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.