This occurred between the Allen’s gamma ray shield cone and its first tier of antimatter containment vessels, rupturing them and releasing an apocalyptic amount of energy, instantly destroying the fusion rocket cluster, AM and He3 storage tanks, and shattering the great ship’s keel. Usually, even a loss of antimatter containment wasn’t enough to destroy an entire ship, as the shield cone was designed to direct the force of the explosion away from the engineering and primary hulls, leaving half a ship unable to fight or maneuver, but still with reserve power for life support and communications.
But a third of the shield had been ripped apart by the seedpod collapse, channeling the force of the blast deep into the engineering hull, setting off secondary explosions as drone platforms, probes, counter-missile magazines, and eventually shuttle fuel reserves and ground support munitions all added to the cascading carnage.
In the span of a breath, all that remained of the Paul Allen, the most powerful warship humanity had ever put to space, was a gutted, drifting shell of armor plating and melted structural steel.
There were no survivors. There was no reason to loose the second bolt.
The stunned silence in Ansari’s CIC was total. Long faces stared at the tactical plot, at each other, or at nothing at all. Miguel was the first to compose himself. “We still have birds incoming, everyone.”
That snapped them out of it. There were indeed still seventy-three orphaned missiles from the Allen coming their way. But with their mother’s datalinks now silent and reverted to autonomous control, they quickly lost cohesion and became easy prey for Warner as her fingers danced across the CiWS and counter-missile controls. She stopped the last missile a few hundred meters short of optimal detonation range. The only injury they sustained was from missile fragments peppering the hull like birdshot.
“Damage report,” Miguel requested calmly.
“We’re down a lidar array portside forward. And one of our CiWS modules took a hit to its independent radar, but we can tie it into the rest of the sensor net. Minor damage to half a dozen compartments, showing loss of pressure in four of them, but slow. Holes can’t be very big, they’ll be easy to patch. One casualty reported, a boomer tech took shrapnel to the calf. Headed to the infirmary now, not life-threatening.”
Miguel shook his head in disbelief. By rights, he should be surrounded by fire and screaming and alarms, if he was still alive at all. Instead …
“Sir, Halcyon Actual on the line.”
“Put her through.”
“Miguel?” Susan’s voice said through the room. “Are you seeing this?”
“Seeing it. Still not sure about believing it.”
“I know what you mean. We’re showing some light venting coming from your hull. How’s the damage?”
“Minimal. All hands accounted for. We made it. Now I’d just like to know how we made it.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Susan asked. “Our new Xre friends were holding out on us. Those little rings in their rings weren’t for FTL maneuvering. They’re an Alcubierre railgun.”
TWENTY-NINE
Forty-eight hours later, Susan found herself sitting at a conference table onboard Ansari, surrounded by the most improbable company imaginable. Warner, Mattu, and Okuda sat to her left. To her right, acting captain of the CCDF Halcyon Miguel Azevedo and his newly minted XO, Lieutenant Francine Culligan. Across the table from them sat, or in two cases knelt, Xre Derstu Thuk, Dulac Kivits, Attendant Hurg, Attendant Lynz, and visibly unsettled corporate liaison Javier Nesbit, only because there weren’t any more chairs on the human side of the table for him to occupy.
After the dust settled from the battle, Susan pulled rank to get her ship back, but Miguel got to keep a command, so he couldn’t complain much. On her suggestion, he’d picked Culligan as his first officer in recognition of her service during the battle against what had begun as her own task group. Much to everyone’s surprise, she’d managed to talk another half-dozen of her shipmates into crossing the line as well, easing the number of billets they’d have to fill from Ansari’s ranks to keep the fast frigate operating.
The last two days had been a blur of activity, dominated by rescue operations onboard the crippled Carnegie, stripping the carcass of the same, and shuttling survivors down to the recently vacated civilian facilities on the surface of Grendel. Carnegie had suffered significant casualties and quite a few KIA during the battle, primarily from the sucker-punch delivered by Halcyon before they’d realized it had been commandeered. Several of the wounded were still in Ansari’s infirmary in critical condition and would have to remain there for the foreseeable future. The walking wounded were transferred down to the planet’s surface with their shipmates.
“Where are we on integrating our salvage from Carnegie?” Susan asked.
“Nearly finished,” Warner answered. “We’re still running updates on the older Mk VIII birds we lifted to bring them up to spec with our AI network, couple bugs to code out, but nothing insurmountable. They’re a little slower than the Mk IXs, but we’re back up to seventy-eight percent magazine capacity. Counter-missile and CiWS ammo is even better. We’re topped off with room to spare between both us and Halcyon.”
“Throw the rest in a cargo bay. No idea when we’re going to lay hands on more of it.”
“Agreed, mum.”
“How about the rest of our consumables? Water, provisions, fuel?”
“We’re in the green on all of it,” Okuda, who had been coordinating flight ops to and from the surface answered. “Water tanks are full, He3 at ninety-three percent, and antimatter stuffed to the rafters with enough left to tank up our, um, new allies.” Okuda glanced across the table to Thuk, whose mouthparts moved into such a position it could, charitably, be assumed to be an approximation of a smile.
“Grateful,” the translator matrix provided. “Easier if our reservoir not blown up.”
“I said I was sorry,” Susan replied. “But in fairness, we were technically still enemies
