“The lead Skrel ship appears to be targeting and taking out any satellites in its path.”
“Have we fired?”
“First one’s coming into range shortly,” Strongbow reported.
“Make it the main image,” she snapped. Suddenly, a tactical map of the solar system flicked into existence, looming large over the room. Enough sensor data had come in to render a silhouette of the Skrel ship, resembling the ones that arrived almost seven hundred years earlier. Large, bulbous shapes up front, spikey tail sections with cables running loosely under the carriage. Without a Skrel corpse for reference, no one could estimate the scale or determine how many might be flying each ship. What worried Raige and the others was their firepower. How much had that improved since the Skrel’s last attack?
“Fire at will,” she ordered. Several voices acknowledged and then the waiting began.
Long minutes passed until the first F.E.N.I.X. missile was launched… and obliterated before it hit its target.
“That screws with our intelligence. Damn, I knew we needed warships,” she said, not for the first time. While the last century saw a new generation of starships with upgraded Lightstream engines, they were designed for deep space and for the wormhole to the next spiral arm. All the resources went to them, and the anchorages, when her predecessors recognized they needed a fleet of fighters to keep the battle in space. Had the Varuna Squadron been supplied with such ships, the last iteration of Ursa would have been sucking vacuum. But resources, even after nearly a thousand years, remained carefully apportioned. The system had its share of asteroids to mine, but unlike the ones placidly orbiting Sol, they were tougher to tame and access. As a result, every scrap of ore had to be allocated.
“I have the Savant and Primus calling in,” Strongbow said.
“I’ll give a briefing once I have something to say,” Khantun snapped. Any vestiges of her personable character were gone. She was now a focused warrior, readying for battle. The Prime Commander never asked her parents why they chose Khantun, meaning “Iron Queen,” but she was determined to live up to the name.
For the next several minutes, with her eyes barely wavering from the purple dots—now confirmed as eight identical ships—the Prime Commander was briefed on speed, point of entry into the solar system, estimated angle of orbit, and speculation as to whether they brought the deadly beasts with them. Ruth Strongbow took notes and convened the command staff in the adjacent room. Meantime, leaves of absence had been canceled and every Ranger in uniform was put on alert. Following a well-practiced series of protocols over the last fifteen years, the Rangers were now checking all supplies, power packs, medical field kits, and, of course, their cutlasses. Tomorrow, the squadron would take to the air and begin around-the-clock patrols. The shelter alert would not sound until the Skrel were one day away, time enough to prepare but not long enough to panic and cause additional headaches.
Raige was pleased with the intelligence coming through as well as the projections. “Have these confirmed by the Savant,” she instructed her adjutant. “I’ll meet with the Savant and Primus in two hours. Have someone bring Brom to Mama Sam.”
Strongbow acknowledged the orders and began by having the nearest Ranger collect the PC’s son and deliver him to Samantha Raige, Khantun’s mother. Once the teen was secured, Strongbow knew Raige’s total focus could remain with the Rangers. Her father, Mark, was once the PC, but had been injured in the line of duty and was largely paralyzed. Brom was a strapping teen and could help with her father’s care while Samantha could ensure the boy didn’t do anything foolish.
The preparations were now under way, but the waiting for the Skrel to arrive would make everyone skittish. All except the Iron Queen. She would show them how it was done.
ii
Primus Jon Anderson was the perfect image for a pious man. He was tall, with a wizened face, and dark, bushy eyebrows that helped animate his expression. His salt-and-pepper beard extended nearly to his breastbone. Anderson carried a staff that had become synonymous with his office but hid a slight limp. His robes of office remained immaculate, and his hat gleamed in the sunlight.
Today, he looked like hell.
He hadn’t slept in days nor, it appeared, had he changed his robes or washed. The beard was a wild tangle, making him appear more savage than sage. There was a faint aroma of sweat rising from the heavy fabric that only added to the stale air in the council room. A plate of food sat uneaten before him and the cup of wine untouched. Had he not blinked now and then, Raige would have thought he had gone catatonic. He was getting pretty damned close.
Their counterpart, Savant Erich Burch, at least had put on a fresh lab coat and violet gloves. At least it looked like he had an hour or more of sleep.
The three leaders of Nova Prime sat in silence as around them holo screens displayed details of the devastation that began three days earlier. When it was clear the Skrel were on the attack, they departed their vulnerable council room and settled into a makeshift operation in a conference room near the Rangers’ hangar bay, low enough in the cliff to be a hard target. It was close quarters, adding to the foul air, and bare of decoration, which matched her mood.
Khantun felt she had failed them all. She prepared the Rangers and the people for a fresh batch of Ursa, but was stunned when the eight ships entered the atmosphere and began blasting away with energy beams that packed explosive force.
It had taken over a day to realize there was a method to the constant back-and-forth flying being done by the Skrel. They were dropping incendiary devices all across the continent. The devices burrowed beneath the surface and were programmed to detonate when weight was placed on them. At first they thought animals were being shot from the sky, but it then became clear the animals were triggering the devices themselves. Savant Burch reported all it took was a few pounds of weight to be detected, and the device would explode with enough force to kill any living thing in a half-meter radius, which was deadly enough.
The dead were an unfathomable number.
“This defies everything we’ve experienced in centuries,” Burch said.
“What do you mean?” Anderson asked.
“The Savant is referring to the fact that in 243 the Skrel were very selective about where they fired. Their targeting systems were incredibly, impossibly precise. It was always things we constructed. Or people. Or livestock. Never the planet itself.”
“And did that happen the second time?” Anderson inquired.
“Yes,” Burch answered, finally reengaging with the conversation. “In 350, they returned and took more shots at us. Not the planet. Your predecessor wrote a treatise speculating about why the planet was left unharmed. You should read it sometime.”
“Ever since then, the Skrel have seen fit to come here, deposit the Ursa, avoid our cannon fire, and leave the atmosphere as quickly as possible,” Khantun said. “This defies everything we have trained and prepared for.”
“Your flyers lack the weaponry, don’t they?”
“Yes, Primus. They were never designed to handle threats from outer space. Same with the Suijin Fleet. The Skrel ships never neared the waterways. I’ve had the ships stored out of target sighting and the crews redeployed.”
She cursed herself for being caught by surprise, but really, how could she know they would choose to fire for the first time in six hundred years? Still, the Iron Queen was feeling beaten and it irritated her.
All available flying craft were being used to throw whatever weaponry they had at the eight ships that leisurely crisscrossed the continent, strafing New Earth City then picking off people who ignored the shelter order, thinking the smaller colony towns would not be targets. Tähtiinville, home to their spacecraft manufacturing, was a smoking ruin.