The Drasin ship minds quickly had to raise their assessment of the intruding ships from “likely dangerous” to “very possibly the most lethal enemy ever encountered by the swarm.” That shift was posing a very real problem for the local swarm at the moment, as they had a great deal of trouble believing that they had encountered an enemy more dangerous than the Original Ones.

Long in the past there had been enemies such as these, targets that were not only able to fight back, but actually cut through the swarm like a pulsar blast. Those times had long since gone, however, and those enemies had fallen in a time so long ago that even the swarm’s inherited memories were foggy on the precise period.

In those days the taking of a star was a massive endeavor, something that could cost millions of ships. One time the cost had been so incalculably high that it resulted in an actual change in swarm priorities. The originators had given the swarm the gift of changing their methods in extreme cases, and that time qualified.

The new standing order was, if any local swarm were to encounter such a system again, it was to flee on sight.

The cost associated with destroying such a system had once nearly broken the swarm forever, something previously believed impossible.

The ship minds were not convinced that this was the case just yet, however, no matter how lethal these new ships were proving to be. That system had been surrounded by defenses ten thousand layers thick, and protected by a veritable swarm of its own.

This was seven ships and one solitary planet.

It was not even remotely in the same galaxy as the Original Enemies.

The decisions were made, tactics chosen, and the swarm warped space powerfully as they flung themselves up the gravity well of the local star and toward the threat of the newly arrived ships.

Behind it, the planet burned.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“ALRIGHT, SHUT YOUR mouths and listen up!” Ronald Blake snarled, ending all conversation in the hangar the group was sheltering in. “The captain has something to say.”

Eric nodded to his old friend and stepped up onto an old munitions crate so everyone could see him. He idly supposed that it would have been more poetic if it were a soapbox, but all the same there was still a certain degree of poetic justice in making a speech from an ammo box.

“As of fifteen minutes ago a miracle happened,” he told them dryly, his tone dark enough to prevent anyone from remotely getting their hopes up. “The President of the Confederation and the leadership of the Block actually agreed on something. Unfortunately for the rest of the world, they agreed that it was time to stop holding back and have ordered the deployment of strategic weapons against the Drasin.”

There was a long silence when he stopped speaking, and Eric let it run for many seconds.