Exodus, page 33
“He’s used his uranic ability to review your original fusion rocket control routines,” Ellie said, knowing the guilt that would be spreading over Finn’s features right now. “They’re a lot more powerful than you think. Which means they can help defend us, just like the plasma buffer the Diligent used when we flew relativistic.”
“Talk quickly,” Uzoma ordered.
* * *
—
As soon as the Arcadia’s Moon egressed Terrik Papuan’s Gate, Marcellu called up the starship’s sensor data. The Lestari was easy enough to locate. From their position, its giant, eccentric fusion plumes made it the brightest object in the system.
Lying in his acceleration couch on the bridge, its activegel cushioning semi-submerging him, Marcellu observed the bright mushroom-shaped flare sliding across the starfield. The display began to fill with purple and emerald vector lines as the Arcadia’s Moon network located and tracked the starships that had egressed the Gate ahead of the Lestari. They were on vectors that would take them directly to Terrik Papuan. It was a common enough destination for Travelers, seeking to buy tech salvaged from the Aktoru Armada down at Breakerville.
“The Lestari is just over half a million kilometers out,” Captain Andino said. “Accelerating at one gee.”
“Let’s get after them,” Marcellu told her.
Even through the couch’s activegel he could feel tremors running through the Arcadia’s Moon as the individual elements that made up the ship reconfigured themselves within the sphere of golden trusses. After a couple of minutes, the fusion drive ignited, sending out a single slender cataract of plasma at a hundred twenty million degrees. It stretched out for more than three hundred kilometers before breaking apart in a fluttering swirl of vapor that decayed swiftly through the spectrum until its sparse remnants were indistinguishable from the background glow of the Poseidon Nebula two light-years away.
“We’ll be able to determine where they’re going at the flip point,” Andino said. “With their drive facing away from us they’ll be at their most vulnerable to our slamhornets. Not that their drive is much use as a defense screen anyway; its temperature is so low.”
“Good. When we’ve eliminated Finn and the Enfoes, I want you to take us to whatever chunk of Aktoru ship they’re heading for and blow it to shit.”
Captain Andino actually lifted her head from the activegel cushioning to look at him. “You’re fucking kidding, right?”
“No. The goal here is to make sure the Diligent never becomes a starship. We can’t destroy it when it’s docked at High Rosa, so that means removing this ZPZ generator beyond anyone’s reach. I don’t know what deal the Enfoes have made with that odious relic Josias, but this folly ends now.”
“Just for the record,” Andino said, “you’re crazy to turn down the chance of acquiring a ZPZ generator. Do you have any idea how rare they are? You can ask whatever price you want. Traveler Dynasties will sell their souls for one.”
“We eliminate the Lestari, then the generator,” Marcellu said firmly. “Then we haul ass back to Kelowan.”
“We don’t have to. Think about this: the Arcadia’s Moon can fly anywhere in the Centauri Cluster. I don’t know who you work for, but they won’t be able to find us, not ever.”
Marcellu quietly activated several of his embedded weapons. He didn’t like the way the conversation was going; it wasn’t like Andino to question his instructions in this fashion. The principal reason he had favored using the Arcadia’s Moon was the way she accepted the charter requirements without question, no matter what those requirements were. “I have business in the Kelowan system.”
“Okay, but in my opinion, you’re making a mistake.”
“Enjoy your I-told-you-so, then.”
The Arcadia’s Moon accelerated up to one gee and lined up on a vector that would chase the Lestari across the Terrik Papuan system.
Forty-one hours later, Marcellu watched the other ship’s billowing fusion exhaust reduce to nothing. Sensors revealed a tiny silver grain traversing the nebula.
“They’re flipping,” Andino said enthusiastically.
Marcellu felt the Arcadia’s Moon’s acceleration force increase, allowing them to close on the Lestari. “How soon until you can fire on them?”
“Once they begin their deceleration burn, and after we’ve determined the rendezvous point for you. I want to get as close as possible.”
