I was deeply impressed. Some of those people would have been in bed and asleep when the base went to war status. They’d still got into impact suits, reached their fighters and launched, all in less than … my eyes flickered to the time … seven minutes.
I added sound to the feed and we could hear Drago shouting orders. ‘Shift 2 hold position, don’t fire. Incoming fighters stay back, stay back! Remain at the portals. Do not engage! Do not engage!’
Colonel Torrek’s voice was calm but pointed. ‘Major Tell Dramis, the sphere attacked your fighter. Your shields are down and you are venting atmosphere.’
Drago again, quieter this time. ‘I don’t think it attacked me, sir. I think it fired at something close to me, and my fighter just got the backlash. I’m sure the last thing I saw before my suit triggered and I went into impact suit blackout was the beam hitting something else as well as me.’
‘Threat team can now confirm that.’ Even in this situation, Mason Leveque’s voice sounded as lazy as ever, and for a mad second I was reminded of my friend Keon. ‘Telemetry from the fighters shows a small piece of space junk incoming rapidly on a collision course with the sphere. It seems to have triggered an automatic meteor defence.’
‘All right.’ The tense note in Colonel Torrek’s voice eased a little. ‘Major Tell Dramis, you are Field Commander unless Commander Stone wishes to take over.’
‘Negative on that,’ cut in Nia Stone. ‘Drago is in the inner circle, I’m well out by the portals, and flying in to take a closer look might trigger another attack.’
‘You are confirmed as Field Commander, Major Tell Dramis,’ said the Colonel. ‘How do you want to handle this?’
‘I want us to do absolutely nothing, sir,’ said Drago. ‘I’d like Nia and shift 3 fighters to hold position at the portals in case we need help, and the rest to return to base. My shift should hold their positions, and not move a muscle. Our policy of carefully approaching the sphere at minimum speed on a non-intercept course has prevented the sphere from targeting us before this, but having fired at that space junk it may be a bit more jumpy. I want to give it a few hours to calm down.’
‘Shifts 1, 4, 5 and 6, you heard him, return to base,’ said Nia Stone.
I saw the four portals flare into life, and the bevy of fighters around each of them begin to fly through.
‘I’m cancelling war status, and taking the base down to alert level 2,’ said Colonel Torrek.
Our Military lookups instantly chimed with messages about the change in alert status. A moment or two later, Fian’s lookup chimed again.
‘The historians want to know what’s happening and what they should do,’ he reported.
I kept my eyes on the wall vid. ‘Tell them there’s no immediate danger, but they’d better work from their quarters for the rest of today. We don’t want them wandering around the corridors with the base only one step down from war status.’
Fian worked on his lookup for a moment. ‘Done.’
Only the fighters of shift 3, and of Nia Stone, remained at the portals now. I zoomed in the vid screen to focus on the two circles of fighters around the sphere. I could tell which belonged to Drago and Marlise, because each fighter had distinctive flashes of colour against the black. Drago’s were command gold, while Marlise had the silver of deputy.
‘What is your status, Major Tell Dramis?’ asked Colonel Torrek. ‘Your fighter is still venting atmosphere, do you wish to pull back for assistance?’
‘I’d like to, sir, but I daren’t,’ said Drago. ‘I think a direct hit from the sphere’s meteor defence would blow me out of space even if my fighter was undamaged.’
‘Threat team can confirm that,’ said the laid-back tones of Leveque. ‘Beam duration was one fifth of a second. Beam power output was approximately one tenth of the level of a planetary power supply beam.’
I gulped. A power supply beam could carve canyons of lava across a continent if it was unleashed against a planet. It had happened, unforgettably, on Artemis. I wore the medal that was first created to honour the Military who died stopping that horror. Even a tenth of that power was scary.
‘In that case,’ said Drago, ‘I definitely can’t risk moving for a while. That sphere could take out my whole team in seconds. Ship diagnostics have finished. I’ve lost all shields, and engines are damaged, but I’ll only need minimum speed. Weapons are operational but irrelevant. Hovers have gone completely, so you’d better expect me to make an undignified landing when I portal out.’