Published via Ecency

This post is inspired by a writing prompt in the Worldbuilding Community - Worldbuilding Prompt #562 - Surgical precision, which I've thoroughly twisted and abused to get it and my ongoing saga to work together.

It's the next part of the space opera tale of Alex Deroma. Enjoy !

"Fast Attack Cruiser Radio-Silence-Is-A-Blessing, you are the tip of the spear. You won the fleet gunnery competition. Now prove you can do it under pressure."

Captain Grinard twitched the corner of her mouth as she heard the message from the flagship. It was somewhere between a frown and a wry smile. She'd worked her misfits into a harmonious crew. They were the best shots in the fleet. She'd had to fight hard to get Senior Gunner Narobi assigned to her.

But "under pressure" was quite possibly the most ridiculous understatement she'd ever heard.

They were deep in Confed space, and despite the massive losses the enemy had suffered at Tharwell, resistance to the incursion they'd begun three days ago was stiffening.

They were the lead ship in the formation of Alexandra's Avengers, the elite formation within the 3275-A Battle Corps. One hundred space craft packed with all the most insubordinate, troublesome, and imaginative crew in the whole Empire.

The Avengers were packed into a tight narrow cone behind them. Behind the Avengers was Third Legion, commanded by Trass Yalandri, newly promoted on the sudden and very unexpected death of the previous commander. The other four legions were spread out like four petals behind the spiky stamen of the Avengers and Third Legion.

Right behind Grinard's ship was the massive battleship Moonfall, flagship of Admiral Alex Deroma. She wasn't sure if this filled her with confidence or not but she felt a quiet pride that her ship was considered hot enough to bump the Admiral's ship out of pole position.

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"Five minutes, Radio-Silence. Then you're up."

The Admiral's voice over Battlenet was calm and clipped, despite the chaos that filled Grinard's Holotac display. The Battle Corps was driving forward through a disorganised but increasingly dense scatter of enemy formations, concentrated forward fire from the Avengers and Third Legion clearing a path through them.

The other four legions were dealing with the remains of hostile units which had been batted aside. But casualties were increasing, and the enemy were clearly getting desperate.

In front of the attacking Imperial fleet was the grey sphere of a small world. Comms intercepts had told them it was Margal VI, a world held by the Slavers as an agricultural planet.

But that wasn't their target. Grinard's target was a small artificial satellite in a close orbit around the planet. She could see it in her display, or rather a symbol representing it. Just a rectangular shape. But the inside of that rectangle was.... elsewhere.

The Confeds were trying to re-open the Nexus Grid thousands of years after the Empire had blasted it closed. If they succeeded, they would be able to instantly transport armies, machines and space fleets from one portal to any other. An advantage they couldn't be allowed to keep.

"Two minutes."

Grinard shook her head, trying to will a strand of grey hair back into place behind the visor of her helmet. It wasn't moving, it was driving her mad, and she promised herself she'd go to the ship's barber and get her head shaved if they came out of this in one piece.

"Okay Narobi," she called across the Command Deck, "Time to earn your pay. All you have to do is toss an Anti-Nilton Bomb into that portal."

Narobi grinned evilly. "What, you mean put my one and only bomb that's the size of a boarding shuttle, with the flight characteristics of half a brick, through that portal that's only just big enough for a heavy cruiser, inside that planet's gravity well, at a range of half a million klicks ? No problem. I do it a dozen times before breakfast each day, just for practice."

Grinard barked a laugh. Narobi was spiky and sarcastic, but she was also an incredible shot.

That was when the ship lurched to the right sharply. A sound like a hammer-blow rung through the vessel, and alarm lights lit up on every control panel. They'd been side-swiped by the debris of a shattered Slaver ship.

"What the ! Helm, steady us. Get us back on target. NOW."

The helmsman just nodded, stabbing buttons and controls with intense focus. Narobi was swearing and cursing under her breath.

"Don't fucking do that to me. I'm trying to aim a nova bomb, don't need any crap like that."

"One minute, Narobi. You can do this, I have every confidence in you." Grinard tried to sound as calm and collected as the Admiral had. Despite several decades head-start, she was not sure she pulled it off as convincingly.

"Thirty seconds."

"Ten seconds."

Narobi took over the count. "Three, two, one. Bomb away. Wonder if it'll hit ?"

She shouldn't have doubted herself. A few seconds later the Holotac display flickered and the symbol for the portal flickered and went out.

That was all the system showed them. But half a million kilometers away the bomb unleashed sub-atomic anti-matter forces that tore the portal apart, cancelling it out instantly and shredding whatever was waiting on it's far side. A flash of light, an instant singularity that collapsed in on itself and cancelled out itself and every piece of matter for a thousand miles.

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The ship clanged again, and the deck tilted at a crazy angle. Another impact.

"Captain... " the helmsman's face was white with shock. He hit a button and a wall-sized screen showed what he'd seen on his instruments.

In front of them was the battleship Moonfall. The Battle Corps flagship. Tumbling out of control. Falling towards Margal VI. Atmosphere was burning out of her, and the planet's atmosphere was starting to burn around her. Bodies and debris were tumbling away from her. Most of the few escape pods being launched were just falling unpowered towards the planet's cloud-covered surface.

Then the ship spun around, and they saw. Her front third was smashed in. The wrecked Slaver vessel that had glanced off the Radio-Silence had hit her head on, with such a combined velocity that defence screens and hull armour had been useless, and the red hot wreckage had torn a gaping wound as it buried itself in the heart of the doomed ship.

Captain Grinard and her crew could only look on in horror as the Admiral's ship fell burning onto the planet. It would take a miracle for anyone to survive that.

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