“Won’t that allow them to fire on us?”
“Yes. Then it’s all down to who has the best Remnant Era weapons. And, Marcellu, we have two C-pumped gamma ray lasers from a Mara Yama vessel. Don’t ask!”
“Okay, I am officially impressed.”
“Good. The Arcadia’s Moon can shoot any missile they fire at us; they’ve got an effective range of eight hundred kilometers. I suspect all they have is pickets. The slamhornets have multiple independent sub-munitions, as well as a shitload of electronic warfare pulsers. They’ll burn through any defensive englobement like it’s made of cheese. You can just sign over my bonus right now if you like.”
He watched the Lestari’s fusion rockets ignite again, producing a corona of light that measured over a hundred kilometers across. “Gives us something to aim at, I suppose,” he muttered.
“Got it,” Andino exclaimed a minute later. “I know where they’re heading—well, within a million-kilometer diameter sphere. The Arcadia’s Moon can find a globecab in that volume.”
“Take them out,” Marcellu said.
The Arcadia’s Moon shuddered as nine slamhornets left their silos. He watched as, a few seconds later, the Lestari’s fusion plume began to fluctuate. “What are they doing?”
“Changing their course, trying to screw up the interception. Don’t worry, the slamhornets have plenty of maneuverability. They can’t escape.”
Marcellu saw a circle of tiny stars flash out from the enemy ship.
“I thought so,” Andino said in satisfaction. “They’re going for a picket englobement defense.”
The substantial solar glare from the Lestari’s rockets abruptly dwindled to a pair of tiny streams. Their intensity scaled up toward violet.
“What are they doing?” Marcellu asked.
“I’m not sure. They’re turning again, coming round a full one-eighty. That’s a weird evasion maneuver. Do they think they can outrun us? That’s insane. Oh, how—what? It looks like their plume temperature is changing.”
“What do you mean ‘changing?’ ” The Lestari’s fusion exhaust was almost invisible now, reduced to pinpricks of light. Marcellu’s gaze flicked to the tactical display, seeing the distance between the two ships was still shrinking rapidly. The slamhornets were less than eighty seconds away from their target.
“Their temperature is rising,” Andino said. “A hundred and fifty million degrees. Hundred and eighty. Asteria’s ass, two hundred and thirty!”
Marcellu stared at the image of the Lestari. Still just tiny twin light points, but much much brighter than before, reaching the painful intensity of indigo. Not wider, though, he realized; not like their exhaust used to be. So instead of width they must be…“Oh shit!”
Andino yelled out in frightened rage. The Arcadia’s Moon lurched violently and accelerated up to nine gees in less than five seconds. Marcellu screamed at the pain as his ribs tried to crush every organ in his torso—
* * *
—
Finn closed his hand on the connection bulb and accessed the fusion rockets’ command routines. The now-familiar topology unfolded inside his brain. Not that it gave him any confidence about deploying the old Celestial routines in a practical fashion. But theoretically…
He issued a batch of neurodata instructions. The perception he was receiving of the fusion plasma changed as the control routines were roused from their inactive state, altering the rockets’ containment fields. The Lestari had been using a single pinch point of moderate compression to recombine a jet of helium-3 and deuterium. But only a fraction of the fuel was fusing, its energy release heating the rest of the mass, which passed through MHD rings, expanding to generate a huge amount of electrical power—which wasn’t used because the Lestari had its own tokamak reactors.
Now he canceled the induction mode and started to increase the bonding field, extending it further along the two-hundred-meter length of the tube. The fusion process grew, converting more and more of the fuel, boosting the energy output, which in turn boosted the overall plasma temperature. The wide flare the Lestari had been riding on began to contract, narrowing as the plasma was squeezed tighter and tighter by the amplified containment field. As a result, the plume began to elongate.
