The Killing of Worlds Read Online Free PDF Page B

defenses can’t cope with so many at once.”
    “A shield, Hobbes. Prepare to fire all four photon cannon.”
    Marx began to protest, and Zai cut the man’s sound off with a gesture. Of course—as the master pilot had been about to complain— capital weapons like the
Lynx
‘s photon cannon were useless against flockers. It would be like hunting insects with artillery.
    “What’s the target, sir?” Hobbes asked.
    “The
Lynx
,” he said.
    “We’re firing at… ?” she began. Then, even as her fingers moved to alert the gunners, understanding filled her face. “I assume we can target the heat-sink manifold directly, sir?”
    “Of course, Hobbes. No need to test the energy shunts.”
    “We’ll be ready to detach the manifold on your order, Captain.”
    “Exactly, Hobbes.”
    He turned his attention to the flailing, voiceless Master Pilot.
    “Marx, get back into the foremost scout,” Zai commanded, then gave the man back his voice.
    “And my orders, sir?”
    “Attack the Rix receiver array. With a sandcaster if you can find any alive.”
    The Master Pilot thought silently for a moment. Then he said, “Perhaps if there were an unexploded canister—”
    “Do it,” Zai commanded, and erased the man’s image from the bridge.
    “All cannon ready, sir. Targeting our own heat-sink array at twenty percent power.”
    Zai paused, wondering if there were yet another factor he hadn’t considered. Perhaps he was making another idiotic mistake. He wondered if any Imperial shipmaster had opened fire on his own ship before, without self-destruction in mind.
    But the war sage’s words reassured him.
    If you fail, fail dramatically. At least you will prove the error of your tactics to your successors.
    Zai nodded; this diversion would get into the textbooks one way or another.
    “Fire.”
Pilot
    Banished from the bridge, Marx leaped back into the forefront of battle.
    He chose another scout craft, displacing a sensor officer who was flying it at one remove. She’d been running three scouts at once, coordinating their efforts through a high-level interface. The Master Pilot kicked her off, settled in, and flexed the machine’s muscles. He informed all Imperial drones within ten thousand klicks that he was assuming control of them.
    Marx accelerated his impromptu battle group into a cone-shaped collision formation focused upon the Rix battlecruiser. He brought the scout’s fusion drive, which doubled as its primary offensive weapon, out of stealth mode. He would need some serious power.
    These actions were all likely to draw the attention of the Rix. The scout was blaring across a wide range of EM, making itself known to the enemy’s battle management intelligences, human and machine. They would spot the valuable asset quickly, a drone under human command and at front-center of the
Lynx
‘s satellite cloud, the position most threatening to the enemy battlecruiser. Within seconds, Marx saw distant acceleration traces deep in the Rix cloud, the plumes of hunters vectoring toward his new vessel.
    In all likelihood, the master pilot would be losing his second scout of the day inside a minute. But his fingers moved confidently, drawing an ever-expanding sphere of resources into the attack.
    Marx didn’t expect to live long, anyway. The nearly full-strength flocker squadron was approaching the
Lynx
too fast. Pilots were nestled in the armored belly of Imperial warships, in the hope that the drones of a dying ship would fight on under human control, damaging the enemy even as their own vessel was destroyed around them. But at this high relative velocity, the flockers would plunge through the
Lynx
like barrage rockets through a cloud of steam. There would be no safety even in the pilots’ armored canopies.
    Death—real, absolute, nonvirtual death—was headed toward Jocim Marx at three million meters per second.
    So he flew with uncharacteristic aggression. Perhaps he could shed some Rix blood on his way out.
    Between