“Shiva One Two, target neutralized. Stand by for next target. Good job.”

She closed the channel and looked over to where Marion was sitting. “Send a ground team with seismic gear into the region as soon as possible, just to confirm.”

The colonel nodded curtly. “I’ll arrange it.”

“You do that,” she sighed, turning back to her console. “I have more targets to service.”

“By the gods, what is that?” Sun whispered, looking at the imagery they were capturing of the surface through the Bellerophon’s advanced instruments.

“Thousands of them, Captain,” his instrumentation chief said. “Hundreds of thousands.”

“I want all lasers prepared to fire. Nothing down there survives,” Sun ordered, lips tightening. “Nothing.”

“Y . . . yes Captain.”

The Bellerophon steadied over its target, weapons priming as they continued to record data from below them. After several long moments a low hum reverberated all around and the air began to shimmer under the bulk of the ship.

Over a dozen beams lanced out of the bottom of the carrier, boiling the sand and rock below directly from solid to gas. The beams sublimated the material above the mine, punching through into the first level, where they instantly did the same thing to thousands of Drasin in twenty milliseconds before continuing on to burn through the second level.

Level by level the beams of the Bellerophon did their job, burning through rock, dirt, and alien carapace with equal ease. A hundred feet, a thousand, ten thousand feet were burned through in just seconds, and then they kept on burning.

“Captain, thermal readings just spiked below us!”

Sun half turned. “We’re turning the earth into gaseous metals. Of course the temperature is spiking.”

“No, Captain, beyond that. I’m reading some very odd thermal profiles . . . something is coming up!”

Sun’s eyes widened. “Cease fire! Pull us out of here, now!”

“Course?”

“Any course!” Sun yelled. “Move!”

The Bellerophon tilted in the air, moving away as the lasers ceased. Below her, however, the hole they’d burned into the ground rumbled and began to spit fire right back at them. Molten rock exploded into the air, the force of the blast actually shaking the kilometer-and-a-half starship as it tried hurriedly to pull away.

“All hands, brace for impact!” Sun called out, holding on to his seat as the Earth exploded beneath them.

Alarms screamed and the ship bucked under the shock wave from below, sending two crewmen on the bridge to the floor. For a moment the bridge actually tilted, something that should have been impossible with the artificial gravity systems in use, and everyone hung on for dear life.

And then it was over. They were clear and Sun was surging up from his seat again.

“Show me the site!” he ordered. “Show me the site!”