Empire of Women & One of our Cities is Missing (Armchair Fiction Double Novels Book 25) Read Free Page A

here must be due solely to
chance. But that chance looked like disaster to the Konaparians.   This thing was a super-dreadnought in size,
and no one really knew what a Mixar ship packed in armament.   The cult of Myrmi-Atla had originally come
from the planets of the Regulus group, where the Mixar Amazons had kept out
all intruders since the earliest days of space travel.   When he said she was potent, Chan had
understated the case.   Tor Branthak’s
heart must have bounced in his boots when he saw her.  
    The big
ship opened fire at once.   A ray came out
of her nose turret that must have been three feet wide at the orifice, and it
broadened its path.   It struck the
nearest of its enemies, a Konapar cruiser, then lanced swiftly right and left
while Konaparian ships zoomed frantically right and left and up and down—any
way to leave the vicinity of that dread, dark shape.   The ships the ray had touched seemed
unaffected as they drove straight on in their courses, through the Phiran
fleet; but the fact that they did not fire a shot revealed the truth—they were
manned by dead men.  
    Chan took
a look at the visiscreen to see what the fleet was doing as a whole.   The Warspear and the Regent’s, big
master-class cruiser were almost the only force now left in range of the Mixar
threat, the rest of the valiant Konaparians rapidly vanishing to the rear.   Space torpedoes were blossoming into fire
against the Mixar hull, but the men who had fired them had left the scene.  
    The
torpedoes didn’t seem to effect her armor.   She boomed on inexorably nearer the Regent’s
ship, and it struck Gan Alain that the Regent was only waiting to see what his
new employee could do about it—which was silly, as the Mixar was at least ten
times the Warspear ’ s size.   Actually, the Regent was probably stunned with surprise, and had unconsciously
looked to his newest ally for a possible salvation of the situation.  
    The Cap
had a tight grin on his grim face, and Chan watched him pull the graviton-sphere
hatch lever, watched the glowing sphere of charged metal drift out into
space.   Gan Alain was revealing one of
his special weapons, and probably with it, its range.   Perhaps the Regent would be surprised in a
disagreeable as well as a pleasant way.  

 
    GAN
FLICKED a repulsor ray against the sphere, and it moved sluggishly off toward
the Mixar ship.   Then the Cap spun the Warspear end-for-end and gave the rear jets to the deadly sphere.   The Warspear went away fast, but the
rough iron sphere of red hot metal bobbed equally fast, though more clumsily,
on its way toward the big stranger, looking about as harmless as a hunk of
asteroid rock.  
    The
maneuver was probably as incomprehensible to the Mixars as it was to the
Regent, who turned tail too, and fled after the Warspear.   The graviton sphere is a device that is
unknown in the Dires system.   The Warspear had gone far to pick that up.  
    The sphere
went humping along toward the enemy, who seemed to watch it
contemptuously.   They swerved the Mixar
gently aside to avoid it, no more than necessary.   The sphere swerved too, and now picked up
speed.   The Mixar took alarm then and,
like the Warspear , spun around and gave it their rear jets.  
    What they
didn’t know was that the sphere was carrying a motor generator creating
gravitons, which was fueled by a fission metal, which was also its
warhead.   It manufactured gravitons so
fast that its artificial gravity was by now nearly equal to a big planet like
Phira, and it was so close that all the blasts in the Mixar fuel tanks couldn’t
drive it away.   They were trying to
escape a thing that nothing ever escaped, unless, like Cap, they got away
before the generator really got up speed.   Since the sphere had no genuine inertia or mass of its own, its artificial
gravity drew it toward any object inexorably, in spite of all attempts to
escape.  
    The jets
had no effect upon the sphere, for it