arun prabhu wrote:

Kurukshetra is a military sci-fi novel I'm working on.
I'm told that I need to work on sticking to a Point of
View and I'd be very grateful indeed if someone here
will give me pointers on this issue. Normal C&C is
also welcome.

Kurukshetra
Chapter 1

The war that had lasted three millennia was almost
over. The tide had turned against the Demon horde a
thousand years before, but their territory was so vast
that it had taken the Terran Fleet ten centuries just
to drive them back to their initial beachhead. 

Lose the opening sentence.  The second sentence is much stronger and 
says the same thing:  "This war is really, really old."


The

Terran campaign had been ruthless beyond compare and
seen the death of hundreds of thousands of suns and
millions of planets. A full ninety percent of the
galaxy's sentient races and an even greater percentage
of non sentient species were extinct not because they
participated in the war but because their home star
systems happened to be too close to the battlefields.

OK, so I already know that both sides are contemptible.

The intentionally inflicted damage to the galactic
ecology was horrible. 

The galaxy doesn't really have an ecology as such.


The war had torn the heart out

of the Milky Way and the threat of radiation poisoning
was so high that not even the Terrans, one of the
hardiest of all races, could survive in the arms
without radiation shields. 

Given the stellar density of the core, it would be far worse there than 
it would be in the arms.  You can actually create nova chain reactions.


The only two sectors to

remain habitable were the Terran stronghold in the
galactic core and the Demon stronghold in the tail of
the Perseus Arm, and even they were doomed as the
dying flare of a thousand stars reached out to them.

And yet, even as the object of the war lay in utter
ruins, the two races fought each other. The Terrans
continued to use the same ruthless tactics that had
protected their race against the extra-galactic
invaders and the Demons defended their territory with
a ruthlessness born of desperation. They knew that if
the technologically superior and infinitely more
barbaric Terrans gained access to the Gate, their
pan-galactic empire was as good as dead. It was their
fondest hope that they would hold the Terran Fleet at
bay until the Gate closed for another seventy million
years. To make that hope a reality they sacrificed
billions against the Terran war machine.

Here's your POV problem.  Is this story written from the POV of the 
"Demons"?  Apparently not since you move straight into Arse's
thoughts.  Drop the paragraph.  All the information in it will be 
conveyed in the copious infodumps which come later from his point of view.

But as coldhearted as the Demon High Command was, not
even they were so crazy as to send a fleet of 70
million ships into a headlong charge into the maw of
the Terran Home Fleets.  Unless there was a good enough
reason and as he stared at the approaching juggernaut
heading right down his command's throat, Fleet Marshal
Reynard Arsu, thrice winner of the Medal of Valor and
commanding officer of the four million strong Home
Fleet Three tried to imagine what that reason could
be.

"What do they hope to accomplish with this Fleet?" he
wondered. He was so baffled that he
uncharacteristically spoke aloud instead of using his
avatar for the purpose.

"Sir?"  Lieutenant Charles Green's avatar asked him
through the vspace dialog, the advanced interface that
allowed bioforms and bitforms to interact directly
with each other and between themselves. Green sounded
bewildered, which he was, not having the benefit of
Arsu's experience to analyze the situation from the
strategic perspective.

"I didn't mean to startle you, Charles," Arsu replied.
"It's just that I'm unable to think of one logical
reason why the commander of that fleet would want to
throw his command away with this suicidal charge."

"They're Demons, Sir. It's the way they are."

"Nonsense, Charles. No one wishes to die. Not even
Demons. Even though every last member of their race is
willing enough to throw away their life at a command."
'As are Terrans,' he did not add.

The Lieutenant wisely chose to keep his silence. There
was no point arguing with the old man, he had learnt
long ago. At one hundred and thirty seven, Arsu was
not only one of the oldest surviving Terrans, but he
was also one of the biggest jabber mouths in history.
Not to mention the most brilliant and successful
commander ever in the Fleet's long and illustrious
history.

