Synthesis - James Swallow [140]
Then rods exploded from its shifting surface, lances that filled the vacuum like a thousand loosed arrows.
The formation of starships splintered, some of them literally detaching into component modules in order to evade the storm of incoming fire. Veering off, the Titan stood up on one warp pontoon, the ship’s structural integrity fields pulled to their limits as g-forces dragged on the vessel. Rods slashed at the shields, impacts slamming hard across the halo of the starboard deflectors.
But it was the Sentry craft that took the bulk of the barrage. A long, rectangular shipframe resembling an upright obelisk did not turn in time, the slashing quarrels of matter turning from stone to gas to metal as they cut it apart. A ball of fusion fire erupted from the midsection and destroyed it.
Red-Gold calculated an escape-and-evasion vector that would put it to Titan’s aft quarter. Those computations, impossibly fast, were still not fast enough. A salvo of the arrow things morphed in mid-flight, writhing as they reversed course, shifting state back to naked protomatter. The streaks of Null form rose beneath Red-Gold’s shipframe and buried themselves in it, impaling the craft with bright, glassy spikes. Out of control, neural connectors brutally severed, the AI began to die.
A shriek like howling static cut through the air, and Vale was on her feet as the spherical drone went into proxy spasms. Red-Gold’s remote, still linked to its primary, mimicked the death throes of the shipframe. Every panel and compartment beneath the machine’s featureless bronze surface shot open, twitching manipulator limbs, sensor heads and weapons flailing. The crimson light behind the sensor band burned star-bright for one brief second before snapping off. Bitter, choking wisps of smoke from melted components wreathed the lifeless drone as it dropped to the deck.
Vale took two steps toward the remote and then turned back to the main viewscreen. Out there in the middle distance, she saw Red-Gold’s shipframe finally succumb to its damage and break apart.
White-Blue rocked on its aft quad of piston legs. “We are losing ground!”
The captain’s knuckles were white where his hands gripped the armrests of his chair. “Then we can’t afford to waste any more time. Tuvok, weapons status?”
The Vulcan’s cool demeanor remained unchanged as ever. “All tricobalt warheads now in forward loading carousel. Weapons are armed and ready to deploy.”
“Lavena.” The captain turned his attention to the helm. “Can you get us closer?”
Vale heard the Pacifican release a wet gasp of tension. “Aye, sir. Twenty seconds to range.”
The view on the bridge screen leaped into motion as the Titan swerved around the burning corpse of Red-Gold’s vessel, and it was possible to see filaments of transforming material snaking over the wreckage, growing like fungus. In moments, it would be as if the Sentry ship had never existed, and another knot of Null mass would be emergent in its place.
Past the debris, the orbital space ahead became clearer, although the term was relative. With the Null-Sentry conflict now being fought all around the Demon planet, it seemed there was nowhere that the shadow of the battle did not fall, and still the spatial rifts were coming, spilling out more and more strings of rapacious protomatter.
The deck tilting beneath her feet, the first officer lurched to the tactical horseshoe behind the command pit and grabbed the console to steady herself. The slight