minute, his software estimated—at the ramscatters.
His view whirled. All his drones with active sensors had been destroyed. Marx fought to control the ramming ship, but nothing on the canopy’s screens made sense. With an effort of will, he pulled his hands from the control surface, searching for meaning in the storm of light before him.
Suddenly, a fist seemed to strike him in the stomach. A decompression alarm sounded!
The
Lynx
was taking hits. The flockers were here.
Gravity in the canopy spun for a moment, a further disorientation. Acid filled his throat. The disjunction between visuals and his inner ear was finally too great. Marx pitched forward in his canopy, and vomited between his knees.
He looked up, bile still in his mouth, and saw that he had missed. His ramscatter drone had flown past the sandcaster.
Marx struggled to bring it around for another pass, but the long, hard acceleration revealed it to the Rix monitor drones, which raked it with fire.
His ramscatters were destroyed, and Marx’s synesthesia view of the distant battle dimmed to shadows and extrapolations.
Then a host of explosions rolled through the
Lynx
, and Marx realized that they were all dead.
Executive Officer
Katherie Hobbes saw the collision icon go bright orange, but the sound of the klaxon hadn’t time to reach her before the shock waves struck.
Her status board flared, red sweeping up through the decks as the flockers plowed through hullalloy and hypercarbon like paper. The shriek of decompression came from a dozen audio channels.
At one percent light speed, being rammed was as good as being railgunned.
“Shit,” Hobbes said.
It would take her days of careful reconstruction to determine exactly what happened over the next few seconds.
The first flocker in the pack had been melted into an irregular blob by the blazing energy-sink manifold. Having lost its penetration shape, it pancaked against the warship’s hull, its diameter expanding to a half-meter as it punched through the three outer bulkheads. The force of its entry into Gunnery Hardpoint Four hit the crewmen there like a compression bomb, imploding their pressure suits, shattering every non-metal object into shards. The wide entry hole sucked out most of the air in the hardpoint before the sprays of sealant foam could do their work. Hardpoint Four housed a highly volatile meson-beam emitter, and was armored on all sides to protect the
Lynx
in case the weapon ever blew. The flocker, its momentum exhausted, flattened itself against the next bulkhead, never exiting the hardpoint.
Between the massive shock wave and decompression, none of the seven crew was suitable for reanimation.
The next flocker, which struck the
Lynx
four nanoseconds later, had maintained its bullet shape through the manifold. Its small entry hole was sealed without much decompression, and it plunged through lower decks twenty-six through -eight on a diagonal path. It destroyed several burn beds in a temporary sickbay, and cut through a section of synesthesia processing hardware, tearing out a fist-width of optical circuitry sixty meters long, drawing a geyser of powdered glass and phosphorus behind itself through a long vertical access hallway. The cloud of burning glass blinded four members of an emergency repair team and one data analyst, and caused lung damage to a dozen other crew scattered along the hallway. The drone emerged from the frigate’s port dorsal sensor array.
The
Lynx
‘s sensors were not appreciably reduced, but the frigate’s processors were cut by twenty percent. All its Al nodes became slower, its synesthesia grainier, its weapons dumber.
Three flockers in close tandem struck the turbine that powered the
Lynx
‘s railguns. This dense coil of superconducting wire was sufficient to stop one of the drones cold, sending a deep shudder through the ship. The other two were deflected sternward, tumbling through a full magazine of minesweeper drones. The drones were armed with
His view whirled. All his drones with active sensors had been destroyed. Marx fought to control the ramming ship, but nothing on the canopy’s screens made sense. With an effort of will, he pulled his hands from the control surface, searching for meaning in the storm of light before him.
Suddenly, a fist seemed to strike him in the stomach. A decompression alarm sounded!
The
Lynx
was taking hits. The flockers were here.
Gravity in the canopy spun for a moment, a further disorientation. Acid filled his throat. The disjunction between visuals and his inner ear was finally too great. Marx pitched forward in his canopy, and vomited between his knees.
He looked up, bile still in his mouth, and saw that he had missed. His ramscatter drone had flown past the sandcaster.
Marx struggled to bring it around for another pass, but the long, hard acceleration revealed it to the Rix monitor drones, which raked it with fire.
His ramscatters were destroyed, and Marx’s synesthesia view of the distant battle dimmed to shadows and extrapolations.
Then a host of explosions rolled through the
Lynx
, and Marx realized that they were all dead.
Executive Officer
Katherie Hobbes saw the collision icon go bright orange, but the sound of the klaxon hadn’t time to reach her before the shock waves struck.
Her status board flared, red sweeping up through the decks as the flockers plowed through hullalloy and hypercarbon like paper. The shriek of decompression came from a dozen audio channels.
At one percent light speed, being rammed was as good as being railgunned.
“Shit,” Hobbes said.
It would take her days of careful reconstruction to determine exactly what happened over the next few seconds.
The first flocker in the pack had been melted into an irregular blob by the blazing energy-sink manifold. Having lost its penetration shape, it pancaked against the warship’s hull, its diameter expanding to a half-meter as it punched through the three outer bulkheads. The force of its entry into Gunnery Hardpoint Four hit the crewmen there like a compression bomb, imploding their pressure suits, shattering every non-metal object into shards. The wide entry hole sucked out most of the air in the hardpoint before the sprays of sealant foam could do their work. Hardpoint Four housed a highly volatile meson-beam emitter, and was armored on all sides to protect the
Lynx
in case the weapon ever blew. The flocker, its momentum exhausted, flattened itself against the next bulkhead, never exiting the hardpoint.
Between the massive shock wave and decompression, none of the seven crew was suitable for reanimation.
The next flocker, which struck the
Lynx
four nanoseconds later, had maintained its bullet shape through the manifold. Its small entry hole was sealed without much decompression, and it plunged through lower decks twenty-six through -eight on a diagonal path. It destroyed several burn beds in a temporary sickbay, and cut through a section of synesthesia processing hardware, tearing out a fist-width of optical circuitry sixty meters long, drawing a geyser of powdered glass and phosphorus behind itself through a long vertical access hallway. The cloud of burning glass blinded four members of an emergency repair team and one data analyst, and caused lung damage to a dozen other crew scattered along the hallway. The drone emerged from the frigate’s port dorsal sensor array.
The
Lynx
‘s sensors were not appreciably reduced, but the frigate’s processors were cut by twenty percent. All its Al nodes became slower, its synesthesia grainier, its weapons dumber.
Three flockers in close tandem struck the turbine that powered the
Lynx
‘s railguns. This dense coil of superconducting wire was sufficient to stop one of the drones cold, sending a deep shudder through the ship. The other two were deflected sternward, tumbling through a full magazine of minesweeper drones. The drones were armed with
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