A World of Difference Read online

  “Oh.” That made Fralk feel a little better, but not much. Flash, boom-his warriors were definitely having second thoughts now. They didn’t know the pistol was too far away for its bullets to reach them. Fralk thought furiously. “Can I kill whoever has the pistol from here?” he asked.

  “Maybe,” Oleg said.

  That was all Fralk needed to hear. He pointed his rifle in the direction from which the Omalo had shot, set the change lever to full automatic, and fired a long, satisfying burst. Ice splashed from the Omalo barrier.

  “Do you think I got him?” he asked.

  “Maybe,” Oleg said again, this time in his own language.

  “As for what I think, nichevo. Soon enough you will know. If he does not shoot back, you got him. If he does, you did not.”

  Flash, boom-Fralk cursed.

  Emmet Bragg was having fun, only slightly hampered by the fact that, as Irv had reminded him a. couple of days before, he couldn’t afford to do anything stupid. Had only his own neck been on the line, he would have worried a lot less. But four other people were depending on him to get them back to Earth. With Frank dead, he didn’t even have a well trained backup.

  So he threw himself flat on his belly the second the Kalashnikov started barking and stayed there till well after the burst was done. The wisdom might have been forced on him, but it was wisdom nonetheless: a couple of rounds punched through the barrier to wound Minervans behind it. One might have got him, and he not hit the deck when he did-the snow and ice it kicked out froze the back of his neck.

  More males fell from bullets that had clipped them above the level of the rampart. Still, Bragg thought, most of the rounds from the burst had gone high. That was bad shooting, worse than he had expected from the Russian. Maybe it was because Lopatin was KGB and hadn’t got proper training.

  “Isn’t that too bad for him?” Bragg muttered. He was just glad Sergei Tolmasov was on the far side of Jotun Canyon. Tolmasov, he was grimly certain, would not have used the AKT4 like an amateur.

  Staying low, Bragg scrambled twenty yard to his right, jumped up for a quick shot over the barrier, then dove onto his stomach again. A short burst chewed up the ice and snow almost at once, followed a few seconds later by a long one.

  “Changed clips again, did you? Good,” Bragg said, as if he were playing poker, not soldier, against the man with the rifle. “Now how many do you have left?” That was a question, all right. Lopatin, he thought, was shooting as though he had brought along a truckload.

  This time, Bragg crawled a couple of hundred feet to his left, almost to the trees anchoring that end of the line. He popped up for three shots at Fralk’s right wing. They might even have done some damage; the Minervans there weren’t much more than a hundred yards away now, and they made a big target. Bragg didn’t stay up long enough to look, which was just as well-the answering fusillade came hard on the heels of his last shot.

  Reloading while on his belly was not a skill he had practiced much since basic training days, but he managed. Still down there, he pulled out his radio and called his wife. “You all ready there?”

  “Ready as we’ll ever be.” Louise’s voice emerged tinnily.

  “Is that that damn gun I hear, Emmett? Watch yourself, now.”

  He chuckled. “I intend to, hon. Love you. Next time I call, I’ll really need you. Out.”

  He started making his way back toward the center of the line and quickly forgot about Louise. He did love her, as he had said, but he loved what he was doing more. He had loved Carleen, too, come to that, but he had figured out early on he was never going to make it to Minerva married to a historian of ancient Rome.

  Crazy, the stuff that goes through your mind, he thought. Carleen hadn’t, certainly not since Athena touched down. He dismissed the memory of her once more as he got back to Reatur.

  The domain master said, “Well done. They’re still coming, but with arms and eyestalks pulled in partway. They don’t like being on the wrong side of your human noiseweapons any more than my warriors do.”

  Bragg jabbed a thumb at himself. “Not like, either,” he said. Reatur’s eyestalks wiggled. Bragg went on, “Now try to kill their human male with noiseweapon. Then we win-Skarmer lose courage when that male fall.”

  “A human does not have their noiseweapon,” Reatur said. “It is the eldest of eldest of the Skarmer domain master, the male called Fralk.”

