I still don't own Blake's 7. Sadly.
253.2 NC Liberator, Saurian System
Commander, President, Counselor, Delta, Gamma, Alpha…the cards changed in Vila's hands as he flicked through the practice patterns he'd learned years earlier, moving the cards so that whatever poor sucker was playing 'Find the Alpha' never, ever succeeded in their search. "I'm bored," he announced to the room at large.
"Boring, Vila, you're boring," Avon countered, not bothering to look up from his work on the teleport bracelet.
"Seriously, Avon, Blake, why are we just sitting here?"
"I'd have thought you'd be happy, we're in no danger here—" Blake began.
"Alert, explosion detected in the main refueling station," Zen interjected.
"Blake!" Vila snapped, infuriated at the rebel for tempting fate.
"Vila!" Jenna countered, feeling both of them were equally to blame for cursing them.
"Alert, explosion detected in secondary refueling station. Explosions are consistent with impacts from alien weaponry."
"Get us clear of the other ships!" Blake ordered, ignoring their bickering.
Jenna already had the ship moving, diving through the cluster of Federation ships which were suddenly panicking and trying to alternatively rush to the aid of their fellows trapped in the burning and exploding mess of the refueling stations, or escape the destruction spread by those same stations.
"What happened?" Avon snapped at Zen.
Jenna was just as curious. Usually the expert in space-side combat, the alien weaponry and technology had changed the game and made all her instincts wrong. It was quite infuriating.
"Explosions are consistent with impacts from alien weaponry," Zen repeated.
"Confirm, detectors are clear of alien ships."
"No alien ships are located within detector range," Zen confirmed.
"But they don't have to be," Blake said, suddenly understanding.
"What?" Vila asked.
"The refueling stations are in a fixed orbit. They could sit five hundred spatials out and fire where the stations will be when their projectiles arrive."
"If they can do that…then any fixed defense, any planet-side base, is dust," Avon said.
"We'll be all right though. Minor course changes every hour or so and we can be sure that whatever they shoot at us will miss by spatials," Jenna countered.
"Yes, we'll be fine, but the rest of the fleet needs to dock to refuel and repair…" Blake argued.
"And if these aliens just pound every refueling station to scrap, they won't even need to engage the Federation Fleet again. They can just wait for it to run itself out of power," Avon agreed.
"But we'll be okay, right? We don't need fuel or anything?" Vila asked.
Avon grinned, "Wonder of wonders, Vila Restal can learn, if you repeat something often enough. Indeed, our powerbanks are based on regenerative antimatter powercells."
"Well, can we sell them some of them, or something?" Vila asked ingenuously. Falsely ingeniously.
Blake flinched at that suggestion. Since the arrival of the aliens, they had all avoided the obvious suggestion of giving the Federation access to the Liberator's more advanced systems, either because they did not want to lose the advantage, or because they didn't want the Federation to misuse the technology. But, with the massive casualties the Federation fleet had already suffered, it was getting harder to argue that preparing for victory was the smart thing to do.
Avon ignored the awkwardness, "I already considered that. Unfortunately, it would take too long to construct additional powerbanks. And I think Blake would have moral qualms about what it entails."
"What do you mean?" Blake asked.
"After our encounter at Spaceworld, I reviewed the files on the Liberator's construction Orac retrieved from the System, before its destruction. The autorepair system works off of nanites, as do many of the other ships systems."
"Nanites?" Vila asked.
"Itty-bitty machines," Jenna explained before Avon could get distracted into a verbal mudslinging competition with the thief.
"Yes. Once the reaction is stable, the nanites can generate the relevant electric fields to maintain the reaction essentially indefinitely. However, during the period that the reaction is being created, it requires constant adjustment to keep it from exploding."
"I'm not seeing the moral quandary," Blake interrupted.
"The adjustments must be made essentially instantaneously as changes are observed in the powercell. No computer could do it—"
"I could do it," Orac interjected. Avon had left the key in, as the A.I. had been distracted by analyzing the data from their last engagement with the aliens and been unusually silent.
"Given the transmission lag on the observation systems and response signals, no, I don't think you could," Avon countered.
