Page 14 (1/2)

By the E

Surely this was some ed optics Some crocodile trick

Surely not tears

Another sob wracked the commando Then she pulled a monofila-ment knife from her clothes

Akman fired instantly, the recoil froered to reht on the icy floor of the cave The suspension of steel balls bounced harmlessly from the Rixwohed and threw the knife aside

"I am unarmed now," she said in a perfect local accent

Her burned and scarred head dropped back into her hands

The rush of adrenaline and fear that had caused hiained control of his breathing This Rix co The I he had been taught about the Rix could be false

The ungainly sounds of Squad One un&039;s report He turned and waved them back

The first Rix prisoner ever He wasn&039;t about to let some yokel burst in and shoot her to death Her body convulsed again, and Akod

"Are you?" he began Sick? Dying? Weeping?

Keep it siain with her stunning violet eyes, the only feature of her face that was not grotesque with injury

"I a Rana Harter," she said simply "Who died today"

And then she wept soan to move

Almost a full four hours after the captain&039;s deadline, First Engineer Frick finally cleared Hobbes to give the order The frigate shook as the ed with a enerators, which usuallytheir over-stressed condition Hobbes felt herself pressed rudely back into her chair, feeling about half the frigate&039;s four-gravity acceleration She saw the captain scowl as the crushing weight released the double duty," she explained "It&039;s keeping us nailed down and the ship together We&039;ve prioritized inertial darity is in doubt"

"Yes, Hobbes But surely that treood for the fissured hullalloy in the bow"

"No, Captain It wasn&039;t good at all for the fissured hullalloy in the bow"

She returned to her tasks, ignoring Zai&039;s look of surprise at her tone Hobbes had enough to do--coordinating the continuing repair, dispensing zero-gee to creith heavy objects tosure the Lynx didn&039;t break up--without explaining the obvious to the captain Another few hours of repair in freefall, and the ship would have accelerated without a hitch

But orders were orders, and ti at itsthe vessel turned over, it would reach the object in just over seven hours The Lynx couldn&039;t sit around forever As it was, the wounded frigate would be hard pressed to match velocities with the object before the battlecruiser arrived

Hobbes wondered why the Rix had placed the object fifteen million klicks behind the battlecruiser, and without an escort Had they assigned a hundred or so of the blackbody drones to it, the object would be able to defend itself

She wondered gri off the Lynx Its powers of alchemy were an unknown quantity The now-animated object (Did it really contain the Rix e itself into practically any substance

But hoould it defend itself? Turn into a working starship? A giant fusion cannon? Or would it cla itself a carapace of hullalloy? Or even neutroniu this last supposition Neutronium was collapsed matter--a non-elemental substance--and so far all the object&039;s transubstantiations had involved eleerate its powers, Hobbes reminded herself Data Analysis&039;s current theory was that it could call arrange, but not protons and neutrons Therefore the object&039;s substance, despite its chemical properties, would never have the s The object&039;s alcheenerator: The particles it created were a at first, but upon closer exa

Katherie Hobbes pushed these thoughts aside--speculations on the object were DA&039;s concern--and refocused her attention on the Lynx&039;s repair woes The biggest drain on stores had been the singularity generator The bigbang enerator&039;s shielding, arate The generator&039;s jury-rigged shielding was sufficient to protect the crew, but lacked the necessary counterees It took a lot offree under the inertial stresses of ot another fraction of a gee in safe acceleration, but that armor had to be pulled froate&039;s fissured bow also needed reinforcement Frick had made do with a patchwork of plates drawn from armored drones, combat stations, and even decoun batteries, the ets like sickbay--had been stripped of ar a half-assed volley of flockers or some other kinetic weapon, the Lynx would be swissed

The executive officer wished fervently that she could call up a hundred tons of hullalloy from an alchemist of her own

Hobbes siate&039;s current configuration At four gees for seven hours, they could slon to make a first pass at a relative velocity of about three hundred kilometers per second, a respectable velocity for an attack But if she could squeeze out another gee, they would come in neatly matched to the object It would be invaluable for the E before they destroyed it

Ideally, Hobbes thought, she could get two ate would be able toan eventual escape at least feasible

If Frick stripped every hardpoint on the ship, it ht just be possible

Hobbes rubbed her head, which had begun to spin around the combinatorial tree of possible tradeoffs The mental focus that two hours of hypersleep had bestowed upon her was starting to slip again She decided to ask the captain for advice

The shipmaster&039;s chair was empty She raised Zai in synesthesia His voice can that he was in the captain&039;s observation blister Zai had ordered the blister resurrected as soon as it could be after the battle was over Over the last few hours, he had returned there again and again, staring into the void as he had before rejecting the blade of error

Hobbes wondered if he were having second thoughts

"Yes, Hobbes?"