At the same time, Finn pulled the sensor data from the starship’s network and started tracking the nine incoming missiles. That information was fed directly into the Lestari’s navigation routines. The ship swung around sharply, slicing the slim lines of plasma in a giant arc across interplanetary space, until the twin fusion rockets were pointing back at the other ship.
Finn then brought the fusion compression up to maximum. Even he was surprised by the efficiency of the process, which sent the plasma temperature racing up over three hundred million degrees. The resulting speed of ejection hit relativistic velocity, sending the jet streaking out over ten thousand kilometers.
He controlled its direction with minute manipulations. Even deflecting the rapier-thin beam of incandescent particles by a millimeter as it left the end of the tube would send the tip of the plume slashing across hundreds of kilometers.
It didn’t even have to be particularly accurate. All Finn had to do was slash it backward and forward in the direction of an incoming missile, and he’d be guaranteed a strike. Within seconds, all nine projectiles were reduced to clusters of expanding fragments twirling across the starfield as they emitted a lethal sleet of hard radiation.
Both exhausts swept across the hostile starship as it fled away under high acceleration, playing across its surface for several milliseconds. Its exhaust vanished immediately, accompanied by whoops from the Lestari’s crew.
* * *
—
The Arcadia’s Moon hit ten gees as the slamhornets were struck by the Lestari’s hyperenergized exhaust stream, then accelerated harder. Marcellu wanted to yell from the torment his body was enduring as his ribs fractured and oxygen starvation progressively smothered him, but he had no air left in his flattened lungs to even whimper. A convulsion hit him as the now-intolerable weight of his weapon implants shifted inside his forearms, shredding a huge quantity of muscle tissue. First one shoulder dislocated, then another, and the excruciating pain spike told him his bicep and clavicle tendons were also tearing under the relentless gee force. His vision was already shrinking as a tide of blackness rushed in.
Then another extreme force slammed him sideways. Mercifully, he was still contained in the acceleration couch; otherwise he’d have been thrown across the bridge. The excruciating eleven-gee acceleration vanished, only to be replaced by a disorientingly giddy spin. All around him, the bridge struts and panels and conduits sparkled with vivid static webs. Alarms wailed. Small flames burst out of equipment cabinet vents. Fire extinguishers came on, nozzles emerging from the ceiling to squirt white jets at the heat sources.
“Going dark! Going dark!” Andino shouted. “Null-spectrum sheaths deploying.”
The dreadful spin didn’t stop. Marcellu threw up—a muscle spasm that was anguish for his damaged body. There was just no part of him that didn’t hurt. The disgusting fluid splatted across the couch and ceiling above.
“What just happened?” he croaked.
“Son of a fatherfucking bitchwhore!” Andino spat. “They hit us with their plasma exhaust. Asteria’s ass, we were twelve thousand kilometers away! The energy input was incredible. We were only in the stream for milliseconds, but half our power circuits burnt out, and our stress structure is still trying to discharge the energy overload.”
Marcellu felt like he was about to throw up again. The spin was killing his inner ears. “Can you stabilize us? Please?”
“No way. We’re acting dead right now. The drive is off, and our stealth sheaths are covering the outer structure. If we start firing the reaction control thrusters now, there’s a chance their sensors will pick it up. They’ll know we survived. We’ll be sitting ducks.”
“Shit. Okay, but I think I need a medical triage andy.” The pain from his legs and arms was crippling. He could feel blood leaking out of his nose, and suspected it was coming out of his ears, too. Small globules of blood were flowing away from his face to wobble away across the bridge. Out of the corner of his vision he saw Andino raise her head, the slim pistons on either side of her neck extending slowly. The sight of her, the lack of damage to her body with its reinforcing biomech components, produced a burst of jealousy.
“Asteria!” she grunted in worry. “You look— Hang on, I’m authorizing one now.”
A big static discharge a couple of meters away from Marcellu’s couch made him flinch. “How bad is the ship?”
“Not sure. Right now I’m just hoping most of our null-spectrum cloth is intact. I didn’t deploy it until after we were hit, and three segments didn’t unfurl, but the rest seems to be okay.”