Orac didn't respond, for a second which suggested he knew Avon was right, then he spoke in an even grumpier voice than before. "I said I could make the changes and I could, if I were wired directly into the system!"
"I'm sorry, maybe I'm being dense, but if no computer could do it, how do we have the powercells?" Cally asked, finally drawn into the question.
"Simple. They lobotomized certain of their people to ensure higher brain functions wouldn't interfere with the solving their problem they'd been assigned, then wired their brains directly into the device. It only worked about one time in three, the other two times it exploded, so they did it out in space."
Silence greeted that pronouncement.
Jenna, who'd been ignoring the conversation as irrelevant to the current predicament of not crashing the Liberator into any of the other ships which had been hanging in defensive spheres around the refueling stations, seeking to protect their helplessly docked fellows. Fortunately, though not surprisingly, none of the ships had been hit. Despite the massive number of ships that were filling the nearby space, it was still mostly empty. Which was a good thing as Jenna slipped the Liberator free from the panicking fleet. The wild maneuvering was dampened by the inertial dampeners, letting the others talk as if there was no crisis, which they did. That confidence in her skill might have been flattering if Jenna hadn't been completely focused on flying the ship.
"Zen, activate battle computers," she commanded
"Battle computers online."
"Compute courses for the entire fleet necessary to ensure no collisions occur," Jenna snapped.
"Computed."
"Transmit their course to each ship. Now."
"Transmitted."
Jenna leaned back heavily in the command chair, blue eyes closing as the sweat adrenaline had wrung from her body began to evaporate as the moment of terror and action passed.
"You're telling me that seven—twenty-one people died to give us our seven power banks?" Blake asked, horrified.
"No," Avon's reply was characteristically blunt.
"Thank—"
"How many people did die for our seven power banks?" Cally interrupted Blake's relieved response, all too familiar with Avon's tendency to misdirect with the literal truth. As was Blake of course, but he was more willing to accept misdirection if he didn't want to know the truth.
"I don't recall."
"But it was more than twenty-one, wasn't it?"
"Almost certainly."
"Why?"
"Because there are seventeen power cells per power bank," Avon said.
"So there were what—" Blake began.
"357," Vila interjected.
The others stared at him momentarily distracted.
"A thief who can't do math doesn't get his share," Vila explained uncomfortably, shrinking under their stares.
"We're living in a tomb," Blake whispered.
"Melodramatic. None of the bodies, or brains were ever even on this ship."
"Why didn't you tell us earlier? And don't say we didn't ask," Cally's voice was low and dangerous.
Avon cocked his head, meeting her brown eyes with his bottomless black ones. "What good would it have done to tell you? You can't change what was done. There was no upside to telling you and there were several potential consequences."
"Like what?" Cally said, stepping towards him. Avon didn't retreat at her approach, remaining in his seat in the couch at the front of the flight deck, though he did put down the teleport bracelet he'd been working on.
"The obvious one would be some sort of absurd refusal to use the power systems of this ship."
"That would not bring them back, but it would kill us," Cally closed the distance. She was looming over him, hand caressing the butt of her rifle.
Avon shrugged as if he didn't have a care in the world. "Less obviously, you might have decided that opposing the System was more crucial than opposing the Federation and our only technological advantage over them was Orac, whose existence they must be aware of by now. If the Federation could take steps to neutralize him, so will—"
"I have not been neutralized!" Orac interjected. "Simply because you are incapable of—"
Cally's free hand removed Orac's key without breaking her staring contest with Avon.
"So you left us in ignorance of what was being done to innocents because you didn't want to face their torturers? And I thought Vila was the coward here."
"Hey!" Vila snapped.
"Cally," Blake said, cautiously.
Avon rose slowly, like a stretching cat. The others tensed to separate them if it should come to blows, though with the pair of them nose to nose, they'd have time for some good shots before they could be separated and neither of them believed in fighting fair. So it was something of a surprise when Avon leaned in, and whispered something in her ear. The blood drained from Cally's face. Blake started forward, but it was Avon who gave ground, retreating over the couch, snagging the teleport bracelet as he went.
"Cally?" Blake asked, stepping forward and extending a hand.
"Don't touch me," she might have been carved from ice for all the emotion she, or her words showed.
