The Ashes of Worlds - Kevin J. Anderson [145]
“Are they trying to ram us?” Conrad gripped the armrests, pushing himself halfway out of the unfamiliar command chair. The cratered landscape of the nearby Moon filled the entire screen.
“No, sir. I think they’re . . . running from something.”
Three more ships in the Adar’s group fanned out, activated their stardrives, and sped away. Meanwhile, the last Ildiran ship skimmed close to the surface in extremely low orbit, using the lunar mass as a shield until it left the Moon and headed off at full speed. Although its vector would carry it directly out of the solar system, it would also bring the gaudy alien ship unnecessarily within weapons range of the EDF battle group.
And the Ildirans didn’t even seem to care.
Conrad couldn’t understand the Adar’s actions. “What is he thinking?” No response came from repeated hails. The EDF ships unleashed a flurry of jazer blasts, but the warliner was moving too swiftly; some of the bolts struck the ornate solar sails, but did little damage. The fleeing ship streaked away.
Conrad looked quickly to his bridge crew for any answers or suggestions. “Can anybody tell me what he’s trying to do?” None of this made any sense.
A cloud of hot spheres streaked toward the Moon like incandescent buckshot. Within seconds, the shower of sparks on the Goliath’s main screen changed to an inferno. Impossible numbers of fireballs extended beyond the net of the EDF’s sensors.
“Faeros,” he said aloud. “My God!”
The flaming ellipsoids arrowed straight toward the lunar base and all the EDF ships that had launched in a confused response as soon as the Solar Navy had departed. The Mage-Imperator’s confiscated warliner, still attempting its pursuit of Adar Zan’nh, had risen up over the Moon and was increasing speed. The faeros saw it. The EDF lieutenant in command of the skeleton crew called to General Brindle for instructions.
Without pause, without warning, without any communication whatsoever, the foremost faeros slammed into the warliner, engulfing it in flames. The ship’s extended solar sails shriveled, and its meager shields could not possibly withstand the impact. The whole gigantic vessel was vaporized within seconds.
The stream of fireballs kept coming, and thousands of faeros began to attack the Moon. The whole Moon.
Elemental flames lanced down in a unified barrage, blistering the already barren landscape, gouging new molten craters in the surface. This was orders of magnitude more destructive, more overwhelming, than any attack, any weapon, any disaster Conrad had witnessed in his entire life.
Even as a second wave of EDF ships rushed in from other stations in the solar system, he knew there was nothing his entire fleet could do against these things.
Clustering around the Moon, the fireballs threw down a holocaust. The faeros bombarded the surface with total abandon, erasing craters and turning the rocks and dust into glassy streams of lava.
They obliterated the fortified EDF base within the first few minutes. All transmissions from Commandant Tilton and anyone in the vicinity of the EDF base had fallen silent. Conrad didn’t know how many people had been stationed there, but it must have been in the thousands. Those men and women were already dead, the facilities destroyed, all the nearby ships vaporized. Every ship that had managed to launch was wiped out.
But even that did not satisfy the rage of the fiery entities. The faeros bombardment continued until they succeeded in breaking through the lunar surface. Their weaponry hammered through the regolith until the Moon itself became cracked and red.
“General Brindle, do we attack?”
“No, do not engage the faeros! Maintain our distance.” He shuddered, staring at the screen. “No weapon in the entire Hansa arsenal can fight against that.” Any Earth Defense Forces that tried would be incinerated in the first wave.
Conrad