Doctor Who_ The Infinity Doctors - Lance Parkin [33]
the traces of silicon. Qqaba had been creating energy using nuclear fusion of silicon for just a week when Omega had discovered it, and it had already run dry. Since then, the nuclear processes were only kept going by Gallifreyan technology. By the Hands of Omega…
Omega had already sensed it. Was that intuition, or was it the Hands telling him? He could hear the spacedrive of his ship powering up.
All was going to plan.
For the whole of its life, the energy radiating outwards from the core had balanced out the gravitational force pulling inwards. There had been equilibrium, stability. Now there was nothing left in the core that the star could use as fuel. The only elements left were iron, cobalt, nickel – all too stable to break down with any ease. As the last molecules of silicon were converted into iron, the star died. Over a million years, the core had burned away most of its mass, and it was now a vestige of its former self, only around one and a half million kilometres across.
Three tenths of a second later, the core was ten kilometres in diameter.
The energy involved in the compression was incomprehensible. Most of it was shed as heat and light, enough of it to disintegrate atomic nuclei. The chains locking protons, electrons and neutrons together as atoms and molecules were shattered. These fundamental building blocks of the universe began behaving differently in their strange new environment. Tiny electrons were pressed together to form neutrons by sheer force of gravity. Neutrons normally formed the nucleus of atoms. Here, as the core reached a new equilibrium, all that was left of the core was a sphere of densely packed neutrons, a hundred kilometres across but with twice the mass of the Sun.
The haloes are malfunctioning.
The news came from all around. He heard it via the telepathic link to the others, the shouts of his crew over the intercom, his instincts.
The pressures at the heart of the star were so intense that the neutron material was squeezed harder than it could bear.
It sprang out, sending a shock wave out into the rest of the star.
He would not be denied this moment, he would watch. He would survive, he knew this from the Fragment. The others would find a way to restore the shields.
With no energy radiating from the core, there was nothing supporting the outer layers of the star. Although Qqaba was a mere shadow of its former self, there was still enough material there to build a dozen Gallifreyan suns. All of that matter, weighing down on the core. The outer shell began falling down the gravity well to the core, at a quarter of the speed of light.
‘Neutrino flood detected,’ the helmsman called.
It was half a minute since the star had died.
The haloes had not been restored.
Omega knew that he would die. That glorious dying star was suddenly a maw that he was staring into. He knew his destiny. He heard the first sparks and muffled explosions as radiation began to blast apart his ship.
A shock wave had formed in the core. Even now it surged outwards. It was immensely powerful, easily enough to reverse the infall of the outer layers. Suddenly there were fifteen solar masses heading outwards, an expanding spherical shock front. The instruments were registering the neutrinos now because neutrinos have no mass, and they were so small that they were passing through all but the densest matter at the speed of light. They were created after the shock front, but they outran it. The shock front was already on its way, it had already happened.
But the Fragment…
He heard one of their voices, then the other.
‘No!’
‘The Fragment’s a forgery. Rassilon’s work.’
‘No!’
‘You deny it even now?’
‘I thought you had forged it.’
Omega wasn’t listening to their squabbling any longer. He stood, hands behind his back, facing the shock front. Around him his crew betrayed their animal instincts, they flinched, they cowered, they tried to run or shield themselves. The Gallifreyan fleet was right in the path of the destruction, facing towards it, unprotected. Omega’s