The Kharak system was comprised of seven worlds, and the mothership was now about to arrive at the seventh far-flung planet, a tiny ball of ice from which the burning star of Kharak appeared as a flare of yellow light. Through the fantastic properties of hyperspace, it had only taken them a few seconds to go from the Scaffold to the seventh planet. However, to Admiral Kirana Paktu, it had felt like so much more. She watched the forward viewport as the rush of cerulean movement began to coalesce back into the window back into normal space. It was as though they had gone from full throttle to absolute stop, and she felt as though there should be some kind of deceleration or feeling of slowing down, rather than the instant transition from dynamic to static. Once more, the quantum waveform locked the bridge crew into poses for a few seconds before relinquishing its hold, and they could see stars outside once more. The holoprojector whirred to life and started to show holographic data from the sensors as they snapped on-line.

"Reversion to realspace complete," the hyperdrive controller announced. "Power-down complete. No fluctuations or instabilities detected."

A short but slender Sjet woman at the small Mission Medical station nodded as she watched a long string of statistics appear on one of her monitors. "No casualties, ma'am."

That was it.

The hyperdrive was a success.

"Note in the log that the mothership's first use of the quantum waveform drive was an unqualified success," Admiral Paktu ordered. "And put out a signal to the support ship. We do not require assistance, but we will be happy to liase and check sensor output."

There was a long moment of quiet, and Kirana opened her mouth to repeat her command, but the communications officer up on the upper deck called down to her first. "Uh, ma'am…I can't raise them on any channels."

"Sensors, report," the admiral said, all business.

"Short-range scans do not detect the support ship, ma'am."

"Then try a long-range scan."

"I am, but the scopes haven't been entirely calibrated yet. We didn't anticipate the need for a long-range sweep."

Kirana pushed herself out of the command chair and walked out to the holoprojector. It was displaying a map of the immediate region, using the mothership and the seventh planet as reference points. I don't understand, she thought. They're supposed to be here. They spent ten years getting here on conventional drives…they have to be here. She looked at the holograms and frowned. The support vessel had taken a decade to arrive here, in the event that the mothership suffered some form of problem during hyperspace transit. It was impossible that they weren't here – she would have suspected a problem with the sensors, but if the comm officer couldn't raise them, then something was up. "Bridge to Fleet Intelligence," she said, speaking into the air before her. "Report."

"This is Fleet Intelligence. All systems nominal, admiral."

"Intel, where is the Khar-Selim?"

"Unknown, ma'am. We've started a search pattern, and…wait, we have something. Transmitting to the bridge holo…now."

All eyes turned to the holoprojector as it refreshed, showing the data from Fleet Intel. It showed the same chart of the space around them, but a blinking red dot appeared some distance from the mothership. A yellow circle of light surrounded it for contrast. "We must have misjumped," the nameless, faceless voice of Fleet Intelligence said calmly. "A mid-range scan picked up this distress frequency caught in the gravity well of the seventh planet. It appears to be the Khar-Selim, judging by the IFF transponder, but we can't be sure. Recommend that a probe be sent to investigate." Admiral Paktu nodded as she digested the information. The Identity Friend/Foe transponder was usually a reliable piece of equipment that communications and sensor officers alike queried for data as to a ship's name and alignment – Kharakid had, so far, not found any other ships from other life forms in the galaxy. Therefore, it was extremely unlikely that the ship was an alien vessel in distress. Kirana felt a familiar instinct telling her that something wasn't quite right in this situation, particularly if it was an emergency frequency. "Bridge to Fleet Command. Construct and launch a probe to the co-ordinates indicated on the holoprojector," she said again. This time, Karan Sjet received the information and replied with an acknowledgement, then signalled the construction bays to begin building a probe.

Because most of the materials were already premanufactured, it took ten minutes for the tiny sensor drone to be built and tested. Ten seconds later, it launched from the starboard bay, propelled by a combination of internal drives and inverse magnetic fields. The probe was a complex series of sensor matrices built on top of a basic plasma drive assembly, and as such, had little on-board power that it could spare for manoeuvring. A micro-perpetuator array was able to capture some of the energy from the initial launch and re-use it, but eventually, the probe would run out of power and drift, a remote sensor station that was vulnerable to external factors such as meteors or weapons fire. Fleet Command had programmed the course with fuel economy in mind, and so the probe rocketed out into the void with a minimum of course corrections.

"Probe away," Fleet Command said calmly and tonelessly. "ETA is thirteen minutes."

Kirana groaned inwardly. The hyperspace targeting system was designed to bring them out of hyperspace at a specific point that matched the mothership's profile exactly. They were meant to emerge in close proximity to the Khar-Selim, which was to monitor the quantum waveform effect as they returned to realspace and assist in tuning the drive control systems, given that sensors were momentarily useless in the reversion process. However, they had either misjumped or the Khar-Selim had moved from its original position. She sincerely hoped that it was the first one, because the support vessel had been given orders to stay put until the mothership emerged.

