The Prodigal Sun by Sean Williams, Shane Dix

assault on the Midnight via his ship’s various external sensors with interest.
    The battlefield was complex. At its heart, the angry speck that represented the COE frigate spun like a primitive atom in primordial soup. A ring of Dato fighters harried this defensive position, swooping closer with every pass, supported by the greater might of the three raiders and, further back still, the Marauder itself: the Ana Vereine.
    Occasional stray bolts spun free from the intense web of destruction woven by the raiders about the blazing frigate. Some were deflected from the Midnight’s remaining shields; others might have originated from the frigate itself. Although most dissipated harmlessly, the potential remained for an unlucky mishap. The narrow channel through Sciacca’s World’s asteroid field had been mapped in advance and was updated every millisecond by the Marauder’s battle computers—but every new, unplanned explosion altered the orbits of nearby asteroids and increased the risk of collision.
    When the Midnight’s antimatter reserve suddenly spilled free of its containment and annihilated the ordinary matter surrounding it, that risk increased tenfold.
    “Pull the fighters back!” Kajic ordered, sending the command hurtling down electromagnetic paths to the bridge in the Marauder’s primary nacelle, where his holographic image appeared a moment later. “Prepare for impact!”
    His second in command, Atalia Makaev, turned away to relay the order. The expanding bubble of energy reached the Ana Vereine , making it shudder. Kajic’s image flickered slightly with the energy surge, but otherwise remained steadfast. The officers on the bridge gripped their stations as the disturbance washed over them, steadying themselves against the lurching motion. When it eased, and the ship’s g-field restabilized, the normal bustle resumed.
    “Report!” Kajic was unable to suppress his impatience. If the ship had been holed, he would have known immediately, but there were thousands of smaller ailments that might slip by unnoticed. The inevitable lag between his orders and their enactment was never as irritating as it was in battle.
    “Telemetry reports—” The ship shuddered again as the shields sustained another impact, draining power. Makaev waited for her superior’s image to reconfigure itself properly before continuing. Not that it was necessary—Kajic could receive the information with or without the presence of his hologram—but it was considered polite. “Telemetry reports that the Midnight has broken into seven substantial fragments.” She paused again, adjusting the communication bud in her left ear. “Their trajectories have been noted and extrapolated.”
    “Damage to the raiders?” Although Kajic’s primary concern was the Ana Vereine , the information available to him showed an alarming void where moments earlier a dozen fighters had been.
    “ Paladin has sustained minor damage. Lansquenet reports no incident. Awaiting word from Captain Hage regarding Galloglass .”
    Kajic sighed, folding his simulated hands behind his back—using body language consciously, as just another means of communication of the many in his repertoire—and did his best to radiate calm. On the bridge’s main screen, the brilliant fireball that had once been the COEA Midnight boiled away into space, leaving a shower of particles and radioactive dust in its wake. The larger fragments that telemetry had noted were ringed in warning red to aid navigation: bull’s-eyes where perhaps gravestones should have been.
    Kajic knew from intelligence reports that every COE frigate carried a crew of four hundred and fifty, each with families scattered throughout the Commonwealth of Empires; some of these people might conceivably have had ties with the Dato Bloc, no matter how distant. The Midnight had also been carrying a score of transportees...
    Gone, all of them, in a single blinding explosion as the Midnight’s pile went