Harry Turtledove - In the Balance

she did her best to put authority in her gaze. “If you do not go, you will at best wander on foot and alone. Maybe you will find Lizards. Maybe you will find Russians who think you are worse than Lizards. Maybe these kolkhozniks are only waiting for you to fall asleep…”

The panzer major was a cool customer. He did not turn to give Kliment Pavlyuchenko a once-over, which meant he’d already formed his judgment of the chief. He did say, “Why should I trust your promises? I’ve seen the bodies of Germans you Russians caught. They ended up with their noses and ears cut off, or worse. How do I know Sergeant Schultz and I won’t wind up the same way?”

The injustice of that almost choked Ludmila. “If you Nazi swine hadn’t invaded our country, we never would have harmed a one of you. I’ve seen with my own eyes what you do to the part of the Soviet Union you took. You should have everything you get.”

She glared at Jager. He glared back. Then Georg Schultz surprised her-and, by his expression, the major as well-by saying, “ Krieg ist Scheisse -war is shit.” He surprised her again when he came up with two Russian words, “ Voina-gavno, ” which meant the same thing.

“Da!” the kolkhozniks roared as one. They crowded round the sergeant slapping his back pressing cigarettes and coarse ma khorka tobacco into his hands and tunic pockets. All at once he was not an enemy to them, but a human being.

Turning back to Jager Ludmila pointed at the kolkhozniks and the gunner. “This is why we have stopped fighting Germans who do not fight us, and why I can say no harm will come to you. Germany and Soviet Union are enemies, da. People and Lizards are worse enemies.”

“You speak well, and as you say, we have little choice.” Jager pointed to her faithful Kukuruznik. “Will that ugly little thing carry three?”

“Not with comfort, but yes,” she answered, stifling her anger at the adjective he’d chosen.

One corner of his mouth tugged upward in an expression she had trouble interpreting: a smile, she supposed, but not like any she’d seen on a Russian face, more like a dry white wine than a simple vodka. He said, “How do you know that, once we get into the air, we will not make you fly us toward German lines?”

“I do not have the petrol to reach the nearest I know of,” she said. “Also, the most you can make me do is fly into the ground and kill us. I will not fly west.”

He studied her for perhaps half a minute, that curious, ironic smile still on his face. Slowly, he nodded. “You are a soldier.”

“Yes,” she said, and found she had to return the compliment. “And you. So you must understand why we need to learn how you killed a Lizard panzer.”

“Wasn’t hard,” Schultz put in. “They have wonderful panzers to ride around in, ja, but they’re even worse tankmen than you Ivans.”

Had he said that in Russian, he would have forfeited the goodwill he’d won from the kolkhoz’s farmers. As it was, Ludmila gave him a dirty look. So did Kliment Pavlyuchenko, who seemed to have a smattering of German.

“He is right,” Jager said, which distressed Ludmila more, for she was convinced the major’s judgment needed to be taken seriously. “You cannot deny our panzer troops have more skills than yours, Pilot”-he gave the word a feminine ending-“or we could never have advanced in our Panzer IIIs against your KVs and T-34s. The Lizards have even less skill than you Russians, but their tanks are so good, they do not need much. If we had comparable equipment, we would slaughter them.”

So here is German arrogance at first hand Ludmila thought. Having admitted the Lizards had smashed his unit to bits, all the panzer major cared to talk about was the foe’s shortcomings. Ludmila said, “Since our equipment is unfortunately not a match for theirs, how do we go about fighting them?”

“Das ist die Frage,” Sergeant Schultz said solemnly, for all the world like a Nazi Hamlet.

Jager’s mouth quirked up once more. This time, he raised an eyebrow, too. Ludmila found herself smiling back, if only to show that she’d noticed the allusion and was no uncultured peasant. The German turned serious: “We must find places and situations where they cannot use to best advantage all they have.”

“As the partisans fight behind your lines?” Ludmila asked, hoping to flick him on a raw spot.

But he only nodded. “Exactly so. We are all partisans now, when set against the forces we aim to oppose.”

Somehow, his refusal to take offense irritated her. Brusquely, she pointed back toward her airplane. “The two of you will have to go into the front cabin side by side. Keep your machine pistols if you like; I do not try to take your arms away. But, Sergeant, I hope you will leave your rifle behind here. It will not”-she had to pantomime the word “fit”-“in a small space, and may help the kolkhozniks against the Lizards.”

Schultz glanced to Jager. Ludmila eased fractionally when she saw the major give an almost invisible nod. Schultz presented the Mauser to Kliment Pavlyuchenko with a flourish. Startled at first, the collective farm chief folded him into a bear hug. When the sergeant broke free, he went through his pockets for every round of rifle ammunition he could find. Then he set a foot in the stirrup and climbed up into the U-2.

Jager followed him a moment later. The space into which they were crammed was so tight that they ended up sitting half facing each other, each with an arm around the other’s back. “Would you care to kiss me, sir?” Schultz asked. Jager snorted.

Ludmila had the back cabin, the one with working controls, to herself. At her shouted direction, a kolkhoznik spun the little biplane’s prop. The sturdy radial engine buzzed to life. The two Germans set their jaws against the noise but otherwise ignored it. She remembered they had their own intimate acquaintance with engine noise.

When she saw all the peasants were clear of her takeoff path, she released the brakes, eased the stick forward. The Kukuruznik needed a longer run than she’d expected before it labored into the air. A sedate performer under the best of conditions, it was positively sluggish-or, better, sluglike-with more than three times the usual crew weight aboard. But it flew. The collective farm receded behind it as it made its slow way north.

“Be alert for Big Uglies, both of you,” Krentel warned from the cupola of the landcruiser.

“It shall be done, commander,” Ussmak agreed. The driver wished the male newly in charge of the landcruiser would shut up and let the crew do their jobs.

“It shall be done,” Telerep echoed. Ussmak envied the way Jager the gunner could keep the faintest hint of scorn from his voice. What Telerep had to say privately about Krentel would addle an egg, but he was all respect when the landcruiser commander was around.

Males of the Race learned to show respect from their smallest days, but Telerep was unusually smooth even by that high standard. Maybe, Ussmak thought, his low-voiced gibes about Krentel were a reaction to the need for public deference. Or maybe not. Telerep had never talked that way about Votal when the previous commander was alive.

Thinking about Votal made Ussmak think about the Big Uglies who had killed him, and did more to make him alert than all of Krentel’s warnings. The natives of Tosev 3 had learned in a hurry that they could not oppose the Race landcruiser against landcruiser, aircraft against aircraft. That lesson should have marked the end of conquest and the beginning of consolidation. So officers had promised the males of the invasion force when battle commenced.