"All is prepared, Grand Marshal!" a junior officer replied with a sharp salute. "We await only your word to begin!"
"Excellent." The Glaive's command chair stood on a dais in the centre of the circular bridge; Tal strode to it, and settled into it comfortably. He allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction as he checked the displays on the chair's console.
"You are ready for your test, then?" came a voice from behind him. Tal span the chair around. Enteskilen Mur stood in the doorway of the bridge turbolift, Nyredelit Amm hanging at his elbow behind him.
"I am. With this development, we can truly take the Siohonin people to the stars," said Tal.
Mur stepped out onto the bridge, shaking his hoary head. Amm trailed silently behind him. "I am doubtful," the priest said.
"We have adapted the warp circuitry from your own designs," said Tal. "An interesting technical challenge... to change the warp cannon from a devastating weapon to a prodigious engine of propulsion. But it can be done - it has been done." He waved a hand at the colony cylinder on the screen. "Today, we shall see the proof."
"Conceivably," said Mur. The old priest did not appear to be impressed, and Tal felt obscurely irked by that.
"It will work. And then, my plans will come to fruition. The biggest single problem I face is that of holding our captured territory. Our cargo carriers cannot bring in enough troops to police the conquered worlds, to maintain our grip on the populations. Oh, yes, with the god's help we can accomplish much... but it will be so much easier with the extra manpower that this method promises us." Tal's smile was exultant. "And it will truly give our people the freedom of the stars. This... static city in space... will become a true voyager among the heavens, bringing the Siohonin people and their true god out into the galaxy as a whole. Already, the Klingons run in fear from our frigates... what do you think they will do, when they see this?"
"If you are successful," Mur observed.
"And why should we not be?" demanded Tal.
"Because the god does not interest himself in this venture," said Mur. "Oh, he does not disapprove - you would be in no doubt, if he disapproved. But he is not concerned, one way or another. You perform this test without the god's attention. And his attention would guarantee success. Without it -" He shrugged, expressively.
Tal swung the command chair around, to face the main viewscreen again. He felt obscurely deflated, somehow. "Back the Glaive off," he ordered. "We do not want to interfere with the warp field once it is established."
"Aye, aye, sir!" said the helmsman. A faint throbbing in the deck plates indicated that the warship's impulse drive had engaged.
"Have you evacuated the colony cylinder?" asked Amm, speaking up for the first time.
"Oh, we have transported off all the administrative and military castes," said Tal. "The priests... this whole colony is owned by Ceamag-Tai. That god's priests remain, to look after the drabs."
"You are not evacuating the drabs?"
"Of course not. There are over two hundred and fifty million of them. I do not have the troopships to spare." The Glaive was far enough away, now, for the whole of the colony cylinder to be visible on the viewscreen. The new assemblies, at one end, were little more than a cluster of dots. "Far enough, I think," said Tal. "Communications. Send a message. Commence the test."
"Signal sent, sir," the communications officer said. "Receiving confirmation... Reaction has been initiated."
"If this thing works," murmured Amm, "it will dwarf even the city-ships of the Voth."
"If it works," said Mur sourly.
And why should it not? thought Gamariden Tal, but he kept the thought to himself. He gazed at the screen, waiting for the moment when the colony would flare with light and vanish into warp speed.
Instead, there was a sudden brilliant burst of light from the end of the cylinder, where the new modules were. Tal cursed fluently. "What was that?"
"Warp core breach," said a junior officer in hushed tones. "Sir, the drive generator is... is gone."
"What is happening to the cylinder?" asked someone else.
Tal turned his streaming eyes back toward the colony cylinder. It seemed normal enough, at first... then, he noticed, it seemed to shake, to ripple, almost, as if the metal of the giant structure was shivering.
"Shockwaves from the explosion," he said confidently. "They will damp out soon - there is flexibility in the structure -"
Even as he spoke, it happened. A split opened in the spinning metal of the colony, a split which lengthened with heart-stopping speed, which opened into a rent -
Under the influence of centrifugal force, the relentless pressure of its own spin gravity, the colony began to tear itself apart. Great strips of metal tore loose and hurtled away into space. Through the rapidly growing tear in the structure came great billows of air, flashes of fire, bodies, buildings, whole city blocks torn loose from their foundations and thrown headlong into the void. Space around the disintegrating colony filled with a strange sparkling haze. After a moment, Tal realized what it was: water, from reservoirs and artificial lakes, falling into space and being converted by evaporative cooling into a shower of particles of ice. The colony cylinder was swathing itself in a blizzard....
"Deflectors on full," he said grimly. "Impulse engines, half power. Back us away. Evasive manoeuvres."
"Should we -? Sir," said the helmsman, "we could get in closer, and scan for life signs. Even through - through that - there must be many enclosed or partially enclosed structures that have not yet lost atmosphere. We could attempt to rescue survivors -"
"To what end? We would only endanger the ship... and, besides, it is just drabs."
"Yes, sir."
"Unfortunate," said Enteskilen Mur. "The priests of the false god Ceamag-Tai will be... perturbed."
"At least their god is the right one for this event," said Tal. "We must make further tests -"
"It will be futile," said Mur, "unless the true god Sebreac Tharr smiles on your endeavours."
Tal's lips thinned, but he forced himself to keep his temper in check. "And how may the true god's favour be assured?" he asked.
"The fulfilment of his wishes, for one part," said Mur. "Our agent among the Gorn has, it seems, failed in his duties. Besides that... Amm, we must show him."
"The god has a fresh requirement," said Amm. "I have the data here... a construction project, on a fairly considerable scale. It will require planning, and the active assistance of the military."
Tal stood, and turned to the two priests. "Well," he said, "let us discuss it, then. In my ready room."
He led the way off the bridge. The two priests followed, with not even a backwards glance at the viewscreen, at the sight of the place where a quarter of a billion people had just died.
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