Harry Turtledove - Worldwar 01 - In the Balance

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By Harry Turtledove

Published by Ballantine Books:

The Videssos Cycle:

THE MISPLACED LEGION

AN EMPEROR FOR THE LEGION

THE LEGION OF VIDESSOS

SWORDS OF THE LEGION

The Tale of Krispos:

KRISPOS RISING

KRISPOS OF VIDESSOS

KRISPOS THE EMPEROR*

NONINTERFERENCE

A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE

KALEIDOSCIPE

EARTHGRIP

DEPARTURES

THE GUNS OF THE SOUTH

WORLDWAR IN THE BALANCE

*Forthcoming

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WORLDWAR.-

IN THE

Harry

Turtledove

A Del Rey Book

Ballantine Books · New York

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A Del Rey Book

Published by Ballantine Books

United States by

Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New

York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of

Canada Limited, Toronto.

Turtledove, Harry.

Worldwar: in the balance / Harry Turtledove. -- 1st ed.

p. cm -- (Worldwar series)

"A Del Rey book."

ISBN 0345382412

I. Imaginary wars and battles--Fiction. I. Title. II. Series.

PS3570.U7615 1993

813'. 54--dc20

93-22133

CIP

Text design by Alexander J. Klapwald

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition: January 1994

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I

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WORLDWAR: IN THE BALANCE

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Fleetlord Atvar strode briskly into the command station of the invasion

fleet bannership 127th Emperor Hetto. Officers stiffened in their seats

as he came in. But for the way his eye turrets swiveled in their sockets,

one to the left, the other to the right, he ignored them. Yet had any been

so foolish as to omit the proper respect, tie would have noticed--and remembered.

Shiplord Kirel, his body paint less elaborate only than Atvar's, joined

him at the projector. As Atvar did every morning, he said, "Let us examine

the target." Kirel served the fleetlord by touching the control with his own

index claw. A blue and gray and white sphere sprang into being, a perfect

representation of a life-bearing world floating in space.

All the officers turned both eyes toward the hologram. Atvar, as was

his custom, walked around the projector to view it from all sides. Kirel followed

him. When they were back where they had begun, Atvar ran out a

bifurcated tongue. "Cold-looking place," the fleetlord said, as he usually

did. "Cold and wet."

"Yet it will serve the Race and the Emperor," Kirel replied. When he

spoke those words, the rest of the officers returned to their assigned tasks;

the morning ritual was over. Kirel went on, "Pity such a hot white star as

Tosev has hatched so chilly an egg."

"Pity indeed," Atvar agreed. That chilly world revolved around a star

more than twice as bright as the sun under which he'd been raised. Unfortunately,

it did so toward the outer edge of the biosphere. Not only did

Tosev 3 have too much free water, it even had frozen water on the ground

here and there. In the Empire's three current worlds, frozen water was rare

outside the laboratory.

Kirel said, "Even if Tosev 3 is colder on average than what we're used

to, Fleetlord, we won't have any real trouble living there, and parts will be

very pleasant." He opened his jaws slightly to display small, sharp, even

teeth. "And the natives should give us no difficulty."

"By the Emperor, that's true." Though his sovereign was light-years

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WORLDWAR: IN THE BALANCE

away, Atvar automatically cast both eyes down to the floor for a moment.

So did Kirel. Then Atvar opened his jaws, too, sharing the shiplord's

amusement. "Show me the picture sequence from the probe once more."

"It shall be done." Kirel poked delicately at the projector controls.

Tosev 3 vanished, to be replaced by a typical inhabitant: a biped with a

red-brown skin, rather taller than a typical male of the Race. The biped

wore a strip of cloth round its midsection and carried a bow and several

stone-tipped arrows. Black fur sprouted from the top of its head.

The biped vanished. Another took its place, this one swaddled from

head to foot in robes of dirty grayish tan. A curved iron sword hung from

a leather belt at its waist. Beside it stood a brown-furred riding animal

with a long neck and a hump on its back.

