Surface Detail

The view tumbled one more time, another set of targets highlighted across the wash of contact-strewn space, then even as she triggered the weaponry again they set off, their slow, near-centred drift composed of many lightning-fast tumbles and gyrations turning into a single darting vector aimed at where they reckoned the grey they were targeting would be. She kept on firing microsalvo after micro-salvo at the sleet-echoes of red targets as they pursued, triggerings becoming almost continuous as the firing patterns diverged. Red sleet, red sleet turning fire bright; they must be leaving a tunnel of ravaged, fading debris behind them through the swarmer cloud, the ship itself a sleek spear-point glittering with reflected light as the red-flagged laser elements swivelled, following it and firing. So many reds, so many…

∼It’s accelerating hard, the ship sent.

Shit, she thought.

∼We powered it by hitting it, she sent to the ship.

∼Yes.

∼With the laser.

∼Yes. Oh.

∼They’re not all just to hit us with.

∼They’re there…

∼To power the greys.

∼That’s a departure.

∼That could be a lot of fucking departures. Those grey fuckers are ships; microships.

∼The outburst has halted, the ship told her. ∼The last swarmer just exited the infected fabricary.

Auppi and the ship were picking out double-handfuls of targets constantly now as they charged through the mist of contacts becoming targets, delegating the fire commands to the sub-AIs, effectively letting the weaponry make up its own mind when to initiate.

∼Hundreds of the laser swarmers are firing at the grey we’re pursuing, the ship sent. ∼I can see the back-scatter. Other laser swarmers starting to pattern themselves around each of the greys. They’re going to power them up too.

∼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,