Upsetting the Balance

Nejas might have picked the thought from his head. “With luck, our conquest of this island of British or whatever its name is will make it harder for the Big Uglies, at least in this part of Tosev 3, to continue building the weapons with which they oppose us.”

“Yes, superior sir, with luck,” Ussmak said. He’d given up on the idea that the Race would get much luck in its struggle with the Big Uglies. Maybe, along with their aircraft and landcruisers, the Tosevites manufactured luck in some hidden underground factory…

Nejas broke into his reverie, saying, “We are on the point of landing. Prepare yourselves.”

Sealed up in the landcruiser, Ussmak hadn’t noticed maneuvers less violent than the ones the transport had used to escape the Big Ugly raider. Now he braced himself for a jolt as the aircraft touched down. It came, hard enough to make his teeth click together. The airstrip, made by combat engineers in country for which “hostile” was a polite understatement, would be short and rough and probably pocked with shell holes, too. He wondered if any transports-and the males they were transporting-had been caught on the ground.

Things started happening very fast once the transport landed. The scream of its engines reversing thrust to help slow it made Ussmak’s head ache even through the aircraft fuselage and the steel and ceramic armor of the landcruiser. Deceleration shoved him forward against his seat belt.

The instant the transport stopped, Nejas ordered, “Driver, start your engine!”

“It shall be done, superior sir,” Ussmak replied, and obeyed. The hydrogen-burning turbine purred smoothly. Ussmak stuck his head out through the driver’s hatch to get a better view. At the moment he did so, the nose door of the transport opened, swinging up and back over the cockpit while the aircraft’s integral ramp rolled down to the ground.

Air from outside flowed into the fuselage, bringing with it the smells of powder and dirt and alien growing things. It was also cold, cold enough to make Ussmak shiver. The idea of being on an island, entirely surrounded by water, was less than appealing, too; back on Home, land dominated water, and islands on the lakes were small and few and far between.

A male with a lighted red wand ran up to guide the landcruiser out of the transport. “Forward-dead slow,” Nejas ordered. Ussmak engaged the lowest gear and eased forward. The landcruiser rattled over the metal floor of the fuselage, then nosed down onto the ramp. The male with the wand hadn’t done anything but urge Ussmak straight ahead?he might as well not have been there. The Race, though, tookbetter safe as a general working rule.

By the way they fought, the Big Uglies had never heard of that rule.

A buzzing in the air, like the wingdrone of a flying biter immensely magnified… Ussmak hadn’t heard that sound often, but knew what it meant. He ducked back into the landcruiser and slammed the hatch shut. The Big Uglies’ killercraft shot by at a height not much greater than the top of the transport’s tail. Machine-gun bullets rattled from the glacis plate of Ussmak’s landcruiser. A couple hit the just-closed hatch. Had his head been sticking out through it, they would have hit him.

The male who’d been directing him out of the transport reeled away, blood pouring from two or three wounds. “Forward-top speed!” Nejas screamed into the microphone taped to Ussmak’s hearing diaphragm. Ussmak’s foot was already mashing the accelerator. If the Tosevite killercraft had poured bullets into the front end of the transport, what had it done to the rest of the machine?

“Superior sir, is the other landcruiser following us out?” he asked. With the prisms in the cupola, Nejas could see all around, while Ussmak’s vision was limited to ahead and a bit to the sides.

“Not quickly enough,” the commander answered. “And oh, he’d better hurry-there’s flame from one wing of the transport, and now from the fuselage, and-” The blast behind him drowned his words. The rear of the heavy landcruiser lifted off the ground. For a terrifying instant, Ussmak thought it was going to flip end over end. But it thudded back down, harder than any of the jolts it had given the crew while the transport took evasive action in the air.

More explosions followed, one after another, as the ammunition of the landcruiser trapped in the inferno of the fuselage began cooking off. “Emperors past, take the spirits of the crewmales into your hands,” Skoob said.

“May they takeour spirits into their hands, too,” Nejas said. “Until that wreck is cleared, no traffic will be using the runway-and we need all the traffic we can get. More landcruisers, more soldiers, more ammunition, more hydrogen to keep our machines running-”