Harry Turtledove - Upsetting the Balance

He suspected more nightmares were heading his way. He wished-how he wished! — Elifrim had chosen a different male to lead the protection for the punishment killercraft now flying toward Munchen. Had the Deutsche known the load that killercraft carried, they would have sent up everything that would fly in an effort to knock it down. They’d used an atomic bomb against the Race, and they were going to be reminded they could not do that without paying the price.

Tokyo had already paid that price, thanks to Teerts, and the Nipponese hadn’t even had nuclear weapons-they were just trying to acquire them. They were only Big Uglies, but Teerts felt guilty anyhow. And now he was going to have to watch a Tosevite city go up in atomic flame.

The pilot of the punishment killercraft, a male named Jisrin, had no such qualms. Mechanical as if he were a computer himself, he said, “Target is visually obscured. I shall carry out the bombing run by radar.”

“Acknowledged,” Teerts said. He spoke to Sserep and his other wingmale, a relatively inexperienced flier named Hossad: “We’ll want to swing wide of the punishment killercraft after it releases its bomb. From everything I’ve heard and reviewed in the training scenarios, blast effects and winds can do dreadful things to aircraft handling if we’re too close to the site of the explosion. You’ll follow my lead.”

“It shall be done,” Sserep and Hossad said together.

In his flight-leader’s circuit, Teerts listened to his opposite number on the other side of the punishment killercraft giving his wingmales almost identical instructions. Then Jisrin said, “I am releasing the weapon on the mark… Mark. Ignition will delay until proper altimeter reading. Meanwhile, I suggest we depart.” He hit his afterburner and streaked away from the doomed city.

Teerts swung his killercraft through a wide turn that would bring him back on course for the air base in southern France. His wing-males followed. Up till now, everything had run as smoothly as if it were a training mission. That relieved him-such things didn’t happen very often on Tosev 3-and alarmed him, too: what would go wrong now?

Nothing. Not this time. A great ball of fire burned through the clouds below and behind him, flinging them aside, scattering them, vaporizing them. The glare was terrifying, overwhelming; Teerts’ nictitating membranes flicked across his eyes to protect them, as if the piercing light were a grain of sand or grit that could be physically pushed aside.

Moments later, the blast wave caught up with the fleeing killercraft and flicked it through the air. It was stronger and sharper than Teerts had expected. The airframe groaned under the sudden strain, but held. Together, Teerts and the killercraft’s computer rewon control.

“By the Emperor,” Hossad said softly as he, too, mastered his killercraft. “We take for granted what the atom can do. It gives us electric power, it electrolyzes hydrogen and oxygen for our vehicles, it powers our ships between the stars. But when you let it loose-” He didn’t go on. He didn’t need to go on. Teerts wished he had a taste of ginger.

Jisrin, still matter-of-fact, put the capper on the mission: “The target is destroyed. Returning to base.”

Atvar listened to the bestial howls of rage that came over the crackling shortwave frequencies from Deutschland. One thing the atomic bomb that had smote Munchen had not done: it had not got rid of Hitler, the not-emperor of the Deutsche. Even without understanding a single word of the Deutsch language, Atvar also gathered that it had not persuaded Hitler to yield.

He turned away from the incomprehensible rantings of the Deutsch not-emperor to a translation: “We shall have vengeance!” Hitler was saying; the translator added an emphatic cough to show the stress the Big Ugly put on the words. “Our strength lies not in defense but in attack. Mankind has grown strong in eternal struggles. We shall once more make the heroic decision to resist Our idea-our people-is right, and so is invincible; every persecution will lead to our inner strengthening. This war is one of the elemental conflicts which will usher in a new world era. At its end, Deutschland will either be a world power or will not be at all! If the Deutsch people despair now, they will deserve no better than they get. If they despair, I will not be sorry for them if God lets them down.”

The translator added, “Speaking in my own voice for a moment, I should note that all of these not particularly rational utterances are accompanied by vehement and prolonged applause from the Big Uglies in the audience. Rational or not, Hitler has a strong hold on the Tosevites of his not-empire.”

When he resumed, the febrile tone he assumed showed he was once more passing on Hitler’s words: “We shall have vengeance, I say again! For every bomb the Lizards use against us, we shall use six, eight, ten, a hundred bombs against them. We shall destroy them so completely, it shall be as if they never were. They have dared test themselves against the master race, and they shall fail!” The translator added another emphatic cough, then said, “This preposterous and vain pronouncement was greeted with more applause.”

Atvar turned off the Tosevite’s speech. “Well, what do you think of that?” he asked Kirel.

“Destroying Munchen has failed to intimidate the Deutsche,” Kirel answered. “I find this most unfortunate.”

“Unfortunate, yes,” Atvar said, with an emphatic cough of his own. Kirel’s restrained pattern of speech could sometimes be most effective. Atvar went on, “What do you make of this Hitler’s threat, to respond bomb against bomb?”

“My opinion, Exalted Fleetlord, is that he will do so if he has the ability,” Kirel said. “And, since analysis confirms that this latest bomb was made partly from nuclear material not stolen from us…” His voice trailed away.

“-He either does have the ability or will have it soon,” Atvar finished unhappily. “That is my conclusion also. My other conclusion is that this war has just grown a great deal worse. Spirits of departed Emperors willing, I shall not have to say that so often in future.”

Mutt Daniels opened his canteen and poured from it into his cup. The liquid that went from one to the other was a deep amber color. He lifted the cup in salute before he drank. “Mud in your eye, Miss Willard,” he said, and gulped the whiskey down.

“Ain’t this a hell of a thing, Lieutenant?” said Sergeant Muldoon, who had his own canteen full of whiskey. “Havin’ a drink in the Frances E. Willard Home, I mean.” He drank, too. “All the little old ladies from the WCTU must be spinning in their graves, I figure.”

“I seen plenty o’ the Women’s Christian Temperance Union down home in Mississippi when I was growing up,” Mutt answered. “I figured anything those sour old prunes were against had to be good enough for me to want to be for it. And you know what? Put it all together, I reckon I was right”

“Damn straight you were,” Muldoon said, taking another drink.

“But that ain’t why I chose this here house for us,” Daniels said.

Herman Muldoon laughed. “I know why you chose it: it’s standing up.”

“You ain’t just joking.” Even here in Evanston, north of the Chicago city line, devastation was heavy. The Northwestern University campus had been pounded hard. The water filtration plant close by was just a ruin. Maybe it was the whiskey-though he’d had only the one swig-and maybe just frustration boiling up in him, but he burst out, “God damn it to hell, we don’t need to be in Evanston. We should be takin’ the fight to the Lizards down in Chicago.”

“Tell me somethin’ I don’t know, Lieutenant,” Muldoon said. “But as long as we’re here, we got ourselves a nice fire goin’, an’ we can get snug as a couple of bugs in a rug.”