Read Online The Lost Destroyer (Lost Starship Series Book 3) by Vaughn Heppner - Free Book Online

there.
    Then it happened. A hot beam a full five kilometers wide fired from the alien vessel’s orifice. The red ray speared at Al Salam. It reached the planetary orbit in ten seconds and burned down through the atmosphere. The wattage was beyond phenomenal. The thick beam bored against the surface, churning through sand, rock and finally against the planetary crust. After fifty-nine kilometers of crustal rock, the beam reached Al Salam’s mantle.
    There the rocks changed texture, made up of iron and magnesium combined with silicon and oxygen. It was called olivine rock, with a thickness of 2900 kilometers.
    With incredible speed and destructive power, the teardrop ship’s beam sliced into and annihilated olivine rock. Such a thing should have been impossible. Yet, the beam churned and burned, digging into Al Salam until finally it reached the planetary core.
    Because of the melting properties of the iron alloy core, the outer core was molten while the inner core was solid.
    At this point, the beam quit.
    On Al Salam, molten iron from the planetary core shot up to the surface, spitting onto the red sands like a super volcano geyser. Behind the molten iron followed hot olivine rock. Surface sand burned, atmospheric air ignited and havoc raged in a widening, billowing circumference.
    In space, the giant ship minutely changed its trajectory. Minutes passed. Then, the beam flashed from the orifice and began drilling into Al Salam once more, repeating the performance in a new location hundreds of kilometers from the first planetary drilling.
    “Can you tell what’s happening on the planet?” Artemis asked weakly.
    “Yes,” Kris said in a soft voice. “Death and destruction. I finally understand why Al Gaza is hot and radioactive.”
    “The planet-killer beamed into its core?” Artemis asked.
    “There’s no other reasonable explanation,” Kris said.
    “How long will it take the alien vessel to destroy all life on Al Salam?” Artemis asked.
    “At the rate it’s firing, I imagine it will be done in hours.”
    “Do you think the alien craft will attack Riyadh next?”
    “Don’t you?”
    Artemis stared at her dull-faced. “The ship means to destroy the heart of the Wahhabi Caliphate.”
    “I think that’s right.”
    Artemis shook her head. “What if the vessel heads for the Commonwealth?” the pilot asked in a horrified whisper. “What if it journeys to Earth?”
    Kris gave the pilot a stricken gaze. “We have a new objective. We must race to Earth and warn them about this. Go, Lieutenant. Take us through the Laumer-Point. We have to get out of here.”
    Osprey engaged its engines as Artemis warned the crew. Soon, the Laumer-Point became visible in space. The frigate headed straight for it.
    As they neared the jump point, Kris’s board gave a warning beep .
    “What’s wrong now?” Artemis asked in a panic.
    Frowning, Kris adjusted her panel. For just a moment, her sensors showed a ship even farther out in the New Arabia System than they were. What was the vessel doing, and why had it been hidden until now?
    As Osprey plunged toward the Laumer-Point, Kris’s fingers played across her board. Even as she attempted to learn more about the mysterious ship, it faded from her screen, just disappeared.
    Kris ran a fast analysis on the ship’s dimensions. She’d been recording those brief seconds it had been visible. “This can’t be right,” she muttered.
    Artemis gave her a worried glance.
    “According to the computer,” Kris said, “I just saw a cloaked star cruiser.”
    “The New Men,” Artemis whispered. “The planet-killer must belong to them.”
    “How could a star cruiser have gotten into New Arabia without anyone knowing about it?” Kris asked. “It couldn’t have used the same Laumer-Points Osprey did. The Wahhabis would have destroyed the star cruiser at a jump point long before it reached the home system.
    “Is it coming after us?” Artemis asked fearfully.
    Kris checked the sensors.