Battle at Zero Point (13 page)

Essentially by putting on the brakes, just for a fraction of a second, the enemy barrage would reach its target just a little bit too early—and miss.

Popping was a spectacular thing to watch in action. All Empire ship commanders were required to practice it a few times early in their training, against fake blasts, of course. At high speeds, with leeway measured in microfractions of seconds, popping was an art form that no Empire ship CO ever thought he'd have to use.

Until now.

There were no hailing calls.

No challenges or ultimatums. No communications at all.

The scanning screens aboard the
StratoVox
were screaming that the SF fleet's weapons had powered up; all of the SG ships' weapons had just come on-line, too. Up until now, the fighting in and around the No-Fly Zone had consisted of brief clashes between individual vessels or small groups of ships, and only after much haranguing and posturing between opposing commanders. Now, these two grand fleets were ready to open up on each other without any prior taunts or threats— willing to let fate decide who would be left alive when it was over.

More blaring and beeping alarms distracted Cronx now. He looked up at the scanning screens again and saw the SF fleet was now just 10,000 miles away and still coming on very quickly.

He heard the booming voice of McLyx rising from behind him. 'Train weapons!"

"Weapons trained, sir!" came the response from the weapons officers, all twelve of them.

"Prepare to fire."

"Preparing to fire, sir!"

Cronx felt his stomach turn over once again. Up until this moment he'd believed that despite the fighting and bad blood between the SF and SG, the damage that had been done already could be repaired somehow. But now, with these two gigantic fleets about to hit each other head-on… well, there'd really be no stepping back from this. Cronx checked the ship's position; ironically enough, they were just about in the middle of the No-Fly Zone, very near the place where the battle between the REF and the Two Arm invaders had supposedly taken place a month before. If there hadn't been a battle dien, Cronx thought, there was certainly going to be one now.

The scans began screaming again. The column of SF ships was now just 5,000 miles away and still coming straight at the SG fleet. As the
StratoVox's
weapons sections began tracking multiple targets, there came another bellowing order from McLyx.

"Ready all forward weapons."

"All forward weapons ready, sir."

Cronx gripped his seat tight. Was there any way to turn back from this? Any way both fleets would just veer off and go their separate ways, and preserve the integrity of the Empire for just a little while longer?

The answer was no, for just a moment later, McLyx screamed the fateful words: "
Open fire
!"

The
StratoVox
shuddered as every weapon on board fired at once. Space itself began shaking as the rest of the SG fleet followed suit. With tens of thousands of weapons blazing, the storm of SG destructo-rays tore into the SF ships. Thousands of gigantic explosions along thousands of miles of space. Then the
StratoVox's
scans began blaring yet again: The SF ships were firing back.

The main weapons for both opponents were Z-beam guns. Their killing rays appeared in the form of thick blue bolts. Fired from a Jong distance, these bolts originated as pulses of incredibly bright light.

Once a bolt got close to its target, the pulses coalesced into mile-long beams. Cronx now saw thousands of tüese beams flying right at him, even as the immense
StratoVox
began twisting and turning through space.

He was terrified—and he was sure many others on the bridge were terrified, too. This was already so unlike anything they'd ever faced, it
was
a waking nightmare, payback, for all those times they'd overwhelmed poorly armed, poorly trained adversaries in the past.

Ships were taking hits all around him. Some SG vessels were disappearing in puffs of sickly green fire. The
StratoVox
was gyrating itself through incredible, seemingly impossible maneuvers. In all his years riding them, Cronx had no idea Starcrashers could move like this.

At last, the two fleets collided. Cronx was suddenly looking out at a sky full of blue and white Starcrashers, all of them adorned with the star symbols of the Space Forces. This was another frighteningly new experience for him. He had never seen a Starcrasher in battle, not from this perspective.

He was astonished by just how many weapons were firing off these gigantic ships: tens of thousands of bright blue and green streaks flying out in every direction, even as so many storms of multicolored beams were being fired at them.

