It had been
hours since ship’s sensors had registered the launch, which made the launch
itself hours old by the time it had reached Flynn’s crew. As soon as he knew
the projectile’s course, he had swung Calypso
to exit the solar system.
They just
came out of the shadow of Unceri 6, a ringed gas giant that had occluded the
sensors’ view of the sun, but now the optical sensors registered all the
information. Flynn and his crew watched as the sun, which had been orange G2,
similar to the size of Old Earth’s sun, had detonated. A shell of superheated
material expanded from the star, even now overtaking Unceri I, a rocky planet.
The stellar
material burned and ripped through the planet until nothing remained.
“Flare me,”
Ann breathed.
“Stars
above,” Hank swallowed. “I knew the math, but to see it. . . .”
I’ve seen it before. The Alliance possesses stellar
destabilizers, but the ones able to cause novas were banned, supposedly
destroyed. And now someone else has them.
“We’ve
cleared the system,” Ann said.
“Raise
sails, get us streaming for Alliance Outpost Magdalon.”
“You really
want to go to an Alliance outpost, Flynn?”
“We need to
report this. Someone needs to stop this before those maniacs target an
inhabited system.”
“Setting
course.”