overloaded by Prime weapons. The radiation and pressure surge would kill everyone in the crypt—and probably smash half the palace to pieces, too.
With a sense of bitter inevitability, she knew what she’d have to do next.
Slvasta was there, pressed up against the force field, watching aghast. Her u-shadow transmitted an analog signal again.
“For crud’s sake, Slvasta, pardon Bethaneve!” she sent. “This is a big bad universe, you’ve seen that for yourself now, so you can’t go through it jumping at shadows. You have got to dial down your paranoia. Grow up, think logically, plan ahead. You have to defeat the Fallers, kill the bastard Trees. Build the atom bombs and get them up there into the Ring—any way you can. With the Trees gone, there’ll be no limits to what your world can achieve. Do it!”
She saw him shouting at her, saw the anger and fright on his face. Her u-shadow linked to the BC5800d2, shutting down the wormhole and codelocking its smartcore. The terminus shrank to nothing then winked out in a purple ember of Cherenkov radiation. Her fieldscan function caught five more mini-nukes in flight. Secondary targeting routines zapped them.
At last, the Valatare floater’s smartnet reported it had anchored the wormhole from Ursell. The connection between the two planets was open and stable.
All right. Now we’re getting somewhere!
Over two hundred Prime motiles were advancing on her from all directions. More fliers were ascending from the valley. Twenty-five accelerated after the floater as it spun lazily through the air, gradually rising—four hundred meters high already.
Another mini-nuke detonated on the ground three kilometers away. Then a third went off.
Laura sent another batch of instructions into the linked floaters. The final procedure had to be enacted. Then the first of the new blast waves struck her, sending her rolling helplessly across the sharp rocks until she crashed into a boulder.
Pinned there by the wailing superheated wind, with her force field fizzing aquamarine, she stared upward. The blasts had torn the clouds from most of the sky, allowing her to see the floater and its shimmering force field bubble. The explosions were swatting it about brutally, sending it skipping higher and higher. Her u-shadow initiated the final sequence, and the wormhole’s diameter began to expand. She watched a plume of the gas giant’s hydrogen atmosphere come squirting out. Thin at first, then gradually getting wider, but still the colossal pressure was maintained. Her mouth split open in a smile. It was acting like a rocket exhaust, accelerating the floater upward. And the wormhole diameter continued to expand—a hundred meters wide now. Then bigger. The flow of gas was fierce and undiminished, backed by the incredible pressure of the gas giant’s atmosphere. And the fringes of the massive gas plume were bursting into stark blue flame as the hydrogen finally mixed with Ursell’s oxygen, creating a fire halo.
Another mini-nuke detonated. The closest yet. Laura left the ground, spinning over and over in the glowing air before crashing down painfully. Her exovision medical readouts blinked up a series of amber warnings. Biononics shut down nerve paths, closing off the pain.
The immotiles must be using the motiles as carriers,
she thought, sending them crawling along ridges and depressions to infiltrate her defensive perimeter, sacrificing them. Which was what the Primes did; individual motiles were valueless.
The wormhole was two hundred meters wide now, its roar rivaling the awesome soundwall of the nukes. Laura ran a systems diagnostic on the two floaters. Everything was functioning very smoothly, all components within tolerance, gas feeding easily into the mass energy converter.
Four hundred meters wide, and the sky above her was a single layer of elegant indigo flame.
“It will never stop,” she broadcast to the Primes in their own neurological code. And started to laugh. It
With a sense of bitter inevitability, she knew what she’d have to do next.
Slvasta was there, pressed up against the force field, watching aghast. Her u-shadow transmitted an analog signal again.
“For crud’s sake, Slvasta, pardon Bethaneve!” she sent. “This is a big bad universe, you’ve seen that for yourself now, so you can’t go through it jumping at shadows. You have got to dial down your paranoia. Grow up, think logically, plan ahead. You have to defeat the Fallers, kill the bastard Trees. Build the atom bombs and get them up there into the Ring—any way you can. With the Trees gone, there’ll be no limits to what your world can achieve. Do it!”
She saw him shouting at her, saw the anger and fright on his face. Her u-shadow linked to the BC5800d2, shutting down the wormhole and codelocking its smartcore. The terminus shrank to nothing then winked out in a purple ember of Cherenkov radiation. Her fieldscan function caught five more mini-nukes in flight. Secondary targeting routines zapped them.
At last, the Valatare floater’s smartnet reported it had anchored the wormhole from Ursell. The connection between the two planets was open and stable.
All right. Now we’re getting somewhere!
Over two hundred Prime motiles were advancing on her from all directions. More fliers were ascending from the valley. Twenty-five accelerated after the floater as it spun lazily through the air, gradually rising—four hundred meters high already.
Another mini-nuke detonated on the ground three kilometers away. Then a third went off.
Laura sent another batch of instructions into the linked floaters. The final procedure had to be enacted. Then the first of the new blast waves struck her, sending her rolling helplessly across the sharp rocks until she crashed into a boulder.
Pinned there by the wailing superheated wind, with her force field fizzing aquamarine, she stared upward. The blasts had torn the clouds from most of the sky, allowing her to see the floater and its shimmering force field bubble. The explosions were swatting it about brutally, sending it skipping higher and higher. Her u-shadow initiated the final sequence, and the wormhole’s diameter began to expand. She watched a plume of the gas giant’s hydrogen atmosphere come squirting out. Thin at first, then gradually getting wider, but still the colossal pressure was maintained. Her mouth split open in a smile. It was acting like a rocket exhaust, accelerating the floater upward. And the wormhole diameter continued to expand—a hundred meters wide now. Then bigger. The flow of gas was fierce and undiminished, backed by the incredible pressure of the gas giant’s atmosphere. And the fringes of the massive gas plume were bursting into stark blue flame as the hydrogen finally mixed with Ursell’s oxygen, creating a fire halo.
Another mini-nuke detonated. The closest yet. Laura left the ground, spinning over and over in the glowing air before crashing down painfully. Her exovision medical readouts blinked up a series of amber warnings. Biononics shut down nerve paths, closing off the pain.
The immotiles must be using the motiles as carriers,
she thought, sending them crawling along ridges and depressions to infiltrate her defensive perimeter, sacrificing them. Which was what the Primes did; individual motiles were valueless.
The wormhole was two hundred meters wide now, its roar rivaling the awesome soundwall of the nukes. Laura ran a systems diagnostic on the two floaters. Everything was functioning very smoothly, all components within tolerance, gas feeding easily into the mass energy converter.
Four hundred meters wide, and the sky above her was a single layer of elegant indigo flame.
“It will never stop,” she broadcast to the Primes in their own neurological code. And started to laugh. It
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