“Disgraceful,” Nejas said. “We must have order aboard our own ship before we can hope to put down the Tosevites.”
Another male came into the barracks and swiveled his eye turrets every which way, taking the measure of the place. By the time he was through, he looked dismayed. Ussmak understood that; he’d felt the same way the first time he’d inspected his new housing. From everything he’d heard, even the Big Uglies lived better than this these days.
The newcomer might have been Nejas’ broodbrother. They both had the same perfect body paint, the same alert stance, and, somehow, the same air of trusting innocence about them, as if they’d just come out of cold sleep and didn’t know anything about the way the war against the Big Uglies was (or rather wasn’t) going, about what ginger had done to the Landcruiser crews at Besançon, or about any of the many other unpleasant surprises Tosev 3 had given the Race. Ussmak didn’t know whether to envy or pity them.
Nejas said, “Driver Ussmak, here is Skoob, the gunner of our landcruiser crew.”
Ussmak closely studied Skoob’s body paint. It said the other male’s rank was about the same as his. Nejas’ neutral introduction said the same thing. Ussmak had the feeling he was vastly superior in combat experience: what Nejas had said told him as much, at any rate. On the other hand, Skoob looked to have been together with Nejas for a long time. Ussmak said, “I greet you, superior sir.”
Skoob took the deference as nothing less than his due, which irked Ussmak. “I greet you, driver,” he said. “May we brew up many Tosevite landcruisers together.”
“May it be so.” Ussmak wished he had a taste of ginger; better that than the taste of condescension he got from Skoob. But, because his life would depend in no small measure on how well the gunner did his job, he went on politely, “The other half of the bargain involves keeping the Big Uglies from brewing us up.”
“Shouldn’t be that difficult,” Nejas said. “I’ve studied the technical specifications for all the Tosevites’ landcruisers, even the latest ones from the Deutsche. They’ve improved, yes, but we still handily outclass them.”
“Superior sir, in theory there’s no doubt you’re right,” Ussmak said. “The only trouble is—may I speak frankly?”
“Please do,” Nejas said, Skoob echoing him a moment later. From that, they were an established crewpair. I was wise to defer to Skoob after all, even if he is arrogant, Ussmak thought.
Still, he hoped their willingness to listen meant something. “The trouble with the Big Uglies is, they don’t fight the way we’d expect, or the way our simulations prepared us to meet. They’re masters at setting ambushes, at using terrain to mask what they’re up to, at using feints and minefields to channel our moves into the direction they want, and their intelligence is superb.”
“Ours should be better,” Skoob said. “We have reconnaissance satellites in place, after all, to see how they move.”
“How they move, yes, but not always what the moves mean,” Ussmak said. “They’re very good at concealing that—until they hurt us. And we may have satellites, but they have every Big Ugly between here and their positions to let them know where we’re going. This isn’t like the SSSR, where a lot of the Tosevites preferred us to either the Deutsche or the Russkis. These Big Uglies don’t want us, and they wish we’d all disappear.”
Nejas’ tongue flicked out and then in again, as if at a bad taste. “Helicopter gunships should take the edge off their tactics.”
“Superior sir, they’re of less use here than they were in the SSSR,” Ussmak said. “For one thing, the countryside gives the Deutsche good cover—I said that before. And for another, they’ve learned to bring antiaircraft artillery well forward. They’ve hurt our gunships badly enough that the males in charge of them have grown reluctant to commit them to battle except in emergency, and sometimes then, too.”
“What good are they to us if they cannot be used?” Skoob asked angrily.
“A good question,” Ussmak admitted. “But what good are they to us if they get blown out of the air before they damage the Big Uglies’ landcruisers?”
“You are saying we face defeat?” Nejas’ voice was silky with danger. Ussmak guessed part of his mission was keeping an eye turret turned for defeatists as well as ginger tasters.
“Superior sir, no, I am not saying that,” the driver replied. “I am saying we need to be more wary than we thought we would against the Tosevites.”
“More wary, possibly,” Nejas said with the air of a male making a concession to another who was inferior mentally as well as in rank. “But, when faced in accord with sound tactical doctrine, I have no doubt the Big Uglies will fall.”
