As he watched the holo and the read the information from his scans, his smile slipped. Time slowed down, his mind going into overdrive; he read the data and then read it again, checking and checking hundreds of times in a span of moments. He was still looking at the holo, at the positions of his ships. He was helpless.
I’ve miscalculated, Adrian thought to himself as time resumed its normal flow. I didn’t account for the amount of fuel; I didn’t account for their ammunition stores, their power plants, and gravity generators. Frantically, he reached for the comms to his left, opening a channel to the Second Fleet even though he knew it was too late.
Audacious
The crew of Audacious’s CC cheered as the Harbinger’s main weapon hit the Sowir construct. Its weapons fire died off, and Beth saw multiple explosions appear all over its surface. Then her comms chimed.
“Beth, get away from there now!” Adrian frantically yelled out.
Bethany was about to respond, when she saw what was happening at the Sowir Construct.
Immediately, she opened the comms to her entire fleet.
“All ships turn around immediately. Get as far away from the Construct as possible,” Bethany ordered, even as she realized that her dreadnoughts were too close and wouldn’t have enough time to get away.
The pieces of the moon blew outwards in a storm of fire, the explosions from the Sowir power plants blowing them in all directions. The massive station surrounding the moons disappeared in a fast-expanding rain of fire and debris. The moon and the Construct exploded, the debris field moving in every direction.
Bethany’s dreadnoughts were too slow; they wouldn’t be able to get out of the way of the rapidly approaching danger. Her ship was firing at all the closest pieces, hoping to shatter or deflect some of them, but with no success.
Beth watched as her crew desperately tried to get more out of her ship, but the Mark Twos were not built for speed. She realized that she would die, and that there was nothing she could do about it. She recorded a message and sent it off, just as a three-kilometer-wide piece of rock smashed into her ship.
Harbinger
The Harbinger turned using its massive auxiliary drives and was speeding away from the oncoming carnage and towards the gas giant, where the rest of the fleet was now heading in order to escape the debris field. Titan and Tiamat were following with the drones, which the command crews used now to ram smaller, faster pieces of debris that threatened to hit the three warships. The Vanguard ships were much faster than the Empire’s other ships, and had little problem with keeping ahead of the danger.
Adrian looked at the holo. Bethany’s dreadnoughts were trying to get away, but he could see that they wouldn’t get far; the old ships were tough, but too slow. He saw ships fire all their weapons, but to no avail. He saw ships turning around and ramming the bigger pieces of the moon, hoping to save their friends, but it didn’t matter.
Adrian forced himself to look at Audacious on the holo, to look as a big chunk of the moon he’d destroyed bore down on Bethany’s ship. He watched as the rock struck the large dreadnought in its side, breaking its spine and then plastering it on its surface, followed by a big, short explosion as the Audacious disappeared. He watched as Bethany died.
Grief threatened to swallow him. Iris appeared in front of him.
“Adrian,” she said in his mind. “Bethany sent you a private message, before she—”
“Not now, Iris, I don’t have the time,” he said, and she looked at him for a moment before disappearing, focusing on guiding the Harbinger’s systems again.
He saw Sora looking at him, angling her head. He knew what she was asking, but he was not the same person he’d been so long ago. He had spent a great part of his life with two empathic animals, and he had learned a lot from them. He didn’t need her help. He pushed his emotions aside and focused on his task.
“FTL comms are back online,” his Communications Handler said somberly.
Adrian looked at the status of his ships. The Vanguard and the Third Fleet had managed to get away with only minor damage; most of their ships had been further away from the Construct when it blew, and Adrian’s Vanguard ships had been fast enough to escape. The Second Fleet, on the other hand, was gutted. Bethany had taken all of their Mark Twos close to the Construct, and all of those ships had been destroyed. Of those further away, only one hundred and eighty managed to escape.
Adrian glanced at the crew, all of whom were studying him. They had all known about him and Bethany. Paul’s look was the hardest to bear; he’d known her personally too.
“Is Watchtower operational?” Adrian asked Paul.
“Yes,” Paul answered.
Adrian stood and turned, icily stating, “Set a course towards the Sowir fleets.” And then he exited the command center. He still had a mission to finish.
The force consisting of the combined Third and Vanguard Fleets moved in formation towards the Sowir ships. Behind them was the carnage of the destroyed Sowir Construct. The Sowir were not running away; they knew that they had no chance of escaping, so instead they opened fire. Thousands of missiles launched from their ships, speeding towards the Empire’s fleet. In retaliation, the Empire’s fleet opened fire. Lasers, particle beams, and kinetic shells closed the distance between them, destroying scores of Sowir ships every second. The force of more than a thousand Sowir ships was rapidly shrinking down.
The Vanguard ships led the charge, their lasers cutting ships in half, their particle beams smashing holes through entire ships, their shells pulverizing the Sowir ships’ hulls.
In a short time, the Sowir fleet died, just as the last of their missiles died from the point defense of the Empire’s fleet.
The invading fleet continued forward, hunting down any and all Sowir warships. An unstoppable force that destroyed everything in its way.
Chapter Eighteen
Seven days later – Sowir homeworld
Lurker of the Depths stood with eleven others of his kind in a circle inside the oldest building on their homeworld. The Sowir race didn’t really have a ruler or a ruling body; all of their people were part of the whole. Their ability to communicate mind to mind had resulted in all of them having a singular voice. And their ability to see/hear/sense the Spirit of the Universe allowed them to always feel the collective of their race, even if they couldn’t speak with each other across vast distances. But while they were united, their beliefs and will singular, they were still individuals, and some parts of the voice held more weight than others.
The twelve gathered here were those whose knowledge, experience, and will pulled ahead of the others of their kind. The purpose of their meeting was simple: their entire race was about to end.
The ungifted who were even now dismantling their system had used their superior void travel technology to strike fast and hard before his people could respond. The Sowir Dominion had known that they were coming from the moment they appeared in Sowir border systems, thanks to the FTL communication systems that his people had developed. But it mattered little when their enemy could move faster than they could respond.
At the start of their conflict, the Sowir had decided to sacrifice a lot of territory, keeping the enemy busy in order to reinforce systems that were far away from the front, leaving the border systems to fall and buy them time. Over four cycles after they had taken those systems, the enemy had solidified their hold on the greater part of the former Consortium territory, including the shipbuilding facilities that the Sowir had repurposed for their use.