“The galaxy might not be quiet because no one is there. It might be quiet because someone already was.”

  — Isaac Arthur, Futurist Prophet 115 B.I.

  The station lights flared in a constant red. Ouyang Li packed her scarce belongings hastily into a bag. Outside her door, she heard other crewmen running through the hallway. The unknown ship she had detected was on a trajectory to Styx Station, and the Fleet had given an evacuation order.

  Thankfully, the warning came in time, so everyone had the chance to pack the essentials.

  It was even luckier that Styx Station was still under construction. The finished station, as envisioned, would have housed millions. But that point was decades away.

  Now it looked like it would be destroyed, because nothing the Aligned fleet had thrown at the enemy had any measurable impact.

  Li needed every ounce of restraint not to cry. Her father had told her back then, when they buried her mother after the Three Gorges Dam had collapsed, “We don’t cry. We don’t give in to pain. We use it to grow stronger.”

  Searching her little quarters for any forgotten item, Li shouldered her backpack and walked to the elevator leading to the hangars where the evacuation Sleipnirs waited. As she reached the hangar, she quickly found her designated group.

  “Third Group ready for departure.” Her supervisor, Chief Patel, shouted to the evacuation coordinator.

  The military had demanded evacuation drills from the moment the station was put into operation, and Li was now thankful for them.

  After boarding their Sleipnir, the transporter immediately left for Ceres, their new home for now.

  Li looked back at Styx Station, hanging there on a seventy-meter-thick cable between Pluto and Charon, a trickle of lights in the endless dark.

  In her mind, she saw how the station would look after construction finished.

  A stream of lights, elevators going down to Pluto or up to Charon, Fleet docks along the line, and a city built for millions at the center of it all.

  Maybe next time.

  ————

  Admiral Browner stood before the central holo tank, which displayed the known military assets of the Sol system, including automated defenses and remaining civilian traffic. He had enacted a general systems alert, grounding any civilian ship except emergency traffic or the slowly beginning evacuations.

  The enemy ship headed for Styx, one of the outermost manned stations of the system. Browner couldn’t believe it at first when he saw the enemy’s acceleration. All sensor probes gave similar figures: more than fifty G. Of all the weapons in the fleet, only light torpedoes had the same acceleration. Well, and of course, railguns and ‘Davies Shots’.

  Or Welsh Princesses, the Engineering department had made up its mind as of now.

  “Sir, Styx Station is reporting they have completed the evacuation.”

  Browner didn’t respond to the communications tech’s report. He was too focused on the greater strategic situation.

  And it could not be much worse. The Aligned Navy had, on paper, eight fleets and three Expeditionary Fleets. And last, the Sol System Defense Fleet. Earth, Mars, and the Jovian system each had its own defense capabilities, but they were likely useless in the coming battle. He needed weapons far heavier than the old defenses could provide.

  This was the situation on paper, but in reality, he had the 8th and 1st Fleets, with the 8th at only 10% since it was still under construction. The 2nd Expeditionary was still in Proxima Centauri on a scout mission, and the 3rd was now considered lost at Bernard’s Star after it missed the third scheduled report window and no Pigeon could deliver any reports to it.

  The 1st Expeditionary was even scheduled to start a search operation after its planned refit.

  Again, he had nothing to defend a whole system. His ships were technically inferior in almost every aspect, and the enemy was unknown.

  He frowned. I’m too old for this shit.

  “Sir, the Charon Defense Grid is activated and synced. Googly Telescope is in position and has made visual contact.”

  The technician’s report brought Browner back.

  The plan was simple: observe the enemy visually from half an AU away with a swarm of Googly Eyes serving as an improvised telescope, while blasting it with everything the Charon Defense Grid had to offer. And Charon had much to offer.

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  The Argos had a single 50 cm caliber main gun. Charon had four 70 cm turrets and fifteen 50 cm turrets.

  The moon’s defense grid was built to wipe out fleets.

  “Distance of the object to Charon?”

  “6.1 AU. The object will be in range in five minutes.” The tech replied

  Five minutes until we see how much trouble we are in.

  “Arrival time of Bismarck?”

  “Bismarck will be in range of Charon in twenty minutes.”

  That was the second stage of the plan. If the object survived, it would be under fire from Bismarck, the half-finished battleship.

  The Germans weren’t happy to sacrifice it, but everyone knew what would happen if they couldn’t stop the object in the outer system. The closer to Earth you got, the more space stations and civilian infrastructure there were.

  So Bismarck was fitted with a remote-control system, and its catacombs were filled to the brim with kinetic gel.

  If the enemy used its “tractor beam” again to simply crash the ship onto its hull, the protomatter-enhanced nukes aboard the ship would be a nasty surprise.

  “Any response to our calls?”

  “None, sir.”

  Big fucking surprise.

  “Object in firing range. Waiting for target acquisition…”

  All small talk and whispering in the CIC stopped. The only sound Browner could hear was the soft hum of the ventilation.

  “Prepare protomatter-spiked osmium shells.”

  Of course, the type of ammunition was already known and prepared, but the rules required confirming the use of protomatter ammunition at every step.

