The Last Starfighter (14 page)

Wishing he were anywhere else but in this den of power, the underling advanced, holding the scepter out before him. Xur the Rylan, son of Enduran of the League Council, accepted the scepter with obvious pleasure. He juggled it in both hands, luxuriating in the weight and feel of the gleaming black metal.

When he’d finished toying with it he grandly dismissed the underling who’d fetched it for him. That poor creature bowed repeatedly as he retreated from the command center as fast as courtesy permitted, greatly relieved at having escaped without a reprimand or a beating.

Balancing the scepter on one shoulder, Xur turned to face the expressionless Commander standing nearby.

“A shape and insignia that should be familiar to you, Kril. I made certain the pattern followed precisely that of the staff carried by your own Emperor. Is the likeness not remarkable?”

“Excellent Ko-Dan manufacture,” Kril muttered. He did not care for these posturings, which the renegade Rylan tried to turn into audiences instead of discussions.

“Yes, it certainly is. There is much to be said for a work force that obeys the dictates of its superiors unquestioningly. That sort of devotion has heretofore been alien to Rylos and the other worlds of the League, but we’ll change that, won’t we?”

“Yes,
we
will,” agreed the Commander.

Other eyes watched; other ears listened. Finally one senior officer could stand it no longer and began muttering dark threats by way of his subordinate. Kril noted the grumbling but chose to ignore it so long as the grumbler remained discreet. He could hardly blame the officer for expressing aloud the feelings of many of his comrades.

To his Rylan counterpart he said only, “It takes more than a scepter to rule, Xur, even a backward world like Rylos.”

“Backward, yes. So backward you would not think of approaching it so openly were it not for the aid of my backward self and my backward allies.” Kril tensed but again chose not to respond. Xur added, “But you are right. It does take more than a scepter to rule. After all, what is a scepter? Nothing more than a harmless standard of office.”

He touched a concealed switch. A thin shaft of green light emerged from the scepter’s black globe. It was the visual manifestation of a high-powered sonic needle, strong enough to heat the air around it. It could cut through just about anything. Xur waved it around the room with disconcerting casualness, but Kril never flinched.

The voice of the outraged senior officer became audible. “How long must we be forced to endure this fool . . .!”

Kril whirled to pin the officer with his eyes, making him shrink back inside his psyche. Realizing he’d overstepped his bounds, the officer executed a voiceless apology. However much the Ko-Dan officers disliked taking orders from, and suffering the antics of, the renegade Rylan, they were compelled to do so unless Xur’s granted rank was reduced. For the moment, he drew his strength directly from Imperial Decree. If not the person, that rank had to be given full respect.

Everyone in the command room was conscious of this silent exchange and its import for all of them. The officer accepted his rebuke silently. It was to be only a momentary humiliation, however. The word they had been waiting for since they’d first arrived on the outskirts of the Rylan system was passed from Research.

“We have a break in the energy shield defending Rylos,” a technician announced. Immediately the confrontation between Commander and officer was forgotten amidst general excitement.

“How long will the break last?” Kril inquired.

The technician communicated with his superiors in the command ship’s laboratory section, then replied, “Insufficient data for conclusive evaluation, Commander.”

“Is it weakened sufficiently to permit an attack?”

“Yes sir. Countershield believes they can suppress its effects until we can destroy the projector itself.”

Excitement gave way to methodical preparations. “Are the assault schedule and squadrons ready?”

“They’ve been ready for many cycles, Commander,” came the reply from Logistics.

“Then the time has come.” Kril’s eyes glistened with anticipation. This would be a moment the recorders would permatize in special script. “All sections prepare for first assault. Mass driver activation if . . .”

The sound of a fist slamming against a console cut off the rest of the Commander’s order. An enraged Xur glared at the aliens surrounding him. Ko-Dan they might be but in this time and place
he
was master, by decree of their own Emperor. He would not see that authority usurped. Especially not at this critical moment. He wanted to savor it, as he had savored it in his own mind for many long, frustrating, empty years. No alien interlopers were going to deprive him of that long-awaited pleasure.

