Dahlia's Deception (The Annihilation Series) (14 page)

“If the change had not been made to it; they would have used the missiles and the Rageon would know it wasn’t the Hedgon making the attack.”

Ping looked at Sprigly, “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. We need to choose other ships to watch. Pare, are there other ships we should watch?”

“Thomas Sorrow’s third planet on his list is a Black Major Production Planet.”

Dahlia looked at her panel, “Send the list to my panel. We’ll watch them through Ping’s distant vision.”

“You have them now.”

T
he countdown slowly wound down until one minute remained. Dahlia pressed her panel, “Defenders of our people, don’t take any chances; you must not allow your ship to be seen or captured. Our survival depends on you not being detected. You have a self-destruct circuit built into your ship’s frame and I expect you to use it if circumstances demand it. We are the only thing that stands between life and death for the people we’re defending. I know your courage and I know your hearts; give us your best.”

Pare announced, “Six, five, four, three, two, one…” Ninety thousand Mites disappeared from above the planet. Pare’s main wall monitor activated and the three on board saw two red beams fired at two Rageon Warships. Hundreds of large White Ships rushed in on the site of the attack and scanned for the source of the two red beams. A few moments later, the planet blew apart as the core blew up through the crust and broke it into six major pieces that appeared to move in slow motion as they moved away from each other. Appearances were deceiving; a huge blast erupted and blew out into space, shoving the Rageon Warships in orbit like leaves in a wind storm. The six major pieces moved away from each other and slowly stopped as their gravity took hold and slowly pulled them back together. The entire planet was on fire as the core continued to push out into the ruptured pieces. Nothing on the planet survived. Everything on the monitor was on fire.

• • •

Dahlia stared at the conflagration and could only shake her head in silence. Ping showed no emotion at the horrific destruction and wondered why the planet didn’t explode and send the pieces flying out in space. Sprigly heard his thoughts, “When the Searchers originally fired on a planet, they used three beams, not just one. Three beams would have caused the damage you expected. However, one does do the job nicely.” Ping nodded. Sprigly said, “Pare, show us what’s happening.”

The monitor began showing planet after planet on fire. Some actually did blow out into space when the core of the planet was larger than normal. However, most of them ignited and burned.

“Sprigly, what’s going to happen to these planets?”

“It will take thousands of years but they will eventually cool. They’re located in the habitation zone of their stars and most of them will live again. Gravity will prevent the water vapor from escaping into space and rain will fall on them again in the future. Intelligent life will start the long process of evolving out of the life that eventually appears. It will take hundreds of millions of years.”

“But all life will have been destroyed.”

“Dahlia, some forms of life are extremely difficult to kill. Spores, seeds, and wind borne microbes will start the process of life again. The planet may be somewhat smaller but it should live again. Some bacteria will live through the fires and flourish again.”

Dahlia sighed. Ping looked at her, “I know this is hard to stomach; after all, your people are planters. Perhaps in that distant future your people can come back and plant the seeds the planet will need to live again.”

“We may be gone with these planets by then.”

Ping could only look back at the Monitor in silence.

• • •

The Black Master received the information about his largest production planet being attacked. He tried to find out what was going on but information was contradictory. He screamed at his fleet admirals to find out what was going on and take measures to stop it. Six minutes later his Senior Fleet Admiral appeared on his panel, “Master, thousands of our production planets are being attacked.”

“BY WHO!!

“It appears to be the same ones that have been attacking our ships.”

“What damages have they caused?” The Fleet Admiral paused and the Master stood and screamed, “WHAT DAMAGES??!”

“More than eighty thousand of our ship building planets have been destroyed.”

“Don’t you mean damaged?”

“No, Master; the planets have been blow apart and everything on the planets has been burned.”

The Master sat down in shock. The Fleet Admiral slowly shook his head, “I am setting up defenses at this moment and you should know the attacks are still taking place.”