It went on like this for what seemed like an eternity. Cronx was being thrown violently back and forth, even though he was pinned to his seat by his safety force field. The main weapons system officer was screaming at his forward array gunners, who were sending out megatons of destructo-rays, some finding their targets but many not.
Better him than me
, Cronx caught himself thinking. He could barely breathe, never mind move and actually operate a weapons system. The blaring of the defensive-systems communication array was ear-splitting. Its mechanical voice was screaming at full pitch, but the control room was already filled with so many Klaxons and sirens wailing, it was very hard to think straight, never mind hear anything.

This cacophony made it almost impossible to decipher what the ghostly electronic voice was saying.

But somehow one of the ship's twelve pilots heard the warning and displayed it up on the floating viz screens: An SF warship, the venerable
NovaVox
, was closing fast on one of the
StratoVox's
escort ships, the
VegasVox
, which had already sustained battle damage. Cronx could clearly see the wounded
VegasVox
off starboard side. A plume of jetblack smoke was streaming from its aft section; another was spewing out from behind its control-deck bubble. The
Vegas
had taken two random blasts from an SF
culverin
. Normally, two stray Z-gun blasts would cause little more than minor damage. But either by incredibly bad luck or the whim of the cosmos, these random blasts had hit two of the gigantic ship's most vulnerable spots. One had destroyed the
Vegas'$
main communications bubble; the other had exploded directly on top of its prop core. This meant the
Vegas
was without full prop-core operation and had no means to receive communications. It had no idea the SF warship
NovaVox
was coming right at it.

The SF ship opened up at just twenty miles out. The commanders aboard the
Vegas
only became aware that a massive fusillade was incoming when their forward scans suddenly lit up. The
Vegas's
CO immediately ordered his ship to pop, but the
Vegas'
s prop core did not respond. It was still maintaining full speed but failing quickly. The SF barrage hit the
Vegas
full force an instant later. Its prop core blew up, and the gigantic ship split in two. All this happened not in seconds but in microseconds. The prop-core disintegration lit off a series of nuclear explosions, and l/4000th of a second later, opened up a tiny black hole. The
StratoVox
peeled off just in time, but the SF
NovaVox
, coming on strong and not really expecting the SG ship to fail in its popping, was not so lucky. It slammed right into the
Vegas
, causing everything from its control bubble back to its cargo holds to simply disintegrate. The ship's rear magazines exploded, causing the
Nova's
prop core to blow, sending out another ripple of nuclear blasts and creating yet another black hole; this, just seconds after the first singularity came into being.

The resulting explosion was so powerful, many gunners in nearby ships were blinded permanently by the flash. The space-time fabric was torn for a thousand miles around. Just like that, the two enormous ships simply ceased to exist.

There were no survivors. There couldn't be.

More than 40,000 were dead.

• • •

Cronx had turned away from the apocalyptic scene at the last possible moment, thus preserving his sight. Still, one side of his face was severely burned. The heat had been so intense, it actually singed his hair.

The
StratoVox
veered right again, pressing Cronx against the side of the clear control bubble. He suppressed the urge to vomit as he saw hundreds of bodies go streaming by, all lifeless, some aflame.

Some even seemed to be beckoning for him to join them. The nightmare continued.

Out beyond the massive debris field, Cronx could see dozens of ships on both sides still engaging each other, still firing madly. In the span of five quick heartbeats, three gigantic battle cruisers blew up, with two more smaller vessels being sucked into the resulting singularities. A few seconds later, the
StratoVox
flashed by a collision between two
culverins
. Another terrifying moment passed, then Cronx saw yet another SG battle cruiser explode under a broadside delivered point-blank from a SF warship riding alongside. This was madness, yet Cronx could not look away. His eyes felt like they, too, were on fire. He could hardly see, could hardly determine who was firing at who, or whose ships were being blown up, or whose ships were triumphant. All he could see on the outside were blue flashes and hot green fire.