Ussmak had had no doubts, either, not until he had a couple of landcruisers wrecked while he was in them. “Superior sir, I say only that the Tosevites are more devious than our tactical doctrine allows for.” He held up a hand to keep Nejas from interrupting, then told the story of the mortar attack on the Race’s local base and the land mine waiting for the armor as it hurried toward the bridge that would let it get at the raiders.
Nejas did break in: “I have heard of this incident. My impression is that males with their heads in the ginger vial were in large measure responsible for our losing an armored fighting vehicle. They charged straight ahead without considering possible risks.”
“Superior sir, that’s true,” Ussmak said, recalling just how true it was. “But it’s not the point I was trying to make. Had they gone more cautiously, they would have taken an alternate route . . . under which the Big Uglies also had a bomb waiting. We are devious by doctrine and training; they seem to be devious straight from hatchlinghood. They play a deeper game than we do.”
That got through, to Skoob if not to Nejas. The gunner said, “How do we protect ourselves against this Tosevite deviousness, then?”
“If I had the whole answer to that, I’d be fleetlord, not a landcruiser driver,” Ussmak said, which made both his new crewmales laugh. He went on, “The one thing I will say is that, if a move against the Big Uglies looks easy and obvious, you’ll probably find it has claws attached. And the first thing you think of after the obvious move may well be wrong, too. And so may the second one.”
“I have it,” Skoob said. “The thing to do is post our landcruisers in a circle in the middle of a large, open field—and then make sure the Big Uglies aren’t digging under them.”
Ussmak let his mouth drop open at that: good to see one of the new males could crack wise, anyhow. Nejas remained serious. Letting his eyes roam around the barracks once more, he said, “This is such a gloomy place, I’d hardly mind getting out of it to fight in a landcruiser. I expect I’d be more comfortable in one than I will here. Does it have anything in its favor?”
“The plumbing is excellent,” Ussmak said. Through the newcomers’ hisses of surprise, he explained, “The Big Uglies have messier body wastes than we do, so they need more in the way of plumbing. And this whole planet is so wet, they use water more for washing and such than we would dare back on Home. Standing under a decently warm spray is invigorating, even if it does play hob with your body paint.”
“Let me at it;” Skoob said. “We were on duty down south of here, somewhere in the landmass unit the Tosevites call Africa. It was warm enough there, but the water was in the streams or falling from the sky in sheets; the local Big Uglies didn’t know anything about putting it in pipes.”
Nejas also made enthusiastic noises. Ussmak said, “Here, throw your gear on these beds”—they had been Hessef’s and Tvenkel’s—“and I’ll show you what we have.”
All three males were luxuriating in the showers when the unit commander, a male named Kassnass, stuck his head into the chamber and said, “All out. We have an operations meeting coming up.”
Feeling unjustly deprived, to say nothing of damp, Ussmak and his crewmales listened to Kassnass set forth the newest plan for a push toward Belfort. To the driver, it seemed more of the same. Nejas and Skoob, however, listened as if en
tranced. From what Ussmak had heard, they wouldn’t have faced serious opposition in this Africa place, which was almost as backward technologically as the Race had thought all of Tosev 3 to be. Things were different here.
The unit commander turned one eye turret from the holograms on which the positions of the Deutsche and the Race were marked to the males assembled before him. “A lot of you are new here,” he said. “We’ve had troubles with this garrison, but by the Emperor”—he and the landcruiser crews cast down their eye turrets—“we’ve cleaned up most of that now. Our veterans know how devious the Deutsche can be. You newcomers, follow where they lead and stay cautious. If something looks too good to be true, it probably is.”
“That’s so,” Ussmak whispered to Nejas and Skoob. Neither of them responded; he hoped they’d pay more attention to Kassnass than they did to him.
Kassnass went on, “Don’t let them lure you into rugged country or the woods; you’re vulnerable if you get separated from the other landcruisers in the unit, because then the Big Uglies will concentrate fire on you from several directions at once. Remember, they can afford to lose five or six or ten landcruisers for every one of ours they take out, and they know it, too. We have speed and firepower and armor on our side; they have numbers, trickery, and fanatical courage. We have to use our advantages and minimize theirs.”