The Master nodded and the display went dark. It suddenly illuminated and he saw the Rageon Ruler, “You will be destroyed for this!” The Master looked up at the Rageon Ruler and he saw the Master was in a state of shock. “How many?” The Master stared into space and the Rageon yelled, “HOW MANY?!?”

The Master looked at the display panel and said in a voice almost too soft to hear, “More than eighty thousand.”

The Rageon knew he was accusing the wrong one for what was happening. “I’ll get back to you.” The Master nodded slightly and the display went dark.

The Rageon Ruler contacted the other three civilizations and discovered the Chinga were enduring the same assaults. He was surprised when the Hedgon and Drund said they had no idea what he was talking about. He ended the calls and pulled up the few recordings made of the attacks on his manufacturing planets. He saw the same thing in all of them; a red beam was used to destroy his planets. His face turned grim as more messages came in reporting more planets being destroyed. He contacted his fleets, “Have we destroyed any of the attackers?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“What have you learned?”

“There was nothing left to examine. The ships we managed to hit exploded in a massive blast that killed more than a hundred of our warships that were too close. A close examination doesn’t tell us anything about the attackers.”

“Do you have any idea of the size of the attacker?”

“I apologize, Your Majesty. There was nothing left to make any determination about the size or anything else.”

The Rageon Ruler knew how good his Admiral was and if he says nothing was left, nothing was left. Finally, the attacks ended and he waited for the toll. The Admiral appeared on his panel, “Tell me!”

“More than a hundred thousand planets have been blown into fragments. Seventy thousand of them are our largest facilities. We’ve deployed the fleets to our other production facilities but it appears the attacks have ended.”

“I want you to examine the recordings of these attacks and tell me what you see,”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” The Ruler was close to losing control of his rage. Now he had a better appreciation of how the Beast felt. Someone was going to pay for this.

• • •

Virgie arrived at the third planet and went directly to the South Pole and fired her beam into the planet. “Virgie, my scans indicated the defenders were moving toward the South Pole just before you fired. Number four should be the last. They are organizing a defense and they’re going to fire on our beam the moment it’s detected.”

Virgie looked at the probe’s feed from her next target and saw a massive movement of ships toward both poles. She hit a button and looked at the fifth target. “Go to the fifth and we’ll fire at the North Pole. Do it now!”

The Mite teleported in and fired on the planet slightly south of the continent located on top of the planet. Virgie watched as hundreds of ships turned and accelerated toward her. She gritted her teeth and just as the Rageon Warships fired a huge barrage of beams at the entire length of the red beam hitting the planet, the beam disappeared before it was hit. A moment later the planet blew apart.

Virgie scrolled back to the fourth planet, “There’s an opening just north of the equator over the large island on the right side of the planet.”

“I see it; teleporting now.”

Virgie took a quick breath as her ship emerged inside the planet’s atmosphere less than six miles above the surface. The computer fired the beam as ships flashed in high overhead in orbit and opened fire at the tiny deep in the planet’s atmosphere. The beam hitting the planet disappeared before their beams arrived. The Mite emerged in open space and Virgie was in shock, “What did you just do?”

“There was no place above the planet to fire without being attacked before our beam could do its job. The waters at the equator are hot and it reduces the time needed for the beam to heat the core. I determined we only had a second and by going into the atmosphere, the warships would hesitate momentarily to make sure they didn’t hit their own structures. That slight delay allowed us to make the kill.”

Virgie turned the display and looked at her last two planets and shook her head, “Get us out of here.”

“You are very wise, my captain.”

“I’m an overachiever, but I’m not stupid.”

Virgie learned later that most of the Mites were only able to kill three planets before they withdrew. She earned her Admiral’s rank, not because she killed the most planets, but because she showed remarkable wisdom knowing when to call it quits.

• • •

Sprigly looked at his device, “We’ve lost four hundred ships.”

“Were any of them seen?”

