Author: proximalflame

Admiral Alicia Hunt stood on the command deck of UTCNS Warlord, a Kali-class dreadnaught. Imperator was of the same class, but Invictus was an Ares. Thunderer and Conqueror were Camulus-class; missile variants, outfitted with fortress tubes and the warheads that went with them. “Status of April Fools?” “All ECM systems read green, admiral. We know what to look for and even our sensors are having trouble sorting them out; the Lefu should be in for a bit of surprise when they open fire.” “Let’s hope so. Status of their advance?” “They’re ignoring the outer-system colonies, coming right for us.” “Their scouts must have reported in, then. I doubt they would have done so otherwise.” The Lefu targeted military ships and facilities first, then took out any spaceborne civilian vessels or installations. If they didn’t know that Hyperion Hive’s outer-system sites were harmless, they’d have started culling them. As it was, they were planning on dealing with BG 97 first.

The images kept coming; the planet had been bombed ruthlessly. Not with nuclear weapons, but with asteroids. Something had sat above it and hurled rocks – little ones, big ones – at a defenceless world over and over. Analysis put the first strike and the last one 2, maybe 3 days apart. “They wanted it,” Jacob mused. Karen looked up from her readouts. “What?” “They wanted the world. Look at this attack – it was meticulous. Here, this island city – first, all the bridges connecting it to the mainland were taken out with smaller meteors, then the city was blasted with one big one. No one was supposed to get out. But the dams, the nuclear power plants, the oil rigs – they haven’t been touched. There’s been collateral damage from the tsunamis and earthquakes, but whoever did this tried to leave as much of the infrastructure intact as possible.” “Without those pesky inhabitants,” the younger woman replied bitterly. Jacob nodded. The asteroid bombardment had been followed up with the atmospheric dispersal of a bio-weapon. One specifically targeted to the dominant species on this planet. It was unlikely that many of the inhabitants had survived the relentless bombing, but those that did wouldn’t even have had a chance to die from starvation. “How much of their industry survived?” he asked. There’d be time to feel like a grave robber later; right now he had a dying ship to fix and not enough resources to do it.