It did not take long for the primary detectors to come back on line, augmenting her personal energy sensory field a thousand-fold. While secondary systems initialised, Ah-hotep turned her artificial eye on the residue of the astromantic detonation she had caused, curious to see what physical fallout had occurred.

A variety of physical debris remained, spiralling slowly away from the point of catastrophic failure. A spectrum of radioactive particles and energy waves formed beautiful patterns of electromagnetism and plasma, overlaying each other in synchronous circles. Ah-hotep wished she could drain those expanding clouds, her hunger breaking the moment of delight. Drawn by the desire to feed, she lingered awhile, imagining supping on negative particles and collapsing photon streams.

She was about to return to a more mundane scan of the target world – more importantly the circling moonbase, where she had detected so much astromantic activity – when a spark drew her attention.

At first she wondered if it was a remnant of the broken starship’s drives or energy generator. Electrical fluctuations betrayed a working power system, which further scrutiny soon revealed to be a functioning reactor shield. It was still possible that this was some protected core that had somehow been ejected in the detonation, but that supposition ­disappeared the moment it changed course…

Something else. Another ship?

She reviewed the memory store and saw nothing to suggest that two vessels had been trying to escape. If the gleaming dot she traced across the voids was a ship, it must have come through almost at the instant the other starship had exploded.

Who were they? Unwitting victims of the offensive about to commence, or reinforcements brought by the cries of the humans before the overnull had silenced them?

For the time being the ship would be invisible against the vast backdrop of the system energy base and the distortion of the fleet’s presence. It was only because Ah-hotep had been focused on that small segment of the void that she had noticed it at all.

Simut would not have seen it.

Which meant it was imperative that, for now at least, Ah-hotep kept the newcomer a secret.

Chapter Ten

CHAPTER TEN

The Ithraca’s Vengeance crawled through the outer void with engines, augurs and life support systems running on minimal power to preserve the strained reactors. Armed with only the most basic information about their surroundings, Nem­etus studied the charts and databanks in an effort to narrow down their location. Given the length of time they had spent in the warp, their trajectory uncontrolled, he barely knew where to begin.

Basic sensor sweeps picked up the local star and the main orbital bodies, but any more detailed information was restricted to just a few hundred thousand miles in the immediate vicinity. Several worlds within the ecozone were potential candidates for habitation, so on the basis that the inner system would be more densely populated than the outer orbits, Captain Aeschelus had set course in-system.