Harold left, recognising the tone that promised harsh punishment if he dared to offer any further disagreement. Jan wasn’t just his and his family’s mother; she was the elected Mother of the entire settlement and the leader of over a thousand human souls. The tiny settlement, like most asteroid settlements, was run by women and Jan was known to be the most cunning, ruthless and far-seeing of all the women on the settlement. In an environment where men went out to mine, or to fight, women held the line at home — and, with it, most of the political power. Jan had never enjoyed the job — it wasn’t meant to be an enjoyable job — but now she felt helpless. By long tradition, a Mother’s word was law, but the Killers wouldn’t heed her words. They would smash through the defences and crush her people without even noticing the effort.
“Motherless bastards,” she said, when she was alone. The Command Centre was normally only manned by a handful of women; now, she was alone, apart from the ever-present AI. It was a limited model — the founder of the settlement hadn’t been comfortable with AIs that had too much freedom of action — but more than capable of handling anything that might be required, until now. “Report.”
“All freighters are being loaded now with evacuees,” the AI said, calmly. Jan was tempted to disconnect the conversational overlays, which kept the AI sounding like a human, provided that it wasn’t pushed, but there was no point. Alone, she could pretend that the AI was as human as she was, or the rest of her people. They wouldn’t be her people much longer. Even if they found safety somewhere else, the community would be broken and scattered among the stars. “The first freighter is leaving the docking bay now.”
Jan clenched her teeth as the freighter lumbered away and, with a flash, vanished into warp drive. The settlement hadn’t been able to afford Anderson Drive starships and that meant that if the Killers decided to give chase, the evacuees would probably be chased down and killed. They generally ignored human starships unless they were actively engaging the Killer ships, but she suspected that this time it would be different. The Defence Force hadn’t hurt the Killers until they’d actually managed to capture a Killer starship. The Killers were probably furious, maybe even out for revenge. Who knew how they thought?
“Good,” she said. It was tempting to call down to the docking bay and order Harold to hurry up, but she knew better than to pester anyone, even her son. Harold might be a man, but he had the ability to handle the task and pestering him would only delay the loading. “How long until they enter firing range?”
“The Killer starship will enter firing range in seven minutes,” the AI informed her. “They will enter range of our automated missile batteries in three minutes.”
“And won’t stop even when we open fire,” Jan muttered. “Can we hurt them? Hell, no.”
The AI didn’t recognise that it was a rhetorical question. “The defence data from the Defence Force suggests that the detonation of Type-Nine warheads against Killer hull material, which is of unknown composition, will not inflict even minimal damage,” it informed her. Jan had known that from the start. The defences were intended for human pirates, not Killers and their invincible starships. “The Killers may not even bother to respond.”
“Maybe they will,” Jan said, slowly. “Can you rewrite their firing patterns? Have each platform engage individually?”
“Yes,” the AI said, “but Defence Force protocols warn that if we do not engage collectively…”
“Override,” Jan said, shortly. “I want one platform firing at a time. When that platform is destroyed, or shot dry, I want the next platform to engage.”
“Understood,” the AI said. “Command protocols are being rewritten. Command protocols have been rewritten.”
“Good,” Jan said, looking down at the update from the docking bay. Nine more starships were underway, fleeing onwards towards the Community, as if there was safety anywhere. The entire Defence Force couldn’t stop one Killer starship. “You may fire the first platform when the Killers come into range.”
“Acknowledged,” the AI said. There was a pause. “You may wish to leave the command centre and proceed to the docking bay. There are only three more starships still accepting evacuees.”
“I’m bred out,” Jan said, relaxing. There was no way that she was going to abandon the remaining settlers to die alone. Her place was in the command centre. “Don’t let them call me. Just clear them to depart without me.”
The AI didn’t argue.
Chiyo felt like screaming as the human settlement drew closer, illuminated by the ghostly gravity waves that emitted from the Killer starship and echoed back from the asteroids. The Killer mind was coldly and precisely picking out the inhabited asteroids, designating them for attention, one after the other. Chiyo guessed — she had to keep herself thinking, just to avoid falling into panic or despair — that the Killers used vast neutrino fields as well. It was a worrying thought. There were hundreds of hidden settlements, designed to be safe from the Killers, that were anything, but.
The first missile caught her by surprise; a flare of light that appeared out of nowhere, slammed into the Killer starship and detonated, without even shaking the starship. The Killer mind wasn’t remotely concerned as missile after missile materialised out of nowhere and struck the ship, leaving the business of destroying the launcher to automated systems. A pulse of white light flared out of the Killer starship and wiped the launcher out of existence, but another launcher opened fire, continuing the ineffective bombardment. Chiyo frowned; the tactic made no sense, yet it was irritating the Killer mind. It seemed to concentrate, and then open fire with ruthless abandon, wiping hundreds of tiny human constructions out of space, along with dozens of innocent asteroids.
It can’t see the launchers, she realised, in disbelief. She had realised that something was odd about the way the Killer was reacting to the human attack, but it hadn’t occurred to her that the Killer couldn’t see what was launching the attack, even though it had been easy to deduce it’s location. It was bizarre; there was no way that a human starship would have missed it, unless it was a stealthed platform. The thought excited her, for it proved that there were chinks in the Killers and their armour, but it worried her at the same time. Why couldn’t the Killers see them?
The thought kept nagging at her as the Killer starship finally battered its way through the defences and closed in rapidly on the core asteroid. A human opponent would have tried to take the asteroid and its equipment intact — the Rockrats had fought hundreds of bitter Rock Wars over asteroid settlements — but the Killers had no need of human resources. Chiyo watched, unable to look away, as the first white ball of light struck home and the asteroid disintegrated. The asteroid hadn’t bothered with artificial gravity, relying instead on spin to create gravity and that spin was now tearing it apart. The detonation alone would have rendered the asteroid uninhabitable, but the spin completed the destruction, leaving the Killer starship free to move on to the next target. The starship ignored the human ships as they slipped away into interstellar space…
Chiyo couldn’t watch any longer and fled back down into the core of the Killer system, watching the cold dispassionate rage of the Killer mind as it completed the task of destroying any trace of human existence in the system. There was no sense of pleasure, or glee, or even sadism, just the awareness that the task had to be completed as quickly and decisively as possible. It fitted in with how the Killers had handled Earth and the other worlds they’d destroyed over millions of years; they hadn’t just wiped out the intelligent races despoiling their homeworlds, but they’d rendered the worlds completely uninhabitable. A limited amount of radiation was a requirement for rapid evolution, but after the Killers had finished, Earth had become so radioactive that even the cockroaches hadn’t survived. Nothing lived there now, apart from a handful of human researchers under very heavy protection, and nothing would ever evolve there again.