He casually adjusted the course of the big ship, splitting away from the Heracles as the other ships did the same. It was a move intended to clear their gun sights, removing any chance of interfering with one another’s shots, as they brought the tachyon waveguide cannons to bear.

The six ships of the Heroics task force went to full automatic fire as the line of sight first cleared, their waveguide cannons humming almost constantly as they discharged. The shells, one-meter nuclear fused munitions, had been improved by the Priminae, as had most of the systems provided by Admiral Gracen and the refugees from Earth. Each now packed multi-gigaton fusion weapons in the place of the smaller Terran warheads.

The tachyon transition, instantaneous as it was, threw the weapons across the intervening space in the blink of an eye. At their targets the effect wore off naturally, plunging the weapons back into real space and, hopefully, right into the heart of the targeted ship.

Some missed. The equations for determining the effect of gravity on tachyon formations were far from perfect, and occasionally the powerful local fields caused by multiple warp interactions caused some shells to reappear outside their intended target. Or, in more extreme cases, other shells reappeared as fragments of their original form due to the tachyon formation being totally disrupted by opposing fields.

Others struck true, but returned to normal space inside the solid matter—such as the hull of the ship—they were aimed at. This was destructive, annihilating both the shells and the section of hull quite effectively, but generally not fatal to the target or even particularly inconveniencing.

Most, however, appeared within the interior of their target as intended—in the cargo rooms, the drone bays, the ducts that piped vital gasses about. These shells fell to the decks with loud clanging noises, attracting attention from all in the area, but by that time it was far too late.

In the first volley, over twenty Drasin ships simply vanished into nuclear fire.

The six ships of the Heroics squadron continued on full automatic fire for nearly five minutes until the last of the charging Drasin ships were destroyed in what was, for Admiral Gracen, the single most one-sided battle she’d ever witnessed or heard of.

There was a quiet moment after the report of the last destroyed Drasin ship made its way around the bridge, a period in which no one seemed to know what to say. Gracen finally broke the silence herself.

“Alright. Set course for Earth orbit,” she said. “They likely need some help.”

“Aye aye, ma’am.”

“Get me the Enterprise in the meantime.”

“Yes ma’am. Captain Carrow . . . online,” Susan told her a moment later.

“Captain, I see you have some fighters headed your way. Do you require assistance?”

“No ma’am, we can handle them. Suggest you get ground units to Earth,” Carrow answered. “We’ll follow as soon as we’ve cleaned up.”