Alexander Kazantsev - The Destruction of Faena

The palace was empty. After switching off the energy that fed the palace’s automatic systems, the security robots carried a heavy box with slits on it down into the shelter.

And now the Wall in front of Kutsi Merc trembled slightly. He managed to insert his fingers into the gap and, to his great surprise, was able to assure himself that the Wall was yielding to his pressure. Finally, it parted enough for him to crawl through.

Then, without understanding how, he got to his feet and leaned back against the Wall. It trembled again and moved. Kutsi Merc fell down. (The power supply had been switched on again.)

Kutsi lay there gritting his teeth and trying to understand what had happened. He suddenly realised that the disintegration war was beginning and that he had failed to prevent it nevertheless.

He forced himself to rise to his feet. Everything went dark. He screwed up his eyes and stood swaying slightly, then supported himself by holding onto the priceless wood panelling on the walls. It finally led him out into the garden, fragrant with the Dictator’s celebrated flowerbeds. Kutsi felt very much like lying down and dying. He had even stopped thinking about food.

He decided that the disintegration war had evidently not yet broken out. He couldn’t hear any explosions, which meant that he must go on living! He did not allow himself to remain lying on the sand in the avenue, but crawled on until he was able to stand up from the kneeling position. He wanted to get to the Blood Door, hoping that it, too, would be open. He was right, and he crawled into the ruined shrine. He could wait there till dark in the familiar niche and at night he could make his way to the aged Nepts, a couple who were friendly with Kutsi’s parents. They lived in a former miners’ settlement near Pleasure City. Their youngest daughter, Lada, was married to a roundhead who had been educated in Danjab. They had flown to Space Station Deimo together.

Only Kutsi Merc, with his insatiable lust for life, could have made it to the Nepts that night.

When he entered their home, he collapsed on the floor in a dead faint.

The solicitous old couple, both overweight, flabby and white-haired, looking very much like one another as is often the case with a married pair who have lived together for a long time, carried his heavy, bleeding body across the room with difficulty and laid it down on some bedding in the corner.

Kutsi Merc had overlooked the fact that the cover of his “hump” had been riddled with bullet-holes and the subterranean air had been leaking into the charge. Although the detonator had not been activated, it was sure to explode after a time because of contact with the air.

That explosion was being awaited with terror by Ruler Dobr Mar, who was tired of guessing when it might happen. By destroying the anti-torpedo defence, the explosion would be the signal for a strike, with no chance of retaliation, against Powermania by rockets armed with disintegration warheads, as was desired by the proprietors who had put Dobr Mar in power.

Against any possible emergency, Dobr Mar had taken refuge in a deep bunker, still hoping that Kutsi Merc would be killed before he could detonate his “hump” and that the war desired by the Great Circle of proprietors would be postponed for a time. The Ruler of Danjab was preparing for a war, but he was afraid of it.

Above all, he wanted the disintegration weapon to stay where it was and things to settle down somehow … at least, until the next election.

Deep down below, a luxurious government office had been reproduced in every detail, circular in shape with a vaulted ceiling and highly placed oval windows that looked out on nothing. The communications monitors had been mounted underneath them.

Dobr Mar had changed. His face had lost its hardness and his eyes their penetration. He had become garrulous and seemed to be justifying himself to someone all the time. He even said to one of his military leaders with the intention of making it known to everyone:

“History will not forget the Ruler who started the disintegration war. Is that not so?” And he stared past the other man.

Dobr Mar was troubled by Ave Mar’s sudden departure for outer space, not because of his son’s fate, but because of Kutsi Merc. Why had the man allowed that flight? And what had become of him? Had he really perished in the end?

But everything turned out differently from what Dobr Mar had been expecting, and not as his enemy. Dictator Yar Jupi, had planned. Nor as the proprietors of the Great Circle or of the Blood Council had planned.

The moment came when the fuse in Kutsi Merc’s artificial hump functioned of its own accord. A deep underground disintegration explosion took place.

Kutsi Merc, who had been sitting on the Nepts’ bedding, felt himself hurled upwards. The floor of the cabin shook, the crockery rattled on the rickety shelves and the portrait of Dictator Yar Jupi fell down from its place on the wall. The transparent film in the window was torn apart and a violent gust of wind blew into the humble room, overturning the table. The sheets of paper covered with writing over which old Nept had bent his back, having taken it into his head to learn to write in his declining years, began whirling about in mid-air.

Kutsi Merc cringed as he waited for the blast. But the ceiling did not collapse. Kutsi limped over to the window.

Nothing, apparently, had happened. But there was no sign of the black spire over the Temple of Eternity.

One of Kutsi Merc’s eyebrows shot up. The left side of his face smiled, the other remained watchful. Suddenly, his face grew longer, his eyes widened and he turned pale.

Directly in front of the window, an enormous flowerbed rose up in the centre of the square and out from underneath it glided a smooth cylindrical body with a pointed nose. It grew taller before Kutsi Merc’s eyes and became a lofty tower. A moment later, black smoke began billowing from the shaft hidden underneath and the tower began, to rise on a column of fire. Then it detached itself from the square, gained height and set course for the ocean. Soon, the rear end of the rocket turned into a fiery cross which steadily diminished to a tiny glittering star. Only then did it vanish altogether.

Kutsi Merc’s hair stood on end. He already knew that not only here, but at a thousand other points on the continent, from identical subterranean shafts, from under the surface of the seas, perhaps even from buildings, terrible rockets were bursting forth to head in a deadly swarm for Danjab.

Kutsi Merc was right. Activated by the automatic systems, the rockets had indeed burst out of their hiding places and, programmed to hit the vital points of Danjab, were speeding across the ocean. One of those rockets rose from the multistorey block in which Ave and Kutsi had been staying, and another was to soar straight up from the Temple of Eternity, where it had been camouflaged as one of the columns. The temple had collapsed at the subterranean explosion of Kutsi’s “hump”. However, the Central Automatic Defence Console, which was at a great depth, had not been damaged. Its sensitive instruments, only just detecting the radiation caused by the disintegration explosion, immediately sent their signals to thousands of rocket installations.

Dictator Yar Jupi was terrified when the bunker shook. He learned from the instruments about the explosion and the response of the automatic systems and he realised that the disintegration war had begun earlier than he had intended. He rushed up and down the cramped shelter. He craved action. But it had all been done without him.

He was alone. No one could see him except the mindless secretary box which was unable to appreciate the Dictator’s joy and triumph. Forgetful of his personal fears, he giggled and danced about. He was filled with a delicious excitement at the knowledge that in a short time the cities and industrial centres of Dan jab would be destroyed and tens, perhaps hundreds of millions of enemy Faetians would cease to exist. He had never experienced a pleasure like this before. Now that the war had started, let it spread! He had achieved his aim: to command life and death over the whole of the planet Faena! And so, grimacing because of a nervous tic, he pulled back the curtain in front of the live screens.