She spent the next thirteen minutes analysing the data they already possessed on the Khar-Selim. It was a blocky, pragmatically-designed ship that had a distinctive snub-nose and clean, angular lines. As far as she could tell, it had become home to over one thousand Kharakid, each one manning the ship for three-month shifts before going into cold sleep. Paktu noted that it was not equipped with any sort of effective weapons array; the designers had instead opted for filling the Khar-Selim with repair facilities, cryogenics equipment, and installing heavy shields that were powered directly from the fusion drive. Such a design feature was a risk in combat situations, as any tactician worth their salt knew. Kirana had heard of cases where the energy backlash of failing shields would cause the engines to overload and explode, which is why all ships carrying omnidirectional shielding used buffers and power couplings to supply energy to the generators.

"Admiral?"

Her nightmares of the support vessel blowing up due to a horrible accident on-board faded into nothingness when the one of the Sensors staff caught her attention. "Admiral, the probe is nearly in position. I'm feeding the telemetry link to the holoprojector now."

"Yes, yes…proceed…"

Tri-D images in the recessed projector rippled before her as the data stream began to roll in. At first, it was just a stream of garble, but then Karan Sjet interpreted it into a holographic format, and the images and data took on form in the air. Admiral Paktu watched as the engine ratios on the seeker probe began to drop, indicating that it was nearing its final destination. "Go to high resolution," she ordered, and the images sharpened at her word. Her emerald eyes flicked back to the navigation readouts, and she saw that the probe was now in position. Sensors began to sweep the area surrounding the probe. Kirana went to one of the consoles, input a command, and stepped back. She had configured the hologram to show her a direct feed from the probe's main optical sensor, which would show her a realistic representation of what the seeker was 'seeing'.

Slowly, but surely, the image began to refine itself into clarity.

Admiral Kirana Paktu gasped.

"They're gone," she whispered quietly, and yet all heard her.

The Khar-Selim had been hulled by an incredibly destructive force. The forward section appeared intact, albeit charred and blackened by internal explosions, but what was more horrifying was the rear of the ship. Whereas in life it had been all bulky engines and supply bays, it was now gone. Not broken free, but gone, erased from existence. Nobody could even begin to guess how that had happened, but Kirana knew that none of the one thousand souls aboard the support ship were alive. She watched the scrolling data with a heart that felt as dead as the hulk outside. Had she been right? Had the direct power link from engines to shields caused some kind of catastrophic meltdown? That would certainly account for the obliteration of the entire back half of the ship. But that didn't explain the tiny pockmarks that peppered the remaining hull fragment. They appeared too often to be random meteor impacts, and in patterns that just couldn't occur as an act of natural force. No, Kirana had seen them before. They were the trademark impacts of directed weapons fire.

Something had been here.

Something had destroyed the Khar-Selim.

"This is Fleet Intelligence," the intercom said suddenly, urgently. "The probe's scans show heavy weapons fire at hundreds of points on the hull of the derelict. There's also evidence of recent engine trails."

"I know…" Paktu said.

"Dating scans put the weapons fire back to about forty minutes ago."

Kirana fell backwards into her chair, one hand feebly clasping at the armrest to steady her. Forty minutes? That meant that the attack had begun a long time before the mothership had even launched. She felt sharp pangs of guilt for being so happy at the launch, and having so much pride in her own abilities. "Note it in the log, Fleet Intelligence. The Khar-Selim was lost in battle."

"Admiral!"

For what felt like the hundredth time that hour, Paktu turned to the Sensors station and saw a horrified look on the man's face. "Admiral, I've got incoming contacts closing fast. Multiple intercept points. Unidentified vessels, mainly fighter-sized, unable to get details. Ma'am, we're being swarmed!"

Admiral Kirana Paktu swivelled her chair back to the holoprojector, which showed the first wave of alien fighters approaching. They were blocky and menacing in shape, spewing yellow engine trails as they rocketed through the void. Clearly hostile, they engaged in what seemed to be infighting – one bounced off another in a dangerous hull impact, and the other returned the favour, dodging at the last second to avoid an asteroid that lay in its path. They were now only seconds from the mothership. "We have two fighter squadrons ready to fly," she said resolutely. "Let's use them. Deploy Arrow and Blade squadrons. All hands, full alert. Raise shields and prepare for incoming fire. Tactical, what kind of weaponry are we packing?"

A well-muscled man standing at the Tactical station shook his head. "A handful of mass driver cannons, nothing more. The rest is to be installed on our return to Kharak, admiral."

"Get them tracking. Engage and destroy as they approach."