Yort’s mind still labored under the lingering influence of null space confusion when his mothership’s sensors shone alarms into his eyes. Exquisitely detailed holographic plots showed a scene of horror with machine precision, even more sickening because of their painful realism using data relayed from his many spy drones.
Of the twelve motherships, eight of them had vanished. In their places he saw balls of expanding plasma and sprays of wreckage. “Emergency power; evasive maneuvers,” Yort blasted through every photo-emitter on his body, his words slurred with residual lethargy. “Begin immediate deployment.” Machines on the bridge echoed the order to his subjects.
“But Archon Third, we have no targets,” blinked one of his officers. “The lower orders will be confused and some will head for the star.”
“Then ensure they do not!” Yort ordered. “Send them outward while I determine what disaster has befallen our motherships.” Playing his digits over the controls himself, he ran the record back to the time of their appearance, and then quickly located the moment when the massive swarm-carriers exploded. First they existed, and then long moments later they exploded, so suddenly that only light-based weapon strikes seemed likely. The direction the wreckage sprayed provided him with a vector, and within seconds he plotted the position the unknown weapon must have fired from, a significant distance above one pole of the star.
Somehow, the infestation had expected them, had waited at a place that allowed them to see all possible exit points, and fire on them. But even light-based weapons took time to reach them, and so as long as his mothership continued to evade, he should be safe from the hideous death ray.
Unfortunately the blazing radiation of the star eliminated any hope of his sensors detecting the exact nature of the enemy. It must be a supermassive fortress to employ such a weapon, a veritable planetoid.
“There,” he said to his officers, indicating the place with a claw tip. “Send half my forces to the enemy firing location via a spherical route. Spread the other half out and away from the star. Where...” He quickly examined the first planet in the system, a small barren world, then the second, shrouded in hot clouds, neither of which showed signs of abundant life. But the third teemed with it.
It also swarmed with infestations of war machines.
Of interest, the eight annihilated motherships were all closest to the third planet’s current orbital position.
“Sir, I have detected another biomass cluster, here, near us. Eight large nests.”
Yort examined his primary display. Life readings beckoned opposite the infested planet, but closest to his own mothership, a stroke of luck. If he moved quickly, he could seize and eat this prize himself, then move on to join in the main assault as other swarms took the brunt of the casualties.