Mission accomplished.
Aboard the Victory, Freston keyed acknowledgment. Then he gave swift orders for the Aoife to scoop the team up and head for home.
Freston turned to Sten. "Ready, sir."
"Proceed."
As the AM2 train and abandoned depot swung in their orbits, the Victory suddenly appeared out of hyperspace. Missile ports swung open, baring the Victory's teeth. Six Kalis spat out.
Before they struck, the Victory was gone.
On Dusable, there was no sound as the Kalis hit home and set off the massive AM2 explosion. Kenna and the thousands of SDT workers still gathered at the shipyard election party were suddenly aware that something was different. It was an odd, swimming sensation as all objects suddenly lost dimension. As if they had all been transported to a world of dots on paper.
They looked up at the sky. And it was gone.
All they could see was blinding white light.
There were loud screams. The crowd wavered as a gut-gripping hysteria swept over it.
Kenna fought for self-control. He raised a hand—to plead for calm.
Then all was abruptly normal. The white light gone. Dimension returned.
Kenna sucked in breath. Then his heart jammed against his ribs as he saw the enormous vid screen at the edge of the crowd wiped clean of his transmitted image.
Another man's face looked down on them. Vague familiarity clawed at his memory. There were loud, frightened mutters from the crowd. Then Kenna knew.
It was Sten.
"Citizens of Dusable," Sten's voice boomed. "I bring you grim news. Your leaders have callously chosen to gamble with your lives. And they have sold your right to be a free and independent people to the Eternal Emperor. And now you are his slavish allies."
Kenna shouted frantically for his tech to wipe Sten's face from the monitor. But it was no use. And it wasn't only at the shipyards that people were hearing and watching Sten speak. The broadcast was overpowering all transmissions, all freqs on the planet.
"Considering Dusable's importance to the Empire of Evil, I have no choice but to remove it as a threat to me and all freedom-loving beings.
"The first attack has already been launched. We have destroyed the AM2 depot the traitor Solon Kenna was boasting about. We have also destroyed the AM2 shipment that was the price your Judas leaders set for your betrayal."
The crowd was transfixed, hanging on every word that fell from those gigantic lips on the vid screen. Kenna was looking for a bolt hole.
"My forces are launching a series of attacks on your world," Sten said.
People in the crowd looked wildly about, as if missiles were going to fall at any moment.
"However," Sten said, "it is not our wish to harm innocent civilians. Therefore, I now give you warning on which military targets we shall strike. I urge you all to abandon those areas immediately."
Sten held up his doomsday list And began to read out: "In Ward Three, the arms facility... In Ward Fifty-six, the tooling facility... In Ward Eighty-nine, the shipyard..."
Kenna and the union minions didn't wait to hear the rest of the list. Sten had just named the shipyard where they all stood and gaped.
Screaming, weeping, calling to forgotten gods for mercy, the crowd poured out of the yard and raced away for safety.
Kenna was too scared to be ashamed to be among them.
The missile swooped lazily out of the sky, dropped to twenty feet above the broad boulevard, and slowly made its way along the avenue, on a hastily installed McLean drive. Broadcasting as it went:
"Warning. I am a Kali missile. I carry a low-yield nuclear device. Please do not interfere with my progress. I have no wish to harm innocent civilians."
All over the street, beings scurried for cover. Windows slammed as the missile cruised by at second-story height.
In one apartment, a child reached out with a stick to touch the missile. His mother grabbed him just in time and pulled him back.
In Ward Three, the workers at the targeted arms factory dashed out of the sprawling complex. Fleeing on foot, gravcar, and occasionally on one another's back.
A Kali slowly approached, skimming over their heads.
"Danger. Danger. I am a Kali missile. My target is this arms factory. Please clear the area immediately. Do not panic at my impact. I am set to explode in fifteen minutes."
Still broadcasting, the Kali sailed through an open door of plant headquarters.
A plant supervisor watched in awe as the missile entered the main work area. Then settled to the floor.
"You now have fifteen minutes to evacuate. Please leave at once. I have no wish to harm innocent civilians... You now have fourteen minutes and fifty seconds to evacuate. Please leave at..."
The supervisor and his team needed no further prodding. They ran.
At a bearing factory in Ward Forty-five, a missile was buried up to its nose in a crater.
"... please abandon this area. I am armed with twenty-four explosive devices. The first will detonate in one hour. Please do not return to the area after the first explosion. The other explosives have been programmed to explode every hour on the hour. Warning. I am a Kali missile. Please—"
A burly ward boss, frustrated at being cheated out of contracted overtime, rushed forward. Swinging a two-meter-long hunk of steel.
He connected. Then disappeared from the face of Dusable as the Kali exploded.
Two factory buildings collapsed as the force of the blast hammered out. But only the ward boss and four of his crew were dead. Good sense saved the thirteen thousand other workers. They had fled long ago.
Dusable's biggest shipyard was now empty of politicians, hangers-on, and sentient life. Scattered all over were hundreds of abandoned freighters, transports, liners, and private flitters.
Kalis rained down. These fell with no warning.
In two awful minutes the yard was a smoking hole. Surrounded by twisted frames and molten metal.
And every launch pad had been turned into craters. The port would be useless for decades.
Sten studied the damage on the monitor. Image after image of destruction leaped up at him.
Factories gone.
Smoke and fire bursting upward from other points as delayed explosions went off.
Not just one, but thirty shipyards in total ruin.
It would be a long time before Dusable would be a threat—or a support to anyone again.
As the mind-clouding scenes of destruction swept by, he had a sudden, giddy moment He felt lightheaded. Powerful.
Almost... godlike?
For just a heartbeat he knew what it must be like to be the Eternal Emperor.
Sten shuddered and turned away, disgusted at himself.
Captain Freston stopped him just as he was about to exit the bridge. He had a puzzled frown on his face.
"A strange thing has happened, sir," he said.
"Go ahead."
"That AM2 shipment? Well, according to the com officer, just before the missiles hit, there was an odd transmission."
"You're sure it was from the ship?"
"Yessir. I double-checked it myself. The message was coded. Naturally."
"Where was the signal being sent?" Sten asked.
‘That's even stranger, sir," Freston said. "I've run the coordinates over again myself. And I keep on coming up with the same answer."
"Which is?"
‘To nowhere, sir. It was being beamed to nowhere."
BOOK TWO
POISON PAWN