Upsetting the Balance

He checked his radar. The Deutsche had some killercraft in the air, but none close enough to his flight to be worth attacking. He also watched the Tosevites’ aircraft to make sure they weren’t pilotless machines like the ones he’d encountered over Britain. Orders on conserving antiaircraft missiles got more emphatic with every passing day. Before long, he expected the fleetlord to issue one that said something like,If you have already been shot down and killed, it is permissible to expend one missile against the enemy aircraft responsible; expenditure of two will result in severe punishment.

He spotted a dark gray plume of smoke rising up from the ground and hissed with glee. That was a railroad engine, burning one of the incredibly noxious fuels the Tosevites’ machines employed. Whatever a railroad engine was hauling-Big Uglies, weapons, supplies-it was a prime target He spoke to Sserep and Nivvek, his other wingmale, to make sure they saw it, too, then said, “Let’s go shoot it up.”

He dropped down to low altitude and reduced his airspeed to make sure he could do a proper job of raking the target. His fingerclaw stabbed at the firing button of the cannon. Flames stabbed out from the nose of his killercraft; the recoil of the cannon and the turbulence from the fired shells made it shudder slightly in the air.

He yelled with savage glee as puffs of smoke spurted from the railroad cars. As he shot over the locomotive that pulled the train, he yanked the stick back hard to gain some altitude and come around for another pass. Acceleration tugged at him; the world went gray for a moment. He swung the killercraft through a ninety-degree roll so he could look back at the train. He yelled again; either Sserep or Nivvek had hit the engine hard, and it was slowing to a stop. Now he and the other two males could finish destroying it at their leisure.

Off in the middle distance on his radar set, something-half a dozen somethings-rose almost vertically into the air. “What are those?” Nivvek exclaimed.

“Nothing to worry about, I don’t think,” Teerts answered. “If the Deutsche are experimenting with antiaircraft missiles of their own, they have some more experimenting to do, I’d say.”

“Truth, superior sir,” Nivvek said, amusement in his voice. “None of our aircraft is even in the neighborhood of those-whatever-they-ares.”

“So I see,” Teerts said. If they were missiles, they were pretty feeble. Like other Tosevite flying machines, they seemed unable to exceed the speed of sound in the local atmosphere. They climbed toward the peak of their arc in what looked to be a ballistic trajectory… whereupon Teerts forgot about them and gave his attention over to smashing up the train.

It had been carrying infantrymales, perhaps among other things. The first pass hadn’t got all of them, either; some had bailed out of the damaged coaches. The gray-green clothes they wore were hard to see against the ground, but muzzle flashes told Teerts some of them were shooting at him. Memories of the Nipponese made fear blow through him in a choking cloud-what if the Big Uglies got lucky twice with him?

They didn’t. His killercraft performed flawlessly as he flailed them with cannon fire. Shells smashed at them; they boiled like the waves of Tosev 3’s oversized oceans. He hoped he’d slaughtered hundreds of them. They weren’t Nipponese, but they were Big Uglies, and in arms against the Race. No qualms about killing civilians diluted his revenge, not here, not now.

He pulled back on his stick again. The train was afire at several places up and down its length; one more run would finish the job of destroying it. Now that the nose of his killercraft was pointing upward again, he checked the radar screen to make sure no Deutsch aircraft were approaching.

Sserep must have done the same thing at the same time, for he shouted, “Superior sir!”

“I see them,” Teerts answered grimly. The Deutsch machines he’d dismissed as experimental-and inept-antiaircraft missiles were diving on his flight of killercraft, and plainly under intelligent control. For the Tosevites, that meant they had to be piloted; the Big Uglies didn’t have automatic systems good enough for the job.

With a small shock, he saw that the Tosevite aircraft were flying faster than his own machine. At least momentarily, that let them choose terms of engagement, something rare in their air-to-air engagements with the Race. He gave his killercraft maximum power; acceleration shoved him back against the seat. The Big Uglies wouldn’t keep the advantage long.

“I am firing missiles, superior sir,” Sserep said. “After we get back to base, I’ll argue about it with the males in Supply who seem to spend all their time counting pieces of eggshell. The point is to be able to get backto base.”