Jenna's eyes opened and the pilot took in the scene before her. "What did I miss?"
"Avon being a dick and then leaving," Vila said.
"Well, at least we can have a pleasant conversation about what to do next for once."
Cally's head snapped towards Jenna. "Indeed. You will. Excuse me," she vanished out the door, back straight and rifle in hand.
"She's not going to do anything stupid, right?" Jenna asked.
"Is shooting Avon really a stupid thing to do?" Vila snarked.
"She'll be fine," Blake said, with more hope than expectation.
"Sure. Avon's not armed," Vila joked.
"Avon's always armed," Blake countered.
"Guys, what are we going to do?" Jenna interjected.
"Wait for Servalan to get her people under control. Keep an eye out for the aliens."
"Listen for gunshots," Vila muttered.
Cally caught Avon before he reached his quarters. "Explain." She commanded from behind him.
"I was guessing about why you left Auronar, I have no actual information regarding—"
"Not your insulting suggestion that I was a coward for leaving my home instead of fighting to change it. I mean the fact that you left the deck when there was a decision to be made which would affect your survival. Explain that, Avon."
"We are in no immediate danger."
"I remember once that you said that Blake wasn't your leader, but rather that you chose to follow him. Choosing to follow requires knowledge of where you're going. So why leave?"
Avon hit the door control and went in. "I can improve our odds of survival best by working on this project," he waved the teleport bracelet, then turned to face her and continued in his dead level tones. "And I was undeservedly cruel to you, especially given your assistance resolving the business with Shrinker and Anna. I apologize for that."
The door closed at his command before Cally stopped looking like a stuffed fish. Finally she staggered away, muttering 'he apologized' to herself over and over again. She tried to recall the last time she'd heard Avon apologize. Then she did. It was while they were prisoners of the System, when Vila had freed Avon and the hacker had attacked without checking who was coming through the door. But there the harm had followed immediately the action creating a debt. Here, it had been months since she'd assisted Avon, if killing his traitorous ex so he didn't have to could be called 'assisting.'
What in the world did that mean? And then she realized something else. He'd said he shouldn't have been cruel to her especially given what she'd done for him. Not because of what she'd done to him. As if he shouldn't have been cruel to her, even if she hadn't done it. Now that, she thought as a small smile played around her lips for a moment, was very interesting. The smile vanished. He hadn't answered her question.
Her hand released the weapon, swinging it back onto her back instinctively and returned to her pocket, only to turn up Orac's key, which she'd stashed without even noticing and which Avon hadn't objected to her keeping Winged eyebrows drew together as she tried to put that all together into a story which made any sense.
"Cally! I need Orac's key, I'm going to try to contact the other rebels and the independent worlds again, maybe they'll be willing to see the light now," Blake's voice came over the intercom and Cally abandoned her puzzle to deal with the crisis. Long legs carried her away from Avon's door at a brisk pace, but she couldn't help the slight frown that crossed her lips, as she was sure she was missing something, or was missing out on something.
253.2 NC Command Ship FNS Unity, Saurian System
"Get those fucking ships back into Formation 17. Tell Commander Delor to get his pursuit ships scouting the edge of the system!"
A chorus of 'yes, ma'ams' came from the crew as her message was passed. Fortunately the FNS* Unity had refueled first, so they were well clear when the refueling stations went up. Fortunately the fleet had mostly refueled, so only a few ships had been lost, it was the panic which would destroy the fleet, but that was mostly under control thanks to the those damn rebels and their machines. They'd bought her time to get back to the bridge from her quarters and take control.
*FNS: Federation Naval Ship
"And someone tell me what the ever-loving fuck happened to the refueling stations!"
"They were hit with something with the same qualities as the railgun rounds that the squids have been using," one of the scanner techs put int.
"How the hell—No range limits…right. Shit. Okay. Why the fuck didn't our detectors pick it up?"
"They're too small and too fast, ma'am. There's no way we're going to detect them. It's just not possible. When the ships are in range we can detect when they fire and calculate their ballistic paths, but without seeing the enemy ships…" a different tech explained, while the first one was busy being intimidated by his Admiral's fury.
