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The Deutsche were defending Ploesti every way they knew how. Above the clotted smoke floated balloons tethered to stout cables that might wreck an aircraft that ran into them. More antiaircraft guns, some cannons like those on the high ground to either side, others mere machine guns that spat glowing tracers, fired out of the smoke. They had no radar control and so could not see what they hoped to hit, but they added more metal to an already crowded sky.
“Does anyone have laser lock-on?” Gefron asked hopefully. Both wingmales denied it. Gefron sighed. The results would not be what his superiors had hoped for. “Proceed on purely visual bombing run.”
“It shall be done, Flight Leader,” Xarol and Rolvar chorused.
Then they were over the billowing smoke. Gefron poised a claw at the bomb-release button. The killercraft lost both weight and drag as the ordnance fell away. All at once it seemed a much better performer.
“We did hurt them, by the spirits of departed Emperors!” Xarol said exultantly.
The wingmale was right. Sudden new angry clouds of black, greasy smoke roiled up through the screen the Deutsche had stretched above Ploesti. Through new smoke and old, Gefron saw sullen orange fireballs blooming like so many huge, terrible flowers.
“The Big Uglies will be a long time repairing that,” the flight leader agreed happily. He radioed a report of success to the base from which he’d set out, then returned to the intraflight frequency: “Now we go home.”
“As if we had any real home on this cold ball of mud,” Rolvar said.
“Part of it-the more southerly latitudes-can be quite pleasant,” Gefron replied. “And even this area’s not too bad in local summer. Present conditions, of course, are something else again-I assure you, I find frozen water as revolting as does any other male in his right mind.”
He brought his killercraft onto the reciprocal of the course he’d flown to Ploesti. As he did so, his radar picked up the Big Ugly aircraft through which his flight had barreled on the way to the refinery complex. They hadn’t come straight after the killercraft; instead, they’d loitered along the likely return route and used the time while he and his wingmales were making their bombing run to gain altitude.
Gefron would have been just as glad to scoot past unnoticed, but one of the Big Uglies spotted him and his comrades. They might have been radarless, but they had radios. What one of them saw, the others learned in moments. Their aircraft turned toward the flight for an attack run.
The range closed frighteningly fast. The Big Uglies flew inadequate aircraft, but they flew them with panache and courage, darting straight at Gefron and his wingmales. The flight leader fired his next-to-last missile and then, a moment later, his last one. Two Tosevite planes tumbled in ruins. The rest kept coming.
On the head-up display, Gefron saw another enemy aircraft break up, and yet another: Rolvar and Xarol were using their cannon to good effect. But the Big Uglies were firing, too; through the windscreen, past the head-up display, the flight leader watched the pale flashes from their guns. He turned the nose of his killercraft toward the nearest Big Ugly, fired a short burst. Smoke poured from the enemy’s engine; the plane began to fall.
Then the flight was through the horde of Tosevites. Gefron let out a long sigh of relief: the Big Uglies could not hope to pursue. He keyed his radio: “All well, wingmales?”
“All well, Flight Leader,” Rolvar answered. But Xarol said, “Not all well, superior sir. I took several hits as we mixed it up with the Big Uglies. I’ve lost electrical power to some of my control surfaces, and I’m losing hydraulic pressure in the backup system. I am not certain I will be able to complete return to base.”
“I will inspect visually.” Gefron gained altitude and lost speed, letting Xarol pull ahead of him: What he saw made him hiss in dismay: part of the tail surface of his wingmale’s killercraft had been shot away, and two lines of dismayingly large holes stitched the right wing and fuselage. “You didn’t just take several hits; you got yourself chewed up. Can you keep it flying?”
“For the time being, superior sir, but altitude control grows increasingly difficult.”
“Do the best you can. If you are able to set down on one of our airstrips, the Race will have the opportunity to repair your aircraft rather than writing it off.”
“I understand, superior sir.”
The Race had lost far more equipment on Tosev 3 than even the most pessimistic forecasts allowed for. Keeping what was left operational was a priority that grew higher every day.
But luck was not with Xarol. He did manage to keep his killercraft airborne until the flight reached territory the Race controlled. Gefron had just radioed the nearest landing strip of his wingmale’s predicament when Xarol announced, “I regret, superior sir, that I have no choice but to abandon the aircraft.” Moments later, a blue-white fireball marked the machine’s impact point.
When Gefron landed back at Warsaw, he learned his wingmale had ejected safely and been rescued. That pleased him-but the next time Xarol needed to fly, what aircraft would he use?
Small-arms fire rattled through Naperville. Mutt Daniels crouched in the trench in front of the ruins of the Preemption House. Every so often, when the firing slackened, he’d stick his tommy gun up over the forward rim of the trench, squeeze off a short burst in the direction of the Lizards, and then yank it back down again.
“Kinda quiet today, isn’t it, Sarge?” Kevin Donlan said just as one such burst was answered by a storm of fire from the aliens, whose forward outposts were only a few hundred yards to the east.
Mutt pressed his face against the dirt wall of the trench as bullets whined just overhead. “You call this here quiet?” he said, thinking he’d chill the kid with sarcasm.
But Donlan wouldn’t chill. “Yeah, Sarge. I mean, it is, isn’t it. Just rifle fire right now-just rifle fire all day long, pretty much. I don’t miss the artillery one little bit, let me tell you.”
“Me neither. Rifles are bad enough, but that other stuff, that’s what slaughters you.” Daniels paused, played back the day’s action in his head. “You know, you’re right, and I didn’t even notice. They ain’t done much with their big guns today, have they?”
“I didn’t think so. What do you suppose it means?”
“Damfino.” Mutt wished he had a cigarette or a chew or even a pipe. “I ain’t sorry not to be on,this end of it either, though; don’t get me wrong about that. But why they’re off with it… son, I couldn’t begin to tell you.”
The more he thought about it, the more it worried him. The Lizards didn’t have numbers going for them; their strength had always lain in their guns: their tanks and self-propelled pieces; if they were easing off with those…
“Maybe our offensive really is putting the screws to them, making them pull back,” Donlan said.
“Mebbe.” Daniels remained unconvinced. He’d been falling back before the invaders ever since he got strafed out. of his train. The idea that other troops could move forward against them was galling; it seemed to say nothing he’d done, nothing Sergeant Schneicier-as fine a soldier as ever lived-had done, was good enough. He didn’t like believing that.
Behind him, back toward Chicago, an American artillery barrage opened up on the Lizard position. It was an odd, pawky sort of shelling, on again, off again, nothing like the endless rains of projectiles that had punctuated combat in France. If you kept a gun in the same place for more than two or three rounds, the Lizards would figure out where it was and blast it. Mutt didn’t know how they did it, but he knew they did. He’d seen too many dead artillerymen and wrecked guns to have any doubt left.
He waited for counterbattery fire to start. With the cynical senst of self-preservation soldiers soon develop, he would sooner have had the Lizards shelling positions miles behind him than lobbing their presents into his trench.
American shells kept falling on the Lizards. When half an hour went by without reply, Daniels said, “You know, kid, you might just be right. Feels mighty damn
good to give it to ’em instead of taking it, don’t you reckon?”
“Hell yes, Sergeant,” Donlan said happily.
A runner came down heavily into the trench where the two men sheltered. He said, “Check your watches, Sergeant, soldier. We’re advancing against their lines in”-he glanced at his own watch-“nineteen minutes.” He ran down the trench toward the next knot of men. “You got a watch?” Donlan asked.
