“ Kyo?”
Susan opened her eyes, alarmed that she’d fallen asleep in her shockchair. Oc Chac and Pucatli were at the Comms console, and the Sho-sa seemed quite agitated.
“What has happened?” Kosho sat up, feeling every bone and sinew complain.
“Our remote at the Pinhole is gone.” Pucatli shook his head in disgust. “We’ve some telemetry from the aperture right before we lost contact, but it makes no sense.”
“Show me.” Susan rolled her neck and flexed her fingers, trying to force some warmth back into them. Secondary Command seemed to have lost pressure and temperature control while she’d been sleeping. Oc Chac rotated a large v-pane towards her, and then tapped up a series of glyphs to replay the feed.
“We’d picked up what seems to be a Khaid light cruiser about sixty minutes ago.” The Mayan’s stylus indicated a faint outline against the riot of color glowing from the Barrier clouds. “Lying dark, under full emissions control. Watching the back trail of the main squadron, of course. Doing a good job, too-the Thai-i only caught him out by replaying the gravity plot from our passage through the region.”
Oc Chac patted Pucatli on the shoulder. “Then we get a gravity-spike from the Pinhole-see, here? Massing like a dreadnaught, kyo. As though the Tlemitl picked herself up and came after us. But then-wait, I’ll rewind again.” Susan had started, watching the emissions signature on the plot suddenly break apart.
“Not one ship, but hundreds of smaller ones.” The Sho-sa shook his head in puzzlement. “Look at all the drive flares! Like they came in packed together, then deployed in a cloudburst. We’re still crunching the signatures in comp, trying to match a known profile but-”
Susan’s eyes narrowed in speculation, a fingertip drifting across a line of metrics displayed on the console. “I’ve seen that kind of signature once before, Sho-sa, but not in such numbers. This is something like a Maltese assault carrier launching its complement. But I’ve never heard the Knights had something which could simultaneously deploy over three hundred fighters!”
“Don’t know, kyo.” Pucatli grimaced, indicating the flood of contacts now racing across the plot. “But they’re at high-v and rolling right down the drive plume laid by the Khaid battlegroup!”
“Huh!” Kosho’s attention switched to the Khaid light cruiser, which had suddenly exposed a pinpoint hot-spot on its shipskin. “We’re in line with a comm laser?”
Oc Chac nodded, keying up a directional indicator. “Snap transmit to the main fleet, Chu-sa, but see-it’s already too late.”
A brace of drive signatures suddenly flickered into view on the telemetry; ships a fraction the size of the Khaid light cruiser racing past the long black hull, and then the stuttering flare of shipkiller detonations rippled from one end of the warship to the other. In the remote’s camera view, a flurry of white-hot pinpoints appeared in the darkness and then the bright, sudden blossom of the cruiser’s containment failing enveloped the ship.
The tiny ships had already vanished, just before the remote’s telemetry stopped cold.
“They found our remote, too.” Susan clasped her hands behind her back, teeth clicking thoughtfully. “ Sho-sa, did you notice how well shielded their drives are? Like ghosts…”
The Mayan barked a hoarse, exhausted laugh. “Like they weren’t even there, Chu-sa. Until they were on that cruiser and firing.”