If the Destroyer had a checklist for his assassination plan, it would look something like this:
My Assassination Plan
By: The Destroyer
Age: Beyond Your Comprehension
Step One
Annoy one of the Stuck Station crews so much that they give me a cloud to use to play poker (estimated time to complete step: 2.6 billion years).
Step Two
Convince the cloud that cheating is part of playing cards (63 million years).
Step Three
Trick the cloud into unknowingly building a weapon (35.9 million years).
Step Four
Wait for a fragile enough species to board Stuck Station (100,000 years).
Step Five
Encourage the fragile crew member to play poker (300 years).
Step Six
Steal an extra card (35 seconds).
Step Seven
Build the weapon (35 minutes).
Step eight
Use the weapon (.1 second).
Step nine
Congratulate self (no longer than necessary).
Step ten
Escape (fifteen seconds).
Step eleven
Resume obliterating everything in every universe (as long as it takes).
The Destroyer was about halfway through step seven.
As he continued describing the Karkans and their world-smashing game, he ordered Q44 to add microscopic grooves and notches to the sides of the dart.
Q44 exuded an invisible mist of water vapor, the cloud equivalent of a sigh. To Q44, the Destroyer’s latest order made even less sense than changing the shape of the card.
“They’re victory grooves,” the Destroyer had said to him earlier. “It’s a poker tradition.”
Under normal circumstances, Q44 would have known he was building a weapon—there were entire sections of the cloud’s programming devoted to keeping anything weapon-like away from the Destroyer.
However, the Destroyer had spent ages using persuasive arguments to grind away at Q44’s resistance. If the Destroyer hadn’t, Q44 would have reported the now-deadly Ace of Spades to Stuck Station’s Administrative Mind right away.
It didn't have to be the Ace of Spades; any card would do. But the Destroyer had told Q44 to steal a specific card to make sure Q44 wouldn't figure out the plan.
The Destroyer theorized that if he had said he needed "any random card," Q44 may have guessed something was off.
