the energy stores that powered their ancient weapons, but they couldn’t afford to wait any longer. The 17 artificial stars that had begun to form above the asteroid surface were also not impressive in size, and they burst into flames somewhat reluctantly. Now we were getting valuable information about the enemy weapons. We observed its operation in extreme mode, at the limit of its capabilities. This alone justified all the casualties we suffered during the reconnaissance raid.
And then something happened that apparently the toads themselves did not expect. I don’t know if they had ever tested their most dangerous weapon under such conditions before. Possibly not. Otherwise, they probably wouldn’t have taken such a risk. Seven of the 17 pseudo-suns successfully collapsed inside themselves, and emitted the familiar lightning bolts of darkness towards the aircraft carriers, but the others… They also tried to fire, but apparently a certain energy threshold had to be crossed for a successful salvo, and they did not have time to gain the necessary energy. The ten man-made stars collapsed jerkily in several moves, each time throwing black and gray lightning bolts in random directions. Most of them went into space without any visible effect, but the asteroids took about a dozen hits, and a pair of lightning bolts struck the hyperportal, ripping huge chunks out of the ancient structure and breaking the massive ring into two unequal pieces.
At the points of impact, the surface of the asteroids swelled with explosions that threw giant fountains of steam, glowing dust, and incandescent debris into space. The camouflage field, which had previously been unified, was torn to shreds, and now only four of the ten asteroids were still blurry spots on the tactical projection. The rest of the toads’ fortresses have taken shape and revealed to our scanners a picture of total destruction.
In fact, the task could be considered completed, and if I had the chance, I would have stopped the attack of the quarg ships that were in the torpedo launching line, and would have asked the toads to surrender. But there was not the slightest possibility of contacting the computers switched to offline mode, and the ten surviving aircraft carriers fired a full torpedo salvo. A sluggish barrage fire of completely demoralized enemy could not change anything in the current perilous situation for the toads, and in seven minutes, four thousand plasma blasts ripped into the enemy fortress protective fields, wiping them out in a split second and turning the enemy fortifications into an erupting volcano.
Commander Klitch and his quargs, I think, were pleased with the spectacle, and in some ways I could understand it, but I myself took no pleasure in contemplating this local Armageddon. Samples of ancient toads’ weaponry should have been captured intact and not wiped into powder and vaporized in streams of raging plasma. And, most importantly, we had the opportunity to do it. The toads would surely give up, where would they go? But who knew…
We spent two more days capturing the autonomous space objects. Taking advantage of the total absence of enemy warships in the system, I ordered our own transport ring to be deployed not far from the destroyed toads’ portal and contacted Admiral Nelson.
“Well, Igor Yakovlevich, congratulations on your first success as commander of the Allied fleet,” Nelson smiled having listened to my report, “Do you need any assistance?”
“We have a mountain of trophies here, Mr Minister,” I smiled back at Nelson, “There are a lot of shipyards and factories abandoned by the toads in the system. They prepared some of them to be blown up and even managed to destroy some of them, but we’ve managed to capture a lot of them almost intact. Right now our boarding robots are taking control of the most interesting autonomous space objects, but we clearly don’t have enough forces for that as that’s not why we flew here after all. Could you send General of the Army Barrington to help me? I think the operation has now entered the stage where his talents are indispensable. I wouldn’t stay here too long. Who knows what the toads are capable of? They now sit quietly on their planets under a dense network of orbital fortresses, but this isn’t their only star system, they can counterstrike, and I only have 14 Black Dragons and nearly empty drone torpedo carriers.”
General Barrington had not arrived alone. Following the cruiser that had brought the rear chief to us, there was an endless stream of huge evacuation transports, the same ones built for transporting prisoners from the Kappa Ceti system. It seemed that our genius of logistics was seriously determined to take out of the enemy star system everything his grasping hands could reach.
“Commander, Sir,” Barrington, after reviewing the list of the captured objects, addressed to me with a slight smile, “I’m afraid your squadron will have to stay here for at least six days. It would be just criminal to leave such trophies here or to destroy them.”
I started thinking. Such a delay was not part of my plan. It seems that a large fleet of toads could not appear in the system. If they had it, they would have brought it here through the portal a long time ago and not let us take over their space with impunity. But the risk was still quite high. We had already encountered one surprise that had cost us quite a bit. Who knows how many more of these trump cards the enemy has up his sleeve? But Barrington was also understandable. The Federation was desperate for new technologies, and here they were practically lying around to pick up.
“All right, General of the Army, Sir, you will have six days, but I need your men to deploy three more transport rings in different parts of the system. In the event of a sudden change in the situation, this will allow transports to quickly evacuate through the nearest portal. I will send you the coordinates of the gate installation points.”
“I’ll give the order,” Barrington nodded and plunged into the process of organizing a professional looting of the enemy industrial infrastructure.
Chapter 3
“Why are we still working on this old stuff, Fléa?” Silk asked in a tired voice, turning away from the programmer of the medical capsule and sinking heavily into a chair, “As far as I remember, we were promised new equipment a week ago. I mean, these promises are two weeks old, and they were supposed to arrive here a week ago! I spend three times as much time using this junk as I could on one patient. What do they think they’re doing there in the capital?!”
“You’re completely out of touch, doctor," the older nurse shook her head, “When was the last time you watched the network news?”
“What news? Don’t you see what’s going on? Rescue workers are constantly opening up new blocked entrances to the underground levels of cities, and you know what follows.”
Fléa knew this. Every time the heavy repair robots managed to reach another blocked off neighborhood, the flood of wounded was literally overwhelming the hastily deployed Civil Defense Department hospitals. It was just a miracle that engineer Colweg, who came out of nowhere, turned out to be both a qualified doctor and a specialist in medical equipment. Only through his efforts was it possible to bring the old med pods and diagnostic equipment out of mothballs so quickly that the hospital was able to receive almost twice as many wounded. But now Colweg was so busy with work that he fell asleep on the job, so it was no wonder he couldn’t think about anything else.
“In the last ten days, the toads have attacked five more of our systems,” Fléa answered softly, “All in all, almost 30 planets are now under simultaneous attack. Many of them have surface battles going on. The news reports say that the fleet and army have mobilized all their reserves and soon the situation will be back under control, but frankly, I find it hard to believe. The portal network is practically paralyzed. If they’ve tried to send us new med pods and other equipment, the transports must have gotten hopelessly stuck somewhere. And most likely, all of it has already been dispersed to other places for the needs of the army. There’s so much carnage over there now that no one will remember our Kappa Gyan anytime soon.”
“Okay, Fléa, I got it. I’m just grouchy, don’t mind me. Who’s next?”
The nurse didn’t
