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“Ha! What a waste!” I said.

Sandra’s eyes met mine, but soon crept away to the holotank again. Welter didn’t so
much as glance at me, and not even Marvin bothered to assign me an extra camera. If
the situation had been less dire I would have been annoyed. I took in a deep breath
and made another attempt.

“Every bomb they throw out there, exploding nothing but space, is a bomb we won’t
have to feel right here on this station,” I said.

Finally Welter regarded me seriously. He didn’t seem to have been cheered up in the
slightest by my attempt to put a bright face on things. I frowned, perhaps my bridge
crew was getting to know me too well.

“Sir,” Welter said, “I’ve done some calculations. The fireball of concentric explosions
will engulf us in less than three minutes if it continues at this pace. What a simple
expedient they may have uncovered. Why come to our side of the ring and do battle
when they can simply bomb us out of existence from long range?”

“Why indeed?” I muttered. I crossed my arms and watched the show with the rest of
them. There was nothing else to do, really.

Marvin was the first to notice when the incoming missile stopped their relentless
intrusion into the Eden system. “The volley has ended. The closest detonations were
more than a fifty thousand miles from the station. We’re in the clear, sir.”

I smiled grimly. They’d thrown a heavy blow and decidedly removed our forward minefield,
but I still had my flying pulses of mines and plenty more firepower in the station
itself. I did find myself wishing we were up to full strength, however.

“Excellent,” I said. “Hopefully, they don’t have much left in reserve.”

We all knew it was a faint hope. Standard Macro tactics involved throwing no more
than fifty percent of all the missile stocks a given fleet had in any given storm
of missiles. The thought that they could release that much firepower a second time
was terrifying.

“What is the status of all defensive systems?” I asked.

“Everything is a go, sir,” Welter said crisply. “The minefield at the ring has been
taken out, of course. But everything else is green and battle-ready.”

I frowned, thinking hard. Why would they blast so hard right at the outset? By our
best calculations, the enemy was still nearly an hour out from the ring. Our data
was old, of course, as we’d pulled back the scouts before they could become targets.
My frown deepened at that thought.

“Commander,” I snapped at Welter, “calculate the Macro position if they have increased
speed.”

“At what pace of acceleration, sir? For how long?”

“What if they flew at us at maximum burn ever since our scouts retreated to our side
of the ring? Where would they be right now?”

Welter’s eyes widened. I could tell he was catching on. Working his fingers deftly
on his touchscreen, I saw big yellow numbers flashing under them. He turned up to
me thirty seconds later.

“Right here sir, right now. They could be on us. But they will coming in too fast,
too—”

I wasn’t listening any more. I signaled Sandra, who linked me to the PA system. “Now
hear this, all hands, we are about to undergo a very high speed attack from the direction
of the ring. I want everyone in full battlesuits with their hands on the triggers
of a railgun battery!
Move
people, battle stations. This is not a drill!”

Even Marvin seemed surprised. I’d earned a half-dozen of his cameras and a wide-eyed
stare from Sandra before everyone kicked into action. That took a second, a long second,
but I supposed everyone took a moment to change gears.

All over the ship I heard servos whine and big arms rattle as they took aim with their
weaponry. I busied myself at the holotank, checking out the position of my next orbital
shower of mines. It was close—less than seven minutes out. I figured at their rate
of approach we wouldn’t get more than one shot at them. I ordered the mines in the
swarm to fire their tiny guidance engines to increase speed.

Marvin saw what I was doing and objected. “You’re pushing the mine swarm too fast,
sir,” he said. “The next gravity bumper won’t be able to catch them. They won’t be
able to make another orbit of Hel.”

“I don’t think that’s going to matter, Marvin.”

I pointed toward the holotank, but I really didn’t need to. Everyone was looking and
gasping. Marvin turned himself toward it, putting every camera he had on the three-dimensional
image depicted there. His arms clattered and rasped on the deckplates. Only one of
his cameras was still looking at me. That single electronic eye rose up higher, staring.

I didn’t have time to puzzle about what Marvin was thinking, and I didn’t much care.
The holotank emitted a blood-red glow now as the first new contacts appeared. The
Macro ships were coming through the ring, flooding into the Eden system.

“The Macros have come to the battle early, and it’s time to give them our warmest
reception,” I boomed. “All batteries,
FIRE!
”

Outside, space lit up with flashing darts of plasma. I felt the entire battle station
shudder under my boots in reaction to the release of tremendous energies on the surface.

In the silent void, with little or no friction to worry about, railguns could be very
effective. Our systems were very advanced, super-cooled and powered by magnetic forces
the physicists back on Earth could only dream about. Normal railguns operated on the
principle of extreme magnetic fields being used to propel a projectile to great speeds
in a very short amount of time. If you’ve ever tried to push two magnets of matched
polarity together, you’ve witnessed the concept of a railgun in action. The idea is
based upon the application of electrical power to produce powerful magnetic fields.
Since anyone could use magnets to attract or repel ferrous objects then, theoretically,
one could build a super powerful magnet to repel an object to the speed of a bullet.
The nice thing about the principal was its expandability. Bigger, more powerful magnets
and bigger, more powerful projectiles created even greater killing power.

The natural vacuum of space made railguns even more viable. We had no air to get in
the way of projectiles, and no gravity to pull them off course. Even better, once
launched a railgun pellet is pretty close to invisible. Unlike missiles or beams,
ballistic weaponry is difficult to detect in space and even harder to shoot down.

I’d invested heavily in railgun technology on the battle station. Our railguns were
in fact more powerful than the prototypes experimented with back on Earth could ever
have been. The key to this improvement was the use of gravity plates. Instead of using
only magnetic forces, we pushed the huge bullets by causing them to fall away from
the gravity plates. It was as if we were dropping the projectiles on the heads of
our enemies—in any direction we chose.

