LOCATION: INTERSTELLAR SPACE

  DATE: 2404

  Thesska wanted to strangle someone, preferably his brother, for how poorly he botched the deployment of the armada, but his brother was already dead. Had that buffoon put someone in command who was capable enough to hold the armada together until he finished his hunt, they wouldn’t be in the situation they were in.

  It was galling to have to flee from the humans, but he knew he made the right choice after the comms from the angry commanders he left behind were silenced. Their deaths would slow his progress, but they had provided him with valuable intel on the humans’ new weapon, so it hadn’t been a complete waste.

  He assumed that once he stopped jumping into systems to let the drives reset, they would be free from pursuit, but that wasn’t the case.

  The humans hadn’t given up. They managed to locate the armada’s exit jump time and time again and harried the remains of his armada constantly, forcing him to change tactics. He was about to see if his change in course had finally thrown them off. If the humans were still able to track them, even after shifting course to appear in a dead pocket of space, he would have to reevaluate his plan.

  Thesska wasn’t a coward, but he wasn’t suicidally stupid either. He needed to destroy the humans’ technological advantage as quickly as possible, which he believed stemmed from the world where his hunt for the silver aliens had begun. He couldn’t do that if the enemy fleet appeared the moment he arrived. He needed time to deal with any orbital defenses and ships they might have defending the planet.

  So far, the humans had appeared shortly after the armada dropped out of warp, no matter where they stopped between systems. With him requiring the warp fields to be spooled back up as soon as the drives reset, to keep the humans from jumping into their formation, the drives were near failure.

  They needed time to cool down and for the technologues to inspect them for damage.

  “Exit in thirty seconds,” the navigator said.

  Thesska grunted in acknowledgment and waited as the armada exited FTL. If his plan worked, they would have all the time they needed to inspect the drives. If not, he would be forced to push them to their limit to reach the human world to keep as much of his fleet intact as possible or withdraw, which was the last thing he could afford to do.

  The fleet dropped out, and the drives cycled down. The armada was at its most vulnerable until the drives reset, but space was big, and whatever method the humans were using to track them, it wasn’t instantaneous.

  A minute went by, and the drives reset. Each ship in the armada powered its warp fields back up and waited. Thesska snarled quietly in annoyance as the whine of the drive generator grated on his senses. He put up with the annoyance because it was a small price to pay for readiness.

  An hour went by, and no humans appeared. Then another hour, and another. The drive whine had taken on a shifting buzzing note, which probably wasn’t good, but Thesska forced the fleet to maintain active warp bubbles for one more hour. When no humans appeared, he finally gave the fleet the order to standdown.

  “I’ll be in my quarters,” he said with a growl, before storming off the bridge.

  There was still a possibility that the humans might locate them, but he had to risk it. Without the support ships, the fleet needed time to make repairs.

  As soon as he entered his quarters, he sent a comm message to his technologue on the human world. The humans might be able to detect subspace comm messages, but if they could, they would have already arrived. Shican ships didn’t possess any other form of communication, unlike the humans and their archaic radio transmissions.

  “Emperor,” the Shican female bowed. “How can I assist you?”

  “Tell me you have something,” Thesska demanded.

  “I’ve been going over the data you sent. I believe you’re correct. The humans have weaponized the gravity plates. That being said, I do not know how the gravity plates are manufactured. The humans that Sivarra was cloning didn’t possess such knowledge either. All of the human ships we produced were sent out without any gravity plates, and whatever stockpiles they had before our arrival have since failed to function, much like the ones aboard your fleet. My first thought was that the humans had used some sort of ECM to infect your systems, but that couldn’t have propagated to the human worlds under our control.”

  “I assumed it was deliberate sabotage, but how are they doing it?” Thesska asked. It had to be either the humans or the silver aliens who were behind the failure of the gravity plates, but it seemed like an insignificant issue until he learned about their new weapon.