Seeing that Charles chose to keep his thoughts to
himself, Arsu turned his eye back to the plot. He
thanked lady fortune for the stroke of good luck that
had placed the Demon fleet within sensor range of Home
Fleet Three while it was engaged in maneuvers two
hundred light years from its basing area. If the
Demons had been half an hour late, sensors would not
have picked them up. It was not improbable then that
they might have successfully launched a surprise
strike at the colonies, or even happened on one of
those shipyards. But as their luck would have it, they
had not. Arsu knew that without the element of
surprise, which had been the Demons best friend since
the earliest days of the war to offset Terran
technology, the mission was doomed to failure. 

An interesting inversion of the typical sf depiction of interstellar 
war, where the aliens are generally more advanced, but the humans are 
trickier.


And

while it was probable that Home Fleet Three and
whatever reinforcements that Home Com could send at
short notice would not survive the battle, the
colonies would, which was all that mattered to the
Fleet Marshal.

"Payeng, I want a maximum time to interdict course at
a distance of 120 light years from the boundary with
initial maneuvers starting in ten minutes. Please be
so kind as to raise the TFCs on the comm. and inform
them to upgrade status to OffCon 2. I want Home Fleet
Three on the new course in ten minutes sharp," one of
Arsu's avatars informed Commodore Alyssa Payeng, the
highest ranking member of his staff. Simultaneously,
another passed Green his orders, "Charles, send a
priority one communiqu� to Home Com on the VHF. Inform
them that a major incursion is underway in Sector
Three and Home Fleet Three is moving to interdict.
Enemy strength is upwards of seventy million units.
Warn them to expect feints in other sectors. If the
Demons are willing to throw the labor of sixty years
away here, 

There's a certain lack of clarity here.  The aliens outnumber the 
defenders by seventy million to four million and had supposedly a 
reasonable expectation of gaining the advantage of surprise and 
delivering a decisive blow against Terran worlds.  So why is Arsu 
mystified by the alien move?  Even allowing for superior Terran 
technology, it sounds like a perfectly reasonable manuever, a suicide 
attack to be sure, but one which had a good chance of putting a stick 
between the Terran spoke.  Arsu thinks himself that his command will 
mutually annihilate with the enemy attackers.

I expect they're willing to do the same

elsewhere. Request whatever reinforcements they can
scrounge up at short notice. Apprise them of the
situation as it develops."

"Aye, Sir"

"Sarah, I assume that the course you have computed
will ensure that the Demons are never out of sensor
range?"

"Teach your mother to suck eggs, Sir!" Sarah replied
in a crisp voice. She was Arsu's third and final aide
de camp, and the lone bitform in the club. Of the
three, she had worked with the Fleet Marshal longest
and knew him better than he did. She was his best
friend and confidant, and it was even rumored in the
fleet that the two were lovers.

"What's the time to intercept if the Demons stick to
their current course?" one of Arsu's avatars asked in
a sober voice as the vspace dialog split into thirteen
smaller frames to show the other twelve sharing a
laugh at the fiery retort.

"�Thirty six hours roughly, Sir." 

Arsu's avatar gave a harsh nod of acknowledgment as
shipboard klaxons finally rang announcing a change in
BatCon status. His seat's bitform admin responded to
the change by molding itself into a protective cocoon
around Arsu and sank towards the floor. It filled with
synth7-support, a nanite rich liquid medium that served
to both protect a person from high gee combat
maneuvers as well as keep them supplied with the
requisites of life. Similarly, across the ship and
throughout the Fleet, all occupied seats transformed
into cocoons while the unoccupied ones sent redundant
messages � redundant because the klaxons would have
warned the crew to rush to their duty stations �
summoning their bioform partners.

For Arsu, the battle plot in vspace grew to the size
of an amphitheatre with the Demon fleet painted as a
red tetrahedron at the edge. From now, until the Demon
fleet was within a light year of Home Fleet Three, the
scale of the battle plot would continue to expand and
more details would be added in real time as they
became available.

