Harry Turtledove - In the Balance

“Or somewhere in England, at any rate,” Embry remarked; long-range navigation at night was anything but an exact science. When Whyte let out an indignant sniff, the pilot added, “Maybe I should have flung you over the side; we’d likely do just as well following a trail of bread crumbs back from Hansel and Gretel Land.”

Despite his ragging, Embry swung the bomber onto the course the navigator had given him. Bagnall kept a close eye on the instrument panel, still worried lest a line had been broken. But all the pointers stayed where they should have; the four Merlins steadily drove the Lancaster through the air at above two hundred miles an hour. The Lanc was a tough bird, especially compared to the Blenheims in which he’d started the war. And-they’d been lucky.

He peered through the windscreen. Other Lancasters, Stirlings, and Manchesters showed up as blacker shapes against the dark sky; engine exhausts glowed red. As burning Cologne receded behind him, he felt the first easing of fear. The worst was over, and he was likely to live to fly another mission-and be terrified again.

The crew’s chatter, full of the same relief he knew himself, rang in his earphones. “Bloody good hiding we gave Jerry,” somebody said. Bagnall found himself nodding. There had been flak and there had been fighters (that Me-110 filled his mind’s eye for a moment), but he’d seen worse with both-the massive bomber force had half paralyzed Cologne’s defenses. Most of his friends-with a little luck, all his friends-would be coming home to Swinderby. He wriggled in his seat, trying to get more comfortable. Downhill now , he thought.

Ludmila Gorbunova bounced through the air less than a hundred meters off the ground. Her U-2 biplane seemed hardly more than a toy; any fighter from the last two years of the previous war could have hacked the Kukuruznik from the sky with ease. But the Wheatcutter was not just a trainer-it had proved itself as a military plane since the first days of the Great Patriotic War. Tiny and quiet, it was made for slipping undetected past German lines.

She pulled the stick back to gain more altitude. It failed to help. No flashes of artillery came from what had been first the Russian assault position, then the Russian defensive position, and finally, humiliatingly, the Russian pocket trapped inside a fascist ring.

No one had reported artillery fire from within the pocket the night before, or the night before that. Sixth Army was surely dead. But, as if unwilling to believe it, Frontal Aviation kept sending out planes in the hope the corpse might somehow miraculously revive.

Ludmila went gladly. Behind her goggles, tears stung her eyes. The offensive had begun with such promise. Even the fascist radio admitted fear that the Soviets would retake Kharkov. But then-Ludmila was vague on what had happened then, although she’d flown reconnaissance all through the campaign. The Germans managed to pinch off the salient the Soviet forces had driven into their position, and then the battle became one of annihilation.

Her gloved hand tightened on the stick as if it were a fascist invader’s neck. she’d got out of Kiev with her mother bare days before the Germans surrounded the city. Both of her brothers and her father were in the army; no letters had come from any of them for months. Sometimes, though it was no proper thought for a Soviet woman born five years after the October Revolution, she wished she knew how to pray. A fire glowed, off in the distance. She turned the plane toward it. From all she had seen, anyone showing lights in the night had to be German. Whatever Soviet troops were still unbagged within the pocket would not dare draw attention to themselves. She brought the Kukuruznik down to treetop height. Time to remind the fascists they did not belong here.

As the fire brightened ahead of her, her gut clenched. She bit down hard on the inside of her lower lip, using pain to fight fear. “I am not afraid, I am not afraid, I am not afraid,” she said. But she was afraid, every time she flew.

No time for the luxury of fear, not any more. The men lounging in the circle of light round the fire swelled in a moment from ant-sized to big as life. Germans sure enough, in dirty field-gray with coal-scuttle helmets. They started to scatter an instant before she thumbed the firing button mounted on top of her stick.

The two ShVAK machine guns attached under the lower wing of the biplane added their roar to the racket of the five-cylinder radial engine. Ludmila let the guns chatter as she zoomed low above the fire. As it dimmed behind her, she looked back over her shoulder to see what she had accomplished.

A couple of Germans lay sprawled in the dirt, one motionless, the other writhing like a fence lizard in the grasp of a cat. “ Khorosho ,” Ludmila said softly. Triumph drowned terror. “ Ochen khorosho.” It was very good. Every blow against the fascists helped drive them back-or at least hindered them from coming farther forward.

Flashes from out of the darkness, from two places, then three-not fire, firearms. Terror came roaring back. Ludmila gave the Kukuruznik all the meager power it had. A rifle bullet cracked past her head, horridly close. The muzzle flashes continued behind her, but after a few seconds she was out of range.

She let the biplane climb so she could look for another target. The breeze that whistled in over the windscreen of the open cockpit dried the stinking, fear-filled sweat on her forehead and under her arms. The trouble with the Germans was that they were too good at their trade of murder and destruction. They could have had only a few seconds’ warning before her plane swooped on them out of the night, but instead of running and hiding, they’d run and then fought back-and almost killed her. She shuddered again, though they were kilometers behind her now.

When they’d first betrayed the treaty of peace and friendship and invaded the Soviet Union, she’d been confident the Red Army would quickly throw them back. But defeat and retreat followed retreat and defeat. Bombers appeared over Kiev, broad-winged Heinkels, Dorniers skinny as flying pencils, graceful Junkers-88s, Stukas that screamed like damned souls as they stooped, hawklike, on their targets. They roamed as they would. No Soviet fighters came up to challenge them.

Once in Rossosh, out of the German grasp, Ludmila happened to mention to a harried clerk that she’d gone through Osoaviakhim flight training. Two days later, she found herself enrolled in the Soviet Air Force. She still wondered whether the man did it for the sake of the country or to save himself the trouble of finding her someplace to sleep.

Too late to worry about that now. Whole regiments of women pilots flew night-harassment missions against the fascist invaders. One day, Ludmila thought, I will graduate to a real fighter instead of my U-2 . Several women had become aces, downing more than five German planes apiece.

For now, though, the reliable old Wheatcutter would do well enough. She spotted another fire, off in the distance. The Kukuruznik banked, swung toward it.

Planes roared low overhead. The red suns under their wings and on the sides of their fuselages might have been painted from blood. Machine guns spat flame. The bullets kicked up dust and splashed in the water like the first big drops of a rainstorm.

Liu Han had been swimming and bathing when she heard the Japanese fighters. With a moan of terror, she thrust herself all the way under, until her toes sank deep into the slimy mud bottom of the stream. She held her breath until the need for air drove her to the surface once more, gasped in a quick breath, sank.

When she had to come up again, she tossed her head to get the long, straight black hair out of her eyes, then quickly looked around. The fighters had vanished as quickly as they appeared. But she knew the Japanese soldiers would not be far behind. Chinese troops had retreated through her village the day before, falling back toward Hankow.