(From)
First Contact - Elysians
Book Two
Chapter Six
Devastation
The Neutron Beam struck almost instantly, lighting up space like a supernova. The brightness of the detonation stayed visible for about 30 seconds. The material and much of the Elysian attack force were vaporized.
As the light of the explosion slowly faded, the Elysian fleet looked nothing like it had less than a minute before. The ships at the back of the front wedge were vaporized and just gone. The front part of the wedge had many smoking ships. The formation was no longer a wedge. Many of the ships were just drifting.
The inside half of each of the flank formations was also gone. They had been decimated, with the ships just disappearing from existence. The rest of the surviving ships from the two flank wedges had fared better than the ships that had survived in the front wedge.
Captain Chris felt like he knew what Harry Truman felt when he ordered the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. He felt sick to his stomach and wanted to throw up. He looked around the bridge, noticing the sadness on every face surrounding him. When he finally looked at Ellie, he couldn’t believe his eyes. She was crying softly.
“Ellie?”
“I can’t help it, Sir. I’ve never felt like this before. What does it mean?”
“It means that you’re human.”
As he looked around the bridge again, he noticed tears in the eyes of the rest of his bridge crew.
“Ellie, how many ships do the Elysians have left?”
“Umm…sorry…247 Sir. They only appear to have about 120 or so ships that are fully operational.”
“Lieutenant Allen, put me on visual coms, please.”
He nodded, and Captain Chris began, “As you can see, I was not bluffing.” A tear rolled down his cheek. “You were warned. We will not be bullied or allow you to bully our friends. Please reply.”
The com was silent as he waited. A visual came on the view screen, and he got his first look at the Elysians. He couldn’t tell the scale, so he didn’t know how tall they were. They had a feline-like face, with whiskers like a house cat. They were completely covered in fur with two large fangs. Their bodies appeared to be human-like but were also covered in fur.
“You have made an enemy of us. What is your name? I want to know who to tell my superiors deserves to be captured and executed.”
“My name is Captain Chris. Why do you persist in your hostilities? As you can see, we vastly outclass you. You’ve lost 503 ships, with another 127 damaged. You have very little, if any chance, in a fight with us. Leave our system and go back to where you came from. Do not come back here again. In addition, play the com of all of our communications. Make sure your superiors know of my warning so that they know your commander had a chance to avoid the destruction of two-thirds of your fleet.”
“We will be back! Count on it, Captain Chris!”
Thank you for reading this short excerpt from my book!
Scott Ickes