“No Ping, only the explosion of their ship was detected and when a Mite’s reactor overloads and explodes, most of the atoms are changed dramatically by the heat of the blast.”

“Is there any possibility of them finding particles of Nemite?”

“No, it has a low melting point and will have combined with other atoms in the blast. They probably won’t waste time attempting to collect anything; there’s not much left to detect.”

“Do you know how many planets were hit?”

“I’m collecting that information from Dean’s panel as we speak. He’s waiting for all of them to report in. It appears the ones being attacked put together a defense in remarkable time. All of our losses happened in the last few minutes of the attack.”

“That’s going to make the next attacks impossible.”

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“Whether or not they take the bait; their numbers could be greatly reduced if they take it.” Sprigly paused, “You know we can’t attack them soon.”

Dahlia looked up, “They have to have time to decide what to do. If we attack during that time, it will throw away our deception.” Sprigly looked at Ping and he nodded. Dahlia shook her head, “So much death.”

“There will be less now.” Dahlia turned and looked at Ping, “The ships those planets would have built won’t be killing anyone.” Dahlia nodded and turned back to her display.

• • •

Three days later the Rageon, Chinga, and Beast Master all looked at each other on their displays. The atmosphere was subdued and even the Master was still stunned by what happened. The Chinga Emperor said, “Who did this?”

The Master slowly shook his head, “It has to be the ships that have been attacking our fleets.” He turned to the Rageon, “Do you agree?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

“We’ve been unable to find the location of their civilization.”

The Rageon looked at the Emperor, “Let me ask both of you a question; has anyone benefited from this?”

The Emperor stared at the Rageon Ruler, “I’m not sure what you mean?”

“It’s not that hard of a question. Has anyone you know benefited from the attacks on our planets?”

The Emperor thought for a moment, “Well, the Hedgon and Drund weren’t attacked so they weren’t harmed. I guess that could be considered a benefit.”

“Didn’t the Hedgon lose the majority of their construction facilities when we were fighting the ships from that other place?”

The Master nodded, “Yes they did. They made the mistake of placing all of their production facilities on a limited number of planets.”

The Rageon Ruler looked at the other two, “If we were not attacked, what position would the Hedgon be in ten years from now?”

The Emperor said, “They would be tremendously outnumbered by the other four of us.”

“Do you think they know that?” The Emperor looked at the Master and the Rageon saw his sudden anger. “One last question; what was the color of the beam used to destroy our planets?”

The Master’s anger was instant and he forced himself to not give in to his rage, “But we’ve not seen any of their ships capable of avoiding our scanners.”

The Emperor responded, “If they were working to weaken us, they would not have revealed them.”

“But what about the Drund; they weren’t attacked.”

“Do you think the Hedgon would take on all of us without the assurance of their support? The fact they were not attacked gives their intentions away.”

“We should confront them.”

The Rageon looked at the Chinga Emperor, “And do what? They’ll scream at the top of their voices that they’re innocent and have done no wrong. We couldn’t prove that they conducted the attacks and they’ll wait for the next time they can do it again and really weaken us.”

The Rageon Ruler saw his panel blink and he said, “Hold on for just a moment.” He pushed a button and his Fleet Admiral appeared on his display, “Pardon me for interrupting your meeting; I’ve uncovered a piece of news you might find interesting.”

“What is that?”

“The Hedgon has signed an order for the Drund to build them a million Warships.”

“Thank you Admiral, do you have a copy of that agreement?”

“I’ll send it to your panel.”

“That would be good.” The Rageon Ruler saw the agreement appear on his panel and he immediately forwarded it to the Emperor and the Master. He watched them start reading the document and smiled as their anger went to a higher level. He was not going to tell them that the Hedgon had approached him to build them ships. It was an obvious ploy to throw him off the truth.

The Master looked at the Rageon Ruler and said, “We will end our hostilities until this issue is resolved.”

The Rageon Ruler nodded and the Emperor said, “When do we pay them back in the same currency?”