True to the Fleet Marshal's orders, Home Fleet Three
swung to action in ten minutes and as the hours passed
the range between the two fleets, originally separated
by a 1000 light years dropped steadily. The Terran
sensors had the benefit of greater range and broader
band of visibility in the transit spectrum. Both these
advantages were derived from their ability to sustain
higher accelerations in transit space, the bizarre
super-reality that allowed FTL travel and
communication and as they had for most of the war, the
Terrans used the longer reach of their sensors to deny
information to the enemy. 

A contradiction once again.  If the Terrans have longer range sensors, 
then the aliens aren't going to be relying on the advantage of surprise, 
because they'll never have it.  They'll be relying on the superior 
numbers that ruling an entire galaxy gives them while their opponents 
only control a fraction of one galaxy.  Basically, frontal assaults in 
overwhelming numbers is the only way to go.


In the first few hours, Home

Fleet Three gradually decelerated to postpone battle
and to give time for reinforcements to link up with it
while at the same time keeping the Demons within
sensor range. 

I'm not sure how the concept of deceleration works with FTL travel.


By the time Sector Three Reserve and its

million ships linked with Home Fleet Three the range
was down to 300 light years, which was just beyond the
extreme range of shipboard Demon sensors at maximum
acceleration. The Terran Fleet accelerated at this
juncture, both to close ranks quickly with the enemy
as well as to stay beyond range of Demon sensors
longest.

Not everything went according to plan in those thirty
hours though. During that period, communications from
Home Com came in through VHF confirming Arsu's
suspicions that the attack was multi-pronged. What he
had not suspected was the strength of the seven
diversionary Demon fleets. Together the eight Demon
fleets had 165 million ships between them, 

Dumbass tactics.  Given that their opponents have better sensors and 
therefore better command and control, all they're doing is inviting 
defeat in detail.


making them

the largest armada ever in the course of the long and
bitter war of genocide.

Nobody at Terran High Command had even suspected that
the Demons had such a large reserve hidden away beyond
the Gate in Andromeda. And even if they had, no one
would have believed that their ever cautious enemy
would throw the labor of centuries � and it must have
taken the Demons centuries to build such a fleet even
with all the reserves of Andromeda at their disposal �
away in a single action. The war that was almost won
became a mad scramble for survival and all that stood
between Terra and utter destruction were the Home
Fleets, the Sector Reserves and the Colony Fleet, the
last of which Home Com refused to commit to battle.

Doesn't make sense.  "Home Com" would obviously sacrifice the colonials 
first and refuse to commit the Home Fleets rather than vice versa.

Yet, even as the Terran Navy clambered to mount an
effective defense, the reason for the mad all out
attack remained unclear.

Oh, the final objective of the Demons had never been
in doubt � destruction of all life in the Milky Way or
failing that, forward defense of the Gate for the
duration it remained open � but with the Gate due to
close within forty years, 

How do the humans know that?


there was no reason for the

Demons to believe that the Terrans were a long term
threat to survival. Still, there was no denying
reality and the fleet from hell racing headlong
towards the galactic core could have only one
objective in mind: rollover Terran defense and cripple
the industrial complex that had stopped a pan-galactic
empire cold. But of the immediate reason and the modus
operandi, none in High Command had the vaguest idea,
for while it was possible to punch a hole through the
boundary defenses the cost would be so high as to give
even the Demons pause. It was not until Home Fleet
Three was thirty four hours into the event and the
range reduced to a hundred and twenty light years that
the latter was revealed and again, it surprised the
hell out of High Command.

It started as an observation by a Petty Officer
manning Sensors in one of the hunter killer screens
attached to Task Force 8.3. PO Harkley was one of the
few career specialists in the entire Terran Navy and
with seventy years of service behind her in sensors,
she was one of a handful of Terrans with the ability
to make sense of a hunter killer's raw sensor data
feed.

