Chapter Twenty-Five
Oh, the challenges of leadership! Can I achieve what God-On-High expects of me?This I vow: I shall never stop trying.
—Citadel Journals
His Exalted Magnificence the Zultan Abal Meshdi received many messages and reports—from around his realm and from his allies—but never anything like this. With all he had put into the Demolio project—the funds, the manpower, the time, and the angst—this was the most anticipated communication he had ever received.
Everything rode upon the precious research project that he had commissioned.
The shapeshifter stared at a purple-and-gold pyramid in the hands of the young royal messenger who fluttered in front of him in the audience hall, his tiny feet not touching the mosaic floor. The slender youth, an aeromutati who had ridden a podship from the Adurian Republic to Paradij, could fly with his short white wings, but not through space. After arriving at the orbital pod station above Paradij, he had taken a shuttle to the ground depot, and from there had flown to the Citadel overlooking the city.
The messenger shivered slightly, perhaps from the chilly air outside, but more likely from fear.
Hesitating, the Zultan did not reach out to accept the communication pyramid. He wondered if there had been unforeseen problems with the Demolio program, or—as he hoped and prayed—had the final testing gone smoothly?
Suddenly, Meshdi grabbed for the pyramid with his middle arm, startling the bearer and causing him to drop it on the hard tile floor with a loud clatter.
Apologizing profusely, the functionary retrieved it. As he fumbled with the device, however, the seal mechanism released and the sides of the pyramid lit up, casting bright light around it.
Disgusted with the ineptitude, the Zultan hand-signaled to a black-uniformed guard in the doorway. The rotund Mutati guard opened fire with his jolong rifle, shooting high-speed projectiles that smashed the aeromutati back against a wall, leaving him a blood-purple mass of torn flesh and broken wings. He slumped to the floor, dead.
As the guard rushed toward the body, the Zultan shouted, “I meant for you to remove him from my sight. It was not necessary to kill him.”
“Sorry, Sire. I thought you … uh, I … misinterpreted your signal.”
Abal Meshdi realized that he had himself sent the wrong hand signal. No matter. He would have the guard put to death anyway. The Zultan did not tolerate mistakes. Except his own, of course.
Glaring in feigned disapproval, Meshdi retrieved the communication pyramid and activated it. Through a magnification mechanism on one of the faces of the device, he peered into a deep space sector that he did not recognize … a small blue sun, a pink planet, high meteor activity. Something streaked toward the planet from space, and moments later the world detonated, hurtling chunks of debris into the cosmos.
The pyramid glowed brightly for a moment, then went dark.
The audience hall was full of armed guards now, chattering nervously and searching for threats. Calmly, the Zultan again pressed the activation button of the pyramid. The same scene repeated itself, an unknown planet destroyed. No written communication accompanied the display, but under the circumstances he did not need one.
Gazing calmly at the guard who had fired his weapon, Meshdi said sternly, “Beaustan, with your long family history of service to this throne, you should know that it is never good form to kill the bearer of good news.”
“I’m terribly sorry,” the black-uniformed Mutati said. He looked confused, and terrified.
Noting a pool of perspiration forming on the floor beneath his guard, the Zultan smiled. “Well, we can always get new messengers.” And new guards, he thought. The Zultan pointed a long, bony finger. “Remove the body and bring contractors to repair the damage.”
“Immediately, Sire.”
As the men worked, Meshdi stood and watched. This was excellent news indeed, and he had worried unnecessarily.
But isn’t that the job of a Zultan, he mused, to worry? He found himself in a rare, giddy mood.
His secret research program, which had lasted for decades, was about to pay dividends. Finally, Adurian scientists, funded and supervised by Mutatis, had perfected the doomsday weapon. The planet he had just seen explode on the screen had been an uninhabited backwater world, a test case … blasted into space trash.
He absolutely loved the extrapolation: the entire Merchant Prince Alliance blown to bits and drifting through space like garbage.
Humans are garbage.
Just to play it safe, the detonation of the planet—and its aftermath—were camouflaged behind a veiling spectral field that made it look as if nothing had occurred at all. It had been an insignificant world in an immense galaxy, but the Zultan did not like to take chances.
Two guards carried the broken body of the royal messenger past him, while others cleaned up blood and feathers from the spot where he fell. A team of contractors—four Mutati females wearing tight coveralls over their lumpy bodies—hurried into the hall carrying tools and equipment.
Now the Zultan of the Mutati Kingdom had only to fund the training of an elite corps of “Mutati outriders” and manufacture enough Demolios to keep them busy—the high-powered torpedo-bombs that were capable of causing so much destruction. Any one of the projectiles could split through the crust and mantle of a planet and penetrate to the molten core within seconds. There it would go nuclear, with catastrophic results.
In this manner, the gleeful Mutati leader would destroy every merchant prince world. Then, to completely eradicate Humans, he would proceed to wipe out even planets that were capable of sustaining their form of life—those having water, the proper atmospheric conditions, and circular orbits that provided them with the most stable environments. By contrast, Mutatis could live on worlds their enemy would find intolerable, where conditions were too hot or too cold, or with atmospheres that were too thin or too thick, and even with gravities that were too heavy or too light. Mutatis—life forms based upon carbon-crystal combinations—were one of the most highly adaptable races in the galaxy. Hence, they could live in many places.
Meshdi, however, had decided to draw a line in space. After having been driven from planet to planet by the aggressive Humans, he would not be pushed back any further. The successful defense of Paradij had been a warning shot fired across their bow.
The Zultan intended to commence his extermination program with Human fringe worlds, where habitation was low and military defenses were weak, or even nonexistent. Ultimately he planned to strike the key merchant prince planets where hundreds of billions lived, but that would be far more difficult, and would require meticulous planning. Those worlds were on the main podways, and Human agents constantly boarded vessels along the way, searching for dangers with highly effective Mutati detection equipment.
If he focused on less guarded worlds it would provide the advantage of cutting off escape routes from the more populated planets, leaving the Humans no place to run.