Atvar pointed to the furry animal, then to the biped's robes. "Even the

native creatures have to protect themselves from Tosev 3's atrocious climate.''

He ran a hand down the smooth, glistening scales of his arm.

More bipeds appeared in holographic projection, some with black

skins, some golden brown, some a reddish color so light it was almost

pink. As the sequence moved on, Kirel opened his jaws in amusement

once more. He pointed to the projector. "Behold--now!--the fearsome

warrior of Tosev 3."

"Hold that image. Let everyone look closely at it," Atvar commanded.

"It shall be done." Kirel stopped the flow of images. Every officer in

the command station swiveled one eye toward the image, though most

kept the other on the tasks before them.

Atvar laughed silently as he studied the Tosevite fighter. This native

belonged to the pinkish race, though only one hand and his face were visible

to testify to that. Protective gear covered the rest of him almost as

crehensively as had the earlier biped's robes. A pointed iron helmet

w several dents sat on top of his head. He wore a suit of rather rusty

mail that reached almost to his knees, and heavy leather boots below

them. A flimsy coat of bluish stuff helped keep the sun off the mail.

The animal the biped rode, a somewhat more graceful relative of the

humped creature, looked bored with the whole business. An iron-headed

spear projected upward from the biped's seat. His other armament included

a straight sword, a knife, and a shield with a cross painted on it.

"How well do you think his kind is likely to stand up to bullets,

armored fighting vehicles, aircraft?" Atvar asked rhetorically. The officers

all laughed, looking forward to an easy conquest, to adding a fourth planet

and solar system to the dominions of the Emperor.

Not to be outdone in enthusiasm by his commander, Kirel added,

"These are recent images, too: they date back only about sixteen hundred

years." He paused to poke at a calculator. "That would be about eight hundred

of Tosev 3's revolutions. And how much, my fellow warriors, how

much can a world change in a mere eight hundred revolutions?"

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Harry Turtledove

The officers laughed again, more widely this time. Atvar laughed with

them. The history of the Race was more than a hundred thousand years

deep; the Ssumaz dynasty had held the throne for almost half that time,

ever since techniques for ensuring male heirs were worked out. Under the

Ssumaz Emperors, the Race took Rabotev 2 twenty-eight thousand years

ago, and seized Halless I eighteen thousand years after that. Now it was

Tosev 3's turn. The pace of conquest was quickening, Atvar thought.

"Carry on, servants of the Emperor," the fleetlord said. The officers

stiffened once more as he left the command station.

He was back in his suite, busy with the infinite minutiae that accompanied

command, when his door buzzer squawked. He looked up from the

computer screen with a start. No one was scheduled to interrupt him at

this time, and the Race did not lightly break routine. Emergency in space

was improbable in the extreme, but who would dare disturb him for anything

less?

"Enter," he growled.

The junior officer who came into the suite looked nervous; his tail

stump twitched and his eyes swiveled quickly, now this way, now that, as

if he were scanning the room for danger. "Exalted Fleetlord, kinsmale of

the Emperor, as you know, we draw very near the Tosev system," he said,

his voice hardly louder than a whisper.

"I had better know that," Atvar said with heavy sarcasm.

"Y-yes, Exalted Fleetlord." The junior officer, almost on the point of

bolting, visibly gathered himself before continuing: "Exalted Fleetlord, I

am Subleader Erewlo, in the communications section. For the past few

ship's days, I have detected unusual radio transmissions coming from that

system. These appear to be artificial in nature, and, and"--now he had to

force himself to go on and face Atvar's certain wrath--"from tiny doppler

shifts in the signal frequency, appear to be emanating from Tosev 3."

In fact, the fleetlord was too startled to be furious. "That is ridiculous,''

he said. "How dare you presume to tell me that the animal-riding

savages our probes photographed have moved in the historic swivel of an

eye turret up to electronics when we required tens of millennia for the

same advance?"

