by Saxon Andrew
Tommy thought and weighed the options. “Sprig, what do you think?”
“It’s too big a risk to teleport close to him. More than half a million ships are swarming around it. I don’t believe that they can fire those energy balls fast enough to hit us. I also suspect that they won’t fire them near that giant ship.”
“Then prepare to go, we will be running is ten seconds. Are you ready, Lady Gardner?”
Cassandra closed her eyes and everyone could feel the Kosiev start vibrating. Tommy said, “Try to hit as clear a path as possible through those ships coming to look for the planet.”
“Get ready, running…now!”
The Kosiev flew out of the invisibility screen so fast that the Captor ships moving in couldn’t react before it was past them. The huge Captor ships were getting larger faster than the display could see.
“Danger, danger, danger, danger,” the Captor ships moving toward the planet screamed at the First Male.
The First Male’s sensors showed the white ship bearing down on him at an incredible speed. He hit his jump circuit but saw those black energy balls coming in on him and knew he was not going to make it.
Five thousand of the ships near the planet jumped in front of the First Male. The ships surrounding the First Male didn’t have time to react. The ships at the planet had two seconds which was barely enough. The First Male watched as four hundred of his warriors were destroyed just before he disappeared from the system. He appeared in the home system and was stunned at the close call with death. He could still see the black balls coming at him and knew he was lucky to survive. He was unable to communicate for several minutes and then he ordered two more squadrons to jump to the place he was just attacked. They would not arrive in time to help.
Cassandra said, “Crap, they blocked the negative matter.”
“Are they chasing us?” Tommy asked.
“No, they’re staying in the system looking for the planet.”
Twig said. “I think they expect us to come back and try to save the planet.”
Tommy thought for a moment and said, “Stop us now.” Cassandra focused and brought the Kosiev to a stop. “Twig, teleport the ship back inside the invisibility screen,” Tommy ordered. Cassandra furrowed her brow and looked at Tommy. “The more ships we can destroy here, the fewer there will be to face at their home world.” Tommy then keyed his com and said, “Wes, Twig is going to send you a coordinate, jump your four ships here immediately.”
Wes saw the coordinates and ordered his jump officer to teleport the ship immediately. He sent the coordinates to the other three ships and they arrived four seconds after the Rossville broke into normal space inside the screen.
Tommy said to the four ships, “We are going to wait for the Captor fleet to gather around our location and we are going to fire a full salvo of negative matter through the middle of their fleet; we will then follow it out and fire on those ships to the side of the salvo; any questions?”
The four ships lined up on the Kosiev with two on each side. One was stationed above the other each of them higher and lower than the Kosiev. The ship on top would fire at ships above the formation and the one below would fire on those below. The Kosiev would handle those ships coming from the sides firing between the ships on each side. Tommy looked at Cassandra and said, “Can you include them in your aura and run with them.”
Cassandra closed her eyes and thought then said, “I think so but I don’t think I can go further than the outer planets.”
I just want to get them outside the Captor fleet. Once we’re clear then everyone can teleport away if it comes to that. I’m hoping the negative matter will clear a way through the energy balls that I know they’ll be firing into our path. I’m hoping that they won’t be able to hit us from the sides because of our speed.” Tommy then hit his fleet com and said, “As we run from the screen, I want full salvos fired above and below our escape path. When we hit the outer planets, we will teleport away; signal if you understand.
Lt. Ortiz said, “All ships have confirmed instructions.”
Wes looked at Linda Kay who was now his sensor office on the Rossville. She had requested, actually demanded, to be stationed on Wes’ ship. There was no way she was not going to be with him after what had happened before. Wes had protested but she said, “I will not, cannot, live without you. We will live together or die together.”
Rose had written an order giving her an exclusion from the fleet rule concerning commanding officers having members of their family serving on their ship. The crew of the ship was skeptical at first but saw that Wes showed absolutely no favoritism and actually made things harder on her than normal. For her part, Linda Kay was glad he did. After a short time the crew came to like Linda Kay a great deal. She had a way of brightening everyone’s day.
Lt. McAnn, we will be firing over the top of the formation. Please feed to weapons the targets in best position to be hit.”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” she said.
All five ships watched the feed from the Kosiev and saw hundreds of thousands of the Captor ships moving back and forth looking for the planet. They were moving closer and were less than a hundred thousand miles out from the SR ships. Tommy looked at Cassandra and said, “I will collapse the invisibility screen; you control the flight of the ships. We’ll make our run at them when the leading edge is ten thousand miles out.”
Cassandra nodded and kept her eyes on the sensor monitor. “Attention all ships,” She announced over the fleet frequency, “the negative matter will only travel at eighty percent light speed. We will stay behind the initial launch until the mass has either cleared the Captors formations of until it runs out. I am extending the Kosievs’ teleport screen to cover the front of our formation. I will implement the screen when I determine we are no longer protected from the front. Stay in formation, if you fall out you will have to use your own teleport screen so have it ready on standby. Our run will begin in a projected one minute. Prepare to fire a full salvo in front and we will follow three seconds later. You don’t have long to reload your magazines so make the time count.”
