Tilting the Balance

“Armor-piercing,” Jager said quietly. The loader slammed a black-nosed shell into the breech of the cannon. Out of sight down the road, another panzer exploded. Jager bit his lip; those were men, comrades-in-arms, dying nastily. And the officer part of him whispered, if all my panzers get killed before any make it back here, what good is my ambush? He was inured to sacrificing men; throwing them away was something else again.

He stood up in the cupola, made a hand sign: be ready. Panzer commanders passed it down the line. He didn’t want to use radio, not now. The Lizards were too good at picking up their foes signals. As if from very far away he felt his heart thudding in his chest, his bowels loosening. That was what fear did to your body. It didn’t have to rule you if you didn’t let it.

Up the road, motor going flat out, men inside probably shaken to blood pudding, raced a Panzer IV. It sounded like an explosion in a smithy, roaring and clattering and clanking as if it were about to fall to pieces.

Behind it, almost silent by comparison, glided a Lizard panzer, then another and another and another. Jager knew they were toying with the Panzer IV. They had a way of stabilizing their guns so they shot accurately even on the move, but they were enjoying the chase for a while before they ended it.

Let’s see how they enjoy this, he thought, and yelled, “Fire!”

Because his head was outside the cupola, the bellow of the cannon half stunned him. Flame and smoke spurted from the gun’s muzzle. “Hit!” he cried in delight. It was a solid hit, too, right at the join between the turret and body of the Lizard panzer. The turret tilted, almost torn out of its ring; Jager wouldn’t have wanted to be inside when that 6.8-kilo round came knocking.

But the Lizards made their panzers tough. That shell would have torn the turret right off a British tank or a Soviet T-34, and turned either of them into an inferno on the instant. Not only did this one not catch fire, its driver threw it into reverse and did his best to escape the trap in which he found himself. “Hit him again!” Jager shouted. His gunner required no urging-the second shot punctuated Jager’s sentence.

All the rest of the hull-down German panzers along the ridge line opened up, too. The Lizards offered them a target tankers dream about: the less heavily armored flanks and engine compartments of their vehicles. One of those vehicles brewed up in a flash of orange and blue flame-somebody’s round had penetrated to something vital. Jager wondered if that had been a Panther’s kill or a Tiger’s: the heavier panzer’s 88 fired a correspondingly more massive shell, but the Panther’s gun had a higher muzzle velocity and would pierce just as much armor, maybe more.

The Lizards did not react well to being taken in flank. Jager had counted on that: they were even more vulnerable to the unexpected than Soviet troops. For a crucial few seconds, they either tried to back out of trouble like the panzer Jager had hit or traversed their turrets toward the concealed German armor without shifting the tanks themselves. That let the Germans keep pounding away at their more vulnerable sides and rears. Another Lizard panzer turned into a fireball, then another.

But the Lizards did not stay stupid forever. One by one, they turned toward the Germans’ fire. No German panzer gun could beat their front glacis plates. Jager’s gunner tried. His shell buried itself almost to the drive bands, but did no damage anyone could find.

Then the aliens started shooting back. They had only small targets at which to aim, but they didn’t need anything big: their fire-control arrangements were even better than the ones the new Panthers boasted. And while a Panther shell couldn’t quite shift one of their turrets, the Lizards’ projectiles smashed German panzer turrets as if they were anvils dropping on cockroaches.

Two tanks down from Jager, a Panzer IV was abruptly beheaded. Shells cooking off inside, its turret smashed down the rear slope of the ridge and skidded into the pond. The hull exploded in flames, too, and started a fire in the brush.

Then a Tiger got hit. Its turret flew off, too, which rocked Jager; he’d hoped the 100mm of armor there might be proof against anything the Lizards could throw at it. No such luck, though. Now he got on the radio. “Fall back!” he ordered. Keep things moving, keep them confused: that was how you got whatever chance you had against the Lizards. In a set-piece battle, you were dead.

As if he were back on the other side of the rise, Jager saw what the Lizard panzer commander would be thinking: it they came straight up the slope and charged after the retreating Germans, they’d keep presenting their invulnerable frontal armor to his comrades and him. Then they could destroy the panzer force at their convenience and press on up the road toward Belfort.