Around the control bubble nearly everyone had their hands up to the eyes or were turned away from the effects of the blinding battle just outside their bubble. The control teams seemed petrified in stone.

Faces white, drained of blood, none could believe what was happening, like small pieces of madness locked inside one grand madness.

Cronx looked ahead of him again. The main forward weapons officer was still hanging over his array, trying to pick out the shouted orders coming from McLyx above the din and transmit them to his gunners. Then this officer suddenly stopped what he was doing and looked back at Cronx, still pinned to his seat.

"Get ready!" he yelled at Cronx.

An instant later, a bolt of destructo-ray came through the side of the control bubble and blew the forward weapons officer to subatomic bits.

The direct hit continued on through the bridge, killing a dozen more of the steering crew before smashing into the auxiliary communications bubbler. The rush of air leaking out of the perforated enclosure was deafening, even as the control bubble began sealing itself. The deck was suddenly running with bubbler acids, blood, and gruesome body parts. The survivors were stunned. Death had come so fast to their col-leagues, it hadn't even registered yet. McLyx was still screaming out firing orders, but no one was paying attention to him. The
StratoVox
had been in hundreds of battles in the last half century and had never lost a man. Now it seemed like everyone on the deck was soaked in blood.

Though he'd been cut on his head and face by pieces of broken superglass, Cronx was still somehow able to get his arms and legs moving. He staggered over to the weapons array. The blast hole had sealed completely by now, but it did nothing to clean away the gore that was spread everywhere. Cronx studied the battered weapons array. It was about 80 percent destroyed. Half of the gun crew had been killed as well. But that meant 20 percent of the weapons and six men were still able to operate. He started screaming firing orders, telling the surviving gunners to fire whatever weapons were available. No need to sight targets, he told them, and certainly no need to take aim. Following the orders McLyx was screaming to everybody, he was telling his men to simply fire every gun available, as quickly as possible.

All this made for a bizarre theater of sorts. The
StratoVox
was coursing its way through the storm of Z-beam fire and growing clouds of wreckage. The tradition of the ship called for the main steering crew—thirteen pilots in all—to reply to any command in unison, like some kind of dark choir. The same was true for the communications teams, the navigation teams, and so on. Each was made up of thirteen members. So whenever McLyx bellowed an order—a maneuver, a call to open fire, a check on his position—among the general chaos of the battle there came a chorus of responses, almost delivered in three-part harmony. When they were attacking poorly armed pirates or rogue mere armies with virtual impunity, these strange songs took on an almost mystical timbre. Now they were simply nonsensical and disturbing.

Added to this were the effects of popping the
StratoVox
. Whenever a ship slowed down a bit in time, everyone aboard slowed down, too. It was a very unsettling feeling: the human heart literally skipped several beats, leading to a moment of dizziness and disorientation, only to have these effects suddenly go in reverse once the body caught up with the right time frame.

In this moment, everyone on the bridge took on a ghostly glow, similar to the aura that appeared whenever a Starcrasher passed through a star. The
StratoVox
was now popping so often, the entire flight deck was bathed in the strange radiance. At the same time, the ship continued to maneuver wildly around the blizzard of SF Z-beam fire coming its way. After many long minutes of this, Cronx was not just worried about his stomach turning itself inside out, he found himself fighting to remain conscious.

Then came another blast; this one shot through the bubble top just a few feet above Cronx's head. It tore out what was left of the power tubes feeding his weapons array and kept on going, pinging around the bridge, killing another dozen random souls, including the rest of his gun crew. A few inches either way, and Cronx would have been minus his head.

Bleeding profusely, Cronx fell to the bloody deck and stayed there. He had the distinct feeling that the
StratoVox
was careening out of control, tumbling through the maze of warships bombarding each other. Blood began filling his eyes. Another blast came in and wiped out the entire communications team. Another took out the acolytes.