The Admiral and the Assistant

The Ninth Fleet swarmed into the Ceon system, the ships spreading out from the jumphole and forming up into their assigned attack formations. Recon and surveillance ships were deep-scanning and shipping masses of data to the comms beacons, quickly filling them so they could zip back through the jumphole and send the data to Atlas Station.

The ISS Swordheart emerged in the midst of the fleet, long and proud, ready to take on the enemies of the Imperium.

On the bridge of the Swordheart, Admiral Stonefist and Lieutenant Kinnit were finally able to see deep-scan data of the Ash-Tongues' boneship from good Navy scanners.

They paused in awe.

"What is that thing?" Kinnit said quietly, unconsciously clinging to Grimthorn's sleeve. "It's massive."

Admiral Stonefist's face hardened. The imperfect scans from the Ocher Dawn had made it difficult to get a scale on the boneship. Now, though, the size disparity was clear. If the boneship were the size of a shuttle, the Swordheart would be the size of a grain of sand compared to it. The Ash-Tongue boneship was nearly a hundred miles across.

The entire Ninth Fleet seemed like a handful of dirt to throw against it. The mightiest ships of the Imperium were vanishingly tiny against the enormous boneship.

The boneship was a spherical structure of calcified beams that looked like a deranged skeleton: thin ivory columns, probably no more than a couple yards thick each, connected at seemingly random angles, creating a haphazard honeycomb structure. The structure went deep; deeper than they could see on visuals. No understructure could be seen.

"Lieutenant Renning, what do the scans tell us about what's inside that thing?"

Lieutenant Renning paused.

"It's... hard to say, sir. Our scans can't penetrate the layer of, of..." Lieutenant Renning struggled to find a better word, but finally gave up. "We can't get through the bone structure, Admiral." He shuddered. "It's... it's actually organic."

Admiral Stonefist grimaced.

"Any other preliminary info?"

"They are emanating a reactance energy signature, sir. There's at least one reactor somewhere in there."

Grimthorn grinned.

"If they have a reactor, it can be deactivated. Preferably at high velocity. Very good. Anything on weapons or shielding?"

"No shielding like we've seen, sir, though maybe the have unknown tech. For weapons, there's nothing that we can tell, sir. Our scanners can't get through the bone."

"Well, if our scanners can't get through, maybe our weapons can. All vessels, prepare to fire."

"Admiral," Kinnit said. "Should we wait for the other fleets?"

Grimthorn shook his head.

"People on the surface are fighting for their lives right now. Every second matters. Let's give them something to focus on besides killing citizens."

Kinnit nodded firmly.

"Yes, Admiral."

Admiral Stonefist glared at the boneship. Besides the structural struts, the surface was featureless. There were no glowing orbs, no giant dish, no big cannons, nothing that said "shoot me here."

Admiral Stonefist marked a spot on the boneship. Besides being accessible to the entire fleet, the location was more or less random.

"All ships, prepare salvo. We're going to hit this thing as hard as we can in one spot, see if we can punch through. Echelon formation on my flanks. We'll give them one big punch, then circle around and form back up."

One by one, the ships of the Ninth Fleet signaled readiness. Once the were prepared, Grimthorn signaled for the attack to begin.

"All right, everyone. Don't get intimidated by its size. It's big, and that probably means it's slow. All ships ahead full. Let's show these Feeders what it's like to tangle with the Imperium."

Every fleet ship with a weapon surged toward the bone ship. Reactance streamed behind the mighty fleet as it swept toward the silent sphere.

"All ships, open fire!"

Chief Jack watched the screen with growing tension. He stood in the center of the control room in the Techterra Ground Defense Force HQ, rock-steady with his hands clasped behind his back, staring at the screen.

The scarab ships were not indestructible, but they were wickedly tough. It took focused fire from multiple cannons to knock even one of the small ships down. Worse, if the fire let up, they seemed to have some kind of self-repair capability.

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He'd reassigned the cannons into octets-- groups of eight. Four cannons was simply not enough to reliably take down one scarab. The Techterra Ground Defense firing was effective but slow, and the scarabs kept sweeping in in their uncountable thousands. The scarabs struggled to keep the hexagonal formation they seemed to prefer, but they were creeping closer and closer to the defensive cannons.

Chief Jack frowned, his bristly white beard folding into the lines of his old face.

Techterra was losing, and fast.

It was only a matter of time. Sooner or later, those ships would reach one of the gunnery stations-- probably on the east side, if his estimate was correct-- and start taking them out. Once the cannons started to fall, what little resistance they were providing was going to disintegrate.

"Where is Petty Officer Amminius?" he barked. "Has anybody heard from Admiral Dure? We need the Slingshot!"

The door to the control burst open and Petty Officer Amminius tumbled in, falling to his knees. He was gasping for breath having sprinted at top speed from the comms station. He held up one hand with a thumbs-up to the Master Chief.

Chief Jack swept a finger toward one of the consoles in the corner of the room.

"Get the Slingshot warming up." He looked at the swarm rolling over the city. "We may not be able to stop this invasion, but we'll bloody them before we go."

"Yes, sir!"

The battle continued to unfold. The scarabs were advancing, drawing closer to the cannons.

"Sir!" cried one of station officers. "Some of the scarabs are leaving!"

Chief Jack quirked an eyebrow.

"Where to?"

"They're going off-planet! Back up toward the boneship!" The Petty Officer scanned his console. "It's the Ninth Fleet, sir! They're attacking the boneship!"

Some of the tension unwound from Chief Jack's shoulders.

"Praise the Emperor," he said quietly, closing his eyes. "The Spear of the Imperium is here."

The Ninth Fleet was arrayed against the Ash-Tongue boneship.

"All ships, open fire!"

The fleet unleashed everything they had. They charged the impassive sphere, firing blasters, ion cannons, and mass drivers. Hundreds of torpedoes streaked toward the boneship. All fire converged on a spot only a few hundred feet across.

The attack impacted the boneship. A fury of explosions and impacts rocked the surface. The thin struts blew apart easily, shattering and scattering bits and pieces into the void. Torpedoes detonated, tearing the haphazard structure to pieces. The surface was shredded by the Ninth Fleet's powerful attack.

The ships of the fleet pulled up, circling away from the boneship. A vast cloud of shattered material spread from the boneship.

From the surface of the planet, a swarm of scarabs streamed back to the boneship. They approached on the far side from the Ninth Fleet. Rather than land on the ship, they navigated in through the gaps in the structure, wriggling deep into the honeycomb.

"All ships, ready another salvo and come around," Admiral Stonefist said. "Lieutenant Renning, scan. What did we manage to do against that thing?"

"Scanning, sir." Renning clenched his teeth in frustration. "It will take a minute, Admiral. The organic debris is occluding the sensors."

"All possible speed, Lieutenant."

"Yes, sir."

Admiral Stonefist pulled up visual while Lieutenant Renning struggled with the scanners.

The sphere appeared on the main screen.

"Did we... do anything to it?" Kinnit asked, her voice tinged with despair.

At first glance, the boneship appeared unharmed. The crazytown honeycomb structure of the ship made it difficult to see any damage.

"It's ablative armor," Grimthorn said, a grim tone in his voice.

"Sir?"

"Armor that's designed to crumble when it's hit. It soaks up the damage so that whatever's behind it doesn't have to." Grimthorn pinched his lips. "All ships, another salvo! We'll get through this layer of armor! Fire!"

The Ninth Fleet unleashed its fury again, a thousand warships hammering every conceivable weapon at the Feeders. The attack resulted in another spray of bone chips and a cloud of debris.

"Lieutenant Renning! Anything?"

Renning shook his head.

"It's no good, sir," he replied. "We'll have to wait until the organic matter is cleared before the sensors will do us any good."

"Get the infographers on the horn, see if they can parse anything out of scan data from the fleet. And be sure every bit of it gets to Atlas Station."

"Yes, sir."

"Ships, prepare a third salvo," Admiral Stonefist said. He peered at the boneship on the main screen, trying to make out what degree of damage they were inflicting. "I wish I knew how thick that layer of ablative armor is."

Kinnit was busily scanning the trickle of data that was coming back from the infographers. She looked sick.

"Admiral... I don't think it's a layer."

"What?"

"That ship... I think it's that same structure the whole way through."

Grimthorn hissed in through his teeth.

"That's a bad thought." He squinted at the main screen. "All ships, open fire."

The fleet leapt forward again. Admiral Stonefist watched the visuals on the screen carefully as the Swordheart rushed the boneship.

He swore.

"I think you're right," he said as the Swordheart emptied all its weapons at the enemy.

The fleet peeled away from the ship.

"It makes sense," he said, thinking fast. "They don't necessarily need a main body for their ship. The structure in that thing is so big they could just have little modules scattered through the whole mass, buried deep." He nodded grimly. "You could have the reactor in one area, and engines miles away from it. If those struts are conductive, you wouldn't even need cabling. Just run power through the whole structure."

"How can we find anything to hit in all that?" Kinnit cried. That thing's got-- she did some quick mental calculations "--nearly four million cubic miles of volume!"

"Sir!" Lieutenant Renning called. "We've got a damage estimate!"

"Go ahead, Lieutenant."

"Sir, we've destroyed... um, nearly point one two percent of the surface, sir."

"Run that again?"

"Point one two, sir. Just over a tenth of a percent of the surface, sir."

Grimthorn's face stiffened.

"How deep did we get?"

"Hard to say, sir."

"Estimate."

"Umm... based on the infographer's analysis, probably no more than a thousand feet, sir. The struts just... soak up everything we're throwing at it."

"Sir," Kinnit said, "it's possible we could tunnel straight through that thing and never hit anything vital. For that matter, there's nothing to say they can't move vital modules around in there if we start getting close."

Grimthorn sneered.

"Fine, then. They don't seem to have much in the way of offense. We'll tear that thing to pieces, even if we have to chip away at it for a hundred years."

As Grimthorn finished speaking, the last of the scarabs wiggled their way into the boneship.

Then the Ash-Tongues showed that they did, indeed have something in the way of offense.