“What the hell!?” shouted another of the stunned men, their internal alarms flaring in tune with the ship’s wailing sirens. The heat in the cabin was becoming overwhelming and something inside them snapped and they started to run for fire extinguishers. But it was already far too late. As they ran from the cabin, the beam opened a second hole below the first down into the ship’s hold under their cabin and the laser started to eat through to the very hull of the ship.

Lieutenant Moore ran from the main salon where he had been sat at the computer. He had only just finished sending his report a few seconds before the alarm had sounded. Running toward his post on the bridge he could hear screams and shouts from forward, and he went to investigate. As he walked forward along the deck he came to the incongruous hole in the thick steel deck of his ship, its edges now glowing white hot, and went to look at it. He approached carefully, leaning over to look down through the hole, imagining its source was below-decks.

The laser burnt cleanly through the back of his skull before his brain registered it was under attack. A moment beforehand, Captain James had arrived on the bridge and was about to ask for a status update when he saw the lieutenant through the window. He watched as his lieutenant’s head evaporated, his body flopping forward and bursting into flame as it fell across the beam. The flesh provided only a moment’s resistance before it was also obliterated, the relentless laser continuing its attack on the thick steel of the ship’s hull two decks down as the lieutenant’s lifeless, disembodied legs slumped to the deck.

Laurie West was not a dramatic person, she was not given to flights of fancy, but it was that very pragmatism that had led her to be so afraid of the potential implications of their discovery. Now, as she heard the screams of the ship’s crew, something in her told her that their worst fears had been true.

She felt a calm come over her as she walked from her cabin, pulling her robe on over her pajamas as she went. Suddenly the boat lurched and seemed to settle. An almost subconscious sense in her told her that the floor she was standing on was starting lean forward, and she hastened her pace on deck. The boat was sinking.

James’ instincts also told him the instant the hull gave way, and he was about to shout the order to abandon ship when a jet of steam erupted from the hole in his deck. Fresh screams from the few crewmembers not already on deck told him that the boat was filling with superheated steam from where the laser and superheated steel of the ship’s hull had met the water as it rushed into the ship.