In the Balance

“We’ll make them pay,” Ussmak said fiercely. “The past Emperors have learned Votal’s name. He is with them now.”

“Of course he is,” the gunner answered. “Now shut up and drive will you? I’m going to conn this landcruiser and run the gun, too, so I’m too busy to chatter. I’m going to be busier than a one-handed male with the underscale itch, as a matter of fact.”

Ussmak drove. When he’d stepped into the starship and slung his gear down beside his cold sleep coffin he’d expected the Race to overrun Tosev 3 without losing a male. It wasn’t turning out to be so simple, not with the Big Uglies knowing more than anyone had suspected they did. But they didn’t know enough. The Race could still drive them as easily as Ussmak drove his landcruiser.

A pinng off the turret-“Steer 25, Ussmak!” Telerep shouted. “I saw the flash!”

The driver obediently turned due west. Another pinng, this one off the glacis plate. After taking a hit from a landcruiser cannon, Ussmak ignored the tiny nuisance. He tramped down hard on the accelerator. This time, he’d spotted the muzzle flash, too. He drove straight toward it. The Big Ugly fired again, uselessly, then turned and tried to run.

Telerep cut him down with machine-gun fire. Ussmak ran over the carcass, smashing it into the grass and dirt. His jaws opened wide. Votal was avenged. The landcruiser formation rolled on across the steppe.

Even the smallest noise or flicker of motion in the sky drew Heinrich Jager’s complete and concerned-he was too stubborn to admit to a word like fearful-attention. This time, it was just a linnet flitting past, chirping as it went. This time.

He had three tanks left, three tanks and a combat group of infantry. “Combat group” was the Wehrmacht way of describing odds and ends of military meat pressed together in the hope of turning out a sausage. Sometimes it even worked-but when it did, the sausage went right back into the meat grinder again.

Another motion across the sky turned out to be another bird. Jager shook his head. He could feel how jumpy he was getting. But the Lizards’ aircraft didn’t have to be right overhead to kill. The company had learned that, too, to its sorrow.

He managed something halfway between a laugh and a cough, leaned down into the turret. “I wonder if the Ivans felt this naked after we smashed so many of their planes on the ground last year,” he said.

“If they did, they hid it damned well,” his gunner answered. Georg Schultz wore the ribbon for a wound badge, too.

“So do we-I hope,” Jager said.

A squad of infantry was posted on a swell of ground a few hundred meters in front of the tanks. One of the foot soldiers turned and waved urgently. The signal meant only one thing-Lizard panzers, heading across the steppe. Jager’s testicles tried to crawl up into his belly. Schultz looked up at him. The gunner was dirty and unshaven. “We must try,” he said. “For the Fatherland.”

“For the Fatherland,” Jager echoed. Given that the alternative was bailing out of his tank and trying to foot it across the Ukraine through Lizards and partisans both, fighting for the Fatherland looked like the best bet he had. He leaned down into the turret, called to Dieter Schmidt: “To the prepared position.”

The Panzer III slowly rumbled forward. So did the other two survivors of the tank company. In slots dug into the reverse slope of the rise, they exposed only the tops of their turrets to the enemy. Jager stood up in the cupola, peered ahead with field glasses. He took even fewer chances than he had against the Russians. Shrubs tied to his leather headgear broke up his outline; he used his free hand to shield the binoculars so no sun reflected off their lenses.

Sure enough, there were the Lizards, eight or ten tanks’ worth, with more vehicles scurrying along behind to support them. Jager recognized the ones with small turrets as troop carriers, on the order of the German SdKfz 251 but far more dangerous-they could fight his panzers on largely even terms. And the Lizards’ tanks…

“You know what’s the funny thing, Georg?” he said as he lowered himself once more.

“Tell me anything funny about the Lizards, Herr Major,” the gunner grunted. “I will laugh I promise you.”

“They’re lousy tankers,” Jager said. He was a lousy tankman himself, but only in the literal sense of the word. No one who was lousy in the metaphorical sense could have lasted almost a year on the eastern front.

Sure enough, Schultz laughed. “They’ve been good enough to kick our ass.”

“It’s the panzers, not the crews,” Jager insisted. “They have better guns than ours, better armor, and God only knows how they make engines that don t smoke But tactics-pfui?” He curled his lip in disdain. “The Russians have better sense. They just motor along shooting at anything that happens to cross their path. They aren’t even looking this way, though it’s an obvious place for trouble. Stupid!”