beginning. They are cowards who hide behind their pretty words. It is not much different to see them hide behind another people’s ship.”
“Perhaps,” Ivanth admitted, “but only
one
? One ship, against many times its number of the Biologicals, and even several of our own in the Hive, and it either escaped or triumphed each time. Our own best could not easily match it.”
“I know, and that troubles me more than anything else,” the Proheur admitted. “It barely registers on our threatboards, at best. Within the Hive, the vessel remained entirely hidden from every scan save the space-time warping it caused in passing. For all that, these people obviously maintained sufficient military power to pose a credible threat. They are an unknown, and that makes them worrisome. Bu so far we’ve only seen one ship. And one ship, even one a thousand-fold more powerful, will not…cannot, blunt the edge of our assault.”
Ivanth nodded.
There was truth in that. Even a fleet of such warships couldn’t hope to hold a line in space against the full weight of the Biologicals. They could choke a star system with their dead and still come on unabated.
By legend, they had once. The Biologicals had waged an insane war against the Progenitors, beating them back system by system, until they were encamped behind the defenses of the Homeworld. Waves upon waves of the Biologicals descended, only to be battered to dust and shards by the defenses.
Waves upon waves.
Eventually, so the story went, the sheer warping of space by their mass alone inverted the local star and sucked everything for a stellar cycle into the newly formed black hole.
It was a legend, of course. Fanciful, nightmarish, and logically impossible.
For all that, however, Ivanth knew more than anyone alive just how high the numbers of the Biologicals were and could become. He didn’t tell that story to his children. It frightened him far too much.
IN THE BLACK BETWEEN STARS
P.L.A.S.F. Weifang
“SOMEONE VENT THIS smoke!” Sun ordered as he swung into the aft section of main engineering. “We need you people alive or the
Weifang
will never reach home!”
“Filtration is down to a fifth, Captain. We can’t clear the air.”
Sun swore, long and vile words that had no business coming from the mouth of a professional soldier of the people’s army. The ship’s filters were barely keeping up. Soon they’d begin to fail, and when that happened, the
Weifang
would be just one more ghost ship in the legends of the universe.
“Pull the candles from ship’s stores,” he ordered.
“Captain, we don’t have nearly enough for the journey home.”
“What does that matter? We’ll not survive the trip if we don’t clear this smoke and get the filters running again. Pull the candles, I say, and then fix the filters, if you must rebuild them from vacuum!”
“Yes, Captain!” The engineer fell back, issuing orders to the other men.
Sun watched the work as it continued, knowing that the oxygen candles would do little but buy them time. He’d hold back a few dozen of the precious canisters against the hope that they could get the filters working again, but it wasn’t looking good.
Those things hit us where it hurt,
Sun thought grimly.
Half our engineering section is in tatters, along with most of the fabs. What’s left is in hard vacuum and exposed to FTL space.
There was no getting around it, Sun knew.
The
Weifang
would have to slow down in order to affect repairs.
He made his way back through the labyrinthine passages to the Command deck, ignoring his own station to come to rest near the shoulder of the long-range instrumentation station.
“Is there any sign of pursuit?” he asked tersely.
The man holding the station shook his head. “No, Captain, nothing.”
The crewmember hesitated a moment, then turned to look at Sun. “But, Captain, half our instruments were blown out and we’re in FTL. We’re not blind, but we aren’t seeing twenty/twenty as
“Perhaps,” Ivanth admitted, “but only
one
? One ship, against many times its number of the Biologicals, and even several of our own in the Hive, and it either escaped or triumphed each time. Our own best could not easily match it.”
“I know, and that troubles me more than anything else,” the Proheur admitted. “It barely registers on our threatboards, at best. Within the Hive, the vessel remained entirely hidden from every scan save the space-time warping it caused in passing. For all that, these people obviously maintained sufficient military power to pose a credible threat. They are an unknown, and that makes them worrisome. Bu so far we’ve only seen one ship. And one ship, even one a thousand-fold more powerful, will not…cannot, blunt the edge of our assault.”
Ivanth nodded.
There was truth in that. Even a fleet of such warships couldn’t hope to hold a line in space against the full weight of the Biologicals. They could choke a star system with their dead and still come on unabated.
By legend, they had once. The Biologicals had waged an insane war against the Progenitors, beating them back system by system, until they were encamped behind the defenses of the Homeworld. Waves upon waves of the Biologicals descended, only to be battered to dust and shards by the defenses.
Waves upon waves.
Eventually, so the story went, the sheer warping of space by their mass alone inverted the local star and sucked everything for a stellar cycle into the newly formed black hole.
It was a legend, of course. Fanciful, nightmarish, and logically impossible.
For all that, however, Ivanth knew more than anyone alive just how high the numbers of the Biologicals were and could become. He didn’t tell that story to his children. It frightened him far too much.
IN THE BLACK BETWEEN STARS
P.L.A.S.F. Weifang
“SOMEONE VENT THIS smoke!” Sun ordered as he swung into the aft section of main engineering. “We need you people alive or the
Weifang
will never reach home!”
“Filtration is down to a fifth, Captain. We can’t clear the air.”
Sun swore, long and vile words that had no business coming from the mouth of a professional soldier of the people’s army. The ship’s filters were barely keeping up. Soon they’d begin to fail, and when that happened, the
Weifang
would be just one more ghost ship in the legends of the universe.
“Pull the candles from ship’s stores,” he ordered.
“Captain, we don’t have nearly enough for the journey home.”
“What does that matter? We’ll not survive the trip if we don’t clear this smoke and get the filters running again. Pull the candles, I say, and then fix the filters, if you must rebuild them from vacuum!”
“Yes, Captain!” The engineer fell back, issuing orders to the other men.
Sun watched the work as it continued, knowing that the oxygen candles would do little but buy them time. He’d hold back a few dozen of the precious canisters against the hope that they could get the filters working again, but it wasn’t looking good.
Those things hit us where it hurt,
Sun thought grimly.
Half our engineering section is in tatters, along with most of the fabs. What’s left is in hard vacuum and exposed to FTL space.
There was no getting around it, Sun knew.
The
Weifang
would have to slow down in order to affect repairs.
He made his way back through the labyrinthine passages to the Command deck, ignoring his own station to come to rest near the shoulder of the long-range instrumentation station.
“Is there any sign of pursuit?” he asked tersely.
The man holding the station shook his head. “No, Captain, nothing.”
The crewmember hesitated a moment, then turned to look at Sun. “But, Captain, half our instruments were blown out and we’re in FTL. We’re not blind, but we aren’t seeing twenty/twenty as
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