"Exalted Fleetlord, I presume nothing," Erewlo quavered. "I merely report

to you anomalous data which may be of import to our mission and

therefore to the Race."

"Get out," Atvar said, his voice flat and deadly dangerous. Erewlo fled.

The fleetlord glared after him. The report was ridiculous, on the face

of it. The Race changed but slowly, in tiny, sensible increments. Though

both the Rabotevs and the Hallessi were conquered before they developed

radio, they had had comparably long, comparably leisurely developments.

Surely that was the norm among intelligent races.

Atvar spoke to his computer. The data the subleader had mentioned

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WORLDWAR: IN THE BALANCE

came up on his screen. He studied them, asked the machine for their implications.

The implications were as Erewlo had said: with a probability

that approached one, those were artificial radio signals coming from To-sev

The fleetlord snarled a command the computer was not anatomically

equipped to obey. If the natives of Tosev 3 had somehow stumbled across

radio, what else did they know?

Just as the hologram of Tosev 3 had looked like a world floating in

space, so the world itself, seen through an armorglass window, resembled

nothing so much as a holographic image. But to get round to its other side

now, Atvar would have to wait for the 127th Emperor Hetto to finish half

an orbit.

The fleetlord glared down at the planet below. He had been glaring at

it ever since the fleet arrived, one of his own years before. No one in all

the vast history of the Race had ever been handed such a poisonous dilemma.

The assembled shiplords stood waiting for Atvar to give them

their orders. His the responsibility, his the rewards--and the risks.

"The natives of Tosev 3 are more technologically advanced than we

believed they would be when we undertook this expedition," he said, seeing

if gross understatement would pry a reaction from them.

As one, they dipped their heads slightly in assent. Atvar tightened his

jaws--would that he might bite down on his officers' necks. They were going

to give him no help at all. His the responsibility. He could not even

ask the Emperor for instructions. A message Home would take twenty-four

Home years to arrive, the reply another twenty-four. The invasion

foould go back into cold sleep and wait--but who could say what the

T.ites would have invented by then?

Atvar said, "The Tosevites appear at the moment to be fighting several

wars among themselves. History tells us their disunity will work to

our advantage." Ancient history, he thought; the Empire had had a single

rule so long that no one had any practice playing on the politics of disunion.

But the manuals said such a thing was possible, and the manuals

generally knew what they were talking about.

Kirel assumed the stooping posture of respect, a polite way to show he

wished to speak. Atvar turned both eyes on him, relieved someone would

say at least part of what he thought. The shiplord of the 127th Emperor

Hetto said, "Is it certain we can successfully overcome the Tosevites,

Fleetlord? Along with radio and radar, they have aircraft of their own, as

well as armored fighting vehicles--our probes have shown them clearly."

"But these weapons are far inferior to ours of similar types. The probes

also show this clearly." That was Straha, shiplord of the 206th Emperor

Yower. He ranked next highest among the shiplords after Kirel, and

wanted to surpass him one day.

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Harry Turtledove

They started to scatter an instant before she thumbed the firing button

mounted on top of her stick.

The two ShVAK machine guns attached under the lower wing of the

biplane added their roar to the racket of the five-cylinder radial engine.

Ludmila let the guns chatter as she zoomed low above the fire. As it

dimmed behind her, she looked back over her shoulder to see what she

had accomplished.

A couple of Germans lay sprawled in the dirt, one motionless, the

other writhing like a fence lizard in the grasp of a cat. "Khorosho,"

Ludmila said softly. Triumph drowned terror. "Ochen khorosho." It was

very good. Every blow against the fascists helped drive them back---or at

least hindered them from coming farther forward.

Flashes from out of the darkness, from two places, then three--not

fire, firearms. Terror came roaring back. Ludmila gave the Kukuruznik all

the meager power it had. A rifle bullet cracked past her head, horridly

close. The muzzle flashes continued behind her, but after a few seconds

she was out of range.

