In th Balance

by neetha Napew

  The left engine made a horrible noise, then died. His killercraft lurched in midair. A small town's worth of warning lights came on all over his instrument panel. At the same time, he keyed his radio: "Flight Leader Teerts, aborting mission and attempting to return to base. I must have sucked a bullet or something right into one turbofan."

  "May the spirits of departed Emperors take you safely home," Rolvar and Gefron said in the same breath. Rolvar added, "We will

  finish the attack run on the Tosevites, Flight Leader."

  "I'm sure you will," Teerts said. Rolvar was a good, reliable male. So was Gefron, in a different, more primitive way. Between the two of them, they'd make the Nipponese wish they'd never been hatched. Teerts swung his killercraft westward, back toward the base from which he'd set out He could fly on one engine, though he wouldn't be very fast or maneuverable. Get repairs made and he'd be good as new tomorrow—

  The right engine made a horrible noise, then died.

  All at once, Teerts' instrument panel was nothing but warning lights. This isn't fair the flight leader thought. His hard-won altitude began to slip as the aircraft became nothing more than an aerodynamic stone in the sky.

  "Ejecting! I say again, ejecting!" he yelled. His thumbclaw hit a button he'd never expected to have to use. Something about the size of the invasion fleet's bannership booted him in the base of the tail as hard as it could. His eyes stayed open, but he briefly saw only gray mist.

  Pain soon brought him back to his senses. One of the three bones in his left wrist had surely broken. At the moment, though, that was the least of his worries. Still strapped into his seat, he floated above the Nipponese lines like the biggest, most tempting target in the whole Empire.

  The Big Uglies blazed away at him for all they were worth. He watched in fearful fascination as holes appeared in the ripstop fabric of his parachute. Too many holes, or three or four too close together, and ripstopping wouldn't matter much. Then a bullet smacked the armored bottom of the seat. He hissed in fright and tried to draw up his legs.

  Not fair he thought again. The whole killercraft was armored, not just the bottom of the seat. Bullets that hit were nearly harmless. But turbofan blades, immensely strong though they were, couldn't chew up lead. If you were colossally unlucky enough to lose both engines that way...

  If you were that unlucky, you had to hope the Big Uglies wouldn't catch you and do the frightful things rumor said they did to prisoners. You had to hope you landed a little ways away from them, so you could unstrap (one-handed, it wouldn't be easy or fast) and try to evade until the rescue helicopter got there to pick you up.

  But if you were that unlucky, who cared what you hoped? Teerts had spilled wind from his canopy, trying to float as far back toward the Race's lines as he could. That would have made rescuing him a lot easier... if he hadn't come down right in the middle of a Nipponese

  trench.

  He was sure he was dead. The Big Uglies swarmed around him, shouting at one another and brandishing rifles with knives stuck onto the end of their barrels. He waited for them to shoot him or stick him. A little more pain, he told himself, and everything would be over. His spirit would join those of the Emperors now departed, to serve them in death as he had served the Race in life.

  One of the Nipponese outshouted the rest. By the way they cleared a path for him, he must have been an officer. He stood in front of Teerts, hands on hips, staring at him with the small, immobile eyes that characterized the Big Uglies. Instead of a rifle, he carried a sword not too different from the one borne by the Tosevite warrior in the picture the Race's probe had sent Home.

  Teerts wondered why he didn't draw it and

  use it. Why else had the others drawn back, but to give their commander the privilege of the kill? But the officer did not strike. Instead, he gestured for Teerts to free himself from the straps that held him in his seat.

  The flight leader obeyed, awkwardly because his left hand wouldn't work. As soon as he'd moved a couple of paces away from the seat, the Nipponese did take his sword from its sheath. He slashed two-handed at the lines that held Teerts' parachute to the ejection seat. The sword must have had good metal in it, for the tough lines parted almost at once. The parachute canopy blew away.

  The officer said something to his males. Several of them raised their rifles and fired repeatedly into the seat. The blasts almost deafened Teerts. They also dismayed him right down to the claws on his toes. Those bullets were certain to smash the homing beacon buried in the padding.

  Baring his small, flat teeth, the Nipponese pointed east with his sword. He barked out a phrase that probably meant something like get moving. Teerts got moving. The officer and several of his males followed, to make sure the flight leader didn't try to run.

  Teerts had no intention of running. Since he hadn't been killed out of hand, he expected to be treated fairly well. The Race held far more Tosevite captives than the other way round, and mistreatment of prisoners, could be avenged ten-thousandfold. Not only that, the Big Uglies, barbarous though they were, fought among themselves so often that they'd developed protocols for dealing with captured enemies. Teerts couldn't remember offhand whether Nippon adhered to those protocols, but most Tosevite empires did.

  Jets screamed overhead, back where the ejection seat had landed. That would be Gefron and Rolvar, trying to keep him from

  being captured. Too late, unfortunately; not only had he landed among the Big Uglies, but this officer was alert enough to have wrecked the beacon and got him away from it in a hurry.

