Urson gnashed his teeth in frustration. His massive paws longed to rend, and tear, and maul, and....other bad things. The small, shrill voice of the Illianth envoy was irritant enough, but on top of that, these people seemed too stupid to live. Urson began to doubt that they could be conquered; he might be forced to kill them all to make them see reason. Actually, he found the prospect rather inviting. The occupation would be so much simpler...
Dragging his mind back from ecstatic visions of blood- drenched frenzy, Urson made himself listen to the diminutive native.
"I am really very sorry but this is our world. You have to go home now," it piped.
Urson smiled, determined to give it one last try. He spread his claws widely in puzzlement. "Tell me," he grumbled. "What part of 'surrender or die' do you not understand?"
The Illianth sighed, staring away, out across the crystal forests with their prismatic pylons, bleeding hyper-static charges through curtains of rainbow. The sky boiled, churning blending tan and tangerine clouds against an umber backdrop. The native lost count of invader ships hanging over the world in silent threat like a plague of insectoid scavengers.
A small tear fell.
Now we're getting somewhere, Urson thought. The Envoy is finally facing reality. "It won't be so bad. As long as we get whatever we want, your people will live. After all, we do take good care of our property," Urson assured the native.
The envoy turned back to him. Urson found himself caught by faceted, jewel-like eyes that whirred with blue and green tints, reflecting some strange, alien emotion. It put its front forelimbs and antennaed head down to the ground as if in supplication. Its hind legs began to saw together.
Urson puffed with pride at the fear invoked by his fierce presence.
The envoy bewailed its fate. But after a while, Urson realized that the sound he was hearing was not communicative in nature. The native created a chirpy droning by sliding its back set of limbs together.
From the ache in his bones, Urson knew that it exceeded his aural range. What in space is going on? he wondered. Is it sending some kind of message?
"Stop what you are doing," Urson ordered, his voice emerging from the universal translator with an edge of fear to it. "Stop at once."
The other natives picked up the sound, and added their own threads of counterpoint to create a harmonic wave. The song of the Illianth stirred the storm-winds across the crystal forest. The living network of mineral branches absorbed the song with a desperate thirst. The pylons began a gentle vibration, a continuous grinding of chime against chime that gathered force, feeding on itself, growing ever more violent.
Urson grabbed his head, covering his ears, trying to keep the ultrasonic tones from spiking through his brain like a hot iron. He roared, baring fangs. The bellow became a scream many octaves below the crystal keening. Finally, he sank to his knees under the bombardment of major fifths, seventh, and minor ninth chords, as monolithic mountains fractured along old fault-lines.
Exploding slivers of crystallized carbon showered for miles, slicing like shrapnel through Urson's ground troops. He heard their chorus of agony, as well as the rattling hail of razor shards bouncing harmlessly off of the Illianth exo-skeletons.
The crystal growths spit ionic charges, violet-white jags of raw electricity, up into the air where they fused with similar atmospheric charges. These joined ribbons of death enveloped the invading ships, overloading defensive shields with lethal voltage they were never designed to absorb or shunt.
One after another, the fleet ships exploded, blowing their anti-matter piles. Semi-molten pieces of super-structure rained down as super-heated slag, splashing like hot wax. And Urson suddenly understood the strange, alien emotion he had seen in the envoy's compound eyes. Pity. The Illianth were so strong, they could afford compassion---up to a point.
The native envoy gathered and raised its slender, stick-like frame off the ground as the fire-storm peeked, washing the world away for long moments with a hard, fierce light.
Urson bowed his head. "This...cannot be...it cannot be..."
"No?" The envoy asked wearily. "What aspect of our invulnerability eludes you?"