“What did they do to their fusion exhaust?”
“Played the long game. Damn it, the Lestari has been flying like that since the Enfoes bolted all those bits of scrap together. I have to hand it to Uzoma, that is the perfect camouflage: hide your superweapon in full view. Everyone thought those rockets were on the verge of complete failure; their fusion rate was barely above break-even. And the whole time they could reprofile the confinement field to peak efficiency whenever they wanted. They turned them into relativistic cannons.”
“Huh. Good to know.” The ship’s spin was making Marcellu dizzy again. He could barely make out the small insectoid maintenance remotes now crawling over the bridge’s walls and ceiling; there was no way they were human-made. One of the larger versions scuttled along his torso, trailing whip-like tendrils over his blood-soaked tunic.
“Oh, crap, Marcellu,” the captain muttered. “Those are not good stats. Okay, the triage andy is going to put you under now. Doc will patch you up with some emergency units. Welcome to the mech-brotherhood.”
The darkness was closing in on his thoughts again, this time bringing an arctic chill with it. “Don’t— Oh fuck.” He lost consciousness.
* * *
—
Five hundred meters away from the Lestari, the wrecked ship that was their goal tumbled slowly across the irradiated fringes of the Poseidon Nebula. Finn watched it through the cupola’s apex window, trying to understand what he was seeing. It had a roughly semicircular shape, like a segment of fruit, but one that had been distorted by severe twisting forces. The long, straight edge where it was thinnest looked relatively intact. From there the gray-green hull gradually widened toward the curved rim that was all jagged fangs of metal. The profile betrayed its origin as a chunk that’d been ripped out of a much larger ship.
Yoru was piloting an engineering pod toward it, with Basyl perched on its rear loading grid in an armored spacesuit. The little cube-shaped vehicle emitted a flurry of gas from its small thrusters and came to a halt ten meters from the wreckage. In terms of scale, Finn could only think of a fly buzzing up against a limousine.
“Not looking good,” Basyl said over the comm channel.
Finn let out an exasperated sigh. By now he was used to the Remnant specialist’s eternally gloomy disposition, but it was getting wearisome.
He twisted around and checked the monitor, which was receiving a feed from the pod’s camera. He could see the torn-up lip of the wreckage, revealing an interior that seemed to be mostly solid, its ragged surface pocked with small oval holes—maggots in the fruit. Stark light washed across them as the wreckage slowly turned its broken surface toward the sun. Light only penetrated a few meters down the holes.
Finn used his neural connection to open a link to the pod. “Why not? It looks reasonably intact to me.”
“Aye, and there’s your problem. This is a standard Aktoru design. We think it’s some kind of combination between Celestial mech extruders and synthetic-biology; essentially they gathered together all the essential machinery in a three-dimensional lattice, then grew the rest of the ship around them.”
“They grew their ships?”
“Best theory…Grew them, extruded them, dephased their molecules, cast a summoning spell—the point is, if your generator is actually in there somewhere, there’s no way we can get it out without cracking the structure apart.”
“And we can’t do that out here,” Uzoma interjected. “We need to take it down to Breakerville. The Flexals down there know what they’re doing.”
“Right,” Finn said. It was inevitable, but he’d secretly clung to a hope that the generator could simply be loaded into a cargo container for Lestari to fly back to Kelowan. “How long is that going to take?”
“It’ll take a day or two to attach and then stabilize the wreckage. Mass analysis says it weighs just under sixty thousand tons. So that’s no problem for our fusion rockets—especially now. Thank you, Finn.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I’m not risking a one-gee burn; Asteria alone knows what stress factors that would inflict on this thing. So we’ll stick to point-two, which gives us eighteen days to drop into orbit. We’ll rendezvous with Bubbletown’s stalk station on Five.”
“Five?” Finn queried.
“Terrik Papuan has five moons. The largest and outermost is called One, so the next orbit in is—”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it.”
