The Colony on Meranda IV - Part 23

15 days ago

This post started off as a one-off response to a writing prompt in the Freewriters Community. Then I wrote a part 2 (with the outcome literally determined by a coin toss).

But that naturally leads to a part 3, which is where this short series comes in. I felt that doing it in just one post really wouldn't give enough time to build up a bit of suspense 😀 Enjoy !

Image created by AI in NightCafe Studio

Five Einheriar ships advanced inexorably in the HoloTac display, a red diamond leading four small red dots. Their goal was Meranda. A planet with no defences. It was a new colony, still finding it's feet, and was nowhere near the point of having the time, money or resources to build orbiting missile platforms or planetary defence shields.

Those ships might have been just the badly battered remnants of a much larger force, four light cruisers and a single crippled battleship, but they'd wiped out the Imperial squadron which had been all that stood between them and Meranda. Admiral Maraz had gone down fighting, a valiant but unsuccessful effort.

Now, everyone in the impromptu command room looked on in horror at what was coming. The Einheriar would show no mercy, they never did.

Governor Dafang watched with the same horror, but something more. He'd been infected (if that was the right word) by a Spineder bite. It connected him with the global network of living creatures of Meranda. He could sense through the mental link that every creature on Meranda was aware of what was coming. He could feel the tension, the anxiety that everyone and everything felt.

It was strange; he was new to this, so didn't know what to expect or how to react. It was like a mental fizzing, the build up of tension and expectancy similar to that you'd feel when a thunderstorm was about to break.

Looking at the display, he saw the remnants of the battle. All the destroyed ships were still there, grey smears indicating their debris fields, some blinking with pixel-sized lights to indicate there might be survivors. Most were moving in a cloud, inertia causing them to drift in the formation and direction they'd fought and died in.

But not... that one. That one there.

"Garrad, look..." he pointed at the errant speck, almost invisible, showing the ASP officer what he'd spotted.

"So ?" the russet-uniformed commander clearly didn't know what he was looking at, or for. All he saw was oncoming death.

"That ship there. It's the smallest thing in the display, and it's moving tangentially to the rest. It's a Passault, but not one of your modern Passault V's, it's a Passault I. Powered down, but they can still travel outside an atmosphere for short distances."

It was true; a tiny dot, drifting slowly at ninety degrees to the rest, grey with an almost imperceptible yellow flicker. As it drifted, it crossed right behind the advancing Einheriar squadron.

A voice spoke in Dafang's mind; clear against the growing cacophony in his skull from Merandan lifeforms fearing extinction. It was Wardek, sending him a telepathic message.

"Package delivered. Attached to enemy battleship."