His Imperial Worship shlurked at the straw, but not loudly enough to cover the screams from inside the glass. Then he shifted to his command seat in the control bubble of the Panoply. Lt. Veora, he decided, would have to have at least two of her arms removed. She had supplied the three pillows he had asked for, true. But she should have seen at once that he would require four. It was inexcusable, really.
On the screen that stretched across the ceiling of the room the planet Lodeon VII gleamed arrogantly against a background of stars. He had suffered incalculable losses from the outcome of this latest game. Well, those could be recouped in the postgame fireworks display.
A beep at his ;eft was followed by the hail “Your Worship?”
He didn’t look. “Yes, my sheriff?”
“Your Worship, due to the loss of power aboard ship, we have been unable to complete evacuation of the Drover at this point. Another hour would allow the shuttles and search teams….”
An Imperial hand waved her to silence. “It will have to do, dearest of Sheriffs. Has the library ship emerged?”
“It has, Your Worship. It is bearing….”
“That matters not at all. How economical to handle two disposals at once. After our losses on the gantlet, we must be economical, of course.”
He took another shlurp. “Your Worship has considered….” The Sheriff began.
“I have already placed my wagers, darling Sheriff, on the chance that the rebels, in escaping, will blow up the Drover and destroy themselves in the process. I got very good odds.”
The Sheriff’s voice was carefully neutral. “The Drover is….”
“A traitor, dear Sheriff, and treason is certainly a capital offense. I have been brutalized and called groteskew, and lost money, all because the ship’s main computer chose to sabotage its own gantlet. You know I cannot have undependable subordinates at so high a level.”
Now he did turn to the monitor. “You would agree that the death sentence is warranted?”
Her face was as neutral as her voice. “As you order, Your Worship.”
One day, he would shake that blankness from her expression; there wasn’t time to do it properly just now. “Now turn off your monitor and await my next communication. No peeking.”
“Yes, Your Worship.”
He returned to his previous position, decided he didn’t like it, and shifted one pillow. Better: he could watch the screen perfectly this way. The rest of the universe could watch the recording. He alone would watch, live and at the closest safe position, as the most beautiful ship ever constructed blew to pieces, upsnooted computer and all. He caressed his special remote. The bottom button would initiate the Destruct sequence. He wondered if the ship would scream.
The Imperial thumb slid toward the top button. This would be something to see. He had never seen the Drover in its entirety, except in computer simulations and rough sketches. The technicians had felt there was some good reason never to show him the interesting things.
Lodeon VII blinked out of sight as the screen on the ceiling shifted images. He blinked. That little grey speck there must be the library….
The vast beauty of the Drover filled the screen, which was doing its best to display the full spectacle to a brain that was not the right size. An Imperial muscle began to twitch at the back of the Imperial neck as the beauty burned in.
“Mimavax!” he gasped, as his spine twisted in response to frantic signals from the organ at the top. His eyes pulled a bit out of their sockets to give the brain more room. One hand reached for his throat, letting his glass drop and shatter. The contents that could still move scampered for any shelter.
Veins rose on his forehead. Muscles jerking throughout his body bounced the word from him. “M-m-m-m-m-mimivax!” His organs pulled in flat on themselves, like some of his Abian captives in GMS.
The hand not clutching his windpipe shot out in a last attempt to hit the button on the remote to shut out the sight that was killing him. His death rattle made him miss. The Imperial thumb hit the wrong button.
In seven seconds, the most beautiful machine ever created by the hands of humankind flashed out of existence. And the universe shuddered.
This shudder sent tides on Lodeon VII to previously unrecorded heights, and brought tides to bodies of water which did not usually experience tides. A busful of tourists on their way to the Ketsi Casino were bounced into a garden where, in their shock, they tried to place bets with the pink fish in the fountain. A police frigate found itself buried in sand, which turned out to be a stroke of luck when the flash card dealer it had been pursuing was struck by a falling airship. Three of the planet’s major satellite dishes broke out in purple spots, every nine-sided die landed with the four uppermost, and two little blue flowers never seen before in this galaxy sprang up next to a fallen plush chimpanzee.
The explosion of the Drover was brilliant enough to burn out every major tracking device and sensor aboard both the Rhododendron and the Panoply. Swirling trails of white-hot particles swung into bright, brief intricate patterns. Someone paying strict attention might have observed that these streamed away from the former ship only toward the planet and the two major ships nearby. Scientific observers on Lodeon VII, however, noted only that a brilliant new star had come into existence for exactly one minute.
The Sheriff, on the Rhododendron, could see only small flashing lights on the remaining operational monitor. “Your Worship?” she ventured, pressing a blue pad. “Your Worship?”
There was no answer. She had not expected one. A small triangle in the lower left corner of the screen was blinking. Light showed in that opening only for the death of the commanding Sheriff, or, in the presence of the Emperor, for the death of His Imperial Worship. And the Sheriff, to her own surprise, was still alive.
She knew the crew on the bridge was trying very hard not to look her direction. Most of them were too young to have seen this triangle blink, but they all knew what it was.
“Brust,” she said, “We must inform His Worship’s brother.”
When he did not answer, she turned to see whether he had heard her. The Deputy was not there. He had been confined to quarters, with the rest of his company involved in the rescue of the Emperor. Standard procedure: troopers could not be allowed to think themselves too heroic. She had not yet given the order for his termination, thinking His Imperial Worship might care to supervise personally. Or might enjoy the destruction of the Drover enough to reconsider.
Now the order could not be reconsidered.
The sentence had been oral, of course, delivered over a non-recording monitor. She thought it over. Never before had Sheriff Parimat disobeyed any Imperial order. But did an Imperial order still carry weight after the Emperor who issued it died?
She suspected it did. Even an oral, unrecorded message nobody else had….
She stared at the monitor, too preoccupied by the flashing triangle to take any interest at all in the little red dot moving rapidly toward the edge of the screen.
Blogsy Babbles 