Beam weapons turned metal glowing, sometimes molten. Fired upon from both the widely spaced hilldiggers, the platform ultimately could not sustain the attack. Finally, its defence collapsed, and the attackers could rake the platform's underbelly without hindrance.
"Firing Control, prepare loads for Silos Five to Eight, and fire at your convenience," Harald ordered. Meanwhile, on one of his larger screens, he called up a closer view of the Defence Platform. Hearing the low sound of these latest missiles launching, he glanced to a side screen and watched them accelerating up from Ironfist. Halfway to the platform he observed one of them impact against a shield and spew glowing debris in every direction. It did not detonate, however, as the missiles were set for positional detonation, since the premature explosion of one missile might throw all the others off course. As he watched, the last interstation shuttle dropped away, accelerating hard. He rather suspected the last of the platform crew was aboard it, and had most recently been operating the platform weapons via remote consoles. The three missiles passed close by the departing shuttle and punched right into the platform's underside. A heartbeat, and then the platform seemed to expand as if the very fabric of space was being stretched. Next came a brief glimpse of its structure parting over an expanding ball of fire, then all was consumed by an inferno that grew painfully bright, before filters cut out the glare.
The shuttle by now lay well clear of the fireball, but even so it could not outrun the shock wave. Abruptly it jerked sideways, then began to fall, rolling along its axis with fragments tearing away from it. It fell for five miles, attitude jets firing to try and straighten its course. Yet, even though they achieved this, it now seemed they were all it possessed to keep it in the air. Harald watched a deliberate hard change of course, and was unsurprised to note the vessel being set to collide with Ironfist. As it hammered down towards the hilldigger, it spat out a sequence of spheres—one-man re-entry pods.
"Firing Control, is someone going to do something about that shuttle?" he enquired tightly.
"Yes, Admiral, I was waiting until the pods were clear," came the harried and somewhat off-hand reply.
"Well, whoever put it on a collision course with this ship should have thought of that!" he shouted. "Destroy it now!"
"Yes, Admiral! At once, Admiral!"
Harald seethed as he watched a short-range interceptor missile streak up and pierce the shuttle's belly. Thermal load: the shuttle flew apart in another fireball, most of it vaporised or turned molten. Beyond it the pattern of re-entry pods disrupted. The technology of such pods was tough, so Harald reckoned that most of them would be able to deploy their parachutes. Their contents were not so rugged, however, and he estimated that about half of the parachutes would be dangling corpses to the ground.
As abruptly as it came, his anger receded. He could easily have waited a little longer—those had been totally unnecessary deaths. Just like those of the crew aboard Stormfollower…
"Platform Four has somehow managed to tilt itself to enable the deployment of its main weapons," Franorl warned him, his image taking over one of Harald's screens, and his words banishing that brief moment of introspection.
"Something like that was not unexpected," replied Harald. "Anyway, our tactics against this platform would only work once."
"So you are going to use…the weapon?" enquired Franorl.
Harald felt his suspicions confirmed by Franorl's reserve. From what he could recollect and from what he had scanned in his own records, Franorl was less averse to causing mayhem than Harald himself, yet now this sudden reluctance? He gazed at the Captain and, while giving his orders, carefully gauged the man's reactions.
"Firing Control, bring main weapon capacitance up to full," Harald ordered. Then on general com he announced, "Shipwide alert, condition Aleph. This is Admiral Harald speaking. Prepare for gravity wave recoil. You know the drill since you have performed it many times. But this time it is for real."
As he came off general com, one of the officers in charge of internal ship's logistics immediately came on instead. "All back-up reactors to standby mode. Suit for possible breach and run airlock integrity tests. Seal and crash-foam damaged areas. All rail transport and internal lifts will be locking down in twenty-four minutes from now. Engineering, prepare for main engine shutdown…" and so it continued.
Franorl bowed in acquiescence, and his image winked out.
Firing the main weapon of a hilldigger, its gravity disruptor, was no simple task. Hugely destructive, it was also excessively dangerous for the one wielding it. There were other likely consequences as well. Once Fleet resorted to such weapons, it could well mean that Combine would deploy them too. Franorl's recent reaction was probably indicative of how the other supposedly loyal Captains also felt. Harald now called up access to numerous programs on his screen. He had prepared the means for seizing control of those hilldiggers whose Captains seemed likely to rebel, and as necessary he had already done so. What his remaining 'loyal' Captains did not know was that he possessed similar access to the controls of their ships too.
McCrooger
While keeping their weapons trained on her, they injected Yishna with a sedative, using some type of gun-like syringe. Watching her carefully, I wondered if at the door the Worm had divined her intentions, and had slowed her down just enough. The sedative knocked her out within seconds, whereupon a female medic sealed her shoulder wound with a large gummy dressing, before she was loaded onto a floating gurney and towed away. The medic then moved on to Orduval, gazed frowning at the huge hole in his back, then gestured over one of his companions.
"The morgue," she said, as she next propelled herself over to me.
Without much ado Orduval went into a body bag, the basic design of which had not changed in a thousand years. The medic took rather more time over me since, as far as I knew, I had no catastrophic wounds. After a visual inspection—just turning me round in mid-air—she took out a hand-held scanner to check me over.
"Quite strange-looking…almost deformed," commented one of the armed security personnel.
"Actually, we are the deformed ones," replied the medic. "Apparently this is what our ancestors looked like." She peered at the readout from her scanner, grimaced and shook her head. "Though I'm guessing our ancestors weren't composed like him internally. He's got a Brumallian mutualite in there, and that's the least strange thing about him."
Yeah, I certainly knew about the mutualite. Shutting down my heart and lungs had introduced a deathly quiet the last time I tried it. This time the reduction in the noise level allowed me to hear the glubbing and squelching of the beast inside me. I could also feel it moving, which was not a particularly pleasant sensation.
"But he's dead?" suggested the man.
"Well if he isn't, he's doing a very fine impersonation of a corpse," she quipped.
"The morgue?"
"No, he goes up to Bio-containment. There's a casket there with his name on it."
While two others opened up a body bag for me, I observed, just past them, another suited figure clamping something that looked like a portable heater, with attached gas bottle, to nearby cagework. I couldn't figure out what this thing was for until it made some stuttering gobbling sounds, as it sucked down free-floating droplets of blood and and stray gobbets of flesh. Clearing the air, no less. Then the body bag closed out any further view of my surroundings.