Page 46 of Upsetting the Balance (Worldwar 3)

“On to Northampton,” Smithers said in tones of satisfaction. He sucked foam from his mustache. “That won’t be an easy push; the Lizards are there in force, protecting their perimeter, and they have outposts north of town-their line runs through Spratton and Brixworth and Scaldwell.” He swallowed the last of his pint, did that foam-sucking trick again, and shook his head. “Just a pack of bloody little villages nobody’d ever heard of except the people who lived in ’em. Well, they’re on the map now, by God.”

He meant that literally; he drew from a pocket of his battledress an Ordnance Survey map of the area and spread it on the bar so Goldfarb and Stanegate could see. Goldfarb peered at the map with interest; Ordnance Survey cartography, so clear and detailed, always put him in mind of a radar portrait of the ground it pictured. The map seemed to show everything this side of cow tracks in the fields. Brixworth lay along the main road from Market Harborough down to Northampton; Spratton and Scaldwell flanked that road to either side.

Major Smithers said, “We’ll feint at Spratton. The main attack will go in between Brixworth and Scaldwell. If we can roll them out of Northampton, their whole position north of London unravels.” He glanced at the gas masks hanging from the soldiers’ belts. “Canisters in there fresh?”

“Yes, sir,” Goldfarb and Stanegate said together. Goldfarb clicked his tongue between his teeth. The question probably meant another mustard gas bombardment was laid on as part of the attack. After a moment, he asked, “Sir, how do things stand south of London?”

“Not as well, by what I’ve heard.” Smithers made a sour face, as if the admission tasted bad to him. “They put more men-er, more Lizards-into that one, and seized a broader stretch of territory. In spite of the gas, it’s still very much touch and go in the southeast and the south. I’ve heard reports that they’re trying to push round west of London, by way of Maidenhead and such, to link their two forces. Don’t know whether it’s so, but it would be bad for us if it is.”

“Just on account of you’re goin’ good one place, you think it’s the same all around,” Fred Stanegate said. He sighed. “Wish it were so, Ah do.”

Major Smithers folded the map and returned it to the pocket whence it had emerged. “Let’s be off,” he said. Reluctantly, Goldfarb followed him out of the Three Swans.

Not far outside Market Harborough, they passed a battery of 17-pounders bombarding the Lizards farther south. The men serving the three-inch field guns were bare-chested in the summer sun, but wore gas masks. “Gas shells,” Goldfarb said, and took a couple of steps away from the guns. If one of those shells went off by accident, that wouldn’t do much good, but he couldn’t help it.

The 17-pounders barked and bucked, one after another. As soon as they’d fired three shells each, their crews hitched them to the backs of the lorries from which the shells had come and rattled off across the crater-pocked meadow to a new firing position.

They hadn’t gone more than a couple of hundred yards when incoming shells tore fresh holes in the greensward where they’d been. Goldfarb dove for a hole. Fred Stanegate, half a step slower, chose the same hole and landed on top of him. “Ow!” he said; Stanegate’s knee dug into his left kidney.

“Sony,” Stanegate grunted. “Blighters are quick to shoot back, aren’t they?”

“Too bloody accurate, too,” Goldfarb answered, wriggling toward greater comfort, or at least less discomfort. “They always have been. I shouldn’t wonder if they don’t slave their guns to radar somehow.” He had no idea how to do such a thing, but it would account for both speed and accuracy in the Lizards’ response.

Fred Stanegate shifted, too, and not in the right direction. “What’s radar?” he asked.

“Never mind. I talk too bloody much, that’s all.” The shells stopped falling. Goldfarb scrambled out of the hole. So did Stanegate. He looked to the radarman curiously. Goldfarb felt himself flushing. He muttered, “Trust me, Fred, you don’t Need to Know.”

Stanegate heard the capital letters. “It’s like that, is it? All right, Ah’ll say nowt further.”

Three clanking, smoking, rumbling monsters clattered south on iron tracks: two Cromwell tanks and a heavy Churchill. The Cromwells were a vast improvement over the Crusaders they supplanted, but not as good as the tanks the Nazis were turning out these days. The Churchill had thick armor, but a weak engine and a popgun 2-pounder for a cannon. Against Lizard armor, either model was woefully inadequate. They were, however, what Britain had, and into the fight they went.

Fred Stanegate waved to the commander of a Cromwell, who was standing up and peering out his hatch to get a better view. The tankman waved back. In his gas mask, he looked as alien as any Lizard. Stanegate said, “An didn’t know we had so many cards left in t’hand.”

“If we don’t play them now, we’ll never get to use them,” Goldfarb said. “They’ll do some good against Lizard infantry, I hope. From all I’ve heard, gas is the only thing that really does much against their tanks, unless somebody climbs on top and tosses a Molotov cocktail down a hatch.”

