The people of Krikkit, said His High Judgmental Supremacy, Judiciary Pag, LIVR (the Learned, Impartial and Very Relaxed) Chairman of the Board of Judges at the Krikkit War Crimes Trial, are, well, you know, they’re just a bunch of real sweet guys, you know, who just happen to want to kill everybody. Hell, I feel the same way some mornings. Shit.
OK, he continued, swinging his feet up on to the bench in front of him and pausing a moment to pick a thread off his Ceremonial Beach Loafers, so you wouldn’t necessarily want to share a Galaxy with these guys.
This was true.
The Krikkit attack on the Galaxy had been stunning. Thousands and thousands of huge Krikkit warships had leapt suddenly out of hyperspace and simultaneously attacked thousands and thousands of major worlds, first seizing vital material supplies for building the next wave, and then calmly zapping those worlds out of existence.
The Galaxy, which had been enjoying a period of unusual peace and prosperity at the time, reeled like a man getting mugged in a meadow.
I mean, continued Judiciary Pag, gazing round the ultra-modern (this was ten billion years ago, when “ultra-modern” meant lots of stainless steel and brushed concrete) and huge courtroom, these guys are just obsessed.
This too was true, and is the only explanation anyone has yet managed to come up with for the unimaginable speed with which the people of Krikkit had pursued their new and absolute purpose the destruction of everything that wasn’t Krikkit.
It is also the only explanation for their bewildering sudden grasp of all the hypertechnology involved in building their thousands of spaceships, and their millions of lethal white robots.
These had really struck terror into the hearts of everyone who had encountered them in most cases, however, the terror was extremely short-lived, as was the person experiencing the terror. They were savage, single-minded flying battle machines. They wielded formidable multifunctional battleclubs which, brandished one way, would knock down buildings and, brandished another way, fired blistering Omni-Destructo Zap Rays and, brandished a third way, launched a hideous arsenal of grenades, ranging from minor incendiary devices to Maxi-Slorta Hypernuclear Devices which could take out a major sun. Simply striking the grenades with the battleclubs simultaneously primed them, and launched them with phenomenal accuracy over distances ranging from mere yards to hundreds of thousands of miles.
OK, said Judiciary Pag again, so we won. He paused and chewed a little gum. We won, he repeated, but that’s no big deal. I mean a medium-sized galaxy against one little world, and how long did it take us? Clerk of the Court?
M’lud? said the severe little man in black, rising.
How long, kiddo?
It is a trifle difficult, m’lud, to be precise in this matter. Time and distance…
Relax, guy, be vague.
I hardly like to be vague, m’lud, over such a…
Bite the bullet and be it.
The Clerk of the Court blinked at him. It was clear that like most of the Galactic legal profession he found Judiciary Pag (or Zipo Bibrok 5/108, as his private name was known, inexplicably, to be) a rather distressing figure. He was clearly a bounder and a cad. He seemed to think that the fact that he was the possessor of the finest legal mind ever discovered gave him the right to behave exactly as he liked, and unfortunately he appeared to be right.
Er, well, m’lud, very approximately, two thousand years, the Clerk murmured unhappily.
And how many guys zilched out?
adj. 致命的,毁灭性的,有效的
n. 基因