"Then why the fuck didn't we see the ships? Those damn railguns don't accelerate their rounds to FTL speeds."
"They must have come in behind a planet so we wouldn't see the flare of the arrival, then stayed far enough out that our optical detectors couldn't see them," the original tech explained.
"Fucking cowardly squids!"
"Report the status of my fleet," Supreme Commander Servalan said as she swayed in, white silk trailing behind her.
"Five battleships destroyed and the refueling stations are gone. More than a dozen battleships didn't have time to refuel. They're going to be dead in space within the hour."
That hadn't been what she meant. The question wasn't what forces had she lost. It was what forces remained. Less than two hundred ships had reached the Saurian System, but with the arrival of the remaining fleets, they were almost up to the numbers of the fleets which had already been destroyed. The numbers, but not the tonnage. Less than a fifth of their ships were battleships. "Bring the fleet to Earth. We must protect the homeworld," she said, as if she cared about such things. Appearance was everything, as she knew all too well. "Admiral, make sure they can't do this to us at Earth."
"Yes, Supreme Commander. I'll set pickets and patrols. We'll attach some engines to the refueling stations too. Get them moving, even a little on non-ballistic trajectories and these bastards'll only hit open air. I'll keep the majority of the fleet out of the gravity well so we can jump to wherever they show up. We'll cycle ships in to refuel, while keeping the majority available to land on the squids like a sledgehammer!" Admiral Lana's voice grew strident, though whether she was trying to convince the crew, Servalan, or herself that victory was still possible was unclear.
"Of course, Admiral," Servalan said, as if that had been her plan as well. "Get them moving."
"And the ships without power?"
Servalan didn't hesitate even though she didn't actually have any opinion about that. The ships were useless now, but the Supreme Commander could not be seen to have no answer, she had to be in control and had to be seen to be striking back, so she spoke as if she'd had a plan all along, "Take their crews off, and I'll set the Omega Protocol on all of them, to trigger the moment any ship gets too close."
"Yes, ma'am," Lana said, moving to the main screen and examining which ships had the power, room and life-support to get the crews of the battleships off.
"Coordinate with General Samor," Servalan said, before turning away and evaporating towards the exit, all elegance, even in this situation.
"Yes, ma'am," the admiral agreed.
"Additional explosions on the surface of Saurian Major, ma'am. It appears the enemy fired a full barrage on the planet shortly after they fired on the refueling stations."
"As expected," Servalan said without showing any concern for what the destruction of their primary communications hub would do, because she wasn't feeling any. Since the destruction of the previous communications center at Saurian Major by Blake and his compatriots, she'd had it rebuilt and stationed a fleet there to ensure it didn't happen again and to enable rapid response to any communications which came in. But with the vast majority of her forces already present, communication was useless, unless she wished to listen to the whining of the helpless. She did not.
There was a slight flare from the scanner displays, "Cruiser 94 has been destroyed. Enemy barrage continuing."
"Evasive course, but maintain formation," Admiral Lana asked.
"Aye, aye, ma'am."
253.23 NC Rebel Base, Dolor Colony
Contact the Liberator. We need its help. It can transport us out of here. Contact the Liberator. CONTACT THE LIBERATOR. Mark Colt shook his head sharply, trying to clear cobwebs of exhaustion and whispering doubts alike. "Maybe," he whispered, almost against his will, "we should contact Blake. He warned us about this—"
"A warning you ignored!" Minerva snapped from the other side of the table. The rest of their people were out fighting to hold back the unending tide of monsters spewing from the belly of the massive ship on the surface of the planet, leaving Avalon, her bodyguard and her two lieutenants in the conference room of the bunker they'd commandeered from the Federation forces. Taking the bunker hadn't been too costly, with most of their forces withdrawing in anticipation of the destruction of the colony. They'd lost almost a third of their people stopping the deployment of the Solium Radiation Device which would have destroyed all life on the surface of the planet.
"A warning we all ignored," Avalon put in levelly, as if she were not hearing the same whispers in the back of her own mind. Whispers which needed her attention, so she gave it, multi-tasking with the skills she'd gained running a dozen revolutionary campaigns against the Federation. There was something familiar about it. Her eyes widened slightly as she remembered where.
