Simon kept switching his attention between it and the other knot, the one following them forty minutes behind. He knew the SK9 had somehow got himself up to orbit and into a starship. There was only one reason he'd do that.
"Shouldn't be long now," Captain Manet announced. "We're detecting the photosphere."
Beyond the knot representing the Koribu, a faint drizzle of black was creeping through the nothingness, as if space were coming to an end outside the compression wormhole. Then the knot began to waver, expanding as it lost density. It vanished.
"They left that late," Manet said. "Only forty million kilometers out."
"We need to be close to them," Simon said.
"Yes, I know. But I'm going to shift our inclination. If they're really hostile they'll mine the exodus zone."
Simon spent the next twenty-five minutes watching the black barrier of the star's photosphere coming toward them, wondering what Newton and his friends were doing out there in real space. With five minutes to go until their own exodus, Manet armed the Norvelle's missiles in preparation. The ship's AS primed the fusion drive under the bridge crew's supervision. Then the black wall was unnervingly close, and beginning to pick up speed. It fractured radially, with red streaks fizzling through. Then the huge starship was sailing high above a glaring carmine smog that seemed to stretch out forever in all directions.
Columns of indigo digits streamed around Simon, mutating wildly as they went. There was no mass point within five hundred kilometers. No sensor radiation fell across them. Infrared energy began to soak the fuselage. The big secondary chemical rocket engines around the cargo section flared brightly, initiating a slow thermal roll. Large rectangular radar antennae began to deploy.
Simon used his command capability to launch a salvo of missiles. Pressure doors throughout the Norvelle closed and locked, isolating the crew.
"What are you doing?" Sebastian Manet demanded.
"That's perfectly obvious, Captain. The Norvelle is my ship, and I am carrying out my mission." He canceled the link and shut down all internal communications channels.
On the bridge, Sebastian Manet stared on helplessly as his DNI was denied access to the starship's network. The console displays darkened. Two of the bridge officers hammered on the pressure door with their fists. Nobody heard them.
"Sweet Fate, they've fired their missiles," Lawrence said.
"Not at us," Denise assured him.
"What then? Oh!"
"Scatter pattern. I think they're going to try to strike the other ship at exodus."
Lawrence opened the link to One. "Will you now accept that your knowledge shouldn't be given to this starship?"
"The starship's actions support your contention so far. Our knowledge will be withheld pending resolution of this event."
"Thank you." He turned to Denise. "Can we intercept those missiles?"
"No. We're too far away."
"Shit. Get Prime to scan for the exodus. Use our main communication dish to broadcast a warning."
Indigo targeting graphics locked on to a section of space eighteen thousand kilometers away as the Norvelle's radar detected an object under acceleration. Simon's visual focus leaped across the distance. A long, incandescent spark burned hard above the mellow radiance of the photosphere. It was moving fast, descending.
"Fusion flame," the starship's AS reported. "Spectral pattern identical to our own. Radar substantiates vehicle size. It is the Koribu."
"Where are they going?" Simon asked.
Several plot lines curved out of the dazzling plume. The Norvelle's long-range radar began to sweep along them. It swiftly found the destination.
"A solid structure, type unknown," the AS said. "Twenty kilometers across, circular, very regular."
"Take us down to it," Simon ordered.
On the Clichane's bridge, Simon Roderick sat behind the captain as they approached exodus. Console panes counted down the last few seconds. Camera images turned a garish carmine. A small cheer went round the bridge officers. Simon's DNI relayed the radar data directly to him. No large, solid objects within five hundred kilometers. Several small points registered. Extraneous radar pulses were illuminating their fuselage. The AS confirmed their signature as the long-range type carried by both the Koribu and the Norvelle. It began plotting their locations.
"Receiving communications," the captain said. "Somebody's shouting." The AS showed a very powerful transmission beamed straight at them.
"Your exodus point is mined. Launch defense salvo."
"Is that the Norvelle?" Simon asked.
"There is no identification code," the AS told him.
Simon's personal AS checked the radar image again. The small points were now moving under heavy acceleration, tearing straight toward them. Clichane's AS immediately fired a countersalvo. The missiles slid out of their launch cradles around the cargo section. Solid rocket motors ignited, accelerating them at over sixty gravities. Sensors were degraded by the ion wind and radiation rising from the photosphere. The missiles' onboard programs tried to compensate. But the attacking missiles were also using countermeasures and em pulses. The defenders responded with their own volley of electronic treachery.
The Clichane's AS acknowledged that the defense salvo wouldn't be able to achieve precision elimination strikes. Attacking missiles would breach the defenses. It ordered separation, and the swarm blossomed as each missile discharged its multiple warheads. They were still inside safe-distance limit, but the attacking missiles were closing. The AS had no choice.
A huge corona of nuclear fire erupted around the Clichane as the barrage of defending warheads detonated. The spherical plasma shock waves clashed and merged, forming a hellish shield of seething raw energy. Secondary explosions ripped long ebony twisters through the rampaging ions, short-lived hypervelocity spikes that tried to assail the star-ship.
At the center of the fusion inferno the Clichane was buffeted by radiation. Its external sensors were blinded as hard X-rays burned up their circuitry. Em pulses induced huge power surges along electrical cables and metal structures. Temperature escalated, blackening the thermal protection foam before the surface began to ablate, shedding scabby charcoal flakes. The residual foam bubbled like molten tar. A hurricane of elementary particles washed across the besieged fuselage. In the bridge and throughout the life support wheels radiation monitors began a shrill whistle of alarm. Emergency pressure valves began venting deuterium gas from tanks around the fusion drive section as the liquid started to boil from the electromagnetic energy input. Thermal radiator panels ruptured, jetting their sticky, steaming fluid into the hurricane of neutrons swirling round the giant starship.