In the Balance

The intelligence male nervously twitched his tailstump. “There we are less certain, Exalted Fleetlord. One of the languages seems close to Deutsch, the other rather further from Russki-these cursed Tosevites have altogether too many languages. But if we correctly understand the import of these signals, one faction in the city appears to be seeking our aid against the other.”

“It’s not the Deutsche themselves calling for our assistance, surely?”

“By the Emperor, no, Exalted Fleetlord,” the intelligence officer said. “It’s the others, the ones fighting against them. Our estimates are that the empire of Deutschland as it now stands is a jerry-built structure, most of its territory having been added in the course of the inter-Tosevite war in progress when our fleet arrived. Some of the inhabitants of that empire remain restive under Deutsch control.”

“I see,” Atvar said, though he didn’t, not altogether. Product of an empire-of the Empire-which had been itself for tens of millennia, he felt himself failing to grasp what it was like to try to build one in a couple of years (without even the symbol of an emperor to bind it together, in most cases), or, for that matter, to pass suddenly out of the control of one empire and into that of another.

The intelligence officer said, “The groups involved in the fighting against the Deutsche appear to be prominently represented in the camp our forces overran east of the town now involved in strife.”

“Which camp do you mean?” Atvar asked; a fleetlord’s life is full of minutiae. Then he let out a hiss. “Yes, I remember. That camp. What was its name?”

The intelligence officer had to check the computer before he answered. “It is called Treblinka, Exalted Fleetlord.” Even spoken by a male of the Race, the Tosevite word sounded harsh and ugly. “Do you wish me to call up the images our combat teams recorded when they captured the place?”

“By the Emperor, no,” Atvar said quickly. “Once was sufficient.”

Once, as a matter of fact, had been excessive. Atvar thought he’d hardened himself to the horrors of war. Even such hardening as he’d gained had not come easy; his own forces were taking far more casualties than the grimmest estimates had predicted before the fleet left Home. But then, no one had expected the Tosevites to be able to fight an industrialized war.

What the Race’s advancing armor discovered at Treblinka wasn’t industrialized war, though. It wasn’t even industrialized exploitation of criminals and captives. The Race had camps of that sort on all its planets, and had overrun more on Tosev 3; the SSSR, especially, seemed full of them, all far more brutal than anything the Emperor, in his mercy, would have permitted.

But Treblinka… the fleetlord did not need the computer screen to replay images of Treblinka. Once reminded of the place, his mind called up the pictures, and he could not turn his eyes away from what his mind saw. Treblinka wasn’t industrialized war or industrialized exploitation. Treblinka was industrialized murder-mass graves full of Tosevites shot in the head, trucks designed so the waste products of their inefficient, dirty engines were vented into a sealed compartment to kill those inside, and, just installed before the Race seized Treblinka, chambers to slaughter large numbers of Big Uglies at once with poisonous gas. It was as if the Deutsche had kept working to find the most effective way to get rid of as many other Big Uglies at a batch as they could.

Even if Treblinka represented no more than one set of barbarians tormenting another, it was plenty to sicken Atvar. It also set him thinking. “You say the groups now opposing the Deutsche in this town are the same ones the Deutsche have been massacring?”

“Linguistic evidence and preliminary interrogations suggest this is so, yes, Exalted Fleetlord,” the intelligence officer answered.

“We shall promise, them help, then, and deliver it,” Atvar said.

“As the exalted fleetlord wishes.” The intelligence officer deserved higher rank, Atvar thought. He kept any trace of what he thought about the fleetlord’s order from his voice. Whether he agreed with it or thought it demented, he would obey it, as males of the Race were trained to obey from their hatchling days.

Atvar said, “We have here at last an opportunity to use some Big Uglies as gloves, with our hands inside. Despite their losses, the leading empires refuse to yield to us. Italia is wavering, but-”

“But Italia has too many Deutsch soldiers in it to be fully a free agent. Yes,” the male said.

He was not only submissive but keen, Atvar thought happily, forgiving him the interruption because he had been right. “Exactly so. Perhaps we shall presently help them as we shall go to the aid of the, the-”

“The Polska and the Yehudim,” the male supplied.