CHAPTER 2

Captain Dolgas Set of the Syraptose cruiser Kolgar awakened grudgingly to the buzzer in his cabin. Sleep came with difficulty in these days of tension and he relished what little he could get without interruption. Over the past galactic decant a chaotic mass of communiqués flooded the ethernet as the Alliance fleets massed for the offensive on the Terran Empire and their Overlord, Alexander. Set had no illusions but that his civilization was in peril, and though he viewed the invasion of Terran space with disquiet, he drew comfort from the holographic images of his family that glowed from the tiny bulkhead niche beside him. He said a quiet good morning to the image of his wife, a practice he’d followed for as long as he could remember, and then hit his comm switch.

“What is it, another communiqué from headquarters?”

“No, Captain we’ve picked up a superluminal signature on the long range scanners,” the officer answered.

“Commander, there are twelve different squadrons enroute to the rendezvous from this sector alone, are you certain it’s not one of those?” Set replied in weary exasperation, this was the third time this night he’d been awakened.

“Fairly certain, Captain,” the Commander responded. “This is a very large signature, and the projected course is not towards the rendezvous coordinates.”

“Where are they going?” Set asked wearily.

“Mira Prime, Captain: they are directly enroute to our Homeworld.”

The cold withering grip of fear clutched his stomach.

“Have the squadron drop out of superluminal, and tie in all sensors to the signature. Keep the shields down; if these are hostiles we can’t afford to let them see us. I’ll be right there!” He cursed himself in his own fear. Certainly Alexander had proven himself to be an astute general; one did not defeat the Chem through luck, but could even he move so fast, and so daringly? That all depended on his response to the Alliance threat, which Set admitted to himself, was the most public event in the galaxy. The Alliance strategy, as no doubt Alexander knew full well, was quite simply to overwhelm the Terran fleet with numbers. The Syraptose would attack Terran space simultaneously with the Quotterim-Bael fleets, and the Golkos-Seer’koh fleets. Alexander, theoretically, could not be everywhere at once, and by attacking from three different sectors simultaneously he could not concentrate his forces on one opponent without losing territory, time and position to the other attacking contingents. If he thinned his forces enough to engage two, or even all three strike arms, then he risked defeat. A significant defeat of even one of his defending fleets would mean the war was lost; but what choice did Alexander have? That was the question which bothered Set, and now, on his very own sensors, was the possible answer. Could the sensor signature be a Terran fleet? Could such an act of bravado, and risk, be possible? Set didn’t know the answer, but he feared he knew it.

When Set arrived on the bridge he saw that every one of his ten ships was gathered around the Kolgar. Beyond his squadron the sensors revealed a shadowy blur amidst the stars: a superluminal signature. The sensors picked up the distortions in the space-time continuum caused by the superluminal signature, but there was little more specific information to be gained. They could compute speed, course and an estimate of the size or number of ships by the characteristics of the distortion, but little else. This limitation on sensing superluminal targets was true whether the sensing ships were themselves at superluminal or travelling at less than the speed of light. The data was much better the slower the observer was travelling, however, as its own distortion pattern increased exponentially with speed, thus diminishing the ability to receive signals. Sitting in space, silent and almost completely motionless the Syraptose ships were in the best possible position to get a detailed sensor signature. The Captain made his way over to the sensor board and viewed the raw data as it came through.

The Commander approached him, reporting, “Course remains as briefed, towards the Homeworld, at a speed of five point seven-three. We are currently twenty-one parsecs from Mira, and thirty parsecs within Syraptose space. Whoever it is they are deep within our territory, and they’ve been here for some time. At their current speed they would enter orbit around Mira in one point two decants.”

“Ship count?” Captain Set asked.

“Inconclusive,” the Commander answered, “The energy signature of the disturbance remains fairly constant, but the volume changes with great variability. We’re running a sensor diagnostic at this time.”

“What does the energy signature suggest, taken by itself,” the Captain asked sternly.

“It would take a body of between one hundred and three hundred ships to make that signature,” the Commander replied.

Captain Set raised his hands to his temples and rubbed them vigorously. “Very well, maintain strict ethernet silence. If they observe us none of us will ever see home again. They’ll have a hard time picking us up through their own distortion, though. Meanwhile we’ll watch them pass by and record them in our sensor logs. When they’re out of range we’ll relay our findings to the Homeworld. Commander, just to be on the safe side I want you to launch a relay probe with our logs. Set it with a one decurn delay.”

“Yes sir!” The Commander answered returning to her station.

“Let’s hope this is not what I know it is,” the Captain muttered, returning gloomily to his chair.

The Commander took a seat at her station and programmed the relay probe. After the Kolgar’s data logs were loaded she took one of the sensor screens to track the probe and launched it. A slight surge of relief replaced her general malaise as she watched the small metallic sphere jet into space following a curving path away from the squadron. When it was clear of the last ship she reached for the board, intending to switch the sensor from the probe back to the superluminal signature. Suddenly she froze. As the sensor followed the tiny probe the panning camera suddenly revealed a starry background filled with a swarm of menacing silver-white ships. The monstrous shapes and the great size of the vessels left no doubt in the Commander’s mind as to what she saw, but for an instant the breath stopped in her lungs. A warning cry finally erupted from her throat.

Every pair of fear fraught eyes turned towards her. Immediately Captain Set punched the sensor panel to the main bridge viewer; just in time to see the first massive bloom of the Terran battleships. Before another breath could be drawn the bridge exploded in light. There was a rush of superheated wind, only to be replaced the next moment by darkness and cold.

The forty ships of the two Terran squadrons which dropped out of superluminal and stalked the Syraptose overwhelmed the unfortunate aliens in a single surprise broadside. So swift and furious was the assault that no ethernet messages escaped from the doomed ships. After the first salvo each ship was left drifting and powerless, but the Terrans continued to fire. Under the concentrated blaster fire from the huge battleship and cruiser projectors the unshielded hulks were vaporized in a matter of minutes. Then, like ghosts in space, the ships turned and disappeared over the superluminal horizon. One vessel remained: a destroyer. She retraced the Terran’s path, her guns spitting out fire at vagrant pieces of metal. She continued this practice for a quarter of an hour, until she ran across a small silver sphere. With one final blast she vaporized the ball, and then she disappeared. The cloud of gas and minute particles slowly expanded and cooled. There was nothing else to tell an observer that six thousand Syraptose and their eleven warships ever existed.