Harry Turtledove - In the Balance

“What choices do you give me?” Liu Han asked bleakly. Then she realized this was the first time the little scaly devils had offered her any choices at all. Up till now, they’d simply done with her as they pleased. Maybe she had reason to hope.

“Come back again this man one choice,” the little devil said. “Other choice come in here new man. You pick choice now.”

Liu Han felt like screaming at him. He would not free her, he just let her choose between two kinds of degradation. But any choice was better than none. Bobby Fiore had not hit her; though he’d gone into her, he hadn’t forced her; he’d let her clutch at him when she cried; he’d even made her laugh with his silly imaginary cigarettes. And he hated the little scaly devils, maybe nearly as much as she did.

“I would rather have this man come back again,” she said as fast as she could, not wanting to give the little devil a chance to change his mind.

He turned to the other devil. They talked back and forth once more. The one who spoke Chinese said, “Big Ugly male say he want come again, too. We do that, see what happen, you him. We learn plenty, maybe.”

She couldn’t have cared less what the scaly devils learned, except insofar as she hoped they learned nothing whatever. But she smiled her thanks to Bobby Fiore. If he hadn’t been willing to come back to her, then whatever she wanted probably wouldn’t have mattered. He smiled back. “Liu Han-not bad,” he said, and gave the emphatic cough.

The two scaly devils both made noises like kettles bubbling over. The one who spoke Chinese asked, “Why use our tongue, talk you, him?”

“We don’t know each other’s languages,” Liu Han answered, shrugging. The scaly devils could do all sorts of things she’d never imagined possible, but sometimes they were genuinely stupid.

“Ah,” this one said. “We learn again.” He and his companion led Bobby Fiore out of the chamber. Just before the door slid shut and hid him, he raised yet another pretended cigarette to his lips.

Liu Han stood for a while, staring at the closed door panel. Then she noticed, or rather paid heed to, being messy and dripping. The cubicle had a faucet that released a few seconds’ worth of water when she pushed a button by it. She went over and cleaned herself as best she could. When she was done, she didn’t feel the need to wash again and again and again, as she had several times before. Once was enough. That, to her, meant progress.

Flight Leader Teerts felt like a longball. Back on Home, two males would toss a ball back and forth, starting out at arm’s length from each other. Every time one of them caught it, he’d take a step backward. Good longball players could keep the game going until they were a city block apart. Championship players could go almost twice that far.

The shiplords of the invasion fleet had them all beat. They’d thrown Teerts and his flight of killerplanes back and forth across the whole length of Tosev 3’s main continental mass. He’d begun the campaign by swatting Britainish bombardment aircraft out of the sky. Now he was attacking Nipponese ground positions almost halfway around this cold, wet world.

“There they are.” Gefron’s voice came through the flight leader’s headphones. “I have them on my terrain mapper.”

Teerts checked the display. Yes, those were the Race’s landcruisers and other fighting vehicles up ahead, their IFF transponders all glowing cheerily orange. Ahead of them lay the Nipponese trench lines in front of-what was the name of the town? Harbin, that was it-which the killerplanes were supposed to soften up.

“That is affirmative, Gefron,” Teerts said. “I say again, affirmative. Pilot Rolvar, have you also acquired the target?”

“I have, Flight Leader,” Rolvar answered formally, Then his voice changed: “Now let’s go smash it!”

Teerts would not have wanted to be one of the Big Ugly soldiers down there. The peaceful night was about to turn hideous for them. At the precise programmed instant, rockets leapt away from his killercraft to slice into the gashed earth in which the Nipponese huddled. The flames from their motors reminded him of knives of fire.

Since he was flight leader, he had a display Rolvar and Gefron lacked, one that showed they’d also launched their rocket packs. A moment later, ground explosions confirmed that: there were far more of them than his own munitions load could have accounted for by itself.

“Let’s see how they like that!” Gefron shouted jubilantly. “We should have given it to them a long time ago, by the Emperor.”

Pilots got special training so their eyes did not leave their instruments when they heard the Emperor’s sacred name. Teerts kept on paying attention to his cabin displays. He felt the same excitement Gefron had shown; it was as close to arousal as a male could know in the absence of females.

He also wished his flight had been able to attack the Nipponese sooner. But there were only so many killerplanes, and so many Tosevite positions to smash. This one had had to wait its turn. It would have waited longer still had the shiplords not thrown his flight east against it.

His aircraft roared low over the shattered trench line. Little dots of flame sprang into being on the ground as the surviving Big Uglies fired blindly at him. The Nipponese were not the only Tosevite army to do that. Teerts had listened to the briefings. He supposed shooting back made the Big Ugly soldiers feel less like the helpless victims they really were. Its probability of doing anything more than that was very small.

Teerts didn’t gamble. Gambling was a vice of support for males who had time to kill, which was not one of his problems. He’d been in action from the start. But if he’d sat down with the little plastic dodecahedrons a few times, he would have understood with his gut rather than just with his brain the difference between a small probability and zero probability.

The left engine made a horrible noise, then died. His killercraft lurched in midair. A small town’s worth of warning lights came on all over his instrument panel. At the same time, he keyed his radio: “Flight Leader Teerts, aborting mission and attempting to return to base. I must have sucked a bullet or something right into one turbofan.”

“May the spirits of departed Emperors take you safely home,” Rolvar and Gefron said in the same breath. Rolvar added, “We will finish the attack run on the Tosevites, Flight Leader.”

“I’m sure you will,” Teerts said. Rolvar was a good, reliable male. So was Gefron, in a different, more primitive way. Between the two of them, they’d make the Nipponese wish they’d never been hatched. Teerts swung his killercraft westward, back toward the base from which he’d set out He could fly on one engine, though he wouldn’t be very fast or maneuverable. Get repairs made and he’d be good as new tomorrow-

The right engine made a horrible noise, then died.

All at once, Teerts’ instrument panel was nothing but warning lights. This isn’t fair the flight leader thought. His hard-won altitude began to slip as the aircraft became nothing more than an aerodynamic stone in the sky.

“Ejecting! I say again, ejecting!” he yelled. His thumbclaw hit a button he’d never expected to have to use. Something about the size of the invasion fleet’s bannership booted him in the base of the tail as hard as it could. His eyes stayed open, but he briefly saw only gray mist.

Pain soon brought him back to his senses. One of the three bones in his left wrist had surely broken. At the moment, though, that was the least of his worries. Still strapped into his seat, he floated above the Nipponese lines like the biggest, most tempting target in the whole Empire.