“Looks like the Ildirans have no stomach for fighting, sir,” said his navigator.

Conrad nodded without replying. The Adar already had what he’d come for. Considering the enormity of the Ildiran force, a part of him was glad the whole Solar Navy did not intend to engage in a full-fledged battle. It would have been a bloodbath.

The Ildirans had not taken the time to retrieve the Mage-Imperator’s hijacked warliner, which was still in orbit over the Moon. Conrad saw that its systems were coming on, and an EDF pilot — a mere lieutenant left on duty with the engineering and inspection crew — announced that he intended to use it in the fight. He powered up its engines and accelerated to begin the pursuit.

Over the emergency comm system, Commandant Tilton bellowed for help from the EDF. He sounded like a bleating sheep.

The Adar’s last few warliners had arced around the dark side of the Moon in a tight orbit and now emerged from below the southern hemisphere. Accelerating from the slingshot, the Ildiran ships followed a trajectory that actually threw them toward theGoliath and the pursuing EDF ships. “General Brindle, warliners on a collision course!”

“Are they trying to ram us?” Conrad gripped the armrests, pushing himself halfway out of the unfamiliar command chair. The cratered landscape of the nearby Moon filled the entire screen.

“No, sir. I think they’re. running from something.”

Three more ships in the Adar’s group fanned out, activated their stardrives, and sped away. Meanwhile, the last Ildiran ship skimmed close to the surface in extremely low orbit, using the lunar mass as a shield until it left the Moon and headed off at full speed. Although its vector would carry it directly out of the solar system, it would also bring the gaudy alien ship unnecessarily within weapons range of the EDF battle group.

And the Ildirans didn’t even seem to care.

Conrad couldn’t understand the Adar’s actions. “What is he thinking?” No response came from repeated hails. The EDF ships unleashed a flurry of jazer blasts, but the warliner was moving too swiftly; some of the bolts struck the ornate solar sails, but did little damage. The fleeing ship streaked away.

Conrad looked quickly to his bridge crew for any answers or suggestions. “Can anybody tell me what he’s trying to do?” None of this made any sense.

A cloud of hot spheres streaked toward the Moon like incandescent buckshot. Within seconds, the shower of sparks on theGoliath ’s main screen changed to an inferno. Impossible numbers of fireballs extended beyond the net of the EDF’s sensors.

“Faeros,” he said aloud. “My God!”

The flaming ellipsoids arrowed straight toward the lunar base and all the EDF ships that had launched in a confused response as soon as the Solar Navy had departed. The Mage-Imperator’s confiscated warliner, still attempting its pursuit of Adar Zan’nh, had risen up over the Moon and was increasing speed. The faeros saw it. The EDF lieutenant in command of the skeleton crew called to General Brindle for instructions.

Without pause, without warning, without any communication whatsoever, the foremost faeros slammed into the warliner, engulfing it in flames. The ship’s extended solar sails shriveled, and its meager shields could not possibly withstand the impact. The whole gigantic vessel was vaporized within seconds.

The stream of fireballs kept coming, and thousands of faeros began to attack the Moon.The whole Moon.

Elemental flames lanced down in a unified barrage, blistering the already barren landscape, gouging new molten craters in the surface. This was orders of magnitude more destructive, more overwhelming, than any attack, any weapon, any disaster Conrad had witnessed in his entire life.

Even as a second wave of EDF ships rushed in from other stations in the solar system, he knew there was nothing his entire fleet could do against these things.

Clustering around the Moon, the fireballs threw down a holocaust. The faeros bombarded the surface with total abandon, erasing craters and turning the rocks and dust into glassy streams of lava.

They obliterated the fortified EDF base within the first few minutes. All transmissions from Commandant Tilton and anyone in the vicinity of the EDF base had fallen silent. Conrad didn’t know how many people had been stationed there, but it must have been in the thousands. Those men and women were already dead, the facilities destroyed, all the nearby ships vaporized. Every ship that had managed to launch was wiped out.

But even that did not satisfy the rage of the fiery entities. The faeros bombardment continued until they succeeded in breaking through the lunar surface. Their weaponry hammered through the regolith until the Moon itself became cracked and red.

“General Brindle, do we attack?”

“No, do not engage the faeros! Maintain our distance.” He shuddered, staring at the screen. “No weapon in the entire Hansa arsenal can fight againstthat.” Any Earth Defense Forces that tried would be incinerated in the first wave.

Conrad didn’t know what had provoked their fury. It reminded him of angry wasps stinging a blundering child who had accidentally disturbed their nest. Then he remembered the root cause of the hydrogue war: The Hansa’s first test of the Klikiss Torch at Oncier had unwittingly destroyed an enclave of hydrogues; in retaliation, hydrogue warglobes had completely annihilated the four moons of the gas giant, turning them into rubble.

Now the faeros, elemental companions to the hydrogues, were doing the same to the Earth’s Moon. “What the hell did we do to piss them off?”

Or were the humans just in the way?

The vengeful faeros continued to pour energy through the crust, pounding hot spikes all the way into the Moon’s core, until it reached a final unstable point.

Conrad couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Unable to stand, he collapsed back into the command chair.

Because of the lunar mass and size, the explosion seemed to occur with infinite slowness, a gradual crumbling and separation. The Moon cracked, fissured. and then literally broke apart like a ball of dried clay.

100

Mage-Imperator Jora’h

The fireballs swarmed in as the Mage-Imperator’s ship angled high out of the orbital plane. The rest of the Solar Navy had successfully gotten away to the rendezvous point, and now the flagship warliner could no longer hide behind the bulk of the Moon.

Though the EDF reinforcements had finally arrived from their stations around Earth, they were by far the least of Adar Zan’nh’s worries. He did not engage them, but flew past with all possible speed. Instead of pursuing them, however, the faeros concentrated their fury upon the Moon itself.

Even the Adar was astonished by the sheer number of fireballs that Rusa’h had summoned. “We must take you to safety, Liege. We cannot stay here.” He turned to the helmsman. “Set course for Ildira.”