War Command Cruiser 5 lumbered toward the inner planets of the fringe G2 star system they'd recently arrived in. They'd come from a trinary star system a little over four light-years away, and four years in their past. Back then, one of the 27 Empire's many picket ships, this one designated Armor Attack Ship 2875, had happened to be stationed in the same trinary system, and had followed the last known armored warrior into the stargate that led to the fringe system they were now in. Standard protocol would have been to wait for Armor Attack Ship 2875 to send back a report — which, given the round trip time at light speed, would have meant a wait of over eight years. But if this really was the last armored warrior, War Command Cruiser 5 didn't want to wait that long.
So, after only a few months of preparation, War Command Cruiser 5 had followed Armor Attack Ship 2875 through the same stargate. They'd emerged on this new end of the stargate mere days ago. Per procedure, Armor Attack Ship 2875 had left an automated news beacon in this star system, which repeated its report to any ship of the 27 Empire that arrived after it, and had then departed through the same stargate it had entered. (Its light speed signal would've passed War Command Cruiser 5's light speed signal going the other way, a few months into this return trip.) If the news beacon was to be believed, the picket ship had sent the armored warrior careening down into the atmosphere of the largest rocky inner planet. This was excellent news. If the force of the ship's weapons hadn't killed him, the aerobraking heat and the impact with the planet's rocky surface surely would have.
Triumph over the Homeworld, at last. This was what War Command Cruiser 5 now had to confirm.
Nestled deep inside the enormous rectanguar spacecraft, its command center bustled with activity. "Bustled" was a relative term, of course. To human eyes, the six-armed creatures manning it would have seemed lethargic, even slothlike in their every movement; but they moved with deliberate purpose. At their center, crouched on a dais to emphasize his importance, one of the 27 Empire's few High Mandarins lorded over his crew.
Every star system where the 27 Empire held sway had its own Mandarin. It was the only way to maintain imperial control. Each Mandarin was an extension of the Emperor's will, appointed to that role because the Emperor himself never left Colony 27. In the system where the Mandarin governed, everyone had to treat his word as though it were the Emperor's will. The Mandarins had to make regular reports to the Emperor, of course, and receive long-term orders from him. The few years these took to make the trip between one of the inner systems and Colony 27 were acceptable delays. But as the 27 Empire had grown, and had established itself in more and more far-flung star systems, the delays between transmission and receipt of the Emperor's orders had stretched into decades, rendering them hopelessly obsolete by the time they arrived. So, for any long-term strategic planning, the Mandarins in any large region of the 27 Empire needed to coordinate amongst themselves; and with that came the need for one central figure in each large region who outranked even the Mandarins. That one figure was the region's High Mandarin.
This was the first time any High Mandarin had ever ventured into a star system outside his seat of power. Victory over the last Armored Warrior was that important.
"Have you detected any hint of him?" the High Mandarin asked in his high-pitched, chirping language.
"Not from this distance, so far," the second-in-command replied. Two of his six tentacle arms made fine adjustments to one of the instruments. "I don't really expect to find any even after we close in. Armor Attack Ship 2875 put him out of action and knocked him down from orbit at the same time. That one-two punch must have killed him. The news beacon says he hit the planet's atmosphere at over thirty times its speed of sound; not even homeworld energy-armor can protect anything from that much re-entry heat, and he was still supersonic when he hit the ground!"
"Hmmm . . . maybe. But Armor Attack Ship 2875 left an automated probe behind, and that probe picked up high-speed, singular life energy emissions — the type characteristic of personal armor fields. If he really was the last armored warrior, we'd better make sure nothing went wrong."
"Well, I still don't think —"
A scanner reading cut him short. The concentration of life energy at a particular point had just tripled; energy-armor was in use near the large rocky planet's surface. Two of his arms momentarily forgot to be tense, and flopped down by his sides; but he surged back into action and engaged the pinpointing equipment.
"There he is, sir! I don't believe it, but he's still alive. He's below the cloud level. His flight speed is rather low considering the atmospheric and gravitational conditions."
"Then we've found him." The High Mandarin made a gripping gesture with the tentacle-fingers of his upper-left hand. "But why didn't he leave, since he knew this would be the first place we'd look?"
"There is highly evolved intelligent life down there. They even appear to have an electric-level technology."
Several features around the High Mandarin's eyes hardened: he was deeply angered. "How long have you known about this?!" he demanded.
This caught the second-in-command off-guard. "It, uh, showed up in our scans an hour-and-a-half ago."
"And you didn't tell me immediately?!" the High Mandarin said.
The second-in-command withdrew. "No, sir."
"You damned fool!" the High Mandarin snapped. "If he's met a technological race, he could probably teach them how to build a space armada. Now, we have to destroy not only an armored warrior, but an entire intelligent species! We have to start a whole new round of preparations now. We could've gotten all this prep work taken care of and out of the way if I'd been informed of the armored warrior's precise condition and what kind of planet he was orbiting."
"Sorry, sir; but I can't take the responsibility. Procedures dictate we're supposed to complete the scans before we hand the results up the chain of command, so that decisions aren't based on incomplete information."
"No, no," the High Mandarin sighed, calming down, "I'm not blaming you. Armor Attack Ship 2875 should have detected that the last Armored Warrior had survived. Then they could have intervened and finished him off before we needed to exterminate this new species. We might have left them alone to grow, let them mature, who knows? Maybe we could even have subsumed them into the 27 Empire in a few centuries. But now? With access to Homeworld technology, they're too much of a threat. We have to exterminate them." He let a couple of silent breaths go by. "It looks like such a nice world, too. I see the armored warrior's strategy in choosing which planet to orbit when Armor Attack Ship 2875 closed in. But it doesn't make any difference now." He glanced furtively around his command center, reveling in the array of ship systems at his disposal. "At least he'll die seeing the 27 Empire in its full fury."
The first officer punched in a few commands on his console, and watched his display. Their distance to the blue-green world slowly dwindled.
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