In the Balance

Kirel waggled his fingers in a shrug. “Now that we know they fight from the sea, we can sink their big boats, and faster than they can hope to build them. The boats aren’t exactly inconspicuous, either. That problem will go away, and soon.”

“May it, be so.” But once Atvar got to worrying out loud, he wasn’t about to let himself be mollified so easily, “These missiles they’re trying to build-how are we supposed to shoot them all down? We came here intending, to fight savages whose only missiles came from bows. And do you know what the latest is?”

“Tell me, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel said, in the tones of a male who understands he’d better listen sympathetically if he knows what’s good for him.

“In the past few days, for the first time, jet planes rose against our aircraft from both Deutschland and Britain, They’re still badly inferior to ours-especially the Britainish ones-but not nearly so much so as the primitive crates with revolving airfoils we’ve been facing.”

“I-hadn’t heard that, Exalted Fleetlord.” Now Atvar really had Kirel’s attention again. After that moment of surprise, the shiplord continued, “Wait a bit. Deutschland and Britain were enemies to each other before we landed, am I right?”

“Yes, yes. Britain and the U.S.A. and the SSSR and China against Deutschland and Italia; Britain and the U.S.A. and China against Nippon; but not, for some eggless reason, Nippon against the SSSR. If the Tosevites didn’t keep coming up with new things to throw at us, I’d swear on the Emperor’s name they were all mad.”

“Wait a bit,” Kirel repeated. “If Deutschland and Britain were foes until we landed, it’s not likely they’d share jet plane technology, is it?”

“I wouldn’t think so, but who can tell for certain what the Big Uglies would do? Maybe it’s having so many different empires on so little land that makes them the way they are.” The scrambled, convoluted way the Tosevites played the game of politics made even the maneuvers of the imperial court tame by comparison. Dealing with any one Tosevite official made Atvar feel out of his league. As for playing them off against one another, as the manuals suggested, he counted himself lucky that they weren’t exploiting him.

But Kirel was still worrying over the jets: “Exalted Fleetlord, if they don’t share technology, that means they can only have each developed it independently. They are like a bad virus, Fleetlord; they mutate-not physically, but technically, which is worse-too fast, maybe faster than we can handle. Perhaps we should sterilize the planet of them.”

The fleetlord turned both eye sockets to bear on his subordinate. This, from the male who had urged giving the Big Uglies a chance to surrender before the Race choked off their communications? — or rather, failed to choke off their communications? “You think they represent so great a danger to us, Shiplord?”

“I do, Exalted Fleetlord. We are at a high level, and have been steady there for ages. They are lower, but rising quickly. We must smash them down while we still can.”

“If only the filthy creatures hadn’t hit the 56th Emperor Jossano,” Atvar said mournfully. If only we hadn’t kept so many of our bombs aboard one ship, he added mentally. But no, he was not to blame for that; ancient doctrine ordained entrusting large stores of nuclear weapons only to the most reliable shiplords. As an officer of the Race should, he’d followed that ancient doctrine. No one could possibly think less of him for that-except that in so doing, he’d suffered a disaster. The way ancient doctrine corroded whenever it touched matters Tosevite worried him even more than the fighting down on the surface of Tosev 3.

“We still have some of the devices left,” Kirel persisted. “Maybe the Big Uglies will be more willing to submit if they see what we can do to their cities.”

Atvar threw back his head in disagreement. “We do not destroy the world toward which a settler fleet is already traveling.” That was what ancient doctrine said, doctrine based on the conquests of Rabotevs and Hallessi.

“Exalted Fleetlord, Tosev 3 appears to me to be dissimilar to our previous campaigns,” Kirel said,’ pressing his superior up to the edge of politeness. “The Tosevites have a greater capacity to resist than did the other subject races, and so seem to require harsher measures. The Deutsche in particular, Exalted Fleetlord-the cannon that wrecked the 56th Emperor Jossano was theirs, even if it was on the land of the SSSR, and the missile the Big Uglies tried to launch, and now, you tell me, they fly jet planes as well.”

“No,” Atvar said. Ancient doctrine declared that new planets were not to be spoiled by radioactivity, which was apt to linger long after the war of subjugation ended. After all, the Race would be living here in perpetuity, integrating Tosev into the fabric of the Empire… and Tosev 3 didn’t have that much land to begin with.