Besides her experience, PO Harkley and the sensor
bitform had worked together for more than a decade and
one's skills complemented the other. The two of them
made as perfect a team as was possible in the real
world and going through the raw sensor data in real
time, the Petty Officer noticed the telltale
signatures of ships exiting transit space in the Demon
fleet's rear. She and her partner placed their
suspicions before their screen commander, who was
sufficiently intrigued by their finding. He ordered
the screen to pool their sensor data for better
resolution and filed a report to the Flotilla
commander. The Flotilla Commander found the report
interesting, too, and passed it up the chain of
command. The report ended up in Arsu's hands within
minutes and even before Arsu could react, his Flag
Captain had shared the report with the TFCs, who
exercised their own prerogatives as Flag Officers to
pool the sensor data of the whole fleet. The picture
that emerged showed up to a hundred Demon ships
leaving transit space every few minutes with
monotonous regularity.

The TFCs formed their own conclusions from the
information at hand and passed on their suspicions to
Arsu. Arsu drew the same conclusions himself and even
though he did not have irrefutable proof, he ordered
Home Fleet Three to go to flank speed. He could no
longer afford to wait for the reinforcements �
reserves, in truth � from the neighboring sectors to
link with his command. He briefly considered ordering
the transports attached to Home Fleet Three to stay
behind, but decided against it. The two fleets were
close enough now that even the slightest deceleration
would place the transports within the visible band of
the Demon sensors. The fate of Terra hung in the
balance and nothing that could jeopardize her future
could be permitted.

"It appears the Demons have finally had enough and
decided to use brute force where finesse didn't
suffice. 

Once again, finesse is the exclusive prerogative of the people who have 
better sensors and therefore more combat intelligence.  What the 
opposition actually appears to be doing is abandoning defense in favour 
of offense.


This suicide run is the tool they're using to

deliver the coup de grace. Charles, dispatch another
priority message to Home Com. Apprise them of the new
Time to Interdiction. Send them this sensor report on
the Demon fleet and warn them that my officers and I
suspect the Demons of using string weapons in close
proximity to the galactic core."

"Yes, Sir."

"Attach this note to Flag Marshal M'butu Ching:
Release Colony Fleet for action before it is too
late."

"With all due respect, Marshal, Colony Fleet will be
massacred if they go up against this enemy," Payeng
commented.

"Your information is a little outdated, Alyssa. I
can't go into the details, but trust me, Colony Fleet
can take down everything the Demons have in the galaxy
without breaking a sweat." To Lt. Green, "you have
your orders, Charles. Get the TFCs on the comm. too. I
want to consult them."

"Do you think Home Com'll release Colony Fleet, Sir?"
Payeng asked once Green signed off.

"Colony Fleet is stationed close to the front lines in
no man's land and even if it weren't, DefCom will
refuse my request. They won't even use it for the
counterattack."

"But even with reinforcements from other fronts, the
Home Fleet doesn't have the manpower to stop this
attack, Sir."

"We are the only ones hopelessly outgunned and
outnumbered, Alyssa. The other Home Fleets will suffer
very heavy losses in battle, but they'll repulse the
pincers in their sectors provided they put up stiff
resistance and do not yield ground. If we waited for
the reinforcements to hook up with us, the odds will
shift in our favor in this sector, too. But we can't
afford to wait today. To ensure our defeat, all that
juggernaut," Arsu pointed to the Demon fleet icon,
"need do is postpone battle for as long as possible.
We cannot allow that to happen for if that fleet gets
anywhere near the galactic core we will surely lose
the colonies and the war."

"Sir?"

"They're nuking stars along their path, Alyssa.
Doesn't that tell you anything? That Fleet is not here
to punch through us to get to the colonies. It won't
even attempt to break into the core. It's here to nuke
enough stars close to the boundary to make the
colonies uninhabitable."

"But why? The galaxy is already doomed. Within two
thousand years, even the deepest colony in the core
will become uninhabitable. All they had to do was wait
until the Gate closes in thirty seven years and
retreat back to Andromeda."

