“Situation?” Captain Singh asked as he rushed onto the bridge and took the captain’s chair.

Lt. Commander Klyker looked up from his post. “A ship just appeared near the orbit of the seventh planet. It will be on our position in the next fifteen minutes at its current pace.”

Samir turned to the man. “Appeared?”

This time, it was Dr. Terse who answered. She broke away from several computers and pulled the readings from the probes on the holographic wall. “None of the long range probes detected anything. One moment nothing was there and the next…” She furrowed her eyes.

Captain Singh settled into his chair. So it’s likely whatever they use for FTL can bypass our sensors. He was hoping for more time. More advance warning. But it appeared fate was still dealing him short hands.

“How many people do we have on the Andromedan vessel?” Singh asked, glancing over his shoulder to Dr. Terese.

She shook her head. “Too many to evacuate to the Hyperion in time.”

Singh ran the calculation in his head. If the approaching vessel intended to destroy the Adromedan ship, then it might be safer to get their personnel on shuttles and have them fly to the other side of the star system. Of course, it would leave them all sitting ducks. There was no telling what this newcomer would do. And no telling if there are more on the way.

“Order the crew aboard the derelict to take positions in the shuttles. Don’t launch unless absolutely necessary,” he finally spoke.

Ultimately, being shielded was better than sitting out in the open. They would have to rely upon the Andromedan’s particle technology should the derelict come under fire. As for the Hyperion…

“Take us towards the approaching vessel,” Singh ordered. “If we get into a fight, I want it as far away from the derelict as possible.”

There was a commotion behind him. Samir looked back to see Chief Helmsman Miles Kieth limping down the hallway with an arm draped over a marine supporting him. One of the legs of his trousers had been ripped off, revealing a leg coated in blood. Some sealant had been applied to what looked like a bullet wound.

“What on—“

“Bullet discharge,” Miles quickly explained as the marine helped him to the pilot’s chair.

Unbluckeling him, and nearly shoving the other man out of the chair, Miles collapsed on the seat, breathing heavily. A medic quickly came behind Singh.

“Captain, I tried to take him to the infirmary, but he refused.”

“Injured or not, I’m still your best pilot.” Miles shot back, and he looked straight at Singh. “You need me, Captain.”

There was a moment of confusion on the bridge as the other pilot get back up and began to argue. Klyker stood up, about to give his own order, while Dr. Terese watched silently as the situation played out. Samir gritted his teeth. It was against protocol for injured crewman to perform their duties, but the longer they argued, the more time they wasted.

“Let the man take his post.” Samir loudly shut down the argument. “Return to your stations, all of you! Chief Helmsman, take us forward.”

Both the marine and the medic quickly rushed off the bridge while the other pilot quickly assumed another post.

Miles Kieth nodded and put his hands on the controls. There was a shift in the ship as the gravity drives pulled it away from the derelict and to the new vessel. Samir activated his seat buckling, and two straps of leather slid over his chest and locked him to the chair.

“Commander Terese, play our preprogrammed greeting. I don’t want to waste time hailing them.”

She nodded and typed on her computer.

“Klyker, have our scans come back?”

It was protocol to send out automatic scans every few minutes. The initial ping of heat signature was always the fastest, but complex scans were slower. Due to the sheer size of space and even while enhanced, they required a few more minutes to bounce off and come back.

“Getting them now, sir.”

“Pull them up.”

The holographic wall changed towards a view of space with a clear view of the new vessel. There was an audible gasp from the room as all fell in shocked silence at the image.

What was displayed on the screen was a spaceship Samir had never seen the likes of before. There were multiple parts of a concrete exoskeleton which framed the sleek vessel and sank into the interior structure. He could see engines of a much similar design to the derelict and several other devices, which they had identified as communication and weapon systems. But the interior—that was exposed to space. Inside was a substructure composed of grey liquid which formed complicated shapes and churned in patterns he couldn’t begin to describe.

It was like someone had taken a spaceship and hollowed it out to its most essential components. Tossing out everything human and replaced with… he couldn’t begin to understand what that was.

“I’m not detecting any atmosphere. There aren’t any pressurized compartments. The interior temperature on that ship reads as fifty-three celsius.” Dr. Terese looked as though her breath was taken away. She read the information with an excitement that Samir hadn’t seen since they got the first readings from the derelict vessel.

“Any readings on how they’re moving?” Samir asked. “They don’t seem to be using conventional propulsion methods.”

“I’m having some teams on the Hyperion taking a look, but it’s going to take a while to sort through all the data.”

