Harry Turtledove - Tilting the Balance

Barbara’s sigh showed a weariness that had nothing to do with her being pregnant. “Very strange to think that a year ago he and I were happy together. I don’t think he’s the same person any more. He never used to be bitter-but then, he never used to have much to be bitter about, either. I guess you can’t really tell about someone till you see him when the chips are down.”

“You’re probably right.” Sam had seen that playing ball-some guys wanted to be out there with the game on the line, while others hoped they wouldn’t come up or be on the mound or have the ball hit to them in that kind of spot.

Musingly, Barbara went on, “I suppose that’s one of the reasons people write so much about love and war: they’re the situations that put the most strain on a person’s character, so you can see it at its best and at its worst.”

“Makes sense.” Yeager hadn’t thought about it in those terms, but it did make sense to him. He’d seen enough war close up to know it was more terrifying than exciting but it remained endlessly interesting to read about. He’d never thought about why until now. “You put things in a whole new light for me,” he said admiringly.

She looked at him, then reached out and took his hands in hers. “You’ve put some things in a new light for me, too, Sam,” she murmured.

He felt ten feet tall the rest of the day, and didn’t give Jens Larssen another thought.

“Superior sir, I greet you and welcome you to our fine base here,” Ussmak said to the new landcruiser commander. My latest, he thought, and wondered how many more he’d go through before Tosev 3 was conquered-if it ever was.

That gloomy reflection was a far cry from the spirit of unity with which he-and all landcruiser males-had gone into this campaign. Then, they’d thought crews would stay together through the whole war. They’d trained on that assumption, so that a male without his crew was an object of pity, both to his comrades and to himself.

Things hadn’t quite worked that way. Ussmak had had two commanders and a gunner killed on him, and another commander and gunner swept away in the wild hunt for ginger lickers. He studied this new male and wondered how long he’d last.

The fellow seemed promising enough. He was good-looking and alert, and his neatly applied body paint argued that he didn’t have his tongue in a ginger jar (though you never could tell; Ussmak was fastidious about his own paint just to keep his superiors from getting-justifiably-suspicious).

“Landcruiser Driver Ussmak, I am Landcruiser Commander Nejas; you are assigned to my crew,” the male said. “Skoob, our gunner, will be along shortly; he must be completing reporting formalities. Both of us will draw heavily on your knowledge, as you have more combat experience than we do.”

“I shall help you in any way I can, superior sir,” Ussmak said, as he had to. He did his best to sound fulsome, but was not rejoicing inside. He’d hoped he’d get crewed with veterans, but no such luck. As delicately as he could, he added, “The Deutsche are not opponents to take lightly.”

“So I am given to understand,” Nejas said. “I am also given to understand that this garrison has problems beyond the Deutsche, however. Is it true that the Big Uglies actually spirited a landcruiser out of the vehicle park here?”

“I fear it is, superior sir.” Ussmak was embarrassed about that himself, though he’d had nothing to do with it. It showed Drefsab hadn’t managed to sweep out all the ginger tasters, and it showed some of them didn’t care for anything on Tosev 3 past where their next taste was coming from.

“Disgraceful,” Nejas said. “We must have order aboard our own ship before we can hope to put down the Tosevites.”

Another male came into the barracks and swiveled his eye turrets every which way, taking the measure of the place. By the time he was through, he looked dismayed. Ussmak understood that; he’d felt the same way the first time he’d inspected his new housing. From everything he’d heard, even the Big Uglies lived better than this these days.

The newcomer might have been Nejas’ broodbrother. They both had the same perfect body paint, the same alert stance, and, somehow, the same air of trusting innocence about them, as if they’d just come out of cold sleep and didn’t know anything about the way the war against the Big Uglies was (or rather wasn’t) going, about what ginger had done to the Landcruiser crews at Besancon, or about any of the many other unpleasant surprises Tosev 3 had given the Race. Ussmak didn’t know whether to envy or pity them.

Nejas said, “Driver Ussmak, here is Skoob, the gunner of our landcruiser crew.”

Ussmak closely studied Skoob’s body paint. It said the other male’s rank was about the same as his. Nejas’ neutral introduction said the same thing. Ussmak had the feeling he was vastly superior in combat experience: what Nejas had said told him as much, at any rate. On the other hand, Skoob looked to have been together with Nejas for a long time. Ussmak said, “I greet you, superior sir.”

Skoob took the deference as nothing less than his due, which irked Ussmak. “I greet you, driver,” he said. “May we brew up many Tosevite landcruisers together.”

“May it be so.” Ussmak wished he had a taste of ginger; better that than the taste of condescension he got from Skoob. But, because his life would depend in no small measure on how well the gunner did his job, he went on politely, “The other half of the bargain involves keeping the Big Uglies from brewing us up.”

“Shouldn’t be that difficult,” Nejas said. “I’ve studied the technical specifications for all the Tosevites’ landcruisers, even the latest ones from the Deutsche. They’ve improved, yes, but we still handily outclass them.”

“Superior sir, in theory there’s no doubt you’re right,” Ussmak said. “The only trouble is-may I speak frankly?”

“Please do,” Nejas said, Skoob echoing him a moment later. From that, they were an established crewpair. I was wise to defer to Skoob after all, even if he is arrogant, Ussmak thought.

Still, he hoped their willingness to listen meant something. “The trouble with the Big Uglies is, they don’t fight the way we’d expect, or the way our simulations prepared us to meet. They’re masters at setting ambushes, at using terrain to mask what they’re up to, at using feints and minefields to channel our moves into the direction they want, and their intelligence is superb.”

“Ours should be better,” Skoob said. “We have reconnaissance satellites in place, after all, to see how they move.”

“How they move, yes, but not always what the moves mean,” Ussmak said. “They’re very good at concealing that-until they hurt us. And we may have satellites, but they have every Big Ugly between here and their positions to let them know where we’re going. This isn’t like the SSSR, where a lot of the Tosevites preferred us to either the Deutsche or the Russkis. These Big Uglies don’t want us, and they wish we’d all disappear.”

Nejas’ tongue flicked out and then in again, as if at a bad taste. “Helicopter gunships should take the edge off their tactics.”

“Superior sir, they’re of less use here than they were in the SSSR,” Ussmak said. “For one thing, the countryside gives the Deutsche good cover-I said that before. And for another, they’ve learned to bring antiaircraft artillery well forward. They’ve hurt our gunships badly enough that the males in charge of them have grown reluctant to commit them to battle except in emergency, and sometimes then, too.”

“What good are they to us if they cannot be used?” Skoob asked angrily.

“A good question,” Ussmak admitted. “But what good are they to us if they get blown out of the air before they damage the Big Uglies’ landcruisers?”