Tilting the Balance

“Reverse! ” Hessef yelled into Ussmak s hearing diaphragm. “Get out of here! ” The order was sensible, and Ussmak obeyed it. But the commander of the landcruiser behind him didn’t have reflexes as fast as Hessef’s (maybe they weren’t ginger-enhanced). With a loud crunch, the rear of Ussmak’s machine slammed into the front of that one. A moment later, the landcruiser in front of Ussmak backed into him.

Had the terrorists who planted the explosive under the road stayed around, they might have had a field day attacking stuck landcruisers with firebombs. Perhaps they hadn’t realized how well their plan would work: the multiple accident of which Ussmak found himself a part was far from the only one in the line of landcruisers. The machines, fortunately, were tough, and suffered little damage.

The same could not be said about the Big Uglies who’d been standing anywhere near where the bomb went off. Ussmak watched other Tosevites carry away broken, bleeding bodies. They were only aliens, and aliens who hated him at that, but Ussmak wanted to turn his eye turrets away from them anyhow. They reminded him how easily he could have been broken and bleeding and dead.

With patience, which the Race did have in full measure, the snarls unkinked and the landcruisers chose the next best route out of Besancon. This time a special antiexplosives unit preceded the lead machine. Near the bridge over the River Doubs, everybody halted: the unit found another bomb buried under a new patch of pavement.

Even though air conditioning kept the interior of the landcruiser’s fighting compartment comfortably warm, Ussmak shivered. The Big Uglies had known what the males of the Race would do, and done their best to hurt them not just once but twice-and their best had been pretty good.

Eventually, the landcruisers did reach square 27-Red. By then, of course, the raiders and their mortar were long gone.

Back at the barracks that evening, Ussmak said to Drefsab, “They made Idiots of us today. http://www.o-book.ru ”

“Not altogether, ” Drefsab said. Ussmak waggled one eye turret slightly in a gesture of curiosity. The other male amplified: “We did a good job of making idiots of ourselves. ” With that Ussmak could not disagree. It was, however, an opinion to be shared only among those of inconsequential rank-or so he thought.

But he was wrong. Three days later, inspectors of a sort altogether different from the first lot descended on Besancon. Most of the males whom Ussmak knew to be ginger tasters (and especially ginger tasters who’d let their habits get the better of them) disappeared from the base: Hessef and Tvenkel among them.

Drefsab wasn’t seen at Besancon any more after that, either. Ussmak wondered at the connection; before long, wonder hardened into near certainty. He knew more than a little relief that the inspectors hadn’t swept him up along with his crewmales.

If I ever see Drefsab again, I’ll have to thank him, he thought.

“Jesus Christ, Jager, you’re still alive? ” The big, deep voice boomed through the German encampment.

Heinrich Jager looked up from the pot of extremely ersatz coffee he was brewing over a tiny cookfire. He jumped to his feet. “Skorzeny! ” He shook his head in bemusement. “And you wonder that I’m alive, after the madcap stunts you’ve pulled off? ” He hurried over to shake the SS man’s hand.

Otto Skorzeny said, “Pooh. Yes, my stunts, if that’s what you want to call them, are maybe more dangerous than what you do for a living, but I spend weeks between them planning. You’re in action all the time, and going up against Lizard panzers isn’t a child’s game, either. ” He glanced at Jager’s collar tabs. “And a colonel, too. You’ve stayed up with me. ” His rank badges these days also had three pips.

Jager said, “That’s your fault. That madman raid on the Lizards in the Ukraine-” He shuddered. He hadn’t had a tank wrapped around him like an armored skin then.

“Ah, but you brought home the bacon, or half the rashers, anyhow, ” Skorzeny said. “For that, you deserve everything you got. ”

“Then you should be a colonel-general by now, ” Jager retorted. Skorzeny grinned; the jagged scar that ran from the corner of his mouth toward his left ear pulled up with the motion of his cheek. Jager went on, “Here, do you have a cup? Drink some coffee with me. It’s vile, but it’s hot. ”

Skorzeny pulled the tin cup from his mess kit. As he held it out, tie clicked his heels with mocking formality. “Danke sehr, Herr Oberst! ”

“Thank me after you ye tasted it, ” Jager said. The advice proved good; Skorzeny’s scar made the face he pulled seem only more hideous. Jager chuckled under his breath-wherever he’d seen Skorzeny, in Moscow, in the Ukraine, and now here, the man hadn’t cared a fig for military discipline. And now here-Jager’s gaze sharpened. “What does bring you here, Standartenfuhrer Skorzeny? ” He used the formal SS title with less irony than he would have aimed at any other soldier of Hitler’s elite.

“I am going to get into Besancon, ” Skorzeny announced, as if entering the Lizard-held city were as easy as a stroll around the block.

“Are you? ” Jager said noncommittally. Then he brightened. “Did you have anything to do with that bomb last week? I hear it took out one of their panzers, maybe two. ”

“Petty sabotage has its place, but I do not engage in it. ” Skorzeny grinned again, this time like a predator. “My sabotage is on the grand scale. I aim to buy something of value which one of our little scaly friends is interested in selling. I have the payment here. ” He reached over his shoulder, patted his knapsack.

Jager jabbed: “They trust you to carry gold without disappearing? ”

“O ye of little faith. ” Skorzeny sipped the not-quite-coffee again. “That is without a doubt the worst muck I have ever drunk in my life. No, the Lizards care nothing for gold. I have a kilo and a half of ginger in there, Jager. ”

“Ginger? ” Jager scratched his head. “I don’t understand? ”

“Think of it as morphine, if you like, then, or perhaps cocaine, ” Skorzeny said. “Once the Lizards get a taste for it, they’ll do anything to get more, and anything includes, in this case, one of the rangefinders that make their panzers so deadly accurate. ”