Empire commanders were told that should an enemy ship ever enter Supertime — theoretically an impossibility, though it had happened on at least one occasion — then one way to avoid their incoming barrages was to slow down a bit, not in space but in time, just as the enemy fusillade was on its way.
Essentially by putting on the brakes, just for a fraction of a second, the enemy barrage would reach its target just a little bit too early — and miss.
Popping was a spectacular thing to watch in action. All Empire ship commanders were required to practice it a few times early in their training, against fake blasts, of course. At high speeds, with leeway measured in microfractions of seconds, popping was an art form that no Empire ship CO ever thought he'd have to use.
Until now.
There were no hailing calls.
No challenges or ultimatums. No communications at all.
The scanning screens aboard the StratoVox were screaming that the SF fleet's weapons had powered up; all of the SG ships' weapons had just come on-line, too. Up until now, the fighting in and around the No-Fly Zone had consisted of brief clashes between individual vessels or small groups of ships, and only after much haranguing and posturing between opposing commanders. Now, these two grand fleets were ready to open up on each other without any prior taunts or threats— willing to let fate decide who would be left alive when it was over.
More blaring and beeping alarms distracted Cronx now. He looked up at the scanning screens again and saw the SF fleet was now just 10,000 miles away and still coming on very quickly.
He heard the booming voice of McLyx rising from behind him. 'Train weapons!"
"Weapons trained, sir!" came the response from the weapons officers, all twelve of them.
"Prepare to fire."
"Preparing to fire, sir!"
Cronx felt his stomach turn over once again. Up until this moment he'd believed that despite the fighting and bad blood between the SF and SG, the damage that had been done already could be repaired somehow. But now, with these two gigantic fleets about to hit each other head-on… well, there'd really be no stepping back from this. Cronx checked the ship's position; ironically enough, they were just about in the middle of the No-Fly Zone, very near the place where the battle between the REF and the Two Arm invaders had supposedly taken place a month before. If there hadn't been a battle dien, Cronx thought, there was certainly going to be one now.
The scans began screaming again. The column of SF ships was now just 5,000 miles away and still coming straight at the SG fleet. As the StratoVox's weapons sections began tracking multiple targets, there came another bellowing order from McLyx.
"Ready all forward weapons."
"All forward weapons ready, sir."
Cronx gripped his seat tight. Was there any way to turn back from this? Any way both fleets would just veer off and go their separate ways, and preserve the integrity of the Empire for just a little while longer?
The answer was no, for just a moment later, McLyx screamed the fateful words: " Open fire!"
The StratoVox shuddered as every weapon on board fired at once. Space itself began shaking as the rest of the SG fleet followed suit. With tens of thousands of weapons blazing, the storm of SG destructo-rays tore into the SF ships. Thousands of gigantic explosions along thousands of miles of space. Then the StratoVox's scans began blaring yet again: The SF ships were firing back.
The main weapons for both opponents were Z-beam guns. Their killing rays appeared in the form of thick blue bolts. Fired from a Jong distance, these bolts originated as pulses of incredibly bright light.
Once a bolt got close to its target, the pulses coalesced into mile-long beams. Cronx now saw thousands of tüese beams flying right at him, even as the immense StratoVox began twisting and turning through space.
He was terrified — and he was sure many others on the bridge were terrified, too. This was already so unlike anything they'd ever faced, it was a waking nightmare, payback, for all those times they'd overwhelmed poorly armed, poorly trained adversaries in the past.
Ships were taking hits all around him. Some SG vessels were disappearing in puffs of sickly green fire. The StratoVox was gyrating itself through incredible, seemingly impossible maneuvers. In all his years riding them, Cronx had no idea Starcrashers could move like this.
At last, the two fleets collided. Cronx was suddenly looking out at a sky full of blue and white Starcrashers, all of them adorned with the star symbols of the Space Forces. This was another frighteningly new experience for him. He had never seen a Starcrasher in battle, not from this perspective.
He was astonished by just how many weapons were firing off these gigantic ships: tens of thousands of bright blue and green streaks flying out in every direction, even as so many storms of multicolored beams were being fired at them.
It went on like this for what seemed like an eternity. Cronx was being thrown violently back and forth, even though he was pinned to his seat by his safety force field. The main weapons system officer was screaming at his forward array gunners, who were sending out megatons of destructo-rays, some finding their targets but many not. Better him than me, Cronx caught himself thinking. He could barely breathe, never mind move and actually operate a weapons system. The blaring of the defensive-systems communication array was ear-splitting. Its mechanical voice was screaming at full pitch, but the control room was already filled with so many Klaxons and sirens wailing, it was very hard to think straight, never mind hear anything.
This cacophony made it almost impossible to decipher what the ghostly electronic voice was saying.
But somehow one of the ship's twelve pilots heard the warning and displayed it up on the floating viz screens: An SF warship, the venerable NovaVox, was closing fast on one of the StratoVox's escort ships, the VegasVox, which had already sustained battle damage. Cronx could clearly see the wounded VegasVox off starboard side. A plume of jetblack smoke was streaming from its aft section; another was spewing out from behind its control-deck bubble. The Vegas had taken two random blasts from an SF culverin. Normally, two stray Z-gun blasts would cause little more than minor damage. But either by incredibly bad luck or the whim of the cosmos, these random blasts had hit two of the gigantic ship's most vulnerable spots. One had destroyed the Vegas'$ main communications bubble; the other had exploded directly on top of its prop core. This meant the Vegas was without full prop-core operation and had no means to receive communications. It had no idea the SF warship NovaVox was coming right at it.
The SF ship opened up at just twenty miles out. The commanders aboard the Vegas only became aware that a massive fusillade was incoming when their forward scans suddenly lit up. The Vegas's CO immediately ordered his ship to pop, but the Vegas' s prop core did not respond. It was still maintaining full speed but failing quickly. The SF barrage hit the Vegas full force an instant later. Its prop core blew up, and the gigantic ship split in two. All this happened not in seconds but in microseconds. The prop-core disintegration lit off a series of nuclear explosions, and l/4000th of a second later, opened up a tiny black hole. The StratoVox peeled off just in time, but the SF NovaVox, coming on strong and not really expecting the SG ship to fail in its popping, was not so lucky. It slammed right into the Vegas, causing everything from its control bubble back to its cargo holds to simply disintegrate. The ship's rear magazines exploded, causing the Nova's prop core to blow, sending out another ripple of nuclear blasts and creating yet another black hole; this, just seconds after the first singularity came into being.