Surefoot 68: Three... Two... One...

Now, however, the prey will be reminded that we are the predators here.

And the target of this reminder will be the city of Shanos Minor, the loudest nest of mealy-mouthed rebels.

As I speak, Awil-Aya and his males are having fun with the protesting cubs. The Caitians there might think this the acme of their suffering. But they will be wrong.

For our campaign here, we equipped our orbital carries with tricobalt warheads, capable of delivering thirty isoton yields to cleanly eliminate the Militia bases throughout Cait. But such tactical weapons are insufficient for what I want to inflict upon an entire city.

So the Engineers have gone Old School, and obtained appropriate materials to construct what I am told is commonly called a Hydrogen Bomb."

Nusum-Adu reacted sharply, but Welros was more curious. "I am unfamiliar with that term, Master Governor."

Melem-Adu smiled. "It is a weapon, one developed by many races throughout Galactic History; some have even been unfortunate enough to deploy them on their own soil, and to their cost underestimate their destructive potential. It is a weapon that uses a nuclear fission reaction to trigger a much more powerful nuclear fusion reaction, releasing tremendous amounts of energy and radiation.

It is a Weapon of Mass Destruction worthy of the title, primitive by our standards but frighteningly effective, a weapon capable of producing a blast that will destroy everything in a minimal radius of ten sestares, extreme heat that can spark firestorms, and intense white light that can induce blindness.

And as if the initial destruction was not enough to do the terible rjob, such weapons infuse particles of debris hurled into the atmosphere by the explosion with lethal amounts of radioactivity, that can travel thousands of sestares away, poisoning living creatures and contaminating air, water and soil, the effects lasting generations."

Nusum-Adu gasped, appalled by the notion. "B-But... But that same poison will affect the rest of the planet! Affect us!"

Melem-Adu looked to his son. "Not to any appreciable, untreatable degree; I'm told that with the mountains circling the city, only the Caitian communities surrounding Shanos Minor will receive the substantial majority of the fallout.

But what is far more important is the message it will deliver to the Caitians, when they see the price of resistance to their masters."

His son continued to stare back at him. "There's... there's over three million Caitians there."

He nodded. "One city, one sacrifice, to ensure the compliance of all the others. I consider that a worthwhile sacrifice." He looked back at Welros. "Well? Any snide remarks to make?"

The Vorta just smiled again. "I am intrigued. I would be interested in witnessing the effects of your Hydrogen Bomb."

"Then you're in the right place: I will be addressing the planet immediately prior to its employment, with remote cameras broadcasting the effects, so the Caitians fully understand the threat the rest of them face. Unless you'd care to be closer, say, at Ground Zero? I can certainly arrange it."

Welros laughed softly. "Another time, perhaps."

"Perhaps." Melem-Adu turned back to his son. "Contact the Engineers, confirm the target is Shanos Minor and have them ready to launch the weapon. Then activate the Transporter Network, and mass recall all of our people from the city and surrounding area."

Nusum-Adu never responded, just continued to stare at him in sheer disbelief. He drew up to him, lowering his voice. "Father... three million people. Wiping out their military was one thing. But these are mostly civilians, some mewling cubs and sympathisers, making noise and nothing more.

If you do this... there'll be no turning back. They'll never forgive you for this."

Melem-Adu stared back, with a different flavour of disbelief. "I don't need their forgiveness. And I don't need your approval." He stepped closer, baring his teeth. "You stood up to me once, and earned yourself a Name for it. Don't be greedy. Go away and do as you're told... or just go away and don't come back. I have to prepare what I shall tell the Prey."

His son glared back, hackles raised... but then turned and proceed to the stations in Ops.

Melem-Adu breathed in. Good Cub.

*

THREE MINUTES, FORTY-SIX SECONDS, FORTY-FIVE, FORTY-FOUR...

Mithram Valley:

Something was wrong.

Valtiri's blood had boiled with anticipation for the inevitable clash with the Hrelles. It was the pinnacle of his career; he would never meet their like again, and he would remember and honour them for decades to come.

And as he stood in their presence and read their thoughts and feelings, he was enriched by what he found: Captain Esek Hrelle, the veteran Starfleet Captain, former gladiator in the Orion Deathmatches, at his best on his Bridge, saving lives, but equally fulfilled as a doting husband and father.

Then there was Lieutenant Sasha Hrelle, his first human, young and fierce and dynamic, hurt time and again but still striving to carry on, a stalwart Warrior Maiden- well, maybe not a Maiden any longer. But one who knew how to live life to the fullest.

