“All boosters have detonated,” Mattu said quietly. They were committed, now. With the boosters gone, there was no way to alter the meteor’s course. In truth, they’d been past the point of no return for four minutes already, as they were almost half an AU away from the scene of the crime. Mattu had expertly maneuvered a recon drone running passive under stealth into a parallel course with the rock so they could get light-speed updates on the proceedings. Everything had already played out, they were just watching the rerun.
“The covering asteroid has drifted out of line of sight. Our rock has entered the tender’s threat envelope. Active scans have acquired. Countermeasures deploying.”
Despite years of active warfare and decades of an uneasy armistice, mankind had never been able to pin down the Xre’s homeworld. There was no single nexus point to their deployments or logistics. But war strategists had inferred from reams of tactical data, after-action reports, and capture hardware some of the underlying psychology of the enemy. They fought defensively, with more resources and equipment dedicated to repelling counterattack than offensive operations. They were cautious and calculating, which early in the Intersection War had been mistaken by overeager human commanders for cowardice or a lack of commitment. Many of them had paid for the miscalculation with their lives.
What it meant in practical terms was Xre ships were, without fail, tough nuts to crack. Not even this lowly fleet replenishment ship broke that mold. The sheer volume of point-defense fire that swarmed out of it like amorous fireflies on a hot summer night was testament to the aliens’ design philosophy.
“Are their resupply ships drones like ours?” Nesbit asked.
“I expect their oilers are, too, yes.”
“Why do you keep calling it an ‘oiler’?”
“It’s an old, old nautical term from just after the days of sail, back when ships burned heavy fuel oil. Their UnRep ships carried the oil, so, oilers. My military history instructor back in Academy used it and I guess it stuck with me.”
“Why doesn’t it just bubble away?”
“Charts? Would you like to answer the CL’s question?”
“Sure, mum,” Broadchurch said. “Not enough time to charge their rings unless they keep them on hot standby. Which not only puts unnecessary hours and wear on the components, but gives off IR and makes it harder to hide their little secret.”
“I see. Same goes with their fusion rockets, I take it?”
“Yep. Not as much lead time, but still too much if you’re starting cold.”
“Will the Xre cruiser know when it happens?” Nesbit asked.
“Are you kidding?” Miguel said. “When that much antimatter loses containment? They’ll see it in the next system in five and a half years.”
On the “live” feed, the front of the meteor boiled and hissed as the oiler’s version of CiWS lasers and mass-drivers desperately clawed at the newcomer in a bid to save their ship, but they’d been designed to swat down railgun slugs massing a few dozen kilograms up to anti-ship missiles of a few dozen tons. They were not meant to destroy a solid iron/nickel asteroid of over two hundred thousand tons. A well-placed salvo of ship-killers might have enough punch to nudge it out of the way. But then, tenders didn’t have missile tubes.
“What’s the closing rate?” Susan asked.
“Leveled off at three and a half klicks per second,” Mattu said.
Warner whistled low. “That’s going to leave a mark.”
“Ten seconds. Nine. Eight. Drone entering safe mode. Seven…”
The air in the CIC froze everyone in place, immobilized by the cadence of Mattu’s countdown. Susan had to remind herself to breathe.
“Three. Two. One. Impact.”
Even from its position some ten thousand kilometers away from the carnage, the camera feed from the drone platform they’d sent to shepherd the rock on its death plunge flashed brilliant white, then cut out entirely as the EM pulse and hard gamma radiation hit and forced the onboard AI into shutdown to protect itself. The main plot flipped automatically to a feed from the Ansari’s own onboard telescopes, each one several times more powerful than the original Hubble Observatory. The unbridled savagery of the explosion they’d unleashed left even Lieutenant Warner hushed in awe. The death of the Xre tender had pulverized not only the ship itself and the rock they’d thrown at it, but the two closest asteroids in the cluster, while breaking one of the larger ones further out into three pieces. The cluster had been reduced to a cloud.
“Holy shit,” was all Nesbit could muster.
“Do I need to bother with kill confirmation, Captain?” Warner asked.
“No, I think we got it in one,” Susan said. “Good work, everyone. That was … for once calling it awesome isn’t an overstatement, I think. How long until our drone reboots, Scopes?”
“Twenty seconds.”
“Good, get it up and burning away from there as soon as possible. That cruiser will be along soon enough to try and figure out what happened and I don’t want it giving the game away.”
FOURTEEN
“Impossible,” Dulac Kivits said. While the rest of the attendants in the mind cavern were silent, everyone’s expressions and posture conveyed a similar sentiment of stunned disbelief at the last few moments of timestream from the eyes of their now-destroyed annihilation fuel reservoir.
Everyone, that is, except Thuk.
“Hurg,” he said, drawing the attention of the recording alcove attendant. “Could you replay the…” He almost said “attack,” but caught himself before the word escaped. “… impact? Move back up the timestream to the moment the reservoir’s eyes spotted the meteor and begin, please?”
The fallen royal stared at the static playing out in the display surrounding the cavern, transfixed.
“Hurg?” Thuk prodded gently.
She gave herself a shake. “Yes, Derstu. Apologies.” Hurg’s claws fritted and danced over her alcove, peeling back time until the threat first came into
