>>>Be fair - I don't think they had an one shot planet-busting weapon
>>>until the third book and that was a missile. (Until then it was a
>>>matter of tractoring a really big rock for a major kinetic strike -
>>>which takes months) The super laser would have impressed them.
>>>
>>
>>Hmm, not really. They did have planetbuster capability - even Dahak
>>could do it with an appropriately-targeted set of hyper missiles.
>
>He states it outright in that first conversation with Colin-
>"Essentially, Commander, this vessel could vaporize your planet."
>
>BTW, given that it's Dahak talking, we can probably take this
>statement literally... And the superlaser left a _lot_ of debris
>behind.
>
Wandering in again...

Actually, it's been determined that vaporization takes less energy that the superlaser's effect (force the entire mass of the planet to escape velocity). If anyone wants I'll look for the two energy numbers (only have the latter at the moment).