The display laid out in front of him was a piece of art. It was a neatly tiled series of precisely 1200 touchscreens, 400 rows across, 300 rose high, forming a slightly curved panel designed for him to easily reach out and touch any individual square. The entire mass was synced up to the sensor networks of the station and its sister stations, And up above it there was a there was a listing for the current number of weapons available to fire. Apollo had clearly done a remarkable amount of work getting this set up and tailoring it all to this exact situation. The number of ships that would need to be targeted had been known before this had been installed on this station, before it had been manufactured. Just looking at it made it clear exactly how capable Apollo was.

Eyeball studied the clock, adjusting his perceptions, considering just when and what he needed to do. He looked at the boost drug that apollo had taken, the one he'd asked to be left behind. Glancing down at his prosthetic, he spoke quietly. ~Inventory. Retrieve one vial Reflex, maximum strength.~ After a couple of seconds, he pulled a cylinder out of his palm like a magic trick, removing a plastic cap to reveal an injector.

A few feet away was the door to a three-man escape pod; one Wilkes was already strapping Apollo into. The seat he was being strapped into seemed... small. Pre-sized for the ancient greek; Apollo looked even smaller than normal in the arms of the massive soldier.

He glanced around the station for a moment, considering. He needed at least seven seconds of precise precognition for this to do any good. What did he have, now? He studied a digital clock while analyzing just what would happen if he shot it off the ceiling; 11 seconds. Almost 12. That was more than three times as far as he could see normally. Was the interference between him and Apollo a matter of strength against strength? was it a matter of one being unable to predict events the other might interfere with? A matter of both? Should he take steps to make sure that Apollo didn't make it to the ground?

He took a moment to seriously consider it. If his own limitation was due to Apollo's ability to interfere with his actions... that would only work if the man were close enough to change what happened in the next three seconds. It must be something else.

Wilkes stepped out of the pod, having secured Apollo properly, and nodded at Eyeball. Eyeball frowned. He... should probably make sure Wilkes didn't reach the ground either. Nothing against the commander, but the fewer who knew the truth, the better he liked it. Aside from Emerald and Apollo, everyone other than Wilkes who knew it was someone Eyeball trusted; or, at least, liked; Odin would definitely reveal the truth if it suited his own purposes, but Odin's purposes seemed to be keeping the human race alive, so... acceptable.

"Not gonna need the boost. Just Reflex. Might as well stick it in there with Apollo in case he has a use for it later." And if one dose put him into a temporary coma, another in such short order might kill him.

He took a deep breath, holding the vial of reflex. Eleven seconds. Maybe two and a half for the Reflex to kick in. If he took it the moment he saw incoming start to appear....

He stood in place before the panel. Wherever he touched, a Lance would fire; a beam of coherent energy, a Jotun design, that would melt a hole in the target and cause secondary explosions if it hit something vital. One shot would heavily damage, maybe cripple, a Jotun warship. Two, maybe three, and it would be destroyed.

There were 47 weapons. The station-based Lances could fire once a second... until their capacitors ran down. The starships once every two or three, depending on which one was doing the firing.... until they started to overheat. For the first twenty or thirty seconds, the fleet could, in theory, fire on average 23 shots per second. It would drop off dramatically after that. But... there was a chance. Not a good chance, but still a chance... he could damage or cripple every single enemy ship out there before they arrived in normal targeting range... and obliterated everything in orbit within seconds.

He ran the math again. Absolute, best case scenario, and they still wouldn't wipe out the enemy fleet before dying; just.. do quite a bit of damage.

He sighed... and settled the vial against the side of his neck. Any moment now.

There. Eleven seconds out. Hundreds of red dots appearing on-screen. He shoved the injector against his flesh; a sudden hiss; icy cold liquid flooding him. His body on fire. His heart beating like mad. And the world... slowed to a crawl. The first group of enemy ships would appear in... seven seconds. His fingers reached out; touching the tiny screens in just the right spots. Across the fleet, ships whose gunnery controls had been slaved to Prometheus station suddenly opened fire; the human version of a Jotun lance firing in actual combat for the first time.

