Harry Turtledove - A World of Difference

The Swiss army knife cut the string that ran through the handle of the gallon jug filled with wood alcohol, naphtha, and butane. Damselfly seemed to leap higher in the air as the weight it had never been designed to carry dropped away.

The Kalashnikov bellowed, right under Sarah. She screamed, expecting to die in the next second. No bullets ripped through her. Damselfly did not tumble in ruins to the ground.

She couldn’t even look back. She didn’t have a rearview mirror. All she could do was pedal and pray.

Then Emmett Bragg’s hoarse voice came yelling out of the radio: “You can play in my league any day, darlin’! One extra large Molotov cocktail, right on target. Smoked ‘em both!” He let go with a rebel yell that was almost too much for the little speaker.

“Both?” Sarah panted. She flew over Reatur’s barricade, onto the side his males held. As her fear-induced adrenaline rush began to fade, she realized how tired she was. “The Minervan and the Russian, too.”

“Oh. Oh, Jesus. Didn’t I see him fighting with the Minervan, trying to keep him from shooting me down?” If she had dumped hellfire on somebody trying to save her… She wanted to be sick.

But Bragg said coldly, “Well, what if you did? Hadn’t been for Lopatin, that Minervan never would have had a rifle in the first place. And if he didn’t, a lot of people-Frank maybe, a lot of Reatur’s males for sure-would still be alive. Besides, nothin’ you can do about it now, anyhow.”

“You’re right,” she conceded, still wishing he had not told her.

“Look, if it makes you feel any better, we can turn the KGB bastard into a hero when we talk to Tsiolkovsky. Best part is, I guess it’s even true.”

“Yeah.” It did make her feel better, less guilty. I’d never make a soldier, she thought. But then, she had never wanted to be a soldier. “Okay. I’m heading back for Athena.”

“Good. We should have somebody minding the store. Now to win this battle-that’s the point of the exercise, after all. Out.”

“Out.” Sarah pedaled on.

Reatur stared in mixed awe and dread at the flames consuming his foe. His watersmiths used fire, of course, to melt ice and pour it into molds for tools. Hot water could bore through walls or, dropped from above, scald attackers. But to turn fire itself into a weapon for war-the domain master shuddered.

He tried to imagine how humans fought among themselves. Imagining a battlefield full of noiseweapons and fire falling out of the sky made him shudder all over again.

Only for a moment, though. He had his own battle to worry about, and enormous opportunity looking fight at him. “Come on!” he shouted to the males around him. “Their whole center depended on the noiseweapon. Now that it’s gone, nothing’s left there. We can split their whole army in half”

He scrambled over the barricade. Yelling, his warriors followed. He heard a long series of roars from a noiseweapon, back where the Skarmer had forced his males to give ground. A pause, another long string of blasts. Emmett could shoot as he would now, without having to fear the enemy’s more powerful weapon. Then came the sweetest sound Reatur had heard on the battlefield: his warriors cheering, going over to the attack.

“That way!” he called. “We’ll cut off the Skarmer retreat.” He hurried east, his males rushing with him in their eagerness to close with the enemy. Suddenly he stopped. He divided the warband with him in two, pointed to the larger group. “You’ll come with me.” To the others, he said, “You go west instead. Maybe we’ll be able to surround each half of their army.” That hope made his males shout louder than ever.

As the domain master ran toward the much-battered rampart, his eyestalks started twitching of their own accord. He had never expected to be fighting from the north side of the barrier! Here he was, though, reaching across with a spear to thrust at the Skarmer on the other side.

The foe was frantic now, caught between the males they had pushed back and the barrier from which they had pushed them. Some started climbing over it, this time in the opposite direction from before. The arrival of Reatur and his warriors put an end to that.

“Surrender!” the domain master shouted in trade talk. “We will not slay any male who throws down his weapons and widens himself before us!” He waited to see if the Skarmer would yield.

They didn’t, not fight away. But after a couple of desperate attacks failed to dislodge Reatur and his warriors, Skarmer males began casting aside axes and spears and widening themselves. When the first few who did so were not harmed, more and more followed their lead.

Reatur began telling off warriors to take charge of prisoners. Clamor to the west made him turn a couple of eyestalks that way. He cursed-the Skarmer there had broken out to the north, through his hastily dispatched containment force. Were they to swing back on his males now…

They did not. Instead, they streamed back the way they had come, all thought of fight forgotten. The western half of the Omalo army pursued. Reatur spotted Enoph close by. “Take charge of the captives. Let our males loot as they will, but they are not to injure the Skarmer unless they try to escape.”

“It will be as you say,” Enoph promised-and what Enoph promised, the domain master knew, he would deliver. “But where are you going, clanfather?” the reliable male asked.

Reatur was already hurrying north. “To join the chase. I want to rid my domain of the Skarmer once and for all.”

The western half of the Skarmer army, though beaten, was still a force large enough to disrupt his lands. And whoever led it now that Fralk was dead knew his business-knew it better, perhaps, than Hogram’s eldest of eldest ever had. The invaders fought a series of stubborn rear guard actions to keep Reatur’s warriors away from their main body.

“Curse them!” the domain master shouted as his males finally broke through the third such delaying warband. “They’ll escape, scatter, and cause us untold grief.”

“Worse yet,” one of his warriors said gloomily, pointing ahead to a defile. “A rearguard there will hold us off till sunset, and they’ll be able to reform on the far side at their leisure.”

“You’re right,” Reatur said, and cursed again. Another battle to fight, then, he thought bleakly. Even winning would cost him the lives of males the domain could not afford to lose.

But instead of racing through the defile, the Skarmer piled up at its southern end. They milled about in confusion. A male, all his arms outstretched to show he carried no weapons, advanced from their ranks toward Reatur and his oncoming warriors. “Will you spare us if we yield?” he shouted in trade talk.

The domain master was flabbergasted but did his best not to show it. “Aye, we will,” he answered. “You have my vow on it.”

“Good enough,” the Skarmer said. He spoke to his males in their own language. They began throwing down their spears and knives and axes. The Skarmer widened himself to Reatur. “We would’ve gotten away if you hadn’t somehow posted warriors in there to block our path. That was well done-I never saw them leave the battle, and I don’t miss much. Juksal, I’m called.” Juksal suddenly seemed to think of something. “Did you use tricks from the funny creatures to get them here?” “The funny creatures?” Reatur asked.

“Trade talk doesn’t have a word for them. You know-the ones with two arms and two legs.”

“Oh. Our name for them is ‘humans.’ No, no human tricks,” Reatur said, wondering just where the warriors-his warriors had sprung from. Only one thing occurred to him. He walked toward the defile. Some of his males came with him, in case the Skarmer decided to unsurrender. “Ternat?” he called.