LOCATION: INTERSTELLAR SPACE

  DATE: 2404

  G-1 floated next to other units exactly like it. They waited in deep space, invisible and silent, but ready to act as soon as they received orders. Eventually, a vessel appeared and transferred new orders. They and the other sixty-four units like them had been activated. It was time to join the other units that had already been deployed to Shican space and carry out their missions.

  After the EFEC swordfish relayed their new instructions, it transitioned away once again. The group quickly verified the information. Two of the units split off from the others to carry out the primary strikes that had been assigned to them.

  G-1 and G-2 headed in slightly different directions before activating their Nova drives. G-1’s mind froze for a moment as the onboard systems protected the delicate computronics, but it soon came back online and started scanning the new system with its passive sensors to look for any changes that might have occurred since the scout’s report.

  The EFEC Swordfish had located one of the Shican’s muster points. Over fifteen hundred Shican vessels were gathering in preparation to head toward human space. It seemed the scout ship had located them just in time, too. The enemy was beginning to form up for a jump.

  G-1 didn’t hesitate any longer. It sent the command to release the transmission plates that made up the other part of its weapon system. Then it waited the required amount of time for the plates to fall toward the star they were orbiting before it activated its Nova drive for the last time. Less than thirty seconds later, it appeared near the center of the Shican formation.

  By the time its mind became active again, the enemy was firing on it, but the enemy was already too late. It only took G-1 a fraction of a second to activate its portion of the weapon system. The gravitational pull of a brown dwarf star expanded across half a light-second of space at the speed of light. Everything within that sphere was violently pulled toward the epicenter of the activation, tearing apart some vessels and crushing others under the relentless gravitational pull.

  The field vanished just as quickly as it had come, sending an intense gravitational ripple across the system. All that remained of the fifteen-hundred-strong enemy fleet and G-1 was a rapidly collapsing debris field and a local star that wobbled slightly after sharing nearby space with a cousin for a brief instant.

  By the time anyone came to check on the missing vessels, the debris had collided and bounced off other remains that spread it for nearly a light second, hiding any evidence of what had occurred.

  The EFEC scout recorded the whole event from a safe distance. Then it flashed away to look for more pockets of Shican forces and report on the success of the mission.

  ***

  G-2 found its target, the enemy’s resupply fleet. Unlike G-1’s target, the supply ships were still gathering.

  After about an hour of waiting, G-2 noted the enemy was taking a more defensive stance. They must have realized something was off. Probably the lack of communication from the other fleet. This action worked in G-2’s favor as the slow supply ships were quickly gathered up and surrounded by the defensive vessels.

  G-2 idly noted that the ships were packed in too close to allow anything to jump into their formation with a warp drive. Their efforts would have prevented G-2 from completing its mission if it relied solely on that method for FTL travel, but it was meaningless against the Nova drive. It waited for the last of the stragglers to get within the kill range of the weapon, then it signaled the receiver to drop the plates into the star and activated its drive.

  The enemy would detect the outbound FTL comm, but by the time they analyzed it, it would be far too late.

  Much like its counterpart, G-2 flashed into the center of their formation. It appeared between two massive haulers and activated its weapon before anyone could react. Even if they had been given time to react, the tight formation made targeting G-2 impossible.

  Large, dense asteroids were created from the former ships, then scattered into smaller chunks as the chunks of crushed debris slammed into one another. After enough impacts, everything in the nearby vicinity was reduced to a cloud of dust.

  The local star erupted in protest, having been much closer to the supply fleet than G-1’s target had been. The star washed the system in deadly flares of radiation that would have cooked any habitable planet had there been one.

  The scout recorded all that from a safe location before jumping away.

  ***

  G-3 was given a different target from its counterparts, one that the scouts had already visited.

  It was fine with that. The system in question contained lots of military installations and manufacturing, but it also contained the enemy’s seat of power.

