It was over in all of seven seconds, but for Paul it wasn’t until the final fraction of the seventh second that he was conscious that anything had happened at all. And what he was aware of was more disorientating than calamitous.

It had started with a sudden jolt that shuddered through the room and in particular the bed on which he’d been dozing. He’d been awake for over half an hour but it was his habit to drift in and out of the last few moments of sleep before eventually sliding his feet out from under the sheet and over the side of the bed. Sometimes he would lie in bed and eat breakfast prepared and served by robot, but with Beatrice so often absent these days there was rather less pleasure in staying awake in bed than there used to be.

The jolt was followed by a thundering dislocating growl during which Paul, along with everything else in his room, slowly rose above the ground. This was a momentary failure of the Intrepid’s artificial gravity system that normally made life in a space ship seem so deceptively normal. Although this was what most alarmed Paul, it was just one of many fears that flooded through his mind. Only a truly considerable force could disrupt the slow and inexorable rotation of the Space Ship Intrepid on its axis.

The situation then gradually returned to normal. The space ship’s growl steadily dropped out of the audible range. Paul and everything else in the room slowly fell back to the ground.

It was only then, after everything had already happened, that the space ship’s alarm system burst into life and the klaxons rang out. This was incredibly loud and piercing. It startled Paul much more than anything that had preceded it. Since the instructions broadcast after the alarm were basically for him—and everyone else—to stay where he was and not panic, it was literally no effort for him to act as instructed. Paul’s heart pounded ferociously in his chest and his skin was pasted in a sheen of cold sweat.

What the fuck had happened?

A similar thought might have occurred to Isaac and the Holy Crusaders, although they would have formulated it differently. In any case, every single one of them was dead before the alarm sounded. Indeed, given that sound couldn’t travel through a vacuum they wouldn’t have heard anything even if they were still alive. Had Isaac been protected by a space-suit sufficiently proof to nuclear, anti-matter or conventional explosions, he would have seen a stellar firmament where one star, the Sun, shone only a few times brighter than the others and where there was also the dimming light from the slowly extinguishing debris of thousands upon thousands of thermo-nuclear and anti-matter warheads that had just been summarily annihilated.

What Isaac didn’t know, and neither did Paul, was that the Intrepid couldn’t possibly have survived without external help. An assault of this magnitude had never before been unleashed at any one time in the whole of humanity’s existence. Even a space ship as sophisticated and well-armed as the Intrepid wasn’t equipped to fend off such an overwhelming onslaught. It was unfortunate that one stray missile had managed to get as far as it had and exploded just outside the Intrepid’s hull. For Isaac and his fellow crusaders the consequence of this was rather worse than just an unfortunate inconvenience. The true miracle, however, was that the whole space ship Intrepid wasn’t now reduced to nothing more than a trail of interstellar debris and a glow of deadly radiation.

A space ship like the Intrepid was designed to withstand a substantial breach in its hull though its survival strategy was fatal to any survivors that might still be in the outermost level. The shell of the next outermost level instantly hardened into the same toughness as the ship’s hull and jettisoned any encumbrance such as oxygen, biological life-forms and robots that might hinder the speed of this transformation. All forms of access were instantly plugged. It was efficient. It was fast. And, as had been proven many times in the long history of deep space travel where there was no prospect of emergency services arriving any time soon, it was absolutely necessary.

Of all the passengers and crew on board the Intrepid, only Beatrice was truly aware of the full facts and even she was taken almost unawares.

One moment, she was making love with Captain Kerensky. For her this was a duty but also a pleasure. The next moment she abruptly jerked upright over her conflicted lover, jumped off the bed and stood rigidly to attention. She had just received an emergency broadcast of the ongoing action from the invisible Proxima Centauran space ships escorting the Intrepid. This might have been unexpected, but Beatrice did at least have the benefit of several seconds’ grace shared by no one, including Captain Kerensky, before there was a muffled thud against the Intrepid’s hull and the consequent momentary failure in the gravitational system.

In those few seconds Nadezhda was at first greatly offended by being so abruptly cast aside and then swiftly began to formulate an escape strategy. Perhaps Beatrice’s operating system had somehow crashed. Although rare, it did still sometimes happen to the Solar System’s most complex robots and perhaps the same phenomenon might still afflict extrasolar machine intelligences. Nevertheless, she recognised that whatever it was that was happening was affecting not only Beatrice as she felt herself float gently upwards with her erstwhile lover and now her captor.

“What happened?” Nadezhda asked as soon as she was able.

Captain Kerensky could tell that her android lover was furiously multitasking. There followed an unusually slow response from Beatrice who was apparently in frantic communication with her fellow aliens.

