Peter Hamilton - Judas Unchained

“Can we navigate like this?”

“Sure. Look at the returns. The plasma is illuminating the lattice spheres in twenty different spectra. We can fly through this, but slowly.” Their velocity was already taking them toward the second lattice sphere at twenty kilometers per second. Behind them, three hundred twenty Prime ships slid through the outer lattice sphere and plunged into the plasma. They launched another massive missile salvo.

“Uh…”

“It’s fine, I can steer us through the second lattice no problem. It’s the negative mass one, there’s like no way we can hit it, we just get shoved away if we get too close, like magnets.”

“Ozzie…Christ! They can see our wake.”

“Huh?”

Behind the Charybdis, a five-hundred-kilometer-long contrail of plasma spiraled like a gargantuan tornado. The armada of missiles was all converging toward the apex at seventeen gees. They started to detonate. The frigate’s hull field blazed rose-gold as it warded off their directed radiation pulses, flinging vast webbed lightning zephyrs off into the plasma. “Shit.” Ozzie pushed power back into the secondary drive, accelerating the Charybdis away from the vector it had been coasting along. G-force shunted him down into the cushioning again. “Are we losing them?”

“No!”

“Mark, you control the weapons, do something!”

“What? I can fire a quantumbuster, a nova bomb, or a neutron laser.”

Behind them, another wave of missiles detonated. Radiation turned the plasma to an opalescent violet.

“Use a quantumbuster.”

“We need to be a million kilometers away at least when one of those goes off—anything closer than that and this frigate is dead.”

“Son of a bitch, we’re not going to make it.”

“You have an incoming call,” the SIsubroutine said. “An encrypted maser link originating outside the first lattice sphere.”

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me,” Ozzie groaned.

“Do you want to establish a connection? The identity certificate is confirmed: Nigel Sheldon.”

Ozzie was crying as he laughed. “Tell him we’ll accept the charges.”

“Yo, Ozzie, how’s it hanging?” Nigel said. “You guys need any help down there?”

***

Both armored cars charged around the final curve in the road, and the Institute valley was directly ahead. The town had the look of a small elite university campus, with villas and apartment blocks colonizing the shallower southern slope in prim rows where their silvered windows looked out over the long white laboratories and engineering sheds that sprawled across the floor of the valley. All of it was dwarfed by the huge cylindrical starship sheltering inside a force field. The scaffolding that had surrounded its eight-hundred-meter length for over two decades had gone, revealing a light gray fuselage that the morning sun gave a satin sheen. Eight dark fusion rocket nozzles dominated its aft superstructure, their external casings inset with concentric thermal duct strips that were glowing a mild maroon as they kept the superconductor coils chilled. Several long blunt fins protruded from the fuselage, fluorescing a deep fuchsia purple as they maintained thermal stability within the internal tanks and generators. Up at the prow, the original tumorous cluster of force field generators had been supplemented by an elongated scarlet cone, fifty meters across at the base. Frost clung to long segments of the fuselage, revealing the outer walls of the deuterium tanks.

A single gantry pillar had been left standing just behind the prow. The MANN truck was parked at its base.

“The son of a bitch made it,” Alic said bitterly.

“We’d have been royally screwed anyway,” the Cat said. “I somehow don’t think these boys would let us pass.”

Soldier motiles had formed a broad line across Highway One and the surrounding ground half a kilometer from the rear of the Marie Celeste.

“Oh, shit,” Morton muttered; there must have been a thousand aliens waiting.

“Ready,” Stig said.

“Hit it.” Morton launched his three electronic warfare drones; the Cat launched her remaining pair. Stig and Olwen had changed the focus on the X-ray lasers; now they fired them in broad fans at the waiting aliens.

For a couple of seconds the soldier motiles were bombarded by false signals and insidiously corrosive software; X rays seared into their electromagnetic sensors. They adapted and filtered and flushed the digital viruses, but there was still a moment while they were purblind.

It didn’t matter. When their sensors regained full functionality and scanned the land in front of them nothing had changed; the armored cars were still racing along Highway One, three armor suits riding on the outside of one that was puffing out hot black smoke. The two vehicles suddenly braked hard, tires squealing as the gearboxes were slammed into reverse. Then they were turning, skidding around as if the concrete had iced over. They started to flee back down the road.

As one, the soldier motiles started running after them. The armored car that was leaking smoke suddenly juddered. It began to slow, sparks flying out from underneath along with thickening belches of smoke. Something inside it was clanging like a broken bell. The soldier motiles opened fire.

“FUUUUUUCK,” Morton yelled, and powerdived off the armored car. The sky around him erupted in a relentless blaze of malignant ion bolts. He hit the edge of the concrete and rolled perfectly, timing it so he recovered his footing in a half turn. Suit electromuscles propelled him into an immediate sprint, his body leaning forward at forty-five degrees. The force field reshaped itself, mushrooming out around his head and shoulders to act as a spoiler, providing downpressure from the air that rushed over him. He swung his hands in a near-Neanderthal gait, knuckles not quite touching the ground, but close.

Sensors caught Stig bursting out through the armored car’s front emergency hatch as its force field’s glow escalated to a scarlet climax. The Guardian sped away, moving with fluid ease in the low gravity. Behind him the soldier motiles concentrated their fire. The crippled armored car exploded.

Up ahead, Olwen’s armored car braked.

“Keep going,” Morton yelled frantically. “Get the fuck out of here.” Micromissiles streaked overhead, pummeling the slow-moving vehicle. “We can outrun them.”

“But—”

“Go!”

The armored car accelerated hard again, building distance.

“Outrun them.” the Cat laughed raucously. “You going to run away from the launch, too, Morty darling?”

He gritted his teeth inside his helmet. Ever since he’d seen the ship he’d been trying to work out how much it massed. A lot of it was fuel; he remembered that from the quick review he’d given the files. Despite that, a quarter of a million tons was a conservative estimate. Even with force field wings generating some degree of lift, igniting the kind of fusion engines that could produce that much thrust would be worse than letting off a strategic nuke.

He saw the dark tide of soldier motiles flow over the burning wreckage of the armored car. They were fast, but they didn’t have electromuscle support. They’d never be able to keep that speed going. Would they?

The Cat was keeping up with him, leaning over at an even greater angle. Alic was off to one side.

“There won’t be a launch,” he grunted.

“Oh, Morty, you’re priceless. These Guardian fuckups have blown every chance they had. This won’t be any different.”

“It has to be. Bradley has to win. The Starflyer can’t go free.”

“Then we should have brought some tactical nukes or a Moscow-class warship. Don’t you get it? This thing is smarter than us.”