"I still think we should contact Blake. He's never been one to hold a grudge, and surely the Liberator can take one of these enemy ships," Mark pushed.
"At least that's true," Minerva muttered. Her voice strengthened, "The Liberator reportedly has the power of a battleship and the maneuverability of a pursuit ship. It could race in, blast these monsters to bits and get us out. It even has enough room to get most of the surviving colonists out, with half the planet in ruins."
"Even if that was correct, there's more than one enemy ship in the system," Avalon pointed out.
The eyes of the others at the table narrowed as she mentioned this truth, which they'd all been ignoring. Minerva spoke up first, "There's only one down on the surface though—"
"Which means there's only one in position to be easily destroyed, the other three make any such rescue impossible," Avalon pushed away the voice, ignoring it for the moment, but made a minor hand signal and her bodyguard Trion straightened slightly, coming alert and watching. A delta-grade laborer before almost being killed by a Federation goon-squad, Trion had spent his life doing heavy manual labor and his hugely muscled frame showed the effect it had had on him. His loyalty was hers because she'd saved his life and she pitied the alien who had to try to get into his head, but the others…they were cunning, ambitious, idealistic, all the things which were used against you when it was your own mind that was being compromised. For all their intellect, they didn't catch the hand signal, because they hadn't seen it before.
"Only if they got caught," Mark argued.
Minerva backed him up, which was suspicious as all get-out as the two of them were somewhere between competitors and enemies. "And the Liberator has to be more maneuverable than those massive ships!"
"Surely it could slip through and get us out."
One of Avalon's hands disappeared under the table and she forced her body to relax, sprawling in the chair as she aimed the still-holstered weapon on her hip in Minerva's direction. "I see your point—" CONTACT THE LIBERATOR, her hand shook, almost pulling the trigger, "but even if we did ask, Blake knows better than to sacrifice himself, his ship and his crew in a futile attempt at a rescue."
"They came to rescue you from the Federation," Minerva argued, more forcefully than usual.
"Even when they had every reason to believe it impossible!" Mark added.
"True. Maybe if we tell them the full story, give them a full briefing on the enemy presence, they'll be able to come up with a plan, or at least provide us some advice," Avalon lied, testing them, if they agreed then the enemy clearly had other resources in the area, if they refused, then she had a good count on the enemy.
"NO!" her lieutenants chorused at her.
"Oh, why not?" She asked, all level calm, despite the whispers.
"Because…" they searched for a reason, "if we told them all that, then they wouldn't come!"
"You do realize that your position is internally inconsistent?" Avalon asked, eyes steady. Some forms of mind control could be overcome if the subject became aware of it.
"What?"
"You cannot simultaneously maintain that they could come here safely and that we can't tell them what they would be facing, because they couldn't come here safely if they knew the truth about what they were facing."
"I'm not saying that they couldn't come here safely. But that they wouldn't come here if they knew what they were really facing," Minerva replied, falling deeper into her delusion.
Mark agreed, confusion banished by that explanation.
"In order to come here safely, they would need all the information—" Avalon argued.
"No!" Minerva shouted, jumping to her feet, Mark following her to his feet.
"Very well." They began to relax and Avalon continued, trying a different tack. Some mind control forces could be overcome by a direct challenge from a pre-existing loyalty. "Then understand, I am in command here and I am telling you that we are not contacting Roj Blake."
Mark and Minerva glanced at each other, then drew their weapons, Minerva's pointed at Avalon, Mark's pointed at Trion. "I'm sorry, Avalon, but I'm not going to die because you're too selfish to admit we need help!" Minerva snapped. "Just tell us—" *CRACK*
The shot punched through the table and caught the rebel low in the gut rather than in the chest as Avalon had intended, but it still sent her staggering backward, arms instinctively reaching in to push against the wound, necessarily bringing the weapon off target. Mark turned to face her as she kicked backwards, knocking her chair flat and summersaulting backwards, weapon coming free of its holster. Before she could bring it to bear on Mark, Trion moved, catching the smaller man from behind in a bear hug. A quick snap and the rebel lieutenant's spine broke under massive hands.