“Captain,” Miles spoke up. “They’re slowing down.”

At least they have that courtesy. He thought. Maybe there was a chance that this ship might not have been linked to the damage on the derelict. Or perhaps there was some justification for it. Who knows, they had just assumed that the inhabitants of the Andromedan vessel were victims. Perhaps the crew of the derelict were war criminals on the run. Samir hoped for that. It would’ve resolved the situation so nicely.

“Slow down too. Let’s allow them to make the first move,” Singh ordered. “Raise gravity shields. I don’t want to take any chances.”

As they did, the holographic projection became fuzzy and distorted. Gravitational shielding bent the fabric of space so that even light was diverted. As a result, while they were mostly protected from any outside force, including radiation, they also had little ability to survey the outside. Only a few tiny chinks were allowed for sensors to penetrate through. Firing weapons also required shutting the fields off in momentary windows.

Samir brought up a personal projection of a map near his chair. The two dots of the vessels slowly converged. Both slowing down until they came to a complete stop nearly two hundred thousand kilometers from each other.

“Any transmissions from the vessel?” he asked Dr. Terese.

“No.”

Samir wiped the sweat off his brow. Whatever was just outside the ship was completely alien in nature. There was no telling how they would act. I’ve not shown any hostility. He privately warned them. Whatever happens next it depends on you.

He typed into his comm. “Amos, I need to know, are the gravity drives ready for weaponized deployment?”

A short second later, the Chief Engineer responded. “They are fully functional, Captain. Charging is at fifty percent.”

Samir glanced up at the fuzzy image of the ship. Don’t make me do this. Stand down. Contact us. Please. There was no describing how badly he wanted to talk things out. To finally understand what had happened to the derelict. To extend peaceful relations to a new galaxy. I beg you, don’t make me start a war.

The vessel sat there unmoving. Whatever that liquid was, it churned and boiled and formed inside the exoskeleton. What are you? Captain Singh thought. From Dr. Terese’s report of what she saw in the impact crater, the liquid was a remarkable match. The coloration was almost identical.

Samir blinked, and he noticed the vessel began to move again towards them. This time at a quickened pace. Don’t. He begged them. War wasn’t the only choice. They could talk this out. They could negotiate. There were a thousand options. Just don’t attack. Please, just give me any excuse.

“Sir! I’m registering several objects detach from the ship!” Miles shouted on the bridge.

Samir closed his eyes in grief. “Fire at will.”

The Hyperion listed forward and blazed. Silent red beams sprang forth through the darkness and hit the sleek vessel. The red fire halted just a short distance from the ship, yellow fields stopping them from cutting through the hull. Other lasers tracked the moving objects, grey specks that had been fired from the other ship. They destroyed them one by one before they could even reach the Hyperion.

The gravity shield took hold again and silence took the holographic display. On the other side of the Hyperion, the missiles were launching. Over a hundred sleek cylinders fired off into the night. Redirecting towards their target, they burned forward towards the enemy. Samir watched as their fuzzy forms burst ineffectively upon the vessel.

“Amos!” Samir bellowed. “The gravity drives!”

“Sixty-four percent, sir! I still need a little more time!”

Samir took a deep breath and straightened himself in the chair. He calmed himself and his expression turned cold. Looking towards his personal display, he watched the two dots begin to close.

“Fifty-three degrees off the left axis,” he ordered.

Miles followed the order to a tee. The ship turned, its broadside facing the enemy vessel. Klyker was more than trained enough to understand the maneuver. The bridge almost acted in unison as the Hyperion passed just within ten thousand kilometers of the enemy vessel.

The shield dropped for only a second. In that time, half a hundred beams of blinding red light burned through the void. They hit upon the particle shield, scorching at temperatures hotter than the sun. Then, the shield closed again and the walls of reality closed them off again. Samir suddenly noticed over a dozen signatures hitting their own shield.

What’s this? He noted the impacts. The larger objects detected had all been eliminated, but the vessel had fired a number of smaller projectiles as well. They were almost the size of a person each. Insignificant against the vast scale of space, so much so that they barely registered on the Hyperion’s sensors even without the shields.

It didn’t matter in the end, though. They were all grabbed by the sudden twist of gravity and thrown at impossible speeds at the slant of the shield. None ever made it close to the hull of the Hyperion.

“Amos!”

“Eighty-three percent! We’re rushing as much as we can, Captain!”

“Jump at one-hundred and twenty degrees!” Samir ordered.

