Harry Turtledove - Tilting the Balance

Then a stuttering roar filled the sky. Jager dove for the nearest cover he could find. The. Lizard helicopters were coming back.

Split was in flames, with smoke mounting fast into the sky. Drefsab hissed in astonished disbelief-who could have imagined a town could go from peace to ruin in so short a time? “Oh, Skorzeny, how you will pay,” he whispered.

Even as the helicopters reached the outskirts of Split, a big explosion sent a great cloud of dust leaping into the air. “They’ve blown up part of the wall,” the pilot said in dismay, scanning the electronically amplified vision display. “How did they get all these munitions into town under our muzzles?”

“Some have probably been there all along-the Big Uglies were fighting among themselves when we got here, you know. As for the rest, they’re good at it,” Drefsab said bitterly. “We didn’t X-ray every bit of every single animal cart going in, and now we’re paying the price. But if we did that everywhere, we wouldn’t have enough males to do anything else. The fault here is mine; I accept it.”

That made him feel virtuous. Otherwise, it did nothing to change matters. Split kept on burning. Radio calls for help kept pouring in. Every one of them reported some fresh Tosevite gain. “What do we do, superior sir?” the weapons officer asked, fixing Drefsab with worried eyes. “We have no rockets left and our machine-gun ammunition is low.”

Worries about conserving ammunition, Drefsab thought, had cost the Race victories. If they lost here, it wouldn’t be on account of that. “If we don’t expend what we have, our ground position in Split falls,” he said. “Next to that, ammunition-or, come to that, three helicopters-counts for nothing. Maybe we can kill enough of the Big Uglies to make the rest break contact and give our males a chance. Let’s go try.”

“It shall be done, superior sir.” Neither the pilot nor the weapons officer sounded enthusiastic. Drefsab couldn’t blame them for that-even if the Big Uglies didn’t have antiaircraft guns, the helicopters were still going into danger: if they’d armored all the wires and hydraulics heavily enough to protect em from rifle fire, the aircraft would have been too heavy to fly. But the pilot didn’t hesitate. He radioed Drefsab’s orders to his two comrades.

The three helicopters skimmed low over the rooftops of Split. They started taking fire long before they got to the rectangular stone wall the Race had used as a perimeter for its base. Some bullets went spanng! off armored sections; others inched through sheet metal in less vital spots.

Drefsab quickly realized the ground fire away from the fortress came from Big Uglies who just happened to have rifles and pistols. It turned into a storm of bullets when the aircraft approached the fighting zone. “Shall I return fire against the Tosevite males outside the walls, superior sir?” the weapons officer asked.

“No,” Drefsab said. “The ones who got inside are even more important. If we have only limited ammunition, we’ll use at the point of decision.”

Again, the pilot relayed Drefsab’s will to the males flying the other two helicopters. All three machines hovered above the narrowing area inside the walls that the Race still held. The machine guns roared. Drefsab felt a savage surge of satisfaction, almost as good as ginger, as Big Uglies twisted and fell under assault from the air.

“We’ll get them out of there yet!” he cried.

Another doorway. This time, Jager didn’t think it would be cover enough. He kicked in the door and rolled inside, automatic rifle at the ready. No Lizard shot at him. He crawled toward a north-facing window.

Outside, death reigned. He’d hated the Lizards’ helicopters when he was in a panzer. Their rockets smashed through armor as if it were pasteboard. Against infantry, their machine guns were similarly destructive.

The fire wasn’t aimed. It didn’t need to be. As he’d seen in France in the last war, machine guns. put out so many bullets that if this one didn’t get you, the next one would. Without luck amounting to divine intervention, anyone caught on the street without cover would be dead.

The helicopters’ noses seemed to be spitting flame. Jager squeezed off a burst at the nearest of them, then rolled away as fast as he could. He had no idea whether he’d damaged the helicopter, but he was sure as need be that the Lizards would have spotted his muzzle flashes.

Sure enough, bullets battered the wall. Some pierced the stones; others sent shards of glass from the broken window flying like shell fragments. Something bit Jager in the leg. Blood began to soak into his trousers. It wasn’t a flood. He cautiously tried putting weight on the leg. It held. He might not run as fast as usual for a while, but he could move around pretty well. He headed up to the second story of the building. When he got there, he planned on firing another burst at the helicopters. It would also let him deliver plunging fire against the Lizards at the base of the walls He was still on the stairs when the firing from the helicopters died away: first one machine gun fell silent, then a second, then a third.

His first thought was to rush-or come as close as he could to rushing with a sliver of glass in his leg-back down and join the final attack that would sweep away the last of the Lizards. His second thought was that his first one was less than smart. The Lizards surely had imagination enough to stop shooting and see how many men they could fool into thinking they’d run out of ammunition.

He went up to the second floor after all. The helicopters still hung menacingly in the air, but they weren’t shooting. Men on the ground-Skorzeny’s forces and Petrovic’s both-kept blazing away at them, though. Jager fired, too. This time the Lizards didn’t shoot back.

“Maybe you are out of ammo,” he muttered to himself.

Even so, he didn’t hurry downstairs and rush out into the street. Maybe they weren’t out of ammo, too.

Drefsab turned to the weapons officer in anger and dismay when the machine gun stopped firing. “Is that all of it?” he demanded.

“Not quite, superior sir, but almost all,” the fellow answered. “I’ve reserved the last couple of hundred rounds. Whatever decision you make on how or if we use them, though, I suggest you make it quickly. We already have one male wounded back in the fighting compartment, and we can’t stay under such intense fire indefinitely. The odds of any one bullet doing us significant damage are low, but we are encountering a great many bullets.”

That was an understatement. The patter and clatter of incoming rounds all but deafened Drefsab. He said, “The area close to the wall is too built up to let us land and take aboard those of our males who still live.” He added the interrogative cough to that, though it looked pretty plain to him. Maybe the pilot would tell him he was wrong.

But the pilot didn’t “We could fit the fuselages of our marines down there, superior sir, but the rotors-” He didn’t finish the sentence, but Drefsab had no trouble finishing it for him. The pilot went on, “We do still have fuel enough to return to Italia, where the Race holds unchallenged control.” He sounded hopeful.

“No,” Drefsab said flatly. He reached into a pouch on his belt, took out a vial of ginger, and tasted. The pilot and weapons officer gaped at him. He didn’t care. Atvar the fleetlord knew he was addicted, so what these low-grade officers thought mattered not at all to him. He said, “We shall not flee.”

“But, superior sir-” The pilot broke off, perhaps because of drilled subordination, perhaps because he couldn’t decide whether to protest Drefsab’s tactics or the vial of ginger he still held so blatantly in his left hand.