The broadcast was not subtle. It was a screeching, emergency override on all channels. Across Arthoje, in city squares, in trading hub screens, in slave pen monitoring stations, a distorted, urgent transmission appeared.
It showed the schematics of the Eclipse, the Cleansing Beam powering up, targeting data focused on the southern continent. It played Malakor's voice, filtered and highlighted: "…sterilize the petri dish… burn it all…"
Panic, of a different and more widespread kind, began to spread.
· In Morvane, Varikdar merchant princes saw their mineral rights, their slave holdings, their infrastructure about to be vaporized. They began sending furious, threatening subspace communiqués to the Imperial Governor, demanding intervention.
· A nomadic Brute clan in the northern ice-fields saw their sacred hunting grounds in the crosshairs. They began chanting war-songs and sharpening their tusks, their anger directed at the sky.
· Even some mid-level Imperial administrators on the planet, who lived in the nicer districts, realized they were in the blast radius. Mutinous whispers began.
Malakor had made a critical error. He had assumed his authority was absolute and that the planet was his alone to dispose of. He had forgotten the first rule of control: you need the controlled to believe in their own survival.
On the Eclipse, alarms of a different kind blared. Incoming messages from furious planetary governors, from corporate entities with Imperial ties, from other War Masters questioning this drastic, wasteful action.
For a moment, the Cleansing Beam's charge paused.
It was the opening they needed.