Descend- Seeing Stars, Sean Oswald [best e books to read .txt] 📗

attacked was able to maintain shields although it did take some damage. It began returning fire, but her ship was simply too fast.

      It moved in ways that should have been impossible but the nanium structure responded to her Eesa’s very thoughts. Better yet she activated the subspace drive and could literally phase out allowing deadly barrages of energy weapons and missiles to pass through her. She eventually took out the battleship by firing phased pulse weapons into it. She applied Amelia’s power to the A’snkarnt weapons to devastating effect.

      The first blast took out the engines. The second took out the command deck. A third blew up the main weapons, and a fourth blast ruptured the side of the ship. It was venting atmosphere and soon the engines were going to explode. Jay had finished a ship off a second after she had and now, they were racing to see who could destroy the third battleship first.

      The competitive streak within Jay came out and he shot toward the ship crossing the span between them in fraction of a second. He strafed the side trying to disintegrate it, but the shield held. He knew he could step through the shielding but that seemed to be unfair because it would limit Eesa’s attack options if he were inside the enemy ship.

      Her first attack had already taken out its engines. If he didn’t do something and quickly this was going to be all over, and he would have to admit she had destroyed more of the Forlorn than he had.

      Then it struck him. He was trying to get too fancy. Sometimes old strategies worked the best. In this case he just needed to think bigger. He immediately formed a PSI blade that was a thousand feet long. It didn’t need to be thick in fact he kept it as thin as a hair but still as indestructible as any of his constructs. The level of control for something this massive would have been beyond his control a short time before but now it felt natural.

      Then he gave a mock salute to the ship and brought down the blade. He drove it not with just his PSI enhanced muscles but also all of his control of kinetic energy. The blade drove through the forcefield. The amount of force running along the edge of that blade caused a tiny fracture in the ship’s protective field and just like the ship were nothing more than a snake, Jay beheaded it, lopping off the front twenty percent, which contained the command deck.

      The two portions of the ship floated apart in space driven by the kinetic energy of his strike. He sent a telepathic message to Eesa, “I win.”

      She couldn’t respond back but he could feel her frustration. Then everything changed as a group of three more battleships jumped out of hyperspace. Clearly wanting to win, Eesa fired her multiphase PSI missile at the ships. The planet killing weapon did just what it was supposed to.

      It first flew at nearly a quarter of light speed so there was little chance to react. Even if there had been any reaction it phased through any shields that would have been in its way. Then a dozen different powers went off at the same time. Necrotic energy blended with electricity, fire, and kinetic force. The mass of the ships was all lessenedand the force therefore ripped them apart like tissue paper.

      The resulting explosion was massive, and the shockwave buffeted them even thousands of miles away. He could feel Eesa gloating as she tallied the count of her kills which pushed her ahead of him.

      Then all thoughts of a contest were driven from his mind. More ships started to appear and were opening fire as soon as they did. Jay watched as not three or even three hundred ships appeared but more like thirty thousand. They blocked all the space around him, and their cannon fire filled every inch of the area around Eesa’s ship.

      The nanium was tough. Their improved shields were powerful, but she had not reacted quickly enough to phase and so her ship was torn to shreds. Jay watched as four of his wives were killed before his eyes.

      Rage surged through him and as he had twice before he stepped back through time. He appeared in front of their ship an instant before it was destroyed and threw up the largest, thickest construct he had ever made. It was a curved shield meant to protect him and Eesa’s starfighter.

      Almost instantly it began to buckle but almost instantly is not quite the same as instantly. That sliver of a second allowed Eesa enough time to trigger the subspace drive and respond to his mental command that she flee. Likewise, Jay time skipped back to the shuttle. Since he wasn’t actually traveling through space, they couldn’t lead him with a weapon and target him and so instead he ended up back aboard the shuttle which then jumped back to the leviathan.

      Jay was breathing heavily. The final exertion had been intense, but it was more about having seen his beloved wives killed. They wouldn’t remember it so they wouldn’t know the danger, the risk. He couldn’t lose them. Jay had to do whatever it took to fix this. He wouldn’t allow it to happen.

Interlude 5- Too Late

      The seven armadas had been buffeted by gravity weapons, blown apart by streams of pulse weapons, and sucked into miniature black holes. The entire region of space around what had been the A’snkarnt home world was a tattered ruin. Subspace and real space had been torn apart by the weapons brought to bear and an area more than ten light years in every direction around the planet was going to be deadly to travel through.

      Three of the Overminds had fallen and