It was worth remembering that, in the seven all-out wars of the past, which had drawn in nearly every civilization and intelligent species in the galaxy, there had been plenty of examples of planets being completely destroyed.
For instance, unleashing a deadly plague across an entire planet and destroying the systems that sustained its life could turn a thriving Earth-like world into a lifeless one within months. Or, as another example, firing a high-powered energy weapon directly at an ocean—what was known in legend as "glassing"—could just as easily erase a flourishing world.
Or, for something even simpler and more brutal, there was orbital bombardment. Drop all kinds of powerful bombs to scour the surface; flatten what needed flattening, and destroy what needed destroying.
Of course, there were ways to completely obliterate a planet, too. Near the end of the Third Galactic War, the Empire and the Alliance had dubbed the Airo Empire "the galaxy's most evil breeding ground for terror," "the source of all evil," and so on. When their great fleets reached the Airo's core star systems, they issued a brutal order of genocide—though the Airo had done the same thing early in the war, so you could say they got what they deserved.
After the fleets of the Empire and the Alliance had utterly destroyed countless Airo colonial settlements, they finally reached the Airo homeworld. By then, more than twenty billion of the Airo Empire's last diehards had gathered on the capital, resolved to fight to the last man. The Empire and the Alliance were deeply moved by their defiance and decided to grant their wish.
More than twenty Titan ships and dreadnoughts, each like a fortress, spent the next hour firing dozens of volleys from their orbital main guns at the prosperous "Gaia world," sending over