Chapter Twenty-One
Even in a corner with predators at your throat, there is always a way out, if you can only discover it.
—Mutati Saying
On the shapeshifter home world of Paradij, the Zultan spun inside his clearplax gyrodome, high atop his magnificent, glittering Citadel. During this procedure, his mind was like an advanced computer with all data in it available to him instantaneously. In addition, he had altered his body, and now looked like a cross between a saber-toothed wyoo boar and a Gwert, one of the intelligent alien races employed in scientific positions by the Mutatis.
At the moment, he was considering a very big problem, and needed all the inspiration he could muster.
With podship space travel cut off—the only practical means of transport across the galaxy—Mutati outriders had not been able to continue their Demolio attacks against Human-controlled worlds. Conventional spacecraft, such as Mutati solar-sailers and the hydion-powered vacuum rockets used by Humans, were far too slow to be effective, except for intra-sector voyages. The Humans had learned this lesson the hard way when they sent an attack fleet against the Mutatis by conventional means, and it took more than eleven years to arrive, by which time the military technology was obsolete and easily defeated.
Nonetheless, there might still be a way for the Zultan to continue his Demolio torpedo attacks, busting enemy planets apart. Years ago, a Mutati scientist had cut a piece of material off a podship—a thick slab of the soft, interior skin. He’d done it at a pod station while the ship was loading, and caused the sentient creature to react violently. It had contracted, crushing the scientist and the Parvii pilot before they could send an emergency signal, but the piece of flesh was thrown clear and recovered by another Mutati.
After that, laboratory experiments were conducted on the tissue, and detailed analyses were made of the cellular structure. In the last couple of years, after many wrong turns, Mutati scientists had been able to clone the complex tissue, and had grown several podships … an unprecedented event.
However, while the lab-bred creatures appeared to possess many of the same attributes as the authentic Aopoddae, they did not have all of them, and they fell short in significant particulars. The scientists suspected this might have something to do with the power of the sentient creatures to control their own appearances, and—except for the influence exerted over them by Parviis—their own actions.
What the Mutatis possessed now were generic pods that did not display any individuality or variety. They all looked virtually the same, including their interiors and amenities, which often differed in authentic, natural podships. The clones had primitive access hatches and rough, archaic interiors, more like the insides of caves than the interiors of spacecraft capable of faster-than-light speeds. Not that any of the natural podships were luxurious, far from it. They did, however, offer some basic amenities that were lacking in the clones—such as benches, tables, and stowage areas for luggage.
So far, the Mutatis had met with no success testing the lab-pods. Several attempts to guide them and ride in them as passengers had been disastrous, resulting in crashes that killed everyone aboard, or in vessels that drifted aimlessly and had to be rescued by chase ships.
In addition, using rocket boosters, the laboratory-bred pods had been shot into space. From instinct, perhaps, the pods always accelerated beyond what the Mutatis wanted and reached such high speeds that they left their boosters behind and disappeared into space. Out of twenty-four such attempts, none of the lab-pods had arrived at the intended destinations on Mutati fringe worlds. They had a serious guidance problem, and all efforts to steer them precisely had met with failure. The artificial podships were like wild rockets shot by children in backyards.
Emerging from the gyrodome, the Zultan was disappointed. Inside, God-on-High had appeared before him in a vision, telling him the guidance problem could never be solved. He’d experienced visions before, and had no idea that many of them were psychic influences from the Adurian gyrodome, altering his decision-making processes. He also didn’t know that his research scientists were similarly influenced by minigyros they used, keeping them from ever figuring out how to control the lab-pods. The clandestine HibAdu Coalition didn’t want any more important merchant prince planets destroyed, because they were slated to be prizes of war for the secretly allied Hibbils and Adurians.
Unaware of the layered plots enfolding him, Abal Meshdi went to the lab-pod development facility, and commanded them to make a ship ready to carry an outrider in a schooner, fitted with the torpedo doomsday weapon.
“The ship will be guided by God-on-High,” the intensely devout Mutati leader announced. “If our Demolio is meant to hit the target, it will.”
***