"Do you think that Home Com was unaware of the long
term ramifications of our tactics when they ordered
the indiscriminate use of string weapons ten centuries
ago?" Arsu asked, taking a deep breath. "The decision
was taken with the knowledge that we were dooming
ourselves unless we could develop the capability to
navigate the void between galaxies. It was taken
because if we had not pursued the scorched earth
policy that denied the Demons the ability to build
battle-capable fleets here in the Milky Way, forcing
them to rely on Andromeda, we would be extinct now and
they would have been free to pursue their genocidal
agenda.

"So, even as we destroyed stars all over the galaxy,
we worked in secret to develop the capability. We
succeeded three hundred years ago and Colony Fleet is
built using that technology. 

So calling it "Colony Fleet" is a diversion?  It has nothing to do with 
the colonies.


My guess is the Demons

wised up to Colony Fleet a long while back and that
fleet up ahead is their response. I suspect their High
Command ordered this attack to force us to act before
we had enough of the new hulls to be decisive in war.
And they couldn't have selected a better time, too. If
they can force our hand now, we're doomed. We invade
Andromeda right now and we might be able to establish
a beachhead there, but we won't have the strength in
numbers to defend ourselves long enough to establish
viable colonies. That is why Home Com will refuse to
release Colony Fleet � we don't want the Demons to
know how unimaginably powerful they are � 

...Er...why not?  The Demons are supposed blowing their entire wad on 
this attack.  Wipe out their forces and the way would be clear to head 
straight for the Gate, right?  This is the last big battle of the war so 
why are they holding their primary force in reserve?


and that is

why we'll have to not just stop that fleet in its
tracks but destroy it utterly. We need the building
capacity of the core worlds for seventy more years."

What?  But-but...the gate closes in 37 years, right?

"But we can't, Sir. Stop that fleet, that is."

Arsu smiled ruefully.

"We can and we will. As to whether we'll survive the
attempt... well, that's not important now, is it?"

Payeng's avatar started to reply, but Green, who had
signed on again and was listening to the conversation
intently, signaled that he had a message for the Fleet
Marshal.

"Yes, Charles?"

"TFCs are waiting on the comm. Sir. We've also
received a reply from Home Com."

"Let's see Home Com's reply first."

Green nodded an acknowledgement and pasted the reply
so that both the Commodore and the Fleet Marshal could
look at it at once. The message was short. It read:

Request for Colony Fleet denied. Home Fleet Three will
engage enemy alone and push him back. If necessary,
Home Fleet Three will defend Terra to the last man.

Terra?  But you've already said that Terra is uninhabited.

Signed,
Flag Marshal Adrian Kuznetsov
PS. You know what to do, Reynard. Do it.

Arsu read the message and sighed. He shook his head
and turned to Green.

"I'm ready for that meeting now, Charles. I'll need
you and the Commodore at the meeting."


The TFCs and their aides took their seats in vspace as
Arsu and his aides signed into the meeting room. Their
discussions fell by the wayside and they looked
expectantly to the Fleet Marshal who had a grim
expression on his face.

"Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen. We don't have
much to discuss and I'd like to make this quick. I'd
thought that I'd have a last minute discussion with
you to go over Plan Z-3 one last time, but I've just
received a message from Flag Marshal Kuznetsov. She
has refused my request to release Colony Fleet for
defense. Her orders are that the combined Home Fleet
Three and Sector Three Reserve will engage the enemy
and do our duty, defending Terra to the last man. I
plan to carry out her orders. Accordingly, I've
decided to scrap Plan Z-3. We will use a modified
version of Plan Z-10 and open with string weapons
release pattern Sigma. We will launch as many salvoes
of string weapons as are necessary to utterly crush
the Demons in this sector.

"We are within range of Demon sensors now and � this
is a tough decision to make � we will not split the
fleet. In fact, I'm ordering all transport commanders
to stick with the fleet to the end. Just as we had no
inkling that the Demons had this little surprise up
their sleeve, I don't want them to learn our
intentions until it's too late. However, all
non-essential personnel in the transports will be
jettisoned from their ships with maximum life support
reserves and their emergency beacons timed to activate
four hours from now."