  G-3 didn’t bother scouting the system before heading directly to its target. Unlike the fleets, its target was a known factor. It oriented in the direction it needed to go, then activated the Nova drive. It took longer to form the connection, given the distance, but it had all the time in the world.

  When it appeared in the Shican system, it was dangerously close to the local star. So close in fact that its armor started to boil away almost immediately.

  G-3 ignored that little issue as it zipped around the star until it was on the same side as the Shican’s capital planet. When it was in position, it triggered the gravity plates and vanished into a puff of dust.

  The effect on the star was immediate. The star rippled like a disturbed pond before ballooning outward, the careful balance of forces inside it disturbed. In moments, the yellow dwarf became a vengeful god as loops of plasma, some nearly half the width of the star, shot out into the system, ravaging everything in sight with deadly heat and radiation.

  One of those loops headed straight for the Shican’s planet. The oceans boiled as the solar winds stripped the ozone and magnetic fields from the planet. Then the plasma flare skimmed the world. Everything on the surface was dead long before the plasma arrived, but that light brush was enough to set the world ablaze, hastening the demise of the oceans as they boiled away into space, leaving a trail of vapor in the planet’s orbit.

  Stolen story; please report.

  The planet wasn’t the only casualty of the attack. The violent solar winds sent entire stations crashing into the planets they orbited. Everyone unlucky enough to survive the initial impact of the solar event was exposed to hundreds of times the lethal dose of radiation.

  A few ships and orbital structures in the outer system managed to survive both calamities. They hadn’t escaped unscathed, however. The solar eruption had been so violent that it had slightly shifted the planetary orbits, making warping away impossible until the gravity settled again. Anyone attempting to enter the system would either die when their warp field got disrupted by the roiling and unpredictable gravity or get similarly stuck.

  The scout noted the survivors’ positions and determined that it could not allow anyone to leave the system and report what happened. Without hesitation, it powered up its Nova drive and EFEC cannon and began cleanup operations. Unlike the Shican, it wasn’t trapped here.

  ***

  A scene much like those played out all across Shican space as planets and entire systems were left in ruins. One yellow star, near the last hundred million years of its lifespan, ballooned into a red giant after the gravity bomb went off near it. Nothing in the system survived that event.

  The scout sent to record the attack watched in awe, knowing that no human had ever witnessed such an event from up close. It had to rapidly exit the system after recording what happened, or the shockwave would have destroyed it, but it deemed the data was worth the risk.

  ***

  “Emperor, we might have an issue.”

  “What is it, Grand Commander Kynel?”

  Thesska had been in a wonderful mood since he learned of his brother’s death and his elevation to emperor, but he was also pragmatic and knew that soon enough, he would have to deal with the humans once again.

  “We’ve lost contact with the reinforcement fleet and the new resupply fleet.”

  “What! How?”

  “We’re not certain, yet, Emperor. The reinforcement fleet reported that they were preparing to jump, then they encountered a single human ship. That’s when their comm cut out. I sent a demand to the throne world to check the records to see if those ships were tagged with tracking, but I haven’t been able to get through.”

  “Some form of comm jamming?” Thesska hissed questioningly.

  There was no way the humans had managed to get a sizable fleet through the border sensors. And even if they did, they would have had to send four times more vessels than he had encountered in their territory to even prove a credible threat. There was no possible way they could have or would have done something so foolish. If they had that many ships, the humans would have been better off using a fleet of that size to fight off his forces in their space rather than letting him destroy worlds and ships with impunity.

  “Unknown, Emperor. I have the fleet’s technologues working to contact anyone who can shed some light on the situation, but we aren’t having much luck.”

  “A coordinated attack, then,” Thesska growled.

  “It seems likely, Emperor.”

  “Expand your contacts to include the lesser clans and even the exiled ones if you must. Promise them an improved standing or re-entry into the empire if they find out what is happening and report back to us.”

  Thesska felt disgusted at having to rely on the weak and pathetic lower caste clans and castoffs, but he needed to know what the humans were up to.

