“Very well.” Desjani bent her head for a moment, her eyes closed, her lips moving silently.
A prayer right now was a good idea, Geary reflected. He also took a moment to say a few words noiselessly, pleading with the living stars to preserve this fleet and its crews, and with his ancestors for whatever aid they could provide.
“Standing by for earliest assessed possible impact time,” another watch-stander announced. “Three… two… one… mark.”
The moment passed without any change, the image of the distant hypernet gate still there, still fluctuating as the tethers holding the energy matrix in place were destroyed one by one. It had been absurd to think that Cresida’s earliest estimate would be accurate to the second, but it was human nature to lock on to that time as critical.
Another minute went by, everyone on the bridge of Dauntless staring at their displays as if they would somehow provide advance warning, when in fact the wave front would hit at the speed of light, providing no notice before it struck.
Geary stared at the distant image of the hypernet gate, the fluctuations in energy levels inside it obvious to the fleet’s sensors even from this far away. He would never forget how it had felt close to a collapsing gate, as Dauntless, Daring, and Diamond had fought to keep the gate at Sancere from frying the star system it had served. Space itself had been warping inside the gate as the forces within it were unleashed, causing effects echoed within nearby human bodies even through the shields and armor of the warships. Only Captain Cresida’s theoretical firing plan for causing the gate to collapse in a way that minimized the resultant energy discharge had saved the three Alliance warships and who knew how many other ships and inhabitants in the Sancere Star System.
He wondered how the crews of those Syndic ships destroying the gate in this star system had felt, whether they’d experienced those forces and questioned their orders, whether they’d had time to realize that their obedience to commands was dooming not only them but also a great many other inhabitants of Lakota. He’d never know. Unaware of what they were unleashing, those ships had almost certainly been destroyed more than two hours ago, their crews forever silenced.
One more minute. Two more. Geary heard others muttering to themselves, the words inaudible but the tones clearly pleading. The words of the prayers change, but they always mean the same thing. Have mercy please, because there’s nothing else that human skill or device can do now.
The shock wave slammed into Dauntless. Geary fought down a surge of fear as the ship jerked and lights dimmed, his mind knowing that if the energy burst had been great enough to destroy Dauntless, then the battle cruiser would have been shattered before he had time to be afraid.
“Forward shields down thirty percent, no hull damage, minor energy leak-through affecting ship systems.” The reports rolled in while Geary waited for the display to clear and reveal the state of his fleet, whether his lighter ships had been able to survive the blow.
“Preliminary estimate places the energy output at the source at point one three on the Yama-Potillion Nova Scale.”
“Point one three,” Desjani murmured, then she ducked her head again and her lips moved without a sound for a moment.
Geary did the same, breathing his own quick thanks that the energy output had been so much lower than it could have been.
The display cleared, symbols updating rapidly. Geary ran his eyes across his ship-status reports, searching for red-lined systems. The hardest hit had been the destroyers since their shields were weakest, but none seemed to have suffered major damage. A lot of subsystems blown and a few cases of hull damage, but otherwise even the fleet’s smallest ships had come through intact.
Where the image of the Syndic hypernet gate and the nearby Syndic warships had been, there was now nothing. It took the fleet’s sensors a few moments to find what was left of the Syndic guard force. Whatever remained of the smaller warships was in pieces too small for the system to find immediately. Large pieces of debris tumbling away from the former site of the hypernet gate were assessed as the remains of the two Syndic battle cruisers. One of the two battleships had also been shattered into several large fragments, while the other had broken into two segments that seemed very badly torn up. As Geary watched, one of the big segments blew up. Or rather, he finally saw the light from two and a half hours ago showing the segment explode back then. “They never knew what hit them. That close to the energy discharge, even reinforced shields wouldn’t have been enough.”
Desjani nodded. “That’s what would’ve happened to us at Sancere if Captain Cresida’s calculations hadn’t worked, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“I owe that woman a drink when we get home.”
Geary couldn’t help a short laugh born of relief. “I think we owe her more than that. A bottle of the finest booze we can find. I’ll go halves with you on it.”
Desjani’s mouth widened in a brief, tight smile. “Deal.” The smile vanished. “Where now?”
“Let’s head toward the jump point for Branwyn. What should our course be if we hold this speed?” He could have worked it out himself easily but didn’t trust his thinking at the moment.
Desjani glanced toward her maneuvering watch, who hastily worked out the solution.
Geary paused a moment longer to ensure that his voice would be steady, then punched his command circuit again. “All units in the Alliance fleet, return to positions in Fleet Formation Delta Two. At time three five all units turn together starboard one zero six degrees, up zero four degrees.”
Now that they were behind the shock wave, they could watch it sweep over those parts of the star system that hadn’t yet been hit. It was like watching a terrible before-and-after presentation. Ahead of the shock wave, before it struck each region, Lakota brimmed with life and activity. As the shock wave expanded across the star system and swept over human habitations and ships, it left behind a field of broken debris and death.
The Syndic escape pods had been simply annihilated by the shock wave, wiped out like a swarm of gnats in the path of a heavy, fast-moving vehicle, the sailors inside them dying instantly. A couple of freighters, too far from anywhere to reach safety, had been torn apart. One colony on the moon of a gas giant had been sheltered by the gas giant itself, though the giant had shed a fair amount of upper atmosphere as the shock wave passed by. That colony was an exception though. Two other colonies, on the fifth planet, were badly damaged, and a third on another moon was possibly wiped out.
Hardest to watch had been the impact of the energy discharge on the habitable world. On the side of the planet facing the shock wave when it hit, huge amounts of atmosphere had been scattered and blown off, the surfaces of oceans, seas, rivers, and lakes flashing to vapor. Forests and fields burst into momentary flame, the heat so intense that they were almost instantly reduced to charred remnants. Cities became melted, flattened fields of wreckage. Towns were so badly crushed by the wave of energy that many to all intents and purposes vanished.
Half a world died in the space of seconds.
“It’s possible that people in deep enough shelter on the exposed side might have survived the shock wave’s hitting,” a watch-stander reported.