Destroyer of Worlds Read Free

desperate to know more.
    â€œRecap,” the commander ordered.
    Floshftok evoked a holo display of the stellar neighborhood, expanses of false color washing past nearby stars. Each color denoted a type of radiation.
    Thssthfok studied the image, too extensive to be other than an astronomical phenomenon. Lots of neutrinos and the radiant glow from . . . what?
    â€œSupernovae,” Floshftok offered.
    Plural. But how many? The wave front showed no curvature. Many supernovae then, the spherical wave fronts from each explosion averaging out. “The galactic core?” Thssthfok asked in wonderment. The closer an end-of-life star was to a supernova, the more likely—
    â€œA chain reaction,” Floshftok agreed.
    And so the meeting went, with seldom more than a word or a short phrase offered. The breeders for whose safety Thssthfok feared required many words to convey the simplest concept. Protectors wrung meaning from the subtlest clue, their minds racing faster than their reasoning could be put into words.
    No supernovae shone in the night sky over New Rilchuk. What Floshftok had detected was the leading edge of the wave front. The radiant glow, in frequencies across the spectrum, must blaze from stellar remnants lagging behind the neutrinos. The shock wave would be coming on at one-tenth light speed, thousands of light-years thick, sterilizing every world in its path.
    No wonder
New Hope
fled.
    Neither warrior nor climatologist nor astrophysicist could defeat exploding stars. He looked around the table. This time, one of the warriors beat Thssthfok to a conclusion.
    Klssthfok, their most senior strategist, said, “The end of cycles.”
    Â 
    .   .   .
    Â 
    FOR MILLIONS OF YEARS —how many, the historical record had too many gaps to ascertain—Pak had battled for their families and clans. Every possible advantage was embraced; every horrific consequence excused. In the process, Pak had visited upon themselves every imaginable disaster. Ecological failure. Gengineered plague. Nuclear winter. Bombardment from space. Toxic deserts and radioactive wastelands. The legacy spanned Pakhome, the home system’s asteroids and rocky moons, even the colonizable worlds of nearby stars.
    The return from each collapse was harder, the recovery time longer. Petroleum and coal were long gone from Pakhome, as were most fissile materials. Deuterium and tritium had all but vanished from the seas. Metals were more often stripped from ancient ruins than found as ore in new mines. Only knowledge—sometimes—persisted to alleviate the suffering.
    And to hasten the
next
collapse.
    Only there could be no recovery from a world sterilized.
    Â 
    â€œ ONE FINAL COLLAPSE ,” Thssthfok said.
This
was why he had been summoned. Once imminent disaster was recognized, every protector on Pakhome would have a common goal: escape with his breeders.
    The resources did not exist to evacuate a world.
    There would be war over the few starships, and any resources that might be used to build more. There would be war over every type of supply necessary to provision a ship. And because this was, inevitably, the final war, it would be fought without restraint.
    However closely
New Hope
approached light speed, the ship could not
quite
catch up to the wave front now rushing toward Pakhome to presage disaster. And yet, they must return for their breeders. They would arrive, inevitably, during the fiercest of all wars.
    No Pak living had seen a nuclear winter, and the strategists needed the best possible information about the conditions in which they would fight. While most crew slept through the coming flight, Thssthfok would be analyzing the conditions into which they would arrive.
    Wondering, with no answer possible, if he had breeders left to rescue.

3
    Â 
    Pakhome was a world in torment.
    Its sky was banded in muddy black. Its continents were adrift in snow. Icebergs dotted its oceans. Day side