~Doing, the ship agreed, and the depleted grids lit up, firmed again. She flexed, distributing unseen rays like benedictions. She concentrated on the two foci of the main armament. A single unsullied brightness flicked on in each, then faded neatly. The other swarmers being engulfed in glowing debris clouds all happened elsewhere, unworthy of notice. Further afield still, the missiles careened about their own little patches of sky, dispatching all they could.
~No? she asked.
~No! the ship said.
Another wild twisting about the skies, and Razhir the gas giant was suddenly there, filling the view, its banded face instantly rashed with the aim points. The ship’s main armament had resumed targeting a full-power blast on individual grey targets.
~Motherfucker. Analysis?
~Bigger than average, non-ablating reflectivity, moving quicker. Complicated. Lot of wreckage. Accounting for fewer total targets.
There, she thought; she’d known there was something wrong about their being only ninety K swarmers when they’d been expecting more. The fucking outbreak was switching production mix again, going for complex survivability rather than sheer numbers.
~Grown-up power signatures, the ship continued, as Auppi unleashed another salvo. The incoming laser hits sounded like hail on a glass roof.
Another hurried tumble, one more array of targets snapping into focus, caught and steadied in the aiming grids. Even as she readied to fire, Auppi was scanning for the grey contacts preferentially now, picking out where they lurked in the red sleet-storm of other contacts.
Tiny patches of the sensor view were outing briefly now as the sheer weight of laser bursts incoming forced the mirror field to occlude the sensors, producing little hexagonal pixilations like clutter; they came and went almost before she had time to register them.
She flung out the latest manic light-burst, like shaking water droplets from her fingers.
With the main armament taking one target at a time it was possible to up the collimation on the secondaries for short- and medium-range targets, bringing their salvo total back up again. There might be a few more wounds rather than outright kills, but that was acceptable.
~That one just took off, the ship said, indicating one of the two grey targets they’d tried to waste two salvoes earlier. ~And there goes the other one.
~See them, Auppi sent. ~They’re fast! She had another reduced set of targets sliding across the view; she let fly at them. The two fleeing grey contacts would be out of range in seconds. ~Any missiles we can put in their way?
~Not the first one. Second, yes.
~Get the other missiles to concentrate on the greys, she suggested. She wanted to fire a lot more missiles, everywhere, but they were out of missiles now too.
~Shit, we powered them, the ship sounded upset.
~Didn’t know you swore, ship.
~I didn’t know swarmers could use incoming laser to power them to that sort of speed, the ship replied, fixing an unlikely-looking vector line across the points representing where one of the grey contacts had been when they’d hit it and where it was now, still accelerating.
~We need to chase those, she sent.
~You think so.
~It’s prioritising them.
Another small set of targets, swiftly dispatched, while another slotted instantly into view. The weaponry was falling out of phase now as the differences between the varying re-charging intervals started to add up and the additional collimating on the secondaries introduced its own slight delay.
~Maybe it wants us to do the same, the ship suggested.
The incoming sounded like drumming, heavy rain now. The pixilation outings were spattering across the view like manically invasive subtitles in an unknown language.
~I don’t think it’s that smart.
~You want to chase?
~Yes. That one. She indicated the first one to set off out of the cloud of contacts at the same time as loosing another half-salvo and marking a swathe of fresh targets across the red cloud around them.
~Okay.
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.