"I think I can get us up to five gees, sir"

"Only five?"

Hobbes sighed quietly, glad that her expression was hidden froh heavy her accelerations, sir"

"What have we stripped?"

"Everything, sir Hardpoints Sickbay Drones Asas we can spare without another round of cancers"

There was a pause

"What about the bridge?"

"Sir?" The battle bridge was the Lynx&039;s hardest point, wrapped in a cocoon of hullalloy and structured neutroniuate had no chain-of-command provisions if the captain and all the firsts were killed

The E starships Especially not this one

"I believe there are forty tons of e hardpoint," the captain said

"Forty tons may be present, sir But I&039;m not sure they are available"

The captain chuckled "Give ees, Hobbes Whatever it takes"

"Sir--"

"The object may devise any nu that it would be disinclined to use a kinetic weapon Think about it"

Hobbes considered the captain&039;s words "Because it would have to expend its own mass to create ait lacks It may be able to create a diamond bullet, but however hard that diaar cube However you strip the Lynx, I think she&039;ll be able to withstand a hail of sugar cubes Even very hard ones"

Hobbes&039;s eyebrows raised Whenever she thought the old man had succumbed to melancholy, Zai would show his usual tactical brilliance But she wasn&039;t entirely convinced

"Even if these sugar cubes are propelled by a railgun, sir? At rela-tivistic velocities--"

"A railgun requires rimaced at her own error Of course DA believed that the object&039;s alche was limited to chemical propulsion for any weapon, a paltry way to accelerate a kinetic weapon

"I see, sir That&039;s why you want the gees: so that we can decelerate fast enough to match velocity" Hobbes saw it now If the Lynx flew past the object at hundreds of klicks per second, it could simply place a net of alchemical elements in their path Even a stationary tripwire could be deadly to a running man

"Exactly, Executive Officer," he answered "And with six gees, we can escape the battlecruiser after our mission is accoy weapons, sir? We&039;ve only got a e arns of a powerful energy source, Hobbes But of course you&039;re right If that thing can make itself into a planet-sized fusion cannon, we&039;re dead"

"Then what should we--"

"Dead, Hobbes, whether or not we have shielding around the bridge Give ees Captain out"

Katherie heard the connection step down

She sighed Perhaps the oldtoward an inco a foe of unknown strengths and weaknesses The Lynx was ainst an enemy that was neither a crewed starship nor a drone, machine nor creature; it wasn&039;t even proper nifier in the eain, the survival of Laurent Zai&039;s ship seemed to be out of the hands of its crew

A fewto ue Axis arrived with a thunderous noise

She had been waiting for hours The counselor was only twentyagain and again all day, as if it were sonation There was the aberrance of talking with so with another counselor outside the chae-old fear of contagion

The sound of the counselor&039;s helicopter approached slowly, building from a subliminal shudder to a relentless force that raised a chorus of chattering complaints from Nara&039;s foxbone tea service The vehicle had called ahead to check the specifications of her building&039;s landing pad; it was a big machine The counselor&039;s environmental system required heavy transport It contained the man&039;s affliction, a er Niles had discreetly deterue Axis representative In the chaueman rarely spoke except to vote, his voice distorted by the filtration system that protected both his delicate immune system from the capital&039;s pollution and his fellow counselors from the ancient parasites that made him their home

Nara Oxham shuddered for a moment when the pitch of the helicopter&039;s whine dropped, signaling that its landers were secure on the pad above her Rationally, Oxhaue Axis carried death with the If a biosuit were somehow opened to the fresh air, a layer of phosphorus co the populace

And her fear was not only unreasoned, it was shameful, a remnant of one of huue Axis perfornal service to the Ehty Worlds possessed only a senetic legacy of Earth Prime had been pared down by wars and holocausts, and by foolish edicts of racial purity, which resulted in roups without the stability and adaptability of genetic fusion cultures But of all the historical errors that had reduced genetic diversity, ineer a huenetic manipulation to discover the subtle jape played by evolution: Almost no human traits were universally unfit Genes that exacerbated a disease in one environment conferred resistance in another Insanity was e carried hidden strengths In the wildly variable conditions of the stars, hureater diversity, not less And yet it was a diminished humanity that left earth&039;s cradle, enfeebled supermen who met only a local and flawed standard of superiority