Wraia was scared. She finally admitted it to herself after seeing the pulverised ruins of what had once been a thriving colony supporting more than ten thousand people.

In spite of the best efforts of Ensign Hooper and Ensign Briar, the reception from the live helmet cams was still patchy, but it was enough. The Myrr Idol colony was one large settlement and a scattering of research and agricultural stations, constructed of the usual prefab metal and fast-setting reinforced concrete, and enough of the buildings were intact to make in unmistakable.

Two teams from the Cobra and the Merlin had touched down less than thirty minutes prior, landing just outside what was once the fringe colony's diminutive spaceport. From there they treated the observers in orbit to a spectacle of destruction.

The Cobra was locked in geosynchronous orbit above them, staying as a relay point between the landing parties and the Merlin. Gueller had taken his vessel out to a wider orbit, punching scans into the void around what was left of Myrr Idol's moon.

Looking for clues in his own way. 

Wraia felt like she should have protested – her ship was newer, with more powerful navigation and sensor arrays that ought to have a better chance of cutting through the blanketing static, but Gueller had made the decision without discussion.

It seemed like, after missing out on finding the Manticore, he wanted something proactive to do. Gods, she hoped that the man wasn't out on an ego trip. There was too much at stake especially with what the ground survey was revealing to them.

The similarities between the colony and the Manticore were startling. Even with the grainy footage Wraia could see the strange denting in the once-smooth paving of the colony streets, and some of the buildings listed drunkenly, their out structures warped out of shape. She followed the helmet cam of Mayeda who'd volunteered to lead the landing party, seeing the carnage through his eyes.

Live audio fed from the helmet cams, but that only served to underline how deathly quiet Myrr Idol was now. Most of the sounds were hushed orders from Mayeda and the other officers, mixed in with shuffling footsteps. Occasionally there would be a creak or a crash as something gave way.

The teams moved slowly and carefully. Virtually the entire planet was unstable now, but they needed eyes on the ground. They needed to know what had happened here. Wraia steepled her fingers and let the information wash over her like a tide of icy water.

Dark figures moved through the static-infested images before her. She could pick out the shapes of mangled auto-gliders and cargo carriers; the occasional wrecked piece of equipment – a computer console here, part of a door there. Through the kaleidoscope of cameras from the landing parties there remained no sign of life. Just ruined halls and silent rooms.

"Launch 6 to bridge, please come in?"

It was Mayeda, his voice crackling but readable, spearing up from the planet's surface. Wraia opened her comm, steeling herself as she gestured for Ensign Briar to put Mayeda's camera up on the main screen.

"Go ahead, Launch 6," she answered, her voice coming out firmly, like a person in full control.

"Preliminary report for you, ma'am. We've swept about forty percent of the settlement now."

"Is it as bad as it look?"

"Afraid so. It's just like what we saw on board the Manticore," Mayeda told her. In the view of his camera, deck guards and emergency response teams from both ships continued sifting through the ruins ahead of him. "No bodies, and no survivors. They're gone."

"There were ten thousand people down there," Gallagher growled. "They can't just be gone."

"What about beyond the settlement?" Wraia asked.

"I wouldn't fancy anyone's chances, ma'am," Mayeda said grimly. "They'd be out in the open and sitting ducks for whoever did this. Not to mention they'd be exposed to an atmosphere that can't sustain human life for very long. We're continuing our sweeps."

"Direct your people towards the main administrative building," she advised him. "Assuming Myrr Idol's founders followed standard colony specs there should have been hardened safe rooms incorporated in the structure in case of emergencies. If anyone survived, that's where you'll find them."

"Copy that. Proceeding now."

"And Mr. Mayeda?"

"Ma'am?"

"Be careful. Cobra out." She glanced at Briar. "Ship-to-ship with the Merlin."

"Ship-to-ship live, ma'am."

"Commander Gueller?"

"I read you, Ms. Clay." He didn't sound particularly pleased to be hearing from her, as though she'd distracted him from a task that required his full concentration. "Report?"

"No life signs on the planet – no sign of any of the colonists," Wraia answered, ignoring the man's tone. "Landing parties are moving to the main administrative buildings, but, if I may be candid, I doubt that we'll find anyone."

"Look for logs, security footage – anything that could give us a clue as to who might have done this," Gueller responded brusquely. "We are continuing our survey of Myrr Lomas. What's left of it is considerably denser than Sol-Fleet records. It's as though some of its mass has been compacted – its gravitational pull is far stronger than a body of its size should be generating."

"Understood." Except she didn't understand. Not really. None of this made sense.

"Report back when the landing parties have completed their sweeps. Remain at alert status. Gueller out."

The channel closed and Wraia bit her lip softly, her mind racing to try and account for any of this. Stars could collapse on themselves, forming neutron stars or black holes, but planets didn't. Something had done this to Myrr Lomas, and in the process shed billions of tons of the moon into space.

On her personal control panel an internal comm message blinked green and she clicked the accept button.

"Bridge here."

"Ensign Hooper reporting, ma'am," the woman said, sounding brighter than she had for some time. "We've managed to rescue some data from the drives we took off the Manticore. Tactical AI is making final descriptions now – I should have something for you in fifteen minutes."

"Copy that. Good work Ensign." Her chair turned. "Mr. Briar, please assemble department heads in Tactical Suite 1, fifteen minutes."

"Shouldn't we notify Commander Gueller, ma'am?" Briar looked nervous, rubbing the thumb and forefinger of one hand together repeatedly as he spoke.

Gallagher looked over at her; gave a mischievous shrug.

"Just follow your orders, Ensign," she said.

"I... err, yes, ma'am."