The farther south they went, the more chewed up the ground became. They passed the hulks of several burned-out British tanks, as well as tin hats hung on rifles stuck bayonet-first into the ground to mark hastily dug graves. Then, not much later, they came on a Lizard tank in the middle of a field.

Had it not been for the men in masks climbing in and out of the monster machine, Goldfarb would have expected to die in the next moments. The Lizard tank was not much bigger than its English foes, but looked more formidable. Its armor was smooth and beautifully sloped, so that it brought to mind the “cars of the future” magazines sometimes hired artists to draw. As for its cannon-“If that’s not a four-inch gun, or maybe a five-, I’m a Lizard,” Goldfarb said. “I wonder if the shell would even notice one of our tanks on the way through.”

“We knocked it out some kind of way,” Stanegate said. “Don’t look like it’s burned-could be they got a mite too much mustard in their sandwiches.” He laughed at his own wit.

“I don’t care why it’s dead. I’m just glad it is.” Goldfarb set his gas mask on his head, made sure the seal was tight. “Time to start using ’em, I’m afraid.” His voice sounded muffled and alien, even to himself.

Fred Stanegate understood him. “Right y’are,” he said, and put on his own mask. “Hate this bloody thing,” he remarked halfway through the process, although without much rancor. When the mask was in place, he added, “Better nor breathing that stinkin’ mustard, now, mind tha.” Goldfarb’s burned leg twinged, perhaps in sympathy.

Off to the north, British field guns opened up again, pounding the Lizard defenses between Brixworth and Scaldwell. “Not going to be much of a surprise, with them hammering away so,” Goldfarb said, after first glancing around to make sure Major Smithers was out of earshot.

“Aye, well, if they don’t give ’em a nice dose o’ gas first off, the buggers’ll be waiting for us with all their nasty guns,” Stanegate said. Goldfarb smiled inside the mask where his companion couldn’t see him: the Yorkshire accent made the last sound likenahsty goons. But however rustic he sounded, that didn’t mean he was wrong.

Smithers’ Ordnance Survey map had shown a country road going northeast to southwest from Scaldwell down to Brixworth. The Lizards’ line ran just behind it. Or rather, the line had run there. Some Lizards still held their posts and fired on the advancing Englishmen, but others had fled the rain of mustard gas and still others lay in the trenches, blistered and choking. Goldfarb hadn’t been worse than moderately terrified by the time they forced their way through the foxholes and razor wire and pushed on.

“By gaw, if it’s this easy the rest o’ the way, we’ll roll right into Northampton, we will,” Fred Stanegate said.

Before Goldfarb could answer, a flight of Lizard warplanes roared low over the battlefield. Mustard gas didn’t bother them; they had their own independent oxygen supplies. They flailed the English with cannons and rockets. Everywher

e men were down, dead or screaming. Several tanks sent greasy black pillars of smoke up into the sky. The Lizards on the ground raffled and peppered survivors with small-arms fire.

Digging himself in with his entrenching tool, Goldfarb panted, “I don’t think it’ll be this easy any more.” Digging just as hard beside him, Fred nodded mournfully.

Mutt Daniels huddled inside the Chicago Coliseum, waiting for the place to fall to pieces around him. The Coliseum had been built with the battlemented facade of Richmond’s Libby Prison, which had housed Union prisoners during the War Between the States. Mutt didn’t know how the hell the facade had got to Chicago, but here it was. He did know that, even if he thought of himself as a very mildly reconstructed Johnny Reb, he sure felt as if he were a prisoner in here, too.

Only bits and pieces of that battlemented facade were left; Lizard artillery and bombs had chewed holes in it and in the roof. The destruction didn’t bother Mutt. The wreckage scattered in the interior of the building made it a better place in which to fight. With any luck at all, the Americans could give the Lizards as much grief here as they had in the meat-packing plants off to the southwest. Rumor said some holdouts were still holed up in the ruins of the Swift plant, sniping at any Lizard dumb enough to show his snout inside rifle range.

“How you doing, Lieutenant?” asked Captain Stan Szymanski, Daniels’ new C.O. He couldn’t have been more than half Mutt’s age (these days, nobody seemed more than half Mutt’s age): blond as a Swede, but shorter, stockier, wider-faced, with gray eyes slanted almost like a Jap’s.

“I’m okay, sir,” Mutt answered, which was more or less true. He still didn’t get up and yell “whoopee” at the prospect of sitting on his ass, but he didn’t get much chance to sit on his ass these days, anyhow. Or maybe Szymanski was trying to find out if his new platoon leader was going to be able to stand the strain generally. Mutt said, “Captain, I been in this slat since the git-go. If I ain’t fallen to pieces by now, don’t reckon I’m gonna.”

“Okay, Mutt,” Szymanski said with a nod-yes, that was what he’d been worrying about. “Why do they call you Mutt, anyway?”

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