They’re the enemy and they’re only Big Uglies, so of course we call their courage fanatical, Ussmak thought. Saying they’re just doing their best to stay alive like anybody else would give them too much credit for sense.
The males trooped out to the revetments that protected the landcruisers, Ussmak guiding his new commander and gunner. The earth was scored with hits from Tosevite mortars; bomb fragment scars pocked the sides of buildings. Nejas and Skoob rapidly swiveled their eye turrets. Ussmak guessed they hadn’t seen resistance like this from the Big Uglies.
Once in place in the driver’s position, he stopped worrying about what they’d seen and what they hadn’t. He had a vial of ginger stashed in the landcruiser’s fuse box, but he didn’t open it up and taste, not now. He wanted to be clear and rational, not berserk, if he saw action unexpectedly soon.
Helicopter gunships took off with whickering roars audible even through the landcruiser’s thick armor. They’d reach the target area well before the ground vehicles did. With luck, they’d soften up the Deutsche and not take too much damage themselves. Ussmak knew somebody reckoned the mission important; as he’d told his crewmales, helicopters had grown too scarce and precious to hazard lightly.
Through the streets of Besançon, past the busy-looking buildings with their filigrees of iron railings and balconies. Engineers preceded the landcruisers, to make sure no more explosive surprises awaited. All the same, Ussmak drove buttoned up and regarded every Big Ugly he saw through his vision slits as a potential—no, even a likely—spy. The Deutsche would know they were coming even before the helicopters arrived.
Ussmak breathed easier when his landcruiser rumbled over the bridge across the Doubs and headed for open country. He was also taking the measure of Nejas as a landcruiser commander. The new male might not have seen much action, but he seemed crisp and decisive. Ussmak approved. He hadn’t felt part of a proper landcruiser crew since a sniper killed Votal, his first commander. He hadn’t realized how much he missed the feeling till he saw some chance of getting it back.
Somewhere off in the trees, a machine gun opened up with harassing fire. A couple of bullets pinged off the landcruiser. Nejas said, “Take no notice of him. He can’t hurt us, anyway.” Ussmak hissed in delight He’d seen males with heads abuzz with ginger badly delay a mission by trying to hunt out Tosevite nuisances.
The column rolled north and east. Reports came back that the helicopters had struck hard at the Tosevite landcruisers. Ussmak hoped the reports were right. Knowing the Big Uglies could hurt him put combat in a new light.
A flash, a streak of fire barely seen, a crash that made the landcruiser ring like a bell. “Turret rotate from zero to twenty-five,” Nejas called—urgently, but without the panic or rage or excessive excitement a ginger taster would have used. “Machine-gun fire into those bushes.”
“It shall be done, superior sir,” Skoob replied. The turret swung through a quarter of a circle, from northeast to northwest. The machine gun yammered. “No way to tell whether I got him, superior sir, but he won’t shoot another rocket at one of our landcruisers for a while, I hope.”
“Let us hope not,” Nejas said. “We’re lucky that one hit us on the turret and not in the side of the hull, where the armor is thinner. Briefings say the results can be most unpleasant.”
“Briefings don’t know the half of it, superior sir,” Ussmak said. Vivid inside his head were flames and explosions and unremitting fear, fear that had come flooding back at that impact against the turret and now receded only slowly.
The landcruiser column rolled on. Every now and again, bullets from the bushes struck sparks off armor plate, but the column did not slow. Ussmak kept driving buttoned up. He felt half blind, but didn’t care to have one of those rounds clip off the top of his head.
“Why don’t they keep those pests from harassing us?” Nejas asked after yet another band of Tosevites sprayed the column with gunfire. “This is our territory; if we can’t keep raiders from slipping in, we might as well not have conquered it.”
“Superior sir, the trouble is that almost all the Tosevites hereabouts favor the raiders and shelter them, and we have an impossible time trying to figure out who really lives in the farms and villages and who doesn’t. Identity cards help, but they aren’t enough. This is their planet, after all; they know it better than we can hope to.”
