“Is the commander’s shuttle clear yet?” Lian asked, switching gazes back and forth between Grimes and the display tank.
“Not yet, XO,” replied the ops chief. “Our fighters are still tied down with the enemy. His shuttle’s in the thick of it.”
A wailing vibration from an enemy missile that impacted perilously close to the bridge shorted out a row of display screens. Images in the tank fizzled out, leaving a gaping void of black. Instantly, a redundancy kicked in reconstituting the footage.
The behemoth ship covered a third of the display. Like an encroaching storm front, the massive ship’s image soon blotted out everything else in the tank, energy bolts surging forth from its many emitters like strokes of lightning.
A much larger bolt stabbed outward from the behemoth’s center node, piercing the Far Walker’s upper bow. The enormous green-white beam bit into shielding, draining it dry, then cut into layers of super hard hull plating. A seething, powdery burst of atmosphere erupted from the ensuing breach. Like a gargantuan fire sword, the beam thrust deeply into the Far Walker, turning vast areas of its interior into a star’s core.
Two similarly destructive beams ensnared the King and the Gujarat, penetrating each missile frigate on one side and exiting out the other. Charred, blackened debris jetted out of breaches in both frigates’ hulls. The Cane received particularly harsh dosages of the massive beam. Successive bolts burrowed into the troop carrier’s outer thrusters and mid section, shattering its shield generators.
“Fall back!” Lian turned to the pilot. “Try to outflank that ship!”
“That beam ripped through fifteen levels,” Hilburn reported. “We’ve got massive internal damage!”
“I’ve sourced those beams’ output,” said Weapons Specialist Domos. “Targeting!”
The XO extended a forestalling hand. “Belay that, Fahid. I’ve got something else in mind. Prepare Judgement One missiles.”
Domos tossed the XO a wary glance. “For a J1 launch we’re going to have to put distance between us and the target.”
The pilot, Janet Kiowa, adjusted controls. “Increasing fall back speed.”
“Tell the Task Force to clear the target zone,” ordered Lian.
Domos tapped a console key with a grim finality. “J1 is online.”
“I want every ship to implement a mass launch of lower grade missiles to screen the J1’s approach.”
Grimes acknowledged and disseminated Lian’s order to the task force.
Lian stepped closer to the display tank, barely suppressing an urge to cough from the hazy acridity of damaged, overloaded consoles. She fixed pitiless eyes on the dreaded behemoth, and a spirit of vengeance coiled enticingly around her heart when she snapped the next command, “fire!”
Clouds of Flail and Terror Rod missiles from every ship in Task Force Arrow descended upon the massive Erekdenit vessel.
The behemoth threw up a howling wall of point defense fire, wiping out a host of incoming missiles. Numerous task force missiles, nevertheless, broke through a gleaming barricade of enemy fire to smash into their target. Miles upon miles of the behemoth’s hull boiled beneath a restless, gaseous ocean of multiple missile eruptions. A slower moving J1 plunged into that searing ocean, detonating upon contact.
The J1’s explosion breached the target’s hull, channeling tremendous anti-matter laced forces into its interior, before whipping outward in a secondary blast that dislodged enormous chunks of dense hull.
The behemoth listed severely, its batteries silenced as large pulses of chain reactions assaulted its mighty framework, tearing it apart.
A collective pause seemed to come over the remaining 14 Erekdenit ships as their crews witnessed the death throes of their lead ship.
Lian smelled blood and swooned in its headiness. “Target the heavies and mediums with J1s and open fire.”
Eight J1 missiles, hidden beneath a blanket of screening fire, struck the behemoth’s medium and heavy companions. Individual blast waves from eight explosions merged into a single, moon size spatial disrupting wave that swept over the Task Force ships like a tsunami. One of the heavies broke in half, one segment consumed in a blazing aura, the other plummeting toward the planetoid’s surface.
A fiery typhoon consumed a large swathe of area where the segment impacted, producing a florescent crater that marked the planetoid like a glowing red eye.
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