The Captors were scanning space along the projected orbital path of the planet and their scans were not showing anything. The Captor Fleet leader watched the scans and thought, “It has got to be near this point. How are they hiding it?” He looked closer at his sensors and that’s when trouble beyond his wildest estimation broke out. He only had one second before he was hit by one of the black balls and imploded. He was not alone.
A huge moving black mass exploded out of empty space and raced toward the middle of the incoming fleet. Thousands of red ships were hit and disintegrated and right behind the moving black mass five of the strange white ships erupted out of nowhere and began following the black mass into the ranks of the Captor fleet. The Captors responded immediately and fired their beams and energy balls at the ships but missed as the ships flew by them. As the white ships passed, hundreds of red ships were hit and destroyed. The ones in front of the enemy could not fire their weapons through the moving black mass which destroyed everything in its path and the ones to the sides of the formation fired and missed as the white ships flew past them. There were more than a million energy balls chasing the white ships but were not making up enough ground to impact. Several Captor ships tried to run through the black mass and ram the escaping ships but only disintegrated as they struck the moving black wall.”
“Lt. Ortiz, how are the other ships doing?”
“The Captors in front of us are trying to run around the edge and ram us.”
Tommy looked at Cassandra and she said through gritted teeth, “Let them; our hulls will cut them apart. The only way they can hurt us is with an explosion.”
Captain Zeng commanding the Cainth Pulse Ship Clan Warrior watched as a Captor ship flew in at high speed cutting the corner of the black mass and hit his ship head on. The Captor ship was cut right through the middle falling away in two pieces and exploding into fragments. A second C
aptor ship came right behind the first and just before impacting fired an energy ball and hit it with its beam. The resulting explosion blew the Clan Warrior out of formation and rocked the four other ships throwing them out of formation. The Clan Warrior was blown back and into the path of the energy balls chasing the fleeing SR ships. A huge red ship hit the energy balls as they neared the tumbling Cainth Pulse Ship and the resulting explosions ripped the ship apart and then shredded the pieces.
Tommy felt the Kosiev as it was thrown left and watched as Cassandra struggled to regain stability. “Get us out of here,” he yelled. “That blast wave will be on us in five seconds.” The blast wave was moving at the speed of light and was closing in on the remaining ships. Cassandra hit the teleport button and the four ships disappeared. Just before the ships disappeared Cassandra sent a thought into the black mass and exploded what remained. All of the remaining Captor ships in the system were blown out of existence as the blast wave engulfed everything within a twenty light minute radius and imploded it.
The reinforcing Captor ships arrived in the outer system just in time to see their fellow warriors totally obliterated by the blast. They jumped away before the blast arrived. The First Male and the warriors at the planet saw hundreds of thousands of empty berths on the construct. In their long hundreds of millions of year’s history, no Captor had ever died. Now they had lost a third of their population to a tiny number of tiny ships in a tiny measure of time. They were ruled by instinct but they were also intelligent beings that were starting to realize that there was a real possibility of defeat. They also were feeling the drive to swarm diminish. It would take hundreds of thousands of years to begin to replace the warriors that had been lost.
The First Male and First Mother were stunned at the loss of life in the attack. The First Male said, “Should we have tried to negotiate with those strangers?”
“What good would it do? If they come into our system we would attack; we have no choice. If they discover where we live, we would attack. Our instincts rule us and even though we know mentally that we’re placing ourselves in danger, we would still attack.”
“First Mother, is this new race superior to us? Every time we encounter them, warriors die.”
“The thing that gives us a fighting chance is that they are few in number. We still have four million warriors. However, we must find a way to protect ourselves from that black energy.”
The First Male said nothing but thought about all of the long time relationships that had ended in the blast of that black matter.
Tommy and Cassandra were sitting on the bridge of the Kosiev thinking about the blast wave they had just escaped. Tommy looked at Lt. Ortiz and asked, “Did you get a reading on the energy in that incoming blast wave?”
Lt. Ortiz looked at his screen and said, “The reading was off the scale. Quite frankly, the scale was made so high that it was never anticipated that any kind of energy reading would get half way up that scale.” Lt. Ortiz looked up and said, “Our hulls would not be penetrated but the severe pressure of the wave would have probably broken the structure of the ship just like the Clan Warrior.”
Tommy gave a heavy sigh and said, “There was no way to avoid the blast when that ship fired the energy ball and detonated it at such close range.”
“Tommy.”
“Yes, Rose.”
“Were you able to save the planet?”
“Yes, we did. We moved it to the system that Earth is in right now.”
“Have you thought about whether or not the Captors can track jump tracks from that system to the rest of the Stars Realm?”
Tommy looked at Cassandra and immediately ordered, “Attention all ships; we will be jumping back into the Crengren system in one minute. Be prepared to teleport out if there are Captor fleets present.”
