CHAPTER 22
“I don’t like this, I don’t like this at all,” Mr. Edgar breathed, his face flushed with emotion. His brow twitched, and he could not steady the cigar in his fingers. “Damn it! We should never have let you push us into this Crandal! Things were dead and buried. Now all of our past dealings are there to be dredged up against us. What was necessary in the past can be seen in a vastly different light now, and it is your greed and incompetence which has put us in the spotlight. Face it Crandal, you lost the edge. You don’t have it anymore, and we were fools to believe you did.”
“Whine all you want, it doesn’t change anything,” Crandal replied evenly, puffing at his pipe. “The fact remains that we’re not fingered yet. Alexander may still be alive, but he doesn’t see or suspect who is behind these attempts.”
“He saw enough to fire you,” was the retort. “A fine job of that, I might add, especially after convincing the Hrang that you would take care of the third attempt on Golkos if the second attempt failed. That won’t be so easily done now that you are no longer working on the inside. How are you going to explain that away?”
“Calm yourself, my friend, all of that is worked out,” Crandal assured him. The heavy man was unsatisfied and unperturbed. At that moment the door opened and another man entered. He was a stranger to them all. Crandal jerked up in his chair, a gun in his hand, but the stranger smiled holding up his hands and changed into a Hrang. Crandal breathed a sigh of relief, but said, “That’s a new look for you isn’t it?”
“I thought it wise to periodically change my appearance,” the Hrang said, changing back into his disguise. “Alexander’s security forces are proceeding quietly in their investigations but with a fair amount of energy. Having the same man appear here so many times without reason might seem suspicious to the outside world. If I am suspicious of it other, more important beings, may also be.”
Crandal smiled thinly and stabbed at the remote sitting next to his drink. The television in the dark room bloomed to life playing a grainy black and white tape. “Have a seat. You are just in time for a brief review. Do you remember this event gentlemen?” Crandal asked, puffing at his pipe. The camera’s view moved inexpertly through the interior of a spare office building. There was nothing extraordinary about the locale, but wherever the camera looked there were the huddled bodies of white coated staff and soldiers. They were slumped on the floors in hallways, rooms, everywhere; lit up by naked electric bulbs.
Edgar stared dumbly at the screen before finally saying, “The “accident,”area fifty-one in seventy-three. The day the “Grey’s” killed fifty-nine people in the compound and then disappeared.”
“Yes, my friends, the “accident,” Crandal echoed. “The day when fifty-nine people were killed by our new friends the Scythians without bullets, blasters, knives or gas. It was that catastrophe of stupidity which cost us global power. The Scythians left immediately after the murders, but they left their victims behind. Autopsies revealed they were all killed by some form of telepathy, a psionic weapon. It didn’t take long to figure that out. Autopsies showed that the chemicals in each victim’s brain responsible for transmitting information through the neurons were all ionized by an influx of energy. The brains, unable to transmit data then simply shut down. It was efficient, and indefensible. What took a bit longer was to figure out how they did it. That little piece of work took almost twenty years, gentlemen, and was one of the few programs to survive through this very day. Fortunately, the Scythians not only left us the evidence of this new form of killing, but all of the technology that we had thus far captured or traded from them. We had all we needed to painstakingly piece the puzzle back together. We knew the Scythians were telepaths, but we also knew they were limited telepaths. There was another piece of luck on our side. We had, unbeknownst to the Scythians, a living Scythian prisoner. Now Scythians, as we learned, were connected with each other on a sort of species wide psionic net. We learned, however, that the net could be interrupted, isolating an individual from the rest of the species, by mildly short circuiting the brain. This left the individual in a coma-like state until we had need of them. We did this with a survivor of one of our shoot downs. When the Scythians left we set up an electric interference field in a special room and interrogated the prisoner. The Scythians, especially when isolated from the comfort of their psionic net, are highly susceptible to physical methods of information extraction. It didn’t take long to learn a great deal. We learned, for instance, that the psionic weapon is largely mechanical in nature. Although the initial pulse of energy is actually psionic it is amplified and channeled artificially. This is done through a complex body of circuitry impregnated into the Scythian’s clothing. Of course the Scythian’s wear this specialized clothing when they deal with alien races, as a precaution, so we have examples of it. The weapon has a limited range, about ten meters, and is omni-directional so it has its limitations. It is, however, quite lethal in this range.”
“How is it possible to employ this weapon against Alexander?”
“The weapon actually works quite simply,” Crandal explained. “The Scythian’s have an enlarged pons, and this is the area responsible for their telepathic capabilities. When a Scythian activates the psionic weapon a simple neurochemical trigger sends a pulse of energy out of the region. Normally this pulse would not be strong enough for you or I to notice, and it would do no damage. However, when amplified it becomes quite deadly to life forms without psionic disciplines, as we have seen. The question as to how to employ it is somewhat more complicated since we do not have a Scythian to trigger it. What we do have is the circuitry, and a passable mechanical method of artificially recreating the initial Scythian psionic pulse. The pulse, after all, is simply energy which travels by pathways dictated by physics. That does not mean it was simple to recreate, or that we can accurately do so, but we have a signature which is good enough to serve the purpose. When fired the pulse triggers the psionic amplifier and produces the desired results.”
“You have tested it, I assume?” It was the obvious question.
“Several times,” he answered, wreathed in a blue haze of smoke. “We didn’t want to burn out the circuit. It is unique, and beyond our ability to reproduce, as it is actually a bio-electrical circuit. Understand me, as are other Scythian products, this circuit is manipulated on the quantum level by a process still alien to us. But yes, we’ve tested it on several subjects with excellent results.”
“How are we then to employ it?”
“While engaged in my temporary but useful duties as Alexander’s Chief of Security I had access to Alexander’s private quarters. During one opportunity I secreted the circuit into Alexander’s ceremonial cuirass. He is very rarely without it, not only for its obvious protective purposes but due to its galaxy wide recognition. It is the same cuirass he wore on Pantrixnia, and Alexander knows the value of this recognition. He will wear it when he is on Golkos, and Admiral Augesburcke will be there as well. In one pulse we will take down the entire government of the Empire, leaving a void which we will fill.”
The room became deadly silent as the men digested the news. Crandal could see the slight nods and the hardening of their resolve. That’s exactly what he needed. Now more comfortable, he continued, “You see, alongside the circuit I also implanted a tiny ethernet receiver provided to me by the Alliance. We shall send our artificial pulse through an ethernet transmitter on the day Alexander is on Golkos accepting the Alliance surrender. The pulse will activate the psionic amplifier in Alexander’s armor killing Alexander and Augesburcke. To improve matters there will be nothing at all to trace the assassination to ourselves. The psionic amplifier, when found, is obviously Scythian; and though it is not common knowledge that the Scythian’s have this form of weapon our Alliance friends will assuredly aide us in holding the Scythians responsible for the act.”
“Ingenious,” admitted Edgar, “but why wait? Why not activate the amplifier now?”
Crandal shook his craggy head, “And change history before it is ready? No, my friends let us allow Alexander to play his part. He can gain the glory so long as we reap the benefits. After all, that is what galactic legends foretell as his destiny, and we wouldn’t want to alter destiny would we?”