He was conscious of their eyes on him, knew that if Kril would permit it any one of them would cheerfully rip his flesh from his bones. But they would not dare act without Kril’s permission, and Kril knew better than to allow his emotions to gain control of his mind.

So when he spoke to them he was not afraid, and he enjoyed their discomfort.

“My Ko-Dan friends. Lest you forget, allow me to remind you that it was your own Emperor who in his wisdom gave me command of this armada. Only I know the secret of the Frontier and the shields which protect the League worlds, just as only I know the location of the ancient Starfighter base and the shield projector. Only my people on Rylos can execute the critical maneuvers necessary to ensure our triumph.

“Therefore only
I
will give the order to fire!” He let them stew in their own fury for a long moment before adding, “Is that understood? By
all
of you?” He looked squarely at Kril as he spoke.

It was not in the nature of the Ko-Dan to tremble, out of either fear or fury, but the effort it took for Kril to reply without losing control was self-evident to every officer in the command center, and their already high admiration for their Commander rose proportionately.

“Forgive my presumption, Xur.” It was voiced in a tone barely above a whisper, but it satisfied the Rylan. It also pleased him to be magnanimous, knowing that such treatment could only humiliate the Ko-Dan Commander further.

“You are forgiven, Commander Kril. We are all anxious to begin the final battle.” Unable to watch any longer, several of Kill’s senior officers turned back to their instruments, fighting to suppress their own anger at this Rylan upstart’s actions.

Having prolonged Kril’s debasement long enough, Xur turned grandly to the proper station. “Now is the time to use the mass driver. Fire!”

The fire control officer hesitated just long enough to glance at his Commander. Kril gestured imperceptibly. This infuriated Xur, but there was nothing to be done about it. He could never prove that the officer had requested permission first from his own Commander before engaging the driver.

“Fire!” Xur screamed at him, trying to regain the domination so recently won and offhandedly lost.

Taking care that the Rylan could not see his expression, the Ko-Dan fire control officer passed along the requisite orders.

There seemed no need to build a starship the size of the Ko-Dan command vessel. Traditional weaponry could be mounted on much smaller, more maneuverable ships, including world-threatening atomics.

But there were sophisticated methods of rendering atomics harmless, just as there were ways of diverting energy and particle beams or small explosive projectiles. Rylos possessed such defenses in abundance.

Yet if an attacking ship could get into position near enough to a target world, there was a weapon so ancient and overpowering it could overwhelm any traditional defense. A weapon which had been in use since the beginning of all civilizations. Advanced technology merely upgraded that weapon in scale.

The weapon was mass.

The chunk of heavy metal ore which was moved from one end of the command ship to the other passed through a line of immense supercooled magnets. They accelerated the hunk of platinum-iron to tremendous speed. As soon as it left the command ship’s forward hatch on its carefully calibrated course, a second mass of similar size and shape was moved into position at the command ship’s stern. It was soon following the first toward Rylos.

It had taken some time for the Ko-Dan to locate a local planetoid of sufficient composition and size to fit their need, longer still to section it into chunks small enough to fit into the mass driver which ran through the longitudinal axis of the command ship. The resulting pieces were still very large indeed.

Superfast heavily armed fighters might still have intercepted the incoming masses safely out in empty space and destroyed them, except that the League had relied on its shield system for so long it no longer kept such vessels active. The League had nothing ready to counter the Ko-Dan threat with . . . save some half-rumored rebuilt old ships called gunstars.

Awesome as the power posed by the mass driver was, however, the Ko-Dan did not intend to rely on it alone. A second attack was about to make itself felt on Rylos.

A far more subtle one.

It had been too long since that world had been required to deal with anything more solid than a theoretical assault, so the technician in charge could have been excused for his delay in reporting the objects that suddenly appeared on his screen. Once their reality had been confirmed, though, he displayed no reluctance to file his report.