  Despite the news, he didn’t stop the fleet’s return to human space. It was likely just another stalling tactic from the humans. Someone would report back before they returned to human space, and he could decide what to do then.

  ***

  It took a full seven days before Grand Commander Kynel was ready to present his report. Thesska made him wait until they exited warp so he could adjust his plans immediately if required. The system they stopped in was an unremarkable place with only a single small rocky world close to the star, and a small, vibrantly red gas giant.

  The planet’s color fit his mood as he listened to Kynel’s report.

  “Destroyed, how?” he demanded.

  “It’s unclear at this time, Emperor. My technologues believe it was some sort of weapon.”

  “Your technologues are morons. Obviously, it was a weapon, but what sort of weapon can destroy entire planets, let alone entire solar systems?”

  Thesska wanted to know, because if the humans had it, he wanted it. He also knew he had to be careful if they did have such a device.

  “Based on the readings that the clans sent us, they believe it might be a gravity-based weapon. Something similar to our gravity plates.”

  Thesska jerked in surprise at that. He immediately understood what the humans had done. They had weaponized the gravity plates in a new way. It wasn’t surprising; they had done so two times already. Once to create the gravity traps, then again when they recreated Thesska’s trick with the null plates.

  He cursed himself for not seeing the possibility sooner or looking into how the plates functioned now that communication across the Empire was disrupted. He didn’t even know if the scientists who were working on the null plate project had survived.

  “Find out if the imperial researchers are still alive.”

  Kynel nodded and left the call, leaving Thesska to stew in rage. He would reach out to his technologue on the human world to see if she could figure it out, but that would have to wait until he got control of his anger. His implants were helping, but even then, he was barely able to keep his mind from blanking out and going on a rampage.

  The humans had struck the single most devastating blow to the Shican Empire since its founding. He would not let that stand. Death was too good for them. Once his people figured out the trick with the gravity plates, he would deploy it against them. Only he wouldn’t stop until every single human was wiped from existence.

  Thesska’s battles against the humans had all been in the armada’s favor, yet the humans had delayed his attack multiple times and forced him to switch tactics to deal with their fleets and defenses. He also had evidence of them developing defensive fields similar to the Shican. It was infuriating, but also exhilarating. He finally had a worthy hunt, but this new weapon changed things.

  How had they pulled it off so swiftly? The humans would have had to slip scouts into Shican territory for years to gather enough information for such surgical strikes across the entire empire.

  “Unless they had a faster means of FTL travel,” he growled in understanding.

  It would explain so many of the intelligence gaps. The humans didn’t have dozens of fleets picking off the insolent clan fleets that had run headfirst into their territory, looking for glory. They could just position themselves anywhere they wished before the fleets arrived.

  Thesska knew he was right the moment the idea coalesced in his mind. It was the only thing that accounted for all of the unexplained occurrences. Everything started going wrong after he attacked the system that was hiding the silver aliens. He wasn’t superstitious, but it seemed like too much of a coincidence that everything changed after that day.

  “New coordinates!” he barked at the navigator. He had planned to resume his march into human space, removing any threat along his path, but that was no longer an option. Now he was going to skip every system between him and his target. He knew in his gut that the silver aliens and those working directly with them were responsible for the destruction within the Empire. He couldn’t keep letting them bleed him out. Even a pesky insect could win if it stung you enough times.

  With the entire fleet, cleansing that system would be easy. He knew from his previous visit that the world had only a single small city. The orbital defenses would slow him down, but he had a plan to deal with those.

  As he sat back in his command chair, pondering whether he wanted to join the shock troops when he sent them down to the surface of that world, the alarm blared.

  Thesska jerked his head over to the sensor operator.

  “Contacts, Emperor, hundreds of them!”

  “Where the hell did they come from?” he demanded. It was a pointless question; the humans had tracked them, proving once again that they had access to technology that should be impossible for their species.

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