In the Balance

Taking the commander’s silence as consent, Ussmak slowed the landcruiser to let the animal approach. That seemed to please it; it opened its mouth, almost as if it were a male of the Race, laughing. Ussmak knew it was making sharp yelping noises, even if he couldn’t hear them through the landcruiser’s armor. The animal ran right for the machine.

That gave Ussmak pause; maybe it really was stupid, as Krentel had said. Then the driver noticed it had a square package strapped onto its back, a package with a cylindrical rod sticking straight up from it. He’d never seen one of these beasts so accoutered before, and didn’t trust it. “Telerep!” he said sharply, “I think you’d better shoot it after all.”

“What? Why?” the gunner said. “It-” He must have spotted the package the Tosevite animal was carrying, for the machine gun started to chatter in the middle of his sentence.

Too late. By then the animal was very close to, the landcruiser. With a sudden burst of speed, it ran under the right track, even though Ussmak tried to swerve away at the last instant. The strapped-on mine exploded even as the animal was crushed to red pulp.

Ussmak felt as if he’d been kicked in the base of the tail by a Big Ugly wearing solid-iron foot coverings. The landcruiser’s right corner lifted up, then slammed back to the’ ground. Hot fragments of metal flew all around the driver; one buried itself in his arm. He screeched, then started to choke as fire-fighting foam gushed into the compartment.

He opened and closed his hand. That hurt, but he could still use it. He tried the landcruiser’s controls. The tiller jerked; a horrible grinding noise came from the right side of the machine. He snapped his jaws in fury, swore as foully as he knew how. Then he realized Krentel and Telerep were both screaming into his audio button: “What happened? Are you all right? Is the landcruiser all right?”

“We had a track blown off, may the spirits of the, Emperors of blessed memory curse the Tosevites forevermore,” Ussmak answered. He sucked in another breath that stank of foam, then spoke more formally: “Commander, this landcruiser is disabled. I suggest that we have no choice but to abandon it.” He flipped up the hatch over his head.

“Let it be done,” Krentel agreed. His voice turned vicious. “I told you to slaughter that Tosevite beast.” That he’d been right made the rebuke sting worse. As far as Ussmak was concerned, it didn’t make him a better landcruiser commander.

The driver pulled himself up and out of the compartment. It wasn’t easy; his bleeding right arm didn’t want to bear its share of his weight. He scrambled down behind the left side of the landcruiser. He would have liked to find out just what the mine had done to the other track and sprocket, but not enough to go around to the side exposed to the trees. That animal hadn’t been a wandering stray, not with a mine strapped to its back. Somewhere in the copse lay Big Uglies with guns. He was as sure of it as he was of his own name, or the Emperor’s.

Sure enough, bullets began snapping by, pinging off the armor of the landcruiser. Krentel let out a hiss of pain. “Are you all right, Commander?” Ussmak said. He still didn’t think Krentel was fit to carry Votal’s equipment bag, but the new landcruiser commander remained a male of the Race.

“No, I’m not all right,” Krentel snapped. “How can I be all right with a hole in my arm and two crewmales who are mental defectives?”

“I regret your arm is wounded,” Ussmak said. He wished the commander had been hit in the head instead. Those of lower rank gave unswerving deference to their superiors; that was the way of the Race. But the way of the Race defined obligations that ran in the other direction, too. Superiors gave underlings respect in exchange for their loyalty. Those who didn’t often brought misfortune on themselves.

Along with Ussmak and Krentel, Telerep also huddled behind the protective flank of the landcruiser. He waggled his left eye, the one that faced Ussmak, back and forth to show he was thinking along with the driver. Krentel remained oblivious to the dismay he caused his crew.

A couple of the other landcruisers in the squadron slowed down, poured suppressive fire into the trees. The hail of bullets and high-explosive shells was so intense that the wood caught fire. But when Ussmak dashed away to scramble into the landcruiser that had pulled up behind his own wounded machine, Tosevite bullets flew all around him.

He heard one of those bullets strike home with a dull, horribly final-sounding smack. He couldn’t look back; he was scrambling through the front hull hatch, almost falling down on top of the other landcruiser’s driver. That male swore. “One of your crewmales just got hit. He won’t get up, either.”