By the time it reached the Two Arm, the impromptu battle group had swelled to more than seventy ships.
Several times over the past three weeks, Sublieutenant Cronx had stolen a precious few moments to make private-string contact with colleagues on Earth. This was how he'd received news — both confirmed and rumor — about what was happening both on the Mother Planet and throughout the rest of the Empire. None of these reports were good.
Fighting between the two services was spreading all over the Galaxy. Clashes on every arm had been confirmed. There had even been a skirmish inside the Ball, the ridiculously peaceful center of the Milky Way. Forces on both sides were ignoring all desist orders from Earth. Very hardline SG individuals were even attacking isolated SF installations out on the Fringe. The SF was retaliating in kind.
Everyone knew fighting between the two services would not lead to anything positive. It further weakened an Empire that some believed was already reaching its breaking point. A too-hasty expansion policy, roughshod treatment of its newest citizens out on the Fringe areas, and an overall elitist attitude that was simply repulsive on many, many levels were bad enough. To have a war within its vast military was simply disastrous.
But why were the hostilities continuing? With all the command structures that lorded over both services, wasn't there any way to get the two rivals to stop? Cronx's friends on Earth said no — and the reason was simple: the only person whose words would be heeded by both sides, the Emperor O'Nay Himself, was unavailable. Where was he? In his tower, the soaring spiral that dominated the floating city of Special Number One, deep in his prayer mode. The perpetually detached O'Nay entered these meditative states quite often, or at least his Imperial Guards claimed he did. Once he was in such a trance, it could last for days or even weeks*. And there were standing orders that he was not to be disturbed for anything.
His imperial bodyguards were obeying that order to the letter these days. So the internecine war was allowed to rage on.
Even worse, the SG had unilaterally declared a state of emergency within the Solar System. They'd flooded each of the original planets, from Mercury out to Pluto, with millions of regular SG troops.
They'd stopped just about all flights around the Solar System and had sealed off the Pluto Cloud as well.
They were even close to shutting down the entire One Arm. Cronx's friends described the situation as being no different than if the SG had declared martial law.
In the entire 600-plus-year history of the Fourth Empire, nothing like this had ever happened before.
Lieutenant Cronx reached the StratoVox's flight deck to find the place in chaos: crewmen running everywhere, officers shouting orders above the wailing sirens, strobe lights flashing, bells ringing. Tension and anxiety were thick in the air.
The flight deck itself was supposed to be a monument to advanced Empire technology. It was contained within the ship's large, multitiered control bubble, which in turn was located near the forward point of the vessel's enormous wedge shape. The bubble was like a small city, large enough to hold 3,000 people. The bridge itself, it being on the highest level of this small metropolis, could hold more than 500 souls. It took all of these people, many serving in traditional if redundant capacities, to keep the ship running properly. Only this way could Starcrashers travel through space at speeds of one light-year every thirty seconds.
The situation up on the bridge was no better than the flight deck below. Cronx reached his station, an isolated seat located next to the lower echelon of pilots known as acolyte steering and directly behind the forward weapons array. A crew of sixteen was sitting in two semicircles around this array; their commanding officer was seated in an elaborate control chair hovering about eight feet above them. If anything happened to this primary weapons officer, it was Cronx's job to take his place.
Until then, Cronx would have a front-row seat for whatever was about to happen. His station was very close to the edge of the control room's immense bubble; it was barely an arm's length away. All Cronx had to do was turn to his right and look directly out into space.
The ship's enormous scanning screens were floating in front of him. These screens showed everyone what the "eyes" of the ship were seeing. And what they were seeing at the moment was very frightening.
The seventy-two SG ships, many of them two-mile-long battle cruisers, were running in their dark gray and black SG battle colors. The ships were spread out for as far as the long-range scanners could see. SG ships were so big, they rarely traveled in packs of more than a dozen or so. This, however, looked like a victory parade; they seemed to go on forever.
Trouble was, in (heir sights, dead ahead, was a fleet of SF ships that seemed to go on forever as well.
They were mostly battle cruisers, but several pocket cruisers, also known as culverins, were in evidence, too. There were six dozen SF ships in all, or exactly the same size as the SG fleet. And they were just 15,000 miles away.
This battle group had not been dispatched by Space Forces command. Instead, just like the SG force, it had collected itself over the past few weeks from disparate squadrons, called here at first upon hearing of the intense battles in and around the mid-Two Arm and then rushing to the aid of comrades asking for help. It had grown steadily over the turbulent weeks into the enormous numbers it boasted now.
Cronx had seen combat before. But like just about everyone else on board the StratoVox, his experiences had been against space pirates, mere armies, or other interstellar outlaws. Fights where the SG always came in with an overwhelming advantage in the number of ships, weapons, and of course, the ability to move in Supertime, which none of their opponents had.
But now, this… this was terrifying. The huge SG fleet was about to collide with an SF force equal both in size and capability. Both forces were flying in Supertime, both forces were armed with the same awesome weapons, and both were crewed with men of equal training and elan.
Cronx swallowed hard. He was about to witness one of the worst military disasters in the history of the Fourth Empire. Imperial warships were never meant to fight each other. They were designed with only two missions in mind: to bombard enemy planets and to fight in space against much slower enemy vessels. Taking on ion-powered ships was relatively easy. When flying in Supertime, Empire vessels could see their slower adversaries while knowing the enemy could not see them. All the Empire ship had to do was drop out of Supertime and unleash its weapons. It could be more like target practice than a battle.
Fighting an enemy in Supertime was totally different. First of all, your opponent could see you just as soon as you could see him. Not only did both sides have the same weapons and crews, they both had the same capabilities for maneuvering and stealth. Both were also capable of flying just as fast — and in Supertime that was close to 67 million miles per hour. Two Empire ships closing on one another then were doing so at 134 million miles per hour. Almost incomprehensible speed.
Nor did Empire ships carry any kind of deflection equipment, again because they were never made to fight each other. They had no shields to protect themselves from incoming fire, no energy-dispersal arrays to sap the lethality from an adversary's fusillade. The only defense they had against an all-Supertime fight was a tactic known as popping.
When Empire ships traveled in Supertime, they were moving not so much in physical space as they were in time. The prop core found on every Empire warship was fed by the Big Generator, the mysterious, omnipotent power source located in the western desert back on Earth. This unknown power enabled the vessel to enter the seventh dimension and move very quickly in time.