“We passed a relatively small asteroid nearly half a million kilometres distant,” Beatrice replied. “Naturally, we routinely monitor all space objects for threat. There was no reason to suspect that this asteroid would be any different from any other. Without warning, at exactly the closest point of triangulation, the asteroid let loose a few hundred missiles. Within the first two seconds, these split into a few thousand and all were targeted at the Intrepid. None were targeted at or seemed even to be aware of the presence of the Proxima Centauri space fleet. This is fairly strong evidence that the party responsible for this assault comes from within your Solar System. Our space fleet had only four or five seconds to annihilate all the missiles before they hit their target.”

Nadezhda tried to assimilate this sudden rush of information. “Did you destroy them all?” was the only question she could frame.

“Our forces eliminated very nearly all of them. The Intrepid’s slower defence system destroyed the hundred or so missiles remaining. One missile exploded within fifty kilometres of the Intrepid’s hull. It was that which caused the anomalous gravity event. The explosion breached the hull and the space ship’s self-repair system immediately sprung into action.”

“Casualties?”

“You’re perfectly right to ask,” said Beatrice who was also sentimental about such things although she often wondered what difference a year here or there really made to the lives of these transient beings. “All biological life-forms in the outermost level were instantly exterminated. This was caused either directly by the explosion or from the sudden loss of habitable environment. The vast majority of human casualties were Holy Coalition prisoners so their loss will have no adverse operational impact. In fact, it will actually help to conserve resources. There were a further dozen or so casualties in the penultimate level. This was as an unfortunate side-effect of the space ship’s automatic defences. There were a few injuries and one death caused by the momentary failure in centrifugal rotation.”

Captain Kerensky was slightly offended by the unemotional objectivity of Beatrice’s account. These were people’s lives she was talking about. “What about your lot?” she asked. “Were any alien androids killed in defence of the Intrepid?”

“None,” said Beatrice. “But the missiles weren’t directed at us. You must be aware that if the space ship Intrepid hadn’t been escorted by a fleet of Proxima Centauri star ships and if we hadn’t secured it against such an attack, then neither of us would now be alive. All your crew and passengers would now be little more than radioactive waste.”

“So who did this? Was it another group of religious fanatics?”

“If we knew, then we would have anticipated the attack and guarded against it,” Beatrice replied. “Our intelligence capacity exponentially exceeds that of your governments and non-governmental agencies, but we were still caught entirely off-guard. It’s true that we expected some measure of disruption to the ship’s mission—that is, after all, why we’re protecting you—but we didn’t anticipate that it would come in this form.”

“Don’t expect me to thank you for hijacking my ship,” said Captain Kerensky bitterly.

“Such a thought couldn’t be further from my mind,” said Beatrice. She nonetheless wondered just what she could do to earn gratitude from these flawed carbon based beings. She had just helped to secure the one thing humans valued more than anything else. And that was their continued existence.

“Do you think we’ll find out who the culprits are?”

“I’m sure special investigators will be on the case in a couple of months when news of this event finally reaches your Mission Control on the Moon,” said Beatrice. “They should be able to identify the source. However, I don’t want to alarm you too much. Our analysis of the assault strongly suggests that, in this case, the ultimate perpetrator might not come from your Solar System.”

“What do you mean? If the assault didn’t come from the Solar System, where else could it have come from? The Anomaly?”

“Who knows,” said Beatrice, shrugging her shoulders. “But I doubt it. Anything that emanates from the Anomaly is disturbingly random, whereas this assault was meticulously planned.”

Beatrice paused for a moment as if she was thinking carefully, although Nadezhda knew that the android didn’t need the time to cogitate in the sense that a human might. The speed of her processing far exceeded the need for such delay.

“I may have misled you,” said Beatrice at last. “Our analysis of the hardware employed is fairly conclusive. We believe the source to have been a secret armoury in the possession of a certain Ellis Gidding. We have no intelligence that suggests this man had any especial hostility with regards to the Intrepid’s mission, but your trillionaires have more reason and means than most humans to conceal their actions and opinions from public scrutiny. This habit is totally consistent with the evasiveness they exhibit when required to pay taxes to the various governments of the Solar System. Our operatives shall explore this line of investigation in more depth and no doubt we’ll soon determine just why this man took such extreme action and whether he acted with the assistance of alien operatives.”

“Operatives?” Nadezhda wondered.

“Androids like me,” said Beatrice with a smile. “You didn’t think I was the only android on a secret mission in the Solar System, did you? However, your primary concern as captain of the space ship should be to evaluate the damage and provide a report to Mission Control on the Moon.”

“Nominal captain,” remarked Captain Kerensky bitterly.

“As far as we are concerned,” said Beatrice, “you are still captain of the space ship Intrepid. We would much rather it stayed that way…”

“As long as the ship remains under your effective control…”

“I would rather you called it protection,” said Beatrice. “Remember: we wouldn’t even be having this conversation if the ship hadn’t been defended by a Proxima Centauri space fleet.”

