Harry Turtledove - A World of Difference

Off to one side, the Skarmer who had already gained the flatlands were starting to swing round to cut Reatur’s males off from the way back. If they could manage that, they could surround and destroy them at their leisure, even without their cursed weapon. With it… Reatur did not like to think about what would happen with it.

“Back!” he shouted, hating himself for it but seeing no better course. He quickly added another command he hoped his males would obey: “Keep your order as you go!”

Most of them did. And, to his relief, the Skarmer let them escape. Why not, the domain master thought bitterly. They’ll already done what they needed to do. Reatur tried to stay optimistic. He thought about how much his avalanche had battered the invaders.

Enoph tramped by. He said just what Reatur was thinking:

“We hurt them.”

“Aye.” The domain master sighed; he could not afford the luxury of wishful thinking, not now. “But they hurt us worse. They beat us, Enoph, and right now I have no idea how to keep them from beating us again.”

“What are we going to do?” Sarah hated having to rely on Emmett Bragg. Making a career soldier mission commander had always struck her as part and parcel of the Washington mindset about extraterrestrial intelligence, which, she was convinced, had been formed by too many bad science fiction movies-aliens had to be enemies, therefore had to be fought, therefore a soldier should be in charge. Simple. Simpleminded, too.

But now the crew of Athena found itself in the middle of a war. The aliens weren’t all enemies; some of them had become good friends. They were better friends, certainly, than Oleg Lopatin ever would be, and Oleg Lopatin’s AKT4 had killed and maimed more of them than she liked to think about.

Her medical training had not prepared her for war wounds. They were as ghastly on Minervans as on people, not just for themselves but because they were deliberately inflicted.

So she turned to Emmett. Having him in charge suddenly looked like a good idea after all. The trouble was, instead of instantly coming up with an answer that would solve their problems, he only scowled and said, “What are we going to do? I don’t see too much we can do, right now. Maybe the best thing to hope for is that old Oleg didn’t bring that many spare clips for his rifle.”

Sarah felt her lips tighten. That wasn’t what she wanted to hear. She said, “In your cubicle-”

He grinned at her, put her offstride. “What do you know about that? Haven’t hardly coaxed you in there.”

“Will you shut up?” The heat of her fury amazed her. Picking her words carefully, saying them even more carefully, she went on, “In your cubicle, there is a cabinet you keep locked. I thought that perhaps-”

“-I had an Armalite stashed away there-a rifle,” he amended quickly, seeing that she did not follow. She gave him reluctant credit for being all business once more. “Or maybe a crate of grenades. Trouble is, I don’t.”

Sarah set hands on hips. “Well, what the hell do you keep in there, then?” She was furious at him all over again, this time for having her hopes dashed.

“This and that,” he said. She thought that meant he wasn’t going to tell her, but he did, a little. “Some real special codes, for one thing, the kind you hope you never have to use-I mean, there’s a lot worse things could go wrong than one crazy Russian.”

“Like for instance?” Sarah asked, genuinely curious.

“Like the whole crew of Tsiolkovsky attackin’ us on purpose when we set out, remember, we didn’t know how far apart we were from them. Or like the natives bein’ high-tech after all, just without radio on account of they’re telepaths or some stupid thing, and overrunnin’ Athena. They’d have to be ready back home then, in case we had somethin’ happen out of Invaders from Minerva.”

In spite of herself, Sarah giggled. “Stupid damn movie,” she said, having watched it on TV at least two dozen times since she was a kid. A late-fifties low-budget scifi classic turkey, it featured “Minervans”-who looked nothing like real Minervans-remarkable chiefly because the zippers in their costumes were visible in several scenes. Every so often, coming up with something silly like that, Emmett could surprise her and remind her that he was human, too.

“Isn’t it?” he said now, quietly laughing himself. “I’ll tell you what I wish I had in there, and it’s got nothin’ to do with guns and such.” He waited for Sarah to raise an eyebrow, then went on, “I wish I had a couple o’ bottles o’ good sippin’ whiskey put away, for celebrating gettin’ down here, gettin’ back home…” He paused, studied her in that way she found alarming and attractive at the same time. “Maybe sharin’ a little, now and again.”

“Hmm,” was all she said. She was damned if she would encourage him.

“Doesn’t matter anyhow,” he said when he decided that was the only response he’d get. “NASA doesn’t understand that sippin’ whiskey is for sippin ‘, if you know what I mean.

When I put the idea to ‘em, they just reckoned I wanted to get lit.”

“When you what?” There was about as much likelihood of NASA bureaucrats okaying a couple of fifths of Jim Beam, she thought, as there was of dying of heatstroke on Minerva. My God, the manifest might leak out one day, and then somebody could kiss a career goodbye.

If anybody could see that, it was Emmett. He had boundless contempt for all bureaucracies save the military. For all Sarah knew, he had asked about the bourbon just to give the three-piece-suit boys fits. That was his style.

She expected him to chuckle and own up to twisting NASA’s tail just for the fun of it. Instead, she saw with a thrill of alarm that he had what she thought of as his sniper’s face back on- behind his eyes, he was taking dead aim at something. After a moment, she realized it wasn’t her.

Or was it? “Get lit,” he said dreamily. “That just might work.” Now he was focused on her, sharply.

“What might work?” she demanded. “I hate it when people think through things and then leave out all the interesting parts when they start talking. It’s like-“ She started to say “sex without foreplay,” but decided that might not be a good idea. “I hate it,” she finished.

Bragg nodded. “Can’t say I blame you.” He spent the next several minutes explaining.

By the time he was done, Sarah wished she hadn’t asked. She knew that was stupid. As soon as Emmett got this brainstorm, he would have come to her with it. The real trouble was, it made too much sense for her to tell him he was crazy.

But when he said, “You know, I’m jealous as hell,” she had all she could do not to reach up and bust him fight in his grinning chops. She probably would have, had it not been so obvious that he meant it.

Fralk watched the latest raiding party come in from the north. They were leading enough massi and eloca to keep the Skarmer army fed for a couple of days. “We’ll squeeze the Omalo domain until Reatur’s eyes pop off their stalks,” Fralk declared grandly.

His warriors cheered as the beasts, complaining every step of the way, passed through the gaps in the barricade of frozen snow. Other males, high-ranking by virtue of their closeness to Hogram-but none so close as Fralk spoke up in loud and prompt agreement.

Then someone said, “May the domain come down with the purple itch. When are we going to take out the cursed Omalo army?”

Sudden silence fell. The officers edged away from the male who had spoken, as if they wanted to show they had nothing to do with his words. It was Juksal, Fralk saw. What rank he had sprang only from his ability to fight and fight and fight and stay alive. Still, he had a great deal of that ability-and he had kept the human from escaping. Thus Fralk spoke firmly but politely: