Surface Detail(179)

∼We aren’t going to be able to cope, she sent. ∼This needs mayhem weaponry; what we’ve got’s far too polite and pinpoint.

∼Or a serious Effector.

∼Job for our in-bound Torturer class.

∼I think we should suggest just that. Okay, we’re in range.

Auppi squeezed off the single main-armament shot at the fleeing swarmer, blasting it across the skies in a pulsating detonation of light, fragments incandescing in the pulses of laser still coming in from the swarmers which had been helping to power it.

Their own incoming increased again as the swarmers switched from powering the now destroyed microship to just plain shooting at the Bliterator and Auppi. The ship was swinging, powering away, curving round, lifting away from the debris field it had just created.

∼How many more greys? Auppi asked.

∼Thirty-eight.

∼We’ll never get them all.

∼As many as we can, then.

∼Any heading for the planet?

That had always been one of the nightmare scenarios: the swarmers turning properly feral and plunging into the gas giant to start trying to tear it apart. So far they hadn’t shown any desire to do this.

∼None. Mostly sticking to the system plane; few straight up and down.

∼Nearest?

∼This one, The ship highlighted one of the microships seemingly headed straight for another fabricary, its rear end lit up by the laser swarmers helping to propel it.

∼Signal Lan and the others, she sent. ∼Get Base to contact the Torturer class and suggest it gets stuck straight in with its Effector. Only way we’re going to cope here is by turning these fuckers on themselves.

∼Agree. Done.

They left the missiles to deal with the blue-tagged breeder swarmers while they went after the microship. This one loosed its own tail laser at them, re-directing some of its vicarious propellant laser fire back at its pursuer. The Bliterator’s mirror field blanked their sensors for an instant to cope.

∼Oh, that’s not funny, she sent.

∼Range, the ship replied.

∼Take that with your fucking arse-light, Auppi sent as she triggered their main armament. The weapon was wound up to frequencies there was no way the target ship’s own mirror armour could counter; the swarmer erupted brightly, way in the distance; the Bliterator was already curving away hard, picking out their next target.

They ran down ten more, the intervals between growing greater as the fleeing swarmer ships moved quickly away from the initial outbreak point. They passed the time frazzling as many of the cloud of laser swarmers as they could get near, dipping into the still-slowly expanding cloud of contacts like a predatory fish into a bait-ball.

The next grey was taking them way out of the original infection outbreak volume, zipping past other dormant fabricaria as they tore after the rear-lit microship.

∼This one’s accelerating harder than the others, given its distance

from the laser swarmers powering it, the ship told her. ∼Thought it was taking a while. ∼May mean it’s learned something about using that rear absorp-

tion/deflector set. ∼We in any danger? ∼Shouldn’t be. Mirror field’s been unstressed so far. The ship

sounded unworried. ∼Range. She fired. The resulting explosion didn’t look right. Too small,

for a start. ∼A partial, the ship sent. ∼Just wounded. ∼Wow, our first partial. ∼Still accelerating, though slower. Seventy per cent. Course

change, too. Heading straight for that fabricary. Collisionary. The ship highlighted one of the great dark slowly orbiting

shapes, sitting less than a thousand kilometres ahead. ∼Collisionary? Auppi sent. Oh, fuck, she thought; just what they needed. High-speed

swarmer/fabricary collisions. ∼Ready, the ship told her. ∼Hit it again. She did. Still too small a result. The swarmer had got harder,

smaller, more reflective. ∼Forty-five per cent of original acceleration, the ship reported.

∼Still picking up speed though. ∼Come on, you fucker, fucking die! They whizzed through the debris field from their first partial

hit. The ship scanned the still hot cloud as they flashed through

it, shields taking tiny impacts that made the ship judder. ∼Interesting materials profile, the ship said. ∼Definitely learning. ∼Same course? ∼Yes; swerved back to it after we knocked it off. ∼Impact? ∼Three seconds.

They had time to hit the swarmer twice more.

By the time it collided with the fabricary it had stopped accelerating and been reduced to the status of something more like a tight cloud of debris all travelling in the same direction rather than a ship, though it was still making sufficient speed to create a substantial flash when it hit the dark, three-kilometre-long lump of the fabricary.

∼Fuck, Auppi sent, watching the debris bloom and expand.