then Straha had been the one calling for his head.
Kirel said, “As I mentioned before, we have met some of our goals for the invasion of Britain, if not all of them. We need not be ashamed of our efforts on the island.”
“No,” Atvar agreed. He let his mouth fall open and nodded slightly: a rueful laugh. “Anywhere in the Empire but Tosev 3, partial fulfillment of goals is a matter for shame and reproach. Here, against the Big Uglies, we feel like celebrating whenever we can accomplish that much.”
“More is relative than the behavior of objects at speeds approaching that of light,” Kirel said. “Among ourselves and when dealing with the Rabotevs and Hallessi, planning can take into account all known variables, and almost all variables are known. When we deal with the Big Uglies, almost all variables have indeterminate values.”
“Truth,” Atvar answered sadly. “Sometimes we don’t even know a variable exists until it rises up and bites off the tip of our tailstump. These poisonous gases, for instance: the Tosevites had them in unlimited quantity, but weren’t using them against each other or against us. For all we know, we may have overrun considerable stores of them without noticing-and the Big Uglies would hardly have gone out of their way to point them out to us.”
“There’s a notion, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel said. “We should explore the weapons stocks in empires under our control. That may enable us to retaliate in kind against the Tosevites.”
“See to that,” Atvar said. “We will still be at a disadvantage against them, as their protection technology is ahead of ours”-he opened and closed his hands in embarrassment at the admission-“but having the tool in our kit will prove useful, as you say. Start the investigation today.”
“It shall be done,” Kirel said.
Atvar went on, “Whether or not we come upon stores of these gases, though, the point is that we were unaware the Tosevites even had them until we made the British desperate enough to use them against us.”
“With all too much success,” Kirel said.
“With all too much success,” Atvar agreed. “The Big Uglies care nothing for the long term. If something will help them for a moment, they seize on it. In the long run; their species may well have wrecked itself had we not come along at this particular time.” He hissed a sigh. “But come we did, and now we must make the best of it.”
“The Soviets’ use of the nuclear device was a similar phenomenon, I believe,” Kirel said. “When we press the Tosevites-or some of them, at any rate-they are liable to do astonishing things.”
“Astonishing, yes,” Atvar replied dryly. “To say nothing of appalling. And several of their other empires and not-empires are sure to be working on nuclear weapons for themselves. And if we press hard enough to make them desperate-” He paused.
“But if we don’t, Exalted Fleetlord, how are we to win the war?” Kirel said.
“Planners back on Home never have to worry about dilemmas like that,” Atvar said. “By the Emperor, bow I envy them!”
10
Ludmila Gorbunova was used to flying over the endless plains of the Ukraine and central Russia. She’d seen little of the great forests of pine and fir and beech and birch that blanketed the more northerly reaches of her country.
Around Pskov, trees dominated, not steppe. The great dark green expanse to the east had been called the forest republic when Soviet partisans used it as their base and stronghold against the Nazis who held the city. Now Russians and Germans both used the woods in their struggle against the Lizards.<
br />
The Lizards used them, too. Ludmila was still discovering one major difference between forest and steppe: out on the steppe, despite vigorous Sovietmaskirovka, concealing soldiers and weapons and machines was hard work. Here in the woods, it was second nature.
An aircraft that flew low and slow like her little U-2 biplane was the only sort of machine with much of a chance to look down and see what the enemy was doing. As she buzzed along, she wished theKukuruznik could also fly low and fast. A Lizard helicopter could run her down and shoot her out of the air with no trouble at all, if it chanced to notice her.
She skimmed over a path in the forest. On the path she spied a pair of lorries, pushing north. They were of human manufacture-one a German model, the other an American one probably captured from the Soviets-but where they were and the direction in which they were going declared them to be under Lizard control. And where she’d seen two, there were likely to be two dozen more she hadn’t seen, plus armored personnel carriers and tanks.
Ludmila had heard stories of Red Air Force pilots who’d flown below treetop height right down paths like that, shooting up everything in their sights. People who did things like that got the Hero of the Soviet Union award pinned on their tunics, sometimes by the Great Stalin himself. It was tempting, but…
“I’d only get myself killed,” Ludmila said, as if someone were in theKukuruznik arguing with her. It wasn’t that she was afraid the Lizards would shoot her down; she’d signed up with the risk of getting shot down when she joined the Red Air Force. But she didn’t think the lane was wide enough to let her get the U-2 down it. Tearing the wings off your aircraft by running into a tree was not what they taught you in flight school.
That left her with one choice. She spun the little-but not little enough-biplane through a tight turn and headed back toward Pskov. The Germans had artillery that could pound this position and the area north of it. It wouldn’t be a guaranteed kill, not by any means, but it would make the Lizards unhappy.
Upsetting the Balance w-3 Page 32
