“Fight, or flight?”

***Outer Rim***

***Levvi Batlin***

The ship shudders once more under the nearby impact of an antimatter warhead, causing all sorts of radiation warnings to go off. I am forced to hold onto the table which projects the tactical situation in order to avoid falling, and I don’t like what I see.

“How are they doing this!? We should be out of missile range!”

Another torpedo pops up out nowhere, accompanied by a little flash of radiation. It's just a few thousand clicks away and hurls itself at us, burning out its fusion drive in a split second, bridging the distance in seconds. It homes in on our position and is taken down just in time by our automatic missile defence, a network of railguns which covers the whole ship.

We didn’t get so lucky the first time, and a large scar in my flagship’s hull is proof of that.

The Galen is twenty kilometres in length and harnesses the power of a small singularity. The armour is over two metres thick, but despite that, it’s only thanks to our powerful electromagnetic shields that we are still in one piece. They caused the antimatter warhead to activate before it came in contact with our hull.

There is no way to tell what would have happened if the hit had destabilized our core.

Another impact shakes the ship and I almost fall as the entire floor rocks beneath me.

“Antimatter torpedoes with miniaturized warp engines!” One of my officers calls out. “They warp them in close to us, and then they automatically pick a target and go for the kill with normal fusion engines! It doesn’t matter that we are hiding behind the planet.”

“But that’s impossible!” I reply, refusing to believe it. “Warp engines don’t work reliably that close to a planet, and they are right next to a star!”

“Not close enough to have the gravitational force interfere that much,” Assistant announces helpfully. “It’s likely that the miniature warp engines are disposable devices, intended to be activated only once. The launching system calibrates and charges the emitters, which is much easier than to wrap a whole ship inside a warp field. It’s even possible that they are using gravity-tech to compensate for the star’s interference, which wouldn’t take that many resources, taking the size of the devices into account.

“The real problem lies in the necessary mathematics and the miniaturization of the warp emitters. They really don’t care whether the warp-bubble collapses after a few seconds, which results in a lethal amount of radiation - possibly tearing the device apart. In fact, I observe a large amount of exit-flashes which doesn’t correspond the lower number of torpedoes attacking us. Their success rate lies at approximately sixty-seven percent.”

“That’s still enough to give us a beating! How many of these things to they have?” an advisor whines. But he has a point. They could have stockpiled thousands of these torpedoes.

“It doesn’t matter, we are almost done with the planet. Have the whole fleet concentrate their weapons on a single spot and crack open the crust, which will result in a supervolcano. It will have the same effect as sending them into a nuclear winter.”

“Sir...” Someone points above us and enlarges the representation of the planet.

The planet’s surface lost its greenish-blue appearance, and is now a dark and grey wasteland. I gape in awe at the apocalyptic scene, not understanding how this is possible. Yes, we have a few thousand ships in orbit, but there is no way to do that much damage in so little time. Our bombardment started only a few minutes ago, just enough time to lay waste to the larger cities.

This is a world which was entirely stripped of its ecosystem!

As I watch, I realize that the surface is moving, the black and grey substance is floating towards several points, creating a regular square-shaped web of monolithic spires, which rise like mountains, reaching up into space. The process is slow but fast enough to get an idea where this is going.

“The entire planet’s biosphere just dissolved two minutes after we begun our bombardment! They… they must have infected it with some kind of nano-plague.”

I pale at the mention of a nano-plague. Our analysts always warned me loudly and regularly that the humans are able to create weapons of that type. Microscopic machines with the ability to self-replicate – and possibly to do more than that. Now they are reforming the planet’s surface and ecosystem into something else, building something.

So far, the humans never used their technology to its full potential. The G.S. could only speculate on the reason, whether it was a moral, social, or religious. But this recent offshoot of humanity clearly has no such qualms and took off the gloves – so to speak.

“Can we incinerate the whole planet?” I ask, even as the ship is shaken by yet another explosion, the warhead having come entirely too close for me to feel comfortable. It's as if I am dancing on my toes while my opponent leisurely throws one threat after the other at us. What will be next?

Assistant answers the question while announcing yet another problem. “Positive, but it would take too much time. Whatever the plague is building, it’s reforming as soon as our ships shoot it down. Additionally, I register incoming countermeasures from the planet. They are rapidly increasing in number. Mostly high energy lasers, which will force us to leave orbit in a few minutes. The rate at which the nano-plague is building equipment is phenomenal, but I also register that it’s slowing down – probably because it’s using up readily available energy. Sadly, that won’t matter.”

“Why not?” One of my generals asks.