  So that the judges at the court-martial hearing would have no difficulty finding the guilty one if something went horribly wrong. Browner pushed the thought away.

  “Target acquired.”

  “Fire at will.”

  The Googly Eyes around Charon streamed images of the moon in real time to the CIC of the Argos.

  Browner saw space rippling at the end of the towering guns when the projectiles went FTL.

  “Hephaestus sends their congratulations to Chief Ferguson for successfully raping physics.” The words of the Hephaestus captain after the first successful use of FTL ammunition rang in the admiral’s ears again.

  “We’ll see the first impacts in ten seconds.” The tech broke the deafening silence in the CIC.

  Everyone stared at the screens. Everyone hoped.

  Browner knew the universe, so he didn’t dare to hope. He braced himself instead.

  The screen showed the rusty-appearing sphere, with the now too-well-known scar-like hull opening and its glowing lights.

  The scientists assumed it was some kind of hangar opening or something.

  ‘Or something. Fact is, we know nothing, and the enemy uses ships and shipwrecks as additional hull armor like a caddisfly larva.’

  “Impact.”

  Unlike conventional FTL ammunition, protomatter-spiked shells exploded on contact.

  The impacts were massive, throwing large sections of the enemy’s outer hull into space. The sphere was clouded in debris, explosions glowing through it as more projectiles struck.

  A few detonations were especially massive. Browner hoped they had hit something vital inside the object.

  Before the second volley could arrive, dark rays emitted from the sphere, dragging every bit of debris back onto the hull, clearing the view and giving the engineers and scientists around the admiral a chance for impact analysis.

  Browner didn’t need a report to know what had happened.

  The shells had easily penetrated dozens of meters of hull armor. They had blown craters hundreds of meters deep into the surface of the sphere.

  But the sphere was the size of a large asteroid, and the layer of ships and, as Browner now saw, metal-rich rocks was kilometers thick.

  Not one of the first volley was even close to penetrating the layer. And no shell hit the exposed “hangars.”

  “The first volley had a significant impact, but no penetration. Second volley hits now.”

  Browner stared at the faces of the assembled crew. They still hoped. He knew better.

  He knew the screen would again show a debris cloud, then the enemy would use its “tractor beams” to pull the debris back onto its hull.

  A glance at the screen told him he was right.

  “Enemy counteractions?”

  Moment of truth. If they used evasive maneuvers, the hits had at least stung them. Otherwise…

  “None. The enemy vessel is still on course to Charon.”

  “Fuck.”

  The whole CIC suddenly stared at Browner. They weren’t used to him losing his composure.

  Lyra’s voice rang out clear in the CIC. Browner knew that the ship VI had run countless simulations and had, together with the central Sol Defense VI ‘Blue Dog’, observed and calculated possible defense strategies.

  ‘Admiral, I recommend ending the assault for now. It is ineffective and might give the object valuable insight into our defense capabilities.’

  Browner was of the same opinion, but Lyra’s next words made his blood freeze.

  ‘It also seems we’re only strengthening the object’s hull armor.’

  “Explain.”

  ‘First of all, we reduce the ships and ore-rich rocks to smaller debris, allowing them to pack more densely. And secondly, due to the projectile impacts as well as the force of the explosions in the petaton class, we’re risking forging the lower levels of the armor into a dense alloy.’

  Browner inhaled sharply.

  ‘Even a 70 cm planetary defense gun can’t penetrate a kilometer-thick armor of welded-together metal.’

  “Any suggestions?”

  ‘Yes. Evacuate every station outside of Jupiter’s orbit. We have already lost the outer systems. We should prepare a stand in the Jovian system.’

  Browner exhaled. He had, again, come to the same conclusion.

  ‘And we might need some human improvisation and out-of-the-box thinking… sir.’

  On the screen, Browner could see the enemy object. The readings indicated it was still 4.5 AU away from Pluto.

  To his surprise, an opening appeared inside the unarmored part — the part everyone called the wound.

  A yellow, glowing elliptical object appeared for a fraction of a second. Then it rippled and was gone.

  “Analysis?” He had a bad feeling. Rule of combat number one: Everything new is dangerous.

  “Unknown object. Length approximately two kilometers. Diameter around two hundred meters at the center. Graviton wave indicates its course is roughly crossing Pluto.”

  Browner overlaid the course. Before he could ask for a rough speed, something unbelievable happened.

  The Googly Eyes transmitted the elypsies’ impact on Pluto.

  But instead of creating a massive explosion, it seemed to drill inside the dwarf planet.

  Waves of cracking ice sheet rippled away from the impact point, leaving the surface looking like broken glass.

  Browner somehow knew what would happen next.

  The cracks deepened. They grew wider.

  Then the planet fractured as a whole, the same yellow light blasting out between the shattered pieces of the former ninth planet.

  It was almost anticlimactic.

  It was also a message.

  By firing on Pluto, the enemy didn’t even acknowledge that Charon posed any sort of danger to it.

  And by using an FTL weapon, just like the fleet did, it showed them how much more devastation it could bring.

  We need some serious improvisation.