  Still, he didn't think things would be too bad. The officer first took him to a medical station. A Nipponese doctor with corrective lenses held in front of his eyes by a weird contraption of bent wires bandaged his wrist and poured a stinging disinfectant over the cuts and scrapes he'd got in his ejection and landing. By the time the doctor was done, Teerts felt halfway decent

  Then the Nipponese officer started hustling him away from the front line again. The jets' wail vanished; the other two pilots in the flight must have expended their munitions and had to head home. Artillery shells whistled overhead every so often. Most came from the west and landed on Tosevite positions. The Big Uglies kept firing back, though. They

  seemed too stubborn to know when to give up.

  Teerts walked toward the dawn that was breaking in the east. As light grew, Nipponese artillery fire also picked up. Lacking night-vision gear, the Tosevites were limited to targets they could actually see. Each salvo of theirs drew quick counterbattery fire from the gunners of the Race.

  Back at the rear edge of the Nipponese trench system, a new party of Big Uglies took charge of Teerts. By the way the officer who had captured him acted toward the one who now received him, the latter was far more prominent. They bowed to each other one last time before the junior officer and the males who had accompanied him headed back to their position.

  Teerts' new keeper surprised him by speaking the language of the Race. "You come this way," he said. His accent was mushy and he

  barked out his words, but the flight leader followed him well enough.

  "Where are you taking me?" Teerts asked, glad for the chance to communicate with something more expressive than gestures.

  The Nipponese officer whirled and struck him. He staggered and almost fell; the blow had been cleverly aimed. "Not talk unless I say you can talk!" the Big Ugly shouted. "You prisoner now, not master. You obey!"

  Obedience had been drilled into Teerts his whole life long. His captor might be a savage, but he spoke as one who had the right to command. Almost instinctively, the flight leader responded to his tone. "May I speak?" he asked, as humbly as if he were addressing a shiplord.

  "Hal,"the Nipponese said, a word Teerts did not understand. As if realizing that, the

  Tosevite abandoned his own jargon. "Speak, speak."

  "Thank you, exalted male." With no notion of the officer's rank, Teerts laid the honorifics on with a trowel. "Without asking where, exalted
male, do you have places in which you keep your captives from the Race?"

  The Nipponese showed his teeth. Among the Big Uglies, Teerts knew, that was a gesture of amiability, not amusement The officer, however, looked not the least bit amiable. He said, "You prisoner now. No one care what happen to you."

  "Forgive me, exalted male, but I do not understand. You Tosevites"— Teerts carefully did not say Big Uglies— "take prisoners in your own wars and mostly treat them well. Is it just to use us so differently from your own?"

  "Not do so," the Nipponese officer answered.

  "Be prisoner go against bushido." The word was in Nipponese. The officer explained it: "Against way of fighting male. Proper fighting male die before become prisoner. Become prisoner, not deserve to live. Become— how you say?— sport for those who catch."

  "That's—" Teerts caught himself before he blurted out insane. "That's not the way most other Tosevites act."

  "They fools, idiots. We Nipponese, we— how you say?— people of the emperor. Our way right, proper. Same family rule us two thousand five hundred year." He drew himself up as if that paltry figure were a matter for pride. Teerts didn't think it wise to point out that the Emperors' family had ruled the Race for fifty thousand years, which was twenty-five thousand revolutions of Tosev 3. A small pride, he reasoned, might be more easily hurt by a large truth.

  He said, "What will you do with me, then?"

  "What we want," the officer answered. "You ours now."

  "If you mistreat me, the Race will avenge itself on your people," Teerts warned.

  The Nipponese officer made a peculiar barking noise. After a bit, Teerts realized it had to be what the Big Uglies used for laughter. The officer said, "Your Race already hurt Nippon so bad, how you do worse on account of prisoners, eh? You try make me afraid? I show you. I not afraid to do this—"

  He kicked Teerts, hard. The flight leader hissed in surprise and pain. When the Big Ugly kicked him again, he whirled round and tried to fight back— even, if he was smaller than a Tosevite, he had teeth and claws. They did him no good. The officer did not even bother reaching for the sword or the small

  firearm he carried on his belt He'd somehow learned to use his legs and arms as deadly weapons. Teerts couldn't so much as tear his tunic.

  The beating and stomping went on for some time. Finally the Nipponese officer kicked the flight leader's broken wrist. Teerts' vision blurred and threatened to go out, just as it had when the ejection seat hurled him away from his killercraft. As if from very far away, he heard someone screaming, "Enough! Enough!" He needed a while before he recognized the voice as his own.

  "You talk stupid again?" the Big Ugly asked. He stood balanced on one leg, ready to kick Teerts some more. If the flight leader said no, the Tosevite might stop; if he said yes, he was sure he'd get kicked to death. He got the feeling the officer didn't much care one way or the other what he answered. In a way, that indifference was even more frightening than

  the beating itself.

  "No, I won't talk stupidly again, or I'll try not to, anyway," Teerts gasped. The tiny qualification held all the defiance left in him.

