***Saggitarius Arm – Icarius***

Eighty-four ships dropped out of warp, each carrying several ballistic projectiles. Those projectiles consisted of several dozen tons of molten metals, which turned them essentially into oddly shaped lumps of meteorites.

The ships had accelerated them to thirty percent of the speed of light before they activated their warp drives to bring their payloads closer to the target, meaning that those projectiles were now hurling towards pre-targeted locations at relativistic speeds.

Having delivered their payload, the attackers started to manoeuvre, stressing their engines to their maximum capability in an attempt to be somewhere else from where the light emissions of their arrival would indicate them to be.

There was no question that the Demons would react immediately and violently to the attack.

Meanwhile, the light that announced their arrival had yet to reach the Dyson swarm’s sensor systems.

The attacker’s latest stealth shielding systems were activated to further prevent the enemy from retaliating. To decrease the chance of detection, the ships angled themselves to reflect any electromagnetic countermeasures out into the emptiness of space instead of back towards the star.

Less than two seconds into the encounter, the light of their arrival finally reached Icarius and allowed automated systems to react.

The large gravity projectors that held the star in check ramped up and were stressed to their limits in an attempt to speed up or to slow down the various ring segments of the superstructure. Engineers were called and automated repair systems were activated in preparation for the unavoidable.

Fleet Command assembled a time accelerated task force within virtual reality to predict further actions the enemy might take. One second of real-time later, they gave their first predictions and further adjustments to the initial countermeasures were made.

The gravitational effects of changing the delicate balance of Icarius’s ring system rippled outwards, but wouldn’t reach the still closing ships for a few more seconds.

Two more precious seconds passed before the task force understood the nature and goal of the attack.

Counterstrikes were launched at entire volumes of space, based purely on the probability that they might contain a stealthed enemy ship. Huge railgun systems filled the space with clouds of projectiles and huge automated rockets with their own gravity drives were launched towards locations where they might encounter the enemy.

More time passed as both sides waited and watched in anticipation of what their actions had wrought.

The attacker’s projectiles arrived first, roughly seven seconds after the attack had begun.

Most of them missed their intended targets entirely as they passed their targeted ring segment, just to go on and threaten some other installation on the other side of the Dyson swarm. Some few could be simply dismissed, as their trajectory would send them directly into Icarius’s star where they would fall into an ocean of plasma like nothing more than pebbles into the sea.

Evacuation orders were given and further countermeasures were launched.

Some of the projectiles were stopped or diverted by a hastily readjusted gravity projector, further causing Icarius’s gravity fields to spin out of control.

Many of these new trajectories took the meteorites back into deep space, where they would menace unlucky third parties aeons from now.

Only four of the projectiles were stopped by physical countermeasures, like a large asteroid that had yet to be processed for resources. Quickly given orders allowed the work crews to divert its path just enough to intercept a projectile’s path, effectively using it as a shield to break up the incoming projectile.

Naturally, this resulted in an expanding cloud of shrapnel-like debris that would plague the clean-up crews for the coming weeks. The individual fragments would almost certainly cause more surface damage to any installation they hit, but the smaller parts had much less penetrative power. Which meant that it was less likely for them to damage vital installations deeper within the ring segments.

But the attackers had taken misses and potential countermeasures into account long before they had started their mission.

Not only had they brought an overwhelming number of these projectiles to bear, but they had also spread them out in anticipation of misses.

Many of the projectiles just punched through a ring segment, causing death and destruction, but nine hit their intended targets.

They punched entirely through the ring segments, transferring a lot of their overwhelming kinetic energy.

Five of the primary gravity projectors that held the star’s power under control failed outright and three more were taken offline by the collateral damage. Although with less effectiveness, the ninth kept working despite the projectile having caused considerable damage to the support structure.

Almost all of the personnel in the affected locations were killed instantly as pressure waves rippled through the habitats before safety airlocks were blown out to vent the atmosphere and mitigate the shockwaves. No longer supported by an atmosphere to spread, the kinetic force quickly dissipated.

Five seconds into the confrontation, the launched countermeasures found the first stealthed vessels that had made their way closer towards the Dyson swarm at a slower pace.

Of the eighty-four attacking ships, seventeen never managed to fight a second engagement, as they were unlucky enough to encounter a cloud of projectiles or were detected by a smart missile.

Seven seconds after the attack had started, the attacking vessels had to drop their stealth measures as their massive heat-sinks overloaded and they started to radiate energy in the infrared spectrum.

They launched a wave of nuclear missiles before they tried to disengage, but by then, they had entered Icarius’s gravity field that had gone haywire.

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None of the planning officers that had been in charge of the attack had anticipated the level of gravity manipulation that had been necessary to keep the star under control.

The lead ships that had been the furthest into the gravity field suddenly realized that they could no longer reverse their course. Which forced them to plunge directly into the Dyson swarm and its point defence systems.

Others tried to escape the gravity well, but could only do so by completely reversing their thrust. Which made them easy targets because of their quickly decreasing velocity.

Only the ships furthest behind could confirm that their primary goal had been achieved. Unfortunately for them, their secondary goal had been a failure.

Their projectiles had been accelerated to relativistic speeds but failed to cause as much damage as necessary to justify this form of attack a second time.

Icarius’s superstructure was much less dense than the scientists in charge had assumed. Instead of causing massive damage by transferring their kinetic energy in its entirety, the massive metal slugs had merely punched holes through the superstructure and continued onwards, following the path that the star’s gravity well directed.

