moon.
The Prime knew in a nanosecond that someone else controlled the Sunbeam. This was an emergency, a dire event. In three seconds, it understood that whoever fired the beam meant to destroy the moon. Whoever fired tried to kill it—the marvel of the universe. That could never occur. There was only one possible solution now.
The armored chamber holding the Prime’s brain domes lifted. Jets fired and the chamber shook. Slowly, the great armored room slid through wide corridors as it headed for the great elevator.
The Prime ran through outlandish scenarios. Cooling chemicals kept hysteria at bay, kept panic from guiding its logic. Given its uniqueness and greatness, it would be an inconceivable loss to the Solar System if it should perish.
The armored chamber headed for a large oval vessel. The vessel was bigger than an SU battleship, although it would never willingly engage in a fight. The size was for the unique equipment, for the experimental Fuhl Mechanism.
As the armored chamber moved up the elevator, as debris slammed against the roof, as Triton-quakes shook the planetoid, the hideous Sunbeam kept burning. Time was running against it.
As the Prime’s chamber slid into the belly of the great ship, the Sunbeam boiled the subterranean ocean at a fantastic rate. Seconds passed into minutes and the minutes crawled as the Prime’s vessel slowly lifted off the moon.
The Sunbeam now burst through the subterranean ocean as it bored for the core.
The enemy must desire vengeance. How else to explain this crime against the universe? The Prime knew it was unique, a gift to reality. The thoughtless Homo sapiens with their small thinking must yearn to destroy Triton as Mars’ moon Phobos had once been destroyed, as South American Sector on Earth had been destroyed.
The beam began to move now across Triton’s moonscape. The great vessel slowly lifted for space as the beam moved faster, sweeping the surface and coming dangerously near the ship.
On the
“The beam is going to destroy the moon,” Hawthorne whispered.
Kursk blinked several times. “Sir, there’s a communications, an emergency message,” she said, pointing at a blinking light on the panel.
Hawthorne tore his gaze from the incredible sight of the vast beam. “Put it on,” he said.
It was a short message. It came from Cone on Earth. According to her, the Sun-Works Factory had been destroyed.
“What?” Hawthorne said. “How did that happen?”
The message was over four hours old. Therefore, Cone hadn’t heard the question. She did tell them, however, that an amazing beam from the Sun had demolished the Highborn headquarters.
“A Sunbeam,” Hawthorne said. “That’s what we’ve been witnessing. What happened back in Inner Planets?”
“Sir!” said Blackstone. “Look! Is that a ship?”
Kursk was already bringing the object into sharper focus. It was oval, lifting from Triton’s disintegrating surface.
“It’s big,” she said, “bigger than our battleship.” She looked up in surprise. “These readings—I’ve never seen anything like them. Is it a weapon?”
Hawthorne opened his mouth to shout an order. Before he could utter any noise, four dark nodes appeared on the enemy ship. Then a strange flash occurred, and the ship disappeared, leaving the flash behind as it seemed to close in upon itself.
“What just happened?” Kursk whispered.
Hawthorne’s jaw sagged as a sharp pain lanced his chest. He groaned, mastering the pain as his long fingers played over controls. He brought up the video recording and played it in slow motion.
The four nodes, they were a swirling black color, seeming to suck light. Then the flash occurred as it cycled through a number of colors: red, green, purple, orange, blue and bright white at the end. The ship slipped through what seemed like a rent in space, and the hole closed behind it as the colors cycled down.
“This is new,” Hawthorne whispered.
“Did a cyborg ship escape?” Kursk asked.
“I’m more interested in finding out if a Web-Mind escaped,” Hawthorne said.
“I doubt we’ll ever know,” Blackstone said. “That was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Stranger than the Sunbeam?” asked Kursk.
“I can understand the Sunbeam,” Blackstone said. “What we just witnessed, I don’t want to hazard a guess as to what it was.”
“Was that a rip into hyperspace?” Hawthorne asked quietly.
“There are no warp drives or wormholes,” Kursk said.
“Not until now,” Hawthorne said. The pain in his chest was less than before, but it hurt every time his heart beat. Had they just fought the greatest war ever, only to have the enemy slip away to start everything over again from a different base? If that was a starship, with the Prime Web-Mind aboard…it meant the next cyborg attack might possibly come from another star system. He massaged his chest. This was more than he wanted to think about now. Sunbeams and starships…he wanted to go home to Earth.
Sunk in gloom, Hawthorne fell silent as Triton broke into sections, cut apart by the terrible ray.
The Prime knew a moment of rarified glee as its vessel winked out of existence above Triton and away from the annihilating ray.
In the huge ship, cyborgs stood at their stations, awaiting orders. The cargo-holds held massive amounts of equipment, all that was needed to begin again.
The glee turned to anger as the Prime realized it would have to start over.
Quick calculations showed the Prime its strongholds in Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars could not survive the terrible Sunbeam. Perhaps if it gathered every surviving Lurker and used the starship—
The Prime’s gloating was cut short as a lurch and alarms throughout the starship told of a reentry into normal space. It ran an accelerated analysis. Neptune’s nearness had upset the starship’s gravitational fields, which needed a precision bordering on the Sunbeam’s targeting systems.
Cyborgs on the bridge poured their findings to the Prime. With a shock, the Prime realized it had only hopped a short distance. Then a louder alarm rang through the experimental starship.
Sub-Strategist Circe contemplated the meaning of the third Dictate. She sat in the Force-Leader’s chair in the control chamber. Unconsciously, she rubbed the black gem embedded in her forehead. With half-lidded eyes, she let her gaze rove over a statute of an ancient, naked Roman boxer with a broken nose. He—
