Explorer rocked and shook.
“They’ve hit our shields,” said Phylas.
“No weapon was fired,” said Morval.
Then we saw on the screen the tell tale shadows of missiles in flight.
“The missiles struck before they were fired,” theorised Phylas. “They’re using some kind of time reversal mechanism.”
I froze at the implications of that.
Morval didn’t wait for the rest of the count; he pulled the sliders on his phantom control display to flit the anti-matter bombs.
Our flitting technology can cut through any force shield; one moment the bombs were on our weapons deck, the next they were inside the enemy vessel.
And so the black-sailed ship spun madly in space, as if beset by fierce winds, as the bombs exploded inside its hull. The hull itself cracked, spewing air and bodies into space. And the sails collapsed, as their energy supply was compromised, and they dangled helplessly in vacuum.
Meanwhile, real-space missiles surged forth from Explorer and, ten minutes later, cut through the enemy’s force-shields with ease and detonated on its hull, shattering it further.
“It can’t be that easy,” I said.
“Watch,” said Albinia. She could see the ship as Explorer saw it, on our panoramic wall screen. And she knew, with a chilling certainty, that something strange was happening.
And then it happened. The shards of the enemy ship began to reform. The two parts of the hull rejoined; the sails refurled.
“Nice trick,” conceded Phylas.
“Quarantine cage?” I said.
“Activated,” said Morval.
Another missile exploded on our force shields. And another. The stay-still fields kept us safe, but the Hub was rocking wildly with each impact.
“Quarantine the bastards!!” I screamed.
And so the battle raged: the Death Ship continued to hurl missiles at us, and the missiles continued to splash hopelessly against our invincible shields. And meanwhile we cast a quarantine lattice through space to envelop the black-sailed monstrosity. Within moments the battle would be over.
Then our fields failed, and a missile crashed through our hull.
The impact on our ship was devastating: the hull cracked; air billowed out into space; our wireboards exploded, and the lights flickered wildly.
But in the Hub we saw none of that. The stay-stills kept us in place. The armoured doors protected us from all blast impacts. Our wireboards were shielded and discrete. And we could if necessary survive for centuries in this Hub even if the rest of the vessel were destroyed.
“Evacuate lower deck crew into pods,” ordered Galamea.
“No one has ever done that much damage to an Olaran vessel before,” marvelled Morval.
I began to worry we had got ourselves into a fight we couldn’t win.
“Albinia, report,” I said.
“Explorer is hurt; the sheer drive is damaged; we are using spare rift-support engines,” she replied.
The black-sailed ship vanished from our screen.
“It’s rifting,” said Phylas.
“We have it tagged.” We rifted too and found ourselves almost on top of the Death Ship; and we rained more missiles on it. And then it vanished, once again.
And again we tagged it.
And so the battle was waged: our two damaged ships flickered in and out of space, landing occasional blows upon each other in the form of powerful beams of energy that smashed against energy-absorbing shields. Albinia relied on her powerful intuition to guide her in her rift-leaps and most of the time she made Explorer reappear within missile-range of the enemy, and we struck.
Phylas and Morval were marshalling the barrage of energy beams, which collided with invisible barriers but, with each repulsion, stole data about what was within. They also used the disuptor ray in short bursts; but the Death Ship’s shields bore up against it.
Then I flickerflew a black hole from Explorer’s inner cage and it rematerialised within the enemy ship. The ship’s image wavered, as the gravity well began to rip at its very fabric.
Then the enemy ship vanished, rifting away with incredible skill, and the black hole was left behind, bending space around it, a pinprick with the gravitational pull of a red giant.
And the enemy ship was below us now and Explorer began to shake. Every atom of our vessel was in motion. The enemy were trying to shake us to death with a weapon unlike any we had ever encountered.
I opened the bomb hatch and Albinia rifted Explorer away, and when Explorer reappeared in real space we were able to see a flock of missiles explode as one in the space where we had been. And then the black-sailed ship vanished again and we rifted after it.
After another hour of battle, we scored another hit: the enemy ship was smitten by a mighty energy blow, and its hull was dented, but this time it didn’t tear. But within instants our own hull was smashed with a mighty fist, and air began venting out again.
“How are they managing to penetrate our shields?” asked Galamea calmly. “I thought that was impossible.”
“They’re-good,” I said.
“Wait,” whispered Morval.
“But even so, we’re beating the fornicators!” I roared, as I saw their hull began to rip apart once more.
“It’s rifting again,” screamed Phylas.
“Continue pursuit,” I said.
The black-sailed ship slipped through a rift in space; but once again we flew with it. We emerged in a different part of space; and the battle continued.
They rifted again; we went with them. And again. And again.
“What are they doing?” asked Morval baffled. “They’re not fighting; they’re travelling.”
This continued for-how long? Hours? Or days? We received regular reports from the crew on the fatalities and casualties that had accrued. But our ship had self-healed, the wireboards had regenerated, and our guns were now recharged. We had lost six brave Olarans but we were battle-worthy once again.
And finally we found ourselves in a solar system dominated by a large gas giant. The black-sailed ship stopped shooting at us. It seemed to be waiting for something.
Our gen-guns fired, and fired again. The enemy ship’s shields were holding up; but it was making no effort whatsoever to avoid our blasts.
“Look. Behind. On the wall-screen,” said Morval.
The panoramic wall-screen in front of me showed the enemy ship, its hull a blaze of energy as bomb after bomb exploded on its invisible walls.
“No, look behind you. Look at the stars,” Morval said.
I turned around, and looked at the screen behind me, which offered a view of the far distant universe.
And I realised that some of the stars were gone. Many remained, but I knew the patterns of the distant galaxies and I could see the absences as vividly as if they had been coloured flashes of flight.
“Which stars are gone?” I asked.
“The most distant.”
More stars vanished.
“And now many nearer stars too,” Morval said.
All the stars vanished.
“And now,” said Morval, unnecessarily, “all of them.”
“What does this mean?” I asked, trying to keep the panic from my voice.
“The battle is a feint,” said Morval. “We are not winning, we are losing. In fact, we have already lost. Utterly.”
The enemy ship accelerated towards us in real space, scattering our space cameras like a farki running through a mob. Energy beams bounced off its hull, and the metal glowed white, but still the black-sailed ship flew, closer and closer to Explorer.
“They’re breached our improb wall a second time; there’s a bomb inside Explorer,” said Albinia, her eyes wide open, terror in her voice. “I think it’s-”
Our ship exploded around us. The instruments were shattered into shards, and Albinia’s body exploded and blood gushed out of her torso, and I heard her scream, but only once. Morval and Phylas too were ripped into bloody shreds of meat and bone.
I was knocked off my feet, and one of my arms was ripped off, and my skin burned, and my legs melted. I dragged myself by the strength of one arm and hand until I reached Albinia’s seat. And I tugged myself up. And I touched her cheek, which was cold. And I took her pulse, and there was none. She was dead.