The Black Gate (The Messenger #11) - J.N. Chaney Page 0,17

In answer, she turned to Envaer. “Show the imagery from our last battle with them.”

While Envaer tapped at controls on a console built into the table, she looked back at Dash. “We ensured that we had several drones standing back from our last engagement to record what happened.”

A screen at one end of the room lit up, while the room lights faded. An image appeared, showing a task force of about a dozen warships, ranging in size from what Dash would call a heavy cruiser, down to a corvette-class ship. A split screen showed a single dark, sleek shape, visible more by the stars it occluded than any light along the hull. A scale bar showed that the Deeper ship was far larger than any of the League ships, but it also seemed to be alone.

“Only one Deeper ship?” Leira asked. “A big one, sure, but do they often operate alone like that?”

Lomas shook her head. “No, they don’t operate alone.”

Dash felt his mouth open in amazement when he saw shapes begin to carve away from the Deeper ship. Smaller craft, just as sleek as the parent, peeled away from it. All of them raced toward the League task force, opening fire with powerful x-ray lasers and fusillades of even smaller, dart-like shapes that must have been missiles. Dash narrowed his eyes at that. They were identical to the missiles that had destroyed Assembly Prime.

The battle itself didn’t last long. The League fleet was battered and blasted to scrap in minutes, every ship being destroyed.

The imagery froze, and the lights came back up. Dash turned to Lomas.

“That was bad. I’m sorry that happened to your people,” Dash said.

“We share a common loss here, as there were almost three hundred lost in that battle. Just like your attack. We’ve avoided battle against the Deepers as much as possible since then.”

“Naturally, though, we live in fear of them pressing home more attacks against us,” Abillart said.

Envaer’s eyes bored into Abillart, but he seemed immune to the look.

“Can’t deny that’s true. So you can understand our wariness, I hope,” Lomas said.

“Of course.” Dash turned back to the screen, drumming his fingers on the table. He felt Leira looking at him.

“Dash, what are you thinking?” she asked.

Dash raised a hand. “Can you predict the next attack with any accuracy?” He never took his eyes from the screen.

“No, but they don’t seem to attack the same place twice, and they also seem to originate somewhere near the galactic rim. Based on that, I can give you a good guess, because it’s exactly where we won’t want to be,” Lomas said.

“Good enough. I want to be there when they come knocking.”

Lomas tilted her head to one side, regarding Dash through eyes that were half-closed. “You sure about that? I know you took them on once already, but that was three of their smallest ships.” She gestured at the screen. “You saw their full capability. They don’t use anything we understand. Or at least not much beyond some sort of hyper-efficient x-ray laser and antimatter shipkillers.”

“That’s fine. That ship is a lot bigger than mine. If that’s what they attack with, then I’m going to make a hole in theirs and take a look around. And if they attack with smaller stuff, well, then we’ll kill it.”

“Wait, you want to look around? As in literally climb inside their ship in that—what did you call it, a mech?”

“Yeah. The Archetype, actually.”

“You just want to bash your way into a Deeper ship and see what you find.”

Dash grinned. “Don’t worry, I’ll ask nicely.”

Envaer leaned forward, sputtering in disbelief. “But . . . what if you can’t stop the ship? What if you just provoke them to do even worse?”

“Don’t worry, we won’t go in carelessly,” Leira said, patting Dash on the arm. “But you can trust us. Our mechs by themselves are a huge problem for the Deepers. On top of that, we’ve got three heavy cruisers and an escort carrier fitted out with Denkiller fighters. There’s not much chance of the Deepers getting past that.”

“You don’t know that!” Envaer shot back. “What if you try to take them on and find yourselves outgunned?”

“Then we’ll go to plan B,” Dash said. “Which is to run away. But that just leaves us in no different a position than we are now, does it, although we’ll pull data from each and every encounter. We won’t go away empty-handed.”

“Besides,” Leira put in. “I don’t think you can provoke these bastards into doing