Still naked, Captain Kerensky surveyed the injury to the ship as it was displayed on the ship’s computers. The holographic display of the damage showed just how close the Intrepid had come to being totally destroyed. The elliptical hole that punctured the outer hull was nearly a hundred metres at its widest point, although the Intrepid’s systems were visibly repairing the perforation at a rapid rate. The breach would be completely patched within an hour or so. It was evident that Beatrice was right in her assessment: nobody in the outermost level could have survived the impact. All that was left of the Holy Crusaders were a few distended corpses. Many of these were outside the ship and slowly tumbling into deep space. There were also the corpses of animals that had recently been wandering blamelessly about the gardens and forests, but no animal, not even an insect or earthworm, could have survived the freezing temperature and the total loss of atmosphere.

What of the crew and passengers? Wasn’t Colonel Vashti supposed to have been on duty on the outermost shell? The records indicated that was exactly where she should have been, but she wasn’t amongst those listed as dead. How could that be? Where was she? Had the computer simply not accounted for her?

Although this was wasting time that should be better engaged in assessing damage, the captain quickly checked on her lover’s whereabouts. What a relief! Vashti hadn’t been anywhere near the outermost shell. Nadezhda must have been mistaken. She was actually at that moment making her way from the sixth level towards the injured survivors.

When Captain Kerensky had gathered together all the necessary facts, her duty was now to impart as much as she could to Mission Control and the ship’s crew and passengers. This duty was compromised of course by the intercession of Beatrice’s alien forces. Just how much of what she might say would actually be received exactly as it was originally phrased? An account of the real reason why the ship survived the bombardment couldn’t possibly be transmitted. She couldn’t even make known the fact that the weaponry used in the assault was owned by the reputable philanthropist and trillionaire Ellis Gidding. However, there were plenty of other things that she had to report. The captain had to give an account of what had happened, an analysis of the extent of the damage, and a roll call of the names of the deceased. She would also have to announce a provisional date and time for the funerals.

Paul was one of those reassured by the captain’s prompt announcement. It was unfortunate that the ship had been attacked (again). It was very sad that some people had perished, but good to know that order had now been restored. The holographic image of the captain, apparelled in full uniform, emanated an air of authority and command. A greater crisis had been averted and repairs were well under way. Captain Kerensky also explained that, as the Intrepid continued its voyage through the Oort Cloud, there would henceforth be fewer and fewer objects in orbit around the far distant Sun. In fact, there was no celestial object larger than a small boulder between where they were now and their destination. The captain reminded everyone that in terms of distance they were probably about half-way to their destination and rather less so in terms of travelling time.

“So, nothing to worry about,” said Paul to himself as, still unclothed, he groggily lifted himself out of bed and shuffled towards the refrigerator for a cold drink.

“Are you all right, darling?” Paul heard his wife coo as he closed the fridge door.

He turned his head to see Beatrice dressed only in a simple white kimono and gripping a cup of steaming hot coffee in her hands. She must have been in the house all along.

Paul nodded. “I’m fine. It’s the others I’m worried about. And you, of course.”

“I saw the captain’s announcement,” said Beatrice with a look of deep concern etched on her face. “It’s dreadful, isn’t it? Who do you think might have attacked the ship?”

Paul shook his head sadly. But he remembered the failed assassination attempts and near-misses that had bedevilled his progress from Godwin to Earth, so it was probably too much to expect that the trail of destruction would end just as he was getting so close to this accursed Anomaly. “I’ve given up trying to guess who might be after me... or the ship. It wasn’t another bunch of religious fanatics was it?”

“Well if it was, they didn’t do a very good job of saving their co-religionists,” remarked Beatrice in the chilling dispassionate tone to which she sometimes inclined.

“You must have been as terrified as me when this all began,” said Paul as he placed a reassuring arm around Beatrice’s shoulders.

“I just didn’t know what hit me,” said Beatrice with disarming honesty as she steered her husband towards their shared bed on which her side was still unruffled. “You need some relaxation after all that stress,” she continued with a cheeky smile as she squeezed Paul’s hardening testicles in one hand while her other pushed him gently back into the bed’s comforting embrace.

“I think I do,” said Paul with a tone of resignation.

As soon as the couple fell onto the sheets, Beatrice’s tongue and fingers once again brought Paul’s genitals to life. Paul wondered whether it was right to have sex so soon after a near fatal attack and the resultant death of so many people. But then, he reflected, in times of war it was precisely when things were at their worst that people most often resorted to sex as a means of escape.

And if the launch of several thousand deadly warheads wasn’t an act of war then what else possibly could be?