The Last Starfighter by Alan Dean Foster

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 maneuvera-ble 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 star-ship 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.”

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