Briar passed the word, and Wraia felt a twinge of guilt at her bending of protocol. Technically she didn't have anything to actually tell Gueller yet, so there was no information being withheld, but she knew the other ship commander would have wanted to be there for the cracking of the Manticore's logs.

On top of the guilt, she also couldn't deny a faint thrill at taking this small act of rebellion against Gueller's tenuous authority. He'd get the data when he needed to know, and not a moment before.

"Mr. Ratcliffe, the bridge is yours," she said, standing up. "Mr. Gallagher, with me. Let's see what the Manticore has to tell us."

*

Wraia turned an expectant gaze on Ensign Hooper. Joined by Gallagher, Chief Petty Office Whitlock, and one of the Cobra's technicians, they awaited the secrets of the Manticore with a mixture of anticipation and worry.

"All right, Ensign," Wraia began. "What have we got."

"The crew logs were wiped," Hooper replied. "Like they'd been scrubbed by an EM blast, along with most of the sensor data, but we managed to salvage a few things from the hardened AI module." She nodded to the technician. "Yeoman Zellars was able to pull a damage control report from the Manticore's tactical AI, time stamped eight hours before we found them."

Yeoman Zellars straightened in her seat, clearing her throat nervously – an officer just barely eighteen years old on her very first assignment. Her skin was dark, hair short and frizzy, and her eyes were wide.

"Yeoman," Wraia said, doing her best to mask her impatience. She reminded herself that everyone on the crew was barrelling into the unknown right now. "What did you find?"

"We have a recorded red alert in the log," Zellars said quickly, keying a command into the controls in front of her. "Four minutes after that, the tactical AI recorded a massive impact, shipwide." The tactical suite's quad screen came to life to show the readings. "It's not like any weapon impact we've ever recorded. It's like ... like someone wrapped a giant hand around the ship and squeezed. It overloaded the main barriers almost instantly."

"At the same time as that overload, there's a recorded loss of main power," Hooper continued. Zellars looked grateful that she didn't have to elaborate. "That's then followed by a simultaneous stream of critical structural integrity warnings."

"The internal damage." Wraia nodded. "Do we have any indications of what caused the warping of the Manticore's interior?"

Zellars looked to Hooper, as though searching for permission, before speaking up.

"They appear to have been caused by brief, localised distortions in the ship's gravity," she said. "As though someone opened a black hole for an instant."

"Our theory," Whitlock elaborated, though from her tone it didn't sound like she quite believed the words coming out of her own mouth, "is that the warped sections within the Manticore are where the ship was boarded."

Gallagher frowned. "But those sections are within the ship, and we didn't see any evidence of hull breaching consistent with any kind of boarding craft."

"That's because they didn't use a boarding craft."

There was a brief moment of confusion that manifested as silence, before Wraia narrowed her eyes at the chief engineer.

"Then how did they get aboard?"

"The Merlin's engineering officer said they were consistent with dropspace windows. I think he was right. Mayeda said those warped sections were crucial junctions for defending any boarding attempt. They would be prime targets for a boarding action."

Wraia's eyes widened when she realised what was being suggested. "You're saying they created a ship-to-ship dropspace window?"

"It fits the evidence." Whitlock gave an uneasy shrug. "It's theoretically possible, but its never been pursued. The consequences of getting it wrong are..." She clicked her tongue. "Let's just say it would be pretty nasty, and leave it at that."

"This tech is well beyond anything in Sol-Fleet," Gallagher said, folding his arms with a grim expression on his face. "Or anyone else, as far as we know."

"There's one more thing, ma'am," Hooper interjected. "The Manticore's cameras were running throughout the entire attack. Most of the visual memory was erased by the power outage, but we managed to pull an image from the port camera arrays." With lips pressed tightly together, she tapped out a command and the quad-screen display changed. The damage reports disappeared, replaced by last thing that the Manticore's cameras had seen.

Wraia leaned forward, clasping her hands together and leaning on the table as she stared at the image. It was badly corrupted, with belts of static and dead pixels all over, but that wasn't enough to obscure the shape that took centre stage.

It had been captured at the limits of the ship's camera range, but the form was definite. It was roughly circular, its exact outline difficult to discern from the picture, coloured a rough, sludgy grey. There appeared to be bands of light across parts of its outer structure, but no engine cones that she could see.

"This is maximum visual, yes?"

"Yes, ma'am," Hooper confirmed.

Wraia squeezed her hands together a little tighter. "At that distance, what would the diameter of that object be?"

"At maximum range..." Hooper keyed a swift calculation into the console. Then swallowed hard. "It would be around two hundred kilometres across, ma'am."

"Two hundred kilometres?" Gallagher blurted incredulously. "Good God."

"I think we can safely say it's not a Narvorian ship," Wraia murmured, slowly leaning back into her seat. "Or any other party that we know of. No-one has ever recorded a vessel of this size before, anywhere in explored space."

"I've seen orbital colonies and fleet anchorages that size," Whitlock mused, "but to actually turn a structure that big into a ship capable of interstellar flight... the power costs would be astronomical. Any dropspace drive big enough to transport something like that would tear itself apart under the structural stress."

"So you're saying it's impossible?"

"As far as I know."

Wraia frowned, clasping her hands together and pressing them against her lips as she absorbed the deluge of information. There were a lot of impossibilities worming their way into her world right now, and she didn't like it. Expectant eyes turned on her.

One decision at a time, Wraia, she heard her father's voice say. No matter the noise, no matter how many people are shouting for you, you take things one decision at a time. She nodded to herself. The impossibilities could wait to be solved. They had taken step forward, and finally caught a glimpse of what they were hunting.

"Very well. Good work, all of you," Wraia said, nodding to the technical team before her gaze returned to the vast dark ship on the screen. "I believe you've found our enemy. Now we just need to find it."