"Have you detected any hint of him?" the Emperor asked in a language almost too high for a human to hear.
"No, there's no sign of him," the second-in-command replied. Two of his six arms made fine adjustments to one of the instruments. "We put him out of action and knocked him down from orbit at the same time; if that didn't kill him, the fall must have. Not even homeworld energy-armor could protect anything from that much re-entry heat, not to mention hitting the ground at over twice that atmosphere's speed of sound!"
"Hmmm . . . maybe. But an extreme range sensing ship picked up high-speed, singular life energy emissions — the type characteristic of personal armor fields — coming from here after the guy was destroyed. If that's the last armored warrior that was shot down, we'd better make sure nothing went wrong."
"Well, I still don't think —"
A scanner reading cut him short. The concentration of life energy at a particular point had just tripled; energy-armor was in use near the planet's surface. Two of his arms momentarily forgot to be tense, and flopped down by his sides; but he spurted back into action and engaged the pinpointing equipment.
"There he is, sir! I don't believe it, but he's still alive. He's below the cloud level, and cruising rather slowly considering the atmospheric and gravitational conditions."
"Then we've found him. But why didn't he leave, since he knew this would be the first place we'd look?"
"There is highly evolved intelligent life down there. They even appear to have an electric-level technology."
Several features around the Emperor's eyes hardened: he was deeply angered. "Why wasn't I informed of this?!" he demanded.
The second-in-command withdrew. "It just . . . didn't seem important at the time."
"It is important, you insubordinate fool!" the Emperor snapped. "If he's met a technological race, he could probably teach them how to build a space armada. Now, we have to destroy not only an armored warrior, but an entire intelligent species! This would never have happened if I'd been informed of the armored warrior's precise condition and what kind of planet he was orbiting."
"Sorry, sir; but I can't take the responsibility. I wasn't the one who decided not to inform you."
"No, no, I'm not blaming you. It's just too late now; we might have let them grow, but now we have to commit genocide, just to protect ourselves from their potential threat.
"It looks like such a nice world, too. I see his strategy in choosing which planet to orbit, but it doesn't make any difference now. At least he'll die seeing how the empire is in its full fury."
The first officer punched in a few commands on his console, and watched his display show their orbit of the blue-green world slowly tightening.
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