  “Is it?” Bragg wondered what the hell Lopatin was playing at. Whatever it was, it explained the bad shooting from the other side. The mission commander shrugged. Maybe it made his job easier. “Try to kill Fralk, then.”

  “I want to tell you no,” Reatur said. Bragg looked at him in surprise. The domain master explained, “I want to kill him myself. But you are right, Emmett. Slay him now, if you can.” Reatur was a soldier like none America had known since the War Between the States, Bragg thought-he took his fighting personally. The pilot readied himself. He wished he had been a cop: some work with the popup targets the police used would have come in handy now.

  He bounced up and shot with a two hand grip, one round after another, aiming at the Kalashnikov. His attention focused so completely on the rifle that he had fired several times before he even noticed Oleg Lopatin a few paces away, and twice after that before he saw the rope around the Russian’s neck. So things weren’t all going Lopatin’s way, he thought. Well, tough luck, Oleg Borisovich-serves you right.

  The hammer clicked. The pistol was empty again. Bragg hit the dirt to reload. A moment after he did, the Kalashnikov started chewing away at the barrier in front of him. “Shit,” he said. He was just glad Fralk couldn’t shoot for beans.

  Reatur’s guess was a good one: Fralk did not care at all for being shot at. A bullet kicked up snow and dirt at his feet. Another two zipped past him, closer than he ever wanted to think about. And two more struck a male close by Fralk. He did not even scream before he fell.

  “Get back out of range, you idiot, before you get killed and get me killed with you!” Oleg yelled.

  Fralk needed a moment to understand the human, another to figure out that he made good sense. “Back!” Fralk called. Several males in his small band had not waited for the order. He would deal with them later. “How far can that cursed pistol shoot?” he asked Oleg when they had retreated a good way.

  “This should be far enough,” the human said, adding, “unless the man with the pistol there gets very lucky.”

  Fralk thought about retreating some more, but enough males around him understood human speech to make that look like cowardice. He fired several rounds in the direction from which the shots had come but doubted they would do much good. The human on the other side of that frozen wall seemed to have a knack for surviving.

  “What I will do,” Fralk decided, “is stay here and use the rifle to help our warriors on the flanks. I can reach the whole field from this place, and the pistol cannot. That still leaves us with the advantage.”

  “Khorosho, Fralk, ochen khorosho,” Oleg said. “You are beginning to understand how to use your firepower. If you have more range than your enemy, you set up where you can hurt him and he cannot hurt you.”

  That made sense to Fralk, but he still felt peculiar standing off in the distance while his males and the Omalo first flung spears at each other and then began using those spears-and every other weapon on which they could lay their hands-at close quarters as the Skarmer tried to force their foes back from the barricade.

  Several Omalo warriors stood very tall to thrust at Fralk’s warriors. He fired a short burst. One of the enemy males tumbled away from the barrier, the upper part of his body a chewed, bloody ruin. The other Omalo warriors flinched away. A couple of Skarmer started to climb over the frozen wall.

  Fralk shifted his aim from one end of the line to the other, squeezed the trigger again. He was not sure he hit anyone this time, but the Omalo flinched anyhow. Skarmer males started trying to get over the barrier there, too.

  “If they can mak
e it to the far side in any numbers, we have them,” Fralk declared.

  “Da,” Lopatin agreed. After the fighting was done, Fralk knew he would have to figure out what to do with the human, but now he valued his thoughts. Fralk felt pleased at regaining his equanimity: this was the first time since that other human had shot at him that he found himself able to plan for what would happen after the fighting was done.

  Reatur flung a spear at one of the Skarmer scrambling over the rampart. It missed his target, but might have hit a warrior further on-the enemy was tightly packed at that part of the barrier. The domain master shouted and waved his arms when one of his males killed the Skarmer with an ax.

  But for every Skarmer who died, another-often more than one-did his best to climb over. “If they make it to this side in any numbers, we’re done for,” Reatur said.

  “I know.” Emmett dodged a spear. His long legs made him extraordinarily nimble, Reatur thought.

  Off in the distance, too far away for Emmett to strike back, Fralk’s noiseweapon began its deadly chatter once more. One Omalo male shrieked, then another, then another.

