The reports from the front were in.
They were very bad.
The reports from the backlines were also in.
They were extremely bad.
The reports from the President were in but General Gleen just put those in the trash as always. But there were more of them than usual.
That was very annoying, which was its own kind of bad.
In light of all those new and extremely annoying developments, there was only one course of action.
“Hold my calls,” said Gleen to her secretary. “I’m going to visit R&D&D.”
***
There were eighteen locks on the door. Seventeen of them were incredibly intricate and powerful and entirely for show; one of them was actually a disguised biometric scanner that would vaporize the door on both sides in a half-kilometer radius if anyone other than General Gleen opened it. It moved around and swapped places with the others without warning, and had been one of R&D&D’s earliest accomplishments.
Research and Development for Destruction wasn’t, strictly speaking, a department. For one thing it only had one employee, and ‘employee’ was an iffy word to apply to someone who wasn’t being paid.
Still, she WAS being compensated.
“Hello, professor,” said Gleen.
“Hello, general,” said Sadcollop. She was seated at her window, staring at the nothing outside it. “How’s my family?”
“Completely unharmed.”
“Well, isn’t that nice.”
“It is. And speaking of which, I had a request.”
“Wonderful. Fantastic. Stupendous.”
“No need for sarcasm. We’re losing the war.”
“Again? What would you ever do without me?”
“Lose two years ago. It’s the proton-shift torpedoes. They’ve figured out how to counter them with targeted phase-”
“Oh, quit parroting jargon you read in a report. We both know you hate it because it makes you feel stupid.”
“I don’t feel-”
“Really? Oh dear. My apologies. So your big bad beatstick of a weapon isn’t working anymore and all your strategies and tactics and whatnots are falling apart. Again. Right?”
“Right.”
“Well, it’s your lucky day.”
“You say that every time.”
“Every day’s a lucky day when you’re talking to me. I’ve had something ready for about a week. You want to see the math first?”
“You’ll just make fun of me again.”
Sadcollop clucked her tongue. “Spoilsport. Anyway, it’s the plans for a mass accelerator. Abuses space and time, works at a distance. Accelerate your enemies into the nearest star. Accelerate your troops to the border worlds. Accelerate rocks at lightspeed into border worlds. Whatever makes you happy.”
“Thank you, professor,” said Gleen. And she meant it.
“Go fuck yourself,” said Sadcollop. And she definitely meant it.
Gleen shut the door behind herself with unnecessary softness. She knew it pissed the professor off.
Sadcollop counted to forty, shut her eyes, thought about her family, then started to think about teradeaths.
***
This time there was a knock.
“Six months,” said Sadcollop. She was at her desk, looking at a sheet. She didn’t bother changing her view to Gleen when she entered; the general was substantially less interesting. “That’s a new record. Did you get sloppy with the accelerators?”
“There was a surprise raid, and-”
“You didn’t destroy them before they could be captured, therefore you got sloppy with the accelerators. So they’re accelerating your toys into stars and now it’s not as funny as it was when you were doing it?”
“We’ve had some success in countering the transmission signals, but-”
“But they’re better at it than you are. Because their research teams are actually competent. So now here you are again, come back to ask for another superweapon.”
“You make it sound so evil. We’re the underdogs here, professor.”
“Only because you finally pissed off someone bigger than you. I don’t remember my planet voting to join up with your little stellar empire.”
“There was a vote.”
“Yes. Which you rigged.”
“It was conducted with scrupulous fairness.”
“In your military outposts.”
“To ensure no vote tampering.”
“And I wonder what sort of outcomes that led to?”
General Gleen ran a hand through her hair. Was it thinning? Damnit, it was thinning. “Professor? Fewer politics, more weapons.”
“Weapons are tools used for war, and war is diplomacy by other yadda yadda yadda,” sang Sadcollop. She threw the tablet at the general, who caught it both by reflex and one corner. “There you are. Have the blueprints for a carbon annihilator. Instantaneously renders all carbon in a targeted area incapable of forming molecular bonds, dissolving all substances it comes into contact with. Make it, load it into warheads, fire it everywhere, liquefy people and spaceships and planets and pat yourself on the back until your spine goes concave.”
“Thank you, professor,” said Gleen, mild as milk.
“It’s not a problem at all. And yes, it’s thinning. Find a surgeon. And while you’re at it, see if they can do something about that way you suck in your cheek when you’re thinking. It makes you look like you’ve been through a lobotomy.”
Gleen left.
Sadcollop marked her calendar and sat down to wait. Four weeks, it should be. Maybe a day late, maybe a day early.
***
It was a day early.
“Total disaster,” said Gleen accusatorily. “They never committed a full force, they had maximum security forces orbiting their home systems, whole STARBASES moved overnight. They knew it was coming for them, and as of last night they’ve found a way to remote-detonate the payloads in our holds. How’d you leak it, professor, and how did you come to care so little about what happens to your family?”
“Go to hell,” said Sadcollop. “They knew something was coming because you’re as subtle as a one-eyed heffalump in a helical heliosphere, AND because you’ve used six superweapons over the last four years. They expect the unexpected, and they prepare for it too. Which is precisely the sort of planning you’ve never had. If I were on the other side and had no morals whatsoever we’d have won first week.”
“’I will protect my family at any cost’ isn’t a moral code, professor,” said Gleen.
“No, no it isn’t,” agreed Sadcollop. “Have you tried giving up? You keep telling me how smart a choice that was.”
“Giving up is not an option.”
“Oh come on, what have you got to lose?”
“We’d sooner lose everything.”
“Mmm. So you want a new new superweapon.”
“Yes. And-”
“And it needs to be idiotproofed so you can actually get mileage out of it no matter how stupidly you deploy it.”
“That’s-”
“And it needs to not be easily countered by someone with a functioning brain when stupidly deployed.”
General Gleen said nothing.
Professor Sadcollop said nothing.
“So-“ began Gleen.
“So here it is,” said Sadcollop. She stood up and handed a small data plug over.
“Can’t I-”
“No. You cannot. We’re done here. Go turn this on and end the war.”
“What-”
“It’s a rounder.”
“That-”
“Look, you know how most of the universe is empty space?”
General Gleen waited.
Professor Sadcollop waited.
“Ye-”
“Matter is scarce. Absence of matter isn’t scarce. Energy is scarce. Absence of energy isn’t scarce. This device will round an arbitrarily large volume to the universal average density of… everything. Which works out to almost nothing.”
“It disinteg-”
“No, disintegration implies something lost integrity. This removes everything. Well, nearly everything.”
General Gleen glared.
Professor Sadcollop smiled.
“Goodb-”
“Don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.”
For the first time, General Gleen slammed the door.
Professor Sadcollop permitted herself the first smile of over half a decade.
All in all, it wasn’t a bad way to go.
***
“Well, that’s scary,” said Professor Bunrs, turning the little data plug over and over in his hands.
“Scary or not, we can use it to win,” said General Gleen. “Absence of evidence doesn’t give them anything to counterengineer. And we’ll be going big with it – first use should be the last. I want a suicide run at the homeworld with this.”
“Once we build it,” said Bunrs, opening the data port on his computer.
General Gleen had a little less than two seconds to think of some extremely and consistently precise wording Professor Sadcollop had used when referring to the object in Bunrs’s hands.
General Gleen had a hair under half a second to say something.
General Gleen got out “Don’t-” before Bunrs plugged in the rounder and she was interrupted for the absolute last time ever, along with everything else within fifteen lightyears.
***
The singular atom that was all that remained of Professor Sadcollop’s entire extended family understood. On average.