Recruit

Prologue

The Destroyer Gemini slowed as it approached the massive asteroid. The support fighters raced away from the Gemini and took up flanking positions. Alone and this deep in space, there was always the present threat from the Chitins. The destroyer activated the deflection laser and began nudging the asteroid off its collision course with the populated planet, Eros.

The first flash came from the shadows on the surface of the asteroid as the Chitin craft fired a plasma spear. The second came from the furthest fighter as the plasma spear vaporized it. Two more flashes from the Chitin weapon quickly destroyed two more fighters.

Within a nanosecond of the first flash, the Gemini’s artificial intelligence targeted the point on the asteroid where the Chitin weapon blasts had originated and launched a salvo of combat drones. At the same time, the forward battery of guns each fired a thousand rounds of high density metallic shot in a wide spread over the target area.

The Chitin craft lifted off the surface, spreading its tentacles while charging its primary weapon, avoiding the mass of shot from the Gemini that slammed into the surface of the asteroid, vaporizing the ice and tearing through the rock.

The combat drones identified the Chitin craft as it lifted off the asteroid and automatically targeted the central body of the craft within the mass of black, writhing tentacles. The drones accelerated toward the Chitin craft, the magnetic field around the antimatter payload timed to deactivate once in effective range. The Chitin craft fired its arcing plasma flares. Dozens of seething orange strands, each reaching across the space around the craft, sliced through the drones, transforming them into small, short-lived stars that lit up the battle space.

Having reached full power, the high energy laser on the Gemini activated. The beam slammed into the Chitin craft, piercing the tentacles that wrapped forward across the central body in a protective shield. The laser moved slowly and cut across the tentacles, slicing through one and sending it spiraling off into space. The orange liquid interior spilled out from the severed tentacle as it tumbled through the void.

A focused plasma arc erupted from the Chitin central body and slammed into the forward section of the Gemini. The composite hull cracked and fractured, biomech flesh and fluid spewing out and boiling away into space. A second plasma spear sliced clean through the five hundred meter long craft, erupting out of the aft engine assembly.

Automated distress calls from the Gemini died before the ship’s complete log could be transmitted, but as the destroyer burned in the empty interplanetary void, the military command on Eros was receiving the most significant points: the Chitins had struck again and destroyed another major military vessel in a battle that had lasted a fraction under seven seconds.