Upsetting the Balance

“Because the Russkis can,” said the male who’d guided them. “If we didn’t have infantry patrols out there, the cursed Big Uglies would sneak within mortar range and start dropping their stinking bombs right down on top of our heads. Either that or they’d get into our vehicle parks and work the Emperor knows how much havoc there. They’ve done both, and they probably will again.”

Ginger or no ginger, Ussmak wanted to hide. “I thought nothing could be worse than Britain and all that poison gas. Maybe I was wrong.”

In a ragged chorus, the guide and the other males in the barracks sang out: “Welcome to Siberia!”

Rance Auerbach looked to the cloudy skies, hoping for snow. Thus far, his prayers had gone unanswered. Low, dirty-gray clouds hung over the prairie of eastern Colorado, but whatever snow or even rain-he would gladly have taken rain-they held refused to fall.

He waved to the troopers of his company, urging them to spread out farther. If a Lizard helicopter spotted them, they were on the way to becoming raw meat. The winter before, from all he’d heard, the Lizards hadn’t got so frisky so late in the year. This time, they’d sent a force west by helicopter to occupy Cheyenne Wells, and were pushing infantry west along US 40 to try to consolidate their position. If they did, that would put Lamar, due south of Cheyenne Wells down US 385, in a hell of a bind.

Worse still, the next town west of Cheyenne Wells on US 40 was called First View: it was the place where the Rockies first poked up over the horizon of the Great Plains. In the Rockies lay Denver. Because he’d traveled with Leslie Groves, Auerbach got the idea something important was going on in Denver, even if he didn’t know-and had no business knowing-what. Lizard thrusts that headed toward Denver needed stopping, no matter what.

The prairie seemed utterly empty but for his men and their horses. Turn those into buffalo and you’d have things back the way they were before the white man came-before the red man, too, come to that.

He turned in his saddle and called to Bill Magruder. “Now I know what the Indians must have felt like, going up against the U.S. Cavalry back in my grandpa’s day.”

His second-in-command nodded. “Sitting Bull licked General Custer, but look at all the good it did him in the end. We can’t just win fights now and again. We have to win the whole shootin’ match.”

Auerbach nodded. He’d been trained to think in terms of campaigns, which Sitting Bull certainly hadn’t. He wondered what sort of global strategy the Lizards were trying to maintain. They’d plainly had one at the start of their invasion, but it seemed to have broken down in the face of unexpected human resistance.

As soon as his company passed Sheridan Lake, Auerbach waved them off US 385. No tracked vehicle could match a horse for cross-country performance. So he told himself, anyhow, although the rule applied more in mountains and marshes than on the rolling plains near the Kansas border. But his troopers and their mounts would be harder to spot in the mix of stubble and unharvested crops than on the asphalt of the highway.

“Sir, will you want to strike US 40 east or west of Arapahoe?” Magruder asked.

Auerbach’s orders gave him discretion. Arapahoe lay about ten miles east of Cheyenne Wells, close to the Kansas line. If he came to the highway west of the little town, he risked drawing notice from the Lizards who’d been helicoptered into Cheyenne Wells. If he reached the highway on the Kansas side of Arapahoe, though, he was closer to what had been the Lizards’ main forward bases.

“We’ll go in to the east of Arapahoe,” he decided after a few seconds’ thought. “The farther east we can damage them, the more we draw their attention away from moving west, which is what we want to try to do.” That operating as far east as possible made it easier for the Lizards to damage him was something he tried not to think about.

He and his men camped for the night on an abandoned farm not far south of US 40. When they set out the next morning, they left their horses behind, toting on their backs the supplies they needed, as if they were infantrymen.

Auerbach had scouts out. He and most of his men sprawled in tall, yellow grass while the scouts advanced to make sure no Lizard patrols were on the highway. He watched through field glasses as the scouts crept forward, their khaki uniforms almost invisible against the brown earth and dying plants.

Only when they waved did he go forward with the demolition team. Two men laid charges on the surface of the road, connecting each one with the electrical detonator. They ran wire back to a little gully a couple of hundred feet away and then, crouching in it, blew the charges.

The earth shook under Auerbach. Chunks of asphalt rained down on the improvised trench. Somebody swore: “Goddamn thing hit me right in the ass, Howard. Whose side you on, anyway?”