The breacher missiles tore from their tubes, separating from their original formation as they followed Oeskym’s tracking toward six spots along the Battle Dreadnought’s starboard flank. The alien responded instantly, firing a burst of dibbers at each missile. The dibbers converged on their targets, slamming into the missiles and destroying them, sending their payloads into space. Even as the thick waves of acid slowly expanded, shimmering as they continued toward their original targets, the plasma spheres appeared, burning through space behind them. Another salvo of dibbers shot from the Battle Dreadnought, zeroing in on the spheres—
And disintegrated in midflight as their intercept courses took them straight through the acid globs flowing ahead of them.
“Lasers!” Ar’alani snapped. “Target bridge and dibber launchers.”
The Vigilant’s lasers tore at the alien’s hull. Simultaneously, the Battle Dreadnought’s lasers also opened fire, raking across the Chiss electrostatic barriers. Ar’alani watched as the plasma spheres completed their journey unhindered, delivering their paralyzing ion loads into the enemy’s starboard side. She shifted her attention to the Grayshrike—
Just in time to see the heavy cruiser launch twin clusters of breachers at the battle cruiser’s portside flank.
Belatedly, the alien warship opened defensive fire with a handful of spectrum lasers, probably all it had left on that side. But it was too little too late. The breachers slammed into the hull, their acid loads digging farther into the damage already there. The additional corrosion was eating through the metal when the Grayshrike’s own lasers opened fire, digging even deeper into the alien ship.
“Getting a drop in energy emissions,” Biclian called. “Power levels down thirty percent. I think the Grayshrike got one of their reactors.”
“They may have taken out the hyperdrive, too,” Wutroow added, pointing at one of the data displays. “Particle emission profile just dropped off the curve.” She looked back at Ar’alani. “Time to call on them to surrender?”
“Missile launch toward the Grayshrike!” Oeskym snapped.
Ar’alani winced. It was a big missile, bigger than any of the ones she’d yet seen the Battle Dreadnought use. Reflexively, she opened her mouth to shout a warning to Lakinda—
And closed it again. The missile had settled onto its final trajectory, and that vector wasn’t targeting the Grayshrike.
It was targeting the asteroid missile launcher.
Lakinda saw it, too. But there was nothing she could do. The Grayshrike’s lasers lanced out, trying to take out the weapon as it swept past. But it was too well armored, and going too fast, and in the end she could do nothing except join Ar’alani in watching it slam into the lattice and launcher and obliterate both.
And with that task completed—
Ar’alani caught her breath with sudden premonition. “Lakinda, veer off!” she snapped. “Get out of there now.”
The Grayshrike had pitched upward in response to Ar’alani’s order and was driving away from the enemy when the Battle Dreadnought disintegrated in a coordinated series of violent explosions.
“Wutroow, get us out of here,” Ar’alani ordered.
“Yes, Admiral.”
A moment later, even as the Vigilant started pulling away, the first wave of debris spattered across its hull. Ar’alani tensed, but the impacts were far gentler even than those they’d suffered from destroyed enemy missiles. Clearly, the Battle Dreadnought’s self-destruct system had been designed to shred everything into very small pieces.
And with that, it was over.
“Grayshrike?” Ar’alani called. “Report.”
“Minor damage only, Admiral,” Lakinda’s voice came back.
“Same here,” Ar’alani said, running her eye over the Vigilant’s damage report. “Fortunately for us, he was more interested in learning our tactics and weak spots than in outright destroying us. Come back around—we’ll rendezvous and see how much of this we can sort out.”
“Acknowledged, Admiral.”
Ar’alani keyed off. “Senior Captain Wutroow, go to the sensor station and assist Biclian in looking for any dibbers that might still be incapacitated after running through one of our spheres,” she ordered. “If you find one, get a shuttle out there to bring it back for study.”
“After making sure it stays incapacitated, I assume?” Wutroow asked, gesturing the order over to Biclian.
“Absolutely,” Ar’alani confirmed. “The last thing we want is to bring a weapon aboard that might go boom. Better idea: Rig one of the shuttles with disassembly and analysis equipment, and they can do the preliminary work out there.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Wutroow said. “Whether or not they found our weak spots, at least we found theirs.”
“Which is?” Ar’alani asked.
Wutroow frowned slightly. “The mixed breacher-and-sphere attack. Right?”
Ar’alani shook her head. “That was a useful tactic. But it’s not their underlying weakness.” She gestured to the tactical. “At their earlier encounter, the Grayshrike blinded their portside flank sensors with spheres, opening the way for Thrawn to launch an attack against that side. Here, with the Grayshrike coming up on that same side, we threw spheres at their starboard flank.”
“Ah,” Wutroow said, nodding. “Which they then assumed was a precursor to an attack over on that side. Possibly from a third ship about to come at them out of hyperspace.”
“Right,” Ar’alani said. “Notice, too, that all of that reaction came after the asteroid’s inbuilt self-defense system blew the shell when it sensed it was being attacked.”
“Is that what happened to it?”
“I assume so,” Ar’alani said. “We’ll study the Grayshrike’s records, but it’s the only thing that makes sense. At any rate, the Battle Dreadnought’s commander saw the explosion, and with the lack of good sensors on that side he assumed the Grayshrike was at least temporarily out of the battle.”
“I see,” Wutroow said. “So their weakness is making assumptions and not confirming them?”
“And perhaps being too easily distracted.” Ar’alani gestured to the sensor station. “Get busy on that dibber hunt. The aliens worked very hard to make sure there weren’t any souvenirs for us to take home. Let’s see if we can find something they missed.”
“I’m sorry, Admiral,” Lakinda said, trying not to wince. Even in a private meeting, facing a superior officer required a certain degree of decorum. “I assumed you meant to bring just the launcher, and I was told we couldn’t get it free quickly enough.”
“It’s all right,” Ar’alani soothed from the other end of the conference table. “My scenario would also have ended with the missile destroyed, so it’s not as if we could have salvaged it for study anyway.”
“No, ma’am.” The admiral was being nice about it, but there was no way Lakinda could avoid feeling like a fool.
What made it even worse was the nagging suspicion that Thrawn wouldn’t have missed the intent of Ar’alani’s quick order.
“I presume you’ve heard we weren’t able to get to any of the dibbers before they also self-destructed,” Ar’alani continued. “Whoever these aliens are, they’re very determined to keep as many of their secrets as they can.”
“It would appear so,” Lakinda agreed.