“I show incoming solid objects, largely metallic, in sector three-one.”

A subofficer ambled over while other technicians glanced up from their stations.

“Track them,” ordered the subofficer. Together the two Rylans watched the screen. “Composition?”

The tech scanned his readouts, waited briefly for a computer analysis. “Heavy metals, unrefined. Not starship hulls. Too much mass in too small an envelope and shape does not conform to any known Ko-Dan or League match. Furthermore, mass seems to vary slightly among incoming objects.”

“Course deviation?”

“None. Is the shield still functioning?”

The subofficer looked across the room, receiving positive replies from several stations.

“So it would seem. Then why no course deviation?”

“Could they be coming in on some new kind of drive? Or even without using drives?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t like it.” Around the room, instruments and consoles began shouting for attention. “Whatever they are, they’re heading straight for Rylos. No question about that. Give me an impact approximation.”

Another long minute of study and subsequent analysis. “Right for the base, sir. For this portion of the continent, anyway.”

“Sanprash!”
The subofficer grew livid. “They must be aimed at us. There’s nothing else of military importance for a thousand
milots
along this coast. It has to be the Ko-Dan, attacking! Somehow they managed to pinpoint this location!”

“Xur’s underground at work,” muttered another technician angrily. The subofficer ignored him.

“Never mind. We can handle it, no matter what they’re throwing at us. It’ll be a good test for the revamped gunstars and their crews. We ought to thank Xur for the target practice.” He turned to a voice pickup and his words were broadcast throughout the defense complex.

“Alert! We are under attack! I repeat, we are under attack!” Alarms began to sound as he continued. “Incoming spheroids of varying metallic composition. Intercept and destroy, intercept and destroy. Navigations prepare for onboard reception of intercept coordinates.” He looked back to the technician.

“Make sure the intercept point is at least two-dozen planetary diameters out. We want them to have plenty of time.”

“Understood. Schematics forthcoming.” Like everyone else in the room the tech was relaxed, confident. They’d been preparing for this attack for over a year now. “Incoming objects have passed through a destabilized section of the shield. They must be driveless. We may not have enough time for a two-dozen diameter intercept.”

“Make it a dozen, then. We’ll still have plenty of time to stop the first ones.”

Out in the hangar, Starfighters and Navigator/Operators were donning helmets and running last-minute equipment checks. Gunstars were prepared for final powerup, computers detached from central control.

The subofficer’s information was relayed to the command center nearby. An engineering officer made a last check of a certain console before speaking to the technician working next to him.

“Deflector shield powerup?”

“On-line. Standing by, sir.”

“Activate.”

“What about Plomerr Precinct, sir?”

The officer’s expression never wavered. “We’re the target here, not Plomerr. Our first priority is to protect the gunstar base. We’ll just have to hope those pilots can get to these incomings first.”

“Yes sir,” said the technician slowly. He had family in Plomerr Precinct.

Around them others worked smoothly at tasks long rehearsed. Everything was functioning according to design. Everyone was at their proper post.

Everyone except the monitor making his way along the service conduit that ran behind the main warboard. He did not long belong there, nor was the small package he carried so gingerly part of the intricate maze of circuitry and components that combined to provide the Rylan Defense Command with necessary intelligence.

Selecting a site, he placed the package in a gap between two fluid-state junctions. Then he retreated as fast as his feet would carry him.

Not far away, on the other side of the board, the general officer in charge of defense was feeling confident. He was in the process of requesting an update on the trajectory of the incoming objects with an eye toward sending a few of the gunstars racing back along that path in search of the Ko-Dan armada.

He was preparing to issue the necessary orders when the console he was studying exploded in his face, shredding it along with that of the technician manning the instrumentation.

Considering the small size of the explosive package, the resultant detonation was substantial. It effectively demolished the warroom along with all local communications.