A DIFFERENT POINT OF VIEW

by De Writer

Power Down

The tech nodded. She put the image up on a screen. A circular area about fifty kilometers across was covered by green plants. There was a small castle close to a little lake at the center of the area.

The Star Admiral’s jaw dropped. “What confines the air? How can a weather cycle work on so small a scale?”

The sensors tech shook her head. “I can detect nothing at all holding the air in place. It might as well be magic, for all that I can guess.”

The whole bridge crew chuckled. The pilot, though, got done with setting his course and the ship turned smoothly to its new heading for the moon.

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Luna removed her eye from the telescope’s eyepiece and let lose a string of curses in Zebra and Saddle Arabian. Celestia inquired mildly, “They moved again?”

Luna paused in her stream of foul language to reply, “Yes! At least this course will take them to the moon! I suspect that they are seeking to rescue survivors from the other vessel. If they are, maybe I will have time to get this correction done properly.”

Concerned, Celestia inquired, “How sure are you that they are space craft? I mean, if they are, what of the lives of the beings on board them?”

Luna turned to her sister and asked bleakly, “Why do you think that I am so upset? Both of these vessels are armed for war. One is still fully operational.

“What kind of species would send a warship fully ready to conquer unexplored planets by force? What about the eighteen known intelligent species here? I HAVE to make this correction or our own will suffer. Father always told us, and the Hearthwarming Invasion underlined it, ‘Readiness costs little. What we cannot do is allow our own to suffer for the lack of it.’

“I have been learning to Dream Read the aliens aboard the wreck. Only THREE of them were free beings as we understand such things. All the rest, thousands of them on the first vessel and over a thousand on this new intruder, are SLAVES. Our feudally based system of governance allows far greater freedom for our subjects because our laws are benevolent and take into account the needs of those below us in station. Theirs do not.”

Thoughtfully, Celestia nodded. “They are not creatures of Mother’s Creation. I see why that upsets you so. For them to have such a precious gift as life itself and to have so little respect for it must be awful. Especially for you, who can touch their dreams and feel it all.”

Nodding while hugging her sister of the Day with her midnight magic, Luna replied, “Thank you, Celestia. That helps. Now, I need to finish this calculation and balance the Inequality Matrix as fast as possible. I think that I can still save this correction.”

She nearly leaped to her desk and the big circular slide rule.

Celestia smiled at her sister’s energy and pointed out, “You work, Luna, I will go and put a note in the Chronicle for Dad to find. I am sure that he can do something about keeping that ship on the moon until your correction is done.”

Absently, Luna replied, “Thanks, Sis. I should have thought of that myself.”

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Aboard the wrecked Chain of Empire, Supreme Star Admiral Hassit watched through rage slitted eyes as the Emperor’s Lash settled down to the bare lunar regolith beside the wreck of his ship. The worst part of the whole situation was that he and his crew’s survivors had seen the Lash struck by the same unknown force that had wrecked the Chain. Somehow, the Lash survived. For some unfathomable reason, the Lash was operating solely on auxiliary drives. Her perfectly functional Displacement Engine was not emitting from its array at all.

His communications slave opened a channel to allow speech and video transmission and reception. He opened without preamble, “Hissin! You must recover me and turn your vessel over to me! We were attacked by an unknown weapon that destroyed our Displacement Engine! We are going to return, weapons blazing and fry them for the insult to our Empire!”

Hissin waited until the Supreme Star Admiral ran down and replied, “No, Hassit, Sir. No to all, if necessary. Your wreck was due to faulty scouting. That is an Admiral’s failing, not the failing of our slaves.

“You were not struck by ANY weapon. We do not know yet what it WAS, but we do know that it was oriented toward the satellite moon that we are presently on. We also know this about it. Without any form of Displacement Engine signature, it was a massive warping of the local space-time complex that we both had the misfortune to be in the path of. You had your space-time warping Displacement Engine on line. The degree of power in that local space-time warp is shown by the fact that the Displacement Engine of the Empire’s most powerful dreadnought was simply destroyed by it. Not disabled, as would be the case from a 100 megatonne near miss. Destroyed entirely.

“The races on the primary only appear primitive. Since we became aware of the many anomalies about this planet, my sensor slave set her detection as wide as possible and as sensitive as possible. There is a near continuous background of minute ripples in the local space-time complex. The only way that it can be accounted for is the routine use of some form of minute space-time warping by huge numbers of beings.”

Hassit interrupted, “Utterly impossible! Your slaves have lied to you to cover their failings! My pilots and astrogation even tried to tell me that G was not constant here! I executed the lot of them for those lies.

“G is the UNIVERSAL GRAVITATIONAL CONSTANT. UNIVERSAL! It is the same EVERYWHERE!”

Hassit was interrupted in his interruption. A new and strange creature was speaking from their screens . “Nope, Hassit, old asswipe. You are wrong. Hissin is correct. His respect for those serving him has paid off rather handsomely, really.

“I mean, look at your relative positions. Hissin has a working star-ship. You have a total wreck. Hissin has a functional crew. You executed yours because you were a pissed off idiot.

“Look around you. Even if the Chain was flyable, how many slaves do you have left who know how to do it? I will save you from any effort at thought. Not really your specialty, that. You have none. You executed them all.”

The interrupter, an apparently old blue furred creature with a short single horn and white forelock, mane and whiskers paused, “Now I have to change the topic, I am afraid. You each have two choices and only two choices for now. You MUST totally power down. Even life support. It will only be for about two hours.

“The choices come to this. Either YOU do it or I will. Take your pick.

“If I do it, any mistakes might be a problem later. One that you will have to fix. If YOU do it, the consequence is the same but you will already know what is wrong. Much easier to fix.”

Hassit snarled, “My shields are still in perfect order! You cannot shut down the Chain of Empire!”

Suddenly the interrupter was standing beside Hassit, on the remains of his bridge. The panning of the camera to follow him, showed that the bridge slaves were at their stations when they were executed. Shattered control panels, blood stained control chairs and ruined equipment showed as the elderly blue quadruped, now shown to have some design on his flanks and a flowing white tail, trotted about, tisking.

“You REALLY don’t think, do you, Hassit? I suspect that even if your damage control team was still alive, they could not fix the mess that you have made here. Pity that they got killed when your Displacement Engine blew.”

Pale blue light grew around the stranger’s horn. It reached into the shattered and broken equipment. Systems began shutting off. Hassit began shooting wildly at the blue alien on his ship. The projectiles passed harmlessly through the quadruped but not harmlessly through equipment behind him!

He looked up in mild irritation. “Didn’t you learn anything from shooting your bridge slaves at their stations? I would ask what sort of idiot you are but there are so many kinds to choose from and they ALL apply to you!

“Now let me go on shutting you down in an orderly fashion. I grant that letting you destroy the controls is WAY faster.”