She let the biplane climb so she could look for another target. The

breeze that whistled in over the windscreen of the open cockpit dried the

stinking, fear-filled sweat on her forehead and under her arms. The trouble

with the Germans was that they were too good at their trade of murder

and destruction. They could have had only a few seconds' warning before

her plane swooped on them out of the night, but instead of running and

hiding, they'd run and then fought back--and almost killed her. She shuddered

again, though they were kilometers behind her now.

When they'd first betrayed the treaty of peace and friendship and invaded

the Soviet Union, she'd been confident the Red Army would quickly

throw them back. But defeat and retreat followed retreat and defeat. Bombers

appeared over Kiev, broad-winged Heinkels, Dorniers skinny as flying

pencils, graceful Junkers-88s, Stukas that screamed like damned souls as

they stooped, hawklike, on their targets. They roamed as they would. No

Soviet fighters came up to challenge them.

Once in Rossosh, out of the German grasp, Ludmila happened to mention

to a harried clerk that she'd gone through Osoaviakhim flight training.

Two days later, she found herself enrolled in the Soviet Air Force. She

still wondered whether the man did it for the sake of the country or to

save himself the trouble of finding her someplace to sleep.

Too late to worry about that now. Whole regiments of women pilots

flew night-harassment missions against the fascist invaders. One day,

Ludmila thought, I will graduate to a real fighter instead of my U-2. Several

women had become aces, downing more than five German planes

apiece.

For now, though, the reliable old Wheatcutter would do well enough.

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WORLDWAR: IN THE BALANCE

She spotted another fire, off in the distance. The Kukuruznik banked,

swung toward it.

Planes roared low overhead. The red suns under their wings and on

the sides of their fuselages might have been painted from blood. Machine

guns spat flame. The bullets kicked up dust and splashed in the water like

the first big drops of a rainstorm.

Liu Han had been swimming and bathing when she heard the Japanese

fighters. With a moan of terror, she thrust herself all the way under, until

her toes sank deep into the slimy mud bottom of the stream. She held her

breath until the need for air drove her to the surface once more, gasped in

a quick breath, sank.

When she had to come up again, she tossed her head to get the long,

straight black hair out of her eyes, then quickly looked around. The fighters

had vanished as quickly as they appeared. But she knew the Japanese

soldiers would not be far behind. Chinese troops had retreated through her

village the day before, falling back toward Hankow.

A few swift strokes and she was at the bank of the stream. She scrambled

up, dried herself with a few quick strokes of a rough cotton towel, put

on her robe and sandals, and took a couple of steps away from the water.

Another drone of motors, this one higher and farther away than the

fighters, a whistle in the air that belonged to no bird ... The bomb exploded

less than a hundred yards from Liu. The blast lifted her like a toy

and flung her back into the stream.

Stunned, half-deafened, she thrashed in the water. She breathed in a

great gulp of it. Coughing, choking, retching, she thrust her head up into

the precious air, gasped out a prayer to the Buddha: "Amituofo, help me!"

ore bombs fell all around. Earth leapt into the air in fountains so

pect and beautiful and transient, they almost made her forget the destruction

they represented. The noise of each explosion slapped her in the

face, more like a blow, physically felt, than a sound. Metal fragments of

bomb casing squealed wildly as they flew. A couple of them splashed into

the stream not far from Liu. She moaned again. The year before, a bomb

fragment had torn her father in two.

The explosions moved farther away, on toward the village. Awkwardly,

robe clinging to her arms and legs and hindering her every motion,

she swam back to the bank, staggered out onto land once more. No point

drying herself now, not when her damp towel was covered with earth. She

automatically picked it up and started home, praying again to the Amida

Buddha that her home still stood.

Bomb craters pocked the fields. Here and there, men and women lay

beside them, torn and twisted in death. The dirt road, Liu saw, was untouched;

the bombers had left it intact for the Japanese army to use.

She wished for a cigarette. She'd had a pack of Babies in her pocket,

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