The resulting explosion was so powerful, many gunners in nearby ships were blinded permanently by the flash. The space-time fabric was torn for a thousand miles around. Just like that, the two enormous ships simply ceased to exist.
There were no survivors. There couldn't be.
More than 40,000 were dead.
Cronx had turned away from the apocalyptic scene at the last possible moment, thus preserving his sight. Still, one side of his face was severely burned. The heat had been so intense, it actually singed his hair.
The StratoVox veered right again, pressing Cronx against the side of the clear control bubble. He suppressed the urge to vomit as he saw hundreds of bodies go streaming by, all lifeless, some aflame.
Some even seemed to be beckoning for him to join them. The nightmare continued.
Out beyond the massive debris field, Cronx could see dozens of ships on both sides still engaging each other, still firing madly. In the span of five quick heartbeats, three gigantic battle cruisers blew up, with two more smaller vessels being sucked into the resulting singularities. A few seconds later, the StratoVox flashed by a collision between two culverins. Another terrifying moment passed, then Cronx saw yet another SG battle cruiser explode under a broadside delivered point-blank from a SF warship riding alongside. This was madness, yet Cronx could not look away. His eyes felt like they, too, were on fire. He could hardly see, could hardly determine who was firing at who, or whose ships were being blown up, or whose ships were triumphant. All he could see on the outside were blue flashes and hot green fire.
Around the control bubble nearly everyone had their hands up to the eyes or were turned away from the effects of the blinding battle just outside their bubble. The control teams seemed petrified in stone.
Faces white, drained of blood, none could believe what was happening, like small pieces of madness locked inside one grand madness.
Cronx looked ahead of him again. The main forward weapons officer was still hanging over his array, trying to pick out the shouted orders coming from McLyx above the din and transmit them to his gunners. Then this officer suddenly stopped what he was doing and looked back at Cronx, still pinned to his seat.
"Get ready!" he yelled at Cronx.
An instant later, a bolt of destructo-ray came through the side of the control bubble and blew the forward weapons officer to subatomic bits.
The direct hit continued on through the bridge, killing a dozen more of the steering crew before smashing into the auxiliary communications bubbler. The rush of air leaking out of the perforated enclosure was deafening, even as the control bubble began sealing itself. The deck was suddenly running with bubbler acids, blood, and gruesome body parts. The survivors were stunned. Death had come so fast to their col-leagues, it hadn't even registered yet. McLyx was still screaming out firing orders, but no one was paying attention to him. The StratoVox had been in hundreds of battles in the last half century and had never lost a man. Now it seemed like everyone on the deck was soaked in blood.
Though he'd been cut on his head and face by pieces of broken superglass, Cronx was still somehow able to get his arms and legs moving. He staggered over to the weapons array. The blast hole had sealed completely by now, but it did nothing to clean away the gore that was spread everywhere. Cronx studied the battered weapons array. It was about 80 percent destroyed. Half of the gun crew had been killed as well. But that meant 20 percent of the weapons and six men were still able to operate. He started screaming firing orders, telling the surviving gunners to fire whatever weapons were available. No need to sight targets, he told them, and certainly no need to take aim. Following the orders McLyx was screaming to everybody, he was telling his men to simply fire every gun available, as quickly as possible.
All this made for a bizarre theater of sorts. The StratoVox was coursing its way through the storm of Z-beam fire and growing clouds of wreckage. The tradition of the ship called for the main steering crew — thirteen pilots in all — to reply to any command in unison, like some kind of dark choir. The same was true for the communications teams, the navigation teams, and so on. Each was made up of thirteen members. So whenever McLyx bellowed an order — a maneuver, a call to open fire, a check on his position — among the general chaos of the battle there came a chorus of responses, almost delivered in three-part harmony. When they were attacking poorly armed pirates or rogue mere armies with virtual impunity, these strange songs took on an almost mystical timbre. Now they were simply nonsensical and disturbing.
Added to this were the effects of popping the StratoVox. Whenever a ship slowed down a bit in time, everyone aboard slowed down, too. It was a very unsettling feeling: the human heart literally skipped several beats, leading to a moment of dizziness and disorientation, only to have these effects suddenly go in reverse once the body caught up with the right time frame.
In this moment, everyone on the bridge took on a ghostly glow, similar to the aura that appeared whenever a Starcrasher passed through a star. The StratoVox was now popping so often, the entire flight deck was bathed in the strange radiance. At the same time, the ship continued to maneuver wildly around the blizzard of SF Z-beam fire coming its way. After many long minutes of this, Cronx was not just worried about his stomach turning itself inside out, he found himself fighting to remain conscious.
Then came another blast; this one shot through the bubble top just a few feet above Cronx's head. It tore out what was left of the power tubes feeding his weapons array and kept on going, pinging around the bridge, killing another dozen random souls, including the rest of his gun crew. A few inches either way, and Cronx would have been minus his head.
Bleeding profusely, Cronx fell to the bloody deck and stayed there. He had the distinct feeling that the StratoVox was careening out of control, tumbling through the maze of warships bombarding each other. Blood began filling his eyes. Another blast came in and wiped out the entire communications team. Another took out the acolytes.
The screams of the wounded became horrifying. The ship twisted again, and Cronx slid right up against the superglass bubble, eyes looking out.
That was the only way he was able to see what happened next.
Throughout all this, McLyx was screaming out firing orders. His strategy was to fire all of his guns at once, as the SF ships were so thick around him that just by numbers alone he hoped he would hit something. That the other SG ships flying wildly alongside him had to avoid being a target apparently had little concern for him. This was war, and people died on both sides, and in the end it only mattered how many ships were left and who was controlling those ships.
It was in the midst of all this — the firing, the popping, the bizarre chorus, McLyx screaming, the dead and the dying— that a very bizarre event took place.
Cronx, his head practically stuck to the side of the bubble, was looking down as the swirling fight increased even further in intensity. Suddenly, there was a bright flash of light right below him, but it did not come from an explosion. This was pure white light, and it seemed to tear a piece of space right in two. Before this could register in Cronx's brain, a shape emerged from this flash of light. It was huge and black and full of lights. It was ship. A Starcrasher of sorts, but immediately Cronx knew it was not a combat ship. Not a typical one, anyway.