9
“Raise defenses,” Kris ordered.
“Shields up,” said Sulwan as an umbrella of Smart MetalTM spread out in front of the Wasp. Battleships and cruisers were encased in ice, some of it meters thick, to ablate away the blazing sting of lasers and even kinetic weapons. Small ships like the Wasp, especially when it was wrapped in shipping containers full of scientists, Marines, and other gear could hardly use the ice defense.
The rotating umbrella of Smart MetalTM, especially if it was angled to the threat axis, not only provided protection but also gave the Wasp a chance to hide behind it.
Where, exactly, was the Wasp with respect to the spinning parasol?
Guess.
Meanwhile, Kris’s ship had four 24-inch pulse lasers ready to strike out with a sting of her own.
Slipping out farther to the left of the Wasp, the Intrepid deployed her own protection.
Ahead of them, the unknown continued to close.
“How fast is that sucker accelerating?” Captain Drago asked.
“Three-point-five, no three-point-eight gees, sir,” the chief reported.
“Can you get us a picture of it?” the captain asked.
“I got one as it launched, but the thing is spraying something into the space all around it now.” The chief tapped his board, and a small window opened on the main screen. It showed a series of spheres balanced on rocket fire.
“Fusion rockets?” Kris asked.
“I would guess so, from their temperature,” the chief said. “But I’m getting next to nothing from my electronic readouts.
“Nelly, hail it. Try every language we know,” Kris said. “Say ‘We come in peace,’ for starts.”
“Doing it, Kris.”
While Nelly tried to open a conversation, the ship continued to close the distance, eating up the kilometers.
“Is it going to try to ram us?” Sulwan asked.
“Get ready to take evasive action,” Captain Drago ordered. “Don’t do anything yet. It’s on a steady course. Let’s not juggle its elbow.”
The three ships closed. Nelly tried sending numbers to see if they would talk math back to her.
Then the thing hit them with a laser.
The spinning parasol did its job, rotating more Smart Metal TM into the vacancy as fast as the laser could make the hole. When the power hit ended, the parasol was still there. Nelly quickly patched it up, but the shield out there spinning was several meters smaller across.
“Ouch,” the chief said.
“That was not nice,” the captain agreed.
“Locked and loaded,” Kris said. “I think Nelly and I can graze it through all the gunk it’s pumping into the space around it.”
“Do it,” the captain said.
“Nelly, let’s open the largest sphere to space. Just a quick cut,” Kris said, moving the crosshairs on her board to show exactly where she wanted to hit the stranger.
Nelly put a red dot on Kris’s target. With sincere regrets for starting the next alien war, Kris closed the firing switch for Laser 1.
On the screen, a laser reached out for the alien.
On Kris’s board, an outside camera followed the shot. There, at least, the crud around the ship gave them something for the laser to relate to. A red beam cut right where Kris wanted.
One sphere took the hit along the top of its curve.
The alien didn’t slow. It just kept coming.
“Hit it again,” Captain Drago said. “Aim for the engines.”
“Already setting up for it,” Kris said, and moved her crosshairs aft.
Before Nelly could cover the target with a dot, the alien shot a second time.
Once again, the shield did its job.
“We can’t take many more like that,” Sulwan reported.
“Let’s see how good they are at damage control,” Kris said as she punched Laser 2.
On the main screen, and on Kris’s view, a red beam reached out for the aft end of the alien ship—and sliced right through it.
Behind it, the glow of the rocket motors sputtered, the ship wobbled on its tower of fire.
“I got ’em,” Kris said.
Then the spheres of the ship rippled as an explosion ran its full length, from bow to stern. Huge chunks of the different spheres flew in all directions.
Kris had seen ships die violent deaths. It was not something she ever wanted to get used to. But this explosion looked very different from any of the other ones.
“Chief, talk to me about what just happened. Professor mFumbo, what can your experts report? Was that a reactorcontainment failure?”
“I don’t think so, Kris,” the professor reported. “My experts here say that was some kind of chemical explosion. We’re running our high-speed cameras back over it. I can tell you more in a few minutes, but the explosion doesn’t appear to have been initiated in the last sphere where you hit it. Rather, it started at the opposite end of the ship and moved aft.”
Kris nodded. “That was what it looked like to me, as well. Let me know as much as you can as soon as you can.”
“This is interesting,” the chief said.
“Everything is interesting,” Kris said. “What’s making your bunny jump?”
“The moon. That hot spot where the ship just launched from. It just got very hot. Explosive hot. Whatever they were doing there, I think someone just blew up all the evidence. And unless I’m very mistaken, they used the exact same sort of explosives on the moon as they did on the ship.”
“Yes,” Kris said. “How very interesting.”