When the Second World War started in Europe, back in the dim dark days before the little scaly devils came, the Germans had staged a border incident to give themselves an excuse to go to war against Poland. The Germans were fascists, of course, but Mao admired the stratagem: it turned the Wehrmacht loose exactly when its leaders wanted it to move.
Borrowing from the Germans’ book, Mao arranged for an incident in the railroad yards in the southwestern part of Peking. Liu Han wasn’t far away. When she heard the first gunshots ring out after sudden provocation from the devil-boys turned unbearable, she spoke one word into a radio: “Now.” Then she shut it off and took herself elsewhere, lest the little devils trace the transmission. That one word was the signal for riots to break out around the railroad yards, too, in carefully chosen places.
As the planners in the People’s Liberation Army had been sure they would, Chinese policemen-tools of the imperialist scaly devils-came rushing from all over Peking to quell those secondary riots. And they rushed straight into withering machine-gun fire: those emplacements had been sited and manned for a couple of days, and covered the likely routes of approach.
The Chinese police reeled back in dismay. Watching from a third-story window, Liu Han hugged herself with glee. The scaly devils’ running dogs weren’t soldiers, and couldn’t hope to hold their own in a fight against soldiers. Now that they’d discovered they couldn’t hope to put down the rioters, what would they do? Call in the little devils themselves, of course, Liu Han thought, and hugged herself again.
As usual, the little scaly devils wasted no time in responding. They were soldiers, and formidable soldiers at that. Three of their mechanized fighting vehicles, machines identical to the one in which Liu Han, her daughter, and Nieh Ho-T’ing had left the prison camp, rattled past her, guided toward the trouble-and toward ruination-by a couple of devil-boys. But they didn’t rattle very far. Barricades had already started going up. When the machines tried to bull them aside, the obstacles proved to have surprisingly solid cores.
Chinese rushed out from houses and storefronts to heave bottles of burning gasoline at the mechanized fighting vehicles. Liu Han had never learned why those were called Molotov cocktails, but they were. Two of the vehicles quickly caught fire. The third one sprayed death all around with its light cannon and with the scaly devils shooting from the firing ports set into the sides of the machine. Fighters fell one after another. At last, though, the third vehicle started burning, too, and the little devils inside had to bail out or be roasted. They lasted only moments outside their armored shell.
Columns of smoke began rising into the sky all over Peking. Liu Han nodded in sober satisfaction as she watched them sprout. Now the little scaly devils would really know they had an insurrection on their hands. What would they do next, now that their mechanized fighting vehicles were having trouble? Send in the landcruisers, of course, Liu Han thought. Landcruisers were the bludgeon they’d used to retake Peking after the last progressive uprising.
Sure enough, here came a pair of them, with infantrymales skittering along beside them spraying gunfire to keep would-be flingers of Molotov cocktails from getting close enough to harm them. Some of the little devils fighting on foot went down. The rest stayed with the landcruisers. They were brave. Liu Han wished she could have denied them that virtue-and many others.
But the landcruisers got a surprise not long after they rolled past the burnt-out hulks of the mechanized fighting vehicles and shouldered aside the barricades that had stalled the lesser machines. Spewing tails of fire, antilandcruiser missiles manufactured by the Reich slammed into their relatively thin side armor. They brewed up, flame belching from their turrets.
“See how you like that!” Liu Han shouted. The Russians wouldn’t give rockets they made themselves, but they were willing to supply plenty of these.
And, when a helicopter thuttered by overhead, another missile swatted it out of the sky. Liu Han whooped again. If the little scaly devils thought they were going to keep China forever, if they thought they could get away with ruling over a people who yearned to rule themselves, some reeducation for them was in order. The People’s Liberation Army would provide it.
“I give you the option of declining this flight, Shuttlecraft Pilot,” the female in the monitor told Nesseref. “Missiles have been fired at shuttlecraft attempting to land in the subregion known as China. Shuttlecraft have been damaged. Two, I am sorry to report, have been destroyed.”
Nesseref wondered how much truth that held. If the dispatcher admitted two shuttlecraft destroyed, how many more had gone down in flaming ruin? Nevertheless, she said, “Superior female, I will accept the mission. I have seen the aftermath of fighting here in Poland. We must maintain control of the areas of Tosev 3 where we presently rule.”
“I thank you for your display of public spirit,” the dispatcher said. “Many from the colonization fleet in particular have seemed reluctant to accept any personal risk in maintaining our position on Tosev 3.”
“I find that unfortunate,” Nesseref said. “It lends truth to the disparaging comments certain males of the conquest fleet have been known to make about us colonists. Tosev 3 is now our world, too.”
“Exactly so.” The other female made the affirmative gesture, then turned one eye turret toward a monitor other than the one in which she was speaking with Nesseref. “Report to your shuttlecraft port at once. The male you are transporting to China will be waiting there for you.”
“It shall be done,” Nesseref said, and broke the connection. She didn’t leave her apartment quite at once. First, she made sure Orbit had enough food and water to last him till her expected return, and for some little while after that, too. “Behave yourself while I am gone,” she told the tsiongi. He yawned in lordly disdain, as if to say she had no business telling him what to do.
She couldn’t wait for the regularly scheduled transport to the shuttlecraft port. That meant she had to hire a Big Ugly to drive her there. In her experience, Tosevites in motorcars were more dangerous than members of the Race in shuttlecraft, but she survived the journey and gave her driver enough of the metal disks the locals used as currency to keep him happy.
One of the males in charge of maintaining shuttlecraft hurried up to her. He pointed to the machine waiting on the concrete. “You are fully fueled, and your oxygen supply is also full. We have thoroughly checked the shuttlecraft. I assure you, everything is as it should be.”
“I thank you for your care.” As always, Nesseref would make her own checks before she let her fingerclaw press the launch control. She asked, “Is my passenger ready? He had better be, seeing how urgently I was sent here.”
“Here he comes now,” the technician answered, pointing with his tongue toward the blockhouse by the broad concrete expanse of the landing area. And, sure enough, another male hurried up to the technician and Nesseref.
“I greet you, superior sir,” Nesseref told him, for his body paint was a good deal more ornate than hers.
“And I greet you, Shuttlecraft Pilot,” he answered. “I am Relhost. I have considerable experience in fighting Big Uglies, both in full-scale combat against organized forces and in battle against irregulars. I am given to understand the situation in China combines elements of both combat modes.”
“All right, superior sir.” Nesseref didn’t need to know anything about Relhost’s expertise. She assumed he had it; if not, he wouldn’t have been sent to China. She started for the shuttlecraft. Relhost followed. She climbed the mounting ladder and took her place in the pilot’s seat. Relhost strapped himself into the passenger’s seat with a familiarity that showed he’d flown in a shuttlecraft a good many times before.