Warglobes boiled out of the clouds of Ptoro. As the displaced neutron star caused the gas gaint to implode, scatters of lightning ricocheted off the clouds in eruptions of light that broke through from the first surge of a newborn star’s ignition.
“Shizz, look what we flushed out of the bushes,” said Tasia with a grim smile. “I guess they don’t like the present we just sent them.”
“Can’t take it back. Nothing they can do now except run.” Elly Ramirez chuckled, but her tense posture hinted at her level of anxiety.
Ensign Terene Mae made a disconcerting groan as the Manta’s viewer magnified the oncoming spiked spheres. “Doesn’t look like they’re running, Commander. They’re coming right at us.”
“Normally, I wouldn’t presume to guess how the drogues think,” Tasia said. “Right now, I’m fairly certain that they’re pissed off.”
Heedless of the warglobe threat, Sergeant Zizu read from the weapons displays in front of him. “Our deepest sensor buoys have been destroyed, presumably by the ignition shockwave. The flamefront is rising.” He turned, grinning.
Several EDF Mantas shifted position to face the enemy spheres. Their armaments included fracture-pulse drones—shaped charges designed to shatter thick diamond material—and carbon slammers that would break carbon-carbon bonds in the crystalline structure.
“Battle stations!” Tasia said over the shipwide comm system.
Sergeant Zizu scanned the tactical readouts. “Slammers and fraks are in the launch tubes. Ready.”
Tasia nodded. “Escort cruisers, disperse and prepare to offer some covering fire!”
Blue lightning arced from point to point on the warglobes as the aliens discharged their weapons. Deadly bolts lanced toward the EDF targets, ripping streaks along the thick hull plates, bursting some bulkheads. The Mantas reeled and turned their damaged sectors away from further pummeling. New reinforced armor prevented the warships from being destroyed outright.
Tasia gripped the arms of her command chair. “Shizz, I’m not going to stand on ceremony—open fire whenever and wherever you see fit. Keep shooting as you pack up and retreat. It’s the better part of valor to escape now—let the Klikiss Torch do its stuff!”
The escort battleships launched a storm of jazer blasts and detonating charges. The hydrogues responded with even greater fury. Tasia’s bridge crew cried out in dismay when three drogue spheres converged on a single escort Manta, pounding it repeatedly until it was blown apart. Debris spread out in a cloud of wreckage, atmosphere, and bodies.
A second Manta exploded as the EDF ships accelerated, pulling away from the collapsing gas giant. More and more of the hydrogues kept coming, surrounding the EDF ships and cutting off their escape. Tasia’s only glimmer of pleasure was to see Ptoro beginning to glow with purifying fires from below. She’d had quite enough of the damned aliens.
“Come on, quit spinning your jets and take us out of here.”
“Hydrogue warglobes are pursuing, Commander!”
From far outside Ptoro’s orbit, a streak of fire rocketed past Tasia’s cruiser, a blazing ball as large as any warglobe, heading toward the dying planet. Then came a second, a third, and then ten more.
“What the hell was that?” Ramirez said. “A meteor?”
Tasia knew. All around them in space, the incandescent ellipsoids were like moths gathering around a kindling flame. “The faeros,” she said with a quiet breath. She had seen them before, fighting a losing battle at the artificial star of Oncier. Now, though, the fireball entities and their blazing vessels greatly outnumbered the hydrogue spheres. The inferno ships careened into the warglobes like exploding suns, shattering the diamond-hulled spheres.
The hydrogues immediately turned their crackling blue lightning upon the faeros, ignoring the insignificant human battleships. The EDF crews responded with a mixture of stunned silence and crazily enthusiastic cheers. “Shizz, don’t waste any time!” Tasia bellowed so loudly her voice cracked. “We’ve got a distraction—let’s get the hell out of here.”
An even more strenuous volley of jazer blasts and targeted hull-breakers flew out, but Tasia told her weapons officers to stand down. “We’re like a little mouse in a battle between two mammoths. Just move out of the crossfire. No sense in having more of our battleships destroyed here and now.”
As Ptoro continued to brighten, as its core collapsed and nuclear fires were sparked deep within, the faeros combatants smashed into the flotilla of warglobes. Diamond spheres and flaming ellipsoids pirouetted around each other like closely orbiting planets. Blinding arcs like solar flares and coronal loops intersected with blue lightning bolts.
The EDF ships continued to accelerate in their retreat, leaving the gray gas planet warming with inner flames.
Several of the still-spinning faeros ellipsoids had turned black like extinguished coals, carbonaceous cinders deadened by a hydrogue attack, but the majority of the diamond globes had been shattered. Broken fragments drifted away from the funeral pyre of Ptoro. Dozens, then hundreds of the fireballs rushed to the burgeoning star, mercilessly surrounding and engulfing the few remaining hydrogues.
Satisfied, Tasia muttered, “See? Bullies always come to a bad end.” She called a halt to their retreat and waited on the edge of the Ptoro system, observing the immense battle from a safe distance.
The hydrogues had no chance. Within an hour, the faeros had eradicated them completely, destroying every one of the spiked spheres.
Tasia wished she could have personally crushed a few of the warglobes, but she was pleased enough just to see their enemies meet such an ignominious end. She had done her part by triggering the ignition of Ptoro. Thanks to her, the new star would burn for thousands of years before it faded into an ember.
“It looked awfully grim there for a few minutes, Commander,” Zizu said. “I was never much of a believer in Unison, but I admit I was reciting all the prayers I memorized as a kid.”
“Call it a miracle if you want,” Tasia said. “We owe the faeros our thanks, at the very least. They cleared the way for our escape.”
But the flaming ships responded to none of the EDF hails. Instead, after the fireballs had mopped up the hydrogue warships, they flitted around brightening Ptoro, then descended into the new sun. Without a word of response, they plunged with obvious delight into the flamefront that gobbled the gaseous atmosphere.
All across the Spiral Arm, stars had been quenched in the titanic battles between hydrogues and faeros. Perhaps, she thought, Ptoro was new territory to make up for all the dying stars the faeros had lost.