Embers Snippet 2

 Okay, so, getting down there on Christmas. Hopefully everyone is doing okay. I know these times are tough.

Anyway, on to the snippet!

Chapter 2

 

Beta Sector

 

Wave after wave of ships arrived at two locations in Beta sector. The final battles of Beta sector had begun.

Admiral Kelsi Saint Marcus had command of the first location, what the Ghost Hunters called the prime nest. She had twenty thousand ships with her.

The enemy had five times that number.

“Looks like this is the right spot,” she said as she nodded. War had raged across the sector for years. In the past year, every core world had been destroyed. Every naval base, every industrial world—they were all gone.

The survivors from all of those battles were arrayed here and with Admiral Z'v'k'll. According to the Ghost Hunters, the enemy had just the two nests left. At least, that was based on their latest intel. She hoped so at any rate because she wasn't sure they were going to walk away from this one.

<<<*>>>

The Beta Queen noted the intrusion of prey warships and immediately ordered her fleets to go to alert and begin to form up to run.

She regretted drawing down her defenses to send cruiser task forces out to kill the prey star systems all throughout her territory. It seemed she had sent too many … or not enough.

She had thought the fleets she had dispatched all over her territory would have kept the prey on the defense and torn them apart. Apparently, that was not the case; the psychology studies the other clans had agreed to had been flawed. The prey had abandoned trying to protect their own in favor of venting their fury on her.

This was her third time running; she had no idea how they kept finding her so easily. She had lost the ansible link to the other nests and to the other clans cycles ago. Now all she had left was her life. When she ran, she would be writing off any of her clan that survived and returned to a destroyed star system.

She had no choice. Her survival was paramount; they could be replaced given enough time and material.

Running this time wasn't going to be so easily she realized. The prey had dropped out in formation at the least time location to the hyper limit. She could try to take them head-on or alter her course. But any course alteration would make her run a gauntlet while delaying her time in the star system.

A star system that was now proving treacherous as ships appeared around the star.

Forces she had placed there began to fire on the ships that suddenly appeared. One died, then another. They didn't fire back. But two came in too far away to be immediately engaged. They deployed their weapons and then fled. Both ships were destroyed but the damage was done.

The weapons dived into the corona of the star, out of reach of her defenders. Angrily she ordered them to join her.

Even as they came to her call, other ships appeared and dropped their payloads into the star. She knew time was running out, faster than ever. Sensors that were not studying the enemy for weaknesses turned to monitor the star.

Ruthlessly she ordered the defenders who had failed her to return to their duty stations and to monitor the star and send her their data. She had a daughter clone plug the data into models to see how much time she had.

It was not good.

She split her force, dividing it into three. She sent a daughter clone directly ahead into the waiting arms of the prey formation. She sent another daughter as a decoy down while she herself pulled her formation upward.

<<<*>>>

Kelsi noted the enemy formation change. Obviously, they were trying to salvage something. The true queen was in one of the other formations. Most likely at the center, the most heavily defended of the mass of ships.

“They are trying to get away,” her husband said from the flag captain's station.

“Operative word there, trying,” she said as she cut orders. “Are you ready, Bill?”

He nodded.

<<<*>>>

The queen considered her options as her blocking force began to spar with the enemy's small craft at extreme range. Data flowed back. She felt a tingle of resentment from her daughter at the sacrifice but ignored it.

She felt a tingle of excitement and anticipation from the daughter she had sent down. She refused to give her the keys to unlock herself and become queen. No, she was not dead, at least, not yet.

When her first daughter reported that ships were disappearing from the rear of the enemy formation, she felt concern. The concern ebbed when her plot indicated they began to appear in front of her second daughter's path, cutting her off.

So, the prey had chosen wrong. The trap would fail again. She felt smugness over that.

The smugness ebbed abruptly as ships began to appear in front of her and even within her formation. Those that appeared within her formation didn't last long. Some interpolated with her own ships, disappearing in savage energetic events that ravaged her formations. Others that survived were cut apart by her defenders.

But they had opened a hole in her defenses. She angrily sent orders to fill the voids as the prey ahead of her regrouped and began to send out their waves of small craft.

So, her flight wasn't going to be as easy or simple as she'd thought.

<<<*>>>