the base of the clouds. They were more than a kilometer away and coming down fast. Another cohort dropped down on her other side. They were all emitting strong electronic warfare distortion pulses, trying to fuzz whatever sensors she had. It was good, but not good enough to deflect Commonwealth systems. She blew the first group apart, its glaring fireball swelling out. The surging red light showed her
things
scampering over the drab wilderness.
Four stumpy legs, a fat pear-shaped body wearing some kind of black-glitter armor, with sensor stalks sprouting from the crown like whip antennae weighed down with electronic modules on their tips. No mistaking them:
Prime motiles.
The memory was ingrained into the human psyche after a war that had brought the Commonwealth to the brink of extinction.
No wonder the Void shat them out.
Laura blew up another flier. Prime motiles were scuttling out of all the other hemispheres that had landed. With the jerky way they moved, zigzagging from boulder to boulder, it was like watching a charge of giant crustaceans. There was only silence around her, except for swift coded radio bursts. She emitted a powerful jamming signal and watched with satisfaction as they all stopped moving for several seconds. The Prime weren’t a hive mind, but the motiles certainly qualified as a herd, functioning best while under direct control from the immotiles—who were the herd brains as well as the egg layers.
The smartnet on the floater above her reported it had established a real-time link to the Valatare floater through the wormhole. Her u-shadow was in direct control of both of them.
Now for the tricky part.
Laura directed the Ursell floater’s terminus toward the Valatare floater, at the same time reconfiguring the Valatare floater’s mechanism. She wanted to turn it into a stable anchor for the Ursell floater’s wormhole rather than generate its own.
The motiles started to move again. Her fieldscan function detected small objects flying toward her on ballistic trajectories. The scan identified a small quantity of uranium inside each of them. “Holy fuck!” Her secondary routines took over, running in parallel, identifying the mini-nukes arching through the air, and slammed out over a dozen disruptor pulses in less than two seconds.
More than twenty maser beams stabbed down, hitting the floater. Its force fields resisted easily. She couldn’t waste time targeting the fliers overhead, but this all-out saturation attack was going to overwhelm her pretty quickly.
Her exovision was showing her the wormhole terminus easing slowly to the Valatare floater. The engagement procedure was working, helping to reel it in. Just a couple more minutes, and the gateway to the crypt and safety was a simple jump away…
But she had to be here, had to maintain a direct link with the floaters so her u-shadow could manage the incredibly complicated procedure. More mini-nukes came streaking toward her. Her routines knocked each of them out.
A dazzling flash erupted five kilometers away. Her force field turned opaque to cope with the monstrous gamma pulse. Data flowed across her exovision: The yield was about four kilotons.
Survivable.
She watched the mushroom cloud ascending, finding its grotesque seething shape oddly elegant, as if seeing a legend reborn. The ground around her was suddenly steaming. Then the blast wave reached her, a rolling eruption of sand and small stones hurtling across the wasteland. She flung herself down. Her force field strained into a dull rouge as it fought the pressure slam. The screaming storm began to tip the floater up. She ordered it to expand its force field, and watched it take off, dwindling away into the sky, flipping around and around in the violent air. Her link remained intact.
Laura rolled over, seeing the BC5800d2’s terminus still hovering thirty meters above the ground, with long fronds of dust and vapor flashing across it. She couldn’t risk its force field being
things
scampering over the drab wilderness.
Four stumpy legs, a fat pear-shaped body wearing some kind of black-glitter armor, with sensor stalks sprouting from the crown like whip antennae weighed down with electronic modules on their tips. No mistaking them:
Prime motiles.
The memory was ingrained into the human psyche after a war that had brought the Commonwealth to the brink of extinction.
No wonder the Void shat them out.
Laura blew up another flier. Prime motiles were scuttling out of all the other hemispheres that had landed. With the jerky way they moved, zigzagging from boulder to boulder, it was like watching a charge of giant crustaceans. There was only silence around her, except for swift coded radio bursts. She emitted a powerful jamming signal and watched with satisfaction as they all stopped moving for several seconds. The Prime weren’t a hive mind, but the motiles certainly qualified as a herd, functioning best while under direct control from the immotiles—who were the herd brains as well as the egg layers.
The smartnet on the floater above her reported it had established a real-time link to the Valatare floater through the wormhole. Her u-shadow was in direct control of both of them.
Now for the tricky part.
Laura directed the Ursell floater’s terminus toward the Valatare floater, at the same time reconfiguring the Valatare floater’s mechanism. She wanted to turn it into a stable anchor for the Ursell floater’s wormhole rather than generate its own.
The motiles started to move again. Her fieldscan function detected small objects flying toward her on ballistic trajectories. The scan identified a small quantity of uranium inside each of them. “Holy fuck!” Her secondary routines took over, running in parallel, identifying the mini-nukes arching through the air, and slammed out over a dozen disruptor pulses in less than two seconds.
More than twenty maser beams stabbed down, hitting the floater. Its force fields resisted easily. She couldn’t waste time targeting the fliers overhead, but this all-out saturation attack was going to overwhelm her pretty quickly.
Her exovision was showing her the wormhole terminus easing slowly to the Valatare floater. The engagement procedure was working, helping to reel it in. Just a couple more minutes, and the gateway to the crypt and safety was a simple jump away…
But she had to be here, had to maintain a direct link with the floaters so her u-shadow could manage the incredibly complicated procedure. More mini-nukes came streaking toward her. Her routines knocked each of them out.
A dazzling flash erupted five kilometers away. Her force field turned opaque to cope with the monstrous gamma pulse. Data flowed across her exovision: The yield was about four kilotons.
Survivable.
She watched the mushroom cloud ascending, finding its grotesque seething shape oddly elegant, as if seeing a legend reborn. The ground around her was suddenly steaming. Then the blast wave reached her, a rolling eruption of sand and small stones hurtling across the wasteland. She flung herself down. Her force field strained into a dull rouge as it fought the pressure slam. The screaming storm began to tip the floater up. She ordered it to expand its force field, and watched it take off, dwindling away into the sky, flipping around and around in the violent air. Her link remained intact.
Laura rolled over, seeing the BC5800d2’s terminus still hovering thirty meters above the ground, with long fronds of dust and vapor flashing across it. She couldn’t risk its force field being
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