"Excuse me, Fleet Marshal, but did you just tell us
that you want to use string weapons in transit space?"
 Flag Admiral Mark Schuster asked.

"Yes, I did. I know no one's ever detonated string
weapons in transit space before and lived to tell the
tale and that we won't survive either, but  we're all
dead anyway and if I'm to die, I'd like to sign off in
grand style by taking that whole damn fleet with me.
As to air-defense, this is what we'll do..."


Two hours later, the range dropped to three light
years between the lead elements of the two fleets. A
minute later, when the range was reduced to two light
years � effective range of Demon ship killers in
transit space � the Demon fleet fired the first shots
of the battle.

The Demon commander, a wily old warrior herself, was

This POC change is not a problem.

fooled into a false sense of security during the
approach by Arsu's headlong charge and by the fact
that the Terran Fleet was meeting her command just 120
light years from the Terran border. She had feared
that she would lose the element of surprise throughout
the long voyage and that her command would suffer very
heavy casualties, but when the enemy's response
indicated that she had managed to achieve surprise,
she relaxed. Even though the response was stronger
than expected, the fact that the opposing commander
was charging her like a dumb male in heat filled her
heart with such great confidence that she let her
guard down. She did not pause to consider that the
enemy commander of this particular sector was supposed
to be a cunning warrior himself and explained away the
larger than expected strength of his fleet to cosmic
coincidence.

Probably some fleet returning to the frontlines had
happened to be at hand and when he found out we were
dropping by � what a surprise that must have been � he
assumed command of it before rushing to give us
battle. Must have thought that his technology made him
invincible or something.

Since she did not know that she had failed to achieve
tactical surprise utterly, she did not suspect the
desperation that drove Arsu. Sure, she believed that
his actions were driven by desperation, but she
suspected a different kind of desperation � one that
every man feels when caught with his pants down.
Acting on her belief, she activated the plan that
supposed she had both strategic and tactical surprise
on her side.

She does.  They _were_ taken by as much surprise as is possible.
That's why Arsu is unveiling his brilliant "let's blow ourselves up" 
strategy.

The plan was a variant of Demon fleet SOP for
offensives against a numerically inferior enemy and
like any carefully crafted plan for battle it had
starting, intermediate and final phases. It called for
a scenario where the Demon fleet would close ranks
with the enemy and employed a brute force approach to
ensure victory. The idea revolved around a battle of
attrition at very close range where Demon strength in
numbers would offset Terran technology. 

You see?  So why is Arse talking about Demon "finesse" earlier on?
As far as they're concerned "finesse" is a shampoo.


It was a risky

plan that when all was said and done, accepted heavy
casualties for the opportunity to rout the enemy on
the battlefield.

The Fleet Marshal, on the other hand, had used his
fleet as bait dangling it before the enemy commander
expecting his opponent to make a mistake in judgment
and commit himself to battle. He knew that at very
close ranges, Demon anti-torpedo batteries would stand
little chance of successfully intercepting his string
weapons; none at all if they were launched in tandem
with a massive ECM salvo.

And so, to the Demon commander's misfortune, her
battle plan fit nicely into Arsu's own, a fact that
she remained forever unaware of. She was so taken by
Arsu's ruse and by her own logical arguments that even
while the two fleets drew ever closer, she thanked her
Gods that the Terrans had not opened fire with their
hellishly accurate torpedoes at long range.

As per the plan, when the first Demon screen reached
effective engagement range of the vanguard elements of
Home Fleet Three they opened fire. The fleet was too
large and spread too far that it was beyond the
capability of Demon fire control to coordinate such a
massive salvo. So, instead of trying to accomplish the
impossible, Demon command had devolved fire control
down to the level of flotilla commanders. The
staggered release would reduce the effectiveness of
the salvo, but since the first and last torpedo in any
salvo would be less than ten seconds apart, the
reduction would not be that great.

