Vernor Vinge - Bomb Scare

Of cruel monsters we might say,

"...and a little child shall lead them."

Prince Lal e'Dorvik dilated his mouth hole, and casually picked at pointy fangs. With great deliberation he inspected the sky: the Maelstrom glittered across fifty degrees, a spiral of silver mist. Its brilliance was dimmed by the gibbous blue planet that hung near the zenith. That blue light flooded through the transparent hull section onto the formal gardens of the Imperial Dorvik flagwagon. The soft brown sand dunes of the gardens were transformed into rolling blue carpets. An occasional ornamental lizard scurried across the sands. Within his vision, Prince Lal could see no less than five shrub-cacti: the excess vegetation made the since almost sickeningly lush. Except for the bluish tinge of the landscape, Lal could almost imagine that he was back at Home in his winter palace.

With feigned nonchalance he turned to look at his companion, Grand General Harl e'Kraft. Prince Lal was thought harsh, in a civilization where the execution of ten thousand soldiers was considered moral-building discipline. Now he moved obliquely toward the subject at hand-with his reputation, he could afford to speak softly. "Is it always night?"

"Yes, Puissance, we keep the wagon oriented with the sun beneath the gardens' horizon. Of course, I could make a 'sunrise.' It would take less than fifteen minutes to turn the wagon..."

"Oh, don't bother," Lal responded smoothly. "I was just wondering what the 'super-sun' looks like." He glanced at the blue-green planet high in the sky. "Isn't it theoretically impossible for a giant star to have a planetary system?"

The young general sniffed warily at the bait. "Well, yes. Stars this size never develop solar systems by condensation. This one was probably formed by the accidental capture of three planets from some other system. Such things must be very rare, but we're bound to come across them eventually."

"Ah yes, there shouldn't be planets here, yet there are. And these planets are inhabited by an intelligent, technologically developed race. And we must have these 'improbable' planets as the industrial base for our expansion in this volume; yet we don't have them."

Lal paused, then struck with reptilian ferocity. "Why not?"

For a moment Harl sat frozen by the other's ophidian glare. With a visible effort he twitched his mouth hole open in a disarming smile. "Care for a milvak, Puissance?" He motioned to a shallow dish of hors d'oeuvres.

Lal had to admit that the general was a cool one. Though e'Kraft faced the Long Dying for his failure, he offered his superior candied meat rather than explanations. This was going to be interesting. He carefully spread one of the squirming milvaks with a wrist talon, and sank his fangs into the little mammal's hairless skin. With a sucking sound, he drained the animal of its vital fluids.

Harl e'Kraft waited politely until Lal had finished, then handed him a pack of color photographs.

"The Mush faces are every bit as developed as you say. Their two outer worlds could supply us for any further expansion we might desire in Volume 095. They--"

Prince Lal slithered into a more comfortable position on the resting rack, and glanced at the top photograph. Mush-faces: that was an appropriate name for them. The olive skinned monster that looked out of the photo seemed bloated, diseased.

"... Have not invented mass-energy converters, but they do use a very efficient form of hydrogen fusion for their spacecraft. Their biggest spacewagons mass more than thirty thousand tons."

Not bad for hydrogen fusion drive, thought Lal. He glanced at the next picture. It was a schematic of a Mush-face battlewagon. There was a typical cigar shape of a fusion-powered craft, the magnetic venturis taking up much of the rear volume of the wagon. Then rocket bombs were housed forward, with more snuggling under the craft's nose on outside racks.

"In one respect they are ahead of us technologically." Harl paused, then said slowly, "The Mush-faces can shield against our mass-energy converters."

This remark would have been greeted by a look of stupefied amazement if Lal's spies had not briefed him beforehand.

Lal's thirty times great-grandfather, Ghrishnak I, had conquered three oases on Home by edge of sword. His twenty-one times great-grandfather launched the first rockets into orbit, and perfected the hydrogen bomb for use against a group of heretics in the South Polar Sands. But the sword, gunpowder, steam, even the hydrogen bomb, all these were as nothing before the mass-energy converter. It was a simple weapon in practice: place the converter at the proper distance from a target, turn it on, and any desired fraction of the target was changed directly into energy. If such a weapon could be shielded against, the Dorvik had lost one of their trump dice.

E'Kraft continued, "This effect is probably incidental. Since the Mush-faces don't have converters, it seems unlikely that they could intentional design a defense against them. In any case, the only way we can destroy their craft is to convert a substantial amount of mass to energy just outside their screens. In other words we are reduced to using rocket bombs.

"They have an anatomical advantage, too, Puissance. A Mush-face can survive more than five times the acceleration that a Dorvik can. This mobility combined with their thousand gravity rocket bombs makes their space force more than a nuisance.

"Puissance, we have done as much damage as we dare to their industrial centers. It has not broken their will. Until we gain absolute control of local space, there will be no conquest." The general's statement was blunt, almost defiant.

Lal could imagine the tine enemy craft flashing through the Dorvik fighter screen and firing rocket bombs at the Dorvik battlewagons. From the general's own account as well as Lal's spies, it was obvious that e'Kraft had made the best of a terrible situation. Supreme tactical skill was necessary to survive an enemy with longer legs and better defenses than one's own. He riffled through the rest of the photographs. They showed proposed modifications in the Dorvik reconnaissance skimmers, for use as self-propelled bombs. Lal's race hadn't used rocket bombs in three centuries, so now that they needed them, such weapons were unavailable.

When Lal finally spoke, his face and tone contained nothing complimentary. "So these pus-filled creatures are too stubborn for you? Your view is just too narrow, General." He pulled an ornamented slate from his waist pouch. "That sickeningly blue planet," Lal waved at the brilliant object directly overhead, "has twenty percent of the population and only three percent of the industry in this solar system. Its destruction would hardly impair the system's usefulness to us. This"--he gestured with the triangular slate-"is an order, signed by my father. It directs you to detonate this planet."

E'Kraft's tympanic membranes paled.

Prince Lal hissed gently, "You find this overly violent?"

"Y-yes." The general was still blunt.

"Perhaps, but that is the point. You will convert one trillionth of one percent of the planet's mass. The explosion will be so vast that it will gently sorch portions of the other two planets. The deed's very essence is violence and brutality; it will show this race that further resistance would be worse than any surrender." Lal recited several stanzas from the liturgy of Dominance, finishing with:

"Ours is is all that is and we rule all those who be,

For we are the Dorvik, the sons of the Sands.

And to those who deny our rule we say:

Bow down--or be not"

"It is immaterial wheter you believe this doggerel garbage. The point is, that by divine authority or not, our race must stay on top. The day we take second place in the universe will be the beginning of the end for the Dorvik. If through some weakness of spirit we fail to conquer this system, then we will be consigning ourselves to the museums of the future just as surely as if we were destroyed in battle."