Pink Noise - Leonid Korogodski [30]
With a heavy heart, the Dancer watched the shuttle swallowed by a retractable sheath, like a chameleon’s tongue darting out of the very same vault they had left not long ago.
So. The conceit was over. The castle knew the truth.
Nathi expected no interceptors, no search parties to sally forth—not anymore. If any had been sent, they were already out, stealthed. But that was not the worst of it. Despair gripped his mind—a still, thin cry.
He knew it was his turn.
THE FLAGSHIP CRUISER DAREANGEL OF THE TASK FORCE “TRAFALGAR” 10 MILLION KILOMETERS BELOW THE ECLIPTIC PLANE
“ENTERING PHASE ONE.”
The ship’s collective mind relayed it straight into Naomi’s brain, jacked into the ship’s polaritonic network. Intercepted by the battle cruiser’s self-aware “skin,” the signal bloomed into a harmony of synchronous sensations, triggering Naomi’s battle instinct.
Because phase one meant the Dancer was already on the move, for at least five minutes.
We imagined you’d enjoy it, the ship said.
Naomi smiled. Sure.
“Hell be damned!” Naomi roared over the com. “Ships of the first column, report.” Her DareAngel had already forwarded the signal to her second-in-command, Rostam, the leader of the second column.
She initiated the ship’s segmentation, feeling her life capsule’s separation like a tear in her skin. Pushing the direct brain feedback into the background, Naomi opened her eyes. The wall above her body turned trans parent.
Stars. Myriads of them. But she was long past her first crush. She found their target, the red eye of Mars—a tiny disc as seen from far below its south pole.
O my baby. Look what we must do.
But no use dwelling on that. They had to hope that the girl was safe.
The other “stars” around her—the crew’s life capsules, tagged with names and vectors of direction, waiting for the ship to recombine, while hurtling all together at the same initial speed of some one hundred miles per second relative to Mars—the speed about to increase tenfold.
Naomi watched the ship’s polaritonic skin turn inside out, going through a reverse metamorphosis from something like a butterfly back into a cocoon. The magsail masts lay out in a spiral around the outside of the enormous hollow cylinder, while the powerful plasma jet engines moved inside.
She latched her capsule back onto the ship and reestablished a direct link. All around her, the DareAngel’s crew was settling down in positions on the outside of the ship’s surface, ready to split off in microseconds, rescuing a portion of the ship’s collective mind, should they be hit.
“The Pearless, all set.”
“The Bird of Prayer, standing by.”
“The Peregrin….”
Two columns on parallel courses. Never since a certain naval admiral more than a thousand years ago had anyone tried such a risky battle plan. The enemy could concentrate their fire on the leading ships before the task force would be able to respond.
Of course, that meant the DareAngel had to lead. Naomi couldn’t ask the others for a sacrifice without going in first.
Don’t worry, we will carry you. She winked. In pieces.
Ha-ha-ha! We’ ll have you first!
Naomi laughed. The damn attentions of her crew must have been rubbing off the ship’s collective mind.
The envelope of her stress sarcophagus slid over Naomi’s prostrate body. She disconnected from her body, totally relinquishing control, even awareness of it—remaining just a naked mind connected to the ship’s. She hated this, but knew her human body couldn’t cope with the stress that lay ahead. She knew, only if it were immersed in strong paramagnetics and instrumented heavily with nanobots, adjusted at the ship’s reaction time, could it survive the crazy rpms of the ship’s cylinder.
Could it? No one had tried this method of attack. It was against all military wisdom to attack a highly fortified castle without