fragmentation canisters, and a chain reaction of explosions rocked the drone bay. The magazine was shielded to prevent such a calamity from spreading throughout the ship, but the two flockers passed out of the magazine and drew the explosions after them, severely damaging the drone launch rail.
They careened through the hullalloy-armored drone bay, and finally exited the
Lynx
through the frigate’s open launch doors at a much reduced speed. They would have had sufficient reaction mass remaining to turn and attack the ship again, but neither had survived the pummeling with its intelligence intact.
Another flocker punched through the belly-side armor plate and entered the main damage control room, where Ensign Trevor San had just helped to eject the energy-sink manifold. She was watching as it began to discohere when the drone tore through her from foot to head, pulping her organs and robbing her of immortality. Her crew-mates were sprayed with blood, but it took them long seconds to realize which of them had been hit. Ensign San had practically disappeared. The drone then passed through several storage decks, destroying medical supplies and stowed personal effects, then drove straight into the core of the
Lynx
‘s singularity generator, which was running at high-active level. The pseudo black hole swallowed the flocker without so much as a tremor registering on its monitors.
Hobbes later calculated the chances of such a hit at several-thousand-to-one against, and noted that nothing so bizarrely exact had ever been recorded on an Imperial warship.
The last flocker passed through the belly-side waste tanks, which had been brought to high pressure to propel the
Lynx
silently out of harm’s way. The pressure of the unrecycled water was over five hundred atmospheres, dense enough to slow the flocker considerably. But the drone’s reaction drive was still active, and it managed to pass through the tanks, trailing a stream of waste water that filled the adjacent bacterial recycling chamber in ten seconds. The processing chief, Samuel Vries, was knocked unconscious by the jet of water and drowned before rescue could come. The
Lynx
was left without a functional water-recycling system for days, and three decks smelled noticeably for a long time. Vries was eventually rewarded with immortality, and continued his researches into human/bacterial interactions in small closed environments, but at a far less practical level of application.
The much slowed flocker limped through a few more bulkheads, still pursued by dirty water, befouling a long column of crew cabins before it was stopped by the armored hull on the dorsal side. It was the only flocker to survive passage through the blazing manifold and the ship with its intelligence intact. After it came to a halt, the drone was still cogent enough to release a metal-eating virus into the
Lynx
‘s hull that went undetected for some time.
Then, it attacked a marine private as he ran to foamseal shut the sudden geyser of waste water that marked its passage. The drone had only its weak signaling laser as a weapon, and went for his eyes. The man was in full battle armor, however, his face shielded by a reflective visor. He stared for a confused moment at the glittering drone, this tiny alien invader still valiantly attempting to trouble its enemies. Then he smashed the half-dead flocker with his servo-assisted fist, and it expired on the spot.
The
Lynx
had survived.
Data Analyst
Chaos struck the Data Analysis station without warning.
Ensign Amanda Tyre’s vision had been far away, following the Progress of the foremost scout drone. The drone was one minute from its closest approach to the enemy battlecruiser. Master Pilot Marx Was in control, struggling to perform some wild maneuver, an indirect attack on the Rix warship that only he understood completely. Tyre had asked what he was up to, but he’d only grunted, too focused on piloting to answer.
She watched Marx’s data
They careened through the hullalloy-armored drone bay, and finally exited the
Lynx
through the frigate’s open launch doors at a much reduced speed. They would have had sufficient reaction mass remaining to turn and attack the ship again, but neither had survived the pummeling with its intelligence intact.
Another flocker punched through the belly-side armor plate and entered the main damage control room, where Ensign Trevor San had just helped to eject the energy-sink manifold. She was watching as it began to discohere when the drone tore through her from foot to head, pulping her organs and robbing her of immortality. Her crew-mates were sprayed with blood, but it took them long seconds to realize which of them had been hit. Ensign San had practically disappeared. The drone then passed through several storage decks, destroying medical supplies and stowed personal effects, then drove straight into the core of the
Lynx
‘s singularity generator, which was running at high-active level. The pseudo black hole swallowed the flocker without so much as a tremor registering on its monitors.
Hobbes later calculated the chances of such a hit at several-thousand-to-one against, and noted that nothing so bizarrely exact had ever been recorded on an Imperial warship.
The last flocker passed through the belly-side waste tanks, which had been brought to high pressure to propel the
Lynx
silently out of harm’s way. The pressure of the unrecycled water was over five hundred atmospheres, dense enough to slow the flocker considerably. But the drone’s reaction drive was still active, and it managed to pass through the tanks, trailing a stream of waste water that filled the adjacent bacterial recycling chamber in ten seconds. The processing chief, Samuel Vries, was knocked unconscious by the jet of water and drowned before rescue could come. The
Lynx
was left without a functional water-recycling system for days, and three decks smelled noticeably for a long time. Vries was eventually rewarded with immortality, and continued his researches into human/bacterial interactions in small closed environments, but at a far less practical level of application.
The much slowed flocker limped through a few more bulkheads, still pursued by dirty water, befouling a long column of crew cabins before it was stopped by the armored hull on the dorsal side. It was the only flocker to survive passage through the blazing manifold and the ship with its intelligence intact. After it came to a halt, the drone was still cogent enough to release a metal-eating virus into the
Lynx
‘s hull that went undetected for some time.
Then, it attacked a marine private as he ran to foamseal shut the sudden geyser of waste water that marked its passage. The drone had only its weak signaling laser as a weapon, and went for his eyes. The man was in full battle armor, however, his face shielded by a reflective visor. He stared for a confused moment at the glittering drone, this tiny alien invader still valiantly attempting to trouble its enemies. Then he smashed the half-dead flocker with his servo-assisted fist, and it expired on the spot.
The
Lynx
had survived.
Data Analyst
Chaos struck the Data Analysis station without warning.
Ensign Amanda Tyre’s vision had been far away, following the Progress of the foremost scout drone. The drone was one minute from its closest approach to the enemy battlecruiser. Master Pilot Marx Was in control, struggling to perform some wild maneuver, an indirect attack on the Rix warship that only he understood completely. Tyre had asked what he was up to, but he’d only grunted, too focused on piloting to answer.
She watched Marx’s data
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