Chapter Forty-Nine
My mind cuts in many directions. The gyrodome makes the blades sharper.
—Zultan Abal Meshdi
It was difficult to imagine that anyone could be unhappy living in the magnificent Citadel of Paradij. As the Zultan of the Mutati Kingdom, Abal Meshdi possessed everything a shapeshifter could desire, including a harem of the most stunning and sensual Mutati women in all of creation, each of them rounded heaps of rolling fat. On a terraced hillside, his private baths offered a broad selection of mineral and spirit waters from all over the galaxy, for soothing his tired bones and renewing his energy, which had been sapped by endless affairs of state. Tens of thousands of Mutatis, robots, and the slaves of various races (other than allergy-producing Humans) worked for him in the Citadel, a virtual city within the capital city, attending to his every need, his every whim.
Originally, Paradij had not been a world that appealed to any galactic race for habitation, since it was covered with arid deserts and vast salt flats. But the planet featured deep aquifers, essentially subterranean seas. The Mutatis—driven there by Human attacks against their other planets—had set up a massive hydraulic engineering project to bring the water to the surface, which they then used to create rivers, lakes, and irrigation canals for crops and forests. The costs in money and the expenditure of time had been enormous, but the marvelous result had been a source of inspiration to all Mutatis. It showed what they could do in even the most difficult environments, and that the greedy, aggressive Humans could not take everything away from them.
He lived in such exquisite luxury that he didn’t really need to go to war against the merchant princes. But they had insulted him and his people, driving them from one world to the next, never letting up.
And Mutatis did not take insults lightly.
With many important matters weighing heavily on his mind, the big shapeshifter shuffled toward the clearglax bubble of his gyrodome, which he’d had moved to one of the highest rooms in the Citadel, where he could be closer to God-on-High. The platform inside the dome spun slowly now as it awaited him, making a faint, inviting hum. Pursuant to his instructions, the mind-enhancing unit was in its simplest, most basic configuration, without the customized compartments that could be fitted on the outside to contain aeromutatis and hydromutatis. Sometimes he did not want such distractions.
Just then an aide interrupted him and said, “Pardon me, Your Eminence, but there is a messenger to see you. He says it is important.”
Shaking his tiny head in dismay, since he really needed what he had come to call his “morning gyro treatment,” the Zultan said, “Very well, send him in.”
Moments later a uniformed aeromutati flew into the chamber, and hovered in the air. It was one of the small, speedy flyers who were best suited for such tasks. “There are two messages, Sire. I carry one”—he held a small communication pyramid in one hand—”and the other is outside.”
“Outside?” Abal Meshdi said.
“Look over there, My Zultan,” the messenger said. He pointed to a small window on the narrow north end of the chamber.
Hurrying to the window, Meshdi beheld a sight that surprised him, and filled him with patriotic pride. He counted ten outrider schooners flying in formation over the capital city, swooping this way and that.
“They are performing for you, Sire, in honor of the glory they will achieve when you send them into battle.”
“But I thought there was a delay in production,” the Zultan said. “I was told that the vessels would not be ready for another month.”
“Apparently they solved the problem,” the messenger said, with a shrug of his narrow shoulders. “Look, Sire, the outriders have come to receive your blessing before departing on their holy missions and giving up their lives.”
Filled with pride, the Zultan watched the bomb-laden schooners, each a beautiful doomsday machine capable of annihilating an entire enemy planet. Such a magnificent, perfect design. Truly, his researchers were inspired by God-on-High when they developed this most perfect and deadly of all weapons!
The Zultan felt tremendously humbled by all of this. As the leader of trillions of Mutatis, he was still only a tool of the Almighty, put here on Paradij to further the hallowed Mutati mission. Today, his sacred duty was to dispatch these outriders.
Already two fringe planets under enemy control—Earth and Mars—had fallen victim to his deadly design. And one additional outrider had been sent as well, with orders to strike against a third planet in the future at a predetermined time, on a Mutati holy day. Now—glory of glories!—ten more magnificent weapons were ready to go, and only needed his blessing before surging off into space.
The opening salvos of the Demolio program were all according to a precise, sacred pattern of numerology, following mathematical formulas laid out in The Holy Writ of his people. Two, one, and ten were sacred numbers, referring to a sequence of events that occurred long ago in Mutati history, leading to the most celebrated of military victories.
Until now.
It was not necessary to wait for confirmation of the third kill—the outrider who was still out there—before sending more of his brethren into the fray. The excited Zultan knew nothing could go wrong with any of the attacks, and that the third one would go off without a hitch, scattering another merchant prince planet to the cosmic winds. Then there would be ten more.
And many more after that.
‘Everything is predetermined,’ he thought, quoting from the ancient sacred text of The Holy Writ.
The Zultan felt euphoria sweeping over him, and then noticed the aeromutati fluttering its short wings, still waiting to deliver the second message. “Oh yes,” Meshdi said, extending a hand, palm up.
The messenger placed the gleaming communication pyramid on his palm. Afterward, the aeromutati tried to leave, but Abal Meshdi shouted after him, “Wait! I might send a response.”
* * * * *
The Zultan didn’t want to believe the message.
Angrily, he hurled the communication pyramid at the aeromutati and hit him square in the head, dropping him out of the air, where he had been hovering. The flying Mutati thudded heavily to the floor, didn’t even twitch. He was dead, but this didn’t make the Zultan feel any better.
“It’s not possible!” he bellowed.
According to the missive, his son Hari’Adab had barely escaped with his life when enemy commandos destroyed the Demolio manufacturing plant, along with the adjacent outrider training facility. The ten planet-busting schooners now at Paradij had been dispatched shortly before the disaster, and—for reasons of military security—had flown across the solar system by conventional hydion propulsion.
Two attendants ran into the chamber. “Your Eminence?” one of them said. “is everything all right?”
Reaching into the pockets of his robe with his two outer hands, Meshdi brought out a pair of long knives. Thunk. Thunk. The motions were smooth as he hurled the blades expertly at the terramutatis, hitting each of them in their torsos. The attendants dropped into piles of pulpy, bleeding flesh, beside the messenger.
For months, the Zultan had been practicing with his knives, throwing them at target boards. Fortunately for his aim, the attendants had been wide, easy targets. But he still didn’t feel any better.
I need to kill Humans, not my own people.
Extremely agitated, he entered the gyrodome and stood on the whirling floor. Closing his eyes, he felt the mechanism probing his overburdened mind, trying to purge it of the weight of vital duties and decisions. But it only made him feel worse.
When he finally stepped out of the gyrodome, the Zultan felt confused and uncertain. Now he would need to wait for instructions from God-on-High before proceeding. Clearly, it was not enough to only destroy ten merchant prince planets, since the enemy had hundreds, with military industrial facilities on many of them. With only a limited number of doomsday weapons and no manufacturing facility to replace them, Abal Meshdi needed to rework his war plan.
As he watched the gyrodome stop spinning and shut down, he made a new vow. The destruction of his Demolio facility would slow the Zultan down, but he would resume operations as quickly as possible at another location, diverting all possible resources to the project.
And next time there would be no security breach.