  “I am not an expert in the field,” the Shican female apologized, “but if they don’t have direct access to your fleet, there are only two possibilities I can think of. It could be some sort of signal we can’t detect, but that would mean that it covered hundreds of light-years. I received reports from back home, before we lost contact with those systems, and my technologue colleagues confirmed hearing of similar disruptions. Perhaps a subspace signal of some kind?”

  “Get to the point,” Thesska growled.

  The female’s ears went rigid at the reprimand, but she nodded before continuing. “The other option, and the one that seems far more likely, is that each plate is only half of the equation. Similar to how we communicate across vast distances. I don’t know how transmitting gravity would be possible, but if the humans know how to do that, it would explain why they have adapted so quickly.”

  “Explain.”

  “If they can create their own gravity plates, all they would need to do is place one end of a gravity plate near a source of high gravity, like a star or gas giant. I could probably even determine exactly what star or planet they are using, given a few more months to process the data from the systems they destroyed.”

  This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.

  Thesska growled, but not at his technologue. “We don’t have a few months. The humans are advancing far too rapidly. If the world I plan on hitting isn’t the source of these new advancements, we’ll have to pull back.”

  The female looked shocked by the admission. “I will do what I can, Emperor. If you would allow me to convert more of the new clones into computing units, I may be able to speed the process along.”

  “Do it, but be prepared to abandon the human worlds. If our attack doesn’t generate the desired results, I want all of our resources pulled out immediately. I‘m also sending you a current backup of my mind. You have my genetic code, make sure a clone is ready to deploy in case things don’t go as planned.”

  The woman nodded. “You honor me, Emperor. I will begin creating your replacement and removing my people from the surface.”

  Thesska ended the call and began plotting a course that should keep them hidden from the humans for as long as possible. It would extend their arrival by another week, but it had to be done. That would give the humans more time to prepare, but there was little he could do to avoid such a delay. He was already planning on pushing the drives to the breaking point soon after they made any repairs they could. He knew he would lose a few vessels along the way because of that choice, but that was a price he was willing to pay. They needed to get to the human world as quickly as he could manage.

  He was hoping he could trick the human fleet into scouring space for the armada, but if they were waiting at the planet, he would have to retreat.

  ***

  Thesska’s fleet arrived at their last standard jump. From here on out, they would begin rapidly jumping toward the human system. He had already sent a few ships that were having drive issues in opposite directions to try to draw the human fleet away.

  Whether or not that would work, he didn’t care. He was tired and annoyed. His technologue had managed to pinpoint the most likely position from which the human’s weapons originated over the last few days. The gravitation readings that were taken after the humans destroyed entire systems were not that hard to pinpoint, but the news was not pleasant.

  He had hoped that the humans were using a nearby star or gas giant as their weapon site. If they had, he would have considered the delay reasonable to deal with it, eliminating their main advantage, but they hadn’t. If his technologue’s calculations and subspace readings were accurate, the star they were looking for was located quite a distance away and far from any other star. It infuriated him because it was an ideal location to hide such a vulnerable project.

  If he wanted to remove the new weapon advantage from the humans, it would take months to reach that location. It was not a delay he could risk. Even if he was forced to flee and regroup, hitting the system later would be pointless. The humans could just build at a new star.

  With this being the last stop, Thesska ordered his people to double-check their drives. They would not be getting a second opportunity before they arrived at the human system. If their drives failed from strain, the best they could hope for was being stuck in deep space. More than likely, their ships would disintegrate the moment their warp field failed.

  He gave them a full day to go over everything. When all of the commanders confirmed their readiness, he ordered the armada toward their destination.

  ***

  After weeks of silence, one of the scouts thought it detected something. The signature was so weak that it couldn’t be sure, so it jumped closer to investigate. When it arrived near the location where it thought the signal had originated, it found nothing.

