This post was inspired by a writing prompt in the Worldbuilding community - Worldbuilding Prompt #618 - Advanced Weaponry.
I'm not sure if this post counts as science fiction or horror, but it's from my scifi setting, and one of the characters is someone who has appeared before.
Disclaimer; all science in this post is the kind of space opera hand-wavey bull***t that Star Trek would be proud of. None of it is real. Thank goodness. 😉
Image by Peace,love,happiness from Pixabay
"Well, Professor Fazzick, what do have to show me ?"
Her tone was brusque; BrownASP Lady-Leader Saria Reditran was a busy woman, and was not accustomed to being summoned by scientists as if she were a common maid. Especially not this early in the morning. Although she had, of course, ensured that her red-braided chestnut brown uniform and long copper-coloured hair were utterly perfect before venturing out. She had an image to maintain.
The scientist in front of her looked like the personification of the laboratory they were in. He was a Malan, a small serpentine race who existed in a permanent state of levitation. He was maybe three feet from the tip of his nose to the end of his curly tail; the top foot was an almost humanoid head, with a rib cage and two arms.
He was also loaded down with cybernetic enhancements. His eyes were blank steel-coloured orbs. His hands had been replaced by complex assemblages of instruments, sensors, probes and prehensile metallic grasping tentacles. Large areas of his skin were covered with articulated plates or sensor panels.
The Malan's voice, when he spoke, emanated from a rectangular speaker in the centre of his chest. It sounded human, melodious, and utterly wrong coming from a creature like this.
"You asked me to lead a team working on improved strategic level weaponry, honourable Lady-Leader. The brief was to see if we could devise an improved Galaxy-Cracker bomb. Well," he paused, a self-congratulatory smile of triumph appearing on his artificial face, "we've done far better than that."
He flicked a few controls, and complex schematics appeared as a holographic projection in the centre of the lab.
"Let me introduce you to the Stab-bomb. It is all you asked for, and much, much more."
"The Stab-bomb," Lady Saria echoed, her face carefully blank, and her tone just as carefully neutral.
"It stands for Spinning-Tachyon-Altered-Baryon Bomb. It's really very clever. I can give you a simplified explanation of how it works, if you like."
Lady Saria detested the smug tone of his voice, the implication that he was dumbing it down for her. She just nodded.
The Malan scientist continued; it was clear he was following a pre-prepared mental script, and nothing she said would have stopped him anyway.
"What the bomb does is replicate the effects of the Big Bang. It doesn't have the mass, but the rotation of the spinning tachyons imparts far greater energy than ordinary linear-motion tachyons have. That's our first stroke of genius. By harnessing tachyons, we can replicate the expansion effect of the Big Bang. This is where the first effect of the altered baryons comes into play. The tachyons instantaneously create an entire universe inside the target one. The baryonic alteration means it is made of anti-matter. The two should cancel each other out very nicely !"
As the scientist paused, Lady Saria struggled to maintain her neutral tone. "We asked you for a galaxy cracker bomb. But it sounds like this is a universe-cracker."
Professor Fazzick's grin widened. "Oh no, My Lady, it is far better than that. The baryonic alteration has a secondary effect. The two universes cancelling out removes all the matter, but generates a large amount of energy. With no universe there any more, it needs to find somewhere to go. So it'll punch a hole through to an adjacent plane or dimension and repeat the process there."
"And how many times does it do this before it stops ?"
"That's the beauty of it ! It keeps on going. It'll totally destroy our enemies. All of them, everywhere, in every universe they could hide in."
She nodded as if she understood. "Very good, Professor Fazzick. I will let you know later this afternoon whether we wish to proceed with this weapon."
He bobbed a bow as she left the laboratory.
Once she closed the door, she turned to the stolid brown-clad ASP officer waiting outside who had escorted her there. She knew he was totally dedicated to her, and utterly reliable.
"Colonel Martell, five minutes after I leave please go in there and shoot Professor Fazzick. Shoot him repeatedly until you are certain he is not just very, very dead, but most definitely brain dead."
The colonel just nodded. He knew that if she gave him an order, it was for good reason.
"Then have your men round up his team and shoot all of them, too. Shoot his family, and their families. Burn the laboratory. Burn his house. Track down every file, every backup, every notebook, every doodle on a napkin, everything you can find. Burn them too. Then deposit all the ash into the nearest star in person. What he has just explained to me like some happy little schoolkid with his science project, is an abomination and must never be built."