“It was simpler down in Africa,” the landcruiser commander said mournfully. “The Big Uglies there had no weapons that could hurt a landcruiser, and did what they were told once we made a few examples of those who disobeyed.”
“We tried that here, too, I’ve heard,” Ussmak said. “This was before I arrived. The trouble was, the Big Uglies had been making examples of one another yet fighting just the same. They ignored the examples we made, the same way they’d ignored their own.”
“Mad,” Skoob said. Ussmak didn’t contradict him.
The landcruisers began passing old battlefields, some still showing the scars of fires set by shot-up landcruisers. The hulks of destroyed Deutsch armored fighting vehicles still sprawled in death. Some of them were the angular little machines Ussmak had encountered on the plains of the SSSR, but others were the big new ones that could endanger a landcruiser of the Race if well handled—and the Deutsche handled them well.
Nejas said, “Those are impressive looking hulks, aren’t they? Even holograms don’t do them justice. When I first saw one, I wondered why our males hadn’t salvaged it; I needed a moment to realize the Big Uglies had made it. I apologize for wondering about some of the things you said, Ussmak. Now I believe you.”
Ussmak didn’t answer, but felt a burst of pleasure more subtle than the jolt he got from ginger, and perhaps more satisfying as well. It had been too long since a superior acknowledged that the Race’s obligations ran down as well as up. His last pair of landcruiser commanders had taken him for granted, as if he were just a component of the machine he drove. Not even being a ginger buddy with Hessef had changed that. No wonder he’d felt isolated, alone, hardly part of the Race at all. Now . . . it was almost as if he’d come out of the eggshell anew.
Smoke rose from the woods up ahead. An artillery shell burst off to one side of the road: the helicopters hadn’t routed the Deutsche, then. Ussmak had hoped he’d be going in to mop up. He hadn’t really believed it, but he’d hoped.
A cannon belched fire and smoke from behind some bushes. Wham! Ussmak felt as if he’d been kicked in the muzzle. But the landcruiser’s heavy glacis plate kept the Tosevite shell from penetrating. Without being ordered, Ussmak swung the vehicle in the direction from which the round had come. “I almost fouled my seat
,” he said. “If the Big Uglies had waited till we passed and shot at the side of our hull—”
Nejas took the time to give him one word: “Yes.” Then the landcruiser commander snapped an order to Skoob: “Gunner!” A moment later another single-word command followed: “Sabot!”
Skoob put the automatic loader through its paces. A round of armor-piercing discarding sabot ammunition clattered into the breech of the gun, which closed with a solid thunk. “Up!” the gunner reported.
“Landcruiser, front!” Nejas said, noting the target for Skoob.
“Identified,” Skoob answered: he had it in his thermal sight.
“Fire!”
“On the way,” Skoob said. The report of the landcruiser cannon was less than thunderous inside the hull, but the massive vehicle rocked back from the recoil and a sheet of flame billowed across Ussmak’s vision slits. Again the driver knew pleasure almost as intense as ginger gave: this was how a crew was supposed to work together. He hadn’t known anything like it since Votal got killed. He’d forgotten how satisfying it could be.
And, just as ginger brought a burst of ecstasy as it shot from the tongue to the brain, so teamwork also had its reward: fire and black smoke boiled up behind the bushes as the Deutsch landcruiser that had tried to impede the progress of the Race paid the price for its temerity. The turret machine gun chattered, mowing down the Big Uglies who’d bailed out of their wrecked vehicle.
“Ahead, driver,” Nejas said.
“It shall be done, superior sir,” Ussmak said. Along with part of the column of landcruisers, he pushed the machine forward down the road past the ambush the Big Uglies had hoped to set. The rest of the Race’s armor went after the Deutsche who’d tried to waylay them. The fight was savage, but didn’t last long. When they weren’t caught by surprise in disadvantageous positions, the Race’s landcruisers remained far superior to those of the foe. They methodically pounded the Deutsche till no more Deutsche were left to pound, then rejoined the rear of the advancing column.
Turtledove: World War Page 119