And the love these two had for each other was almost palpable. It left Valtiri... humbled. Envious. Even his own Mentor, who had found him and raised him in the wilderness as a cub to train him to control his telepathy, as loving and caring as he was, was as a shadow compared with what he felt between Father and Daughter Hrelle.

He couldn't wait for the fight.

At least, until it began. And their numbers, their experience, was almost overwhelming.

So he cheated, and used his psychic skills to listen in on their thoughts, and decipher the tactics that they were employing in Old Caitian. Still, the fight was hard and brutal.

And then Nyx intervened and attacked Lt Hrelle, who killed her in self-defence.

He knew, objectively, that the Lieutenant had only did what he would have done under the circumstances. She had every right to do so, and Nyx had no business getting involved. Valtiri should have just dismissed it and continued with his fight.

Except it didn't.

As he felt his only friend's death scream in his head, as he thought of the years he had shared with her, building a psychic rapport, knowing he could count on her to watch out for him, he couldn't help but let hate suffuse his limbs, to reach up and fling a crescent dart at the human, bringing her down.

Little wonder Captain Hrelle doubled his attack upon Valtiri. But even when they lost their swords and grappled with tooth and claw, he still felt it was a fight he could win. For all his skills, Hrelle was an older male, less fit, and Valtiri was younger, larger, stronger, faster. This should have ended quickly now.

Except it didn't.

Still, Valtiri could hear Hrelle's mind was still fixed on getting to his daughter. And Valtiri used that, and when it came, he drove his fist hard into Hrelle's left eye, breaking the socket and leaving his eye a bloody pulp. The shock should have killed Hrelle, or at least put him in deep trauma, leaving Valtiri to finish him off.

Except it didn't.

His one eye filled with blood and fixed on Valtiri, he roared, "MEAT!"

Valtiri reached into his opponent's mind, seeking Hrelle.

And finding... someone else.

Something was definitely wrong.

"KILL!"

Valtiri crawled back, fighting his own pain... and something new, something unfamiliar and unwanted: fear.

He raised an open palm to the Caitian. "Captain- your daughter- she needs you-"

"FUCK HER!"

And the Beast now in control of Hrelle charged again at him, roaring.

*

ONE MINUTE, TWENTY-NINE SECONDS, TWENTY-EIGHT, TWENTY-SEVEN...

"Remote cameras in place," Nusum-Adu reported. "Commencing Transporter Evacuation Protocols from Shanos Minor."

"Better hurry," Melem-Adu noted, staring up at the main screen, displaying a high, wide view of the sun-soaked, metropolis, sprawled out over a long peninsula surrounded by high mountains. It looked most appealing, all that glass reflecting the midday sunlight. "I'm tired of waiting."

*

SIXTY SECONDS, FIFTY-NINE, FIFTY-EIGHT...

In Shanos Minor's Freedom Plaza, the packs of Ferasan males, sated with the hunt, the rapes, the kills, without warning were enveloped in red transporter beams, vanishing like a nightmare.

The surviving Caitians, those conscious and coherent, gasped, looking around, wondering if it was some sort of trap, some deception. But why would they do that now?

"W-Where did they go?" someone asked, the question spreading like the plague. "Why did they leave?"

Then someone suggested, "M-Maybe they've left the Motherworld? Maybe Starfleet have chased them away?"

That hope spread even faster. Some even began cheering, even amidst the carnage surrounding them.

FIFTY SECONDS, FORTY-NINE, FORTY-EIGHT...

"All Ferasans transported from the Target Area," Nusum-Adu updated.

Melem-Adu nodded and began his address to the world. "Attention, Citizens of Cait: your Masters have something to say to you.

Despite our efforts to make this transition to your lives with the minimum of inconvenience, you continue to resist. Many innocents have been killed because of the selfish, short-sighted malcontents among you. And today, this inexplicable desire to fight the inevitable has culminated in an attempted missile strike on our Headquarters in First City."

FORTY-TWO SECONDS, FORTY-ONE, FORTY...

On Kaijushima Island, Kami and the others stared up at their own viewscreen, staring at an aerial view of a Caitian city she recognised as Shanos Minor, and listening to the global broadcast from the Ferasan.

"Should we feed this to the rest of the facility?" one of the younger volunteers asked.