“The Demon fleet is moving towards us, probably to stop us from bombarding the planet to smithereens. If it were only for the planet, I would give us a decent chance at sterilizing the surface, but the inbound fleet will arrive in half an hour, reducing our chances at success to zero.”

I snap my head up, looking at the ceiling. “How is that possible!? Their fleet is too far away to reach us in time. Nobody can cover ten lightminutes in half an hour without using warp-technology.” And if they were warping their ships in despite the risks, they would already be here.

“Correct, but we already confirmed that some of their largest colony ships utilize some kind of gravity propulsion.” Assistant takes the liberty to call up a large image of a powerful telescope, giving us the pixilated and distorted image of a large, grey asteroid. It’s much like watching something through a magnifying lens.

“Gravity technology is based on using the space-distorting effect of warp-emitters. But instead of creating a spacetime bubble around the ship, they are used to project a field in front of the ship, bending only space and creating artificial gravity. The ship is then, basically, falling towards the gravity field. It’s the first step to an artificial singularity. Their largest colony ships formed up to create a massive gravity distortion and are now ‘riding’ it towards us. The smaller ships are following, using the gravity distortion of the lead-ships.”

“But creating such a massive gravitational field could imbalance the whole star-system. At the very least, this planet will be thrown out of its orbit if they come too close!” a science officer warns.

“That’s correct, but I doubt that our opponents are concerned with preserving this planetary system’s integrity.” Assistant’s emotionless voice sounds as it does always, but I can’t help but think that there is a small amount of sarcasm mixed in with the answer.

“That doesn’t matter.” I try to rally my people. “We have to get the initiative back! Think of what’s important right now. We need evasive options to avoid their gravity distortion. Our fleet still outnumbers them significantly, and we clearly have an advantage when they are in range of our weapons. The first encounter confirmed that. Steer clear of that planet and find me a way to engage them on our terms. If they are finally done poking us with their long-range tricks, then I want to show them that we aren’t to mess with.”

If they are coming towards us, then that means that they will lose the advantage of their solar-weapon. They will also be in range of our own weaponry and I am very confident that we can win any engagement of that type.

“We have another problem,” Assistant’s voice drones through the room, sounding a little smug.

“What? And what’s wrong with you, Assistant? Your voice sounds different, like it’s carrying emotion. Check your systems!”

“That’s what I am currently doing. Unfortunately, it seems like our ship was infiltrated by the enemy. I am engaged in electromagnetic warfare, and some of my systems are compromised.”

“What!? Why didn’t you inform us?” I call out.

“Because up until now the incident seemed like it was under control, and only two individuals made themselves known. It didn’t seem like distracting you with that knowledge would have any impact on the overall outcome of the tactical situation. Although, I have to inform you that some of your advisers, Semdal, Fri, and Ouluk, perished when the infiltrators made themselves known. Afterwards, they immediately fled the ship and used a cloaked vessel to escape. Because of the strong radiation from the solar-weapon, it was impossible to follow them.”

My advisers are dead!? “Was that their goal? Why would they send an assassination team to kill my advisers!?” It makes no sense. They somehow made it onto my flagship without anyone knowing. Then a dreadful thought occurs to me. “Wouldn’t it be much simpler to place a nuke on the ship?”

“That’s why it became necessary to announce the situation to you. It appears that the infiltrators did indeed leave behind a little gift. Our ventilation system is overrun with little, self-replicating robots. They are attacking power lines and computer cores, generally creating as much mayhem as possible. As it appears, I am also under attack, but my firewalls are holding. Some of my functions are impeded, but I am operational. My current estimation is that their target was Ouluk, as he has a history with the humans.

“Their secondary goal, to impair our command structure by gaining access to our network. The security system is holding up, but we are being flooded by mnemonic worms and adaptive viruses. I highly recommend raising the fleet’s network safety by isolating each ship’s computer cores and reducing communication to simplified messages which hold no risk of spreading the attack.”

“Then do it!” I hiss out between my teeth. “Do we have to abandon ship?”

“I detected the situation early enough and activated countermeasures, so there should be time. Unfortunately, the replication units come in several sizes, so it’s hard to root them out of our systems, almost impossible without drastic measures. Though it will take several hours until we are forced to choose between sterilizing the ship, or abandoning it.”

“Concentrate your efforts on the command module, then separate us from the rest of the ship. Instruct a ship that’s not compromised to pick us up and use the battle platform as a spearhead against the attackers.” I turn to the rest of my command staff. “Gentlemen, we are needed to oversee this engagement, so let’s do our jobs while the rest of the ship does theirs.”