The holographic display expanded to reveal the solar system in all its glory. Humanity might not have mastered gravity technology — just how the Killers were able to manipulate gravity so easily was a mystery — but the scout ship’s sensors could detect the use of gravity technology at a considerable distance, along with the presence of anything else that cast a sizeable gravity field. The planetary system was fairly average — seven planets, three of them gas giants — but the waves of focused gravity crossing the system told another story. There was no way that such gravity waves existed in nature. The Killers were in residence.
“I am detecting powered sources from four of the planets,” the AI added, illuminating the active planets. “It would appear that the Killers are tearing the planets apart.”
Chiyo winced, wondering if the planets had developed intelligent life — or any kind of life at all — before the Killers came calling. Humanity knew little about their tormentors, but one thing they did know was that the Killers were brutally xenophobic and completely ruthless. A thousand years of covert space exploration and careful observation of thousands of star systems had confirmed that the Killers had wiped out hundreds of other intelligent races, leaving any survivors well hidden, as well hidden as the remains of humanity itself. It was quite possible that the only forms of intelligent life left in the Milky Way were humanity and the Killers.
And, if the Killers had their way, one day it would just be them.
A thousand years ago, humanity had been pushing into space when the first Killer starship arrived in the Solar System and opened fire on Earth, bombarding the planet into a radioactive wasteland. The starship had ignored the bases on the moon and the asteroids, perhaps in the belief that the remainder of humanity would writher and die without Earth. Instead, humanity had managed to survive and eventually escape the Solar System, only to discover hundreds of other dead worlds and a handful of habitable planets. Several of them had been settled by humanity… only to be eventually located and wiped out by the Killers. The remainder of humanity now lurked in asteroid settlements and dead worlds, knowing that if the Killers found them, all of humanity’s technology wouldn’t save them. The only saving grace was that the Killers didn’t seem to care about asteroid settlements. No one knew why.
It wasn’t the only thing humanity didn’t know about their alien foe. No one, even after a thousand years, knew what a Killer looked like, or even spoke their language. Human archaeologists had explored hundreds of alien worlds — their populations exterminated by the Killers — and decrypted several alien languages, but no one had found a dead Killer world to explore. No one knew why they were so determined to wipe out all other intelligent races, or even how far they’d spread across the universe. The Defence Force’s probes had located dozens of bases… and hundreds of their massive starships, wandering across the galaxy on seemingly-random courses. The sheer scale of the galaxy itself defeated such efforts. Even on the scale the Killers operated, it was like searching for a tiny needle within a very large haystack.
But Chiyo’s commander had lucked out and located this system.
“Wormhole opening, seventeen million kilometres away,” the AI said, suddenly. Chiyo looked up from the display towards the near-space monitor. It wouldn’t have done any good if the wormhole had opened up right on top of her position, but at least she would have seen her enemy coming at her. “Confirmed; one Iceberg-class Killer starship, heading in towards the inner solar system.”
“I wonder why they’re heading in at such a clip,” Chiyo said, thoughtfully. If the Killer starship had come in via wormhole, rather than using their still-inexplicable normal space FTL drives, there wouldn’t be a human scout following it. According to the last report she’d downloaded from the Network, there were at least seventeen known Killer starships within a hundred light years of the star, and all of them seemed to be wandering at random. There seemed no purpose at all to their journey, unless they were watching for signs of other intelligent life.
“Unable to speculate,” the AI said, pedantically. “Alert; passive sensors have detected traces of seven other Killer starships powering up their drives. Gravity fields are expanding; brace for possible impact.”
“Understood,” Chiyo said. She’d been told that there were things called tides on a planetary surface, where the gravity of a moon pulled the water into waves and sent them crashing into the land. Space had gravity tides caused by the presence of several heavy bodies — or Killer gravity drives. They could generate waves that propagated across the system faster than light and shake humanity’s starships like a child shaking her toys. She couldn’t have said how it confirmed to being on a beach, or a boat on a real sea; she had never set foot on a living planet. Very few living humans had and those who lived in the MassMind swore blind that no simulation matched the reality. “Alert me if the waves come near us.”
She turned her attention back to the display as the Killer starships came to life. They were massive starships, each one shaped like a massive iceberg, studded with eerie lights and flickering with strange energies, almost like a city come to life. Whatever else one could say about the Killers, they thought big and built bigger; their starships utterly dwarfed everything humanity had produced. No such starship had been lost in combat with human forces either; the massacres at Terra Nova, Hope, New Jehovah and Peace had been little more than routs. Humanity’s attempts to make a stand against the Killers had been doomed from the start. No one even believed that the Killers had noticed humanity’s stand. It certainly hadn’t prompted them to go after the remaining human settlements.
“Incoming wave,” the AI said, suddenly. The scout ship rocked suddenly. “No damage; no major course adjustments.”
“Thank God,” Chiyo breathed. The course they were on should take them through the star system without passing too close to any Killer facility — although no one, of course, was sure what ‘too close’ actually was. The Killers might have ignored a routine fly-though their system, but she knew that if she came too close to one of their facilities, they would respond. Her tiny scout couldn’t stand up to their weapons for more than a second. “Show me their position.”
“The fleet is moving towards Planet One,” the AI said. “They do not seem to be in a hurry.”
Chiyo eyed the AI’s icon suspiciously, suspecting that it was making an impossible joke, before turning her eyes back to the display. The Killer starships didn’t use warp bubbles or even the Anderson Tachyon Drive — at least as far as humanity could tell — but it didn’t seem to hamper them any. No human technology could have generated a warp bubble large enough to cover a Killer starship, but their gravity drives could propel them through space at sublight speeds with ease — and then there was their inexplicable FTL drive, or their wormholes. The AI was right; whatever they were doing, the Killers were in no hurry. They advanced on the world, ominous intent clearly written in their formation, and surrounded it. Chiyo had the mental impression that the world was cowering under their gaze…
“Power spike,” the AI snapped. “Major power spike…”
The display seemed to blur as the Killers went to work. The rocky planet was struck by beams of powerful energy, rapidly disintegrating into an asteroid field. Chiyo watched in terror and awe as the Killers wove their gravity net around the asteroids trapping them and slowly funnelling them towards the star. The sheer power left her speechless; the Killers hadn’t just rendered the world uninhabitable, they’d torn it apart! It made no sense to her at all. The system had plenty of asteroids they could have used without destroying an entire planet.