The bodyguard dropped him and casually crushed Minerva's head as she lay there trying to hold her guts in. "What now, boss?"
"Now? We contact Roj." She typed in a warning about the enemy's behavior thus far and all files they had on both of her enemies. She couldn't know if they would receive it, but she could send it. With that done, she went for a walk. The Solium Radiation Device was unguarded, because she'd removed the core, without which the device was no danger. The core was on her person, for safety's sake, since it could not be destroyed. No one else got in her way as she went to the room, put the core in, and paused. The whispers in the back of her mind were the same as the ones which had been inflicted on her when the Federation had sought to rip her secrets and her will from her captured body.
She would not permit that to be done to those who had followed her, or those who she had come to this world to defend and free, so the core slid into place. There should have been last words worthy of Avalon, the great rebel leader, but they eluded her. Instead she turned to Trion, "I was born Alexia Dorva, did you know that?"
"No, boss," Trion said, voice steady as stone.
"I gave up my name so the Federation wouldn't know which family to massacre, or enslave, for my actions."
"Okay, boss."
"But I'd like to die as Alexia Dorva," she concluded sadly, turning back to the control panel.
"Okay, boss." Trion shot her in the back of the head, killing her instantly, obedient to the whispers in his head and what they could convince him was Avalon's wish to die.
Neither he, nor the enemy on the planet realized that in placing the core back in, she'd restarted the countdown begun by the Federation forces until the device went off, killing everyone on the surface of the planet.
253.24 NC Homeworld of the Race
Giroc staggered along, leaning heavily on her staff, summoned by her mother's voice, Sinofar's summoning lacked its usual irritatingly infinite compassion. "What is it, Sinofar? We've only been resting for a cycle or two, the power has only just begun to rise again—"
"Yes, it has, but something comes..." the young looking woman was staring up at the stars and did not look at the tottering old wreck that was her daughter.
"Something so full of hate you cannot resist the urge to meddle?" the old woman asked, mockingly, her staff moving almost threateningly.
"No. These beings know no hate, but have shed the blood of billions."
Giroc's wrinkled blue skin flexed as she frowned at that. "No hatred, but the blood of billions? Where's the fun in that?"
"There's no fun in any of this—" Sinofar began righteously.
"Yes, yes, mother, let me look," Giroc communed with the nanites that flooded her system and looked up past sky and blackness to what approached their shattered world. Her hand tightened on the staff as horror and terror burned through her eyes to her heart and soul. The nanomachines that connected her and her mother and the surviving weapons on the planet, reacted to her contact with the creature, automatic defenses mostly shut out the attempt by the creature to seize her body, but as nanites purged their corrupted brethren, they could not control her pain as they usually would have. For the first time in centuries, she felt true pain. The staff lifted under the pressure of her hands and Giroc collapsed backwards, convulsing, staff beating a tattoo against the ruined cobblestones beneath her.
In seeking to control her, the creatures had, necessarily touched her. She had not understood everything, or much of anything, but she'd felt the blood, oceans of it, enough even for her, but with none of the righteous fury, the hatred of the enemy that she expected, but something different. Some powerful emotion, not mere duty powered these creatures in their slaughter.
That was…unacceptable. She was a child of war and had fought all her life, but she fought because she hated her enemies. That was the only reason to kill. Whatever this was, crawling over and under her skin as the nanites fought each other, was evil and she would see it dead, for she hated it.
Sinofar broke the link between her daughter and the approaching abomination, but she did not reach down to aid the fallen woman as she usually would have. Instead she focused her attention on the systems. Most of the weapons of the Race had been destroyed in the same wars that had destroyed their planet, but the final weapon was still there, its power always rising. They had emptied the power banks only a cycle ago. Previously she had left the weapon to recharge at its own rate, while she and her daughter rested in cryonic storage until its power rose to the level where it had to be discharged or explode, taking the planet with it.
The rest of it was her own exercise in penance for the sins of her people. Trying to teach others what her people had learned at the cost of their existence. Perhaps it was as pointless as her preservation of her daughter and their empty world, but she was Sinofar, Guardian of the Race. She would preserve all that was left of her people. And now came an enemy. All the systems of the weapon which had destroyed their people activated, not the patient waiting of before, but the full, powerful threat of the thing, active and alert.