***

Assault Ship Grubbi was a masterwork of Jotun technology. With a blend of automated controls and extremely responsive crew, it could launch missiles in less than a second after emergence into normal space, open the hatches and launch its lighter attack craft almost immediately after, and begin priming its Lance in the event closer combat was deemed necessary by the King; less than two seconds after emergence, her point defense lasers would be ready, and the ship could start fighting in earnest, with its payload of soldiers safely away.

The captain didn't expect to need to say anything; they may have been in FTL for months; time dilation thankfully made such journeys shorter for the crew than the rest of the universe running by outside; but these were experienced spacers. They knew their orders. Many had been involved in campaigns long ago; some of these crew were tens of thousands of years old.

He watched the countdown with anxiety. This enemy had placed an ambush in hyperspace somehow; the initial plan to come in at point-blank range, or on the opposite side of the moon, had been abandoned; what if there were weapons mounted on the enemy moon? What if they simply appeared in another minefield? Instead... a randomly selected location at the edge of lance range was chosen. They'd launch missiles, take a few lance shots in case they caught the enemy napping as it were, then move in once the missiles softened them up.

A cautious plan. A perfect plan. Still.

The timer reached zero, a beautiful blue gem of a world appearing on the main viewscreen. With orderly precision, missile bays opened, the main launch bay prepared to discharge fighters... a flash of light.

The viewscreen was gone. A perfect circle, glowing red at the edges, where the front wall used to be. Grubbi had a few moments to clutch desperately at the captain's chair with three of his claws, vacuum pulling the atmosphere out alongside much of the bridge crew; before a flash of brilliant light overwhelmed it all.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

***

From his throne on the flagship, Jotun stared in horror at the results of the initial insertion. Forty-six of the first wave had been disabled before they could even fire missiles or deploy landing craft. Over ten thousand Jotun dead; possibly many more than that; and a solid percentage of his ships crippled. The fire continued with impossible precision; his ships started dodging and shifting, exactly as they were trained, the moment they emerged in orbit; only for shots to strike true, every time.

At least the missiles were already on the way; the enemy wouldn't survive that for long. But... just in case... they needed to close. And quickly. "All forces! Scatter and advance, maximum speed! Disable all safeties. Where possible, use cripples and damaged ships for cover."

He could hear the sudden unhealthy grind deep in the heart of his flagship. The six fusion reactors all cycling over; increasing output beyond their listed maximum; and the ship started to push forward; leaping as quickly as possible.

***

Roughly one and a half light-seconds from earth; sharing an orbit with the moon; a string of, seemingly, ordinary rocks suddenly blossomed with heat... and detonated. Dozens of them, nuclear explosions going off almost simultaneously; launching clouds of irradiated debris at the space between the two fleets in conflict; and serving as a propellant for another series of bombs; which would go off in another string of brilliant white pinpoints.

The detonations weren't serious enough to have an impact on a Jotun warship; even one of their attack craft, built for surface operations, would survive. The missiles, however; a single massive wave of tens of thousands of them, intended to eradicate all human space defenses in a single overwhelming strike; suddenly lost their target locks. Some detonated, struck by debris. Others turned, attempting to seek some random chunk of irradiated rock; only to end up hopelessly off course; or even began seeking other missiles in the massive swarm.

The handful that remained were easily picked off by point defenses on the human fleet; even as continued Lance fire struck Jotun craft, one after another, as they desperately closed; still spitting out more missiles as they came.

***

Captain Chen of the Fist of the People stared at his console in awe.

The Chinese military had agreed to allow combat control for remote fire; but only during that time when enemies were outside the two light-second mark, as they believed there was no reasonable way to strike a target that far away that was actively avoiding fire.

They should have shut off that control, if they followed orders, and assumed manual fire control... but the results of this coordinated fire were astonishing. There might be a thousand damaged ships trailing behind the fleet, and the combined missile and random beam attacks by the Jotun had only taken out seven of the human defenders. They'd been firing as quickly as the charge could build for the past eighty seconds; at first, it had been a shot every 1.93 seconds. Now... it was one shot every six seconds. He'd been warned five shots ago that their reactor would keep going strong; but the capacitors and the weapon itself would fail, catastrophically, at any given moment if they kept this up.

