Upsetting the Balance

“No,” Ussmak answered. Half the males in the communal chamber stared at him in astonishment. Disobeying an intercom speaker was one thing, disobeying a direct personal order quite another. But the repeated loss of cherished crewmales-and the ginger in him-took Ussmak to a place far outside the Race’s normal patterns. And when he went to that place, he was able to take the rest of the males in the chamber with him. After their moment of surprise, they screamed abuse at Hisslef.

The base commandant spread his hands so all the claws showed, a gesture showing he was ready to fight “You will come with menow, you egg-addled wretch,” he ground out, and took two steps toward Ussmak.

Ussmak raised the personal weapon he’d been holding ever since he frightened the mechanics with it. A ginger-quickened impulse made him squeeze the trigger. The burst crumpled Hisslef and flung him backwards like a sheet of wastepaper. Ussmak was amazed at how little he cared. With Nejas’ blood, and Skoob’s, on his coat, what did having Hisslef’s on his hands matter?

‘We’ll clean them all out!” he shouted. “The base is ours!”

Again, he’d stunned the males in the communal chamber. Again, he was able to take them with him to a place where they might never have gone otherwise. “Clean them out!” they bayed. “The base is ours!”

Atvar wished with all his spirit that the Race had never come to Tosev 3. He wished that, if the Race had to have come to Tosev 3, it would have done so under a different fleetlord. “By the Emperor, maybe Strahashould have overthrown me after the first atomic bomb the Big Uglies touched off,” he said savagely. “I’d like to see how he’d enjoy coping with these latest ones.”

“The loss of Rome was a heavy one for us in many ways, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel agreed. “Not only were military and administrative casualties heavy, the bomb also destroyed the Big Ugly who called himself 12th Pope Pius, and that male had been a leading factor in accommodating the large number of Tosevites of his theological persuasion to our rule. His traditional authority reached back almost two thousand Tosevite years, which for this planet gives most antique status.”

“Unlike a good many others on this world, he was able to recognize the advantages of cooperating with authority,” Atvar answered, “and he would not have lost all his power after the conquest, as the emperors and not-emperors here so bitterly fear. As you say, Shiplord, an unfortunate Big Ugly to lose.”

“Targeting the Deutsch city called Hamburg for retaliation seems fitting, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel said, “it being a center for water-borne commerce.”

“Yes, we shall destroy it. In fact”-Atvar flicked one eye toward a chronometer-“it is already destroyed. Thus we avenge ourselves for Rome; thus we visit horror on Deutschland in exchange for the horror the Deutsche visited upon us.” He sighed wearily. “And for what? The Deutsche continue to resist us. This latest bomb had nuclear materials entirely of their own making. And much of the radiation from our nuclear explosions on Deutsch territory-and from that of their first weapon, the one east of Breslau-is blown east and contaminates our holdings and our males in Poland.”

“It contaminates the Deutsche first and worse, Exalted Fleetlord,” Kirel said.

Atvar hissed out a sad sigh. “Truth, and I thank you for trying to cheer me with it. But another truth is that the Deutsche, whether out of sheer ignorance or simply their own savagery-given some of their practices before we arrived, the latter strikes me as not at all unlikely-well, as I say, whatever the reason may be, the Deutsche do not seem to care what happens to their own males and females.”

“What happens in the generations to come will make them care,” Kirel said.

“Truth again,” Atvar answered, “and if you put this truth to the Deutsch not-emperor-theFuhrer, he calls himself-I know precisely what he would say: ‘So what?’ If something suffices for the moment, the Big Uglies care nothing for long-term consequences.”

“This irony bites us again and again,” Kirel said. “We must have a care for the future management of Tosev 3 in order to preserve it more or less intact for the settlers aboard the colonization fleet, while those native to the planet would cheerfully fling it into the cremator for the sake of a temporary advantage.”

Pshing’s face appeared on the communicator screen. “Exalted Fleetlord, excuse the interruption,” Atvar’s adjutant said, “but, per your orders, I report the successful destruction by atomic weapon of the Deutsch city of Hamburg. All aircraft involved in the mission have returned safely to base.”