Pink Noise - Leonid Korogodski [36]
“Good luck,” she sent.
They couldn’t spare anyone. In truth, they were less mobile than the Pearless, because they had to keep the course. She wondered how soon the enemy would realize that.
She transmitted to the others, “Keep the course!”
Checksum exceptions, tasting bitter—someone hacking their weather data. Muffled screams—faint echoes of compulsion resonating through their internal net. She tightened the rollover schedule of their communication frequencies and protocols.
Fuck you. Is that your worst?
The blasted wizards must have lost their punch. No knockdown like the last time, in the botched Horseshoe Ambush, when they had lost communications and a quarter of the Fleet’s task force, including the complete loss of two Dragon Guard ships covering their retreat. But now the plasma storm itself made for a fairly good screen.
Unless there was something else to keep the wizards busy.
Mars had grown in her view. Down below them and straight ahead, Naomi saw thin columns of dust devils spawning all around the polar cap, straining to reach up and join the storm. But some were veering toward the power needles, which were drawing on the electron jets.
Are you safe? She hoped that the Dancer had already reached the Needle.
But it was the smaller patch of sky above the castle, at the very edge of Martian ionosphere, that called on their crew’s attention—shining at all frequencies on the ship’s scanners. That was where the electric currents drawn by their jets passed through the double layer sheath that separated ionosphere from the interplanetary space.
It was a fundamental property of plasma to “coagulate” around any solid body, similar to blood plasma—the very property that gave plasma its name. The double layer sheath contained most of the voltage drop. Within that narrow space, the electromagnetic forces now pinched the plasma braid like a curtain at the waist. Squeezed into a small elliptical sump by the magnetic pressure of converging currents, the trapped plasma at the center pulsed like a beating heart, expanding and contracting, dancing to the rhythm of competing forces.
Damn. Not tight enough. Too bad, no solar storm.
That patch of the magnetopause erupted suddenly, an image of a leering gargoyle tearing through it as though it were paper, in a cheap demoralization trick. Yeah, right. The combat wizards doing this were likely sweating over their shut eyelids, trembling. Shared with the entire crew, this image of the struggling wizards did the trick. The gargoyle was dissolving. In its place, she noticed faint traces of two interlocking, spinning teardrops—a budding mini-galaxy.
How long?
The DareAngel showed her the latest calculations. The ships would have to begin braking soon with their magnetic sails, unless they wished to smash into the castle at top speed—which meant they had to disengage the jets and hope that the plasma storm had gathered enough momentum to keep going.
“All ships, maintain your course,” she ordered. “And add some steam to those sails.”
She juiced their magnetic sails up to the limit, felt them strain—both braking and accelerating at the same time. Just a little more, and their material would “boil” with small magnetic vortices—the superconductivity breakdown. If that happened, they could lose their magnetic wings entirely. Few dared to “steam the sails” so close to the boiling point.
She shrugged. They were the Dragon Guard.
In five more minutes, their leading ships would be within range of the granddaddy stationary batteries of the castle’s defense. At least, there was no question whose guns had the longer reach.
9
YOUR NAME IS NATHI.
So dark….
Small specks of light respond—flashes of color, vortices, a tunnel with light at its end—triangles sparkle randomly, then reappear, recombining in the imagery generated by the mind’s internal workings.
Then, a quiet sound enters. Then, patches of skin sensation, smell. A new world is being created all around