Without comment, Qul Aro’nh ordered six of the seven warliners in his foremost septa to return to the maniple’s main grouping. But the old subcommander’s own battleship continued to drive forward.

Sitting in his command nucleus, the Adar saw from his sensor readings that the conservative old Qul had set the power of his stardrive reactors high enough to trigger a cascade overload. The lone warliner plunged toward the three diamond warglobes that still hovered over the smoldering wreckage of the mining facility.

Kori’nh spoke sharply. “Qul Aro’nh, what is your intention?”

“As you instructed during our training exercises, Adar, I am attempting to employ nontraditional tactics. Perhaps this maneuver will eventually become a standard routine in desperate situations such as this.”

Then the old subcommander cut off communication entirely. He had made up his mind and seen his path. Kori’nh could only watch helplessly as the warliner’s rear ports glowed cherry red. The reactors would go supercritical within a few seconds.

All the people aboard, the Ildiran crew, the soldiers, the engineers … Kori’nh sensed their brooding terror, their determination, their grim acceptance as the battleship headed toward oblivion. The Adar stood inside his command nucleus, knowing he was responsible for the Qul’s actions. He had disgraced the man, yanked away his solid reason for existence, pushed him to this extreme solution.

If only it works...

Qul Aro’nh drove his battleship toward the first warglobe. As he approached, the ship launched all of its remaining kinetic projectiles and planet-splitters, while continuing a relentless bombardment with high-energy weapons. Already, Kori’nh could see damage being inflicted. The other two warglobes rose up, blue lightning intensifying.

But before the alien weapons could lance out, Aro’nh’s ship collided head-on with the warglobe. Simultaneously, the stardrive reactors reached their overload point, and the impact created a brief, intense new sun above the Qronha 3 clouds.

Kori’nh felt the blow like a dagger to his heart. But after all the casualties the enemy aliens had inflicted, at least the brave martyrs aboard that warliner had not been helpless. Qul Aro’nh had chosen their fates for them, and—if the Adar had anything to say about it—their sacrifice would be memorialized forever in the Saga of Seven Suns.

Aboard the flagship, as the sensor screens readjusted from the blinding overload, Adar Kori’nh saw that the first alien warglobe was now a blackened husk, plummeting downward in the clutches of the gas giant’s gravity. Mortally wounded.

The other two diamond-hulled spheres reeled as if stunned. They appeared cracked and damaged from the shock wave, white jets of high-pressure atmosphere bursting out from breaches in the spherical hulls. But they seemed to be recovering quickly.

Kori’nh knew the rest of his maniple and the rescued miners were doomed if he did not move immediately.