  "You get up, then."

  Teerts didn't think he could. But if he failed, the Big Ugly would have another excuse to hurt him. He struggled to his feet, did his best to wipe the mud off his scales one-handed.

  "What you learn from this?" the Nipponese officer asked.

  The flight leader could hear the danger in that question. It wasn't just rhetoric; he'd better answer it in a way that satisfied the Tosevite. Slowly, he said, "I learned that I am your prisoner, that I am in your power, that you can do whatever you want with me."

  The Big Ugly moved his head up and down. "You keep this in your mind, eh?"

  "Yes." Teerts didn't think he was likely to forget.

  The Nipponese officer gave him a light shove. "You come on, then."

  Moving hurt, but Teerts managed. He didn't dare fail; maybe the Big Ugly really had taught him a lesson after all Dawn was breaking when they came to a transport center. The Race had worked it over at least once: truck carcasses lay here and there, some flipped over, others burnt out, still others both.

  But the center still functioned. Nipponese soldiers, chanting as they worked, unloaded cloth sacks from a few intact motor vehicles and from a great many animal-drawn wagons. The officer shouted to the males there. A couple of them came rushing over. They

  exchanged bows with the flight leader's captor, spoke rapidly back and forth.

  The officer shoved Teerts again, pointed toward a wagon. "You go on that one."

  Teerts awkwardly climbed into the wagon. The Nipponese officer gestured for him to sit in one corner. He obeyed. The wooden bottom and sides scratched against his sore hide. The officer and a Big Ugly soldier got into the wagon with him. Now the officer took out his small firearm. The soldier kept his rifle aimed at Teerts, too. The flight leader's mouth wanted to fall open. The Tosevites had to be crazy if they thought he was in any shape to try something.

  Crazy they might have been, but they weren't stupid. The officer spoke again in his own language. The males around the wagon obeyed with an alacrity that would not have shamed members of the Race. They

  snatched up a heavy, dirty tarpaulin and draped it over' Teerts and his guards.

  "No one see you now," the officer said, and laughed his noisy, barking laugh once more.

  Teerts was afraid he was right. From the air, the wagon would look like any other, hardly worth shooting up and certainly not worth investigating. Oh, in an infrared scan the wagon bed might show up warmer than it would have were it just carrying supplies, but no one was likely to bother scanning it.

  Somebody with heavy, booted feet got up onto the front of the wagon, the part the tarpaulin didn't cover. The wagon shifted under his weight. The newcomer said something, though not to Teerts or the Big Uglies. The only answer he got was a soft snort from one of the two animals tethered to the front end of the wagon.

  The animals started to walk. In that instant, Teerts discovered the wagon had no springs. He also discovered the road over which it traveled did not deserve the name. The first two jounces made him bite his tongue. After that, with the iron taste of blood in his mouth, he deliberately clamped his jaws shut and endured the rattling as best he could. He was jolted worse here at a walking pace than he'd ever been inside his killercraft.

  After a while, daylight began to seep through the space between the tarpaulin and, the top of the wagon. The two Tosevites did not seem to have so much as twitched since they sat down. Their weapons remained pointed straight at Teerts. He wished he were as dangerous as they thought he was.

  "May I speak?" he asked. The Nipponese officer's head moved up and down. Hoping that meant yes, the flight leader said, "May I please have some water?"

  "Hal,"the officer said. He turned to the other male, spoke briefly. The soldier shifted his weight— he could move after all. He carried a water bottle slung on his right hip. He undid it with one hand (the other kept his rifle aimed at Teerts), passed it to his commander. The officer in turn gave it to Teerts, making sure all the while that the flight leader could not grab his small firearm.

  Teerts found the water bottle hard to use. The Tosevites could wrap their flexible lips around its opening to keep from spilling it. His own mouthparts were less mobile. He had to hold the bottle above his head, pour the water down into his mouth. Even so, some of it dribbled out the corners of his jaws and made a couple of small puddles on the floor of the wagon.

  Refreshed, he dared ask, "May I also have some food?" Saying the word told him how empty his belly was.

  "You eat food like us?" The officer paused, tried to make himself clearer: "You eat food from this world?"

  "Of course I do," Teerts answered, surprised the Big Ugly could doubt it "Why would we conquer this world if we could not support ourselves upon it afterwards?"

  The officer grunted, then spoke to the other soldier again. This ti
me, the junior male moved slowly, grudgingly. He had to put down his rifle to reach into the pack on his back. From it he took out a cloth wrapped around a couple of flat, whitish grainy cakes. He handed one of them to Teerts, carefully refolded the cloth, and put the other cake back into the pack. Then he picked up the rifle again. By the way he held it, he wouldn't have been sorry to shoot the flight leader.

  Teerts stared down at the cake he held in his good hand. It didn't look particularly appetizing

  — why was the male so unhappy to give it up? The flight leader took a while to realize the two cakes might have been the only food the soldier had. They're barbarians, after all. he reminded himself. They still have things like hunger— and we've been hitting their supply lines as hard as we can.