Pink Noise - Leonid Korogodski [32]
Of course, the ships would be gyrating, too. And that was why they had to custom-build the crew sarcophagi.
Don’t make me faint after we win, she sent her DareAngel personette.
Don’t worry, chief.
Before the ships began to spin, Naomi broadcast to all her battle cruisers, not in words but in archaic symbols from a millennium ago, as a homage: “The Order of Flamethrowers”—no!—“All free minds expect that everyone will do their duty.”
She was sure they would understand.
8
POSTHUMANS DO NOT TIRE EASILY. BUT NATHI WAS EXHAUSTED. After their daring escape, after the struggle against the guards inside the castle’s transport tubes, and taking over the shuttle, followed by the painstaking task of picking off every bit of marker nanodust, their nanobots were struggling with overload. Between dedicating some of them to their magsails, some to maintain invisibility in both radio and visible ranges, more still to run their “magneto-synthesis,” they didn’t have any resources left.
Now they also had to block the infrared, to keep from freezing and to hide from infrared detectors. Friction of the air kept them warm in flight, at first. It also made their trail glow in infrared, easily detectable once they had left the halo of the shuttle’s heat emissions. If it may have looked at first like just another stray plasmoid from the shuttle’s plasma engine, now everyone would know what it was.
They had to split from their original direction, lower their speed, and weave in complicated loops to shake off pursuers—exposing themselves to the harsh temperatures of Martian polar night. No choice but to enable heat containment by engaging their metasilk skin in the infrared. But they could not afford to drop their camouflage in either the radio or visible ranges of the spectrum. Not while they were gliding in the open.
How soon… before we land? he asked.
That was her job; the girl was clearly a better pilot.
About two minutes to that crater. The girl guided their eyes. Unless you want to drop over flat land.
They’d reached the highlands, on the outskirts of the magnetic field anomaly. Before, they had to run in circles, ending up just slightly west of their original direction.
No. Make for those cliffs. He focused on the section of the rim where “wavy hair” grooves ran down the slope of the crater’s wall. We have to drop invisibility. Provided that they didn’t drop from exhaustion first. But only in the visible, not in the radio range, for the steady surf of e-World traffic beat against their polaritonic skin, demanding entrance—combat wizards. He could not afford the risk.
I hear you. Hold on, doc.
But the landing wasn’t soft. The girl was just as beat as he was. They rolled down across the slope in a centrifuge of agony, the ground searing their skin with freezing cold. It was one thing to keep heat from escaping via radiation in thin air, but the solid ground was a better heat conductor. Barely in time, he ordered their nanobots to open the myriads of tiny nano-pores all over their skin, to let the moisture out, from the water he’d injected subcutaneously before the trip.
Thank goodness, it’s below -130°C.
The water vapor froze so fast that it had no time to crystallize. In microseconds, they were covered in a microscopic sheen of low density amorphous glassy water.
Patience.
Let it out too fast, and the glass would “hyper-quench,