caraig | 500 Words

Not the best part of this little saga so far. It's rather scanty, in fact. I think I'll try re-writing it tomorrow, it just seems a bit too lacking in something.

Khaine's ships, bit by bit, emerged from shift, deep in the heliosphere of the system they had been told, in fairly certain terms, to not approach.

"Plot, Flag. Anything?" She kept her voice calm and collected, restrained. She didn't want any nervousness showing.

"Flag, Plot. Nothing at all. All telemetry is clean."

She fretted for a moment, then shook her head. "Plot, Flag, get me threads to the division leads.

She tapped her seat's arm idly while she waited, not liking being coccooned in the seat's restraint system of plates and mesh. A strict interpretation of the warning would mean that they'd have been destroyed as soon as they entered the heliosphere of the system, and here they were already far deep within it.

What are they waiting for? she found herself wondering.

On her screen there appeared four images, the commadners of her fleet's four combat divisions. "Commodores," she began to say. But then general alarm started to blast, the light turned a harsh blue, and everyone was talking at once. Even on the normally silent intraship phone, there was a cacophony of voices.

"Quiet! Dammit, I said -- quiet!" She had to shout twice more to make herself heard in the flag center.

"Flag, Bridge! Flag, Bridge!"

Growliogn softly, she silenced the alarms, and keyed the intraship. "Bridge, Flag, go ahead! What's this all about, Captain?"

"Admiral... I... the...." The man paused. Just when she was about to completely loose patience -- and dreading the tightening in her stomach -- he blurted out, "You should see for yourself, Admiral...."

She opened her mouth, and at that moment one of her screens came alive. Normally, there should have been countless stars there, rendered beautifully in the entire visible spectrum of light. And there were. Except, slowly, an inky blackness was starting to blot them out, spreading outward from some center she couldn't quite place.

Suddenly she felt calm, and sighed softly. No bluff, then, she thought. Well. This is it, then. Far from terrifying her, she was glad that the waiting and worrying was finally over. And, admittedly, curious as to how they were going to kill her and her fleet.

* * *

Okana watched the fleet spread before him as the weapon began to engulf the ships. His instructions had been specific: destroy them. But he did not want to. They weren't deserving of death. But he had been given instructions, and while he might decline them, then there was nothing stopping the Archons themselves from exerting their own power using other weapons, and carrying out their own wishes.

No matter what was to come next, there were things to do. He had the weapon cause the fleet's reactors to stop functioning -- converting the antimatter to matter was the simplest and quickest means, so he had that done. There were auxiliary power plants, as well, and he had them neutralized. He ensured that the probes pacing the fleet were, for now, unharmed, and that their telemetry was still -- mostly -- clean. The soldier in him did not want them to learn too much about the weapon, after all, though there was precious little they could possibly learn.

From what he had seen of these ships, the main engines were mounted on thick spars away from the inhabited sections; they were remotely operated. he had the weapon generate small particulates of quintessence and send them hurtling through the engine sections. While the particulates were small, they would cause a great deal of havoc and destruction, coming out of nowhere and ripping apart even the most resilient engine machinery.

After the three-microsecond series of volleys, the weapon told him that one of the ships still had somewhat functional engines. Irritated with himself, he sent one more particulate through that ship's engines. He must have been more unwilling to do this than he had thought, and the slip in his duty bothered him.

Ng paused, then, and looked at the fleet of hulks that were not going to go anywhere ever again. He looked at them, and considered, and tried toconsider quickly. He knew that the persons within were terrified and for their sake he tried to think quickly.

* * *

They were on battery power, adrift, little more than pressure hulls filled with screaming, frightened personnel.

The blue light of action stations was replaced by the blood-red glow of emergency lights. All of five seconds had passed from when she had seen the blackness appear on her screen. And all she could think of was why they weren't killing them immediately. At this point, she half-expected some sort of gloating condescencion, some sort of high-worded declaration of their impropriety.

As it became ten seconds, then fifteen, she wondered what their newfound enemy was thinking, and silently urged them to just do what they were going to do.