Cassandra looked at him and nodded, “Weapons, load all magazines; be prepared to launch immediately upon entering normal space; jump in thirty seconds.”
“Rose, I don’t know if the tracks can be traced. We are jumping back in now and see if they are there. What prompted you to ask that question?”
“I have a sense of danger to the Realm and I’m not sure where it’s coming from.”
“Contact Dad and see if he can tell where it’s originating; he had a much better sense for that than we do.”
“He contacted me, Tommy. Something is going on but we can’t tell what it is.”
“I’ll contact you as soon as we arrive back in the Crengren system.”
Cassandra said, “Jumping in 3,2,1, execute.”
The four ships entered normal space in the outer system and saw that there were no Captor ships in the system. They also immediately saw that the system was dramatically changed. All of the inner planets were gone and the three planets in the outer system were in ruins. The closest was shattered into twelve huge pieces with millions of small asteroids fanning out from its former orbit. The crew of the Kosiev looked out on the ruined system and were awed by the magnitude of the blast that must have caused such catastrophic damage.
Cassandra gazed at the ruined system and knew that she had caused the event by exploding the dark matter. “It’s my fault; I caused this.”
Tommy saw her distress and said, “You had no choice; we could not leave any negative matter behind for them to study. One thing we now know though; the tactics of following such a huge amount of negative matter is not something we would do in a system that has value to us.”
Twig looked at them and said, “I suspect that if there were any tracks in this system they were wiped out by the blast.”
Tommy thought a moment and said, “Sprig, you need to find a system for the planet.”
“I already have fifteen selected.”
Tommy looked at the monitor with the destroyed system and then thought, “Rose, I just don’t see any way that the Captors could track anything from this system.”
Sprig stopped as he was about to leave the bridge and stopped. “I just heard what you said to Rose. What is the problem?”
“Rose and my father sense a danger to the Realm. We thought that the Captors might be able to follow jump tracks from here to the rest of the Realm.”
Sprig started shaking and said, “Captain Dodd, find us a nerve center, quickly.”
Cassandra looked puzzled and then comprehension showed, “Lt., jump us to a nerve center, now”
Ortiz looked at his board and entered a coordinate, “Jump in three seconds, 3,2,1, execute.”
The Koseiv broke into normal space and Sprig focused his device on the center. “The temperature is down. The Captors can read all they want. Cassandra, you’ve got to raise the temperature.”
Cassandra focused on the nerve center and saw the particle was no longer white hot but had cooled to red. She mentally entered the particle and felt it respond to her presence. The heat shot up instantly and roared past white to violet. She pulled out instantly and barely got out before the particle exploded. She held her head in her hands and said, “It’s getting close to time for the explosion. The particle is ready.”
Cassandra sat down in her command chair and held her head. Tommy came over and took her hands and shared her thoughts. “Just take it easy, darling. Deep breaths, just relax.”
“Tommy, whatever you did, that sense of danger ended abruptly,” Rose thought to him.
“We found what it was, Rose. However, we have about four months and then we will have to attack the Captors home world. We cannot close this avenue again without a dramatic energy event and I’m not certain what the end result would be. If we wait longer than that, the Captors will be able to see all the planets in the Realm.”
“Tommy, that means only half our ships will be converted,” Rose thought.
“Actually less than that; we can’t wait until the last moment to attack.”
“Have you developed a plan to win this war?”
“We had one but every contact with the Captors forces us to reevaluate. We should meet and dis
cuss our best options, but first we have to find a new home system for Crengren. We’ve pretty much destroyed their home system.”
Rose closed her eyes and saw the system. “What did you do?”
“Well, we came here to party and had a blast. Rose, we had no idea we would cause this much damage. Like I said, we have to reevaluate our plan.”
“Contact me when you’re ready to meet. I’ll let everyone else know to be on standby.”
“Give me about seven days; we lost one of our ships in the last battle and we need to contact the next of kin.”
Rose thought to him, “Let me know when you’re ready,” and she broke the connection.
Sprig and Twig were standing in the main library on Ross looking at the history books. They had just finished consuming the “History of The Human and Alliance of Worlds Conflict” that was written by Sten. Sprig said, “That was an interesting time, Twig. I wish we had been able to see it.”
Twig thought a moment and said, “Me, too. I was greatly impressed with the human military leader Admiral Kosiev. He was a remarkable individual.”
“Yes, he was; it’s a shame he lost his life saving that Stars Realm Fleet from our attack.”
Twig was silent for a moment and then said, “I know you have the same thoughts I have about a possibility of what happened when his ship was destroyed.”
Sprig shook for a moment showing his surprise. “I didn’t know you had seen that thought. I just have these fantasies occasionally and I was wondering what the great Admiral was like. I just wondered if there was a chance he could still be alive.”
Twig leaned in close to Sprig and said, “I have run several simulations on my console and guess what they showed?”
Sprig looked at her for a long time and then said, “You can’t be serious. That was just a wild thought I had.”
“Well, my simulations show that there is a real possibility that what you thought might happen; could have actually happened.”