Alexander Kazantsev - The Destruction of Faena

The questioning and distraught faces of the military leaders were staring at him from them. Yar Jupi directed a mad glare at the servile faces and, foaming at the mouth in a burst of inspiration, he screamed:

“What? You weren’t expecting it? You were marking time? Well, hear this. I’ve done it! I! I’ve blown up the Temple of Eternity and the palace to activate the automatic systems! What? Are you frightened?”

He ran round the bunker, shouting, although the screens were blacking out one after another. The military leaders were obviously not in agreement with their lord and master and preferred to take cover as quickly as possible in their bunkers, which were similar to the Dictator’s own. When the secret screens of the Blood Council’s members were switched on, they revealed the unhooded, frightened faces of the first proprietors of the ancient continent.

The barbarians’ rockets went above the limits of the atmosphere as they flew over the ocean. Their approach was spotted at once by the ever-vigilant automatic observers far from the targets to which the rockets were flying. Without any help from the military or from Ruler Dobr Mar, the rocket defence system went automatically into action. A flock of defence missiles soared up from Danjab and headed for the disintegration armada. They were themselves packed with disintegration warheads intended to explode when close to any missiles that flew towards them.

And the disintegration explosions occurred one after another in the upper layers of the atmosphere, over the ocean. The shock waves threw the rockets off course or simply destroyed them. Mangled fragments and sometimes even whole torpedoes fell into the ocean, to the great horror of seafarers from both continents. It was as if a meteorite shower had plunged into the ocean, raising to the cloudy sky columns of water like the weird trees of a forest that had suddenly sprung up in the sea.

Over eight hundred rockets were destroyed by Danjab’s automatic sentinels. But over two hundred continued on their way.

During those first moments of the disintegration war, not a single Faetian took part except for the wounded Kutsi Merc. Not one Faetian was killed in that appalling battle of the rockets.

But this was only during the first few moments.

Soon, Danjab began to tremble under disintegration explosions in hundreds of different places.

A disintegration explosion!

Is there anything to compare with it? Perhaps only the supernovas or the mysterious processes which astronomers have observed on Sol, when enormous tongues of white-hot matter have been ejected over distances many times greater than the star’s diameter.

Matter itself was disintegrating, part of it was ceasing to be matter, its mass was diminishing. The energy of the internal bonds was being unleashed and, converted into heat energy according to the laws of nature, was raising the heat level at the place of disintegration by a factor of millions. All the surrounding matter that remained as matter was instantly converted into white-hot gas that shot out in all directions, wiping out everything in its path. But even faster was the action of the radiation that accompanies the disintegration of matter. Penetrating living tissue, its impact was fatal. Even long after the explosion, the impact of those rays was to destroy all who had survived the firestorm or the devastating hurricane.

On the site of each disintegration explosion, a fireball rose up first, immeasurably brighter than Sol itself. Light of such brilliance had never been known on the gloomy planet Faena. This brilliant ball became a pillar of fire that rose up like the white trunk of a magic, gigantic tree, growing up and soaring into the sky, where it spread out in a swirling canopy.

Shuddering, Dobr Mar saw on the communications monitors those ominous mushrooms sprouting on the sites of flourishing cities.

He was appalled. As he paced round his study, he felt himself keeling over; his knees buckled and he slumped into an armchair, scarcely able to clutch hold of it.

What had happened? How had the enemy anticipated him? What about Kutsi?

What had become of the Faetians who were to elect him for another term? They were dead, dead! Thousands, maybe millions, maybe hundreds of millions had ceased to exist!

The military leaders rushed into his office and hastened to help the old Faetian with the shaking head… He was groaning; his left leg was twitching, but his right leg, like his arm, had gone numb.

The military leaders bustled about the circular office and sent for the Sister of Health. They tried to pour water and broke the tumblers. No one was yet capable of understanding the full gravity of the position.

The disintegration war, when they mentioned it, sounded like something horrible but impossible, like a children’s fairy tale. Even now, when the ominous mushrooms could be seen on nearly all the monitors in the bunker and many of the screens were black and networking, the scurrying Faetians still didn’t want to believe that it was all over up above. It was somewhere far away, but here, what was close and visible was the Ruler’s weakness, the Sister of Health fussing over him and the unpleasant odour of medicines.

The dejected military leaders made no decisions and issued no orders.

Once again, commands were given by automatic systems.

Dictator Yar Jupi, who had not such secret communications with the enemy continent like those maintained by Kutsi Merc through the roundheads did not suspect that Danjab had no less reliable a “retaliation system” than the Superiors.

Instruments recording the disintegration radioactivity in the air, the seismic effects of the explosions on Danjab territory and the force of the heat blasts, gave firing commands to countless rocket installations, also camouflaged on the seabed, in deep mine shafts and in mountain gorges. An armada of vengeance had already set off to fly across the ocean to Powermania.

Only Kutsi Merc had foreseen this. No sooner had the coloured, swirling cloud risen up before his eyes than he managed to dive into a disused shaft in which Nept had worked all his life and over which, when it was exhausted, he had built his own cabin. Kutsi Merc took cover in a narrow stone well down which he climbed by means of damp metal rungs.

His weakness seemed to have passed off. Nervous tension had given him back his strength.

He couldn’t see anything any more, but could hear and, it seemed, felt with every cell in his body the terrible explosion that rocked the vicinity. Stones rained down on Kutsi; one of them struck him painfully on the shoulder. But Kutsi clung convulsively to the rungs. Even now, he refused to give in.

The exultant and triumphant news about the outbreak of a disintegration war was picked up by Ala Veg on Space Station Dei-mo.

Terribly frightened, unable to believe her own eyes, she read the automatically taped report in which there was news of disintegration strike unleashed on Danjab, the continent of the Gutturals, about the extermination of tens of millions of the enemy, if not more.

With the sole feeling that the explosions had fortunately taken place on the other continent and her children were alive, Ala Veg ran out to report about this terrible event to Mrak Luton, the station commander.

He did not admit her. Puffed up and pompous, as if his office had been invaded by dozens of Faetians awaiting an audience, he made Ala Veg stand for a long time outside the door before he let her in.

He glanced over the proffered papers, stood up and shouted hoarsely:

“Joy! This means happiness for us! May they be without end, the cycles in the blissful life of Dictator Yar Jupi! At last it has come to pass! The continent of Danjab is being cleansed of the scum that settled there!”