Cassandra nodded and kept her eyes on the sensor monitor. “Attention all ships,” She announced over the fleet frequency, “the negative matter will only travel at eighty percent light speed. We will stay behind the initial launch until the mass has either cleared the Captors formations of until it runs out. I am extending the Kosievs’ teleport screen to cover the front of our formation. I will implement the screen when I determine we are no longer protected from the front. Stay in formation, if you fall out you will have to use your own teleport screen so have it ready on standby. Our run will begin in a projected one minute. Prepare to fire a full salvo in front and we will follow three seconds later. You don’t have long to reload your magazines so make the time count.”
The Captors were scanning space along the projected orbital path of the planet and their scans were not showing anything. The Captor Fleet leader watched the scans and thought, “It has got to be near this point. How are they hiding it?” He looked closer at his sensors and that’s when trouble beyond his wildest estimation broke out. He only had one second before he was hit by one of the black balls and imploded. He was not alone.
A huge moving black mass exploded out of empty space and raced toward the middle of the incoming fleet. Thousands of red ships were hit and disintegrated and right behind the moving black mass five of the strange white ships erupted out of nowhere and began following the black mass into the ranks of the Captor fleet. The Captors responded immediately and fired their beams and energy balls at the ships but missed as the ships flew by them. As the white ships passed, hundreds of red ships were hit and destroyed. The ones in front of the enemy could not fire their weapons through the moving black mass which destroyed everything in its path and the ones to the sides of the formation fired and missed as the white ships flew past them. There were more than a million energy balls chasing the white ships but were not making up enough ground to impact. Several Captor ships tried to run through the black mass and ram the escaping ships but only disintegrated as they struck the moving black wall.”
“Lt. Ortiz, how are the other ships doing?”
“The Captors in front of us are trying to run around the edge and ram us.”
Tommy looked at Cassandra and she said through gritted teeth, “Let them; our hulls will cut them apart. The only way they can hurt us is with an explosion.”
Captain Zeng commanding the Cainth Pulse Ship Clan Warrior watched as a Captor ship flew in at high speed cutting the corner of the black mass and hit his ship head on. The Captor ship was cut right through the middle falling away in two pieces and exploding into fragments. A second Captor ship came right behind the first and just before impacting fired an energy ball and hit it with its beam. The resulting explosion blew the Clan Warrior out of formation and rocked the four other ships throwing them out of formation. The Clan Warrior was blown back and into the path of the energy balls chasing the fleeing SR ships. A huge red ship hit the energy balls as they neared the tumbling Cainth Pulse Ship and the resulting explosions ripped the ship apart and then shredded the pieces.
Tommy felt the Kosiev as it was thrown left and watched as Cassandra struggled to regain stability. “Get us out of here,” he yelled. “That blast wave will be on us in five seconds.” The blast wave was moving at the speed of light and was closing in on the remaining ships. Cassandra hit the teleport button and the four ships disappeared. Just before the ships disappeared Cassandra sent a thought into the black mass and exploded what remained. All of the remaining Captor ships in the system were blown out of existence as the blast wave engulfed everything within a twenty light minute radius and imploded it.
The reinforcing Captor ships arrived in the outer system just in time to see their fellow warriors totally obliterated by the blast. They jumped away before the blast arrived. The First Male and the warriors at the planet saw hundreds of thousands of empty berths on the construct. In their long hundreds of millions of year’s history, no Captor had ever died. Now they had lost a third of their population to a tiny number of tiny ships in a tiny measure of time. They were ruled by instinct but they were also intelligent beings that were starting to realize that there was a real possibility of defeat. They also were feeling the drive to swarm diminish. It would take hundreds of thousands of years to begin to replace the warriors that had been lost.
The First Male and First Mother were stunned at the loss of life in the attack. The First Male said, “Should we have tried to negotiate with those strangers?”
“What good would it do? If they come into our system we would attack; we have no choice. If they discover where we live, we would attack. Our instincts rule us and even though we know mentally that we’re placing ourselves in danger, we would still attack.”
“First Mother, is this new race superior to us? Every time we encounter them, warriors die.”
“The thing that gives us a fighting chance is that they are few in number. We still have four million warriors. However, we must find a way to protect ourselves from that black energy.”
The First Male said nothing but thought about all of the long time relationships that had ended in the blast of that black matter.
Tommy and Cassandra were sitting on the bridge of the Kosiev thinking about the blast wave they had just escaped. Tommy looked at Lt. Ortiz and asked, “Did you get a reading on the energy in that incoming blast wave?”
Lt. Ortiz looked at his screen and said, “The reading was off the scale. Quite frankly, the scale was made so high that it was never anticipated that any kind of energy reading would get half way up that scale.” Lt. Ortiz looked up and said, “Our hulls would not be penetrated but the severe pressure of the wave would have probably broken the structure of the ship just like the Clan Warrior.”
Tommy gave a heavy sigh and said, “There was no way to avoid the blast when that ship fired the energy ball and detonated it at such close range.”
“Tommy.”
“Yes, Rose.”
“Were you able to save the planet?”
“Yes, we did. We moved it to the system that Earth is in right now.”
“Have you thought about whether or not the Captors can track jump tracks from that system to the rest of the Stars Realm?”
Tommy looked at Cassandra and immediately ordered, “Attention all ships; we will be jumping back into the Crengren system in one minute. Be prepared to teleport out if there are Captor fleets present.”
Cassandra looked at him and nodded, “Weapons, load all magazines; be prepared to launch immediately upon entering normal space; jump in thirty seconds.”
“Rose, I don’t know if the tracks can be traced. We are jumping back in now and see if they are there. What prompted you to ask that question?”
“I have a sense of danger to the Realm and I’m not sure where it’s coming from.”
“Contact Dad and see if he can tell where it’s originating; he had a much better sense for that than we do.”
“He contacted me, Tommy. Something is going on but we can’t tell what it is.”
“I’ll contact you as soon as we arrive back in the Crengren system.”
Cassandra said, “Jumping in 3,2,1, execute.”
The four ships entered normal space in the outer system and saw that there were no Captor ships in the system. They also immediately saw that the system was dramatically changed. All of the inner planets were gone and the three planets in the outer system were in ruins. The closest was shattered into twelve huge pieces with millions of small asteroids fanning out from its former orbit. The crew of the Kosiev looked out on the ruined system and were awed by the magnitude of the blast that must have caused such catastrophic damage.
Cassandra gazed at the ruined system and knew that she had caused the event by exploding the dark matter. “It’s my fault; I caused this.”