“New contact bearing zero mark zero! Collision alarm!”

The sudden shouts from the Fury’s tactical officer startled everyone on the bridge. One moment everything was functioning smoothly and the next, they were surrounded by screaming nightmares.

Senior Lieutenant Sabrina Mallory swiveled in the bridge command chair. “Reflex batteries forward! Fire! Point blank!”

A frigate-class vessel hurtled at full power towards the Fury’s bridge, its engines glowing red-hot through their cowlings and hull plating. A moment later, the enormous strike cruiser’s forward point defense weapons exploded to life, filling space with a terrifying yellow-white fusillade. Sixty shots per second poured from each battery. The overloaded plasma energy produced a huge cloud of residual particles in the cubic mile of space forward of the Perseus flagship.

Dozens of bolts ripped into the ablative nose armor of the smaller ship, tearing huge spinning chunks off and throwing them into space in its wake. Dust and electrical arcs formed an enormous static shockwave forward of the vessel as its atmosphere ignited against the suddenly intense surface heat of the rapidly disintegrating hull structure. A secondary explosion shook the ship’s inner decks, but still it came, streaming atmosphere and burning debris.

The boot of the gods impacted Fury’s port armor and the bridge crew fought to retain consciousness as the entire vessel pitched a good 35 degrees to starboard. The auto-alert systems activated and decompression alarms began to sound.

“What the hell was that!?” Mallory barked.

“Weapons fire port!” someone shouted in response.

“Veer us off, pilot! All engines back full. Give me a port reversing turn! All battle screens to maximum power!”

“Too late!”

For only a moment, the fireball-trailing frigate filled the screen and then another incredible blast plunged the Fury bridge into complete darkness.

“Auto alarm! Fury’s been hit!” shouted the weapons officer on the bridge of DSS Spruance. “I have weapons fire bearing one zero five!”

The mighty cruiser’s captain calmly shifted into action. “Sound fleet-wide general quarters, Ensign. Helm, bring us about, course seven seven mark one five! All ahead one half power! Comms, bring us up on the J-A. Patch us in as Zero Juliet Four. Signal all ships. Code Zero Zero Black. I say again Code Zero Zero Black. Engage battle conference on this channel and stand by for strike operations.”

The communications officer responded with precision efficiency as he performed five tasks at once. “Affirmative, Captain. Coding your message.”

Encrypted LOS channels opened across space in all directions. The jangling clear channel alert tone sounded.

“All stations, this is Spruance Force Command on emergency channel. Acknowledge Code Zero Zero Black and report alert status to Signal Station Zero Juliet Four. Standing by.”

“Affirmative, Spruance, this is Revenge, acknowledging strike alert at time out three zero mark. Vessel at your command.”

“Constellation acknowledges.”

“Minstrel is at point five. Station Eight Juliet Four. Standing by.”

“DSS Jefferson acknowledging. Battle alert engaged!”

“Rhode Island at your command, sir.”

“Exeter acknowledges.”

“DSS Ajax has the point, Spruance. Acknowledge battle stations code Zero Zero Black. Standing by.”

“Comms, raise the Fury as soon as you are able. Tactical, report all contacts.”

A chorus of “ayes” responded, one for each of the Spruance Skipper’s commands. Lieutenant Commander Francis Teller swiveled back to examine the main viewscreen. An atmosphere-fueled fire was burning on Fury’s dorsal section just aft of the bridge. Teller’s jaw tightened. He knew what that damage meant.

“CIC, I want an origin point and a firing solution for that weapon in ten seconds.”

The Perseus Task Force went from station keeping to a perfectly choreographed swirl of motion all at once. Three destroyers and three frigates moved to screen their flagship from further weapons fire while the two heavier cruisers pounded away with their active scanners, combing nearby space for the source of the weapons fire.

“New contact! Eight eight mark five! On a collision course with the Rhode Island!” The tactical officer on the Spruance bridge jumped to his feet. “This doesn’t make any sense! Where the hell are they coming from?!”

This time, the command data net gave seven vessels a track on the suicide attacker all at once. The Exeter, Constellation and Jefferson opened up first, firing hypervelocity point defense missiles from their efficient and deadly rotary mounts at the inbound target. Then the Rhode Island’s energy batteries joined in. In a matter of seconds, 80 missiles were in space and screaming towards the attacking starship. Jamming signals managed to confound some of their their weapons locks, but did nothing to protect the attacker from DSS Revenge.