"Absolutely not. Not until we know what this is about." She looked over at Tshal, her heart racing now. "Open a direct channel to my husband's combadge! I don't care if we break radio silence or not!"

TWENTY SECONDS, NINETEEN, EIGHTEEN...

"This we cannot allow," Melem-Adu continued. "It genuinely saddens us that an example must be made. And with a city that has been most vocal in its opposition to our rightful rule here."

He paused, turning to his son, silently mouthing the word Launch.

"The city I speak of," he continued. "The city on your screens right now, is Shanos Minor, in Nashea Province, a city renowned for its beauty, and its affirmation of equal rights for all. At your last census, 3,220,000 Caitians live here. Males, females, cubs, the young, the old. So many precious lives.

Say Goodbye to them."

ELEVEN SECONDS, TEN, NINE...

Hrelle pounded his fists against Valtiri's muzzle, roaring still.

Until he heard Kami's voice over his combadge. "Esek? Are you there? Answer me! We need you!"

He froze in place, gasping at the sound of his wife, blood dripping from his muzzle.

He drew back, away from the prostrate Valtiri. He lowered his fist, unclenched it, turning away, trying to focus with only one good eye.

He... He had to find Sasha... Help her...

EIGHT SECONDS, SEVEN, SIX...

From a spearhead-shaped Ferasan vessel in low orbit over the target, a missile launched, aimed at the planet below. It cut through the upper atmosphere, its trail noticed by many in the outlying parts of the city.

FIVE...

Its descent accelerated, the whistling sound barely catching up with the missile itself.

FOUR...

A twelve-year-old cub standing on the balcony of his apartment pointed up, seeing the object would land in the Bay next to the Esvista Suspension Bridge connecting the city to Agana Mount Aeroport.

Cool.

THREE...

TWO...

ONE...

White light filled the sky.

Nearly everyone in the city instinctively closed their eyes. Those unfortunate enough on the outer edges to be facing towards the centre of the light were instantly blinded, their retinas burned away as atoms were split and then fused together, Creation and Destruction, as a miniature star appeared in Shanos Minor Bay.

The brick-red Esvista Bridge, which had connected the city to the mainland for over four hundred years, melted. The three high main towers of the Bridge took nearly three seconds to transform into slag and drop into the boiling water, but the main and suspender cables, the deck, and every vehicle and every Caitian upon it, vaporised instantly.

The unbelievable forces generated spread out in all directions, heat and winds propelled at many times greater than the strongest storms ever recorded on Cait. Across the Bay and towards the open sea, there was little in its path, apart from several freighters that overturned as the winds struck and the sea beneath them instantly boiled into steam.

Towards the city, it met a little more resistance -- for all the good it did. The outlying parks and boulevards were swept away by the winds. The buildings, some having stood for centuries, crumbled like tissue beneath the rapid change of air pressure. Every window touched shattered, becoming bullets, billions of them, hurled ahead of the wavefront, followed closely behind by larger chunks of debris.

Anything that was combustible, combusted.

Males and females, adults and cubs, the old and the young, the sick and the healthy stood in shock, or dropped to the ground, or raced for the illusion of protection indoors, or into the arms of loved ones, trying to pray to the Great Mother or just deny what was happening.

None were spared.

Only those watching via the remote cameras lived to bear witness to the ball of energy ionising and heating the surrounding air into a fireball, the hot air quickly rising and expanding upwards, the powerful updraft picking up irradiated dust and debris and forming the stem of what evolved into a thick mushroom cloud.

The shockwave continued onward, reaching the surrounding ring of mountains.

*

"This is the price of continued defiance," Melem-Adu concluded to the Motherworld. "Now, as you understand the price you might pay. you must ask yourselves: are you the smart, sensible Caitians I hope you are? Or are you Shanos Minor?

Choose wisely."

*

Twenty seconds before, Hrelle and Valtiri had both stopped and shielded their eyes at the blinding flash from over the tall, snow-capped peaks of the Mithram Mountains, separating them from Shanos Minor.

Then Valtiri clutched the sides of his head and let loose a bloodcurdling scream of agony, dropping to his knees. The scream, and the horrified look on the Ferasan's face was one that snapped Hrelle fully out of... whatever had happened to him... and for a heartbeat forget everything else.

Then there was a rumble from the mountains.

A roar of pain.

They trembled and cracked as the shockwave struck from the other side.

And a million tons of snow and ice cascaded down from the steep slopes into the Valley...

TO BE CONTINUED...