A madcap space opera where three of the empire's most hapless creatures are tasked with destroying the seat of government and all that goes with it. To manage this dastardly task they are armed with a bomb. Not an ordinary bomb but a planet destroying intelligent bomb that won't go boom until its handlers really really want it to.
I mean, for heavens sake, what could possibly go wrong?
Empires come and go. Some are considered rotten to their core and fall in a most spectacular way. Then, as if by magic, everyone forgets how shitty they were and remembers them with fondness. Others were never rotten, but inhabitants of such empires forget the good bits and focus on the bad—and then they fall. Ho hum!
So, what was this current emperor like? Emperor Zolog of the Shirts, Emperor of the Seven Galaxies, Ruler of the Kingdom of Nod, Prime of the Smugg Alliance, Demigod of the Warlords of Flek, Commander of Space Fleets and owner of The Great Throne of Zing, was despicably bad, and many worlds had the scars to prove it.
On the far edges of his empire most planets felt left out, forgotten, and a plaything of business. That built resentment, resentment built dislike, and dislike led to hatred until people decided to act. One such place was a little-known planet in the outer spiral arm of an unremarkable galaxy the inhabitants called ‘The Milky Way’. Some of its inhabitants believed this galaxy was named after a chocolate bar, not after the actions of a mythical god who sprayed milk across the sky. You will not be surprised to know that that planet is called ‘Earth’, and the bi-peds who lived on it are called humans.
Those humans were very much astounded when, on joining the empire, they found most intelligent life walked on two legs, and that four-legged lifeforms usually didn’t have a superior intellect. If anyone had taken the time to study cats, they might have realised that they were the dominant species, and that, for many generations, cats had been training their humans to look after their every necessity. Now these felines had nothing to do, other than look beautiful, eat, sleep and chase mice.
When the empire found Earth, an armada of empire gunships pulled into orbit, blackening the sky. They suggested, very forcibly, that Earth join the empire. Thus, the Earthlings settled down to be plundered of all their wealth. The one thing the empire did give humans was a spaceport. A huge vertical railway-like structure rose from the surface of Earth to a spaceport in geosynchronous orbit. The ‘gondola’ cars were hoisted to the spaceport using a series of chains, cogs and cables. These gondolas would be cranked up, full of passengers and plundered mining goods, while other gondolas took returning visitors down to the surface. The idea was that the weight going down would equal the weight going up. That never happened. Plundered goods and people desperate to leave far outweighed anything arriving.
Earthlings also found that it was imperial policy that each world should be bombed periodically just to maintain fear and discipline. Emperor Zolog of the Shirts was particularly proud of this strategy; it was something none of his predecessors had thought of. Not one.
Surprisingly, this built up more resentment. Some humans left Earth and its gigantic mining holes that spewed out foulness to find a better life. Those who stayed grew angrier and angrier until their hatred boiled over into action. This action resulted in the making of a planet-destroying bomb. Something so dastardly that it would not only kill every living thing on the planet but would obliterate the entire mantle, along with the core and everything else. Even the beloved spaceport would be destroyed if the bomb exploded on Earth. But it wasn’t meant for Earth. It was meant for the galactic centre, for Planet Nod, the very place Emperor Zolog of the Shirts held court. It was designed to blow up everything there: Zolog, the central government, the planetary representatives, the whole kit and caboodle.
But such a device could not be left to mere happenchance, a misplaced finger, or a miss-remembered passkey. No. It needed something much more secure. It needed insight into the very psyche of its handlers. In short, it needed intelligence, and with intelligence comes personality, and with personality comes trouble. Its two handlers had to be really certain of its detonation, otherwise … nothing.
Handlers were hard to find. They needed to be like the Wicker Man: intelligent fools. Two were found. One was named Wilbert, an Earthling of medium height (six feet), in his thirty-fifth year of life, unmarried, with a porch-like gut, and a fondness for fish and chips. His intelligence was … slightly above average. As a lover of that earthly delight, fish and chips, he and his family—Wilbert, his mother, father, and baby sister—had always settled down to their Friday evening supper of said delight in the local chip shop. One Friday, when Wilbert was away working in the mines, the chip shop was bombed, and his family killed. That single act of destruction would change the course of imperial history.
His cohort, Oakley, had much the same history. He was a floravoid, that is, a two-legged member of the tree family who populated (amongst other places) the second moon of Cram. Cram was an uninhabitable gas giant in the inner arm of the Milky Way. Cram had moons swirling around it. Only one moon was habitable: Du Cram, the second moon in the system.
Oakley was tall and slender, with long branch-like arms, twiggy fingers and thick trunk legs. He was very strong, and I mean VERY! He had whisps of furry twigs sprouting all over his body. This forced Oakley to ‘shave’ regularly. He was a tree man in every sense. He was off moon when his family were killed, working on a planet in the outer arm of the Milky Way (which Cram-moonians call ‘The Bole’). The planet was Earth, which Oakley thought was a godforsaken place. Not that he saw much of the surface. He worked in a very deep godforsaken hole where he ripped out Earth’s juicy plunder.
Oakley and Wilbert worked together and somehow became friends. They were very different. Wilbert was gregarious, craving company and friendship, where Oakley was dour and stern-faced. He was devoid of humour, not least because his face did not have the heartwood or pith to make the shapes necessary to express it. Oakley liked having this Earthling around. He was dumber than him and could take multiple insults, while Wilbert just liked having a tree around that he didn’t need to water.
So, they found themselves outside the guarded perimeter of Earth’s space elevator, carrying an intelli-bomb, a built-for-purpose planet smasher with an IQ greater than theirs. They listened to the clunks and groans coming from the spaceport. It may have been able to ferry them to space without all the huff and puff of lifting each craft out of Earth’s gravity but it had seen better days. Maintenance was hardly carried out and was only managed on a ‘break and repair’ basis. And it broke a lot. This meant it was fast becoming the most hazardous part of space travel.
Now for the story proper …