  “They fight good,” Emmett said. “Sometimes-often- human warriors run away from noiseweapons, first time see, hear them. Your males brave, Reatur.”

  The praise pleased the domain master. “Where would they run?” he asked. “If they lose here, they lose everything. They know it. But”-he let his deepest fear come out-“I doubt even they can hold against terror forever.”

  “You right, I think.” Emmett took out his talkingbox, spoke urgently into it in his own language. He put it away, dipped his head to Reatur. “We do what we can.”

  Irv stuffed the radio back into his pocket. “You heard the man,” he said. Louise Bragg nodded. So did Sarah. She had been limbering up every few minutes, ever since the battle started a few miles northwest. Now she started stretching in earnest.

  “Let’s give it one last check,” Louise said to Irv.

  “Good plan.” They walked over to Damselfly together and went over it strut by strut, wire by wire, joining by joining. They checked the thin plastic skin of wings, tail, and cabin to make sure it hadn’t developed any holes that could rip wide open in the air. They didn’t find anything. Irv started checking again.

  “Are we good?” Sarah demanded. She was peeling off parka and long pants, hopping up and down to stay warm in the Minervan summer sun. “If we are, we don’t have time to waste.”

  “We’re good,” Irv said reluctantly. He gave his wife a fierce hug. “Be careful. I love you.” Ending up in bed-or rather, on the floor-with Pat hadn’t done anything to change that. It just made him feel like a hypocritical bastard when he said that to Sarah.

  “Love you, too,” she answered now. He wondered what she would say if she ever found out. He was full of scientific curiosity, but that was one thing he did not want to know.

  He set the wide stepladder by Damselfly, helped Sarah climb in, then lowered the canopy. The sound of the hooks-and-eyes snapping it closed, shutting Sarah away from him, seemed dreadfully final. Shaking his head, he got down from the stepladder and carried it out of the way. Then he went over and took hold of a wingtip.

  Louise had the other one. She also had her radio out. Irv took his out, too. “Testing,” he heard Louise say. “One, two, three, four…, how do you read Damselfly?”

  “Read you five by five,” Sarah answered. Irv heard her both in the speaker and directly. “How do you read me?”

  “Loud and clear. Break a leg, kiddo,” Louise said.

  “Don’t tempt me,” Sarah started to pedal. “Let’s get the batteries good and charged.” A few minutes later, she said, “Okay-here we go.” She let the prop spin. Damselfly rolled forward. Irv and Louise ran with it, keeping the wing level.

  “Airborne!” Irv shouted. Sarah took one hand off the control stick to wave, then gave all her concentration back to flying. Irv watched Damselfly slowly climb. “There goes the funniest looking warplane in the history of-two worlds,” he said.

  “No arguments.” Louise was on the radio again, on a different frequency. “Emmett, are you there?” she called worriedly. “Come in.”

  “I’m here,” he answered. “Busy, but still here.”

  “Damselfly’s on its way now,” she told him.

  “Not a minute too soon. Out.”

  “Out.” Louise turned to Irv. “Now we can only wait.”

  “The fun part,” he agreed. “I’d rather be doing something, doing anything, than just standing around here.”

  “Me, too,” Louise said. “I hate it when something that’s important to me is out of my hands.”

  “Sarah said the same thing when Emmett was landing Athena. It’s all in her hands now, though.” Irv made sure his radio was on Damselfly’s frequency. “How you doing there, honey? How does the plane handle with the changes we made in it?”

  “Doing all right,” Sarah answered. “The extra weight isn’t bad, about what I’d have if I were pedaling in my parka. And I’m not getting enough extra drag even to notice-gaining altitude shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “Good,” Irv said. “Out.” He wanted Sarah as high as possible above the slings and arrows, to say nothing of axes and spears-of outrageous fortune. To Louise, he said, “Now what? Head over toward Athena?”

  She was gathering up Sarah’s discarded outer layers of clothing. “I think we’d better,” she said. “We’ve never all been away at once before, and we sure as hell don’t want to have to try to talk or fight our way through to the ship if-if Reatur loses.”

