Harry Turtledove - In the Balance

A couple of feet in front of his new foxhole, half hidden in yellowing grass, lay a shiny blue spheroid a little smaller than a baseball. Daniels was sure it hadn’t been there before the shelling started He reached out to pick it up and see what it was then jerked back his hand as if the thing had snarled at him.

“Don’t fool around with what you don’t know nothin’, about” he told himself, as if he were more likely to obey a real spoken order. Just because that little blue thing didn’t look like a mine didn’t mean it wasn’t one. He was certain the Lizards hadn’t shot it at him out of the goodness of their hearts, assuming they had any. “Let a sapper screw around with it. That’s his job.”

Mutt gave the spheroid a wide berth as he started moving forward again. He didn’t go as fast as he wanted to; he kept looking down to see if any more of them had been scattered about. A flat bang! and a shriek off to his right told him his caution wasn’t wasted.

Ahead and to his left, Sergeant Schneider trotted westward, steady as a machine. Daniels started to call out a warning to him, then noticed that even though the sergeant was making better time than he (not surprising, since Schneider was both taller and trimmer), he was also carefully noting where he planted his feet. Soldiers in wartime didn’t necessarily live to grow old, but Schneider was not about to die from doing something stupid.

Farther up ahead, another tank rolled over a mine. This one, a Sherman, started to burn. The five-man crew bailed out seconds before the tank’s ammunition began cooking off. The rest of the American armor, fearful of meeting a like fate, slowed almost to a crawl.

“Come on!” Sergeant Schneider shouted, perhaps to the suddenly lagging tanks, perhaps to the infantrymen whose advance had also slowed. “We’ve got to keep moving. If we bog down in the open, they’ll slaughter us.”

That held enough truth to keep Mutt slogging forward after the sergeant. But he soon began looking for a good place in which to dig in. Despite Schneider’s indomitable will, the advance was running out of steam. Even the sergeant recognized that after another couple of hundred yards. When he stopped and took out his entrenching tool, the rest of the men followed his example. Trench lines began to spiderweb their way across the field.

Daniels worked for half an hour extending his hole toward the one nearest to him on the right before he realized the Lizards had halted the American counterattack without ever once showing themselves. That did not strike him as encouraging.

Atvar studied the situation map of the northern part of Tosev 3’s secondary continental map. “This does not strike me as encouraging,” he said. “I find it intolerable that the Big Uglies continue to thwart us in this way. We must do a more effective job of destroying their industrial base. I have repeatedly spoken of this concern, yet nothing seems to be accomplished. Why?”

“Exalted Fleetlord, the situation is not as black as you make it,” Kirel said soothingly. “True, not all the enemy’s factories are wrecked as completely as we might like, but we have damaged his road and rail networks to the point where both raw materials and finished goods move with difficulty if at all.”

Atvar refused to be mollified. “We ourselves are moving with difficulty if at all,” he said with heavy sarcasm as he stabbed a finger toward the representation of a lakeside city. “This place should have fallen some time ago.”

Kirel leaned forward to read the name of the town. “Chicago? Possibly so, Exalted Fleetlord, yet again we have rendered it essentially useless to the Big Uglies as a transport center. The deteriorating weather has not helped our cause, either. And in spite of all obstacles, we do continue to advance on it.”

“At a hatchling’s crawl,” Atvar sneered. “It should have fallen, I tell you, before the weather became a factor in any way.”

“Possibly so, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel repeated. “Yet the Big Uglies have defended it with unusual stubbornness, and now the weather is a factor. If I may…” He touched a button below the video screen in front of Atvar. The fleetlord watched as rain poured down from a soggy sky, turning the ground to thick brown porridge. The Big Uglies, evidently used to such deluges, were taking full advantage of this one. They’d destroyed a good many roads leading toward Chicago themselves, forcing the vehicles of the Race off into the muck. The vehicles didn’t like muck very well. The mechanics who tried to keep them running in it liked it even less.

“The same thing is happening in the SSSR, and against the Nipponese in-what do they call it? — in Manchukuo, that’s right,” Atvar said. “It’s even worse in those places than in the United States, because they don’t need to wreck their roads to make us go into the mud. As soon as it rains for more than two days straight, the roads themselves turn into mud. Why didn’t they pave them to begin with?”

The fleetlord knew Kirel could not possibly answer a question like that. Even if he could have answered it, responsibility still rested with Atvar. The Race’s landcruisers and troopcarriers, of course, were tracked. They managed after a fashion, even churning through sticky mud. Most supply vehicles, though, merely had wheels. Back before Atvar went into cold sleep, that had seemed sufficient, even extravagant. Against spear-carrying warriors riding on animals, it would have been.

“If this cursed planet were anything like what the stinking probes claimed it to be, we would have conquered it long since,” he growled.

“Without a doubt, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel said. “Should you care to use it, we still have one major advantage of the Big Uglies. A nuclear weapon exploded above Chicago would end its resistance once and for all.”

“I have considered this,” Atvar said. That he had considered it was the measure of his frustration. But he went on, “I am also obligated, however, to consider our occupation of Tosev 3 as well as our conquest of it. Chicago is a natural center of commerce for the region, and will be again when peace returns under our administration. Creating another such nexus after destroying this one would prove troublesome and expensive for those who come after us.”

“Let it be as you say, then, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel replied; he knew when to set a topic aside. In any event, he had plenty of other titbits with which to worry Atvar: “I have a report that the Deutsche launched two medium-range missiles against our forces in France last night. One was intercepted in flight; the other impacted and exploded, fortunately without damage worse than a large hole in the ground. Their guidance systems leave much to be desired.”

“What I would most desire is that they had no guidance systems,” the fleetlord said heavily. “May I at least hope we destroyed the launchers from which these missiles came?”

Kirel’s hesitation told him he could not so hope. The shiplord said, “Exalted Fleetlord, we scrambled killercraft and vectored them over the area from which the missiles were discharged. It is heavily forested terrain, and they failed to discover the launchers. Officers speculate the Deutsche used either launchers concealed in caves, portable launchers, or both. More information will become available upon subsequent firings.”

“More damage will become available, too, unless we are more careful than we have been,” Atvar said. “We have the capability to knock these things out of the sky; I expect us to live up to that capability.”

“It shall be done,” Kirel said.

Atvar relaxed, a little; when Kirel said something would be done, he meant it. “What other news of interest have you for me, Shiplord?”