The Killing of Worlds Read Online Free PDF Page A

single structure. Then the Al calculated its exact diameter and he realized what it was.
    A single column of flockers, probably all that the battle cruiser had launched. More than five thousand of them, spaced less than a meter apart. His sensors told of the formation’s incredible exactness: The whole four kilometers had the diameter of Marx’s thumb.
    He could see minute flashes from the front of the column now. Every few seconds the lead drone was being destroyed by sand. Then the next one took its place, and lasted a few more seconds.
    But behind these sacrifices, the vast majority of the flockers were protected. They were like army ants crossing a river, the latter arrivals marching on the backs of the foremost after they had drowned. They were punching a very narrow hole into the wall of sand, and slipping through.
    Marx had seen flockers spread themselves into a far-flung bestiary °f shapes: radiating arms like paper fans or the struts of a parasol, toroids and lazy-eights that undulated with a standing wave, point-clouds buzzing with internal motion. But never had he seen anything so deviously simple.
    A straight line.
    And they were getting through.
    Another image occurred to Marx. On his home planet lived a species of rat that could break down its own bones, funneling itself into a thin sack of jelly to climb through even the narrowest of cracks. He shuddered at the thought.
    Marx’s surprise cost him a vital moment of attention. He didn’t immediately notice the ten flockers that burst from the line, having detected a transient gap in the sand between his scout craft and the column. By the time the master pilot reacted, the flockers were lined up on him at three thousand gees. Although they had less than a second of reaction mass at that acceleration, Marx’s twisting evasive pattern came too late, his larger drone twisting like some slow-footed mastodon brought down by a pack of small predators. Synesthesia filled with lightning, sputtered for a moment, then dumped him into the calming cerulean wash of a dead signal.
    He cursed. And cursed again.
    Gathering himself, Jocim Marx signaled ExO Hobbes.
    “I saw,” Hobbes said. She’d been watching over his shoulder.
    He bit his tongue as a wave of shame struck him. In a Class 7 trans-light drone on a scouting mission, and he’d been beaten by a handful of pilotless drones.
    “They’re getting through the sand!” he shouted. “The
Lynx
is—”
    “We’ll be briefing the captain in forty seconds,” Hobbes interrupted. “I want you on the bridge in virtual.”
    Forty seconds? An eternity in this battle, a dozen opportunities lost to delay.
    “And what should I do for forty seconds, Executive Officer?”
    A dead pause: his audio muted as Hobbes attended to one of the other dozen conversations she was no doubt juggling. Then she was back.
    “I suggest you reflect thankfully upon the fact that you fly remotes, Master Pilot. See you in thirty seconds.”
    Her voice left him alone in his blue, dead universe.
    As he waited, Marx’s fingers twitched, aching to fly again.
Captain
    “In short, the flockers are getting through the sand,” Hobbes concluded.
    Laurent Zai nodded.
    “They always do. What’s the projected attrition?”
    Hobbes swallowed. These nervous ticks were unlike her, Zai thought. She had lost some confidence since the mutiny.
    “Perhaps a tenth, sir. The other ninety percent are coming through.”
    “Ten percent!” Zai glared down into the bridge main airscreen, where the long, thin needle of flockers hovered. Normally, the small and expendable drones were reduced to a small fraction of their initial numbers. He and Hobbes had expected the sand to be especially deadly at this speed. But instead, it had proved useless.
    There were almost five thousand flockers in the first wave alone, more than enough to tear the
Lynx
to pieces. And they would arrive in some sixteen minutes.
    “Did they use this single-column tactic in the last war?”