Taking Space 2

- Black Hole -

Adolph watched as the rings of the Starway flashed by. Somehow, he had been wrong in his assumption that Vilex would destroy this particular Starway in an endeavor to buy himself time a fact that bothered him to no end. Vilex was not the type to go silently which meant that without a doubt they were walking in some sort of trap but what kind exactly.

A graviton bomb perhaps.. No, Vilex was resourceful, but even he couldn't get his hands on one of those without Adolph knowing.

Still, it was better safe than sorry.

"Pull back and let the Emissary, Verminus and the Ravenger go ahead of us and tell them to use their gravity generators to erect a gravity well," he commanded as they neared the end of the star way.

Immediately his flagship slowed down, and the three indicated battleships raced ahead.

"What are you planning Vilex?" He whispered to himself gazing at the giant holographic 3D radar depicting his fleet as the three foremost blimps left the Starway.

The three ships formed an upside-down V-shaped wedge and disabled their internal gravity as they used their gravity generators to form a gravity well equal to that of a small moon. It wouldn't exactly stop a graviton warhead nothing could, but it would lessen its effect and stopped his ships from being instantly sucked in and turned to small tiny blocks of crushed metal.

"Leaving Starway and transitioning into normal space," one of his officers called out as his flagship reached the end of the Starway.

The blur of stars and rings faded away from the three sixty view as they left the Starway but to Adolph's surprised no new contacts showed up on the radar in front of him.

"Deep scan now!" He barked.

His flagship hummed underneath his as it released a burst of frequencies on every known spectrum.

As the pulse wave spread out, a single new ship appeared on the radar close to fifty thousand GSU away, just out of range of their passive radar sensors.

"Vilex," Adolph muttered as the lone ship turned and started to move on an intercept course with their current trajectory.

"He is hailing us on all open comm channels," his communication officer informed him.

On the open channels? So Vilex intended this to be a public spectacle, not just to his fleet but to the entire galaxy as well thanks to the star way behind him. Of course, his technicians had the star way lockdown at the moment, but there were a million plus eager hackers out there, and eventually one of them would gain access to this conversation he and Vilex were about to have the only way to stop that would be to destroy the Starway.

But that was fine he intended to make Vilex a public example anyway.

"On screen," he told his communication officer.

A new image filled the main viewscreen of Adolph's capital ship's command deck.

The image showed Vilex sitting in the Myrmidons command seat as if it was rightfully his as he leaned forward, nodded and said, "Adolph."

Vilex informal greeting made his blood begin to boil, but Adolph straightened his back and didn't let his anger show as he said, "Traitor."

Vilex leaned back. "Resorting to such childish antics as name-calling already? Adolph, you disappoint me, and you know full well my fealty was never to you. I only ever did what I believed was good for the Empire and the galaxy."