“Well put, Exalted Fleetlord.” Kirel let his mouth fall open in an appreciative chuckle. Atvar studied the map with one eye and the shiplord with the other. He still mistrusted Kirel. A properly loyal subordinate would have played no role in the effort to oust him. Yes, next to Straha, Kirel was a paragon of virtue, but that was not saying enough to leave the fleetlord comfortable.
Atvar said, “The cost in equipment and males for territory gained is running far higher than the computer projections. We’ve lost several heavy transports, and we cannot afford that at all. Without the transport fleet, we’ll have to use starships to move landcruisers about-and that would leave them vulnerable to the maniacal Tosevites.”
“Truth, Exalted Fleetlord.” Kirel hesitated, then went on, “At best, computer projections gave us less than a fifty percent chance of succeeding in the conquest of Britain if the campaign in the SSSR was not satisfactorily concluded first.”
Kirel remained unfailingly polite, but Atvar was not in the mood for criticism. “The computer’s reasoning was based on our ability to shift resources from the SSSR after we conquered it,” he snapped. “True, we did not conquer it, but we have shifted resources-after the Soviets exploded that atomic bomb, we’ve scaled back operations in their territory. This produces something of the effect the computer envisioned, even if by a different route.”
“Yes, Exalted Fleetlord.” If Kirel was convinced, he did a good job of hiding it. He changed the subject, but not to one more reassuring: “We are down to our last hundred antimissiles, Exalted Fleetlord.”
“That is not good,” Atvar said, an understatement that would do until a bigger one came along, which wouldn’t be any time soon. As was his way, he did his best to look on the bright side of things: “At least we can concentrate those missiles against Deutschland, the only Tosevite empire exploring that technology at the moment.”
“You are of course correct,” Kirel said. Then he and the fleetlord stopped and looked at each other in mutual consternation-and understanding. With the Race, saying something was not happening at the moment meant it would not happen, certainly not in a future near enough to require worry. With the Big Uglies, it meant what it said and nothing more: it was no guarantee that the Americans or the Russkis or the Nipponese or even the British wouldn’t start lobbing guided missiles at the Race tomorrow or the day after. Even more unnerving, both males had come to take that possibility for granted. With the Tosevites, you couldn’t tell.
Kirel tried again: “We continue to expend the antimissile missiles at a rate of several per day. We also seek to destroy the launchers from which the Deutsch missiles come, but we have had only limited success there, as they are both mobile and easy to conceal.”
“Any success on Tosev 3 seems limited,” Atvar said with a sigh. “We might do better to blast the factories in which the missiles are manufactured. If the Deutsche cannot produce them, they cannot fire them. And missiles require great precision; if we destroy the tools needed to make them, the Big Uglies will be a long while coming up with more.” He realized he was once more reduced to buying time against the Tosevites, but that was better than losing to them.
“This course is also being attempted,” Kirel said, “but, while it pains me to contradict the exalted fleetlord, the Tosevite missiles are astonishingly crude. Their guidance is so bad as to make them no more than area weapons, extremely long-range artillery, but the prospect of large weights of high explosive landing behind our lines remains unpleasant; some have evaded our countermeasures and done considerable damage, and that situation will grow far worse as we run out of countermissiles. The corresponding point is that they are far easier to build than the missiles that shoot them down. We attack factories we’ve identified as producing missile components, but the Deutsche continue to produce and launch the pestilential things.”
Atvar sighed again. There in an eggshell was the story of the war against the Big Uglies. The Race took all the proper steps to contain them-and got hurt anyhow.
A screen on his desk lit up, showing the features of his adjutant, Pshing. Atvar immediately started to worry. Pshing wouldn’t interrupt his conference with Kirel for anything that wasn’t important, which meant, in practice, for anything that hadn’t gone wrong. “What is it?” Atvar demanded, putting a fierce snarl into the interrogative cough.
“Forgive me for troubling you, Exalted Fleetlord,” Pshing said nervously, “but Fzzek, commander of invasion forces in Britain, has received under sign of truce a disturbing message from Churchill, the chief minister to the petty emperor of Britain. He requests your orders on how to proceed.”
“Give me the message,” Atvar said.
