CHEMOORGANOHETEROTROPHS AND CHEMOSYNTHETIC LITHOVORES …
Gray broke off reading at that point, shaking his head. The squadron had been briefed on the native life forms on Haris, but he’d bleeped past the recorded lectures. He wouldn’t be on the planet long enough to worry about any native life forms.
Hell, from what he had picked up at the briefing, it was mildly bizarre that there was any life on the rock at all. One point seven billion years ago, the stellar companion of Eta Boötis had burned up its hydrogen fuel stores and entered a red giant phase before collapsing to its current white dwarf state. Planet IV had probably formed farther out than its current orbit within the star’s habitable zone, but migrated in closer as friction with the outer layers of the red giant’s atmosphere both baked it dry and slowed it down. The current ecosystem could not have even begun evolving until about a billion years ago … an impossibly short time by cosmological standards.
Whatever was growing on Haris’s surface wasn’t going to be very bright. In fact, the chances that it would find humans tasty, or even interesting, were vanishingly remote.
Gray shrugged the news off. He was a fighter pilot, not a ground-pounding grunt. His only view of Harisian biology would be from space, which was perfect, so far as he was concerned.
The subjective minutes ground slowly along, as objective minutes and kilometers streamed past at a breakneck gallop.
“Deceleration in one minute, subjective,” the AI’s voice announced in Gray’s head. “Confirm A-7 strike package release command at deceleration.” It was a woman’s voice, sultry, attention-commanding.
“Strike package release order confirmed,” Gray replied.
Another minute crawled past. Then, “Deceleration with strike package release in five … four … three … two … one … release. Commence deceleration.”
At the precisely calculated release point, a portion of the Starhawk’s outer hull turned liquid, flowed open, and exposed a teardrop-shaped missile nestled within. The fighter’s AI fired the missile, then triggered the spacetime-twisting immensity of the drive singularity, this time astern, off the Starhawk’s spiked tail. At fifty thousand gravities, the Starhawk began slowing; the strike package pod kept accelerating and, from the gravfighter’s perspective, flashed forward at five hundred kilometers per second squared, the dustcatcher winking out just long enough for the teardrop to flash past unimpeded, before switching on once more.
Ten seconds later, the gravfighter’s velocity had slowed by five thousand kilometers per second. After a minute, he was down to .87 of the speed of light, and his velocity continued to decrease.
Six hundred thousand kilometers ahead, the strike package, still accelerating and moving at better than .997 c, began to deploy.
At this point on the timeline, the Turusch at the planet half an AU up ahead would still be unaware that the Confederation task force had even arrived.
They were in for one hell of a surprise.
Tactician Emphatic Blossom at Dawn
Enforcer Radiant Severing
1241 hours, TFT
Emphatic Blossom at Dawn had been named for a species of hydrogen floater on the homeworld that stunned its prey with an electric charge fired through trailing, gelatinous tentacles … emphatic indeed. It was a tactician, and a gurgled suffix on the Turusch sound-pulse translated as “tactician” carried the added meaning of a deep tactician … very roughly the equivalent of a general or an admiral in the enemy’s fleet.
The phrase Emphatic Blossom at Dawn also implied stealth, relentless determination, and a sudden strike at the end, all qualities of mind that had contributed to its being designated a deep tactician.
There was little stealth involved in this operation, however. The enemy was hemmed in on the planet’s surface, huddled beneath its enclosing force-bubble as Turusch particle beams and thermonuclear warheads flared and thundered. For nearly thirty g’nyuu’m now, the Turusch fleet had been hammering that shield, and it was showing signs of imminent failure.
Victory was simply a matter of time.
“Tactician!” a communicator throbbed from a console-shelf overhead. “Enemy ships, range twelve thousand lurm’m!”
The news chilled … and excited. Emphatic Blossom had hoped the enemy would deploy its fleet. At that range, it would have taken light nearly five g’nyuu’m to reach the fleet’s sensors. And that meant—
“All vessels!” the Tactician pulsed. “Disengage from the enemy! Power deep! Ships in orbit, change vector now!”
Everything depended now on the Turusch hunterforce having the time to change course and speed. The enemy force would have launched their fighters within moments of dropping out of superluminal drive, which meant that those fighters, and any kinetic-kill devices they’d released along the way, would be just behind the light-speed wavefront bearing the news of the enemy’s arrival.
How fast were the approaching kinetic devices traveling, how close on the heels of light? How far behind them were the enemy fighters? That depended on the enemy’s technology—how fast they could accelerate—as well as on how quickly Turusch scanners had detected the enemy fleet in the first place. Five light-g’nyuu’m were a great depth. Many, many g’nya might have passed before Turusch scanners—or even the automated systems they controlled—had noticed the enemy’s arrival. How long had they been out there?
Blossom felt the kick of acceleration as the Turusch command hunter Extirpating Enigma increased speed, breaking free of synchronous orbit, and with it an answering surge of relief. If the enemy had targeted the Extirpating Enigma several g’nyurm ago, while still en route, their missiles would miss the command ship now.
Unfortunately, Emphatic Blossom’s warning would take time to reach the other ships. Some of them might detect the threat in time and act independently, but independence of action, independence of thought were decidedly not imperatives in Turusch tactical planning.
But it was vital that the command ship survive any opening kinetic barrage by the enemy. By boosting clear of a predictable orbit, they had—
“Enemy kinetic-kill missile has just passed our tail!” the scanner throbbed. “Speed—”
And then the Languid Depths of Time exploded in a white-hot glare of vaporizing metal.
In another instant, three other Turusch hunterships exploded, and two dazzlingly brilliant stars appeared against the surface of the planet, expanded, blossoming. The claw-transport Victorious Dream of Harmony staggered as a portion of its tail vanished in a flare of silent light, the shock setting the massive vessel into an uncontrolled tumble.
Lasered messages began flashing back to the flagship, speaking of projectiles passing through the fleet at speeds just a mr’uum less than that of light itself.
The hunters had just become the prey.
VFA-44 Dragonfires
Eta Boötis System
