The stealth ship, the Inference, held its position in the silent vacuum of high orbit, a sliver of non-reflective composite against the star-dusted black. Below, the planet was a swirl of ochre and bruised purple, a marble of dying physics. On the ship’s tactical bridge, the air was cold and tasted of ozone from the humming life support. It was a clean, sterile environment designed for clean, sterile work. Technician Orrin kept his eyes on the primary console, its blue light painting his face in stark geometric shadows. His objective was simple: to ensure the prototype was ready.
The target was acquired. A remote Hunter-Gatherer settlement, designated Seed-Dome Epsilon-9, glowed as a faint circle of warmth on the targeting display. It was a place of life, a small, self-sustaining agricultural community woven into the planetary biosphere. To Orrin, it was just a set of coordinates. He ran the final diagnostic on the Disruptor Array. The gyroscopic focusing lens spun up with a low, almost inaudible hum, its nested pylons glowing with a steady, cold light. Every metric on his board resolved to green.
— Power levels at one hundred percent, — Orrin reported, his voice flat and professional. He was a good technician. He focused on the numbers. The numbers were pure; they had no opinion. — Targeting solution is locked. We are ready.
A moment of silence stretched, filled only by the whisper of the air recyclers. Then the voice of Hanno Valberg, crisp and devoid of any transmission static, came through the comms. It was a voice that did not need to be loud to command absolute obedience.
— Proceed.
Orrin’s fingers hovered over the activation key. This was the moment. The culmination of Director Valberg’s simulations, of the frantic work at the Forge, of the terrible new physics stolen from the Doppler Carillon event. He thought of the number on the manifest: 200 civilian inhabitants. A rounding error, as the Director might say. The price of this action was his signature on a ledger of ghosts. He pressed the key.
— Firing sequence initiated, — he said. His own voice sounded distant.
The Disruptor Array did not recoil. It did not launch a projectile. It simply began to broadcast. From the central lens, a wave of focused paradox radiated outward, a silent scream of incorrect mathematics aimed at the heart of the living dome. The sound, had there been air to carry it, was the corrupted score Valberg had composed: a perversion of Jian Li’s anthem, a song that argued for the elegant logic of nothingness. It was a structured, weaponized form of schism static, a melody of pure decoherence.
The effect on Seed-Dome Epsilon-9 was instantaneous and absolute. There was no explosion, no fire, no debris. There was only an unmaking. The living, woven dome, a structure of immense biological complexity, did not shatter. It decohered. For a fraction of a second, it flickered, trying to be both a living thing and the mathematical void the music insisted it should be. The paradox was unsustainable.
The dome dissolved into a screaming lattice of dust and static. The vibrant green and brown of the living architecture bled into the harsh, digital noise of its own erasure. The process cascaded inward. Woven habitats, fungal light sources, and the intricate root systems that served as the village’s foundation were unwritten from reality. They became a brief, shrieking visual of overlapping, contradictory states before vanishing completely.
Inside, the 200 inhabitants met the same fate. They were not killed; they were nullified. Their bodies, complex symphonies of biological processes, were subjected to a command that insisted they were a flawed equation. They flickered, their forms tearing into ghostly, overlapping images of flesh and geometric crystal, and then they were gone. The sensor feed on Orrin’s console was brutally efficient. Life signs: zero.
The entire event lasted less than ten seconds. Where the dome had been, there was now only a circular patch of barren, sterilized ground, shimmering with the faint, residual after-image of the weaponized schism static. The air above it crackled with a faint, clean hiss, the sound of a wound in the world.
On the bridge of the Inference, the silence returned, heavier than before. Orrin stared at the blank space on the targeting map. He had followed the procedure. The numbers were all correct. He felt a cold hollowness spread through his chest, an emptiness that had nothing to do with the vacuum outside.
— Data recording complete, — he reported. His throat was dry. — The test was successful.
Valberg’s voice returned, as calm and unaffected as if Orrin had just confirmed a routine course correction. — Excellent. Package the recording. Full telemetry and visual. You will broadcast it on the Directorate’s emergency channel.
Orrin’s hands felt clumsy on the console. He was no longer a technician. He was an accomplice, a producer of evidence for a war crime. He isolated the footage—the silent, horrifying unmaking of Epsilon-9—and embedded it in a broadcast packet.
— Message to accompany the footage, Director? — Orrin asked, the formality a thin shield against the reality of his actions.
— Yes, — Valberg replied. The pause was brief, calculated. — Text only. ‘Surrender the composer.’
The order was given. The atrocity was now a threat. Orrin executed the command, sending the message out across the system. He had just helped turn a work of art into an instrument of genocide, and then used the recording as a hostage note. The axis of his world, once governed by the clean logic of physics, had just tilted into a state of pure, weaponized force.
Far away, in the living, breathing heart of The Loom, the message arrived. On a screen woven from fungal threads, the Gatherer High Command watched the silent footage. They saw the dome, a place of life and harmony, dissolve into a shriek of static. They saw the life signs vanish. They read the five words that followed. The chamber, usually filled with the low hum of the Planetary Canticle, fell into a profound and terrible silence. It was the silence of shock, of grief, and of a rage so deep it felt like the planet itself was holding its breath. The war was no longer a conflict of ideas. It was now a matter of survival against an enemy who would unwrite their existence to prove a point.
The hunt for Jian Li was no longer about securing a prophet. It was now a terrified, desperate race to disarm a god.
Aboard the Inference, Orrin leaned back in his chair, the blue light of the console feeling like an accusation. The ship began to move, pulling away from the scene of its perfect, orderly crime.
The quiet hum of the bridge felt like a held breath.
The air was still.
Now they had to see if the world would break under the weight of his ultimatum.
