In the Balance

The interpreter stumbled through the translation of that last sentence, and added, “I have trouble rendering the natives’ religious terms into our language, Exalted Fleetlord. Marx and Lenin are gods or prophets in the SSSR.” He spoke briefly with Molotov, then said, “Prophets. Vyacheslav Mikhailovich knew this Lenin himself.”

Molotov said, “Lenin led the revolution which overthrew our emperor and established the rule of the people and workers of the SSSR. I am proud to say I assisted in this worthy task.”

Atvar stared at the Tosevite in disgust. He spoke to the interpreter: “Tell the bandit I have nothing further to say to him. If he and his murderers will not yield themselves to us, their punishment shall only be the harsher.”

The interpreter slowly, haltingly, turned the crisp words into the mushy native language. Molotov answered with one word. “Nyet.” The fleetlord glanced with one quick flick of an eye at the interpreter to see if that meant what he thought. It did.

“Get him off this ship,” Atvar snapped. “I am sorry he comes here under truce, or I would treat him as he deserves.” The idea of wantonly slaughtering an emperor-even a Tosevite emperor-gave him an atavistic urge to bite something: Molotov by choice, though the Big Ugly looked anything but appetizing.

The doorway out of Atvar’s office hissed open. The interpreter pushed off from the chair whose back he’d been holding and shot through it. Molotov followed more awkwardly, the graceless garments he wore flapping about him. As soon as he was gone, Atvar shut the door behind him. The rather sharp smell of his body remained, like a bad memory. The fleetlord turned up the air scrubbers to make it go away.

While it still lingered, he phoned Kirel. When the shiplord’s face appeared in his screen, he said, “You will come to my quarters immediately.”

“It shall be done, Exalted Fleetlord.” Kirel blanked the screen. He was as good as his word. When he chimed for admittance, Atvar let him in, then closed the door again. Kirel asked, “How fare the talks with the Tosevites, Exalted Fleetlord?”

“Less well than I had hoped.” Atvar let his breath hiss out in a long, frustrated sigh. “All their greatest empires still refuse to acknowledge the glory of the Emperor.” He cast his eyes down in the ritual gesture. He would not tell Kirel what he’d learned from Molotov, not yet; his own pain remained too raw to permit it.

“This is altogether a more difficult task than we looked for when we set out from Home,” Kirel said. The shiplord had tact. He forbore to remind Atvar that he had urged a surrender demand before actual ground combat got under way. After a moment, he went on, “It has been too many generations since the Race fought a real war.”

“What do you mean?” Atvar tried to hold sudden suspicion from his voice. Tactful or not, Kirel coveted the ornate body paint the fleetlord wore. Atvar continued, “We are trained for this mission as well as we could possibly be.”

“Indeed we are,” Kirel agreed gravely, which only made Atvar more suspicious. “But the Tosevites are not merely trained; they are experienced. Weapon for weapon, we far surpass them. In craft on the battlefield, though, they exceed us. That has hurt us, again and again.”

“I know. They are worse foes than I expected them to be even after we learned of their abnormal technological growth. Not only are they wily, as you say, they are stubborn. I was confident they would break when they realized the advantages we enjoyed over them. But they keep fighting, as best they can.”

“It is so,” Kirel said. “Perhaps already being locked in combat among themselves has given them the discipline they need to carry on against us. Along with being stubborn, they are well-trained and skilled. We can continue to smash them for a long time yet; one of our landcruisers, one of our aircraft, is worth anywhere from ten to twenty-five of theirs. But we have only so many munitions. If we cannot overawe them, we may face difficulties. In my coldest dreams, I see our last missile wrecking a clumsy Tosevite landcruiser-while another such landcruiser rolls out of a factory and toward us.”

Of themselves, Atvar’s clawed hands twitched as if to tear a foe in front of him. “That is a cold dream. You should have left it in your coffin when you awoke. We have set down our factory ships here and there, you know. As we gain raw materials, we shall be able to increase our stocks.”

“As you say, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel answered. He did not say-presumably because he knew Atvar knew it as well as himself-that the factories, even at top output, could not produce in a day more than a small part of the supplies the Race’s armed forces used during that day. Back on Home, no one had reckoned that the armada would use as much as it had.