The Anvardi attack Sol with a fleet ten times larger than that of its Imperial defenders. The latter counterattack through hyperspace with the single exception of the Imperial dreadnought, Vengeance, which switches off hyperdrive and switches on time-drive. Three days earlier, the Vengeance, crosses five million miles to a position alongside that of the Anvardi dreadnought at the moment when the fleets meet. Returning through time and back into hyperspace, the Vengeance matches translight velocities and attacks the flagship's screens with vortex cannon, blasters, atomic shells and gravity snatchers. Screens fail. Steel boils. Matter becomes vapor, then atoms, then energy destroying remaining matter. Attacked within and without, the Anvardian fleet breaks up but continues to fight, wrecking Imperial ships. However, the Vengeance attacks and destroys other Anvardian ships until the survivors flee. The Dreamer, on the bridge of the Vengeance, telepathically calls for Anvardi surrender, offers amnesty and safe-conduct and relays Tauri the Red's call for Anvardian chiefs "'...to pledge fealty to her...'" (p. 271)
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And we see Anderson using a very similar idea (on a smaller scale, of course) in "Gibraltar Falls."
Ad astra! Sean
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