Dash twitched in horror. He’d seen extensive combat loss, so at some visceral level, he knew. His mind took a second to sync with his instincts, though, and when he spoke, it was in a short, terse bark.
“Sentinel. Report on what I just saw.” Then his voice grew soft. “In detail, if you please.”
It was a testament to the fact that Dash had started to become used to peace that his first thought was terrible accident. One of the station’s reactors had lost containment, or a ship at anchor had exploded, or—but then his instincts asserted themselves again, dread fingers climbing his spine in an unwelcome dance.
“The object that passed through the Black Gate—commonality of usage seems to suggest that’s now the best name for it—decelerated from trans-light velocity in the system where Assembly Prime was located,” Sentinel said.
As she spoke, a still image replaced the expanding cloud of debris. It showed a sleek, blurred object, utterly black, passing through the frame, part of it silhouetted against the gleaming background of one of Assembly Prime’s radiating spokes.
“This was zero point three seconds before the object detonated,” Sentinel went on. “When it did, it released an omnidirectional x-ray pulse of extreme power, which was sufficient to vaporize most of the facility.”
Dash kept staring at the blurred, dark object, and the instincts he’d thought dormant flared to life. The man he had been only moments earlier—a man who could worry about things like fishing, laughter, and growing old—vanished.
Dash was filled with his former self, a being crafted from outrage, smearing into hatred so incandescent his heart began to flutter, skin dotted with sweat as the anger took hold and burned.
“How many people did we lose?” Dash asked, his voice deathly soft.
“There were two hundred and forty-one personnel stationed at Assembly Prime. Traffic control rosters indicate another thirty-four personnel crewing four ships being serviced there, including the Realm’s light cruiser Striker.” Sentinel paused. “Our losses are total, Dash. However, the command cruiser Sabretooth was scheduled to arrive there tomorrow for a refit of her power distribution network. We avoided some losses due to the ship not being present. This is no consolation, I know.”
“No, it isn’t,” Dash growled, then fell silent, choosing his next words with great care. “I thought we were past this shit.”
“Death?” Sentinel asked.
“No. War. This isn’t death. This is—” He inhaled, then let the breath trickle out, carrying his rage away like a falling tide. “It’s like every other time the Golden hit us hard and left us with bodies out there in the black. No recourse but to fight.” He shook his head, clearing it. “Leira, have you seen—?”
“Just did.” She paused, her breathing audible over the channel. “Same shit again?”
Dash, his eyes still fixed on the blurred image of the attacking missile, just nodded. “Yeah. Same.”
“Like it never happened,” Dash said.
“What never happened?” Leira asked.
Dash paused, tasting the word before he spoke it. “Peace.”
Dash listened as Sentinel summarized the analysis done by the AIs, and concluded one grim fact.
It wasn’t much.
“The missile seems to have been heavily stealthed using a refractor field of some form to distort electromagnetic energy around it,” Sentinel said. “The effect of its warhead—a highly energetic burst of x-rays—is clear, but the mechanism for producing it is not. Finally, the nature of its propulsion is entirely unclear. The missile was obviously capable of attaining superluminal velocity, but that is not, of course, possible in real space because of the fundamental constraints of physics. Therefore, its means of propulsion is also unknown.”
Dash eyed the starfield, focusing on the region where the Black Gate should soon appear, which was helpfully outlined by Sentinel as a part of space inscribed into a red circle. “So we know very little, and we don’t have any unexamined data to sift?”
“Correct. We just don’t currently have enough to offer any more substantive conclusions. Anything further would be pure speculation.”
“Was it Golden?” Leira asked. “Could it have been Golden tech?”
“No,” Tybalt replied. “Or, perhaps more correctly, it has none of the characteristics that typify Golden technology. That does not mean it definitively is not of Golden origin.”
“So you can’t rule it out,” Dash said.
“Correct.”
Dash’s attention flicked between the circled region of the starfield and the chrono. Just under two minutes left, and then the Black Gate should appear.
Which led to a gut-wrenching thought. What if it didn’t? What if whoever—or whatever—was responsible for the attack was finished with this particular Gate and opened another one somewhere else? What if they ended up chasing these damned things all over space, desperately trying to keep up—
“Did Assembly Prime have any point-defense systems active?” Leira asked. “Because I didn’t see anything fire at the missile.”
“It was Local Group policy to maintain only twenty-five percent defensive capacity,” Sentinel said. “It was reasoned that no threat would be able to get close enough to their facilities without sufficient warning to bring all defensive systems online.”
“Can I assume Bercale has brought everything up to one hundred percent?” Dash asked.
“Indeed he has. All Cygnus Realm facilities have adopted the highest level of readiness.”
Dash noted the chrono countdown, then turned to focus on the space inside the circle region. It shimmered in dancing curtains of vague light, the pattern just at the limits of his human vision. The Black Gate reappeared, its visible emissions so darkly purple they blurred into ultraviolet.
Right on time.
Dash narrowed his eyes, jaw muscles tight as he considered options. There were precious few, but that made his decision even easier. “Okay, Sentinel. I need a plan for ingress in the next few seconds because we’re about to go find the murderous assholes waiting on the other side.”
“Just . . . just us?” Leira asked. “Benzel and the QRF aren’t too far behind.”
“They can catch up and come through after us. Don’t want to wait. We did enough of that when we were fighting the Golden. These bastards, whoever they are, have already come to us once, and almost three hundred of our people are dead because of it.” Dash gave his head a grim shake. “Not this time. The Archetype and the Swift are as powered up as they’re ever going to be, so we go now. I trust our punch, and I trust the element of surprise.”
“Insertion parameters are calculated,” Sentinel said. “I’d recommend allowing the automation to control the flight through the Gate. The error margins are very small.”
“Do it. And pass all your data to the Orion flight we’ve got on station here, so they can give it to Benzel when he shows up.”
“We’re ready here, Dash,” Leira said.
“Alright. Let’s go, and remember one thing. Fire first. Questions later.”