Aboard the Senate’s Leviathan Signet, the Leoni captain, Raw’eesha, verified all the readings coming from her combat suit. “Status”

“Depressurizing all combat decks and compartments now,” her executive officer responded. “All personnel are on combat life support and hard-wire communications.”

She nodded. “Spin up the armor, and fire relativistic kill missiles.” She switched to the bridge channel. “Remember people, our job here is to take on their heavy hitters—” she gestured toward the forward viewport and the magnified projection of the four black spheres in orbit around the gas giant “—so the refuelers can scoop the atmosphere and escape to refuel the rest of the battle group. Make your final preparations for our first pass.” She switched to the sensor tech’s channel. “Begin active scans.”

With a nod, the Khepri sensor tech shifted his position to allow the front four of his limbs to interact with the sensor board. His ten eyes darted over the passive readings. Once satisfied, he began the active pulses.

At nearly three times the speed of light, rainbow Cherenkov radiation rippled in minute waves which contracted back to the Signet—ever-smaller rings, containing ever more information. Every organism within three milli-lightchrons which either sensed light or utilized light for synthesizing food, shuddered when touched by the ripples. Then every organism within one centi-lightchron. Within one deca-lightchron.

At which point, the data was useless for targeting. Instead, those sensor readings were shifted to the strategic consoles on the second deck. While the sensors could pull from distances as far as one full mega-lightchron, even the most sensitive Aquari strategists used only two hecto-lightchrons of readings—more than enough to cover all the inner volume of a star system.

The sensor displays updated and showed the high-velocity rounds flying away from the Signet toward the four black spheres, the enemy ships. Millichrons later, the missiles struck the spheres with more energy than nuclear weapons.

But the missiles meekly vanished into the hungry black of the enemy ships.

“What happened? Did we somehow miss them?” Captain Raw’eesha glanced at her suit’s indicator; she was still speaking on the sensor tech’s channel.

Bridge crew voices rose in fear and confusion.

“Seek peace,” her mate said from the command throne next to hers, his languid form draped in a seductive pose. “Save excitement for pleasure and breeding.”

Raw’eesha rolled her eyes.

Even among the males of the Leoni species, there was something special about Carowl—a powerful intuition despite being unable to understand the complexities of the world.

And his words caused sounds of mirth, just for a moment. Then everyone concentrated on their consoles.

“No...” the sensor tech searched the sensor board. “Active pings indicate direct hits.” He adjusted various channel gains—eyes darting over the resulting patterns. “I can't read what damage, if any, that we did.”

Before she could ask the next question on her mind, the black spheres returned fire. Lances of light rose up out of the gas giant’s gravity well.

“Point defenses. Evasives. Inflate the plasma lenses.” She glared down at the enemy. “All weapons hot. Continue firing.”

There was no stealth in space, but somehow this enemy had hidden its wounds.

Captain Raw’eesha of the Signet snarled. All jump-capable craft had vulnerable underbellies. She and her crew just needed a way to target and gut them.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Maneuvering claxons sounded a centichron before powerful thrusters shoved the massive length of the Senate’s Leviathan out of the way. Fuel mass for the thrusters continued to fall, even as weapon attacks slid past the ship. Glancing blows glowed within the plasma lenses, even as those lenses bent the enemy lasers onto less deadly vectors. The point-defense guns fired projectiles to intercept inbound attacks, causing brilliant and silent explosions. Yet, plenty of lasers scored holes in the Signet’s armor—the ceramics evaporating and the resulting gas clouds flinging away; some of those gasses reinforced the plasma lenses; the rest flung beyond the immediate battle area. Periodic super-heated flaws in an armor plate exploded, cracking the surrounding armor plates.

But the layers of armor rotated around the exterior of the Leviathan. Each layer rotated at a different velocity. Each layer rotated in the opposite direction of the layers above and below. Combined, the Signet appeared to heal from the most devastating hits within centichrons.

Within, both decks forming the command-and-control center had compensators to reduce the effect of the high-gee maneuvers being forced upon the ship. But every species was strapped into an acceleration couch designed for their physiology. Flexible tubing connected their battle suits to life support ports; just as data ports bridged power, data, and communications between the ship’s infrastructure and the occupied suits.

The Khepri sensor tech shook his black head without taking his ten eyes off of the readouts. “I still cannot get a reading. We will not know how badly damaged they are until after they are dead and adrift.” His antennae twitched in annoyance—not that anyone was paying attention to his gestures.

Raw’eesha curled her lower lip exposing her upper fangs. She flared her nostril slits in her wide, flat nose with a huff. She glared at the viewport with its magnified images. “There is no stealth in space, but their black coloration is more than decorative?”

These enemy ships, the four black spheres, orbited the gas giants—their sharp black edges stark against the colorful clouds beyond them.

Lances of light from their energy weapons and streaks of fire from the various missiles flared between her ship’s broadside and the invader’s black orbs.

The Signet’s rotating rings of weapons continuously brought fresh cannons and launchers into firing positions, and provide constant attack streams.

With no hint of weapons, the black spheres returned laser beams potent enough to vaporize hunks of armor off of the Signet.

“What we are seeing as black is actually some sort of electronic warfare field and not actual coloration. Probably the field’s originally intended purpose was to prevent intruders and boarders from communicating with each other and with their ships. As a bonus, such a field shields their internals from most spying attempts.” The sensor tech waggled his front appendages in an almost human-like shrug and clicked his mandibles together. “But that is just a guess.”

Captain Raw’eesha watched the damage readouts floating before her eyes.

Explosions along the Signet’s hull ripped holes in the armor. Damaged armor plates, constantly rotating at different speeds and alternating directions seemed to make the holes disappear.

She knew, somewhere within her support fleet, forges were forming more armor plates, but resupply would not happen until after the firing stopped. Aboard her ship, Gemini robots were pulling damaged plates and replacing them with new ones. At some point, they would recycle the damaged plates into new armor.

For now, she needed to be sure the enemy’s weapons weren’t exceeding their ability to replace their armor. Oh, stores were running low and would run out. But, until restock or death, they needed to produce more damage than they were taking. Unfortunately, she received only half of the needed data. Armor replacement rates weren’t looking good. As for damage output…

“Any sign of where their jump core openings are?”

“Like us, they closed them up. With their sensor and communications countering field—” the sensor tech, again shook his head “—there is no telling. We could poke holes through the access ports, but we wouldn’t know until the cascading failures caused the ships to explode in our faces.”

Her secondary concern was the heat. Firing weapons built up heat, which had to be radiated back into the surrounding vacuum. Early warfare had involved targeting the large, often colorful radiator displays. The latest Senate’s Leviathans turned part of the heat back into electricity, used thermal superconductors to move and balance the heat, and even pumped the heat away with heat-emitting diodes which ran in between armor plates. All of which made the Signet glow—like a meteor slicing through an atmosphere, burning up its last few centichrons—on any sensor board.

But even that was too much information to gain from their enemy. Each of the four spheres remained just as cold on the screens as they did before returning fire.

She snarled at the temperature readings.

Even if the spheres were running just as hot, the Signet was losing.

Raw’eesha changed comm channels. Time to get dirty, she thought. “Adjust slingshot angle. Take us through the center of their formation.”