Free SODIUM:5 Assault by Stephen Arseneault

left Toleda with much fanfare. The journey would take less than a month, but the expedition would last more than two years. The Columbus was an immense vessel, nearly the size of one of our battleships. If planets in the system were anywhere near habitable the ships gravity beam could be used to push the planets until they reached an optimum orbit.
    From that new orbit, millions of terraforming robots would be released and the planet would be left for a period of five years. If all went well the first colonists would be dispatched immediately after.
    With our new defenses, new fleets and new colonies forming up nicely, Earth appeared to be hitting its stride. We had come so far in such a short time, from being on the brink of annihilation, to establishing an empire among the stars. But again, I was uneasy about how well everything was going. It was a nervousness that had plagued me many times before, a nervousness that came in the past with good reason. I expected the bad news to break any day.

Chapter 6

    The bad news came on an Earth Wednesday. Unusual gravity fluctuations had been detected on Toleda. At first they were nothing more than a thing of interest. A gravity bubble 50 kilometers in diameter had been detected that seemed to be circling the Kurtz globe. For a little over an hour the gravity would lessen by nearly a tenth of a G before slowly returning to normal.
    After several weeks of the phenomena the Kurtz scientists had given the all clear as to its harm to life or property. They were stumped as to what the cause was. The people had quickly come to enjoy the short time period of each day where they could jump higher and throw things farther. There were daily celebrations of sorts as the gravity bubble passed through the capital city of Gurthead. But gravitational changes do not happen without a reason.
    I had a team of physicists flown out from Earth to work with the Kurtz on discovering its cause. After three weeks of observation my team returned with a report. The gravity well was originating on or near the planet Eldred and it was slowly growing in intensity.
    I dispatched the battleship New York to reside in the beam with the hope that it could somehow counter its affect. For two weeks the New York ran test after test with no success. Then, with a sudden burst, the gravity beam amplified.
    On the ground of Toleda trees were uprooted and dirt and rock flew into the air. The beam crossed over a large body of water and the contents of a much used reservoir were sucked up into the air and out into space. Evacuations were quickly ordered for the capital city, but the word was slow to get out to the general population.
    I watched in horror as the gravity bubble approached and then began to rip a wide swath through Gurthead. Buildings were ripped from their foundations and drawn up through the atmosphere and into space. On the first pass Gurthead lost nearly half its citizens with Rial Mabia being among them. Whole towns were ripped from the ground and disintegrated as they rose upwards with the other debris. The New York soon reported having to dodge a column of such debris exiting the atmosphere on its way towards Eldred.
    The Frekkin had unleashed a powerful and devastating weapon on the Kurtz from an extreme distance, a weapon for which we again had no counter. Estimates were soon coming in that the planet as a whole would be uninhabitable within months as the atmosphere was slowly sucked away.
    I immediately dispatched a destroyer to Eldred to gather information. I followed up the next day sending a cruiser and then the day after with the entire second fleet. The Kurtz screamed for us to do something as their world was being ripped apart. We had little to offer.
    When the destroyer arrived at Eldred it immediately went silent before it could relay any useful data. It was the Shanghai and captain Dang, he and his crew had served us well in the Kurtz invasion, they had become nothing more than molecules of