I’d considered creating a railgun powered entirely by gravity-repellers, but hadn’t
perfected any of the designs yet. Our systems at this point remained hybrids, and
I was sure they were far from perfect. They did, however, quickly and quietly launch
a projectile at great speed. As far as I was concerned, that was enough.

The battle station’s lighting systems dimmed when the first volley was ejected. For
a split-second, every ounce of power we had went to the railguns and they were greedy
for more. Down in the depths of the station I knew skinny black arms of metal were
loading the next projectiles, slamming them into place and locking them magnetically
so they were suspended between the rails and ready to fire. When the lights went green
again, each battery fired.

Some of the batteries seemed to operate more smoothly than others and thus had a faster
rate of fire. Most took somewhere around eight seconds to reload. A few could move
up to a seven-second cycle. The asynchronous rate of fire wasn’t optimal, but I didn’t
try to fix it. I ordered everyone to put as much metal into the path of the enemy
as they could, as fast as they could. My only wish was that I’d started firing thirty
seconds earlier. Some of the ships were going to be breaking off and evading the barrage.

On the holotank screen, I saw our projectiles as yellow slivers, the enemy ships as
red wedges and cylinders. So far, they weren’t firing more missiles at us, but that
may have meant they were holding their fire for even closer range.

“They’re moving fast, sir,” Welter said, reading a dozen screens at once. “Some are
breaking off, moving out of our cone of fire. The bulk of them is still plowing straight
into us. Should I fire our heavy lasers, sir?”

I hesitated. The ring was within effective range for my three heavy beam weapons,
but I didn’t want to have them show themselves immediately and get targeted. Beam
weapons on a stationary platform were very vulnerable, and I knew I might see a target
I would rather have them take out in the next minute or so. On the other hand, if
they sat idle in this high-speed battle they might as well have been knocked out already.

I struggled to get into my battle suit, as did everyone else who hadn’t listened to
my orders previously. I didn’t really like clanking around in the thing when inside
a vessel, but while out in open space or on a hostile planet, it made you feel like
a god.

“Target the heavy lasers on the outlying ships, the ones that are flying off at random
angles. Take them out one at a time.”

New green lines snapped into existence as the lasers lanced out after their prey.
For this type of weaponry, we were in close range. The holotank shifted a moment later,
as the enemy reacted to my play. A shower of new tiny contacts appeared: missiles.

“Dammit!” I said, “I knew they’d go for my big lasers the second I revealed them.”

“They’ll get in a few minutes of firing time, Kyle,” Sandra said. She stood supportively
near me. I liked the sentiment, but I was still gnashing my teeth about losing the
big lasers. I’d wanted to take out their dreadnaught with them if I had the chance.
We hadn’t seen the big ship yet, but it was only a matter of time.

The lasers were doing nasty work out there. We’d ranged them carefully, and each pulsing
ripple of fire that lanced out finished a cruiser, ripping through the decks and as
often as not igniting the engine core. Ships flashed and winked out of existence with
regularity.

“Why haven’t they fired any more missiles, sir?” Welter asked, staring with me as
the battle played out.

“There’s only one reason I can think of,” I said. “And I don’t like it.”

“They want to take this station for themselves, rather than destroying it,” Marvin
said. His tone and interruptive delivery reminded me of every know-it-all kid back
in school.

“You really think so?” Sandra asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Marvin’s probably right. They’re shooting at our weapons, not pouring
fire onto the station itself. They must have a reason. Just think about it from their
point of view: if they can take this station, they can control this gate permanently.
They’re trying to knock out our weapons without permanently damaging this station.”

“We can’t let them do that, Kyle,” Sandra said.

“I know. If it looks bad, we’ll blow the whole thing up.”

Everyone on the bridge looked grim, except Marvin, who looked alarmed. “Colonel Riggs,
sir?”

“What?”

“Shouldn’t we call for an early evacuation if the plan includes self-destruction?
To achieve a minimum safe distance will require several minutes under fire.”

I laughed harshly. “What’s the matter robot? Don’t you believe in going down with
your ship?”

“No, sir.”

I shook my head and turned my attention back to the holotank. There had to be a way
out of this—but there wasn’t. We were in for a long, hard battle. Once the punches
started landing, we would have few options. Escape wouldn’t really be possible, at
least not until the enemy had made one deadly pass.

I got an idea, and connected to the PA directly via my battlesuit’s helmet controls.
“Heavy laser one, cease fire. I repeat, cease fire.”

People glanced at me in surprise, but no one said anything like “Are you crazy?” I
imagined they knew it wouldn’t do them any good.

“Heavy Laser Two, fire one more shot, then shut down and button up. I want you to
put that clam-shell shielding over the projector as fast as you can. Laser Three—keep
firing until the station takes a hit, then shut down immediately and cover up.”

“What are you doing, Kyle?”

“Making it look like they took out our lasers. If they think they’re down, they won’t
shoot at them anymore.”

She frowned, but nodded and turned back to her screens.

“Sir, our railgun pellets are reaching the enemy line,” Welter said. “The central
mass of the enemy fleet is taking it hard.”

A flashing counter began to change. It had been ticking down in slow increments, counting
the enemy vessels. Mostly it had been rising as more and more wriggled their way through
the ring and into the Eden system. Now that our heavy guns had finally landed a blow,
the little blue number began dropping—fast.

Before I knew it, we’d killed twenty ships. Eight seconds later, the number was twenty-six.
That’s when the enemy figured out we were serious and changed tactics again. I’d been
worried about this part.