The enemy came on in massive ships, too massive for the weapon to damage at this range. They would have to wait. Giroc rose slowly. "Well, it seems I will get to rest at last after all," she whispered, her voice low and bitter. "But," her old face rose from her chest, "the last of the Race will not go into oblivion like mewling infants. We will show them why we were called the masters of war, will we not, my mother? My guardian? Will you not unleash your great weapon on them?"
"Yes, we will. Handle the transporters, I'll handle the weapon," Sinofar agreed, releasing the full power of her daughter's nanites with a thought. The younger woman straightened as the machines repaired the body she'd been confined to and she transported herself to their remaining transit terminal and began loading the explosives, biological, chemical and radiological weapons, getting them ready to go as soon as the enemy ships entered range.
The first three vanished and as she watched eagerly completely failed to rematerialize. Whatever defenses the enemy had was blocking the transporter. Giroc swore, very definitively not under her breath.
"Draining enemy power," Sinofar's voice echoed in her head, transmitted by nanites, and amplified by her mother's will to be reminiscent of the voice of the Allmother, in the days before the last of the churches had been destroyed. The energy suck was the defensive component of the great weapon, but she'd radically underestimated the power of the enemy ships. While she'd been able to stop the Liberator and a trio of pursuit ships with no difficulty, using the power drain on these creatures was like trying to drain the ocean with a garden hose.
The power banks rocked to full power as one of the approaching ships slowed under the drain. She discharged the weapon, not in the massive field of destruction it was intended for, but in a narrow beam, only thirty meters in diameter. It ripped through one of the ship's hull like the armor plate was nothing at all. But the energy drain was still going, power banks refilling too fast. The weapon was not intended for rapid fire. The main discharge point, a city-block-sized hole in the world, was glowing brilliantly as the enemy ships raced forward in random spirals, seeking to evade a second shot.
She ignored the danger and fired a second time as the energy banks had recharged faster than she would have believed possible. This time the beam only clipped one of the ships trailing tendrils, clipping it off easily, but the ship continued on its way. For about ten seconds, until Giroc targeted the transporter on the damaged ship. Whatever defenses it possessed had been destroyed by her mother's shot, and so the ship was ripped apart in a flurry of nuclear fire, burning so bright about the world that it appeared almost like a second sun. Giroc laughed as she raced forward, moving more ordinance into place.
The enemy ships did not return fire, but rather sought to land, despite their massive bulk. Giroc waited patiently, for whatever field they were using to jam her transporters might fail when they entered the atmosphere. Her attention was also on the trailing ship as the energy drain continued to affect it. Soon, but not soon enough, she would get her chance to destroy another of these creatures that profaned the art and beauty of war with their pettiness.
In fact, she would not, for when Sinofar triggered the weapon a third time, seeking to avoid another deployment of the weapon as the weapon of mass destruction it had been designed as, the whole thing exploded. The massive energy banks, connected to the power-plants which drew from the heat and pressure of their location, deep within the planet, went first, causing the shields of the plants to fail and the pressure of what was, quite literally, the weight of the world, instantly crushed the power plants, which responded explosively. The weapon went through the heart of their world, to emerge on the other side and so the massive force of the explosion cracked the planet in half, killing Sinofar and Giroc instantly. The lead enemy ship was destroyed, but the shields on the next two held easily, however the shields of the last ship were critically compromised by the energy drain, leaving it vulnerable to the sudden barrage of planetary shards.
It suffered only minor damage before its two remaining comrades closed in, guarding it with their own shields until its energy reserves were completely restored. Harbringer did not curse, neither did it dissemble. Instead it simply informed the others that it had failed. The weapons and technology of the Race were as gone as the Race itself, and their planet. This cycle had already proven a disaster. The idiot Humans proving unable to understand Element Zero and thus pursued an entirely different route to infest the galaxy, which had already complicated the harvest and cost much, but the loss of three capital ships to a species which had never even managed to leave its own homeworld before exterminating itself? That was…unacceptable.
Author's Note: I'll be out for the next two weeks. The Effect of Liberation will resume July 30th.