Of the eighty-four ships that had orchestrated the attack, eleven managed to successfully disengage and activate their warp drives.

Less than a minute had passed since the start of the attack.

***Saggitarius Arm – Icarius***

***Travil, the Ambassador***

The floor suddenly seemed to tilt beneath my feet and I felt a slight vibration run through the ship.

“All personnel! Access inertia protection right this…”

I didn’t have time to process the warning before the ship lurched sideways. The wall was suddenly the floor. There was a scream from outside my room, but I had my own problems as I tried to prevent my head from popping like a ripe fruit upon hitting a metal wall.

“Ship’s gravity projectors are trying to compensate. Please hold onto the provided security holds.”

The annoyingly friendly voice felt kind of useless as it pointed out the obvious.

I immediately grabbed and held onto one of the dozens of padded and apparently spring-loaded handholds that had popped out of the floor, the ceiling, and the walls.

It was sobering to see that the Demons hadn’t forgotten the principles behind building zero-G spaceships despite their mastery of gravity manipulation.

Gravity changed yet again and I would have found myself falling if I hadn’t held onto the provided handhold with all my might. For a moment, I was hanging from a ceiling that had been a wall seconds ago.

Gravity slowly increased while I desperately tried to hold on, but my fingers slipped.

I saw the floor, the wall, coming closer and I screamed when gravity changed yet again, causing me to slide over the floor and crash hard into the wall.

Then gravity slowly reasserted its proper orientation.

My shoulder hurt, but I quickly scrambled toward the bolted-down office table at the wall and wrapped my legs and arms around its central base. Thankfully, the furniture had been secured via magnets and hadn’t turned into lethal projectiles.

Which still left me with the question of what had happened? A malfunction? An attack?

The warning sirens stopped as suddenly as they had begun and the handholds slid back into their hidden compartments. It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds since the nightmare began.

“Normal gravity re-established. Please render aid to any injured. Emergency bots have been dispatched.”

I slowly crawled out from beneath the table that had come with my personal room, not completely trusting the situation.

My shoulder hurt, but I had survived the ordeal uninjured otherwise.

Survived.

The thought struck me that others might not have been that lucky.

I got to my feet and headed for the door, where I encountered one of the large medic-robots that barred my way.

“Do you need assistance?” the machine asked.

I waved it off and tried to step past the machine, but it didn’t move from its spot. “I am fine! I have to look for the others!”

“I am afraid that you cannot do that, sir. All systems are still in combat mode until we can verify that there will be no second attack after the first one,” the machine explained calmly, which caused me to doubt its machine-ness.

I narrowed my eyes. “Who is controlling this drone?”

“I am trauma medic, Erlson, sir. I took over the ship’s drones when Guide Iris was incapacitated. You can be assured that all members of your delegation are receiving the utmost care possible. We are sorry that we couldn’t prevent injuries.”

“I want to know the state of my people. And what happened to Iris? I thought that Demons’ bodies are specially adapted and improved?” I tried to dodge past the drone, but it expertly prevented me from leaving my room.

“Almost the whole delegation received minor injuries during the attack. Delegation member Miredin was in the main corridor when the gravity fluctuations occurred. He fell twelve metres and injured his spinal cord, but he is alive and not in danger of losing his life.”

I grit my teeth at the news. “And Iris?”

“Guide Iris redirected the ship’s gravity projectors to counteract the forces of Icarius’s fluctuating gravity well. She prioritized all available resources towards your delegation's safety and suffered some injuries due to that,” Erlson explained through the drone.

After a moment of thought, he added, “We can temporarily upload her and have her take control of this drone until her body is repaired. Though, I would dislike doing that to someone who is unconscious. It’s better for the nanotech to finish all repairs to the nervous system, or it would be no different from loading a backup.”

I closed my eyes and shook my head. “No. Please do what’s in everyone’s best medical interest. Are you sure that Miredin will also be fine?”

“Miredin broke his neck, but the medical drone reached him within a few seconds,” the medic explained. “It took over his vital functions, but I am a hundred percent certain that we can restore him to full health without violating your people’s misgivings about the upload process.”

I chuckled ruefully. “Miredin was actually the only one who intended to try the upload aside from myself.”

“If that’s true, then should we wake him up and upload him while we heal his body?” the medic asked hopefully. “It would make the entire affair much quicker.”

I shook my head. “I cannot speak for him, but you can ask him if that’s possible. He sounded like he would try it anyway the last time we spoke.”

At last, I decided to turn around and sit at my table until Icarius lifted the lock-down mode it had going on.

I ignored the spider-like drone that stalked into the room to keep an eye on me.

A good hour passed before Iris walked into the room. “Travil, I am just making the rounds to check on everyone. You are fine?”

Her clothes had blood splatters on the front of her chest and a wound on her forehead was covered by a blue gel-like substance.

“Yes, but you don’t look okay,” I replied. “What happened?”

“The G.S. did something like a shooting drive-by with a small fleet and blew up some of the major gravity projectors that keep our little star under control.” She touched her forehead. “Don’t worry about me. This body can take much worse.”

“They tried to destroy Icarius!?” I asked.

“Well, they certainly tried to get lucky, but that wasn’t their main goal,” Iris hedged. “Damaging some of the gravity projectors certainly caused a mess, but we should be able to repair everything within a few days. Icarius has too many redundancies to be taken out by a lucky shot.”

I frowned. I had known Iris for long enough by now to notice when she tried to avoid a certain topic. “Then what was their goal?”

She sighed. “You. They tried to kill your delegation.”