A massive salvo of 1700 million torpedoes erupted
towards the Terran fleet. Roughly one in twenty
carried ECM packages that tried to befuddle Terran
sensors with gravitic mirages. The rest carried
thermonuclear shaped charges or anti-matter warheads
with yields between a hundred megatons and ten
gigatons. 

"The enemy has opened fire, Sir," Sarah reported,
highlighting the threat axis in Arsu's plot.

"Range?"

"One point nine light years. Thirteen seconds to first
salvo."

Arsu nodded. The battle was going to be short and
brutal, even by the standards of head-on engagements
at point blank range, which were very vicious indeed.
There was nothing he could do to control the flow �
what flow could there be to a battle lasting less than
two minutes � and he would remain a mute spectator to
the most crucial battle in Terran history.

Having anticipated the kind of monstrous salvoes that
they would face, Arsu and the twenty five task force
commanders � twenty from Home Fleet Three and five
from Sector Three Reserve � had tasked twenty two of
the task forces with providing air-defense for the
fleet. The fleet was therefore ready for the Demon's
opening move and launched a massive volley of its own.
The two clouds of torpedoes raced towards each other
and the space between the two fleets exploded in
violence as Terran anti-torpedoes missiles and
anti-shipping torpedoes exploded in the path of the
Demon barrage. They threw massive pulses of x-ray
laser and directed pulses of electromagnetic energy at
them stripping hundreds of millions into their
individual atoms or damaging them enough to veer off
course. Three such barrages followed, and then
shipboard plasma banks lit up, decimating the Demon
salvo even further. Even as the first wave was being
annihilated, the Demon fleet launched another one, but
not before the first Terran salvo containing 24
million anti-shipping torpedoes were launched by the
three task forces tasked with the job. All 24 million
torpedoes were armed with ECM packages except for
sixty that mounted string weapons.

"First wave destroyed with minimal loses," Sarah
reported. "Third salvo will overwhelm air-defense."

Arsu winced mentally as his battle plot showed ten
thousand ships destroyed outright � mostly in the
vanguard � with another fifty thousand showing various
degrees of damage. Still, Sarah's last comment almost
provoked a snort of amusement. No doubt, the Demon
commander's CIC was feeding him the same useless
information. True, the third salvo due to intercept
his fleet in fifty seconds would annihilate them, but
they would not survive that long. The star killers
were due to hit their targets in twenty-odd seconds
and when star-killers blew, they did not leave much
behind. In fact, he suspected that there would not be
enough atoms left of the two fleets to fill a glass
jar. But he did not need twenty five seconds to launch
his two back up salvoes. All he needed was ten seconds
and he had them. They were almost certainly
unnecessary, but he wanted them in the air as a
precaution.

The first salvo of Terran anti-shipping weapons
targeted at the Demon fleet shot through transit
space, through the maelstrom of Terran anti-shipping
fire and through the nigh impenetrable curtain that
was Demon air-defense shield. 

If the Demon technology is generally inferior...how can their 
air-defense shield be anything close to impenetrable?



They died by the

hundreds and then the thousands and then the hundreds
of thousands. Scattered Demon fire tore through their
ranks as the range closed and their guiding bitforms
braved the very pits of hell to deliver their payload
into the bowel of their nemesis. Even with all the ECM
cover they had, only a few thousand survived to reach
their destination and hidden in their ranks were fifty
nine string weapons � one had caught the edge of the
pulse of a directed anti-matter warhead, which had
fried the guiding bitform and detonated the initiator
seven hundred gigaton yield warhead. The star-killers
exploded when the timers mounted inside their warheads
hit zero � timers that were synchronized to the pico
second.

Every ounce of matter within a point one light year
radius was ripped apart into their constituent quark
particles as the rules of the universe changed locally
for a miniscule fraction of a second. The hole point
two light years in radius in real space simply ripped
most of the Demon fleet apart. 

So it's a naked singularity.

This is too long for me to handle all at once.

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