The Fury’s escort cruiser calmly pivoted all four of her heavy weapons mounts to bear on the diving enemy frigate and opened up with a hurricane of proximity blasts. Ten megaton explosions shocked and pounded space for a thousand cubic miles around the inbound track of the wildly swerving vessel as the point defense missiles began to impact. A savage storm of incredible destructive energy streamed through space and finally faded. There was no wreckage.

“CIC, talk to me!” Teller shouted. “I want to know who is shooting at us and I want to know now!”

“I have an indeterminate series of targets at extreme range, sir, but I can’t vouch for any of this data. Nothing on my screen makes any sense!”

“Blast it, ensign! I don’t want to hear about your theories! Give me something to point my guns at! If they can target us, we can damn well target them!”

“That’s the problem, sir. We can’t lock up any of this! Every time we match bearings, the waveform changes!” The tactical officer wore a frantic expression.

“That’s impossible!” the pilot shouted. “How the hell can a ship change its composition and EM signature?”

“Incoming!”

The bridge of the Spruance buckled and shuddered as the lights flickered ominously. A thundering explosion rumbled through the huge vessel’s interior decks.

“Overload your forward screens, tactical!” Teller shouted. The cruiser’s shields glowed with excess energy. Another gigantic blast pounded the vessel’s port side and the bridge crew pulled themselves back upright in their shock harnesses.

“CIC! Report!”

“Sir, I can’t give you what I don’t have!”

“Then give me a direction and range! Anything!”

“Acknowledged, bridge. Our best guess is–”

“New contact, Zero Five by One! Range point one! Collision course!”

This time Minstrel and Ajax banked in pursuit of the suicide ship.

“That’s not a frigate this time!” the Ajax Signals officer warned. “The angle is closing too fast! Veer off, Constellation! Veer off!”

The Minstrel angrily launched a full spread of track-on-signature shipkiller missiles. All sixteen warheads managed an instant waveform lock on their target, but their overtake time was plus five impact. Too late to save their fleet-mate.

“Kill that ship now!” Teller shouted, jumping to his feet. A full-size War Destroyer hurtled towards the evading Constellation. Explosions bracketed her hull and debris started to trail, but destroying a ship this size was going to take time, and the range was closing too fast.

“Constellation! Evasive!” Teller screamed.

Out of nowhere, a full power war shot speared the oncoming suicide destroyer amidships. A blinding explosion shook the very fabric of space as two more shots blasted hundred-foot breach points in the spinning vessel’s disintegrating hull.

DSS Fury’s other two main batteries swiveled silently and opened fire.

Shot four blasted the destroyer’s engines into a cloud of spinning debris, fire and trailing radiation. Shot five missed. Shot six detonated across her ventral hull, igniting a screaming, shrapnel-ejecting hypernova before the seventh shot impaled her fusion assembly. An impossibly bright explosion flared to life briefly and then vanished, leaving a ghostly after-image, a long trail of radioactive fuel and an expanding wake of fast moving debris.

The scene on every Perseus bridge was the same. It wasn’t often they got to see their flagship unload. When she did, it was a sobering event. Where a 70,000-ton vessel had once been, there wasn’t a single piece of wreckage larger than a coffee can.

“Spruance, report! Come in, Spruance!”

Teller finally looked down from the scene of utter destruction on his bridge viewscreen and activated the intership.

“Good to hear a friendly voice, Fury. We have multiple targets on the board. Firing solutions are imminent. What is your status?”

“We’re hurt, but we’re still in the fight. Transfer Force Command to One Juliet Four and prepare to re-establish an attack posture. Acknowledge!”

“Affirmative. Fury has the ball. Spruance shifting to Force Escort on Zero Juliet Four. Vessel at your command, ma’am.”

“They’re gone, sir!”

Teller turned back to his screen. The tactical officer was right. All their previous tracks were gone. There was nothing in space except the nine ships of the task force.

“What the hell am I looking at, Ensign?”

“I don’t know, sir. One second they were there. The next they were gone.”