The ship suddenly lurched at speeds so fast that the inertia dampening was momentarily overwhelmed. Singh felt the force of the Hyperion pull at him in his chair as the ship rocketed towards the enemy vessel.

The gravitational bubble split apart into unstable wakes of force, which spread across the space and hurled themselves into the vacuum. They found themselves directly under the enemy ship, just a scant one thousand kilometers away.

Klyker didn’t even need the order from the Captain. A barrage of missiles burst forth from the Hyperion and their gravity drives propelled them as faster than light speeds. Their explosive force was so powerful that the kinetic force far outweighed a nuclear bomb.

Samir watched as the enemy vessel was overcome in a ball of blinding light as the missiles made impact. Miles dragged the Hyperion away from the ensuing explosion as it spread out in all directions. They sped away until they reached a safe distance.

Captain Singh waited as the explosion radiated outwards. He didn’t believe for a second that the vessel was destroyed, but hopefully it would buy them time. From Dr. Terese’s report, the Andromedan derelict had survived antimatter level damage. If that was true, then these particle fields expended little energy against concussive force. Much like gravitational shielding, they could take hits all day with minimal loss of energy.

But the difference was even the best of gravity drives could only work so well. There were inefficiencies with the best of their cores. The Hyperion had been designed for speed, so even more so. About two percent of the spaceship was vulnerable to attack at any given time. Traditional warfare was about calculating where those areas were. Lasers could pinpoint and cut through those small gaps of vulnerability at the speed of light. Once enough damage was inflicted, missiles could usually finish the job.

However, Samir suspected particle shields didn’t have those weaknesses. They provided complete protection, and it was clear that weapons could be fired through them. In which case, they should have the upper hand. He thought. There was no reason why the Hyperion should be doing this well. Unless they weren’t trying to kill us.

He barely had time to look as the enemy vessel burst out of the explosion, heading right towards the Hyperion. Another volley of projectiles scattered forward. Miles reacted faster than Samir had time to draw the breath. The Hyperion lurched to the side, narrowly avoiding most of the fire. Those that did it make were quickly thrown away by impossible force.

“Three hundred—“ Samir didn’t even have time to give the order as several of the smaller projectiles suddenly diverted course at full speed. Turning from their normal vectors, they snapped in a new direction. Not even Miles could pull the ship away as they darted towards the gravity shield.

Samir opened his mouth and half a dozen impacts hit the ship, bypassing the gravity shield all together. They found the gaps! He privately cursed. Battles often took hours, but that they did it so easily…

“Amos!” he shouted. “We’re out of time!”

“Ready!” the engineer yelled back.

“Do it now!”

Reality itself screamed as space dust was compressed into an impossible density. The gravitational forces required meant that the Hyperion could only afford one or two charges before losing power altogether. Samir saw spacetime distort and rip apart on the holographic projection. The area just next to the enemy ship condensed as a black ball suddenly formed just a few hundred meters off their bow.

Light distorted around it as the ship was dragged inwards. But as it got closer, the ship slowed down as it approached the event horizon of the black hole. Samir watched as the particle shields flared up, but not even that could prevent the sheer gravitational stresses from rending the hull. A blink later and the ship was bending and breaking, but not entirely destroyed.

All the while, the time dilation slowed the ship down as it fell ever closer to the event horizon. Eventually, the enemy craft came to a near stop. Frozen in mid-destruction, the ship would spend the next millennia being ripped apart from the outside view. However, from the inside, only a few seconds would pass before they were swallowed by the black hole.

Samir breathed a sigh of relief and fell back into his chair. The battle was over. Now it was time to assess the damage.

“Captain!” an unidentified voice came over the comms.

Samir made to respond, but a scream howled through the bridge. A noise he couldn’t even begin to describe hissed over the communication system and the comm cut off.

“Sir, I’m getting reports of five intruders aboard the ship!” Lt. Commander quickly shouted.

Intruders? Samir almost couldn’t believe it. The smaller projectiles were barely the size of people. They couldn’t have housed any life support systems—let alone carry a human being safely to the Hyperion. Those shots must’ve impacted several thousand times lethal velocity.

“Confirmed!” Commander Terese echoed. “Three casualties reported. Marines dispatched.”

“Terese, I want you to take the bridge.” Samir stood up.

“Sir?” She stared at him in disbelief.

Samir surveyed the room. “This is first contact, after all. It seems appropriate the Captain should be there. Lt. Commander Klyker, I want you to coordinate the marine teams. Use self-defense when necessary, but I want one taken alive. It’s time we got some answers.”