  It wasn’t the first sensor ghost that the scouts had picked up, but to be thorough, it sent an alert to the fleet along with its sensor data. If the fleet determined it was actionable, they would arrive on scene. Until then, it returned to its original location to continue monitoring for gravitational disruptions caused by ships jumping.

  ***

  Thesska wore a self-satisfied grin as the fleet neared the final jump point. The humans hadn’t intercepted them, and only two armada ships experienced drive failures. Finally, things had gone to plan.

  “Tell the fleet to ready their weapons.”

  Communications confirmed the order, and soon enough, the armada exited FTL on the outskirts of the human system. The few remaining sensor ships got to work, determining if the human fleet was in the system, and began calculating their jump coordinates to appear directly over their target.

  The humans would detect them shortly, but he only needed a few minutes to act without their fleet present.

  The sensor ships soon confirmed that less than two dozen vessels were in the system. A few moments later, the fleet received the updated coordinates. When everyone confirmed they were prepared to jump, Thesska gave the signal.

  The ship shook as it appeared from FTL in low orbit over the ugly yellow world. They had jumped past the humans’ defenses, giving their ships time to reform their defensive fields and forcing the humans’ orbital defenses to reorient if they wanted to attack them.

  “What was that?” he demanded as their defensive fields came back online only a moment after the plasma cannons started firing toward the surface.

  “A few of the humans’ small orbital weapons crashed into our hull. Only minor damage, Emperor.”

  “I want our defensive cannons picking those off, and start launching missiles.”

  Thesska had plenty of missiles, but only two nuclear ones. He was holding those in reserve to see if the humans had ground defenses.

  He saw the missiles wink out one after another, proving that he had been right to hold them back. “Take out those planetary weapons.”

  As he gave that order, the ship shook, and one of the nearby battleships vanished.

  “Belay that order. Target the emplacements that are targeting our ships.”

  Forty ships vanished under the fire from the humans’ ground-based mass drivers, and another twenty from the few ships the humans had in orbit. The small defensive satellites were also taking their toll, even though his people destroyed them by the hundreds.

  While he had faith that his fleet could destroy the small vessels and planetary defenses before they could do too much damage to his fleet, he couldn’t be sure he could do that and take out the complex on the surface before the enemy fleet appeared.

  He decided to focus on the main target. “Tell the fleet to launch all of their missiles at the planet.”

  A practical wall of missiles launched from the armada, and Thesska finally used the two remaining nuclear weapons he had.

  It was more than enough to overwhelm the surface defenses, but the damn humans retargeted their orbital lasers to help pick off the missiles as they burned through the atmosphere.

  The first nuke was destroyed, but the second was only clipped and sent spinning away from the facility. It detonated only a few miles from the target, and Thesska grinned as he watched the shockwave hit the massive building, expecting it to crumple under the impact.

  When it didn’t, he roared in outrage and ordered the fleet to withdraw. Those weapons had been his trump card, and now he didn’t believe the remaining vessels in the armada could destroy the facility in time. Before his ships could even turn, the human fleet appeared behind them, boxing them in.

  The initial confrontation was violent, but Thesska could see his fleet was quickly losing ground.

  “Why aren’t we jumping!” he roared.

  “The orbital debris is hampering our warp bubble from forming,” an underling called back.

  Thesska cursed silently as he watched a few of the armada ships jump, but most were trapped between the human fleet, the orbital defenses, and the remaining surface weapons.

  “Order the fleet to enter the atmosphere and head directly for the facility. If they can’t land properly, they can at least crash into it.”

  Nobody commented on the suicidal order as it was relayed to the remaining ships in the armada. They reversed their turn and accelerated toward the facility below.

  The enemy fire started to let up as they realized what Thesska was doing, probably to avoid causing the ships to crash into the planet or hit the facility by accident. Thesska growled in triumph. He would make them regret being so soft.

  As always, thanks for reading! And thanks for the support! If you enjoy the story, please rate it and comment below!

  Series finale is now available on Patreon!