  “No,” Irv said, although the odds of Emmett’s getting free if Reatur lost were slim, and without Emmett, getting back to the ship didn’t matter in the long run anyhow. Louise, of course, could figure that out for herself as well as he could and doubtless had.

  They had only gone a couple of hundred yards when their radios crackled to life again. Ice that had nothing to do with the weather formed in Irv’s midsection as he lifted his set to his ear-only bad news would make Emmett call back so soon.

  But Pat was on the radio, not Emmett. She was in Reatur’s castle, checking on Lamra. “Has Sarah taken off yet?” she asked.

  “A few minutes ago,” Irv said. “Why?” He had a bad feeling he knew the answer before he asked the question.

  He did. Pat said, “Because Lamra’s getting ready to drop those budlings now, and I don’t think she’s going to wait around.”

  “Shit,” Irv said softly. He could still see Damselfly off in the distance. Sarah was banking into a long, slow, gentle turn, the only kind the ultra-ultralight could make. He could still call her back-and most likely throw away the battle and Emmett with it… and Lamra and her budlings, too, come to that, if Reatur’s males were beaten.

  “What do we do?” Louise asked.

  He kicked at frozen dirt, made his choice. “How are you at coping with gore?”

  “I won’t lose my lunch, if that’s what you mean,” Louise answered at once. “You want me to help you try to save the Minervan?”

  “That’s just what I want. Hang on to Sarah’s clothes. She’s got clamps and bandages in one of those pockets. Pat and I will coach you through as best we can. You’ve got to be quick and accurate twice. Each of us does, and if we are, we have a chance.” Irv wished he were as confident as he sounded. It hadn’t happened yet, not even once.

  “I’m not the person you need,” Louise said.

  “You’re the person I’ve got. Come on.” They ran for thecastle.

  The world wheeled under Sarah as she began another slow, careful clockwise turn. The cold breeze coming in through the freshair tube helped take away the stink of the gunk sprayed all over the bottom of the cabin.

  A great circle, she thought-surely this was the long way around to deliver a surprise to the Skarmer. It had a couple of advantages, though. For one thing, it gave her plenty of time in which to make Damselfly climb. She knew she had sugarcoated what she had told Irv. Even in dense Minervan
air, the ultra-ultralight climbed like a fat man going up a tall ladder. It wasn’t any worse now than it had been before they fiddled with it, though, so she hadn’t really lied.

  The route she was flying would also let her come up from behind the Skarmer, as far as the idea of behind meant anything when dealing with Minervans. This once, Emmett had argued- persuasively, worse luck, it just might. Males in a battle ought to have sense enough to keep all their eyestalks pointed in the direction from which danger came-toward Reatur’s warriors, in other words. They shouldn’t spot her till too late.

  Ought to, shouldn’t, ought to, shouldn’t… “If you’re wrong, Emmett, I’ll never speak to you again.” Sarah panted.

  That, she feared, was no joke. Her stomach did flipflops when she thought about what a burst of Kalashnikov fire would do to Damselfly-and to her.

  Fighter pilots, she realized suddenly, earned every penny they got, and then some.

  “Never seen this place so deserted,” Irv said, puffing. His footsteps and Louise’s echoed down the hallways of Reatur’s castle. On any other day, the noise of dozens of males would have drowned them out. Now he had only seen a couple, one barely full-grown and the other ancient.

  “At the battle.” Louise, also getting her breath back, was short with words.

  The usual racket pierced the doors of the mates’ chambers: mates were sheltered from worries about their fate. Or rather, Irv thought, they never got the chance to grow enough to understand what worrying about their fate meant. Maybe that would start to change today. Maybe.

  The guard outside the doors widened himself as the humans came up. He was in his prime, standing by a post Reatur reckoned important enough to keep him out of the fighting. “What word?” he asked anxiously.

  “I do not know,” Irv answered. “The battle still goes on.

  Let us pass now, please.”

  The male unbarred the doors, shut them again behind Irv and Louise. Mates rushed from everywhere at the boom of the falling bar, then drew back, disappointed, when they saw only humans, not Reatur.