Still. There were at least two hundred enemy craft about to reach the sort of range where this sort of control wasn't needed. In fact, that range would be at any given moment. He took a deep breath. "Initiate reactor overcharge. All ahead full, arm the charges. Point our bow at the fleet." There were two other Chinese vessels; one damaged, no longer able to fire. But all three would be doing exactly the same as himself at this point. The Fist of the People had no escape pods on the bridge. For himself and the senior personnel, it was absolute victory or death.

Sure enough, with the next shot, the Lance misfired. The ship it had targeted was only mildly damaged; the beam hadn't gained enough charge to penetrate, just washing over the outer hull.

He was pushed back against his chair. No longer redirected to the lance, the reactor now pumped every drop of available power into engines; in a move that would melt them into slag within minutes... if that mattered. Three allied ships suddenly went down to Jotun lance fire in a span of seconds. The enemy had the range. Hundreds of escape pods were pouring down onto the surface from the stations and allied vessels, as they each moved in to charge for one final strike.

Chen looked around at the bridge crew. "For the people!" he shouted out. They all turned; but before they could respond, he slammed his fist down on the detonator.

From the outside, the Fist of the People seemed to rupture; a set of simultaneous nuclear detonations converting the vessel into a cloud of superheated shards; thanks to the vast distances involved, the cloud only struck two of the Jotun vessels; melting everything on their hulls into slag, leaving the crew perfectly intact, if a bit uncomfortable hot, but flying aboard drifting ruins; which, without outside aid, would inevitably slam at full speed into the ocean.

***

Eyeball was dripping with sweat. The number of available guns was dropping with each moment. The enemy casualty count was climbing; most of the enemy ships were damaged, but... even among the damaged, most of them had at least some ability to fight. Then... it happened. He could see, eleven seconds out, the screens going black. Power loss. A sudden crack spreading across them, lights out... and an explosive decompression warning.

Taking one glance at the crew on the deck... including Wilkes, standing just a few feet away... he turned, and leapt into the open escape pod; screaming out as he did... "Abandon ship! To the pods! Now!"

Six seconds before the device struck the station, he was inside the pod. Three seconds, he was in the straps... and the door was slamming shut. Commander Wilkes was standing right outside the door, staring at Eyeball and the unconscious Apollo with a look of... resignation?

When the pod abruptly launched itself at the surface, hurtling out of the station on a spring-loaded mechanism... moments later, a brilliant beam of energy tore through the bridge, all the way through the station. Eyeball frowned. He wanted to save his fighter, if possible. "Command, Dragonslayer. Override systems. If there are any techs on you right now, command them to either get in or get off, shut the hatch, then launch and land. Home base if possible, if not, just anywhere that's available. Send me a single location ping, then go silent" Ascension had built the rudimentary AI in the fighter. He knew it likely had some sort of backup control if he screwed with the machine; but then, he didn't plan on doing that. Hopefully, it would get out.

As he looked upward, his helmet gave him a relay of the outside imagery. The escape pod had no windows; no controls. It would try to land somewhere safe, near civilization... then it would shut down. Thanks to his helmet, however... he got to watch the dozens of escape pods that followed him out of the station, in the seconds before a second lance struck it... and Prometheus, a station that had taken billions of dollars and involved decades of work and research, was no more.

He wondered if Hephaestus would be disappointed in her performance...as the air began to whistle around the pod. He could feel it starting to heat up, despite the coolant systems. He sighed... trying to relax in the harness, ignore the empty seat that should have been Wilkes... and studied Apollo. Was this the time? Should he kill him? There was a chance his powers might get more impressive if he did. Maybe the only reason he couldn't see centuries ahead the way the greek god could was that Apollo was still there, still had his powers.. just not as much.

If he were going to do it, now was the time. He could snap his spine, pretend it was the pod. Shoot him with the tenner... would it get some significant benefit, the way it did from killing Lightning?

He was still trying to decide when he got a glimpse of his upcoming future; the pod slamming into the ground, hard; an inescapable, possibly fatal, incident. He had just enough time to hope that he wouldn't hit too hard to survive and mutter a quiet curse before the pod slammed into the dirt; sending a cloud of dust and debris scattering into the air.