Proximal Flame's Fiction

“Over four hundred thousand dead, military and civilian,” Foraker grimaced. “Most of those were caused when Old Oak collided with Cat O’ Might, but there were the additional sixty-three thousand civilian casualties caused when the Nakir opened fire on the convoy.” Alicia’s expression was no more cheery than Hawthorne’s. “All to one damned scout cruiser.” “Which had taken the time and effort to all but perfectly mimic one of our own ships and managed to fool a half-dozen of our escorts and dozens of freighters for two weeks.” Foraker drummed his fingers on the polished tabletop, the only outward sign of his inner turmoil. Lefu technology was superior to the Concord – they’d known that for months – but this incident was a perfect example of just how vast the gulf between the two forces really was.

The Commander of Blind Oracle sat in her command chair, her chin resting upon her hands as she watched the display. Ahead of her Scout Vessel lay the Enemy System. It was full of noise: chattering radio waves and bubbling energy emissions from hundreds ships and dozens stations, both great and small. This system was a resource node; asteroid miners and refineries filled the system’s thick asteroid belt. Sunward, the Enemy had already cracked open one of the rocky planets, dozens of massive processing stations orbiting the wrecked world, breaking continent-sized planetary fragments down into manageable chunks, shuttles and barges carrying the smaller fragments up to the stations for processing and clearing jettisoned waste products safely out of the stations’ and vessels’ orbital paths. The woman licked her lips hungrily, as she looked over the bounty of targets before her. “Continue to close,” she ordered softly. “I want to see the horror in their eyes.”