Larry and Curly struck the field together, exploding into light and debris. At this point low orbit would be filled with too much debris to navigate, and the Dastasji’s own shields were struggling to divert the pieces of shrapnel. The planetary forcefield glowed white-hot, illuminating space as though it were a newly born star. The field was bleeding heat as it dissipated the energy of the impacts, and there was no question that it would easily recover before the final impact.
“Fuckin’ Christ, that thing’s still okay?” Adrian exclaimed. “What’ll it take?”
“Asteroid Shemp is still inbound,” Trix reported.
“*Not* what I asked, Trix,” Adrian growled. “Will it be enough to take it down?”
It was Artiz who answered. “No. The forcefield was nearly overpowered by those three impacts, but it is recovering quickly. The power requirements must be enormous…”
“Now is probably a bad time to mention that I’m detecting several additional energy build-ups on the surface,” Trix ventured. “I don’t know if they’re weapons.”
Weapons or not, they weren’t likely to mean good things for the crew of the Dastasji.
Adrian stared at the screen in horror. “Goddamn… hit that fucking thing with everything we’ve got! Maybe we can slow down the recovery time just enough to let Shemp punch through.”
It was a desperate strategy, without even a shred of planning or science, but it was about the only thing they had left. Trix knew the probability of success was in the single digits at this point, but she kept that information to herself and did as she’d been told. The warship’s guns powered up and began pounding away at the forcefield with an endless barrage of zheron energy. It had the desired effect of slowing down the recovery, but even then it wasn’t likely to be enough. Something else had to happen.
“If we can’t beat this fucking thing here, we’re not going to have another chance,” Adrian told the rest of the crew on the command deck. “What other options do we have? Artiz, should we use one of my bombs?”
“No!” Artiz replied, almost shouting. He looked aghast at the very suggestion. “I mean, we are not quite that desperate yet, Shiplord. We should first consider possible weakpoints to this forcefield.”
“We’ll be considering it for a long time,” Trix replied flatly. “Right now we cannot damage the forcefield enough to prevent it from stopping Shemp as well. It looks as though there are six power sources feeding the forcefield, placed at equidistant locations around the equator. They’ve each got to be using the same kind of reactor that served the Zhadersil.”
“Well, that’s *bad*,” said Adrian, grossly understating the fact. “Unless… Artiz, this ship has some kind of gun that can kill one of those, right?”
“Normally, yes,” Artiz confirmed with a nod. “At the moment the quantum instability prohibits its use, and the strength of that forcefield would undoubtedly produce interference.”
“Trix, get it powered up anyway,” Adrian ordered. “Target the places you talked about. How long before Shemp crashes the party?”
“Just under a count of… thirty,” Trix estimated, and began feeding power to the weapon.
“Shiplord,” Artiz pressed, “this simply will not—”
Adrian whirled to face him with hard eyes. “I’m going to need you to shut the fuck up and get those quantum stabilisers ready. That’s your job right now.”
Artiz hesitated, and Trix stepped in. “Firing all probes.”
The original plan to deploy the stabilisers had been to launch probes into a pre-configured pattern designed to maximise the effect. It would create a tunnel the ship could comfortably travel through. That design decision now seemed incredibly lucky. “Probes away.”
Perhaps realising that he was at risk of being labelled useless, Artiz quickly regained his composure. “The previous configuration will not be optimal. I will direct them into a more suitable pattern, although it cannot be perfect.”
Adrian nodded his confirmation. “Trix, how long to impact?”
The asteroid was now on its final approach. “Counting down now… ten… nine…”
“Probes in position,” Artiz announced.
Trix continued her countdown. “Eight… seven… six…”
“Focusing cannonade on projected impact point,” Laphor announced, making the targeting change.
“Five… four… three…” Trix continued.
“Focal point weakening,” Laphor reported.
“Two… one… impact,” Trix finished as the flash of light swept across the field.
“Forcefield took most of the hit,” said Artiz, “but some damage reached the surface. It seems that the field cannot stabilise under the zheron cannonade.”
“Some good news at least,” grunted Adrian, “but will it be enough? How are those stabilisers coming along?”
“Initial shock has been delivered,” Trix reported. “We should see results in a moment.”
Restoring the regular quantum field was neither a permanent nor instantaneous process. The initial shock triggered a counter-effect which would keep an area stable for a short time. With the trigger fired, things were now sliding back in the correct direction. The effect was most significant in the tunnel of space between the planet and the Dastasji. This was the only cue Trix needed to fire the weapon.
“Fire when ready!” Adrian ordered, well and truly after the fact. There were few benefits to being turned into a digital mind, but speed-of-thought was one of them.
“Firing,” Trix lied; it wasn’t as though anyone would notice she’d pre-empted the command.
“Shiplord,” Artiz interjected, “we should strongly consider a rapid departure.”
Adrian frowned. “No, not before we—”
Artiz hadn’t had time to fully explain himself, but Trix was able to play catch-up in a hurry. Fast enough to fire up the warp drives and drop the Dastasji into the relative safety of a warp field. Not to flee, but to weather the storm.
She was barely in time. The disturbance to the warp field was so profound that it unravelled in an instant, dropping them back into normal space in the wake of disaster.
“—make sure…” Adrian trailed off, his sentence hardly interrupted by the process. Each and every one of them was now staring at the main viewscreen.
The planet was still there in the technical sense, although in practice that would be an ambitious argument. The crust and mantle had been stripped by the explosion, and all debris had been swept away in the explosion. What remained was nothing more than a cracked iron core bleeding magma into the void.
“I think we have made sure,” Artiz noted, and switched the display to the distant moon of Agwar. “But now there is another problem.”
The moon hung there as a thin wave of light rapidly approached it. The consequences played out before Trix had time to run predictions. The wave touched the moon, searing its barren surface, and then… it shattered.
There was stunned silence on the command deck.
Laphor was the first to ask the question on everyone’s lips. “What just happened?”
“Three things,” Artiz replied. “The first was the debris field moving at a considerable fraction of the speed of light. No less than you would expect after six Cradles detonated at the same time. That and the intense gamma burst was enough to blast the surface to a smooth finish.”
“That makes two things,” Laphor counted. “Neither is really a problem for us, though.”
“The third item is the ridiculous gravity pulse,” said Artiz. “Usually these things have some form of gradient, and large rigid bodies do not splinter under the tidal forces. What you managed to produce was more like a gravity *wall*. I would not expect any planet in this system to be entirely unscathed.”
“Any risk to us?” Adrian asked.
“Oh, yes,” said Artiz, icily. “We cannot warp through it until it loses sufficient power. And for *that*, Shiplord, we will need more time than our supplies permit.”
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End of Chapter