Of the 9500 mines along the primary route, a still smaller percentage were actually within range to make an effective attack. Others were simply too far out or were arrayed elsewhere along the circumference of the drive-star, too far from one of the relatively small alien vessels to make an attack. And not all of those within striking distance were effective. Due to the limitations imposed by their “stealthy” low-power state, many simply reacted too slowly or inaccurately, wasting their one and only shot upon either empty vacuum or the burning hell of the drive.
Therefore, approximately 2000 mines of the remaining field with a decent probability of hit upon one of the actual Patron vessels were distributed uniformly along the fleet’s projected course. This spread the mines out to increase the overall engagement time and to avoid calling attention to the massive field of weapons lying in wait. If the Patrons did nothing, each of these 2000 mines would have the opportunity to slice, burn, and pierce their way through the alien ships—and there was no way for the Patrons to survive, not when each and every shot was individually more powerful than 10 of the Sword of Liberty’s warheads.
Of course, that assumed the aliens would do nothing to defend themselves. This was not the first time the Patrons had faced armed resistance, however. Perhaps it was the first effective opposition in centuries, but these conquerors were not without tricks of their own.
Beneath the embattled Control Ship, the drive-star suddenly fluoresced, radiance boiling out from the knot of energies gathered below the main alien vessel. The orange and purple ropes of light binding the drive-star’s plasma tightened and shifted. In reaction, the photonic thrust blasting out from the pole flashed brighter and widened out, turning from a tight column of light to a broader and broader cone.
Propulsive photons lit up local space, trading thrust for searing reflections. Dust motes, particles, and each and every rock and mine within striking distance shone like a local cluster of microscopic stars. The smaller inanimate flecks were burned away or flung far from the fleet. The larger, more massive mines had their low reflectivity coatings burned off, each one becoming brighter and more noticeable.
As the carefully placed weapons melted and cracked from differential heating under the wide, indiscriminate onslaught, the weapons that had a chance of destroying the Patron ships triggered early, far out of range and position. Fusion explosions and invisible beams of x-rays dappled the vacuum around the fleet, spearing infinity with furious energies, but failing to connect with their true targets.
For the few remaining weapons still close enough to score a hit, the new brilliance of their positions gave their one real defense away. Lasers and nano-particle beams shot out from the Cathedral, the Polyp, and the Junkyard, defending themselves and the Control Ship from further attack. Lasing fusion mines, struggling to wake up and perform their duty, were annihilated before they could fire.
From 18,000, to 9500, to 2000 mines, Earth’s second attempt at battle came to a mere 217 total strikes. The rest either never came into play, failed to fire, missed, or were destroyed before they could make their attempts. The damage dealt by this relatively low number of hits looked devastating, but for a culture capable of rapid nano-scale repairs, it was not catastrophic. By the time the Patron fleet met humanity’s next line in the sand, they would be nearly unmarked, with little sign of the attack but for some missing mass and a higher ratio of replicas to originals in their collections. All mankind would have to show for the hours of battle as the fleet fought its way through the mine-field would be a little information and good deal less assurance that their other preparations might be any more effective.
Within the Control Ship, now safe from the assault of its latest quarry, the Patrons began to re-assert some sense of order. Systems came back online as damage was repaired. Atmosphere ceased to billow out from chasms cut and burned into the hull. Lights came back on and machinery hummed back to life.
And the stasis fields surrounding the Sword of Liberty snapped back into operation, suspending time, interrupting Nathan and the crew, and exposing their every careful preparation for the aliens’ inspection.
The destroyer’s mission hull was again awash in dim golden light, trapped in stasis, but something still moved, an alien form around which the golden radiance of time-almost-stopped shied away, replaced by a blue-white nimbus. The segmented, tentacled Patron moved slowly, remaining carefully within the tight boundary of the anti-stasis bubble conforming to it. If it moved too swiftly, the space-time counter-reaction would not have time to negotiate its motion within the wider stasis region. It would become frozen, or worse, beset by destructive atomic tidal stresses shredding it at the molecular level.
The Patron—the same one who had first made contact with the crew, not that there was individually much difference between the thousands of its species within the fleet—drifted through the human ship, noting with close analogs to interest and consternation that its prize humans were not where it had left them. It seemed that the troubling creatures had been in the midst of mischief-making.
The humans were everywhere, all dressed out in vacuum suits and frozen in place throughout the ship behind makeshift barriers and defenses. Weapons had been broken out from the armory and distributed amongst the crew, as if such simple chemical slug-throwers could ever be effective against an enemy that could cross stars, stop time, and even bend space.
The defenses seemed to center upon the ship’s single shuttle, though how they expected to escape from within their own hull, and then from within the Control Ship itself was unknown. To even make an attempt, they would have to employ some significant ship-to-ship weaponry, but every missile had been expended, and the Patrons had ripped out the railgun and the laser emplacements themselves. Also, the reactor was gone, so they could not even have turned that into a weapon, were such a thing possible.
The alien recalled the fictions Earth had heedlessly and endlessly broadcast out into space, with their repeated themes of succeeding and surviving despite seemingly insurmountable odds against them. Had it been human, it would have grinned and shook its head. This was their last stand.
This … pitiful display actually seemed to indicate that the crew thought they had a chance of winning, of escaping. It surveyed the ship, but found nothing to indicate that this plan was anything but the most forlorn of hopes. It actually made the Patron think less of them, and of humanity as a whole. To think that they would endanger their precarious position on so feeble an attempt, it almost seemed to express a suicidal intent.
The Patron thought briefly of honoring their apparent wish. With them frozen like this, it would be no problem at all to end each of their lives, in any of a variety of ways. But that would almost seem to be a gift.
Better to take their hope from them entirely, to crush even their weak ability to oppose their captors, and then show them the price of their pride, the price of destroying so many irreplaceable treasures for their own selfish survival. The Patron went to work.
It and its remotes moved through the mission hull, disarming each of the defenders and destroying the weapons. The crew and the broken remains of the guns were then deposited back in the mess room amidst the shattered pieces of the avatar. After a time, the task was complete, with Nathan, Kris, Edwards, and the rest arranged in a circle facing one another.
When next the Patrons awoke them, they would return to normal time facing each other, powerless, and spared only by the cruel mercy of the aliens. And the next thing to which they would be forced to bear witness would be the murdered Earth, reaped of all its treasures, fated to be forgotten by the universe, except as an exhibit for their captors. Then, at last, these final few humans would know the futility of opposition.