He turned back to the view.
Blasts hit the ship almost immediately. Terran ships were everywhere, all sizes, and more were appearing.
"You were saying," Veta said as she started pressing the controls.
"Since when did Terrans have cloaking abilities," Harbin asked. He'd been in plenty of battles with the Terrans in space. Yet, they never had cloaking abilities before.
Bianca grimaced. "The retrofitting he was doing."
"What?" Veta asked.
"The Emperor talked about retrofitting in his sleep several times, I didn't know what it was. I assumed it had something to do with the old tech they were fixing on the ships. I didn’t realize they were adding new tech to the old ships." She gestured out the window. "Those are the older ships."
"How can you be certain?" Veta asked. "They look the same."
"The nose is different. The older ones had that pointier nose."
"So, the old ships have been retrofit with some kind of cloaking technology?"
"As fascinating as this is," Wrathin said, "It does not address our immediate problem of the huge force of Terran ships in Rhimodian space shooting at us."
"Ships that are not supposed to be here at all," Harbin added. A problem they could not transmit back to the bases to report because of the Eclipse.
Their people had chosen this particular time for the peace talks because they knew that the Terrans would not be able to leave the negotiations in anger. Instead, the eclipse would keep both parties at the negotiation table to find their peace.
The tactic backfired because now they cannot reach out to their own people about what is happening in the system.
A blast hit the ship, making it rock. Bianca grabbed onto the back of Veta's chair.
"Damnit, Wrathin, where are the weapons?" Veta cried out.
"It is a transport ship. It doesn't have any weapons. Just shielding to disperse the blasts."
"It's doing a helluva job."
"This is not the moment for sarcasm," Bianca said, patting Veta on the shoulder.
"Bianca, unless you have a blast cannon under your dress, you need to shut up."
Bianca opened her mouth to say something, but she stopped and turned to the nearby communications port. Panels that showed more information about transmissions--or it would if there was not an eclipse. Right now, on the Rhimodian side, it was fairly quiet. All they had was the transmission they had received from the other Terran they called Freya.
It frustrated Harbin.
Could they not see?
Just look up, cyborgs. You will see the fight. Terran ships were everywhere.
Not even Master System responded to his queries.
Harbin watched the telemetry. There were well over a dozen Terran ships in the immediate vicinity. He glanced at the map that had the coding on it--there were more all over the system.
They had come in when the shields were down, somehow slipping in undetected, and now they were attempting to overtake the system.
"Why aren't the Rhimodians attacking? Fighting back against the Terrans?" Bianca asked.
"Because they likely do not know there is an invasion happening," Harbin said. Next, he studied the patterns of the infiltrating ships. "They had come in when the shields were down for your transport. Determined how to either keep the shields open so they could come and go as they chose or how to open it because of your ship."
"So this is our fault," Veta said.
