The Ascendant Stars - Michael Cobley [208]
The destructor Extra-Brutal unlimbered its external grapplers and began to dig and hack at the malleable yet tough substance that held the Aggression craft entrapped. But cuts resealed themselves and gouges were quickly refilled.
The fifth wave of missiles landed in a long line which flung up a dazzling wall of coruscating energy. Motion sensors detected subsurface distortions within the Godhead – which the AI noted as it reconfigured the lateral thrusters’ control parameters for short hot bursts. The hope was that the enclosing grey mass was alive, part of the Godhead’s physical form, and that it would feel the thruster heat as pain, forcing it to release or expel the destructor. But before it was ready, the sixth wave landed and something deep within and far below gave way.
The undulations of the surrounding morphscape grew violent, casting up thick heavy waves and huge twisting ropes, great long whips which lashed at the sky, bubbles that grew to be giant orbs before bursting, sending shards flying while great fractured shells melted back into the squirming, spasming greyness. And when the seventh missile wave hit, the AI Extra-Brutal saw the great cracks off in the distance – sections rearing up like cliffs, like splinters and shards hundreds of miles long wrenching away from bedrock. The Godhead was breaking apart.
The eighth wave finally did it, like a hammerblow landing on cracked ice. Gouts of destroying energy sliced into fissures and crevasses, racing through the interstices, burning and vaporising the ancient matrices of the Godhead’s brain. Its agony sent gigantic convulsions tearing through its vast corpus.
All around the Aggression destructor the morphscape had slowed, apparently solidifying, before a massive internal deformation shattered it all. The AI Extra-Brutal had shut down most of its external sensors, safely shielding those that could be protected. But it had enough still active to witness the arrival of the last missile wave, their sun-bright explosions lighting up the expanding clouds of debris and dust with haloes of incinerating hellfire.
The Extra-Brutal was picking up nothing but interference on the command channel. It knew that it was now partly encased in a solidified chunk of the Godhead’s integument, and floating clear of huge splintered pieces even as the dissipating wavefronts of energy and debris pushed them further apart. The Construct AI gingerly tested its manoeuvring jets and found that it could move. Steering a course towards the edge of the gigantic rubble cloud, it was careful to keep to wider spaces, trying to reduce the chances of a collision with something large and fast-moving. With its sensors it saw that the energy discharge from the missile strikes continued to blaze amid the veils of pulverised rock, unseen flames flickering in a haze of stone.
The AI Extra-Brutal noticed the wreckage of many ships amongst the drifting debris of the Godhead. But the strangest object was a lifeless male humanoid strapped to a blue couch which had small suspensor assemblies fixed to either end. A detailed scan revealed that the humanoid had broken legs, a broken spine and a fractured shoulder, and that it had died from explosive decompression. The Extra-Brutal committed the data to its report file and continued on its slow winding journey out of the corpse-cloud of the Godhead.
GREG
He swung his legs out of the Roug foray-pod