GENERAL NALANI KEAH
General Keah hadn’t expected to fight a battle in a dead system out in the middle of nowhere, but she was ready for it. “About damn time.” She turned to her weapons officer. “Mr. Patton, time to prove the CDF’s investment in your training was worthwhile.”
The gigantic hex cylinders emerged from the shadow cloud like objects from a nightmare toolbox, thrusting into real space above the black Dyson sphere.
Her comm officer split the screen so Keah could address Adar Zan’nh while maintaining her watch on the Shana Rei. “Every second we delay is a second that we could be opening fire, Z. Unless you plan to talk with those things, I say we hit them with everything we’ve got.” Their best shot was to hit first and hit hard, and worry about justifications later on when doing the paperwork. “No warnings, no negotiations. Why dink around with half-measures?”
“I concur completely, General. I have already given battle orders to the entire septa.”
Keah hunched forward in her command chair and spoke to the bridge crew, letting them see her half smile. “Not to put too fine a point on it, but I’m anxious to use up some of our old sun bombs—Dr. Krieger will get us more once we’re back home. Set a course directly toward the shadow cloud, Mr. Tait.” The Kutuzov pulled ahead of the Ildiran warliners. She thought of it as leading the charge, rather than presenting herself as cannon fodder. “Give me a full sensor sweep.”
Lieutenant Saliba rushed to provide the requested data. Weapons techs brought the laser-cannon batteries online, preparing for a constant, sequential recharge as they had done in a thousand drills. In a full-scale engagement, the cannons would be depleted faster than they could be recharged.
On the weapons decks, tactical crews scrambled to load in the arsenal of sun bombs. Keah wished even more fervently that she had the new enhanced weapons, after what she had witnessed in the rings of Saturn, but the original Ildiran devices packed a hell of a punch anyway.
Keah glanced at the nervous green priest, who clung to his treeling. “Mr. Nadd, I’ll rely on you to send reports back home. Let Theroc know … whatever happens.”
Nadd swallowed hard. “I will do my best.”
“Mr. Tait, prepare for evasive maneuvers and conventional weapons as soon as the bugbot ships show up—and you know they’re going to. They’ll harass us like mosquitoes in a swamp.”
The Kutuzov charged toward the monstrous-looking Shana Rei ships. The seven warliners followed close behind.
Saliba enhanced the image. “General … still no sign of robot ships.”
Keah was puzzled. “But they always use bugbots to do their dirty work.”
As the ships closed in, entropy waves from the Shana Rei began to scramble their targeting computers. Lights flickered on the Kutuzov’s bridge. “Better open fire while we still can, but don’t rely on targeting computers—use manual systems when you have to.”
“You got it, General,” said Patton. “If we can’t hit a target that big, then we’d better go back to basic training.”
Keah nodded. “Point and shoot.”
The first laser-cannon barrage tore across the flat side of one of the hex cylinders, slicing through the solid black material like a knife gutting a fish filled with smoke. Static burst across the comm lines like an angry cry of disruption. The nearest Shana Rei ship began to turn, as if reeling away.
Keah liked that.
The Solar Navy warliners added their laser cannons to the bombardment, and the hex cylinders shuddered. Large sections of obsidian material flaked away, the same flat plates that had assembled to form the nightshade over Theroc—the same type of material that formed the black Dyson sphere around the Onthos system.
“Score!” Patton yelled. The rest of the bridge crew hooted and cheered.
Keah smiled. “What are you waiting for, Mr. Patton? We’ve got a lot more damage to do.”
Her weapons officer launched another laser fusillade, surprising her with how much damage he inflicted on the Shana Rei. “We don’t normally catch the shadows with their pants down like that. What—” She caught her breath. “Ah, they weren’t expecting to find us here at all!”
She contacted the Solar Navy flagship with her urgent realization. “Z, the shadows must have come here for their own reasons. They weren’t planning on a battle. That’s why they haven’t launched any robot fighters.” Keah needed to take advantage of how much her crew was itching for a fight. “Good thing we’re prepared.”
Then a ripple of unseen energy emanated from the hex cylinder, a shock wave that scrambled the Kutuzov’s command systems and life support. The bridge went completely dark until the backup systems kicked on.
The Shana Rei craft began to move, all four of them spreading out. The damaged one shrank in, as if consolidating its remaining material, but the other hexagons sent out waves of disruptive entropy. A Solar Navy warliner reeled off course, its systems failing, its running lights falling dark.
General Keah intended to take advantage of every last second. “Time for a few sun bombs. Lieutenant Kalfas, make sure you record all this. Hell, I will personally give Dr. Krieger a bonus for every Shana Rei hex ship we destroy, even if these are the old designs.”
The Juggernaut launched three crackling sun bombs—spheres of knotted, pinwheeling plasma. The core reactions built up, energy intensifying.
Not to be outdone, four Ildiran warliners also launched sun bombs. Keah watched the fiery streaks plunge in just like the meteor shower she and Deputy Eldred Cain had observed from the deck of his home on Earth.
General Keah much preferred this particular show.
“Boom,” she whispered.
The Kutuzov’s sun bombs ignited against the black vessels like a trio of supernovas. Just as the incandescent nuclear eruptions blotted out the main screen, she caught a last glimpse of four other novas striking different parts of the Shana Rei cylinders. With the sensors flash-blinded, everyone on the Juggernaut’s bridge held their breath. All comm signals were disrupted by the backwash of the sun-bomb explosions. The screens remained washed out, fuzzed with static.
“Mr. Saliba, get me sensors at the soonest possible nanosecond. Let’s see how much damage we caused.”
“Working, General. Sensor suites were already reeling from that entropy barrage and now they’re oversaturated. I should have them back online momentarily.”
Keah knotted her hands into fists, waiting, staring at the screen and willing it to clear. Finally, she saw the distorted image of the shadow cloud, and then an angular edge. The hex ships again—noticeably damaged. One of the hexagons was diminished by half, as if the sun bombs had devoured the dark material. Another cylinder was tilted at an odd angle, as if knocked out of alignment from the cluster of allied hex ships.
Another wave of dark entropy rippled out from the shadow cloud in a broad scattershot, perhaps a knee-jerk defensive reaction that did not target any particular ship. Even so, the Kutuzov’s main screen stuttered, went black, then images resolved out of the static. When the screen sharpened again, she spotted a flurry of motion near the tilted black hexagon—a wave of predatory black ships emerging from the core of darkness.
“Here come the bugbots, late to the party,” said Keah. “This is about to get even more interesting.”