“Apologies, Senator,” the admiral said. “Creating antimatter isn’t especially difficult. We could do it ourselves easily enough, but while the power created by such a reaction is substantial, it’s inherently unstable. Any stray atoms of regular matter that might infiltrate your containment structure would result in a rather explosive reaction. Eventually, storing antimatter is guaranteed to result in a critical failure, and there is no shield in existence that can contain it then. Our observations of the ship seem to indicate that it generates antimatter charges on demand, however, and then they literally sling those at their enemies with a modified electromagnetic accelerator. Crude, insane, but effective.”

“They’re clearly not Oathers,” the first senator said finally, after everyone had taken in the admiral’s words. “Nor related to the Empire in any way, otherwise they wouldn’t use such a rudimentary ship design. Are those rotating habitats?”

“They are, and scanners indicate that the majority of the crew are within, using centrifugal force in the place of gravity systems.”

“More than crude, then,” the senator said. “Complete microgravity neophytes. An emerging world.”

“Impossible!” another objected. “No emerging world could possibly have the ability to destroy Drasin squadrons.”

The admiral shrugged. “We don’t have enough information to be sure on that level. However, for the moment I would tend to agree with both of you. They appear to be an emerging species. Likely another seeded world, of course, and yet . . . they should not be at their present capabilities in that case. We’re missing too much information to make a final determination. What we do know is that the Drasin despise them.”

He looked around, his expression deadly serious. “I cannot express that enough to this council. We all know that the Drasin have a programmed hatred for life as we know it . . . It is core programming embedded in every atom of those beasts, and we’ve never been able to remove it. The best we could manage was to barricade it off when applied to our own ships, but even so it remained. We aimed that hatred, honed it, and loosed it on the Oathers. However, when the unknown ship entered the scenario, something changed . . .”

He hesitated, shaking his head. “Councillors, I’ve looked over the data telemetry from the primary first-generation Drasin that led those battles. At first, there was little reaction. The ship alone was incredibly difficult to detect, even by the Drasin . . . However, when they located the inhabited world, we lost all positive control. It was like the Drasin had a psychotic break, destroying our controls as they went into berserker mode. We’ve never seen anything like it at any point in our interactions with them.”

“So what is it, exactly,” the first senator asked finally, “about this world and its inhabitants that could drive the Drasin to a killing frenzy so wild as to destroy our coded leash?”

“That, Senator,” the admiral said seriously, “is the very question indeed.”

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 1